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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There will be big problems bringing in the harvest in Britain this year, because so many East European workers won’t be in the country, owing to the looming of Brexit. That’s even before the probable fall in food imports next year if Brexit goes ahead.
Justice Secretary David Gauke today suggested a solution: using prisoners to do the work.
I strongly doubt there will be anything like the needed numbers. The number of foreign workers in seasonal agriculture is around the same as the total number of people in prison.
In the usual political poop-talk, “Leaving the European Union is likely to have an impact on the workforce in sectors such as catering, construction and agriculture. I see an opportunity here for both prisoners and employers, particularly those operating in these sectors.” (Source.)
(Translation. Britain runs on East European labour, which Brexit will chase away. Companies currently making profit from prisons, refugee housing, and so on, are invited to meet their official contacts to discuss backhanders for running and accommodating agricultural chain gangs. Perhaps Tesco could take some of the semi-slaves who wash windscreens in their car parks to the fields too?)
Bringing in the harvest is very largely mechanised, N_ – we are living in the 2010s not the 1940s!
There may well be problems with certain other agricultural products however – if the government restricts the use of seasonal workers who, generally speaking, stay for a short period and do not bring their families with them. It is not certain that the government will do so.
As for the question of prisoners working : is the principle of that necessarily a bad one? Perhaps a good few would prefer that to stewing in their cells for up to 23 hours a day. And it would constitute work experience which could be useless after they leave prison. So I think that our judgement on this idea should await further details. Perhaps it’s also worth pointing out that senior citizens in hospital for over a certain period have to make over their state pension (or a part of it at least) to cover board and lodging. Is, in principle, the idea of able-bodied prisoners working for part of their board and lodging, so very different?
“useful” not “useless” and no, that wasn’t a Freudian slip 🙂
@ Charles Bostock May 24, 2018 at 21:13
Aw, be a sport; you’d look cute in a Freudian slip.
I can’t help picturing you as walking about in a loincloth and sandals, a little like Gandhi. Don’t deny it, you old rogue!
@ Charles Bostock May 24, 2018 at 21:26
I wish I had the integrity of Gandhi, who was, of course, assassinated.
I do intend to get my (hopefully also God’s) message out before I die, however and whenever that may occur.
As a Christian, I believe Jesus’ words, ‘The Truth shall set you free’.
You, I’m afraid, seem to be intent on obfuscating the obvious truth.
‘Is, in principle, the idea of able-bodied prisoners working for part of their board and lodging, so very different?’
@CB
Well yes it is. A very dangerous path to go down especially given the current calibre of our media and political system.
Try reading ‘Slavery by Another Name’ Douglas A. Blackmon. How long would it be before companies were actively seeking ‘workers’ and the state criminalising people to provide them?
For a review:
‘Alabama was among the Southern states that profitably leased convicts to private businesses. As the book illustrates, arrest rates and the labor needs of local businesses could conveniently be made to dovetail.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/arts/10iht-10masl.11869463.html
The book itself is well worth reading…
As you say it is 2018 not 1940. But why is slave Labour and even practices banned since Victorian times being reintroduced?
“There will be big problems bringing in the harvest in Britain this year, ”
Indeed N, this duplicitous British government are in my opinion so caught up in their rabid xenophobic plans, which includes deporting citizens who’ve lived and worked in Britain most of their lives, that they’ve forgotten, or chosen to ignore more like, the oncoming perfect storm they’ve created, in not just that field but the NHS, and the service industry amongst others.
They’re not fit to govern.
Bringing in the harvest is very largely mechanised, RoS – we are living in the 2010s not the 1940s!
Moreover, you’re unlikely to find immigrants who’ve spent most of their lives in the UK, working in the fields.
No objection to polemic and even scare mongering, but do please make an effort to make them intelligent!
Fruit picking is by hand the last time I looked, of course you’d know better being all up to date 21st century an all.
‘Bringing in the harvest’ is generally taken to mean the harvestng of cereals. In England anyway, I don’t know what you might say up in Dumbarton.
But you are right to say that fruit picking – including raspberries (very delicious in Scotland except perhaps around Dumbarton) – is largely unmechanised. But the seasons are quite short. Farmers ….and then the supermarkets…..and then the general consumer (that includes you, RoS) will just have to pay a little more. I wouldn’t mind, anyway.
Charlie
You’re a right proper charlie, stumbling and reaching for an excuse, it doesn’t matter the price (and I don’t mean that in a who cares manner) what I mean is the price matters not if there’s no one to pick the fruit.
I’m sure Dumbarton raspberries are just as tasty as say raspberries in Yorkshire or East Anglia for that matter.
Really, Charlie? Can you share with us the type of machinery that takes in the fruit harvest. Many farmers are still relying on humans to pick their apples, strawberries, raspberries, etc. What fools they are when all they need to do is consult a specialist like yourself for guidance. What a guy! ?
My team at Glasgow Uni had a contract to develop robotic strawberry pickers. With the rise in labour costs after Brexit these may become viable economically. The low wage high immigration economy has been a terrible impediment to investing in the sort of labour saving machinery, that is, in the end, the only way to make society as a whole riche r.
Of course the British governments disgraceful treatment of EU and non EU citizens alike living in Britain, is matched only by their horrendous and unforgivable treatment they’ve dished out to the disabled and poor of Britain.
This is a government with core values based on suffering, expulsion and poverty.
@ Republicofscotland May 24, 2018 at 21:35
Aw, their not all that bad. Baroness Wilcox, not a member of the government, admittedly, only charges £300 per day to walk 200 metres: ‘Baroness Wilcox lives in a £4.5million home 200 yards from the House of Lords, but bills taxpayer up to £5,700 a month for walk to work.’:
http://tapnewswire.com/2015/07/peer-claims-300-a-day-in-expenses-to-walk-200-yards-to-work-at-house-of-lords/
And she looks so sweet and innocent.
Yet she doubtless believes people on the dole and benefits are ‘scroungers’. I do not have any links to her beliefs, nor am I going to waste my time looking (at least for now). But it would make perfect sense: after all, people on the dole and benefits don’t pay into the pot that feeds the trough (apart from VAT and purchase tax).
Prisoners might rather like growing their own….
This is an artificial problem.
The underlying problem is that immigration has been used as part of a wide set of strategies to ensure low wages in the monetarist belief this will control inflation and the neo-liberal/monetarist model does not recognise asset inflation and the growth of private debt as causes of economic crisis and suggests that only public debt and wage inflation are problematic due to the neoclassical assumptions in these neo-liberal models.
The neoclassical assumptions underlying the DSGE model assume that fiscal spending is ineffective and monetary policy should be used to manage inflation while governments cut spending, higher wages is assumed to cause higher inflation leading to lower growth and a reduction in employment. This model is of course nonsense (such as it neglects feedback effects of higher demand from higher wages and distributional effects), but the problem is that those managing the economy believe this nonsense, which is why the Bank of England’s economic forecasting using these models has proved so poor.
Using this flawed monetarist model various attempts have been used to control wages, Callahan/Healy used a wage policy, Thatcher used de-industrialization and mass unemployment until social unrest caused this model to be abandoned. This was replaced under Major/Blair with a mass pseudo employment program, benefit conditionality a means tested poverty trap and migration (particularly under New Labour) to manage wage inflation.
The means tested poverty trap used to control wages means that the practically all the benefit from working is clawed back in reduced benefits and increased taxes. If the unemployed could keep some/all of the wages from agricultural labour I fail to see the need for relying on imported labour. In this a citizens wage would encourage more participation by the unemployed/underemployed in insecure seasonal work in agriculture.
For those suggesting unemployment is so low that there is not the pool of UK labour to carry out this work it is worth noting how manipulated the unemployment figures are as the ONS/ILO definition is that you are counted as working for an entire reference week if you work for one or more hr in that week or were on a unpaid government scheme. The conclusion is clear if you want UK nationals to undertake agricultural labour you pay them properly and offer them reasonable conditions at work, until employers are prepared to do this and the government stops clawing back benefits (UC) at 63% (with a much lower earnings disregard than TC), neglecting the additional clawbacks from NI, IT and Council tax, I do not care if fruit rots in the fields as they know well they have the ability to fix this.
It is not racist to suggest that migrant labour is at the lower end is even worse exploited than indigenous labour as migrants are often not eligible for benefits, so are more desperate. Indeed one solution to labour dumping benefiting employers rather than migrants would be to allow migrants the same eligibility to benefits?
On the World Cup, remember that some of the matches (e.g. England-Belgium, 28 June) are scheduled to be played in Kaliningrad. That is a Russian territory that usually doesn’t get mentioned when NATO country journalists copy-paste press releases about how NATO might build a strong fortified line along the eastern borders of the three Baltic states.
Russia wouldn’t let NATO do that. It would be an act of aggression. But pretending to try it would be an effective way to start the war.
“(hello Paul Barbara, are you still listening?) ”
Habby, I mean Charlie.
Paul would need to have the hearing of Superman, to hear you say that. Don’t you really mean are you still reading?
@ Republicofscotland May 24, 2018 at 21:11
Actually, far from the hearing of Superman (i used to have it as a kid), I’m pretty deaf.
I have replied to Bostock or whoever it is, but reply got caught up in the moderation net. It should be OK, when it is checked.
I’ve just realised which ‘dicey word’ I used!
@ Charles Bostock May 24, 2018 at 20:51
The J*ws ‘got it in the neck’ from the Nazis – that does not make it OK to do what they are doing to the Palestinians.
Kurds were given sancturay in Assad’s Syria, but now they seem to have joined forces with the ‘Empire’ and Is*ael to split up Syria.
I did indeed protest Turkish aggression against the Kurds, both fairly recently and in the past, but now they are, like the Is*aelis, beyond the pale.
The thing I find interesting in the Russian version of Yulia’s speech is that she signed the document in Cyrilic as “Yulia Skripal.” I would have expected her Russian signature to (most probably} include her patronymic (or at least the first letter of her father’s first name), and also have the Russian form of her family name “Skripalova” rather that “Skripal.”
A signal to Russians that she’s not the one who wrote the statement?
Where does ‘Skripalova’ come from? Her surname is ‘Skripal’ and it is Ukrainian, her father was born in Kiev, so it is no surprise. The meaning of the surname is ‘violinist’.
Will Mueller indict Mifsud?
I note that Gav the Prat is threatening to use Trident on our ‘enemies’, as we’re running a tad short on conventional kit. Could poor sequestered Yulia be casus belli? Archdukes come in all shapes and sizes.
Sounds very Trump-esque from Williamson, but then like the orange man child Trump, the British government BoJo, May etc (Brexit means Brexit, the Ruskies did it) love to spout garbage regularly. Maybe they just like the sound of their own voices, no matter how unconvincing they appear.
That shower of shite are continuity, not change.
Then Gav the Nutcase needs sectioning.
Honestly if an MP recall bill had been passed, what better reason to recall MP but on grounds of demonstrable insanity?
Mainstream media apparently suffers from intermittent bouts of collective amnesia. Or maybe, it’s just that they figure since they have only 24 hours in day, much more important things deserving of air time and the public’s full attention, like Royal Weddings etc., must take precedence over follow ups to previous reporting on past sensational and much hyped events.
The Skripal Case Is Being Pushed Down the Memory Hole with Libya and Aleppo
by Caitlin Johnstone
Time and time again, we’re fed these deceitful narratives to manufacture support for the agendas of the western war machine, and when the truth begins to surface that we were lied to once again, the news churn moves on and we’re distracted with something else as the old narrative is shuffled back beyond the reach of memory. Maybe a year or two later we wonder to ourselves “I wonder what ever happened with that major news story? I should google it,” but nothing comes up and most of us shrug and move on.
And now a very suspicious and possibly Christopher Steele-related silence has descended on the matter of the Skripals, to the point where Sergei himself can walk out of the hospital and barely cause a blip in the news, and nobody can talk to either of them but everyone pretends that’s perfectly normal. This case which points very clearly to a mountain of lies and cover-ups by the British government and its affiliates is now being shuffled out of the news cycle and replaced with vapid nonsense about Meghan’s dress and Trump’s latest obnoxious tweet.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/05/24/skripal-case-being-pushed-down-memory-hole-with-libya-aleppo.html
This post above about the mainstream media’s remarkably fragile memory and (convenient) forgetfulness, was by Silvio. Apologies, the name field was accidentally changed from Silvio to “E” without my noticing.
“The Skripal Case Is Being Pushed Down the Memory Hole by Caitlin Johnstone
Maybe a year or two later we wonder to ourselves “I wonder what ever happened with that major news story? I should google it,” but nothing comes up and most of us shrug and move on.”
It’s not quite as bad as all that. What will come up as top hit: a tainted Skripal wikipedia article, incrementally more biased, russian-bashing, and misinformed than the one up there now.
Off-topic, but compare the Guardian vs Reuters on uber killing the bicyclist in Tempe AZ. The G left off a few minor things such as driver testing positive for meth and mj, the Volvo had its own effective factory avoidance system but uber had turned that off, and so on. Both had the bike crossing a non-existent “dark street” whereas the sky is lit up so bad 24/7/365 over Phoenix/Tempe that you can read a newspaper down in Casa Grande.
@Charles – You’re right about the decade we’re living in (always a weak basis for an argument), but each year there are about 80000 seasonal agricultural labourers in Britain who harvest food and many of them come from Eastern Europe. They aren’t machines and if they aren’t here then no machines are going to do the work in their place. Any attempt to mobilise a new workforce to replace them is likely to fail in a mire of corruption, administrative incompetence, and bullshit. I imagine army reservists will have to be sent out to the fields, at least in the period after the shelves and car fuel tanks run empty and while there’s still some charge left in smartphone batteries.
You seem to believe in modernity and progress…
@Milan Sulc
Russian surnames with unusual endings don’t decline for gender. If her father’s surname was “Skripalov” then hers would be “Skripalova”, but it isn’t – it’s Skripal. Omitting the patronymic (in her case, “Sergeyevna”) in a signature is not unusual.
Signal to Russians that she did not compose the statement?
There no need for any augmenting signals. The russian letter text itself is so utterly unrussian that it is self-evident even without reading english letter.
And comparing two letter versions side by sode makes obvious which was original and which was half-baked translation
My appologies, you are right. It seems my russian is more rusty than I realized.
But our files say that you are the ‘Philip Cross’ of this blog!?
@quasi_verbatim
This is a link to Gavin Williamson’s speech today.
“If we do not have that conventional deterrence, and the ability to deter from conventional forces, then what we’ll find ourselves in, is a place that none of us wish to be in, and having to turn to the greatest deterrence of them all.”
He is referring to launching nuclear missiles against another country. And he calls that “deterrence”!
Then he says that F35 stealth warplanes “will be flying from the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth, announcing that our carrier strike force is back. Meanwhile, our majestic carrier herself will be conducting her maiden voyage off the East Coast of America. Not just a magnificent symbol of our sea power, but of our expanding influence as a global trading nation.” (emphasis added)
He sounds insane! Is he trying to get on the platform alongside Donald Jong-un and Kim Trump?
I thought that he has already been diagnosed suffering from grandiose delusions when he said”Russia must go away and shut up”.
Well a few stealth bombing trips along the East Coast would certainly wake the Americans up….
Why don’t we all just ignore him? Then, if he continues to post, he will be wasting his time.
Recently the State said “The first use of a nerve agent in Europe for the first time since the Second World War”,
“From 1945 to 1989, scientists at Porton exposed more than 3,400 human “guinea pigs” to nerve gas. While other countries including the US, the Soviet Union and Iraq have also exposed humans to nerve agents it seems likely that Porton has done so more often, and for the longest period of time, than any other scientific establishment in the world.
In early tests men were sent into gas chambers and exposed to low concentrations of the nerve agent sarin. By 1950, Porton was testing considerably higher doses of sarin and cataloguing the severity of symptoms, such as headaches, vomiting and vision problems. The human subjects, supposedly all volunteers, had little or no knowledge of what they were being exposed to. Survivors have said that they were tricked into taking part, with many believing they were helping to find a cure for the common cold.”
http://vfpuk.org/articles/blinded-by-science-porton-down/
Doesn’t count, not part of Europe any more:
1953 British airman Ronald Maddison, 20, dies of sarin poisoning after being purposefully exposed to the toxin at Porton Down military facility.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/a-brief-history-of-chemical-war
Doesn’t count, not part of Europe:
From 1962 to 1973, the US Department of Defense planned 134 tests under Project 112, a chemical and biological weapons “vulnerability-testing program.” In 2002, the Pentagon admitted for the first time that some of tests used real chemical and biological weapons, not just harmless simulants. Specifically under Project SHAD, 37 secret tests were conducted in California, Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland and Utah. Land tests in Alaska and Hawaii used artillery shells filled with sarin and VX, while Navy trials off the coasts of Florida, California and Hawaii tested the ability of ships and crew to perform under biological and chemical warfare, without the crew’s knowledge. The code name for the sea tests was Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense—”SHAD” for short … chemical agents had been tested on thousands of American military personnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare#Post-World_War_II
Doesn’t count, former colony of country formerly part of Europe:
Rhodesia was one of the few countries known to have used chemical and biological agents — organophosphates (parathion), ricin, thallium, warfarin, cyanide, napalm; typhus, cholera, anthrax, salmonella, tetanus, botulism, gas gangrene.
Rhodesian CBW use took place toward the end of Rhodesia’s protracted struggle against a growing African nationalist insurgency in the late 1970s. A thousand Africans are estimated to have been killed. Project Coast, a top-secret biological and chemical program created by South Africa’s white-minority government specialized in the tools of terrorism and assassination – including “stealth” weapons that could kill or incapacitate without leaving a trace.
https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/20/1050777165503.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/sa/goosen.html
https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/iiclr/pdf/vol13p447.pdf
We know that Sergei Skripal hasn’t rung his 90 year old Mum.
We know Yulia Skripal rang her cousin once to tell her she wouldn’t be granted a visa.
What we don’t know is what communications have taken place between Yulia Skripal and her fiance. For someone who has just had his beloved poisoned and apparently needing to whisked off to America to live the rest of her life in hiding, he has displayed an admirable stoicism.
In fact all we have heard is that he has “disappeared”.
Also curious is that Yulia Skripal seems to be equally indifferent to the sudden collapse of her wedding plans.
Possibly – and very thoughtfully – the British Intelligence Community have managed to exfiltrate the fiance? MI6 are just a big bunch of softies at heart
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
“News is what governments don’t want the public to know”
–Donald Trelford
@Riskpal – There’s also the following excellent version of your quote: “News is something which somebody wants to suppress: everything else in the press is advertising“.
That’s sometimes attributed to a Rothermere, but the earliest version Quote Investigator could find a reference to was on a framed placard kept by L E Edwardson, an editor at the Chicago Herald and Examiner in 1918.
What’s most interesting is that, after a huge palaver involving banishing Soviet, er Russian, diplomats, the whole incident has gone down the memory hole. It didn’t happen, as Arthur Miller might say. So, from now till eternity, I’ll happily not believe a word the PM or the Foreign Secretary says. Not a problem, didn’t trust them anyway.
More intriguing is the mass-media hysteria. I shall now not believe them either, on pretty much anything, including Trump. This is a happier, free’er place to be, and releases me from paying any heed at all to their arrant bullshit. I wish I’d known that when I was 16, curious it took me so long.
In the case of Trump the MSM is schizophrenic cheering on whe it suits the warmonger’s agenda whilst still denigrating (rightly so) his other activities.
I note that you do not provide examples of the activities of Trump that require denigrating.
Perhaps you have in mind the fact that Trump has rolled up more child trafficking rings than Obama managed in 8 years. Maybe you find something culturally appropriate in MS-13 gang members ripping out the hearts of their victims – is that what puts you at odds with Trump?
Or perhaps you side with the FBI and believe that should the public be told that they spent $70,000 of public money on a table then national security would be endangered.
Maybe you take the side of the deep state and believe that the US needs to remain involved in Syria and that trying to get along with Russia is tantamount to treason. Or perhaps you see something wrong with the fact that the black unemployment rate is at an all time low.
Or maybe you think that the US should send all of its remaining wealth to China and Germany and that large US corporations should sequestrate $ billions and lock up all the money in offshore tax havens.
Maybe Trump should have copied the Clinton MO and sent money and technology to North Korea in exchange for precisely nothing. See how today the DPRK is almost literally begging to meet with Trump.
Three random examples
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/07/donald-trump-leaked-recording-women
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44045957
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/trumps-washington/560105/
Great!
You might find a couple of useful notions in my article here:
How Stupid Is This Narrative?
This in particular: http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/novichok-could-only-come-from-russiaor-anyone-who-bought-this-8-book-on-amazon/
The Guardian puts its foot in it once again, via Angus Roxburgh’s, “Yulia Skripal delivered a coded message and it spoke volumes.” The editor’s who wrote that headline must not have read Roxburgh’s story, because Roxburgh never tells us about Yulia’s coded message. He seems, though, to have his own.
Angus dismisses the idea that Yulia’s announcement was “stage-managed”. He’s a Russian expert and former Russian government adviser (2006*2009), so he knows all about stage-managed confessions. He believes Yulia was “relaxed” and that, “her expression at no point suggested she was saying things she did not believe.”
It is Yulia’s reluctance “to stage” a press conference, Roxburgh contends, that prevents us from knowing more. I suspect, however, that she might love to call a press conference of her own, and communicate freely with her father in the UK and her family in Russia. That she has not done those things suggests she is concerned about more than her privacy. But Roxburgh has no interest in such speculations.
He does wish Ms. Skripal would “speculate” on who poisoned her. As a victim of a surprise attack from the shadows, her speculation is unlikely to tell us anything new. But there is much she might say about her treatment and handling since the attack, none of which interests Roxburgh. He seems convinced of the government’s goodwill and its conclusion that, “there is little reason to suspect any perpetrator than Russia” did the deed, whatever the deed was.
Roxburgh reserves his passion for what to do about Russia. He concludes that since we will have to live with Putin for “the next six years” (an optimistic assessment), we might as well sort out how to get along with him. A mixed message about a Russian leader who supposedly just tried to murder two people in Salisbury.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/24/yulia-skripal-russia-salisbury-poisoning
No comments of course. The CIA & MI6 are too valuable as partners and financiers. Nothing should stop the flow of champaign.
Yes I thought Roxburgh’s article was full of ambiguity. My impression was that the video was stage managed from start to finish down to the last detail, including the highly theatrical and bizarre public signing of the two statements. The use of a single media outlet was a deliberate ploy to control the output and has actually result in fairly standardised reporting across the world’s media – easy to check a sample – with only variations of emphasis on such as the scar, a deliberately exposed stigma, and, of course the statement of intent to return to Russia “in the longer term”. Roxburgh, with many others, myself included, have found this the most interesting point, and its import probably explains why the message, the only one that really “spoke volumes”, has had to be so carefully wrapped up. The bits about “I speak for myself” etc are in context too incongruous to be accepted at face value by anyone.
Roxburgh seems to blame public scepticism on poor information management. The video is arguably another example of this in terms of its presentation and timing, but does nothing to allay suspicions about government’s inauthenticity.
I only stumbled onto your blog through due to this poisoning affair and due to Richard North over at eureferendum also citing you, and I have to say that I’m very glad. This piece in particular is a fantastic summary, with all the useful links needed to confirm the suspicion that I had from the start that a lot of this simply doesn’t add up. I may have disagreements with some of the other articles you have written, but I respect your independent thinking a great deal. Thanks once again!
Is nobody curious regarding the details of Yulia statement.
Yulia awoke after 20 days of induced coma, approx 24/25 March, the OPCW deployment ended on 23 March. The labs still found presence of the substance in biological samples
I note that Hamish OBE explains the entire matter in the DT and resolves all conundrums, non-sequiturs, logical inconsistencies and red herrings in an elegant conspiracy theory coup de main.
We have clearly been barking up the wrong tree.
Quasi, I think Hamish the ignorant is clearly barking!!
Yes, the good Hamish was of course on the case 15 days *before* the Salisbury incident happened, in a BBC piece written by him and published on 21 February.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43074956
He presciently alerted us that, ‘in the new “cold war” with Russia, NATO must be prepared for chemical weapon usage’, which might involve “super chemicals many times more potent than nerve agents like Sarin and VX”. Along with most of the MSM who quote him on the issue, the BBC didn’t think it worth explaining to its readers that Hamish’s day job is MD of a military nuclear/chemical/biological respirator manufacturer.
N_ et al
you missed the point about ” prisoners “. They didn’t mean people who are in prison, they mean people who live in Britain who currently are on state benefits. None of us have really noticed how under Mrs May’s elusive charm and the distraction of fake news, the Tories are implementing their war on lazy English scroungers. Don’t worry the Eastern Europeans will be here for fruit and veg picking, and by the time Brexit has not happened, Govichok will find a rural subsidy to bring them here anyway.
Picasso turned out to be a political prophet, accurately predicting the multiple profiles of our leaders’ faces. The nose is pointing one way, and the eyes the other way, and the mouth yet another way. I always like my explanations of life expressed in poetry or art. Thank you Picasso.
“Workfare” – the practice of making people work for their benefits, was introduced as far back as the Major, Conservative government, carried ob by Blair’s New Labour, and really expanded during the 2010 Tory/LibDem coalition. The latest version forced people to work – Poundland, Tescos etc. – for their benefits, or risk losing them entirely.
It totally ignored the all too obvious fact, that people being forced to do this were earning far less than NMW – thus making them slave labour, and taking away jobs which genuine employees could do.
Unchecked immigration, largely from Eastern Europe, has resulted in wages being driven down in agriculture, caring, cleaning, manual factory jobs, construction and even science, where UK workers have been made redundant, new positions being created, and Eastern European staff being employed at £7.50 per hour.
Unchecked immigration and the import of cheap labour is great news for unscrupulous employers and politicians, but is really fuelling a race to the bottom, making the poorest people even poorer, and increasing the gap between rich and poor.
Anyoldlabour, music to my ears – it’s about time someone highlighted this. I work in logistics and certainly, unchecked eastern European labour has seen lower wages, worse working conditions and the erosion of the English language in the workplace. Employers allow this to continue to the point where many British people now feel like aliens in their place of work but neither the employers or the Govt do anything about it. Also, employers have allowed eastern Europeans to bring over their friends, relatives, distant relatives etc and give them jobs that British people have not been given the opportunity to apply for. I do know they are not here because they like Britain as a place to live and work but merely for the money so there is no investment in the British way of life. No one appears to have answered the question – these jobs were filled adequately prior to the invasion of the unchecked Eastern European invasion – you are right, cheap Eastern European labour is great news for unscrupulous employers and politicians but it is the British workforce that is suffering for it.
Thanks Jo, I expected to get flamed for posting something like that, but I can only speak according to the personal experiences of my wife and I.
We are in our late fifties, and went through the harrowing experience of being unemployed for 18 months (me working in finance in a heavily regulated sector for twenty five years, my wife as a senior research scientist with fifteen years in biotechnology).
We were being paid around the market rate at £28K – just above average wage, and both our jobs were taken by Eastern European workers (Polish and Hungarian) half our age, earning under £20K.
My cousin is a site engineer, testing construction materials, and the site in London he is working on is staffed by Polish workers. If he needs to ask them any questions, he has to phone head office for an interpretor.
I have no problem with people coming in and paying their way as the vast majority do. But working for less than NMW should see employers prosecuted and all loopholes closed. Shipping migrants in and then charging them left right and centre for accommodation or using some other loophole to effectively pay them very little is rife and is a disgrace. They’ll make big examples of some small fish doing this, same with tax evasion, but the big ones are allowed and to get away with murder, with loopholes created just for them. and it is murder, because this is killing people who can’t make ends meet.
‘The Orbis report is mince. Skripal knew it was mince and how it was written’
Yes.
Skripal’s primary motive for any work done after his release and exchange will have been the same motive behind his betrayal ie power. Money, career advancement or lack thereof, ideology, are secondary and a recruiting officer can use them to lead a target towards the big one. The best intelligence officers internalise zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, some can’t and are vulnerable to the rewards that ego seeks. Skripal wanted to see how he affected lives, politics, international relations, perhaps history – his betrayal did that. He didn’t get enough rewards from his small peer group so he expanded his peer group, he got a new one. Exposure arrest and jail, infamy would be worthwhile for such a person. It would seem he’s carried on in the same way since release. If – if – he had any input into Steels’s dossier, he would have engineered it so he could watch how he shaped events, and feel powerful again. Steele of course would know this, but he’s in private enterprise now, his motive is making money. Meanwhile Skripal’s the centre of attention, without him the course of events would have been different. Will his daughter’s near death experience change him? He’s very likely a psychopath so probably not. The real story here is what can happen when private enterprise meets Statecraft, and it’s destroying the traditional HUMINT gathering agencies.
This is a very interesting point. As with other walks in government the secret service and espionage service are being part privatised for deniability as well as the other usual reasons.
With Le Mesurier, Miller, le Breton Gordon Steele amongst others we don’t know of, the outsourcing is working very well.
Certa this is a very interesting post. There can be no doubt that he had money – he owned two houses, one having recently been bought for cash, he had a BMW and all the other trappings of a high income. He wasn’t just living on a State pension. It seems that either he or h is daughter had also recently received 200,000 pounds. I think your points about his wish for power are very interesting and explored further – this angle appears to have been bypassed altogether but I think, if he is a sociopath, then it is a highly likely factor. What I do know is the Government’s story is a collection of very serious lies which nearly resulted in a serious world incident – so we have two highly disreputable agencies – one Skripal the other the British Government and their security services – no doubt they are in collusion from the outset of this affair.
Moon of Alabama has a high resolution graphic of Yulia’s handwritten statement in Russian. Perhaps someone can tell us the significance of the crossed out words?
http://www.moonofalabama.org/images6/yuliaskripalstatement.jpg
On another forum someone said “after my father’s release from hospital” is crossed out.
@Paul Barbara May 24, 2018 at 20:19:
‘An image of the Russian text of a letter allegedly sent by Yiulia Skripal to Reuters’:
https://rusvesna.su/sites/default/files/styles/by_text/public/obrashchenie_yulii_skripal.jpg
This blog automatically converts links from http to https, which causes broken links when the target site doesn’t accept the more secure protocol. To see the letter (i.e. the Russian version of her statement as seen in the video), remove the ‘s’ from the URL and refresh the page.
Tom Smythe’s MoA link is to an image of the same document but also needs the https changed back to http in order to work as intended.
[Intended as a continuation of my 06:22 comment, but the Reply button is not working.]
I take that back. The Reply button is working… sometimes.
No it’s not.
Thank you Gideon. It is an interesting statement in basic Russian, which the Russian embassy has tweeted that MI5’s translators on such a big salary should be able to put together a more Russian statement. But leaving that aside, and assuming it is her own creation, there are some interesting messages in there. Tatyana, on a previous thread, mentioned the correction in the Russian version. Perhaps she is trying to say something. She originally wrote (if I have got this right with the line through):
Я стараюсь жить сегодняшним днем и хожу помощью моему отцу после его выжимали из госпиталя.
I try to live from day to day and want to help my father after they released him from hospital (rough translation).
After crossing part of the sentence out and inserting new text it read:
Я стараюсь жить сегодняшним днем и намерена нянчить до его полного восстановления.
I try to live from day to day and intend to nurse my father until he is fully recovered. (rough translation).
This sentence precedes the one which talks of her intention of returning to Russia in the future. I need help with this but I think in Russian госпиталь (gospital’) means a military hospital and the more common word for hospital is больница (bol’nitsa). Can anybody confirm?
John, corrections are both in the same phrase, where she changes her tone
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/yulia-skripal-and-the-salisbury-wut/comment-page-3/#comment-751619
Russian original is:
“Я стараюсь жить сегодняшним днем и
– хочу помочь (want to help) + намерена помогать (intend to help)
моему отцу
– после его выписки из госпиталя (after he is discharged from hospital) + до его полного восстановления (untill his complete recovery)”
translation:
lysias
May 24, 2018 at 21:17
I’ll try to translate: “I try to live one day at a time, and I want to help my father until his complete recovery.”
@ John Goss May 25, 2018 at 09:26
Ah ha, that indicates the text was begun before Sergei left hospital, but was delayed from being broadcast till after he had left hospital, due to the PTB wanting it that way.
Paul Barbara,
You are right! Wow!
Sergei left hospital on May 18. Yulia’s video was broadcasted on May 23. She had 5 days to rewrite her russian version, but she didn’t. Also it indicates she knows that her father in no longer at the hospital.
Thanks Tatyana and Lysias.
But I think it is worse than that Paul. We have no idea when the video was produced or where Yulia is now, or when the statements were made as I wrote yesterday:
“My guess is that whoever wrote it for her was deliberately trying to avoid official jargon so readers would not think it was anything but her own words. The Russian Embassy tweeted:
“The bottom line is that MI5 should expect better results from their translators – for 32k/year they should be able to write statements which sound more Russian.”
As you say it is worded very similar to the Met police-statement made on her behalf after her release from hospital. Unless I’ve missed something this sets me wondering when the video was recorded and when the statements were taken. One of the first things to do with a statement is to date it. As far as I can see neither the English nor Russian statements were dated.
One begins “Good afternoon . . .” The other begins “Добрый день . . .”
We are still no wiser as to when that interview took place or when the statements were taken. And because they are so similar to the Met statement we do not know if Yulia is alive. As I say I may have missed something.”
Yes in Russia we have ‘hospital’ for military hospital and ‘bol’nitza’ for civil hospitals.
But I think that Yulia used ‘hospital’ the same as you use it. It is strange to say ‘bol’nitza’ if you talk about British hospital. It is very russian word.
The Salisbury Bol’nitza or British bol’nitza is ‘режет ухо’ (feels like a false note in music).
Thanks again. If you stick around my limited Russian might even improve.
You’re welcome 🙂
Yes, this is correct.
And it tells us that Julia wrote the initial statement before her father was discharged from hospital. And perhaps also tells us that she didn’t want to re-write the whole letter. For somebody who hasn’t got that much to do with her time, this is instructive.
@ Gideon Blackmarsh May 25, 2018 at 06:22
Thanks Gideon. I don’t speak Russian, but I just noticed the link didn’t work. It works if the ‘s’ is knocked off, as you say.
Can anyone point me to Craig’s post where he describes the 10 ideals of Labour Blairites? I can’t find it ambit it was by far the best description of Blairites I’ve found to date.
Is this the post you’re thinking of?
Oops, I messed up that link. Try this:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/06/the-tipping-point/
From that piece by Craig:
“He [Corbyn] needs to exploit his current strength now ruthlessly in internal battles.”
This was aboslutely spot on. Regretably JC did not ‘exploit his strength ruthlessly’ and with the fall of Ken L. and the recent appointment of another blairite to the NEC Corbyn may well have missed his opportunity. He should have ousted his enemies when he had the chance.
I suspect he is trying to be all-encompassing to avoid splitting the party but the party is undeniably split in all but name and all he will do in acquiescing is give the whole thing back to the right wingers.
agree entirely
That’s it! Thank you!
My Fair Lady
Yulia Skripal transcript in her ‘own words’:
Gor blimey guv’nor would you Adam & Eve it
I was sparkers for twenty odd bleedin days
the sods tried to knock off my old geezer an me wiv ‘im!
Anyroad I ain’t gonna avail myself of no ‘elp
from no muvver Russia, ta very much.
The BBC omit the word OCCUPIED after the word ‘Palestinian’ from their announcement of P William’s forthcoming visit.
Prince William to visit Israel and Palestinian territories – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44245103
Q. Why have the PTB allowed this visit to take place? As with Eurovision and the US embassy move, he will be claimed by the Zionists.
By saying “Israel and the Palestinian territories” the BBC seems to make a clear distinction between the State of Israel and what is often called “the West Bank” (which is not part of the State of Israel and which has its own administration, aka the Palestinian authority). So I see no indication of bias or Zionist intent, it seems fairly neutral to me.