In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story. Next week I shall look at alternative explanations.
Russia has a decade long secret programme of producing and stockpiling novichok nerve agents. It also has been training agents in secret assassination techniques, and British intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting nerve agent on doorknobs.
The only backing for this statement by Boris Johnson is alleged “intelligence”, and unfortunately the “intelligence” about Russia’s secret novichok programme comes from exactly the same people who brought you the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme, proven liars. Furthermore, the question arises why Britain has been sitting on this intelligence for a decade and doing nothing about it, including not telling the OPCW inspectors who certified Russia’s chemical weapons stocks as dismantled.
If Russia really has a professional novichok assassin training programme, why was the assassination so badly botched? Surely in a decade of development they would have discovered that the alleged method of gel on doorknob did not work? And where is the training manual which Boris Johnson claimed to possess? Having told the world – including Russia -the UK has it, what is stopping the UK from producing it, with marks that could identify the specific copy erased?
The Russians chose to use this assassination programme to target Sergei Skripal, a double agent who had been released from jail in Russia some eight years previously.
It seems remarkable that the chosen target of an attempt that would blow the existence of a secret weapon and end the cover of a decade long programme, should be nobody more prominent than a middle ranking double agent who the Russians let out of jail years ago. If they wanted him dead they could have killed him then. Furthermore the attack on him would undermine all future possible spy swaps. Putin therefore, on this reading, was willing to sacrifice both the secrecy of the novichok programme and the spy swap card just to attack Sergei Skripal. That seems highly improbable.
Only the Russians can make novichok and only the Russians had a motive to attack the Skripals.
The nub of the British government’s approach has been the shocking willingness of the corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made, even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the “novichok” class of nerve agents, the programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing facility in Uzbekistan in 2002.
Furthermore, it was the USA who decommissioned the facility and removed equipment back to the United States. At least two key scientists from the programme moved to the United States. Formulae for several novichok have been published for over a decade. The USA, UK and Iran have definitely synthesised a number of novichok formulae and almost certainly others have done so too. Dozens of states have the ability to produce novichok, as do many sophisticated non-state actors.
As for motive, the Russian motive might be revenge, but whether that really outweighs the international opprobrium incurred just ahead of the World Cup, in which so much prestige has been invested, is unclear.
What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a motive. The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia.
There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal’s MI6 handler Pablo Miller’s work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump.
Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia had the motive, are massive lies on both counts.
The Russians had been tapping the phone of Yulia Skripal. They decided to attack Sergei Skripal while his daughter was visiting from Moscow.
In an effort to shore up the government narrative, at the time of the Amesbury attack the security services put out through Pablo Miller’s long term friend, the BBC’s Mark Urban, that the Russians “may have been” tapping Yulia Skripal’s phone, and the claim that this was strong evidence that the Russians had indeed been behind the attack.
But think this through. If that were true, then the Russians deliberately attacked at a time when Yulia was in the UK rather than when Sergei was alone. Yet no motive has been adduced for an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone. Furthermore, it is pretty natural that Russian intelligence would tap the phone of Yulia, and of Sergei if they could. The family of double agents are normal targets. I have no doubt in the least, from decades of experience as a British diplomat, that GCHQ have been tapping Yulia’s phone. Indeed, if tapping of phones is seriously put forward as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.
Their trained assassin(s) painted a novichok on the doorknob of the Skripal house in the suburbs of Salisbury. Either before or after the attack, they entered a public place in the centre of Salisbury and left a sealed container of the novichok there.
The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury. Why did the Russians not know that the dose from the door handle was not fatal? Why would trained assassins leave crucial evidence lying around in a public place in Salisbury? Why would they be conducting any part of the operation with the novichok in a public area in central Salisbury?
Why did nobody see them painting the doorknob? This must have involved wearing protective gear, which would look out of place in a Salisbury suburb. With Skripal being resettled by MI6, and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard, some basic security including a security camera on his house.
The Skripals both touched the doorknob and both functioned perfectly normally for at least five hours, even able to eat and drink heartily. Then they were simultaneously and instantaneously struck down by the nerve agent, at a spot in the city centre coincidentally close to where the assassins left a sealed container of the novichok lying around. Even though the nerve agent was eight times more deadly than Sarin or VX, it did not kill the Skripals because it had been on the doorknob and affected by rain.
Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours, and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the nerve agent ultimately ineffective?
Detective Sergeant Bailey attended the Skripal house and was also poisoned by the doorknob, but more lightly. None of the other police who attended the house were affected.
Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly substance, of which a tiny amount can kill?
Four months later, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were rooting about in public parks, possibly looking for cigarette butts, and accidentally came into contact with the sealed container of a novichok. They were poisoned and Dawn Sturgess subsequently died.
If the nerve agent had survived four months because it was in a sealed container, why has this sealed container now mysteriously disappeared again? If Rowley and Sturgess had direct contact straight from the container, why did they not both die quickly? Why had four months searching of Salisbury and a massive police, security service and military operation not found this container, if Rowley and Sturgess could?
I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British government and its corporate lackies.
My next post will consider some more plausible explanations of this affair.
“The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia…” Craig Murray
Hmmmmmm.
That doesn’t exactly narrow it down or help much, does it? And we could add to the list.
Of course, there’s a reason that Russia has so many potential enemies who might make it on to the list. I’m sympathetic to Russia and believe a strong Russia contributes positively towards creating balance in international affairs; but, let’s be honest, Russia has behaved very anti-socially towards many its neighbours in the past.
If there’s a word that sums Russia up its ruthless. Hypothetically, would you want to live on a world dominated by Russia rather than the US? That’s a tough call.
Are you serious in what you say? Have you not seen one of these maps of US bases everywhere? Have you not been witness to recent invasions, destructions and regime changes in many countries around the world?
Have you not read any history of how Russia before and after the Soviet Union, have really not initiated invasive wars to the scale of the US? The skirmishes in Georgia and the rejoining of Crimea to Russia were both acts of self defence after provocations.
Yes of course I do not want a world dominated by any one country but there is no indication of a reason for your fears concerning Russia.
Yes, I’m serious. I have a very good grasp of Russian history too. The Soviet Union, when you strip away all the excuses and ideology, was just another empire imposed on the world under threat of violence. How far back do you want to go, to the gulags and kulaks? Nobody who saw what happened in Grozny could argue that Russia was innocent there. And I could go on all night with more examples.
The US has done worse on a bigger scale. But that doesn’t excuse anyone.
I have two friends who fled from Grozny with their families. Because of ‘pogrom’, do you know what it means, Hatuey?
The place you live in suddenly accepts idea, that your nation is enemy. Your religion is hostile, your language, color of your hair, your everything. Either you go away, or young men with weapons can teach you ‘where your place is’, and no help from local police. People left their homes and property.
Yet the separation idea was to establish ‘imarat caucasus’ sharia state. Ask me who sponsored it ))))
Russia couldn’t stay away from it.
It was a difficult situation. Complicated. But I am not sure that turning Grozny into a moonscape was a solution for Chechnya any more than turning Fallujah into a charnel house helped Iraq.
In a more ideal world we would have a UN that had more power to intervene and resolve these situations. It’s a great shame that the UN has been gelded and so undermined in recent years.
Nothing difficult but yes, complicated. First party of weapons they got from Turkey, and Turkey got it from Germany as NATO military help. it was back before 1991. NATO is always happy to help, you know, with separation.
After decade of conflict several republics decided to be a sharia state. Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushi, Kabardy, Balkary, Karachy and a part of Stavropol region. Religious extremism. Allah told them to live under sharia law. Their leaders sweared their fidelity to Al-Bagdadi, you know that guy, khalif of ISIS. That guy who met with senator MacCain in Idlib, Syria.
Sure, Russia should stay away and let Chechnya go independent, that is usual knowlege in the West.
“Hypothetically, would you want to live on a world dominated by Russia rather than the US? That’s a tough call.”
It’s only a ‘tough call’ if you’re asking the question from the very narrow, shallow, blinkered and self-centred perspective of a privileged resident of a developed Western nation, or a similar person in one of a very small number of other countries with whom the US currently has a ‘friendly’ relationship.
If you are a poor person anywhere in the Middle East, East Asia, North Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, or South America – or a Chagos Islander, for example – I suspect you would like to live in a world dominated by pretty much anybody but the USA.
Unless you’re an Islamofascist thug that is. Then you could rely on the US to provide you with an endless supply of arms, money and training to help you depose whoever is currently governing your country, and replace them with your religious lunatocracy.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But I think we’ve seen enough to conclude that Russia if it had more power would probably be as bad if not worse. No US government has massacred millions of its own people, for example, discounting thei civil war and the annihilation of American Indians.
“discounting thei (sic) civil war and the annihilation of American Indians.”
And, I guess, if you are being selective – then maybe Hitler was not so bad, or Pol Pot, if you discount their annihilation victims – unless you happen to be one of them, of course.
Arraigned before a court of law, the accused, whether a shoplifter or a war criminal, must tell ‘The truth, THE WHOLE TRUTH and nothing but the truth’ – anything else is perjury.
I’m not being selective, though. I’d discount the civil war and the annihilation of American Indians because 1) the civil war wasn’t an example of a government simply massacring its people (many died on both sides and it could have gone either way), civil wars are like that, they’re ugly, and 2) the American indians, as much as I am sympathetic, could hardly be described as people of (belonging to) the US (government) in the normal sense.
The point I am making is that people should be careful about being selective in regards to Russia simply because it suits them to do so when condemning the US and the West. We don’t need to choose one aggressive government over the other; we can reject both.
Discounting civil war and native peoples, no American government has massacred millions of its own people – yet.
Any unempathic egregore with such a ruthless and unquenchable lust for power and open disregard for human life in general, is, when all the pieces are in place, only a lick away from doing just that. Thirst for total control is the greatest display of paranoia, a weak and insecure mind set. It has repeatedly destroyed other nations, its own people and finally itself, time and again as evidenced by history.
It is indeed the archetypal Phoenix.
Profoundly accurate.
What Hateuy seems to be saying is that it is OK to have a history of genocide against natives as long as you don’t kill your own people. Killing other people is also OK.
“No US government has massacred millions of its own people, for example, discounting their civil war and the annihilation of American Indians”
That’s only because those alluded to didn’t number in the millions to begin with.
Actually, some historians have measured the deaths of indigenous Americans in the millions. As I recall some have gone as far as to suggest European colonisation in the Americas resulted in up to 50 millions dead.
Which negates your original point somewhat.
No it doesn’t negate it. The American Indians who were massacred in their millions did not belong to the US government in the normal sense of the word — the US government had no sense of responsibility for them or legal acknowledgement of them as citizens in the modern sense.
The Kulaks in Russia, for example, on the other hand, were indisputably Russian citizens in the sense we understand today. And they were massacred by their own government.
Nothing said here exonerates the US; massacring people is wrong either way. But we were talking about living under one or the other and in basic terms it is difficult to make a case for wishing to be governed by a political class that has massacring its own people on its CV.
So the fact that my racist forebears, unlike the Russians, couldn’t see the inhabitants of the land they had decided to found a state on as “belonging” to the US, to the extent they were able to see them as belonging to foreign nations couldn’t be bothered to honor the treaties they contracted with them, for the most part weren’t even able to see them as people at all, if we’re to be brutally honest here…this is supposed to be a mitigating factor?
I feel like I’ve fallen into the hasbara pool.
Yalt. You have fallen into something. But my point is simple. Would you rather be governed by a political class that has fairly recently massacred its own people (amongst others) or would you prefer a government that hasn’t massacred its own people?
It’s an irrelevant distinction drawn straight out of the American and Israeli book of talking points. “He killed his own people” has been a standard trope of US propaganda going back at least to 1990.
You speak as if the Bolshevik regime was Russian, and saw Russians as its own people. It wasn’t, and it didn’t.
Try reading some Solzhenitsyn. “Two Hundred Years Together” is most relevant, if you can get hold of it. Unfortunately there is no official English translation, for some mysterious reason. But it’s available in Russian, French and, I think, German, and there are partial Samizdat English versions on the web.
It’s really galling that the West decries Russians for the crimes of the Bolsheviks, when they were actually the main victims. Even the postwar Soviet Union transferred wealth from Russians to all the minority groups and the satellite states, and the Russians get hated for it.
I don’t think Solzhenitsyn would agree with the way you are using him to try and exonerate the Russian political classes. And I have read him.
Russia has been attacked and invaded regularly from the West pretty much throughout its entire existance, so maintaining a safety buffer around its borders has become crucial. So crucial that “anti-social” steps towards neighboring countries are seen as a lesser evil.
Yes, we have heard those excuses. Interestingly, similar excuses were used by the US in its handling of Cuba and South America generally — that’s Monroe Doctrine stuff.
It’s hard to justify the argument that people in Cuba, Afghanistan, Ukraine, or anywhere should sacrifice their freedom and chances of peace and prosperity in order to allay the security concerns of a powerful neighbour. How would you feel?
Justify that and you are on the side of the tyrants.
I agree with your general point. (And so does Putin, who has renounced any idea of holding satellite states.)
But you’ve chosen poor examples. Afghanistan in the 70’s and 80’s had the best government in its history – progressive, advancing women’s rights, quite Westernised. It was allied with the later Soviet Union, which had mellowed somewhat from its earlier depravity. As revenge for the Soviet Union’s aid to Vietnam in achieving its freedom, the USA decided to give the SU “its own Vietnam” in Afghanistan, and created Al Qaida and similar Jihadist groups as its instruments. Afghanistan was thrust into the same sort of murderous Islamist chaos we’ve seen recently in Syria – and by the same agents. The Afghans appealed to the SU for help, which was given because of the fear of the American-backed terrorists penetrating the Muslim south of the SU. The intervention was fairly successful – the secular Afghan state survived for a couple of years even after the Soviet withdrawal, only falling to the terrorists after the dissolution of the Soviet state itself, because of lack of aid.
The Ukraine is an equally bad example, but it would take too long to explain why. If you had chosen Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria or whatever, I would be totally with you – with the caveat that they were conquered by the Soviet Union, not Russia.
You fail to grasp the basic moral principle but don’t confuse me for someone who cares. It’s not for you or I to decide this form of imperialism is wrong or this form, because it advanced the rights of women, is right.
Dominance is dominance.
I’ve stated that the Soviet Union was another empire imposed on the world; and it was. You seem to agree. Fake leftists tend to disagree and make excuses for Soviet empire. The same people have Orwell posters in their kitchens.
(To Hatuey’s reply to me)
I think you misunderstand me. I wasn’t saying that it was OK for the SU to impose a “progressive” regime on Afghanistan because of the over-riding importance of women’s rights. I agree that such excuses are extremely suspect, often being just an element of “manufacturing consent” for aggressive wars.
My point was that the replacement of the Afghan Kingdom by the Republic was pretty much a natural development of domestic Afghan politics, not imposed from outside. The foreign intervention came first from the United States (though in secret, to begin with), in organising the most reactionary sections of society into violent terrorist groups. Only then did the SU start aiding the already-established (and generally popular) government in fighting the American-backed insurgents. At that stage, we in the West were told that the SU had “invaded” Afghanistan, and the fighting between the terrorists and the Afghan government forces was actually Afghan resistance to a Soviet take-over. This “justified” making the US backing for the terrorists public and massive.
It sounds as if that propaganda line is still having its desired effect in some people.
kgbgb, I disagree with your description of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Many there were alarmed by the increasing Soviet influence well before the formal invasion and before the US started fanning the flames (I note that the US was secretly engaged there before the invasion, though).
But let’s suppose you are correct. Your description of events leading up to what is widely regarded as an invasion, and the “invasion” itself in terms of the pretext given, could be very easily adjusted to look exactly like the sort of stuff the Pentagon was saying in the early 1960s about its role in Vietnam.
I doubt if that was what Brzezinski meant when he talked about giving Russia its Vientam war.
What I’d suggest you look at, though, and this goes to the heart of my point here, is the motivation for the SU to intervene in Afghanistan. It is clear that they regarded this southern flank as a vulnerability in security terms and in that there is an admission of guilt.
They weren’t meddling and supporting the Afghan government for altruistic reasons — they were manipulating to suit their own national interests and address security concerns in much the same way that the US sticks its nose into the affairs of other countries. And in much the same way they ended up facing resistance.
If you are more careful with language, the behaviour of the SU in this case and others is basically identical to the behaviour of the US and its cohorts, albeit it on a smaller and less monstrous scale.
There’s nothing similar in the two cases. Russia has been repeatedly invaded by countries to its west. What genuine security concerns do we have in the US, other than concern for the profits of our capitalists? Who has ever invaded the US? Aside from the US itself, that is?
I remember getting a phone call from a pollster in the run up to the first Gulf War. There was a series of questions asking if I would support war with Iraq in the event that [insert long series of possible scenarios].
No, I said, to each. No. No. No. Maybe we could save some time and you could just put no down for everything and we can move on.
“I think there are some items on the list here that might change your mind,” she said.
“I can’t imagine what they would be but fire away, if you think so. What have you got?”
“Would you support war if Iraq attacked the United States?”
I couldn’t get a word out I was laughing so hard. Finally I managed to sputter out “I’m sure their battleships are assembling off the Long Island coast as we speak.”
“No, no, that’s not what the question means. What if Iraq attacks the US over there?”
I felt sorry for the poor girl. She was being paid (no doubt poorly) to do a job, and thinking critically about the questions she was instructed to ask wasn’t part of the job.
Yalt, would you say that it was okay for me to break into your house, beat you up, and steal your iPad on the basis that some guy in New York did it to someone else? I wouldn’t. But that’s what your argument here amounts to.
Can you elaborate? That’s so distant from the argument I’m making that I don’t even know how to go about correcting your misreading.
You wouldn’t see it as a tough call if you lived in one of these 37 countries…….
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051
hatuey… you really need to get your head out of the gaurdian and crappy media like that and get a grip on reality.. i agree with bj – you are a gov’t troll or some such thing.. i hope the pay is good.. your comments are worthless and i will now do you the favour of not replying to any more of your bs – or reading it for that matter..
Granada?
Russia ruthless? You mean like invading and destroying lots of countries, removing democratically elected socialist governments and replacing them with puppet dictators, imposing sanctions on countries, supporting Israel at all costs, etc, etc?
Is it possible to justify one person’s transgressions on the basis that some other person has done worse? If it is, almost anything goes.
You are wasting your breath making that sort of point here.
Hatuey, you are right about justifying, but we are not talking about two persons existing apart from each other. We are talking about two ‘persons’ who must constantly interact. Currently it is not a friendly interaction. I’m sorry, but it seems more like war.
The actual problem is – why we interact like enemies? Can we just stop it and find a way for neutral relations, at least. That is what Nebenzia said, we don’t ask for friendship, all we want is understanding and calm partnership.
Sounds nice but maybe more peaceful outcomes are likely if the US and Russia are at odds with each other and antagonistic. I’d argue that Syria would be destroyed by now, for example, if it wasn’t for Russia standing up for it in opposition to the US. It’d be another Libya.
Nothing is simple.
I agree, but only antagonistic as right hand and left hand, there must be ‘a head’ above both, e.g. UN ??? The problem comes with domination ideas “…we are nation blessed… power… democracy… no one nation but we only…”
The main issue is not the ruthlessness of Russia or anyone else, but whether lies are being told to the public, to whip up hysteria and increase tensions, or maybe to provide support for something. And why there seems to be very little investigation of these dramatic events from journalists in our free press.
It’s quite unlikely that anyone on the outside can get enough information to fully uncover the truth but we can certainly note what is unlikely to be true. And just saying ‘OK, they must have more information they are not telling us’ is not enough, we have been officially lied to before, most recently over extraordinary rendition, and famously over Iraq.
Joirnalists do not exist in the MSM, there are typists and propagandists.
The way to deal with that is to boycott them all en masse. Let them go bankrupt and let their influence plummet.
They will not change so do nothing to let them survive.
There’s a few journalists I do respect and there have been some good investigations. Recent examples, Amelia Gentleman and Windrush, Carole Cadwalladr and Cambridge Analytica .. without their persistence we’d know less …. Also I agree, a lot of rubbish.
Rhys Jaggar. Absolutely right. I stopped reading any mainstream stuff years ago. Every utterance on the TV news has me thinking: That’s not right, I’d better check it. Or I scream at the TV/radio, waiting for the obvious questions to be asked or for the politician to be “grilled” but it never happens.
Look at the huge salaries of the BBC “stars” and then ask yourself, why would they challenge anything. Their pay packets depend on them not, doing so. Censorship by omission.
If there’s a word that sums Russia up its ruthless. Hypothetically, would you want to live on a world dominated by Russia rather than the US? That’s a tough call.
I don’t want to be dominated by either.
However, as the England fans now realise, what we read about the nasty Russians is a pile of croc.
Idiocy.
a) so you’re back full force commenting here?
b) I’d prefer Russia twenty times over Pax Americana
c) so you’re back full force commenting here — how about a bit of modesty and maybe an apology?
I would greatly prefer to live in a world that isn’t dominated by anyone.
Somehow I can’t help but think that there are yet more “facts” in this story still buried deep within the recesses of Boris Johnson’s ample derriere, which is the exact location, it would appear, that a good many of our current “facts” seem to have been first located and unearthed. As unsavory and disturbing as it might be to contemplate – this fact alone stands as a powerful rebuke to anyone who ever claimed “Mr. Johnson’s sorry arse is good for nothing!”
Do you mean something like a polished t**d by any chance?
I think Donald Trump would suggest that Boris’ arse would be very good for a good whipping if he does not give Trump everything for nothing when he is installed as a puppet.
We still do not know who exactly told BJ it was categorically Russian novichok.(presumably they had a category to fit it into…oh yeah..military grade).despite the red face of the Porton Down spokesperson.
Nobody has considered that the second set of poisoning may have occurred from the first batch of contamination. Only after the smeared novichok on door knob has been exposed to a couple of days more rain, it became so diluted that it took 4 months to cause damage instead of several hours.
“Nobody has considered that the second set of poisoning may have occurred from the first batch of contamination.”
I wonder why?
Doodlebug
I meant from the original doorknob
There was one minor but interesting detail that caught my eye. Unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it at the time, and now I can’t find the reference. I think it was a link to a Salisbury Journal article that I found in one of the comments on this site.
A neighbour of Rowley and Sturgess was interviewed early in the course of that incident. She spoke of having seen “about a dozen emergency vehicles” around the house after Sturgess was taken ill.
I found that very curious. Would it be normal for as many as a dozen emergency vehicles to respond to a call about a woman who had been taken ill? Is that standard practice for Amesbury? Are all 999 calls in Amesbury handled with that level of response?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/04/wiltshire-couple-poisoned-by-nerve-agent-police-announce-dawn-sturgess-charlie-rowley
“Hobson visited Rowley’s home in Muggleston Road on Saturday morning. Sturgess, who lives in Salisbury, had spent the night there. “I saw lots of ambulances there and [Sturgess] got taken out on a stretcher. She needed to be helped with her breathing,” Hobson said. Rowley came out in tears. “They said she needed to have a brain scan.””
Thanks for that. That may have been the article I was thinking of, although I recalled a reference to “about a dozen emergency vehicles” rather than “lots of ambulances”. I still find it rather odd that “lots of ambulances” should be dispatched to a case involving one woman who had been taken ill.
Well spotted. Lots of, or merely several, ambulances to attend a single patient suggests playing to the gallery, as in the story was going to be spun as that of yet another nerve agent attack (with its attendant risks to all and sundry) irrespective of the genuine cause of distress.
Especially as they were “just two drug addicts.” In normal circumstances one would be lucky to have a PCSO respond to a call. Even 999 calls are no guarantee of immediate action. Maybe Amesbury is just very lucky! Police numbers cut to the bone, but they are there for the high profile events.
I can confirm from personal experience, when an elderly neighbour collapsed, the ambulance took more than two hours. Passers by ‘phoned first, then myself, finally an emergency vehicle arrived – carrying CSO’s! They then ‘phoned the Ambulance Service, and, after another 20 minute wait, Para’s finally arrived.
Again, from personal experience, I found the quickest way to emergency attention is via the 111 service number. Just 12 minutes to arrive after hanging up.
Or maybe there’s a predetermined response in place for acts of terrorism and emergency scenarios involving nerve gas, toxins, or radioactive materials.
This is the first news story I found on the Salisbury Journal website relating to the incident. It is when Charlie was taken ill. I guess that the newspaper missed the importance of Dawn being taken to hospital. It mentions 8 fire engines.
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16325525.person-taken-to-hospital-after-incident-in-amesbury/
The next story is a warning from the police about contaminated drugs made 2 days later.
What is confusing is that once the story hit the national papers the two ambulance calls were often conflated.
What I find interesting is that for both this case and the Skripals it took 3-4 days for a suspected opioid poisoning to turn into a nerve agent attack.
Geo spatial analysis is a valid crime analysis tool. Google earth shows Charlie Rowe’s Muggleton Road residence is 300 meters from the remote western corner of the Bascombe Down airbase. Bascome Down is one mile north of Porton Down. It is believed the #4 Green Bus from Salisbury dropped the couple off less than 150 meters from the Bascomb Down perimeter fence. Mr. Rowley and Ms. Sturgess walked from the bus stop to Mr. Rowley’s home. Both were overcome inside Mr. Rowley’s home the next day. The most obvious conclusion is the exposure occurred there. Prior to the 1997 convention banning chemical and bio weapons, were CBW agents stored at Bascombe Down? Ms. Sturgess took ill at 10 am…Mr. Rowley at approximately 6 pm. Mr. Rowley collapsed minutes after taking a shower and dressing. Did Ms. Sturgess shower and dress shortly before she collapsed? Did Mr. Rowley use the same towel Ms. Sturgess had used in the morning? Did Ms. Sturgess and Mr. Rowley receive their exposures by handling contaminated shoes before or after showering?
Do you mean Boscombe Down?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoD_Boscombe_Down
“Both were overcome inside Mr. Rowley’s home the next day. The most obvious conclusion is the exposure occurred there.”
Yep. After each handling an ‘item’ within a ‘contained space’ according to earlier, official sources.
”
Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours, and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random completely uncontrolled doses.”
The most suitable explanation is that the doorknob was not the source of the Novichok. The details of the second attack destroy the official narrative anent the first attack.
The discarded Novichok would presumably be close to where the attack on the Skripals took place. Note, the Queen Elizabeth gardens are 8 mins walk from bench where Skripals were found, but far further from the doorknob of their home on the outskirts of Salisbury.
It is therefore far more probable that the attack happened at the bench. This has always seemed the most likely explanation, with the Skripals potentially meeting with a third party/parties at the bench who then poisoned them, but the narrative has been switched to excise that.
As a professional assassin, do you want this vial to be found?
Why are you not dumping it twenty miles away in a skip? Why not throwit in the river so any traces are destroyed through degradation.
The assumption has to be that the ‘assassin’ wanted the vial to be found.
The next analysis should be benchmarking assassination team actions vs actions of top professionals.
The dastardly Russians were taking the piss by constantly showboating against MI6, the police etc etc. They were leaving clues everywhere, taunting ‘see, we did it and you are so useless you could not catch us’.
But they managed to get in and out without being seen, carrying some pretty lethal chemicals. Managed to coat door knobs without being seen.
Interested to hear from historians specialising in political assassination how many times in history such arrogance has manifested itself. None?
“The assumption has to be that the ‘assassin’ wanted the vial to be found.”
Or vials. Or packets even. Unless or until someone can confirm that the Skripals, Sturgess and Rowley were all non-smokers, I suspect product-tampering with Fentanyl by persons unknown. The substance is extraordinarily dangerous and could, theoretically, be introduced unnoticed into a packet of cigarettes, using a hypodermic syringe.
Regarding the doorknob, what I’ve always wondered is, if the highest concentration of Novichok was on the doorknob, why did nobody go inside the house to inspect it for traces of Novichok there? Theoretically one might consider the possibility of finding even higher concentrations inside the house, or at least want to rule out that possibility. But evidently the house was sealed and not entered for four weeks, i.e. long enough for the Skripals’ pets to have died or nearly died from dehydration. I may have missed it but I haven’t seen this question raised anywhere. Does anyone have any knowledge or theories about why the inside of the house wasn’t inspected?
Incidentally, I also wonder what poor Sergei thinks about his pets being neglected in this way…
One thing that I have noticed, is the acceptance that a military nerve agent was certainly used, and the arguements and theories are all about Novichok/not Novichok, method, dosage, etc. I am no expert in anything, but I did spend the years 1984 – 1997 serving in the British military and had to learn and practice NBC (Nuclear/Bilogical/Chemical) warfare drills (as did the hundreds of thousands who served in all 3 branches in my time in service). What follows is what I was taught.
Chemical agents used by the military (or expected to be used on us by the enemy) fall into 4 categories:-
Incapacitant – speaks for itself, not deadly, meant to stop normal operations and cause chaos. Includes crowd control chemicals like CS.
Blister agent – Mustard gas, Phogene gas etc.
Blood agent – Agents that stop oxygen being carried by the blood. e.g. Cyanide
Nerve agent – Attacks the central nervous systen, causing full body shutdown. (as far as the military go, this is the one to really be worried about)
Military nerve agents are designed to be delivered by warhead or in aerosol form, such as low pass spraying over an enemy airfield, or tank formation. with this in mind, any “Military Grade” nerve agent HAS to be lethal and almost instant to be operationally useful. There is no point in having or using them if the emeny is still able to fight 3 hours after you have deployed your chemical attack. This stuff is designed so that it can be spread over a battlefield and anyone coming into contact with even the smallest of amounts dies and dies quickly. For all intents and purposes (outside of a lab setup) there is no such thing as a safe or non lethal dose of “military grade” nerve agent.
I was taught that there are 3 stages to nerve agent poisoning, first the mouth, eyes, nose throat start to water, flu like symptoms they called it. Second stage, the bowel and bladder muscles relax (amongst other failings). Third stage and the nervous system shuts down and death follows. I was taught that a single drop of nerve agent on the skin is so toxic and dangerous that you can go through all 3 stages in under 20 seconds.
Once the initial chemical attack is over and the all clear sirens go off, the right people with right equipment go an test for residual agent hanging around, and even if they report all clear, the military is so concerned about nerve agent that the “sniff” test is carried out before anyone can remove respirators. This entails 2 lucky “volunteers” going outside in full NBC kit and respirators, kneeling on the floor facing each other. One would break the seal of his respirator and take a quick breath and seal the respirator again. The other is to watch his eyes to see if signs of nerve agent poisoning are happening. If they are then nerve agent is still around and the second man now has to fire the poisoned man’s own combi-pen into his thigh through his NBC suit (and the uniform underneath) and drag him back to shelter and begin full decontamination using fullers earth.
I don’t know what’s going on around Salisbury, or why, but I am left with 2 options. Either the British military spent a fortune equipping and training, then lied to me and thousands of servicemen about lethality of nerve agents. Unlikely,because we have evidence of what nerve agent does thanks to Saddam, hundreds of bodies in the street where people died where they stood. Or, nerve agent is as toxic and dangerous as the British millitary teach, in which case, whatever is poisoning people in Salisbury is not a “military grade” nerve agent.
sorry for the long ramble.
No apology needed.
Extraordinarily informative and valuable posting.
I learn a lot on this site but that takes first prize, and I am a chemist by profession.
Exactly as you say, the symptoms taught to be recognizable and remembered “rapid distress” time being of the essence, jab the atropine in immediately whilst one still had the ability to do so.
No one was affected by a ‘nerve agent poison’?
‘ . . . 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.’ ”
However,
“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
And where is Dr Davies now……..
And is Dr Jukes destined for next year’s ‘honours list’?
My understanding of the treatment the Skripals received is that it took the hospital a day or two to change their treatment from opioid poisoning to treating organophosphate poisoning.
http://rogerannis.com/uk-medics-treated-skripals-for-opioid-overdose-until-porton-down-claimed-nerve-agent-poisoning/
Reports in the newspapers do not give a time I can find, other than hospital staff saying they “quickly” realised their mistake. The Skripals are immensely lucky to survive such a deadly agent for so long without proper treatment. The hospital staff are also lucky, as they did not take precautions at first, so could have been contaminated themselves. Everyone was lucky apart from Dawn 🙁
Maybe Sturgess knew too much. What if the blonde woman in the CCTV pictures was Sturgess, but the man wasn’t Rowley? And the blonde woman seen by several witnesses on the bench with Skripal (Yulia not being blonde) was Sturgess too? That somehow Sturgess had been used as a patsy in the original attack (carry this red bag with me love, and go over and sit at that bench by those two sat there and leave the bag there, and I’ll give you £100), and thus had to be silenced? She may have been the one dosed with something this time, and Rowley was contaminated by her, but wasn’t an actual target.
Seems like ‘luck’ was plentiful.
One tends to suspect there should a new grade called ‘assassination grade’, to be used by Special Forces for assassination, if this story has any cogency whatever.
In assassination grade, the aim is ability of SFs to reach target, deliver payload and escape safely without need for full decontamination gear.
Aim should be activation 10-30 mins after delivery.
Brilliant post, Huw. Thanks.
Well Huw, things have certainly moved on from my day (70s & 80s NATO/BFG). Back then, the idea was that nerve agents could be used on an area but troops could go through the place in a matter of days (if not hours). Bit of a hose-down maybe – but no big drama. Made of sterner stuff then, I suppose.
Can’t help the feeling of being conned, looking back. I used to be scared stiff of the prospect of a chemical attack, even though we practised dealing with it very regularly. Seems it was nowhere near as dangerous as we were led to believe.
/s
Excellent. Thank you.
The English expression “more holes than Swiss cheese” can now be replaced by a stronger and native equivalent: “more holes than the south Wiltshire Novichok narrative”
Emmentaler can be good, but a good wedge of Stoney Cross, (rather than Philip Cross) without holes is to be preferred.
If it had occurred in Somerset, we could have gone with Cheddar, and you’d have provided a perfectly gorge-ous description which cut right through the crumbling propaganda landscape.
Is trumpf mad? An unseemly post dinner attack on Treeza via a Sun interview, or is it all including this novichok business, designed to oust her. Godfather Adelson has a 2 year window (before 2020 election) to ramp up an attack on Iran, its clear Treeza will not be coming on board after 3 visits by Bibi to 10 Downing, they need a more amenable PM and time is running out. A Bolton in Moscow trying to rope in Putin means they are also desperate which would explain this totally outrageous interview by trumpf.
Probably planned so that she receives sympathy.
Totally humiliating IMHO esp the Johnson stuff.
Ref Israel which, as I say, knows no law. It’s true.
Don’t let Israel become a promised land of impunity for crooks and fraudsters
Israel’s law enforcement bodies are not cooperating with their foreign counterparts in tackling financial fraud. Are they ‘only’ spectacularly incompetent, or something even worse?
By SIMONA WEINGLASS and DAVID HOROVITZ
1 Jul 2018
https://www.timesofisrael.com/dont-let-israel-become-the-promised-land-of-impunity-for-crooks-and-fraudsters
To oust May? During her leadership UK Steele & co were busy trying to abort Trump!
Action – reaction.
Purpose of second poisoning must have been to keep russophobia alive, almost no doubt in my mind.
If any British secret service was involved, Theresa May should be given 24 hours to explain how the Government could allow such an ”appalling murder” to happen (to use her own words), alternatively 24 hours to explain how the Government could loose control over these agencies.
What would happen to her afterwards I do not know (prison sentence?). In addition some countries might expel scores of British diplomats in pure disgust.
Getting slightly ahead of yourself there.
It’s the current fashion.
Why is it widely believed, and routinely written as fact, that pablo Miller works for Orbis ? I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that. His LinkedIn profile is sometimes cited but as far as I can tell it didn’t mention Orbis, and I’ve not seen a screenshot saying otherwise.
“His LinkedIn profile is sometimes cited but as far as I can tell it didn’t mention Orbis, and I’ve not seen a screenshot saying otherwise.”
Are you new here?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/where-they-tell-you-not-to-look/
LOL. Harding plugs Freedland’s piece on BBC/Russia/Brexit stuff.
Great piece by @Freedland on how the BBC isn’t – quite, yet – covering alleged #Russian role in Brexit and the abuse of Facebook data
https://mobile.twitter.com/lukeharding1968/status/1017031972726730752?
Freedland replies ‘Thanks Luke.’
Mutual admiration society.
Harding’s latest oeuvre.
Could Trump pull US out of Nato and what would happen if he did?
The US president has plunged the alliance into chaos with his threat to withdraw from Nato
Luke Harding
12 Jul 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/trump-nato-threat-withdraw-what-would-happen
SE
I can’t bear to read anything by Freedland or Harding anymore. Thanks for the earning.
Trump is negotiating, playing hardball as usual.
Question is whether someone will assassinate him, then Adelson.
About time an unaccountable billionaire made the same fate as JFK.
It’s the Atlantic Council on full alert.
The propaganda outfit of the MIIC proves NATO has become an end in itself.
Another branch of the MIIC is currently busy indicting Russians.
The full link mentioned in Craig’s screenshot is cut off slighly, it’s :
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2017/1/12/52642/4357
Salman to the thugs. ‘You can kill as many Yemeni people and bomb them as much as you like’…
Saudi King absolves troops of any future accountability for their conduct in Yemen war
12 Jul 2018
A royal decree by Saudi King Salman has ‘pre-exonerated’ all troops fighting in Yemen from any accountability issues they may face over their conduct in the war, in which thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded.
A statement announcing the early pardon, released by Saudi Arabia’s state news agency SPA, said the pardon extends to “all military men across the armed forces” taking part in Operation Restoring Hope, citing the official codename of the Riyadh-led invasion of Yemen.’
https://www.rt.com/news/432907-saudi-pardon-soldiers-yemen/
Unreal. If an enemy of the West had issued that statement they would be lambasted as a demon from the depths of hell. But this guy will continue to be represented as some kind of Arab Tony Blair or Emmanuel Macron, an imptessive young reformer or modernizer. This statement, which is basically demanding atrocities against civilians, will get no more attention than any other Saudi crime in Yemen.
For anyone with any lingering doubts about who the Bad Guys are these days, take a look at these two recent articles:
Firstly from Pepe Escobar, who I have come to respect over the years:
“These are Washington’s four demands to recognize the next Iraqi Prime Minister:
1. 30% of all the oil in Iraq should be American-controlled – and it’s up to the US do what it wants with it.
2. Washington must have full access and control of Iraqi banks.
3. All business and trade with Iran must cease right now.
4. The Hashd al-Shaabi, known as People Mobilization Units (PMUs), instrumental in the victorious fight against Daesh (Islamic State), must be immediately disbanded.
This comes from a top Iraqi official present at all the meetings who told Asia Times sources what happened in these exact same words”.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-11/pepe-escobar-chinas-silky-charming-arabia
Secondly, Trump’s recent demand that NATO allies should “pay” 2% of GDP NOW
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-11/trump-slams-nato-pay-2-gdp-immediately-or-even-4
Just think about that for a second; ignore the fact that the existing NATO military budget already exceeds Russia’s by a factor of 20 or more, and focus on the word “PAY”. This is a simple “shakedown”, and the clear implication is not just that vassal states should increase their spending, but that this axiomatically implies that the entire expenditure should be offered up to the USA.
Whether the wealth in question is in Iraq or Germany, I really don’t think Trump sees Foreign Policy as anything other than an extension of the US armaments industry. They are one and the same – Un-Exceptional nations – whether friend or foe- must PAY tribute to the USA Hegemon, else we will bomb, sanction and terrorize you into either submission or the Stone Age
And the UK – the nation that brought you Boudicca, Alfred the Great, Henry V, Sir Francis Drake, Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Douglas Baader, Winston Churchill and Colonel H Jones? The first gig I ever went to was in 1977, to see The Stranglers at the Colston Hall in Bristol – try this for size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gfIgA-PYyQ
Trump as boss of protection racket.
A good analogy.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49840.htm
Direct link to Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/article/chinas-silky-charming-of-arabia/
@Walt King
That was pretty much the shake-down racket Saddam Husain tried during and after the Iran-Iraq War when he tried to get the $40 billion dollar in loans from Saudi and the Gulf states treated as a direct grant with extra money for reconstruction. Their refusal , with a nod from the then US ambassador, led him to invade Kuwait as enforcer.
“ with a nod from the then US ambassador,”
‘Nod’.
Nice underplaying the US’ role in supporting Saddam.
“with an OK from the US”
FTFY.
One sympathises with the Prime Minister, who has become, for President Trump, the unacceptable face and nexus of the entire tawdry Steele/Miller/Skripal/Pissgate conspiracy.
Trump clearly knows who rubber-stamped it.
I put this at length in previous thread – but is nobody curious what the air ambulance was doing at the late Sir James Goldsmith’s “right-hand man’s” house immediately prior to taking off for Skripal incident?
May I ask why you find this astonishing ?
Who is Sir James Goldsmith.
Who is his right-hand man?
Ah, Craig this is a combined effort of myself and Borisofsky; fiendishly clever and deceptively benign.
It is called project Yogisky Bear. We will kill off inhabitants of the island of the UK with a secret formula called Kimerisky-choc, a potion created on the back of our most religious scientists, a potion that attacks in TWOs.
regards
Boogeyman Vlad.
Dan Kaszeta @DanKaszeta (yes him) puts another nail in the coffin of the delayed, simultaneous, catastrophic, unexpected collapse argument in this piece – where he confirms (if any confirmation were needed) that the effects of OP poisoning move from local to global:
https://integrityinitiative.net/articles/yes-you-can-be-poisoned-novichok-and-survive
I challenged him, Philip Ingram (@PhilINGMBE and Hamish De Breton Gordon on twitter to get their views out on this stunning new property of an OP agent. Ingram used their usual ‘it’s all in our threads’ fob-off & Kaszeta threatened to block me and Hamish DBG didn’t respond – knowing that he’ll never be asked about it on the BBC so what does he care.
Food for thought.Thank you very interesting.
The US Ambassador, who is hosting the Trumps in his residence in the 12 acre site in Regent’s Park, is a great grandson of the founder of Johnson and Johnson.
Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.7bn damages in talc cancer case
Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $4.7bn (£3.6bn) in damages to 22 women who alleged that its talc products caused them to develop ovarian cancer.
A jury in the US state of Missouri initially awarded $550m in compensation and added $4.1bn in punitive damages.
The verdict comes as the pharmaceutical giant battles some 9,000 legal cases involving its signature baby powder.
J&J said it was “deeply disappointed” and plans to appeal.
In the six week trial, the women and their families said they developed ovarian cancer after using baby powder and other talc products for decades.
Their lawyers alleged the company knew its talc was contaminated with asbestos since the 1970s but failed to warn consumers about the risks.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44816805
What about babies who get smothered with the stuff?
Johnson’s wife, who is Ukrainian is a friend of Melania who is from Slovenia. Both married very rich older men. That’s the way to do it!
Gideon’s rag gives us the details.
How Donald Trump’s UK visit will reunite Melania with her BFF
For Melania Trump, today’s UK visit is an opportunity to reunite with her best friend Suzanne Johnson, the US Ambassador’s wife
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/melania-trump-friends-suzanne-johnson-a3885501.html
‘A Short History of Ukrainian Tractors’ or ‘A Bird in a Gilded Cage’
htpps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEUmc5Uuwy8
What the Victorians termed ‘adventuresses’,perhaps and this disapproving attitude seems to come through in the US media
Good, detailed, analysis, Craig… as usual. This entire affair in Salisbury opperates on a level of ridiculousness that’s truly jaw-dropping. What concerns me and what find more disturbing than the details of the episode itself, is the reaction or non-reaction, of the corporate media. Whatever happened to real investigative journalism and asking simple, logical questions? Whatever happened to scrutiny and sceptism within our media? So many journalists, yet so few questions asked, why? I can understand that they’ve all been cowed by the issuing of the D notice to protect Miller, but what about the other questions, that you’ve posed and are so breathtakingly obvious?
The UK press acts like it’s been occupied by the military and wartime discipline imposed because the country is under attack and at
war with Russia; only we’re not, are we, officially at war with Russia?
If I recall correctly , didnt one of the minor royals (UK) , at an embassy dinner in Kazakhstan , gleefully announce that ‘the great-game is back on’ at least that’s what the astonished yank ambassador reported back home by telex (which JA eventually ‘open-sourced’) or was it in the Telegraph?
So , yes , I think at least an important and imperial part of the UK establishment is at hot-war with the heirs of dostoevsky, tolstoy, aleksandr pushkin, lermontov and other foreign peasants.
It is all practise to test that uk press can be completely misdirected and worthless to citizens but a tool for powers that are that wish to be powers to be…..that uk population can be misled and owned by falsehoods….dumbed down to even more “comfortably numb”….and testing how “useful” is uk journalistic education is…ie none challenging…..maybe?
Just stumbled upon this
https://www.rt.com/news/432762-shrimps-military-chemicals-sweden/
May should grasp this straw, ginger it up a bit, connect it to the restaurant and with one bound she’s saved face and it’s all forgotten.
I put that up on a previous thread RAC. All around us in the sea. And radioactive waste too.
Legacy Danger: Old Nuclear Waste Found in English Channel …
April 2013 – German journalists have discovered barrels of radioactive waste on the floor of the English Channel, just a handful of thousands dumped there …
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-old-nuclear-waste-found-in-english-channel-a-893991.html
The seas were thought of as rubbish dumps. Now coming back to haunt us, viz plastics waste.
I wonder if that photo is of actually a barrel or the shape of a barrel in maybe concrete after the barrel has rusted away. My uncle was an engineer in that industry and I recall a conversation he was having with my dad probably 50+ years ago talking about the new idea they had about encasing the stuff in glass, his words “there’s nothing we can’t do if we just had the money”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEUmc5Uuwy8
Another foul up by HMG.
Forces homes deal disastrous for taxpayers and worse could follow
13 July 2018 .
The Public Accounts Committee report finds MoD’s failure to reduce number of empty properties ‘scandalous’ at time of national housing shortage.
Deal to sell estate “turned out to be disastrous for taxpayers”
Read the report conclusions and recommendations
In 1996, the Ministry of Defence sold most of its married quarters estate (now referred to as service family estate) to Annington Property Limited and agreed to rent it back for up to 200 years.
The deal has turned out to be disastrous for taxpayers, offering no protection against the private sector making excessive gains at the taxpayer’s expense.
Worse could follow because the rent, which has been subject to a 58% downwards adjustment to date, is to be reviewed from 2021. Depending on the outcome of negotiations, the Department’s costs could increase significantly at a time when the defence budget is already stretched.
The Department and its Defence Infrastructure Organisation, which is again being reorganised, do not yet appear to be well prepared in terms of having the necessary staff and information.’
/..
https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news-parliament-2017/mod-annington-homes-contract-report-published-17-19/
1996 – That was Major who carried on with privatisation post-Thatcher.
The Carillion collapse was also being debated yesterday following reports from two committees.
‘Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I beg to move, That this House has considered lessons from the collapse of Carillion.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling the debate for today, which is timely. This Sunday it will be six months since Carillion entered liquidation. When it collapsed, it employed 42,000 people, more than 19,000 of them working in the United Kingdom. It held liabilities of £7 billion, including a £2 billion liability to 30,000 suppliers and subcontractors, and it held just £29 million in cash to meet those liabilities. In the past six months, nearly 2,500 Carillion workers have been made redundant and more than 1,000 have voluntarily left what remains of the business. Projects have been mothballed and suppliers have faced ruin.
Since the collapse of Carillion, five Committees have looked into the issues surrounding its collapse. Along with the Work and Pensions Committee, my Committee—the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee—has considered the causes of the collapse. The debate is also timely because this morning our Committees published a special joint report containing 24 responses to our original report. It gave those criticised in the report, and those with a significant interest, a chance to respond ahead of the Government’s formal response to our findings. In the time that I have this afternoon, I shall set out what my Committee found, and what needs to change. I thank fellow members of the Joint Committee, some of whom are in the Chamber today, for their work to uncover the lessons from Carillion.
When it collapsed, Carillion had been in existence for 19 years. It was the second largest construction company in the UK, having grown through large and frequent acquisitions and Government outsourcing. Carillion’s directors, and those who know the construction industry, told us that it was a low-margin industry, and part of a highly competitive market with inherent risks. Businesses do collapse every day, and the process of business creation and failure is part of any well-functioning modern economy, but warning lights should have been flashing when such a big business was on the brink. We should demand the highest standards of corporate governance to help to ensure that British businesses are well run, but that did not happen with Carillion.
Despite its catastrophic failure, the Carillion directors, when they sat in front of our Committee, continually claimed that the business was sound, even after it had gone into liquidation, and that only a handful of contracts had brought it down. They even said that everything was fine until just a few months before the collapse. As late as the day before Carillion went into liquidation, the directors thought that they could avert the collapse. They seemed to have a sense of entitlement, and a belief that the Government would step in and bail out their failed business. In their evidence to us, they blamed everyone but themselves. They blamed the Bank of England, the Canadian construction market, Carillion’s suppliers, and professional designers of concrete beams.
However, the collapse of Carillion has meant that our Committees have been able to see the board papers and minutes from company meetings, many of which we have published. Looking inside the company, we have seen a business that acquired other businesses, and relied on unrecoverable “goodwill” to prop up its balance sheet; a company that kept increasing senior salaries and bonuses, and ensured that a dividend was paid regardless of its own health; a company that was paying suppliers late, and bidding for contracts that it could not afford to deliver on time or on budget.
Carillion’s largest acquisitions—of companies such as Mowlem, Alfred McAlpine and Eaga—allowed it to put “goodwill” on its balance sheet. Those notional values of each acquisition, totalling almost £1.5 billion, were allowed to sit on the balance sheet for year after year, without any link to reality and the real value. When the company collapsed, the good will was wiped out, too, showing its true value—a value of zero. Carillion’s board needed healthy balance sheets to continue its dividend policy of increasing its payout to shareholders, but the truth is that it paid those dividends regardless of whether it had the cash flow required for them. Right up to the spring of 2017, it was promoting its growing payout with little challenge—no challenge—from directors as to whether the money might have been better spent supporting the pension fund, for example, or any part of the failing business.
/..
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-07-12/debates/2D8B6F0E-B8C0-47C6-B9D0-D274EC5D72DD/Carillion
Have any of the directors had their collars felt? No. Will any of them pay the price? No. Will this be repeated? Yes.
Of course it will happen again, the real question is whether shareholder dividends covered the cost of buying the shares over the years. If not the shareholders should be blackballing Carillion Directors, rendering them unemployable.
Personally, those Directors should have their homes torched and their insurers should refuse to pay out, stringing it out for at least two years to bleed the Directors cash reserves dry. No work, thousands a month in rent, pull the children from private schools etc etc.
Particularly disreputable must be the NEDs and auditors. NEDs who do not see that coming are not fit to be NEDs, ever again. The Big Five Partner responsible for Carillion account should be defrocked, their accountancy qualifications rendered null and void. They were milking and not doing their statutory duty.
Thing is: signing off as a ‘going concern’ is all or nothing, saying nothing about how close a company is to NOT being a going concern. Should be four options:
1) Inability to sign off accounts as a going concern.
2) Highlighting challenging conditions facing the company at this time.
3) Company in reasonable health.
4) Company in rude health.
craig, a few corrections to tidy up;
”through Pablo Miller’s long term friend, the BBC’s Mark Urban” – they are tank regiment colleagues who served together. Someone tweeted you and Galloway a picture of their Regiment photo from the 70’s(?). Its on Galloways feed if you missed it.
”The Russians built the heart of the International Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury” – Should read ‘can’t’
”of which a tony amount can kill” – Is tony a new unit of measurement from the US education system that hasn’t crossed the pond yet?
”Next week I shall look at alternative explanations”. You take the week off. Its clear as day as to what has gone on.
Lets start from a position that there was NEVER any Novichok out in the public domain. NEVER. What was ”tested” in house in Porton Down was from a lab inside Porton Down. What was sent to the OPCW for ”analyzing” was also from inside Porton Down. There is no Novichok making the public ill on British streets.
(These state agents are pathological frauds after all, why people accept their narrative that the Novichok is the poison causing damage on UK streets is beyond me but maybe craig will clear that up soon)
After the failure and humiliation of the British State at the UNSC by Russia in relation to Syria, the White Helmets, false flag Sarin/chlorine CW attacks and regime change through Russian veto powers at the UNSC and boots on the ground in Syria (stopping an all out US/UK invasion to occupy), the US/UK needed a new mechanism to bypass the UNSC’s processes and authority for future wars. They could not get Russia removed (US/UK deluded enough to think if Russia was removed they could isolate and bully China……) so they saw an alternative route with the OPCW and its remit. All they needed was an opportunity to change that remit.
Junkies ODing on Fentanyl on a park bench was that opportunity. No Skripals in the park. No Novichok. No ninja assassin. Just two random junkies who had their gear spiked passed out on a park bench. Then lights, cameras, action. Russia did, Russia did it, Russia did it. This is why the Skripals have been disappeared by the UK state. They were never willing participants in this fraud against their country. They were just the ones closest by and ID’ed by the spooks as controllable patsies. Charlie and Dawn were the two passed out on the park bench or are close friends to the two that were found and they need to be silenced. They now have been silenced.
Its a charade. A Fraud. And what has been achieved from this orchestrated event –
The OPCW now has new powers to assign blame for CW attacks anywhere in the world.
The OPCW is controlled by the West/NATO. This is a massive development for future conflicts/regime change programs the US/UK has on its agenda in the next few decades. Monumental.
So who has won out in the long run on these chain of ‘events’. The UK is used to being humiliated. They can take it. The spooks are laughing their tits off at secondhand car dealer politicians having to sell their stinking BS. This fiasco will be nothing more than a joke to most (who still remember it) in a year or twos time.
Russia on the other hand have lost out big time at the OPCW. They will now need to withdraw from it because the OPCW has ZERO credibility, it is another internationally recognized body that NATO controls. This will be spun as Russia evil even though Russia has removed all CW stocks it has. It will be the justification as to why the USA will not give up its CWs in the future, once again ignoring the obligations and agreements it signed up to in the past.
Take a step back from the TV screen and see the bigger picture here craig and the long term consequences of this laughable episode. Its quite freighting.
Only a pedant would nit-pick about typos like can for can’t and tony for tiny when the meaning is clear, so I am sure you won’t mind me saying you could spell craig as Craig or Oding for overdosing, or its for it’s, or A Fraud, for A fraud. “A Fraud.” is not even a sentence, it has no object, what did you mean to say? Or am I being pedantic too?
I’m pretty sure a tony is a small, innocuous amount that even appears helpful. However this small amount belies it power and deadly nature, it has the power to drag countries into wars and kill thousands. It is also incredibly difficult to remove.
crosseyed says : “No Skripals in the park. No Novichok. No ninja assassin. Just two random junkies who had their gear spiked passed out on a park bench.”
I think this is very likely. Witness Olly Field said that the woman on the bench was blond. Witness Freya Church said she was 100 % sure that the persons on the bench were the same as on the first published CCTV, and the woman on this CCTV is blond. On the other hand, witnesses who saw the Skripals in the restaurant on the same day “insisted” that Yulia Skripal had auburn (reddish brown) hair.
None of the Salisbury and district events makes any sense: that is their purpose. The more ludicrous and illogical any one part, either in itself or in relation to other parts, the better it is from the standpoint of the initial perpetrators. Cumulative confusion and obfuscation is the aim. Together they constitute quantities of metal chaff intended to disrupt the public’s cognitive radar; it is a smoke-screen; it is ‘Look, look: a (very big) (red) squirrel!’; it is a pantomime fairy story where all the characters are villains. And we, the audience, sit transfixed, occasionally booing, occasionally shouting ‘Look behind you!’ and, in the interval, debating the plot: when what we should be doing is looking at the programme to see if we can’t identify the producer, the director and their reasons for this elaborate and deliberately uncontrollable distraction.
I’d go a bit further–the aim isn’t confusion and obfuscation, it’s blind commitment.
The less evidence there is for a position, the greater the emotional investment in maintaining it.
If you present a carefully considered argument designed to convince, your audience responds to it by thinking and you risk the possibility that they will change their minds if other evidence is brought to light or someone else presents an even better argument. But get people to believe something completely absurd and you’ve probably got them for life. The more absurd the beliefs you can foist on them, the harder they will fight to ignore and avoid anything that might threaten those beliefs. It becomes a sort of catechism, and anyone who won’t confess it becomes a heretic and can be excommunicated.
A few points you missed-
1. Last year the 10 episode TV series “Strike Back: Retribution” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_Back:_Retribution ) began airing on Sky One, the plot revolved around “Novichok”, the series was suddenly put on hold after 5 episodes, the final 5 episodes were aired just before the Skripal incident.
2. HMG are now buying both Sergei Skripals home and also the home of Sergeant Bailey for a cool £1M.
3. BZ was detected in the samples tested by the OPCW, BZ is a military incapacitating agent and accounts for all the Skripals symptoms.
4. The “Novichok” story all started with Vil Mirzayanov who emigrated to the US and wrote the book you mentioned. He is an ethnic Tartar who while working at the Uzbekistan lab passed on information to US intelligence and currently works with US intelligence in an attempt to break Tartarstan away from Russia. Also it is very possible that “Novichok” was a KGB disinformation operation to expose those passing information to US intelligence. Currently there are no public studies on the effects of the various substances that are labeled as “Novichok”, it is entirely possible that they are completely harmless.
BZ doesn’t account for all the symptoms but a known side effect of anticholinergics such as Atropine and BZ is agitation and hostile behavior. Did you notice how I grouped Atropine in there. You might recognize Atropine as exactly what you inject into somebody who is exposed to a nerve agent. BZ is a similar substance in the ways that matter but it’s more potent and it lasts longer than Atropine. There are reasons you might prefer BZ to treat a nerve agent exposure. For example, you’d like to avoid permanent brain damage overall poor prognosis while the hospital figures out what you’re not going to tell them.
> British intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting nerve agent on doorknobs.
You all realise this is nonsense right?
The only people on earth who think painting poison on doorknobs is a good idea are teenagers and morons who watch too much crappy TV.
“You all realise this is nonsense right?”
I am pretty sure Craig does, and so does the majority here, except a few that shall remain anonymous.
Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the United States, was brutally beaten up at Victoria Station in London on Wednesday, the day before yesterday.
He was badly injured and as I understand it he is still in hospital.
Is there any truth in the rumour that he was planning to attend an anti-Trump demonstration?
Is no-one else here interested in this? Meyer is no favourite of mine, but who beat him up and why? What was he doing on Wednesday and planning to do on Wednesday, Thursday, and today? It’s not at all common for a person to be so badly and brutally attacked at Victoria tube station in central London. There must surely be a connection with British-US relations, and there could well be some truth in the rumour that he was going to join an anti-Trump demonstration or at least make a statement critical of the American psycho in the White House.
N. Allegedly by teenagers possibly intent on robbery. Nothing was stolen, but he was beaten up. We should be told the truth…
You just told it.
Why’s there no video.
Did it happen in the Tube or the train station.
Are there parts of either of these that aren’t under 24 hr CCTV surveillance.
But yeah, London’s getting very dangerous these days.
You always get that when there’s massive disparities in wealth.
Anyone who’d create such a system is intent on the social chaos that necessarily follows.
In parallel it is perhaps interesting to note that back last November that mainstream media sources quoting (albeit obliquely) a senior British health official and some kind of retired security person tried to float the idea that Putin was trying to undermine the British vaccine programme.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2017/11/the-problem-is-the-problem-not-vladimir-putin.html
This was certainly farcical. Criticism of the vaccine programme in the UK comes mainly from a small group of individuals such as myself who warn against a pharmaceutical owned government bureaucracy promoting its products, which are then foisted indiscriminately on infants and young people at public expense. If Putin wanted on a geo-political level to see Western Europe brought to it knees (and I can’t see what use it would be to him) he would probably back the vaccine programme to the hilt.Today we are watching meltdown in the child/adolescent population of our country without any explanation – some of the mental health stuff gets publicised, but Neurodevelopmental Disability does not, and in particular autism – if it is mentioned the story is always about shortage of resources, not what is driving the problem. According to a recent Northern Ireland Department of Health Survey (the only UK health department to prepare such a thing for over a decade) autism had risen from 1.2% in 2009 to 2.9% this year, but in Belfast (an urban, economically deprived population) it had risen to 4.7% (with catastrophic human and economic consequences). It is rising everywhere else too.
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1674/rr
I have no wish to find myself in conflict with anybody, only to point out that if we do not get bottom of this we are embarked on a course of self-destruction. But interesting that we get Putin wheeled out as explanation of a few people trying to act responsibly on behalf of their fellow citizens.
You’re right about vaccination.
Note that when the food runs out this year or next year and the Tories sacrifice half the population on their Malthusian altar there will be a return of mass typhoid and tuberculosis (there is no mystery here: starving people get weak) and I should imagine that vaccination will become part of the security procedures and it will bolster the ideological position that antifascists are a great public menace. I haven’t looked closely at the Putin-undermining-vaccine line but it seems to say “resisting vaccination helps the enemy” and such a line is going to get a lot more meaning in the near future.
I think partly we are dealing with a bureaucracy which has been out of control for many decades and does not know how to stop what it is doing, and the logic is that the hazards eventually snow-ball to the point of population breakdown. Some of the dangers were pointed out by the House of Commons Health Committee, in an impressive report in 2005 – today I am struggling to get them to go back to revisit the issue. I think the consequence are probably to a great extent the effect of institutional breakdown – but there are people who can exploit it like Gates.
I think we are well into the realms of fantasy here.
Order, order.
This is the 2005 report:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf
it is not about vaccines but it tells an important story of agency capture. Vaccines are worse because they have been turned into a taboo area. if you have a class of products which may not be publicly scrutinised the ultimate danger to the public will be all the greater.
However, I was simply reasonably trying to draw an analogy with story of Putin trying to undermine the vaccine programme – it is junk!
One of the causes of the rise of autism will also be the mass use of smartphones. It is admitted that mental illness among young people has risen significantly.
Three-quarters of them in public places seem to spend most of their time picking at their phones, and most people in Britain take their phones with them when they go to do a shit. Anybody who does not recognise that as a very very serious mental health epidemic is not ready to discuss how to deal with alienation, atomisation, autism.
No, because autism is a condition that manifests by age three. Exposure to radiation is bad, and no doubt smartphone addiction is bad but I am not sure it is any worse than the addictions of previous generations. Actually, the official line is that decline in the mental health of young people and suicide is to do with internet and things like internet bullying. Unfortunately, I can assure people that bullying was rife in human society and very effective long before Facebook. I think people also ought to be very wary of G5 WiFi pollution.
N_
You have a valid point.
The frequencies the iphone’s work on is in the microwave range. Although of far less power than a microwave cooker (which is fully screened for operator safety – something that cannot, for obvious reasons, be done with a mobile), it still obeys the inverse square law; in other words, you halve your distance from the transmitter (phone) and the effective power emitted is doubled.
People are, literally, microwave cooking their brains by overusing these things.
Wakefield’s misinformation about vaccination and autism which caused great harm has been comprehensively debunked.
He still promotes it though, in the USA
Wakefield is the most lied about person in human history
http://ahrp.org/laffaire-wakefield-shades-of-dreyfus-bmjs-descent-into-tabloid-science/
But, of course, you are producing a straw argument. Even if any of what was said had been true (which it was not remotely) it should not absolve a whole class of products and bureaucracy which promotes them from scrutiny. They had to make an example of Wakefield, turn him into the Emanuel Goldstein of public science, so that no one else would dare speak up again (though a few do with great courage). Every time vaccines are mentioned people like you pop up whining about Wakefield.
Wakefield has a lot to answer for in undermining public confidence in vaccines. He should be put on trial for conspiracy to manslaughter.
The link provided still links autism to thimerosal even though this was phased out of vaccines in the 1990s and was never in the MMR jab at all! Shows how well they’ve done their “research”.
The documents are there on the site – your muddled version of it, whoever you are is of no interest. If it is wrong you have to refute it bit by bit, not refer vaguely to some detail which might be wrong or you might has misread. Thimerosal was not removed from the vaccines till the mid noughties, and is still in theUS flu shot which young children receive. But there are huge problems with other ingredients like aluminium adjuvants (again not MMR). And unfortunately the schedule goes on expanding absurdly. Wakefield’s two essential crimes were that he listened to parents, which you are not supposed to do, and he interfered with industry pipeline for many more products. If people ever listened to the parents of harmed children the whole thing would have to be shut down or vastly curtailed, so it had to be ruthlessly denied.
Yes we noticed how having being absolutely sure it was the mercury based preservative thimerosal the anti-vaxx movement moved on to something else, either aluminium or formaldehyde, when the removal of thimerosal failed to have any effect on autism rates.
Thimerosal was removed from US vaccines in 2001, only multi-dose vials of the flu vaccine still use this preservative, single dose vials and pre-loaded syringes, the most commonly used, do not.
It would be nice to have enough spare time to be able to demolish that pernicious document in the comprehensive fashion it deserves. Sorry but you’ll have to make do with me just kicking the legs from under it.
Mr. Stone’s link has convinced me.
The bottom line is what matters: for a soulless corporation it’s always profit before people.
Kempe, you appear to be one of the ‘Predatory Cyber Propagandists –Weapons of Mass Deception’ generally bought and paid for by corporate lobby groups to divert people and misinform on the ‘net. The tobacco lobby, for example, was discredited long ago; the fluoridation of water lobby is failing fast. The forced vaccination program lobby will be next.
No I just understand the science.
Nobody pays me either.
You talk of profit before people; you are aware that Wakefield had patented a vaccine to replace the measles jab and that he’d been paid £400,000 by a group of lawyers preparing an anti-MMR law suit?
The last I heard of him he was working for some snake-oil outfit that claims to be able to cure autism.
Or https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1378/rapid-responses even.
Putin’s alleged anti-vaccine stance originated from the anti-vaxx movement;-
http://vaccineliberationarmy.com/2016/01/13/putin-declares-russia-will-be-free-from-gmo-vaccinations-and-pharma-drugs/
In reality he never said any such thing and Russia sensibly supports vaccination as can be seen from schedule here:-
http://en.promosurga.com/privivki_kalendar-privivok-detyam-do-1-goda.html
I am perfectly sure.
This vaccine story is a conspiracy theory that has no place here because it devalues all the efforts by a lot of those who contribute to this blog to make valid points about official conspiracies. There is no science behind these theories and the avoidance of vaccines for young children does lead to severe illness and deaths.
How do you know? And btw I take Craig very seriously and a good many of the comment too – but frankly many are quite frivolous, so I don’t see any reason for the pomposity. However, my comments are extremely serious and based on meticulous research, not MSM disinformation controlled by Science Media Centre (which is a government industry collaboration).
My original point, of course, was that it looked as if government sources were trying to blame criticism of vaccine programme on Putin. Now, why on earth would they try to do that? Could it be that some of the criticisms were valid?
https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2623462/warning-contaminated-drugs-in-amesbury/#.Wz1LBLLisMp.twitter
https://news.sky.com/story/amesbury-substance-paramedics-wore-hazmat-suits-11426351
https://twitter.com/kay41981/status/1014935711563173888