It was happy to see Yulia alive and looking reasonably well yesterday, if understandably stressed. Notably, and in sharp contrast to Litvinenko, she leveled no accusations at Russia or anybody else for her poisoning. In Russian she spoke quite naturally. Of the Russian Embassy she said very simply “I am not ready, I do not want their help”. Strangely this is again translated in the Reuters subtitles by the strangulated officialese of “I do not wish to avail myself of their services”, as originally stated in the unnatural Metropolitan Police statement issued on her behalf weeks ago.
“I do not wish to avail myself of their services” is simply not a translation of what she says in Russian and totally misses the “I am not ready” opening phrase of that sentence. My conclusion is that Yulia’s statement was written by a British official and then translated to Russian for her to speak, rather than the other way round. Also that rather than translate what she said in Russian themselves for the subtitles, Reuters have subtitled using a British government script they have been given.
It would of course have been much more convincing had Sergei also been present. Duress cannot be ruled out when he is held by the British authorities. I remain extremely suspicious that, at the very first chance she got in hospital, Yulia managed to get hold of a telephone (we don’t know how, it was not her own and she has not had access to one since) and phone her cousin Viktoria, yet since then the Skripals have made no attempt to contact their family in Russia. That includes no contact to Sergei’s aged mum, Yulia’s grandmother, who Viktoria cares for. Sergei normally calles his mother – who is 89 – regularly. This lack of contact is a worrying sign that the Skripals may be prevented from free communication to the outside world. Yulia’s controlled and scripted performance makes that more rather than less likely.
It is to me particularly concerning that Yulia does not seem to have social media access. The security services have the ability to give her internet risk free through impenetrable VPN. But they appear not to have done that.
We know a little more about the Salisbury attack now:
Nobody – not Porton Down, not the OPCW – has been able to state that the nerve agent found was of Russian manufacture, a fact which the MSM continues to disgracefully fudge with “developed in Russia” phrasing. As is now well known and was reported by Iran in scientific literature, Iran synthesised five novichoks recently. More importantly, the German spying agency BND obtained novichok in the 1990s and it was studied and synthesised in several NATO countries, almost certainly including the UK and USA.
In 1998, chemical formulae for novichok were introduced into the United States NIST National Institute of Standards and Technologies Mass Spectrometry Library database by U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biological Defense Command, but the entry was later deleted. In 2009 Hillary Clinton instructed US diplomats to feign ignorance of novichoks, as revealed by the last paragraph of this Wikileaks released diplomatic cable.
Most telling was the Sky News interview with the head of Porton Down. Interviewer Paul Kelso repeatedly pressed Aitkenhead directly on whether the novichok could have come from Porton Down. Aitkenhead replies “There is no way, anything like that could…leave these four walls. We deal with a number of toxic substances in the work that we do, we’ve got the highest levels of security and controls”. Asked again twice, he each times says the security is so tight “the substance” could not have come from Porton Down. What Aitkenhead does NOT say is “of course it could not have come from here, we have never made it”. Indeed Aitkenhead’s repeated assertion that the security would never have let it out, is tantamount to an admission Porton Down does produce novichok.
If somebody asked you whether the lion that savaged somebody came from your garden, would you reply “Don’t be stupid, I don’t have a lion in my garden” or would you say, repeatedly, “Of course not, I have a very strong lion cage?”. Here you can see Mr Aitkenhead explain repeatedly he has a big lion cage, from 2’25” in.
So the question of where the nerve agent was made remains unresolved. The MSM has continually attempted to lie about this and affirm that all novichok is Russian made. The worst of corporate and state journalism in the UK was exposed when they took the OPCW’s report that it confirmed the findings of Porton Down and presented that as confirming the Johnson/May assertion that it was Russia, whereas the findings of Porton Down were actually – as the Aitkenhead interview stated categorically – that they could not say where it was made.
The other relatively new development is the knowledge that Skripal had not retired but was active for MI6 on gigs briefing overseas intelligence agencies about Russia. This did not increase his threat to Russia, as he told everything he knows a decade ago. But it could provide an element of annoyance that would indeed increase Russian official desire to punish him further.
But the fact he was still very much active has a far greater significance. The government slapped a D(SMA) notice on the identity of Pablo Miller, Skripal’s former MI6 handler who lives close by in Salisbury and who worked for Christopher Steele’s Orbis Intelligence at the time that Orbis produced the extremely unreliable dossier on Trump/Russia. The fact that Skripal had not retired but was still briefing on Russia, to me raises to a near certainty the likelihood that Skripal worked with Miller on the Trump dossier.
I have to say that, as a former Ambassador in the former Soviet Union trained in intelligence analysis and familiar with MI6 intelligence out of Moscow, I agree with every word of this professional dissection of the Orbis Trump dossier by Paul Roderick Gregory, irrespective of Gregory’s politics. In particular this paragraph, which Gregory wrote more than a year before the Salisbury attack, certainly applies to much of the dossier.
I have picked out just a few excerpts from the Orbis report. It was written, in my opinion, not by an ex British intelligence officer but by a Russian trained in the KGB tradition. It is full of names, dates, meetings, quarrels, and events that are hearsay (one an overheard conversation). It is a collection of “this important person” said this to “another important person.” There is no record; no informant is identified by name or by more than a generic title. The report appears to fail the veracity test in the one instance of a purported meeting in which names, dates, and location are provided. Some of the stories are so bizarre (the Rosneft bribe) that they fail the laugh test. Yet, there appears to be a desire on the part of some media and Trump opponents on both sides of the aisle to picture the Orbis report as genuine but unverifiable.
The Russian ex-intelligence officer who we know was in extremely close contact with Orbis at the time the report was written, was Sergei Skripal.
The Orbis report is mince. Skripal knew it was mince and how it was written. Skripal has a history of selling secrets to the highest bidder. The Trump camp has a lot of money. My opinion is that as the Mueller investigation stutters towards ignominious failure, Skripal became a loose end that Orbis/MI6/CIA/Clinton (take your pick) wanted tied off. That seems to me at least as likely as a Russian state assassination. To say Russia is the only possible suspect is nonsense.
The Incompetence Factor
The contradiction between the claim that the nerve agent was so pure it could only be manufactured by a state agent, and yet that it failed because it was administered in an amateur and incompetent fashion, does not bother the mainstream media. Boris Johnson claimed that the UK had evidence that Russia had a ten year programme of stockpiling secret novichok and he had a copy of a Russian assassination manual specifying administration by doorknob. Yet we are asked to believe that the Russians failed to notice that administration by doorknob does not actually work, especially in the rain. How two people both touched the doorknob in closing the door is also unexplained, as is how one policeman became poisoned by the doorknob but numerous others did not.
The explanations by establishment stooges of how this “ten times more powerful than VX” nerve agent only works very slowly, but then very quickly, if it touches the skin, and still does not actually kill you, have struck me as simply desperate. They make May’s ringing claims of a weapon of mass destruction being used on British soil appear somewhat unjustified. Weapon of Upset Tummy does not sound quite so exciting.
To paint a doorknob with something that if it touches you can kill you requires great care and much protective gear. That no strangely dressed individual has been identified by the investigation – which seems to be getting nowhere in identifying the culprit – is the key fact here. None of us know who did this. The finger-pointing at Russia by corporate and state interests seeking to stoke the Cold War is disgusting.
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George Galloway on Talk Radio says he has identified Philip Cross, says Philip Cross is Philip Cross, a vulnerable person being ruthlessly exploited by a very powerful individual, says he has also identified the very powerful individual.
https://twitter.com/DennieMorris/status/1001192005479919616
Newsnight has been speaking to Skripal “doctors”, just trailed on 5 live. Spoke to Dr Duncan Murray and Dr Christine Blanchard. You can rewind online and listen to the extracts. Will be on Newsnight tonight.
Article in the Guardian gives some detail.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/29/doctors-skripal-poisoning-salisbury-hospital
But it all still fails to add up ……….. of course.
Thanks for that.
“But when PC (sic) Nick Bailey, one of the officers who had attended the scene, was admitted shortly afterwards with similar symptoms, hospital staff started to wonder if they too might fall victim to the nerve agent.”
I don’t know where to begin. Article written by a certain Caroline Davies whose previous Guardian contributions appear to be mainly about the recent royal wedding, not by a medical or defence or counterterrorism correspondent. The make it up as we go along continues throughout. Glaringly, DS Nick Bailey, becomes PC. Why are confidential medical details made public after Yulia explicitly expressed her wishes that no one speaks on thier behalf? What is the opinion of the GMC on this?
Then of course there is this conundrum. There is a protocol in the NHS to follow when incidents that can involve mass casualties are suspected complete with procedures for decontamination and attempts at limiting the spread of effects of deadly viruses and chemical weapons. In the case of viruses, the procedure would be a transfer to a high security unit that can deal with isolating patients to contain the hazard. There are very few of these units in the country and Salisbury is not one of them. Shouldn’t the Skripals have been transferred to such a unit? Also as these were unique cases, shouldn’t the patients have been transferred to a ‘centre of excellence’ rather than remain in a DGH? Has PD got any medical expertise?
Co-opting NHS staff to help a narrative may place these staff in a very awkward situation professionally and we await the consequences.
The Salisbury medics are putting all their storyline ducks in a row about the diagnosis and exactly who, why, what, where, when and how some bright aspiring nurse or doctor exclaimed “It’s a nerve agent, innit? Stands to reason, dunnit? There’s two gents in suits and dark glasses just come in and said it is so it must be. We learnt ’bout Novichuck in med school, he says, do we really need to refresh your memories?. Least it sounded like novi-something. Anyway he muttered ’bout making a diagnosis we can’t refuse, sort of terse like”
There were generals and admirals who oversaw the autopsy of John Kennedy and made sure it reached the desired conclusions.
One of the doctor has said it was not before Tuesday (i.e. 2 days after hospitalisation) that the medics “realized” that it was a nerve agent. That they splendidly survived even though the live saving exceptional treatment did not start after two days hospitalization and the fact that they do not exactly reveil how they reached their “diagnosis” makes it even more unlikely that a deadly nerve agent was involved at all.
Salisbury – a Hypothesis
(To weigh up what follows, at least some knowledge of the Abramovich-Berezovsky case is necessary, which I won’t summarise here.)
• Glushkov plans a hit against Abramovich.
• One of the Skripals is assigned a role as courier.
• The job fucks up – in a fashion fairly similar to the Litvinenko fuck-up
• Eight days later, Abramovich’s guys whacksGlushkov: in, out, dead – no messing about.
• Britgov gives Abramovich his cards – they “decide not to renew his visa”
The idea that there is no close connection between Glushkov and the Salisbury case strikes me as unlikely. I’m unlikely to buy any scenario that doesn’t factor Glushkov in.
And here’s an irony: the more likely FSB involvement here would in be in new Malden (murder of Glushkov) not in Salisbury (poisoning of Skripals). That said, of course in this sphere of human endeavour the answers to many questions are often “yes and no”, and it is not as if the Berezovsky sphere doesn’t overlap with the FSB sphere, or as if neither of those spheres intersects with MI6 or Trump-gang business.
N_
Don’t really buy entirely into your hypothesis. However there is an amazing contrast between the way the two events have been ‘managed’.
The Skripals case has a very high profile whereas the Glushkov one has hardly been mentioned.
R4 “Toady” featuring skripal hospital miracle workers who repaired some of the errant flag waving, and delivered the three index patients to their early retirements.
Strangely, for the BBC of course strives to excel in reporting truth & peace unto nations , there was no mention of NHS Consultant for Emergency Care at Salisbury Hospital, Dr. Steven Davies. . . seemingly unable to type any more letters to The Times, with his “ten” accidentally “broken fingers” (?) or the presence of a large scary gorilla/guerrilla following him everywhere or perhaps he’s just taken up jogging? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq_HtgGOIfE (old noisy rebel music)
Further old still sadly salient rebel news reports here https://yournewswire.com/salisbury-sergei-skripal-poisoned-fentanyl/
The State Broadcaster’s ‘news’ channel keep plugging the Newsnight stuff. They show a clip of Dr Steven Jukes speaking. He is described as ‘Intensive Care Consultant’.
A Dr Stephen Davies is there as Emergency Care Consultant.
Quoted here ..
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-salisbury-poison-fears-allayed-by-doctor-vf9v0zg0m
Perhaps Salisbury District hospital has a surfeit of consultants in the specialities.
Maybe that’s the reason why they were predicting a £12.5million debt for 2018 last January.
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/15910404.Hospital_boss_vows_not_to_make_cuts_despite___12_5million_debt/
Never mind. I’m sure Jeremy will bail them out for having played their part in the theatrical.
Correction. Dr Jukes is Stephen not Steven.
‘Skripals ‘expected not to survive’
Dr Stephen Jukes, the intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals a week after they arrived at the hospital, said once the nerve agent was detected “all the evidence was there that they would not survive”.
Dr Jukes said on admission, the medical team suspected both were suffering an opioid overdose but that the diagnosis quickly changed to a nerve agent poisoning. Dr Jukes was speaking to Newsnight’s Mark Urban.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal have since been discharged from hospital.’
6h ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-44284518/skripals-expected-not-to-survive
Oh Mark Urban! That fits. LOL
Ramadhan is a time for self-correction. Some of you don’t like the word repentance because it smacks of guilt -bullying by priests. But nobody can begin to correct themselves until they have become aware of some kind of offence they might be causing to someone else.
Today Starbucks is closing down for a training day on how to make their coffee shops a more welcoming place to all their customers. brilliant. The trailer in the early hours on Business matters on the World Service included a long interview with the designer of the course. She said that the US education system did not challenge deep-seated racist fears from the past, nor did the messages of the current news confront deeply embedded racism today, not least from Potus Trump.
When I walk into the mosque behind my house to practise my everyday compulsory prayers I should not be made to feel uncomfortable by any individual in that mosque because of my ethnicity or what is stupidly called black or white. After 2 days I abandoned the mosque because one individual who apparently feels uncomfortable with being near English people tried to stare me out as I left the mosque.
The most disgusting, racist terminology is still passed on from one generation to another in the word ” gora “, white guy/woman. They feel no shame at using this word even though or because it is heavily-laden with historical disrespect. Nobody has explained to any of them that this is racist.
Last year, not a mile from this mosque a lone English girl was raped twice by 2 separate Asian men at a railway station in the early hours when she was looking for help. If I was to imply, or impugn, as I have that this might have any connection to this mosque or this community, they would say I was being racist. Anybody would. Holding that emotion for a second, it only takes a moment for them to realise what it feels like for me when they imply or impugn that I as an Englishman have any responsibility for our colonial past. This racism is inculcated and incorporated completely into the mosque, as indeed it has been incorporated against Black people in Starbucks in the US when an employee called the police to remove some black people who were loitering. they were in fact waiting for a friend to join them for a coffee.
last night I went back to the Bengali Madrassah in Small Heath which perhaps because of the vast array of human diversity present in the area from every corner of the world has learned not to pick on aliens from the past. I shouldn’t have to do this, especially in Birmingham. I am not going to put up with it. They have to address their problem with British people, not continue to sweep it under the carpet.
In my street there is one house which is nest of spies which monitors me for whom I know not. But they are friends of the main imam of the mosque.
Baraaa’atun / I am free from them. They have to address this hypocrisy, whether they like it or not.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=coffee+shop+anti+racism&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IENAD1&pc=EUPP_
“In my street there is one house which is nest of spies which monitors me for whom I know not”
Sinister stuff, be on your guard.
That same mosque behind my house is still using the many verses in the Qur’an about jihad to justify their own involvement in the catastrophe that is Syria. It is not permitted in Islam either to work for the colonial enemies of Islam who start and maintain these Zionist wars against the Muslim populations. The mosque participates in the official government campaign against ignorance about terrorism A leaflet is available at the mosque desk. But, unbelievably, this mosque’s inherent racism extends against the Muslim populations of Syria, Libya and Iraq against whom the terrorists are fighting and whom, illegally under international law or shari’ah law, they are still using as human shields. Apparently the Muslim populations of these countries do not qualify in their eyes as being worthy of the protection of Law, forbidding the terrorisation of Muslims by Muslims or anybody else. If using civialns as human shields, forcing them out of their homes at gunpoint into foreign refugee camps, and starving the Muslims who do not agree with their behaviour is not terrorism, what is? The eminent Sheikh, Ismaeel Menk, whose lectures are broadcast regularly on Unity FM 93.5, has explained this problem much better that any kind of Prevent pamphlet [ please carry on sending us your young men to fight our colonial wars for us, UK government Boris Johnson ]. But the ignorance and racism of this particular mosque blinds them to the reality that Islam does not permit this savagery against Muslims or anyone else. in their minds the Syrian and Libyans are just ” gora ” i.e different from their own race.
The BBC has now interviewed Salisbury medical staff.
Who was the reporter? Mark Urban. Ho hum….
The official line is that input from international experts, including THOSE JUST ON OUR DOORSTEP (DSTL) contributed significantly to the good outcome.
Well, if DSTL knows a great deal about nerve agents and Novichoks, they maybe know about weaponising it too.
I have to say, as editor of BBC news, I would only involve Mark Urban in this story if I wanted conspiracy theorists to get in a tizzy. The man is joined to Waterloo Bridge at the hip…
No interview with Stephen Davies.
Why not?? His words contradict the Establishment line.
The BBC is not investigating, it is counsel for the prosecution.
If Stephen Davies was lying, expose him by proving it.
If not explain his words…
One more try…
Why not ask Craig to look into the Dr Stephen Davies issue? Seriously, why not pressure him to look into it?
If the BBC is guilty of ‘not investigating’ then so is Murray.
..and for the umpteenth time, ‘his words’ need no other explanation. You’re giving ammunition to the Murray-haters.
Urban did a decent job when the Royal Navy peeps had their zodiac break down in the Gulf and the Revolutionary Guard gave them a lift. Remember the Mr Bean look-i-likey bitching about getting his I pod boosted. Anyways, everyone was shouting capture and kidnap, when Urban points out that the footage shows the Royal Navy peeps still in possession of their own weapons.
Jaja… remember the sailors arriving home after their ordeal, still clutching their gift bags from the Iranians, as they marched across the tarmac from the plane? Their testimonies back in the UK looked more coerced than the original confessions, that the Iranians had supposedly wrung out of them.
I’ve found the snide twerp unconscionable since he used the grave of one of his ancestors from the Egypt and Sinai campaign for a publicity stunt. Ouanqueur
I thought the same about Mark Urban, Very spooky.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/yulia-skripal-and-the-salisbury-wut/comment-page-9/#comment-752554
‘ . . . he began his letter to the Times . . . with;“may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury” ‘
“ The Times published a letter from Stephen Davies (Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust) on the 16th March. ‘Sir, further to your report (‘Poison Exposure Leaves Nearly 40 needing Treatment’), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.’ ”
“Dr Stephen Jukes, the intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals a week after they arrived at the hospital, said once the nerve agent was detected”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-44284518/skripals-expected-not-to-survive
The bits of the interview currently available leave more questions
why the tracheotomy carried out after recovery
On the Sunday evening why the police started to lift the cordons, only to replace them and the fire brigade arrived to de-contaminate
Given the length of time to determine the nerve agent how did they survive
Even one of the consultants cannot ex[lain the speed and scope of recovery
Tony, you posted your reply while I was composing mine so I didn’t see yours. The head of MI5 called described their recovery as ‘near-miraculous’.
From the report of last night’s newsnight. >ward sister Sarah Clark, who was on duty that night, added that there were fears that the hospital’s staff might end up being affected. She pointed out that they had not, at that stage, “taken any extra precautions in terms of protecting ourselves”.<.
So by this account it was at least some hours after the Novichok took its delayed effect that medical staff began to think it was a nerve agent, during which time no antidotes were administered.
Is there a non lethal dose of 'novichok', say just one hundred molecules? Just enough to get through gel on a door handle and through skin?
Broadly yes. There’s non lethal doses of more or less everything.
If you want to know how effective dosages normally work you could start with a look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index
In essence for a drug or toxin to have a measurable effect it should exceed a particular concentration as determined both by the individual and properties of the particular drug or toxin.
Where nerve agents are concerned this concentration can be very small but it’s still required.
All these explanations as to how it might be possible for the poison not to have killed the Skripals are cast iron proof that this was not a State-sponsored Russian hit. They require either a clear intention not to kill or for this to be so bizarre a chosen method of assassination that no professional would ever have used it.
No one would ever be stupid enough to use an unreliable method in the first place. You’d never use a contact agent unless you can control for exposure.
The idea you’d use a skin absorbable nerve agent on a publicly exposed object is laughably amateurish unless you want to risk accidentally killing someone like the milk man beforehand and thus prewarning your target or exposing people after the fact thus increasing collateral damage.
Neurotoxins represent a danger to everyone including the handler so they should be treated as such. (cautiously) If someone wanted to use the door as a trigger and had access to it unobserved (such as they would need to apply a toxin safely) it would be faster, safer and more reliable to just stick an explosive on the thing so it detonated when the door was opened from the inside.
Instead we have a scenario where the agent was theoretically applied to the *outside* of the door, freely exposed to the public and elements for the intervening duration whist still being capable of producing very delayed simultaneous symptoms in two people of distinctly different body masses.
Can we clarify exactly when it was announced that there had been nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, presumably this was some days after 16th March. Dr Davies may well have calmed public fears for a few days through his letter.
Mr Shurrup and Go Away is trying a diversionary tactic from our wars. There is a new war. He has sent our military to Malawi to deal with the elephant killing by poachers
Ministry of Defence ??@DefenceHQ
Today on #EndangeredSpeciesDay the UK Government has introduced a ban on ivory sales. Defence Secretary @GavinWilliamson said: “I am proud that our Armed Forces are working hard across Africa to protect these magnificent animals.” #EndWildlifeCrime #IvoryBan
https://twitter.com/gavinwilliamson?lang=en
When he smiles, I think of crocodiles.
A lot of US special ops going on in Africa, and increasingly so. Maybe they’re just helping drive off poachers too.
Rand Paul delivered a good line the other week. Something about tax payer’s dollars being used to harass herdsmen in Niger. Can’t find a link.
The proximate reason that Tommy Robinson is in jail is for contempt of court. The real reason may well be that he is shining a light on the wrong kind of people. People like these people
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn5Ndlckx-k
There is something seriously wrong with this case – and as per usual no-one at all is interested, just a few pesky grieving Mothers who lack the common decency to shot up and forget all about the sons that they once had.
Here is someone who has been ‘trying for years’ to ‘shine a light on the wrong kind of people’?
‘Remember girls – Dafydd and co are running a sex trafficking ring, the security services and just about everybody else knows about it but no-one is stopping him or indeed warning those being targeted’.
http://www.drsallybaker.com/category/cancer-research/
It was ever thus.
‘Oxford and Cambridge university colleges hold £21bn in riches
Guardian study reveals how wealth of nearly 70 colleges is held in estates, endowments and artworks
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/28/oxford-and-cambridge-university-colleges-hold-21bn-in-riches
‘Oxford last week published details of its undergraduate intake, in an effort in highlight the progress it has made in recruiting students from diverse backgrounds. But the university admitted that it “still has more work to do in attracting the most talented students from all backgrounds”.
The Guardian revealed in October that 82% of offers from Oxford in 2015 went to British students from the top two socio-economic groups.’
Last week the Independent reported:
Oxford University admits need to improve student diversity after third of colleges accept handful of black applicants
‘The truth is that Oxford is still a bastion of white middle-class southern privilege’, Labour MP David Lammy says
Eleanor Busby Education Correspondent |
6 days ago|
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/oxford-university-black-students-diversity-problem-students-offers-colleges-racism-david-lammy-a8364731.html
Lord Patten is the Chancellor of Oxford Univ and Lord Sainsbury is Cambridge’s Chancellor.. Enough said.
It is hardly surprising that Britain’s oldest universities should have large endowments, is it?
£21 billion for Oxford and Cambridge combined could be compared to the following endowments (2017) for a couple of the US’s oldest universities:
Harvard – $ 35 billion
Yale – $ 25 billion
Princeton – $ 21 billion.
What is the problem?
In Leeds Crown Court it seems likely that a judge jailed a man for contempt of court. It is probable that the Judge decided that Justice was best served by having reporting restrictions in place until a certain point in the trial had been reached. In other words the Judge wanted to avoid public reporting and public discussion of the case and was prepared to jail a man in order to achieve this end.
Yesterday in Australia demonstrations occurred in 6 Australian cities protesting the actions of the Judge. A German MP has proposed that Germany offer political asylum to the jailed man, and a Canadian news organization is launching a legal challenge to the reporting restrictions imposed. Demonstrations and protests have taken place in the UK, and a member of the House of Lords has written to the Home Secretary advising him that should the jailed man die in prison then he will initiate and fund a private prosecution against the Home Secretary.
Given all of the above, and given that all of the above has occurred as a consequence of the actions of the Judge at Leeds Crown Court it seems only logical that the Judge should now jail himself for contempt of his own court.
How unusual is the fact that there were ‘reporting restrictions’ on the original case itself?
Not at all, they’re automatic in these cases. They are there to protect the victims and witnesses, to ensure the jury aren’t unduly influenced and to ensure a fair trial; for the defendants and everyone else.
By jeopardising the trial “Robinson” has done nobody any favours, he’s an idiot not a hero.
Oh and the German MP is a member of the far-right Alternative Germany party.
I think this is the first time I have agreed with you Kempe.
Reporting restrictions are not automatic, and the reporting restrictions in this particular case are not clear. It is known that much of the information disseminated by Robinson was information that had previously been published in the Huddersfield Examiner. So clearly some reporting was possible.
Laws concerning contempt of court are governed by the strict liability principle – in other words intent does not matter. Presumably Robinson overstepped the mark in some way. Perhaps that makes him an idiot, and if it does then it also makes someone who falsely claims that reporting restrictions are automatic in such cases an idiot.
What difference does it make as to the political persuasion of a German MP who suggests that Germany should offer Robinson asylum? The intent of the Judge was to prevent publicity regarding the case against Robinson, and the fact that publicity was generated by a publicly elected representative of the German people is evidence that that Judge failed in his intent to prevent publicity.
The point that you raise is not an argument, but a simple smear – which under the same principal of strict liability applied against Robinson is a second strand to the argument that you are an idiot. The only way for you is to argue that Robinson should be subjected to different standards than those that should be applied to you – that you will not make that argument is a racing certainty for well do you understand that the all enveloping cult of cowardice would not approve of such an argument.
There are automatic bans on the media reporting in relation to the following areas:
Information in relation to children
Hearings which are concerned with sexual offences
Divorce cases
This case would appear to tick two of those boxes.
https://www.inbrief.co.uk/media-law/reporting-restrictions/
The ban on reporting Robinson’s detention, which was widely ignored anyway, has been lifted.
The ruling
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/coc-yaxley-lennon-20170522.pdf
Strange that a darling of the far right establishment, should fall so far from grace as to end up in prison. I’d have thought the founder of the EDL would’ve been spared time in on of Her Majesty’s hotels. Never mind, I’m sure Anon1 will write him to cheer him up.
Kempe-
Do you think he deserves any credit for the fact he has drawn attention-ploughing a very lonely furrow initally- to the fact that young girls were being pimped and raped sytematically? while police and governemnt didn’t wnat to know? has he possibly prevented girls- shildren- being raped and pimped?
if so would that make him a hero?
My understanding is that those (allegedly) responsible are currently on trial. By breaching the reporting restrictions Robinson has achieved nothing but the risk of mistrial or the defendants getting off on the grounds of it being unfair as a result of his interference.
You dodging the question speaks volumes. Yes, he may have messed up- i don’t know. Yet he has spoken up for people who had no voice at all- young, abused girls. they had no voice becasue powerful interests were at stake. and robinson spoke up: and he is in jail tonight.
Has he appeared outside courtrooms where groups of people with surnames like Smith, Jones, Brown, Ffartington-Smythe and Lord Bufton-Tufton are on trial?
Fake news, fake news, stop fake news…
One blessed nation helps another nation on its way to the light of democracy from Mordor Russia 🙂 George Soros funds StopFake dot org to help Ukraine fight out Kremlin propaganda.
StopFake says there’s no Nazis in Ukraine and Russian Embassy spreads fake news about the postal stamps honouring Nazis
https://www.stopfake.org/fejk-v-ukraine-rastsvet-fashizma-i-natsizma/
StopFake didn’t notice official statement of Lvov authorities to celebrate 75 anniversary of Waffen SS Galicia
http://loda.gov.ua/news?id=35409
StopFake didn’t notice report by official Ukrainian news agency about these postal stamps at the holiday
https://photo.unian.net/ukr/detail/832376.html
Also StopFake didn’t notice multiple photo reports of this anniversary day!
http://m.kontrakty.ua/photo/6774/1
Next time they tell you ‘fake news’ please check who is talking.
“… is tantamount to an admission Porton Down does produce novichok.”
I understand the standing security procedures for Porton Down (and many other such places) mean that he’s not allowed to say whether or not any given substance is created or handled at Porton Down; not allowed to say it is, not allowed to say it isn’t.
I hope Criag will make a post on questions arising from last night’s Newsnight. Here’s one further which occurs to me
Dr Blanshard said they would need continuing support, noting: “We have a total world experience of treating three patients for the effects of Novichok poisoning and I think it’s safe to say that we’re still learning.”
It looks like Novichok may not be as fatal as thought, if someone can survive exposure for several hours before treatment begins. Surely the USSR tested Novichok before manafacturing it, so surely they and the successor Russian governments knew its limitations. So why use it on Sergei Skripal if they wanted to kill him? Has this all just been an experiment?
Or take his words literally like a lawyer: We = me and my colleague here in Salisbury District hospital.
How does he know it is Novichok that got onto the Skripals? It probably was something else.
The problem is, so long as you’re referring to novichok, you’re trapped in a hall of mirrors. Novichok is a nickname given to a range of distinct chemical compounds alleged by a motivated defector to have been developed by the Soviet Union, yet the chemical structure of the nerve agent in this case has not been revealed and any query on that chemical structure is met with the answer: novichok. The government and media have been very careful to maintain this loop without laying themselves open to the charge of using the old Soviet tactic of disinformation.
Look at the two young people who died at the music festival. Stone dead. Not from exotic but survivable “nerve agents” but dodgy gear.
Yet miraculously Salisbury town centre is awash with paramedics, doctors, cid officers on a Sunday afternoon . The air ambulance is airborne at 16.19 four minutes after the first 999 call. Everything in place to make this happy ending. Like a fairy tale.
yes, like a fairy tale. And no pictures or videos in social media, no posts or comments from Salisbury people. Are they blind and mute, and have no smarthones by themselves?
The symptoms that we are told the Skripals suffered are more consistent with them being exposed to BZ (which isn’t usually fatal) than a military grade novichok. How is the delayed (by several hours) reaction to the touching of a contaminated door handle being explained by the authorities? It’s not.
If it was a novichok (more powerful than the VX which killed the North Korean leader’s brother in minutes) they’d have been dead before they had gone ten yards. Instead they were able to go into Salisbury town centre, have a meal and then go to a pub for a couple of drinks.
The fact that they are alive today isn’t testament to the work of the staff at Salisbury hospital (excellent though I’m sure it was). They are alive because they were poisoned with something non-fatal, rather than with an almost instantly deadly novichok nerve agent.
Alternatively if it was a Novichok then Novichok isn’t as powerful as thought and the Russians would have known this in which case they wouldn’t have been trying to kill Skripal with it.
Russians could kill Skripal with a gun, or staged car accident, or heart attack, or falling out of the window, or eating too many pills, or drinking too much alcohol.
The delayed onset of symptoms is the part that doesn’t ring true. I suppose it’s possible that if novichok was less deadly than we have been told, then symptoms might take longer to emerge, but I’d have thought that the symptoms would still have emerged almost instantly, but not be fatal.
I’m not arguing thatvit was Novichok rather advancing arguments Based on the premise it was Novichok which may then be deployed against the official story.
Excuse some random thoughts from me in this but of all the parties being suspected of trying to kill Sergei Skripal the Russian state are the one most likely to have known that Yulia Skripal would be in Salisbury because they would have been keeping an eye on her. Therefore if they were trying to kill Sergei they wouldn’t have used the door handle method because there was no guarantee that Sergei would touch the door handle at all
Pyotr, it is more likely that Sergei’s phone was under surveillance and Brits knew that Yulia will be visiting him.
Silly me not to think of that. But you don’t need ID to buy a SIM card in Britain and if he contacted her awayvfrom his home could it be traced.
We’ve seen here articles confirming that Sergei is still active Mi6 agent, he even visited foreign countries to share his experience and MI 6 organazed these visits. So I think all his phone calls were under surveillance.
Yulia lived in Britain for some time after the spy swap. Later she preferred to move to Russia and visited his father later for several times (it was said that she usually visited on family commemoration dates, to visit graves of her mother and brother).
I don’t think MI6 didn’t know of her existance, her habits, also I don’t think Sergei would hide his contacts with his daughter.
MODS and this one! ^^
There was only one reason for the Skripal farce. I’m not interested in pranks by spooks, Russian or British. The purpose was to attack Russia because as part of rounding off the war against the Syrian people by USUKIS and its terrorist proxies Al Qaida and Islamic State, Russia will soon supply their evidence of USUKIS guilt in breaching international law by sedition and regime change to the Hague, the UN, or any other forum for human justice.
David Cameron, William Hague, Theresa May and blonde bombcrater Boris Johnson’s collective hands are steeped in innocent blood. They could all hang , or get new identities in Argentina, whatever punishment is doled out to slaves of Israel these days. I personally believe that the Skripals must have been willing participants. I think if I had been poisoned by anyone I would have issued some kind of complaint by now. Ms Skripal saying she doesn’t want help from the Russian embassy , to my mind, means she was working against Russia like her father and she ain’t going back, no way, after doing a double-think scam on Putin.
Leopards don’t change their spots. It’s a great scoop for MI6 because it implies that these two Russia insiders are gambling on Russia losing the Great Game event in Syria to USUKIS. We are in a propaganda war. The reality is very different. In the eyes of the international community the use of terrorists by USUKIS overtly, instead of covertly, means that any country in the world, not just Malaysia, could mount a prosecution case against USUKIS.
The Skripal wobbly shows that USUKIS have lost the plot. Trump’s bigger nukes are as much use as a string of sausages against world opinion. In fact if he tried to swing them against Russia he’d have all the weaker countries in the world, like the Syrian Muslims on his back. Three cheers for Putin and XI. Communism may be agnostic but it one million times more humanistic than narco-capitalism. The failure of the Skripal case to convince anybody at all is a spit in the eye from USUKIS own offal fat.
To misquote Arthur C Clarke, giyane,, the truth will be far stranger.
The main consequence of the Skripal effect and the Libya bombing a month later was that the Tories rose and labour fell in the opinion polls. At the start for March, labour were well ahead at about 44%. Now they are lucky to get 37%. Remember Michael Foot v Margaret Thatcher? The truth came out via Clive Ponting but by then Maggie had her landslide.
I don’t get it. What’s wrong with people. Maybe she should nuke someone, then these morons will truly love her. Really going off humans.
Well she probably thinks she’s very clever, flatulence. Maggie had an actual war, but this time it has been achieved without a single shot being fired (to misquote John Reid).
The really sad thing about this is that if labour had a leader that was even more warmongering than the Tories, the change in public opinion wouldn’t have happened. LOL. surely not ALL humans…
maybe old clever cloggs will believe her own guff and bent polls then and call another election, or maybe her cronies will and kick her out to give the party the new face of some other complete muppet. Bring it on.
Maybe not all humans, but to hedge my bets, I’m on the look out for some psychotic called Noah.
I still don’t get it. If, by the time 999 responders were summoned, the two Skripals were incapacitated and delusional even, then how did the cops etc. ever get to learn that, prior to the pub and Zizi’s pizzeria, they had visited their wife’s / mother’s grave that morning and so thereupon urgently dispatched a forensic chem team to the cemetery (presumably to retrieve & examine flowers recently placed on the grave)? Real time MI5 / MI6 surveillance?
P.S. And yes, where the fuck is Dr. Steven Davies these days?
How did the police know they had been to the restaurant and pub?
They were at the cemetery around 9:15 am at which point their mobile phones were de-activated and their location signals lost. Police asked the public for any sightings of the pair beween 9:15am and 1:00pm
a propos N below might the Skripals have had an idea they were being tracked and deactivated their phones themselves?
Where and who is the doctor who just happened to be at the scene and cleared the throat of Yulia but who is perfectly fit and well and doesn’t want to be identified?
@Tatyana
What do you think of my Salisbury hypothesis involving Glushkov and Abramovich? Some further comments on Abramovich are here. He has now run to Tel Aviv. I wonder whether he will return to Russia before the World Cup – or indeed at any time.
Crooked British figures John Major and Tony Banks are “Chelsea supporters” and, on a far higher rung on the power ladder than those two, so is “Prince” Charles’s friend Jacob Rothschild.
The refusal of a visa renewal to someone at Abramovich’s level is an important event, with big repercussions in the business world, but many are ignoring it and would prefer to talk about Yulia Skripal’s dress and make ironic comments about doorknobs.
There has been laughable speculation that the reason for Abramovich’s recent relocation is that he wants to come to Blighty on a Zionist passport, without needing a visa, after being told his British visa wouldn’t be renewed when he applied using his Russian passport. Yeah, sure, maybe he wants to watch the tennis at Wimbledon? 🙂 The more important consideration is what will happen to his business network and assets in London. Interestingly Icelandic president Olafur Grimsson ran to I__ael just before the Icelandic economy went kaput. There could be big trouble in London very soon. Financial collapses. Some more dead bodies? Some political crooks in trouble too? Britain is just as much of a “mafia state” as Russia, but that will never be said in the British media (and probably not in RT either – not yet, anyway).
Meanwhile Peter Mandelson’s fellow Rothschild-pal Oleg Deripaska has been put on a US sanctions list.
The Glushkov case was a successful murder presumably carried out by professionals who did not rely on couriering by retired colonels who used to head the GRU’s personnel department before they spent several years in prison.
Glushkov was a close associate of Berezovsky who was at loggerheads with Abramovich. I am suggesting that Glushkov may have been involved in an attempted hit against Abramovich that fucked up, and that he was then rubbed out fast and cleanly by Abramovich.
Of course there is the alternative hypothesis that Glushkov was involved in an attempted hit for Abramovich and still got himself rubbed out by Abramovich when it fucked up. That’s not exactly unknown in the organised crime world. Nor is the change of allegiances that would have had to occur for him to have palled up with Abramovich after so many years of antagonism (during which Abramovich even had Glushkov held in jail in Russia.)
A feature that the Glushkov murder and the Salisbury event share is that the British police do not seem to be looking very hard for the perpetrators. There has been no big appeal for information in either case.
N_
I’m sorry to say, I hardly understand about a half of your indicated comments. I didn’t watch info on Glushkov and it’s hard for me to follow your idea.
I just wonder how picky British Governement is to deny a visa for Abramovich and to grant visas to Boris Mints and his 3 sons with their wives and children.
There must be something going secretly about russian money invested in Britain. I wait for Mrs. May’s investigation as she offered about a month ago.
My own thinking about the Abramovich visa issue is to put pressure on the oligarchs to launch a coup against Putin. Basically, the British are trying to peel the oligarchs off and into the Atlantist camp (many already there). It’s a signal to Abramovich that he’s either for the west or Putin, decide now.
I don’t think so, oligarchs are free to rule their investments from any part of the world, with British visa or without it.
On the other side, they have their savings far from Russia. It is not USSR, Russian state can’t get hold on this money.
I see no point of pressure.
One way of avoiding to give an opinion is to say that you didn’t understand what you were supposed to give the opinion about.
@Geoffrey de Galles
“I still don’t get it. If, by the time 999 responders were summoned, the two Skripals were incapacitated and delusional even, then how did the cops etc. ever get to learn that, prior to the pub and Zizi’s pizzeria, they had visited their wife’s / mother’s grave that morning and so thereupon urgently dispatched a forensic chem team to the cemetery (presumably to retrieve & examine flowers recently placed on the grave)? Real time MI5 / MI6 surveillance?”
Cars and mobile phones are tracked.
Since Yulia had arrived from Russia the day before, there may also have been on-the-ground surveillance, yes. That depends what it was thought one or both of them might have been up to.
“P.S. And yes, where the fuck is Dr. Steven Davies these days?”
Good question. (He’s not “Dr” though – he hasn’t got a doctorate in anything.)
Here’s a coincidence! After I posted about Abramovich and mentioned former Icelandic president Olafur Grimsson, I find that Abramovich was involved in Iceland and is friendly with Grimsson and that Grimsson has been in his box at Chelsea. (Source: Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins’s biography of Abramovich)
Gregory “Lord” Barker, the former “mini$ter for climate change” (lucrative work if you can get it), seems also to have taken the Abramovich shilling.
This from the 5th March (the day after the incident”
“Freya Church, 27, who spotted the pair “slumped” on a bench, said the couple in the CCTV images were “100%” the same people she had seen.”
http://www.itv.com/news/2018-03-05/two-people-in-critical-condition-after-being-exposed-to-unknown-substance-in-salisbury/
“Police investigators are known to have recovered a CCTV image captured by a camera at the Snap Fitness 24/7 gym. [Freya Church works at Snap Fitness, she witnessed the couple on the bench when she finished her shift on Sunday 4th March @ 4.00pm]
The image, from Sunday, shows a man and woman walking through an alleyway connecting the Zizzi restaurant and the bench where Mr Skripal and his daughter were found.
Freya Church, 27, who spotted the pair “slumped” on a bench, said the couple in the CCTV images were “100%” the same people she had seen.
“He was slumped … and she was slumped into his chest, leaning on him. They looked like they had been there a little while,” she told ITV News.
“To be honest I thought they were homeless people who had taken something a little bit too strong.”
After Mr Skripal and his daughter were discovered, the police cordoned off a nearby Zizzi restaurant on Castle Street and the Bishop’s Mill pub in the Maltings.”
The people on the bench were NOT the Skripals. Yulia had been caught on CCTV on the previous day (3rd) in a Moscow airport and she had reddish brown hair (white shoulder bag).
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6090854/haunting-cctv-footage-shows-yulia-skripal-boarding-moscow-jet-bound-for-britain-just-days-before-her-poisoning/
The female of the couple in the walkway cctv had blond / white hair (red shoulder bag).
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/927766/russian-spy-Sergei-Skripal-salisbury-poisoned-cctv-police
It wasn’t the Skripals on the bench but whoever they were, they were not poisoned with Novichok.
Ree-Smog who has just purchased a £5M house (nr Tory HQ) to accommodate the brood, listened to ‘drill music’ on LBC this morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ick2usygAKQ
.” 29 May 2018
Jacob Rees Mogg’s Reaction When He Hears Drill Music For The First Time. The Conservative backbencher admitted he had never listened to the music before, after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick called on social media companies to take down the videos that glamourise violence. Nick Ferrari played him a clip and asked what his music of choice is. “Not quite this,” was his response.[..]
When asked how police can reduce knife crime, Mr Rees-Mogg quipped: “I would suggest compulsory Gregorian chant might be a good way of reducing the problem.”
He’s really funny. Not.
Warning . YT includes Ferrari.
Dr Stephen Jukes’ speciality is ‘Anaesthetics’.
https://finder.bupa.co.uk/Consultant/view/33502
He works at Salisbury DH and the local private hospital New Hall.
A Dr Stephen Davies has the same speciality but is now working ONLY at a private hospital in Rochdale. The link has Salisbury within from my search!
https://finder.bupa.co.uk/Consultant/view/161593/dr_stephen_davies?ql=Salisbury&qla=&qlo=&fhospitalNetworkId=
Search page for Dr Stephen Davies, Salisbury.
https://finder.bupa.co.uk/Consultant/search/?first=1&qk=&ql=salisbury&qn=stephen+davies&=&giottoFormFlag_consultant=1
I am assuming he is the same doctor who wrote the letter to the Times.
So why doesn’t someone get up to Rochdale and interview him?
I assume that this is the Stephen Davies who wrote to the Times.
https://www.nhs.uk/profiles/consultant/4122151
That is almost certainly him Bill Marsh. He was concerned with people with headaches and upset tummies filling the his A&E department thinking they had been poisoned by a deadly nerve agent. So he quite rightly put a stop to it.
Correction. Ree-Smog’s 5t storey house cost £5.625m and belonged to Lord Ashcroft. .
Excuse the link.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6388201/jacob-rees-mogg-theresa-may-new-house-pm/
‘For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.’ Mark 4:25
Interesting to note who Wikipedia cite for the injured Skirpals. As to a 2013 international/interracial execution:
On 16 August 2013 Oklahoma driveby gangsters murdered a jogger: Australian student athlete Christopher Lane. They did not know Lane and shot Lane in the back for amusement.
Wikipedia users created a “Death of Christopher Lane” page to expore this henious international incident. The page quoted Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, saying:
“People thinking of going to the U.S.A. for business or tourist trips should think carefully about it, given the statistical fact you are 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the U.S.A. than in Australia, per capita.”
Immediately, a Wikipedia editor/censor “Northamerica1000” tagged the “Death of Christopher Lane” article for DELETION.
A few days of “talk” discussion followed among editors. Pro-gun censors said the “Death of Christopher Lane” was trivial and did not meet criteria. Other editors decried the censors. Lane’s death was making weeks of news headlines in cultures which protected their citizens from gun violence. It was an ongoing discourse around the world, including in the US.
But Northamerica1000 quickly DELETED the historical discourse. After deletion, searches for “Death of Christopher Lane” returned a Wikipedia statement: ‘The page does not exist.’
This historic record was banned from Wikipedia while another US Christopher Lane site flourish with demands for increased censorship and increased gun culture:
“This… is not the time or place for the politicos to use it as a battle cry to limit Americans’ [gun] rights under the second amendment to our great Constitution. Let’s just keep focus on what a wonderful man Mr. Lane was…”
Besides deleting the 2013 Lane history, Wikipedia falsefiers also hacked Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer’s page. Now “Christopher Lane” on Fischer’s page sent researchers to Wikipedia’s decoy article (about a Colorado ‘Lane’). Wikipedia replaced the historic record with decoy trivia – a spy’s cutout.
Soon after the falsification, Mr Jimmy Wales asked me for my regular donation. My reply stopped my donations. I explained that I did not fund his violent deceivers.
In 2018, Australia’s gun control hero Tim Fischer’s page does not link to Christopher Lane, nor to Wikipedia’s decoy page. Wikipedia now hyperlinks Fischer to their NRA!