UPDATE: Stupidly I had forgotten this vital confirmation from Channel 4 News (serial rebel Alex Thomson) of the D Notice in place on mention of Pablo Miller.
Back then I did not realise what I now know, that the person being protected was Pablo Miller, colleague in both MI6 then Orbis Intelligence of Christopher Steele, author of the fabrications of the Trump/Russia golden shower dossier. That the government’s very first act on the poisoning was to ban all media mention of Pablo Miller makes it extremely probable that this whole incident is related to the Trump dossier and that Skripal had worked on it, as I immediately suspected. The most probable cause is that Skripal – who you should remember had traded the names of Russian agents to Britain for cash – had worked on the dossier with Miller but was threatening to expose its lies for cash.
ORIGINAL POST: This comment from Clive Ponting, doyen of British whistleblowers, appeared on my website and he has now given me permission to republish it under his full name:
I have been reading the blogs for some time but this is my first post. Like Craig I was a senior civil servant but in the ministry of defence not the fco. I had plenty of dealings with all three intelligence agencies. It seems to me that the reason none of the MSM are doing any investigating/reporting of the Salisbury affair, apart from official handouts, is that the government have slapped a D-Notice over the whole incident and it is not possible to report that a notice has been issued.
Here is another theory as to what happened. The Russians pardoned Skripal and allowed him to leave (spy agencies have an understanding that agents will always be swapped after an interval – it’s the only protection they have and helps recruitment). In the UK Skripal would have been thoroughly debriefed by MI6 and MI5 (his ex-handler lives near Salisbury). If at some point they discovered that Skripal was giving them false information, perhaps he was told to do so by the FSB as a condition of his release, lives may have been endangered/lost. If he also was also involved in the ‘golden showers’ dossier then elements in the US would have a reason to act as well. The whole incident was an inside job not to kill him, hence the use of BZ, but to give him a warning and a punishment. The whole thing is being treated as though the authorities know exactly what went on but have to cover it up.
Addendum
I meant to add that the policeman who ‘just happened’ to be around was almost certainly the special branch ‘minder’ who was keeping Yulia under surveillance. The media are not allowed to mention the existence of a D notice.
Those of us who have been in the belly of the beast and have worked closely with the intelligence services, really do know what they and the British government are capable of. They are not “white knights”.
I would add it has been very plain from day one that there is a D notice on Pablo Miller.
Except giving an old fat bloke with a drink problem a dose of BZ large enough to knock out a fit young girl could equally well have killed him.
Which is probably why he is still in hospital (allegedly).
I remember seeing a comment and thinking “that sounds like…”
What happened to the Lavrov BZ claim?
It seems they ran a check of what they had harvested from Salisbury against a whole range of suspected toxins, BZ was one of them. But returned a negative when compared to the Salisbury sample.
Interestingly they (OPCW) appear not to have a reference fingerprint for BZ so they made some. Everything else in the database?
The OPCW claimed it was a misunderstanding. The ‘respected’ NATO community of OPCW representatives on the other hand chucked a tantrum more resembling a fat kid losing his sweets.
The official line was that a) BZ and 3Quin were used as control samples for the purposes of calibration and B) you’re not allowed to talk about it because it’s classified and rude.
How and why precisely anyone would calibrate anything at all using BZ or even how it would find it’s way into secret sample results you’re not supposed to talk about is beyond me since as far as I know the most common compounds used to calibrate high resolution mass spectrometers is either Perfluorotributylamine or a Cerium Iodine mix and precisely no one ever at all would use BZ.
“BZ and 3Quin were used as control samples.”
What does that mean?
They ran pure BZ samples? For what purpose? Or did they spike the Skripals’ blood samples with BZ?
The latter would make sense if the object were to conceal the fact that BZ was already present.
The Skripals’ blood samples contained Novichok, and as discussed here, BZ is a physiological antagonist of Novichok. Novichok inhibits the enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter, acetyl choline, at the neuromuscular junction thus causing tetanus, whereas, BZ binds to the acetyl choline receptors at the neuromuscular junction without activating them, thereby causing paralysis. So a combination of Novichok and BZ administered in a carefully controlled dose immediately before the Skripals blood was sampled would have contained both agents, which acting together, would likely have caused the Skripals little inconvenience or distress.
But the presence of two nerve agents in the blood samples might have got folks wondering a bit. Therefore, it may have been decided to obscure the preexistence of BZ, by spiking the samples with BZ for the purpose of “calibration.”
No idea.
The given OPCW response makes absolutely no sense to me.
You don’t add a control compound like someones blood at all ever in under any circumstances and you certainly don’t try to calibrate any instrument with your test sample.
From the following guardian article the direct quote is:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/18/opcw-rejects-russian-claims-of-second-salisbury-nerve-agent
> Referring to Lavrov’s claims about the discovery of BZ, Marc-Michael Blum, the head of the OPCW laboratory, told the meeting: “The labs were able to confirm the identity of the chemical by applying existing, well-established procedures. There was no other chemical that was identified by the labs. The precursor of BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the control sample prepared by the OPCW lab in accordance with the existing quality control procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW team in Salisbury.”
.
Obviously anyone would think Spez Lab wouldn’t feel the need to mention a control sample comparison cos it’s basically irrelevant and it’s fairly obvious they did identify it because they mentioned it in the first place.
I’d imagine someone has some explaining to do.
Thanks for the link to the Guardian article. How strange the reported claims of the UK and of the West:
The UK said … the OPCW report showed the world was facing “a clear case of a new family of toxic chemicals intended to kill”.
I suppose one could describe any development in the means of warfare in the same terms. For example, in the case of, say, the US’s multi-role F-35 fighter aircraft now being acquired by the UK, the world could be said to be facing a clear case of a new family of bombing machines “intended to kill.”
As for the claimed novelty of Novichok, there is nothing new about it. The world has been “facing” its existence for ten years, since the scientist who developed this class of nerve agents published its formula in a book available on Amazon.
and there’s this strange statement:
Sabine Nölke, the Canadian envoy to the OPCW, accused Russia of either “a craven attempt to mislead the international community”, or a breach of the OPCW’s confidentiality procedures.
So either Russia is lying, or they are revealing the truth contrary to “the OPCW’s confidentiality procedures”, which in the Canadian view, is as bad, apparently.
Well done for not just using Acetylcholinesterase instead of ‘the enzyme which’. It does get confusing when it gets used with Acetylcholine.
“The whole incident was an inside job not to kill him, hence the use of BZ, but to give him a warning and a punishment.”
It’s unlikely that the aim was so limited, given what we know happened before (Toxic Dagger) and after (the international round of expulsions and the attack on Syria). D Notice, yes, of course.
Nikolai Glushkov needs to be factored into the speculation – just as his pal Boris Berezovsky (MI6 protected, Mossad protected, packing much more clout than most monarchs in exile and a far more important figure than many people realise) needs to be factored into speculation about Alexander Litvinenko.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s 12th March speech to the House of Commons is blatant in its hypocrisy:
“Mr Speaker I share the impatience of this house, and the country at large, to bring those responsible to justice….but as a nation that believes in justice and the rule of law, it is essential that we proceed in the right way, led, not by speculation, but by the evidence….”
She proceeds to conclude, after a concatenated series of speculations, that there were only two plausible explanations. Either the Russians did it, or a Russian did it.
So much for proceeding ‘the right way’, following tenets good enough for the country, but clearly inadequate to the task of government.
Doodlebug
“Mr Speaker I share the impatience of this house, and the country at large, to bring those responsible to justice….but as a nation that believes in justice and the rule of law, it is essential that we proceed in the right way, led, not by speculation, but by the evidence….”
Excellent piece of puff by Mrs May. When the evidence of MI6 doing this poisoning becomes conclusive, let them be led from this place to a place of execution and be hung by their necks until she and her Nasty Party and their Macchiavellian MI6 traitors are politically dead.
Woudn’t be surprised if May’s statement is true because her security services engaged/coerced a Russian to do the dirty deed.
D notices? Has anyone told the government women are appearing as actresses on the stage?
Shouldn’t we all be proud of our free press? An essential cornerstone of our (sham) democracy.
In the same way Gordon Brown wrote a book on courage to mask the fact that he didn’t have any himself, so Theresa May waxed lyrical on the importance of evidence to mask the fact that she didn’t have any herself.
Thank you, Craig and Clive, we all owe you an enormous debt of gratitude.
After all, THEY work for all of us, not just the few and need to be constantly reminded of this fact.
>
Was waiting for a Whistleblower to prove me right. I said it was an inside job from the outset. JACKPOT!!!
Shortly after winning his Award for Excellence Detective Constable Bailey was promoted to Sergeant and transferred to police HQ in Devizes.
A lot of “ifs” – we all need / deserve / hard facts.
We all need / deserve / ‘proof of life’.
Mr Ponting, I hope you are reading these comments left at the bottom of your statement.
I’m glad to know you are still out there. I remember you very well, although I was only eighteen when you came to public notice. Some years later, I discussed your case with my then father-in-law, a very senior civil servant, and he was wholly contemptuous of the action that you took regarding information about the General Belgrano. His view was that Civil Service information was to remain confidential and impartial, no matter what. (Often wondered what his attitude would have been if a radical left-wing government had come to power. I believe it would have been the same.) However, I remember thinking that if the Civil Service has an obligation of secrecy, a Government has a responsibility not to insult the integrity of its administrators by disseminating information to Parliament, which is supposed to be sovereign, that those administrators know to be false. (I wonder if that happens more now, or less now, than in your day. I suspect a very great deal more).
I wondered if you had an opinion on the position, which I believe is of reasonably recent disclosure, that neither Margaret Thatcher nor her Cabinet were aware of the change in sailing direction of the Belgrano before the order to sink was given. Do you believe it, and if it were true, would that have had an impact on your decision to whistleblow?
I wish you well.
Best, John
Surely the more the public knows about what the elected government is really doing the better. Why should they be spooned outrageously false narratives?
(John Spencer-Davis): Apologies, if you have already had sight of this piece, and are au fait with same,but I attach it for your perusal, just in case you haven’t…http://belgranoinquiry.com/article-archive/seven-lies
No: I had not seen that. Very interesting, thank you.
I think your ex-father-in-law is wrong. Normally civil service confidentiality is fine but what happens when ministers lie to parliament? The basis of accountability is that they tell the truth when asked. That’s why the ministerial code says “ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”. On the Belgrano GCHQ were intercepting everything and the recall signal and the change of direction were known. But that is irrelevant since ministers decided to sink any Argentine ship anywhere on the high seas regardless of any ‘threat’.
@Clive P
‘the ministerial code says “ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation”.’
I wonder if Theresa May read that far into the handbook?
Very grateful for your response. I guess if one were playing hardball, one might remark: “ministers should not lie to Parliament but what business is it of the Civil Service to correct them”? Which was my ex-father-in-law’s attitude: one does not disclose official information without proper authorisation, end of story. Thank you. J
It is the duty of a human being to speak the truth…… “Thou shalt not Lie”
Abetting liars, noble code.
“but what business is it of the Civil Service to correct them”
Adolph Eichmann would have agreed.
A D Notice may persuade a publisher not to publish something, but it surely doesn’t persuade them to push a false narrative and attack those who question it.
Exactly!
In fact, the way the MSM have behaved over this makes me think D notices are no longer needed.
Exactly!
That there is a D notice is not known to the public, we are merely going by the better experience of ex civil servants. It looks very likely, but until they announce it nobody in public can be held responsible for breaking it.
If they do announce it then this would show that Mrs. May’s speech was a speculative lie.
The press used to ignore d-notices when ever it saw fit, the last time being during the Snowden episode when the guardian even announced that one had been issued, interestingly enough that was the last time they showed any backbone. Editors used to decide whether or not the government deserved the cover of a DN now they seem to pre-empt it, I’m not sure why they would even need to bother issuing any more, so weak are the press now
This explanation makes more sense then ev’rything the (not just British but also German) politicians and the press said or published about it.
I had no doubt about the british implication.
WOW! This explains a lot! I guess we will never “hear the end of the story,” but it served its purpose and created a diversion for beleaguered government; what I am amazed at is how very clumsy the whole set-up has been, leading to much theorising and speculation, or was that part of the plan?
Recollecting that early days reporting of the health authority was declaring a major incident involving Fentanyl!
This has now been scrubbed off and sent down the memoryhole, as per Dilyana Gaytandzhieva who is the same journo whom uncovered the Bulgarian arms getting shipped to Daesh in Syria by Americans .
The mentioning of fentanyl at the beginning of the sage makes a lot of sense and may not mean much*. There have been a spate of deaths due to fentanyl, it would have been a natural assumption for the press and others to make and speculate about. Once the D notice arrived they had nothing else to talk about apart from the official narrative.
*The strange part is that from the very beginning a “substance” was suspected and firefighters decontaminated some areas. Why didn’t they suspect food poisoning? Maybe the symptoms were really obvious for some sort of synthetic poison?
It is very, very strange how the corporate media seem to be completely uninterested in so called Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. That lack of interest does rather support Ponting’s suspicions.
It is always interesting to watch the ones that are allowed to slip silently away in these news stories. Usually quite telling.
Yes it would be enlightening to know whether the intrepid DS was working ‘on the book’ in Salisbury that night or was he seconded to another area of police work all together at that time.
Sorry, but that’s mostly just speculation – about BZ, a deal with FSB and a special branch minder – with nothing to back it up (the BZ was apparently only used in a control sample). And I say that as someone who thinks that Sergei’s possible involvement with Pablo Miller and the Steele dossier is the most likely reason to “keep him quiet” by poisoning him.
It would be very interesting, though, if some whistleblower journalist could confirm or refute whether any part of the Skripal case is subject to a D notice. If there’s a D notice on Pablo Miller, wouldn’t that also, at least partly, apply to Skripal since they almost certainly knew one another?
@Brendan
“Bull’s eye!” See Craig’s update. Supplementary question: Who would NOT wish Skripal’s and Miller’s relationship as regards any fraudulent Trump-Russia dossier to have been exposed and explored?
This strikes me as an unnecessarily elaborate way of giving someone a ‘warning’; and also ignores the very obvious choreography of events – first demonisation of Russia as prelude to the fake CW attack in Syria, then NATO military response.
It always felt like they tried to used it for as much different PR spin as possible, that like most Tory PR spin confused itself
That’s for sure. They even used it to pull of the astonishingly improbable trick of making Theresa May look Churchillian.
‘That’s for sure. They even used it to pull of the astonishingly improbable trick of making Theresa May look Churchillian.’
I’m sure Mrs May was aiming for that very ‘look’ but in my book, she failed miserably. The Guardian’s John Crace’s term, ‘Maybot’, is apt. Whatever Mrs May tries to say, no matter how she tries to say it she will always be robotic. She and her coach need to work a tad harder.
I concluded the same myself King. But on reflection, scenario (a) – dossier, makes him the ideal candidate for scenario (b) – stooge to prop up participation in Syria attack. Scenario (b) isn’t in doubt in my book, scenario (a) simply points a big fat arrow at him as ideal patsy.
As I understand it D-notices don’t exist anymore, they are now DSMA notices. They are also supposedly voluntary so not sure how useful they would be in keeping a lid on something like this.
And I don’t think there is something called Special Branch anymore either. No view on the overall argument but these slips suggest someone who is out of touch.
Not sure what you are getting at. The reason the media has very accommodatingly sent the Skripal story down the memory hole is because the top brass at our major MSM outlets are either loyal to or directly work for the security services. It’s like that story a senior CIA operative who once boasted that there wasn’t a publication of note in the US that they did not either own outright via a front company, or have very considerable influence over. When you control much of the media landscape D-notices are redundant.
In 1976 CIA director H.W. Bush declared that operation Mockingbird was basically over in the US . That leaves the rest of the world… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#CIA_response
I was well aware that SB had been amalgamated into the counter-terrorism crowd but this wasn’t anti-terrorism it was a classic MI5/SB activity. So I just used SB as a shorthand.
‘And I don’t think there is something called Special Branch anymore either. No view on the overall argument but these slips suggest someone who is out of touch.’
The terminology, I think, is of no consequence. It is the mode of operation that resonates and I doubt that has changed since Mr Ponting’s time in the Civil Service.
They could officially be called “Arsehole Notices” and “The Most Voluntary Notices Anyone Ever Issued”, and those of us who can think for ourselves would still call them D Notices. Get it?
There seem to be two different approaches going on here.
And as i have said, when the security services control so much of the media landscape that the average person is exposed to D-notices are redundant and would create an undesirable semblance of accountability
Unfortunately the media has become so compliant in the past few years that it would agree to any government request. That’s true without any exception – no mainstream media outlet has highlighted any of the many glaring holes in the official story of the Skripal case.
thanks. I mooted possibility of D notice(s) early on, but impossible to verify. seems only explanation for total absence of follow-up.
Any incident of possible attempted assassination involving a former spy will have a D Notice slapped on it. The question “Is there a D Notice in the Salisbury case?” doesn’t need to be dwelt on because the answer is obvious.
Reporting about the murder of Nikolai Glushkov in New Malden on 12 March, eight days after the Salisbury incident, is subject to similar restrictions.
We can’t prove it, and very probably if you contact the DSMA-Notice Secretary, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds ([email protected]), he’ll tell you there will be neither confirmation nor denial, but seriously I advise people not to try to prove the fucking obvious. If you’ve got lots of time on your hands you can hear how Geoffy-baby talks, what accent he’s got, if you click here; .
As for whether or not we should use the phrase “slapped a D Notice on it” or not, the kind of person who objects to that terminology, and who insists that there are technically only five standing D Notices, will probably be lecturing us next that “MI6” is not the official name of the Secret Intelligence Service.
That said, Clive should get a bit more up to date with regard to “Special Branch” 🙂 (Just kidding!)
Porton Down once ran a centre for research into “the common cold”, which was really testing chemical and biological weapons. They hooked recruits from the armed forces.
Where do we think might be one of the places they test their shit today? Does any hospital come to mind?
I don’t know about that, but there’s some relationship between those two institutions, according to the Daily Mail, 7 April:
“Completely by chance, doctors with specialist chemical weapons training were on duty at the hospital when the victims were admitted. They treated Sergei and Yulia Skripal with an atropine (antidote) and other medicines approved by scientists from Porton Down, the government’s top secret scientific research laboratory.”
“Completely by chance, doctors with specialist chemical weapons training were on duty at the hospital when the victims were admitted.”
As if! ‘Completely by chance’ my arse!
“and they treated them with medicines approved by scientists from Porton Down.”
And if the poison was BZ, Novichok would have been an effective antidote.
And I read somewhere that an exercise with chemical/bio weapons was going on there. Fits neatly with the specialists at the hospital, doesn’t it?
This was the CCU-the common cold unit which closed I think 1989. It was nearby the Porton Down chemical and biological research unit but not part of it. There are some interesting articles on the internet. They did t find a cure but their research identified many of the mechanisms of virus pathology and our immune response, including identifying “interferon” part of the bodies response to infection and the typical symtomatogy of fever, hills, muscular aches etc.
Strange that a police officer was effected but not the ambulance crew who would have had much greater contact with the patients than he did.
Also, they said that the agent was a “gel” at first, then they changed this to a liquid form. How did they get it to attach to the door handle if it was a liquid?
He went to the Skripal’s house, the ambulance crew did not.
So did a lot of other people long before they claim to have discovered that the door handle was the source of the poison.
There is no plausible basis for Nick Bailey being other than deeply implicated in the whole fiasco.
Why has no journalist investigated who took the infamous photograph of the Skripals having their meal? The photographer can be clearly seen in the mirror behind father and daughter. He is also using a proper camera, rather than a mobile phone, the usual custom these days. If it were a mobile phone, it could be conceivable that the Skirpals asked a passer by to photograph a ‘selfie’ maybe to send to the cousin, boyfriend or grandmother in Russia.
It surely cannot be difficult to trace the photographer and ‘eliminate’ him from police inquiries, as it were.
Curiouser and curioser.
Possibly because it wasn’t taken on the day of the poisoning nor in either the pub or restaurant they visited.
Wow, the way the MSM always use that image, I thought it was from Zizzi restaurant, showing them alive and well and in celebratory mood, just prior to being attacked. My bad. Thanks for explanation.
Because it was probably taken by Alexander Skripal who died last year.
https://goo.gl/images/698cL2
The photographer looks similar to me and I believe the dinner photo was taken from Yulia’s social media page (Facebook?).
Some people are naive enough to believe that the government can slap a D Notice (which hasn’t existed since 1993) on anything they find embarrassing.
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/what-is-a-dnotice-debunking-claims-the-media-is-being-gagged-over-the-grenfell-fire-35834435.html
We also now know how the BZ (or it’s precursor) came to be in the samples and that they also contained Novichok which rather undermines the “it was just a warning” conspiracy. I’d have thought there would’ve been easier ways.
Some people are naive enough to believe that the government doesn’t do that sort of thing, whatever it is being called at the moment.
Some people are also naive enough to believe that BZ was used as a control agent, when it was a very possible component of the original poison. Control agents are always sufficiently different that they can’t be confused with the product being tested.
You seriously believe somebody went to all this rouble just to hand out a warning to Sergei? They could’ve just sent a couple of big lads round to rough him up or vandalised his car but instead they devised a complex and expensive conspiracy which has sparked an international diplomatic crisis. Yeah, that makes sense.
That was probably the whole idea to begin with, and then blame it on Russia, a kind of win win situation.
That’s exactly why it is highly unlikely that the Russians did it. Which leaves us with the only real motive: damage Russia.
The state of play in chemical, biological and electromagnetic weapons is probably at least 20 years ahead of what is publicly known. Ditto cryptanalysis.
As I understand it, it is still not “publicly known” what chemical was used by Russian special forces to end the Moscow theatre siege of 2002. BZ fans will be interested to know that the use of that substance has been suggested.
My attitude is that trying one’s damnedest to identify the exact chemical used in Salisbury by reading stuff that’s on the internet, including academic journal articles, as if one were “in the driving seat” in some kind of “security simulator” program, is barking up the wrong tree. Differences between official accounts is a far more interesting topic.
@Laguerre – I’m not naive on those issues, but the “purely a warning to Sergei” explanation doesn’t stand up, bearing in mind both Toxic Dagger and what the British and other governments subsequently justified off the back of Salisbury. Kempe is right that if that was the only aim then there are far simpler ways to put the frighteners on somebody.
Amber Rudd’s traffic lights appearing to have changed form orange to red. You can’t put a D notice on every teeny little mistake by an evil, conspiring, racist government like this one. Well you can, but you’d pretty soon run out of compliant civil servants or hospital managers to manage the mess.
Ah Kempe, if only they were all like you, holding up the Saint George flag instead of leaking embarrassing information to the press.
While both Sergei and Julia Skripal are being held incommunicado by the Intelligence unit which is a part of the Metropolitan police, we will never know the truth of what happened. Yulia [so we are told by her minders] has access to friends and family, this is a blatant lie, how do they explain the fact that she has not contacted friends and family nor have there been any photographs or recordings of anything she has said to back up this farrago of lies from the Police, neither can friends and family contact her in breach of all her human rights notably and as set out in the 1998 Human rights Act 1998 ‘Right to respect for private and family life i.e. ‘You have the right to uninterrupted and uncensored communication with others’, not discounting article 5 ‘Right to liberty and security’. Sergei is in the same position, he too is held incommunicado, the Salisbury hospital Trust has the Hospedia telephone system and Ofcom granted use of the 070 number range to enable every bedside unit to have its own unique telephone numbers so that friends and relatives can call patients directly, alleviating pressure on nursing staff having to field calls, the patients bedside phone number is unique to each patients account and can follow them around the hospital if they are moved bed, a frequent occurrence. The Police would have us believe the Skripals are such uncaring monsters that not only do they not wish to contact their relatives, but their relatives do not wish to contact them. The Home Office and Metropolitan Police are lying hypocrites, i would not be surprised if they were disappeared never to be heard of again. The Russian Embassy should apply for a writ of habeas corpus in the High Court, if it is challenged the Russian Government should look upon that as an act of war and take the necessary measures.
Agreed they should apply for a writ of habeas corpus. Doesn’t matter that the cops have issued a statement allegedly by Yulia Skripal saying she doesn’t at the moment want to contact the consulate or have a visit from Viktoria. The cops’ response would probably be to say that she isn’t in their custody, and that she is only under their protection, and that if she wants to communicate by letters that she asks them to convey, then that’s her business and they’re only “helping”. It wouldn’t be too difficult for a judge to bat the consulate’s submission away, but the details of what the cops said, what the media were ordered to say, and what the judge himself was ordered to say, might be interesting. Perhaps the embassy staff should give their tweeting fingers a rest, fast-read some Saul Alinsky, and think about how really to kick some shit up.
@Harry Law
Hear, Hear!
As I said up-thread, it is incumbent upon the UK authorities to offer proof of life, especially since both father and daughter have been reported as having made a considerable recovery. If they are not brought before a camera at whatever time Sergei is deemed fit to leave hospital I shall suspect the worst.
Indeed. The fact that the Skripals are kept incommunicado undermines the official “Putin victim” narrative and underscores the punishment explanation for threatening to leak Steele dossier secrets. Victims of the CIA/ MI6 more likely.
They don’t need D notices with the MSM, they use a little known law of physics:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5947112/watch-32-discordant-metronomes-achieve-synchrony-in-a-matter-of-minutes
What about 28 EU metrognomes on the shifting sands of politics? Are they all going to tick to the tune of USUKIS by a little gnown law of bollocks ticks?
D Notice secretary Geoffrey Dodds served as a sapper office, but he’s still got ticks on his bollocks?
” Belly of the beast ”
One suggestion I found online for the origin of this phrase is:
” It refer back to the time when Jonah was swallowed by a fish in the bible and said a prayer from the belly of the beast. ”
The prayer which the Qur’an mentions he recited trapped inside the fish, because he had lost patience with his mission of prophethood because of the people’s stubbornness was:
” It was narrated that Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqaas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The Prophet (SallAllahu Alyhi wasallam) said: “The prayer of Dhu’l-Noon when he was in the belly of the fish:
‘Laa ilaaha illa Anta, subhaanaka inni kuntu min al-dhaalimeen’
(There is no god but You, glory to You, verily I was one of the wrongdoers)
A Muslim never calls upon his Lord with these words concerning any matter, but his prayer is answered.”
(Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 3505; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilah al-Saheehah, 1644)
The war criminal Zionists of USUKIS, yes the ones who want to justify shooting Palestinians like pheasants and call anyone opposing them is an anti-Semite, the ones who have delivered more than 30 years of war and terror to the Muslim countries which neighbour Israel, cannot be worse than the warlike people of Nineveh, who embraced Islam of Jonah’s return pbuh and repented in scak-cloth and ashes.
What I hear from talking with ordinary English people at work is that nobody believes a word of the News any more. You absolutely cannot convince all of the people all of the time about your biased, theocratic, racist.
ethnic-cleansing hatred.
The wool of USUKIS is unravelling. Even Turkey’s Erdogan has repented from his participation with USUKIS and NATO. Macron is a Rothschild Micron gnat’s penis . Makes Hollande on his moped nightly visits look like a Blairite. So there is hope.
Sadly my experience talking about the skripals/syria chemical attack/bombing with others, especially “educated” ones, is the MSM IS TO BE BELIEVED, that anyone who disagrees with the shit ITN pump out on a nightly basis is a russian troll, stupid or X-file lunatic…the secret services of the UKUSFR, white helmets, WHO, the Guardian can’t all be lying…can they? Look at the ITN questioning of the russian ambassador press conference in the Hague about the young boy who said he wasn’t poisoned…”how low can you get to bring an 8 year old boy here…” Show some respect ITN! What about the Newsnight segment Evan Davies 24th April…talking about the fake gas attack they said if you watch or read anything outside MSM you are a useful idiot to the russians, they deliberately chose to put on screen someone who was not tv savvy, who appeared to be a crank becaise he said he just wanted to get to the truth and was not a russian troll, to rubbish any dissent of the BBC and main newspaper coverage. To prove their point newsnight brought out Alistair Campbell who said he never told a lie ever under Blair and that government always tells the truth… To me it showed the the BBC and even ITN by just discussing it, they are aware that the doubters are a growing breed. That said man in the street believes the government line…now that is sad.
The Russian troll bot army narrative they have been pushing since Trump was elected has proved very handy. Now if you look like you agree with the Russians over the Western narrative you are shouted down as a Putin bot. No thought needed.
Pablo Miller, First Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours on 13 June 2015 “for service to British foreign policy”.[1]
Also known as Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo, Pablo Miller is an MI6 agent.[
……ttps://wikispooks.com/wiki/Pablo_Miller
Miller, Skripal, Steele and the entire pack of MSM can be D-noticed to blazes as far as I am concerned.
Where is Yulia Skripal, the innocent victim caught up in this monstrous infamy? (I will refrain from calling it an “obscene masquerade”.)
She is daughter to us all, now. Give us habeas corpus or give us corpus delicti!
Perhaps BZ was added to the samples to “explain” its possible presence. Just a guess. The reported symptoms, including survival, certainly match BZ rather than A234.
Could it also be that the “international” response has been evoked through activating section 5 of the NATO agreement? It gives the illusion of solidarity where none could possibly exist. A recent G7 meeting in Canada rountinely condemned Russian aggression, not even bothering to specify where or when this bad behaviour took place. Presumably, it goes without saying.
Glad to see Clive Ponting alive and well and observing events. It is curious how the Skripals and DS Bailey have sunk below the consiousness of our media.
I get that a D-notice can be used to prevent the media from telling the truth.
But it is a different matter entirely when they use it as a basis for publishing stuff they know full well is a pack of lies. That is completely unforgiveable.