Only the Russians have allowed us to hear the actual voice of Yulia Skripal, in that recorded conversation with her cousin. So the one thing we know for certain is that, at the very first opportunity she had, she called back to her cousin in Russia to let her know what is going on. If you can recall, until the Russians released that phone call, the British authorities were still telling lies that Sergei was in a coma and Yulia herself in a serious condition.
We do not know how Yulia got to make the call. Having myself been admitted unconscious to hospital on several occasions, each time when I came to I found my mobile phone in my bedside cabinet. Yulia’s mobile phone plainly had been removed from her and not returned. Nor had she been given an official one – she specifically told her cousin that she could not call her back on that phone as she had it temporarily. The British government could have given her one to keep on which she could be called back, had they wished to help her.
The most probable explanation is that Yulia persuaded somebody else in the hospital to lend her a phone, without British officials realising. That would explain why the first instinct of the British state and its lackey media was to doubt the authenticity of the call. It would explain why she was able to contradict the official narrative on their health, and why she couldn’t get a return call. It would, more importantly, explain why her family has not been able to hear her voice since. Nor has anybody else.
It strikes me as inherently improbable that, when Yulia called her cousin as her first act the very moment she was able, she would now issue a formal statement through Scotland Yard forbidding her cousin to be in touch or visit. I simply do not believe this British Police statement:
“I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 9th April 2018. I was treated there with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness, that I have found I missed the staff immediately.
“I have left my father in their care, and he is still seriously ill. I too am still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.
“I find myself in a totally different life than the ordinary one I left just over a month ago, and I am seeking to come to terms with my prospects, whilst also recovering from this attack on me.
“I have specially trained officers available to me, who are helping to take care of me and to explain the investigative processes that are being undertaken. I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them.
“Most importantly, I am safe and feeling better as time goes by, but I am not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media, as I one day hope to do. Until that time, I want to stress that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves. I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.
“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”
There is also the very serious question of the language it is written in. Yulia Skripal lived part of her childhood in the UK and speaks good English. But the above statement is in a particular type of formal, official English of a high level which only comes from a certain kind of native speaker.
“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services” – wrote no native Russian speaker, ever.
Nor are the rhythms or idioms such as would in any way indicate a translation from Russian. Take “I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.” Not only is this incredibly cold given her first impulse was to phone her cousin, the language is just wrong. It is not the English Yulia would write and it is awkward to translate into Russian, thus not a natural translation from it.
To put it plainly, as someone who has much experience of it, the English of the statement is precisely the English of an official in the UK security services and precisely not the English of somebody like Yulia Skripal or of a natural translation from Russian.
Yulia is, of course, in protective custody “for her own safety”. At the very best, she is being psychologically force-fed the story about the evil Russian government attempting to poison her with the doorknob, and she is being kept totally isolated from any influence that may reinforce any doubts she feels as to that story. There are much worse alternatives involving threat or the safety of her father. But even at the most benevolent reading of the British authorities’ actions, Yulia Skripal is being kept incommunicado, and under duress.
More or less agree.
Even if these are Yulia’s wishes rewritten for public consumption in the UK, US, etc, there is no doubt that she is being fed an official line without any dissenting voices.
BBC: “Yulia Skripal: No-one speaks for me”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43733765
“In a statement issued through police…”
I think what angers me most about this whole business is just how f-ing stupid they clearly think we are.
We ARE stupid – a plurality of us voted them into office
“a plurality of us voted them into office”
You mean there was a much better lot available to vote for? !
No, a plurality voted against a Tory government. (58% to 42%) UK democracy is decaying as fast as the buildings that house it.
YES — that is immediately what jumped out. “I want to stress that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves.” And Scotland Yard.
Here here. One day they will stop feeding us lies and wake up to the fact that their duplicitous game is well and truly up.
No wonder TM has indicated she will commit U.K. forces without the consent of Parliament or the UN. And I thought “momentum” was a Labour invention.
Disgusting.
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better!!!
Listen carefully and you can hear Orwell rotating slowly in his grave
Sounds like a secret services script .. Yulia Skripal would never say this sort of of words.
How do you know? Are you good friends with her? It sounds fishy like this entire story and so much else the media feeds us but take care not to delude yourself into thinking you can reliably divine the truth from reading stuff on the internet. Binary thinking is a trap. If you are genuinely interested in truth learn to live with ambiguity rather than “my team right or wrong”.
Many media cast doubt on the authenticity of the phone call, but I didn’t see any attempts to track down friends or co-workers who could have recognized her voice. She reportedly worked in the UK for a couple of years.
Woah.
(1) Sure it is not her own statement – it has been scripted by the security services and signed with her name as Yulia is a de facto prisoner at the moment. (2) It is nothing unusual, though – actually it is fairly common for families to hold spokespeople in situations like this one, esp. in the US. (3) If she lived here since childhood, her written English will be non-distinguishable from that of a native speaker – the formal variety of language is one we learn in teenage years or later. Myself having learned English in adulthood I would easily compose such a sentence when drafting an official statement.
So, the conclusion is correct, even if premise is incorrect.
No, Kashmir, you ‘could’, rather than ‘would’, thereby clearly demonstrating the fundamental invalidity of your assertion
Try Google group “Dunning Kruger Effect”
Good luck with getting English punctuation right next time, Ophelia. I trust you will then sound more intelligent.
Ouch! Enough already – you win the argument! Gosh, you’re good at this
With all due respect, I call sore loser.
In an exposé on the proper use of English language you yourself were –more or less in jocular way– caught making an error.
Be cool!
Hmm bj,
Ophelia was making a valid point about meaning. She could – possibly – have been capable of writing in this fashion, but would most likely NOT have as this kind of formal genre / jargon does NOT come naturally to anyone except those that are schooled (as adult professionals) in this genre and that excludes MOST native and foreign speakers.
Kashmiri made a pedantic non-point about a couple of missing full stops.
Kashmiri is the sore loser as they attack meaningless punctuation rather than the point made.
Granted Ophelia’s line re Dunning Kruger Effect was cruel, but funny nevertheless.
@Richard Falvey
I was responding to Kashmiri.
“Myself having learned English in adulthood I would easily compose such a sentence when drafting an official statement.”
Spot on, Ophelia. Not very native, for certain.
American English does allow such a construction – but rarely – and suggests, instaed, that the person has often drafted official statements.
Look, you don’t actually knowthose are not her words. The best you and the rest of us can do is make an educated guess based on the available information. Don’t let your cognitive biases fool you into thinking you have divine truth detecting powers.
It’s not an ISO 9001 quality audited situation, that’s for certain. More like rather a lot of back of the fag-packet planning.
Meanwhile, one of the tabloids prints this “The international chemical weapons watchdog has finished its investigation and handed the results to the UK government, the Foreign Office has announced.
A spokesman said they had asked the Office for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to release the results at midday tomorrow”
The risk of nuclear war has risen from a very low chance , to a now much greater than zero possibility. Well done Teresa, historic even.
So the publication of those results will be through the UK government. Crazier and crazier.
Yes. Boilerplate. More smoke and mirrors. in fact its only use is to test MSM reporters to see which, if any, are less than totally credulous.
“I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. ”
When I was released from hospital that was not something I would have ever thought to tell friends and family. Why wouldn’t I have such access? Why, on first being released, would think it necessary to announce, that such was the case?
Unless that were really not the case; that in fact she does not have access to the outside world. Which is the most likely explanation for such an announcement in such stilted language.
The more I study this statement the more the grammar and syntax appear to be very contrived. It looks like the kind of composition that can only be written after much rehashing and rewriting.
“I find myself in a totally different life than the ordinary one I left just over a month ago, and I am seeking to come to terms with my prospects, whilst also recovering from this attack on me.”
Notice the complexity of the prose here; this is almost a run-on sentence. The last phrase “whilst also recovering from this attack on me” is tacked onto two other ideas. Most people would make separate statements about those conditions. Somebody use to writing officialese could easily think to write a statement with three concrete components glued together in a complex grammar that is almost impossible to classify as to who is taking the action. Which to me indicates action is being taken on Yulia.
“I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy “
Is that even English? What are ‘specific contacts’? I do realize I’m engaging in hermeneutics here, but come on, that’s what you get when you communicate to the outside world through scripted press releases.
The British government has alleged that the Russia tried to poison her, yet she has been “kindly offered” assistance from the Russian embassy.
Is anyone else seeing a disconnect here?
I agree and the comparison between this YS statement and that of the police officer bear striking similarities, the slightly over the top ‘protocol’ of thanking the staff, the references to ‘surreal’ and ‘world turned upside down’ (Nick Bailey) versus ‘life upside down’ and the ‘respect privacy’ vs ‘understanding and patience’ all seem very contrived. It is politician- or State-speak. It is not honest translation at work. I actually think that this incident or its treatment may be an act of revenge for Russian Brexit and other cyber manipulation… a way of showing the Russians that ‘we’ control the information war (and almost gloating in the absurdity of it).
They probably executed her right after the forbidden phone call, and the official story will be they gave her as new identity, or whatever. At least that’s my guess – we’ll never see, or hear, anything from her again.
The list of Un-persons who we will never hear from or of again is growing every day –
DS Plod
Dr Stephen Davies
The Air Ambulance pilot
The two people who initially dialled 999 when the Skripals collapsed
Yulia Skripal
Tiddles the recently-toasted Cat
and many, many more
Let alone the whole Kelly family and Diana‘s bodyguard.
I don’t doubt our spooks engage in a bit of extra-judicial assassination.
But I still have this naive belief that our spooks would draw the line at deliberately killing an innocent woman.
Try Dr David Kelly, Harrowdown Hill. 17 July 2003.
Was Kelly killed by British spooks, or by U.S. or Israeli spooks? Remember, the deed was done while Blair was in the U.S., and very likely put in a blackmailable situation by the American male prostitute/phony journalist Guckert/Gannon.
Oh really? I don’t at all. I am sure that they do as they are told by their government bosses.
“But I still have this naive belief that our spooks would draw the line at deliberately killing an innocent woman.”
Are you kidding? In this age of gender equity?
In any case, if the Skripals adopt new identities, courtesy of the CIA (for their own safety, you understand), they can be bumped off without risk of public consternation by American state assassins, who surely have no old-fashioned and un-PC hang-ups about liquidating female threats to the national interest.
Sharpie will probably remember better than I (or John Goss), but there was (foor instance) Hilda Murrell in about ?83.
As I said in another thread, the whole text appears to have been composed specifically to address and rebut all the theories and allegations that are proliferating online.
That’s exactly what this statement is. The government has perceived a need to tie up as many loose ends as possible regarding Yulia’s situation and this is the output.
Exactly.
MI6 doth protest too much?
Much like those Daily Mail ‘ Comical Ali ‘ style articles which always appeared in answer to the obvious inconsistences of the previous days ‘Comical Ali ‘ style articles. Much to everyone’s hilarity.
Almost funny, the language. “At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services” reminds me of Melville’s Bartleby The Scrivener (“I’d prefer not to”). And the whole thing paradoxically, of the official style of Stalinian Soviet Russia.
I do not recall the name of the US expert, who was interviewed in a Rich Planet TV documentary, as stating that “if their is a negative statement made” then there is usually deception involved. As in: “At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them”.
Here’s another red flag:
“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”
You do not want to speak to the press, but you are happy to have more publicity shined upon yourself, by your handlers at Pimlico and The Met. What a farce. The good old fake terror boys and girls, now helping to cause a potential war with Russia, a country that helped defeat Nazism.
Repeat: There was no nerve agent used. It was a Psychological Operation from the start. The statement from “Yulia” yet again reinforces that.
The stinking Theresa May needed an excuse to bomb the Russians.
“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”
And when was the last time the British press respected such a request? Why weren’t reporters camped out at the hospital and interviewing the neighbours…?
Right on the money.
But, hey, the more they keep issuing briefs like this, the more rope with which they’ll hang themselves.
Also of interest is that which is missing.
Shouldn’t she at least have expressed a bit of animosity towards anything Russian.
After all, they had just tried to off her.
I think your referring to Peter Hyatt a US expert in statement analysis. He was interviewed in regard to the parents of Madeline McCann. What he had to say was very interesting.
“I have left my father in their care, and he is still seriously ill”
Hang on – wasn’t Sergei supposed to have been recovering well?
“Everyone’s fine,” and “nothing irreversible” I believe were the words she used in the call…
A blinder Craig, you should consider naming a beer after it at the DTRH event this year.
If you are under the influence of persuasive interrogators who will confer the love you feel for your father, you will slowly bond with the worst scoundrel in the universe, we are, after all, human herd animals.
Add to this, modern psychology as it is being delivered by those who live on taxes and chew it for breakfast, resulting in one almighty mess.
fact is, nobody has seen Yulia since she has been put into hospital, she could be six feet down already, a very safe place indeed, with some very intuitive writers concocting the apparently Cambridge designed narrative, it’ll sound just as the above does.
Somehow from what we know about her, a very astute woman who has learnt to live aside her fathers agenda’s, she is not the type who is likely to be shut up. She comes over as an intelligent confident woman and even when one takes the effects of a possible poisoning into effect, a person who would want to have her say.
Yulia Skripal would want to have her say, imho, I would… having been attacked with some substance, the worlds media going bonkers, a massive time/memory lag to cope with, I would want to get out of there….
Who is time scaling her agenda? Is her H&S just a screen to keep her from talking. Does she not realise that only a few words could derail many other conspirators and has she made this known to her ‘captors’? Or is she not allowed to realise it?
Where is Yulia Skripal and who is keeping her opinions secret. ?
when one takes the effects of a poisoning into ‘account’ not effect, sorry, long day.
Sounds like brainwashing to me.
Not brainwashing. I don’t think Yulia knows the first thing about this statement.
“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services”
Correct, no native Russian would articulate themselves in this way in English.
And not many English would either, this wording comes straight out of a reasonably educated middle class British mouth.
Tony Kevin. This is distressing, and entirely logically argued. I too have worked in English words all my life and I agree with Craig Murray that the alleged statement by Julia Skripal here, who speaks English, is very suspicious. It is just not the language she would use. I share his conclusions: that she is being held under official duress of some kind, and that she made the call while borrowing a phone from someone in the hospital e.g. in a public bathroom or in a free walking area. One point Craig does not make that corroborates – the words of her telephone call to Viktoria themselves indicate or hint that she knew she was under some kind of duress even then, in the hospital . Craig also recalls something UK authorities and media are now trying to blur – that her unauthorised call to Viktoria came before , not after, the Brtish official announcement that she was recovering. It is clear that her call to Moscow forced their hand to reveal this.
Her outrageously abusive treatment in UK over the past month by British authorities is not just a human rights concern. It is also politically important , in that it is feeding into a cold Russian anger that one of their citizens – and a woman – is being treated by British government authorities in this way. Every rule is being broken, by a leading Western alliance member country. This cannot but affect Russian consideration of their current strategic options in Syria. And it is significant that May is so far trying to keep Britain out of military involvement in whatever Trump might decide to do in Syria- they know they would be Russia’s first target in a counterstrike. Tony Kevin.
It strikes me that presuming the phone call is genuine, the reason she probably called her cousin is that it was the first phone number she was able to remember, given that her own phone had been taken away. How many of us have a need to remember phone numbers in the age of the smartphone where we simply bring up a name and press ‘dial’? If you get access to a phone for a brief period with the need to call someone you trust, whose numbers would you be able to remember without looking them up? More than likely someone who hadn’t moved house for long enough that you had their number committed to memory from before the age of smartphones. Someone who is family.
This comment posted on April 8 at Moon of Alabama is worth reading. Have anybody independently confirmed via professional voice analysis that the person speaking on the “borrowed” phone is in fact Yulia Skripal?
re. BM at 180. /The voice analysis part./ + jawbone at 196.
I know someone who worked at the Inst mentioned in link, Dalle Molle, which analysed most of the Bin Laden tapes — as an ‘independent’ and neutral mandated authority, requested by the US amongst others.
The person told me that they always certified ‘same voice’ to 98 or 99% although the analysis is precise enough for 100% (including the case of disambiguiating identical twins!) because one needs to leave a loophole – that’s political. Additionally, that ‘fakes’ can be produced without much difficulty and can be extremely convincing but standard professional analysis detects them easily and irrevocably. (I know her semi-well as someone I worked with – so tended to credit what she said. She learnt part of her craft in the USSR.) Just an anecdote natch.
In the link (merely top o goog) the US says a tape is genuine, the Inst. says it is fake. (Most of the tapes they analysed were Binny. There are enough attested speech samples from O. Bin Laden.)
https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/29/1038386299712.html
This isn’t rocket science, it is standard descriptive / analytical science with basic tools. It is harder to identify handwriting (graphology when it’s at home at Auntie’s) as the product depends on peripheral body movements, tools, etc.
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 10, 2018 4:41:31 PM | 214
Excuse me, April 10.
Who are the friends and family to whom she has access and how? Not Viktoria, that’s sure from the statement. So who else?
If it is true that she has access to friends and family, presumably the Russians would have made it public.
I have read it to mean that she has access as in allowed to speak to, but as she says later, she chose not to.
“… An analysis of 242 transcripts revealed that liars produced more words, more sense-based words (e.g., seeing, touching), and used fewer self-oriented but more other-oriented pronouns when lying than when telling the truth. In addition, motivated liars avoided causal terms when lying, whereas unmotivated liars tended to increase their use of negations…”
— https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01638530701739181?src=recsys&journalCode=hdsp20
What was very strange from the outset are these facts:
1.There are protocols within the NHS for dealing with potential high grade pathogens and chemical contamination victims in specialised units with a high degree of isolation facilities to protect the staff. This protocol was not followed here and all three victims were treated in a district general hospital with no special expertise as far as I know. The medical profession has been silent about this.
2. There was at no point any call out for the police to alert the population that there maybe killers at large, no announcements of closed borders no photfits of wanted individuals or suspects.
3. The instructions of Public Health England regarding possible contamination were rather low key. There were no specific announcements to reassure the population of Salisbury and for them to follow a course of action if they are worried as far as I know. Even today the only mention of the incident in Salisbury District Hospital website is a referral to the announcement of PHE.
4. There was no lockdown of the town which one would have expected in a town where ‘Military grade ‘ nerve agent has been detected.
And there weren’t packs of journalists camped out at the hospital or harassing neighbours for anecdotes and comment.
Or people in Salisbury posting footage of the unusual activity on social media. Or the bit part players, such as those 39 people who sought treatment telling their stories. Or the Nick Bailey “My nerve agent hell” tabloid puff piece. Or the police press conferences calling on the public to help them find individuals they wanted to question in connection with the poisoning.
For all we see in the MSM and on social media, this might as well be a TV drama that does not exist in the real world.
Incredibly cruel –by Yulia’s handlers– towards Viktoria. UK officials have lost all moral sense.
“I too am still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.” – An explicit confirmation of the official story, meant to be authoritative, also quietening what her cousin said (food poisoning).
“I have specially trained officers available to me, who are helping to take care of me and to explain the investigative processes that are being undertaken.” What kind of officers are they? “specially trained” “helping to take care of me” “explain the investigative processes” – sounds like handlers to me; definitely not medical (how could they explain “investigative processes”?). But strange for intelligence officials to refer to themselves so openly. Very strange. Is this supposed to sound reassuring?
Passer
This statement was written by a male. Women usually like to be seen as capable of looking after themselves. Craig is right , it’s a fake. Mrs May has had her moment of quivering over the UK nuclear button and is right now having a statement being composed for her because she can’t get out of the muzzle and straight-jacket.
I felt that too. Written by a male. couldn’t put my finger on why? Maybe the “official speak” is just TOO obvious. The protocol of thanking the staff and covering all the official story. The stuff about the “officers”. A woman on her own in a situation like that is going to reference the friends/family she HAS contacted and thank THEM primarily. NOT tell her cousin to effectively shove off just in case the Russians broadcast their phone calls. If she does thank the staff it’s likely to be one or two females that have helped her feel safe, and name them. Sounds like the same person who wrote the policeman’s statement. Educated, native English speaker with an official, legal or police background. Actively trying to sound formal. How many people in their thirties “avail” themselves of anything?
So the people at the heart of what should be a massive anti-Russia propaganda coup are not available to the gagging-for-it British press.
Something wrong Mrs May, Mr Johnson eh? eh?
My understanding is that, under the Vienna Convention, the Russian Embassy has the right to see and speak to Julia Skripal, whether she wants to speak to them or not. Can anyone confirm that this is the case?
I doubt it. It establishes the rules between states, not rights of states to forcibly deal with their nationals overseas. It would give a right if she wanted Russian consular assistant; but not if she’s claiming asylum status, then the host state could protect her from her state of origin.
If it was a UK citizen incommunicado in Russia, and the Russian government claimed she didn’t want consular assistance, I think there would be much outrage in the UK.
On March 7 somebody accessed Yulia Skripal’s social media account. This was three days after the attack and while Yulia was still listed as being in critical condition.
The alleged phone call between Yulia and Victoria is aired on April 5.
The announcement of Yulia’s discharge (which ostensibly took place on Monday, April 9) comes–I think–on April 10.
The statement is released on April 11.
Note that between March 7 and April 11, the only proof we have that Yulia is alive at all is the five-minute phone call between her and Victoria, which took place on or just before April 5. This is why it is paramount that we determine that the voice on the temporary phone is in fact Yulia’s, and not another person’s voice run through a digital voice modifier. If it is Yulia’s, then we know she was alive as of April 5. If it is not Yulia’s, however, then it is probable that she was killed before April 5.
Strange tough that she never visits her vkontake social site. Even if she doesn’t want to have contact with her family she do get bored like everyone else. In those accusations people tend to visit there social group for comfort. In this case she hasn’t done that, even though she is active user on the vk social group. This only means she cut of from the world, restricted and held hostage.
Nah, ‘Great’ Britain would never do such things, especially to a foreign national… only evil Ruskies, “animal” Assad and the like would stoop so low and deceive their own public… just wouldn’t be ‘cricket’ now would it.
Thanks for your informed view on this Craig. I am sure I am not alone in smelling a great big, fat rat regarding this statement..