The mainstream media are making almost no effort today to fit Charlie Rowley’s account of his poisoning into the already ludicrous conspiracy theory being peddled by the government and intelligence agencies.
ITV News gamely inserted the phrase “poisoned by a Russian nerve agent” into their exclusive interview with Charlie Rowley, an interview in which they managed to ask no penetrating questions whatsoever, and of which they only broadcast heavily edited parts. Their own website contains this comment by their journalist Rupert Evelyn:
He said it was unopened, the box it was in was sealed, and that they had to use a knife in order to cut through it.
“That raises the question: if it wasn’t used, is this the only Novichok that exists in this city? And was it the same Novichok used to attack Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
But the information about opening the packet with a knife is not in the linked interview. What Rowley does say in the interview is that the box was still sealed in its cellophane. Presumably it was the cellophane he slit open with a knife.
So how can this fit in to the official government account? Presumably the claim is that Russian agents secretly visited the Skripal house, sprayed novichok on the door handle from this perfume bottle, and then, at an unknown location, disassembled the nozzle from the bottle (Mr Rowley said he had to insert it), then repackaged and re-cellophaned the bottle prior to simply leaving it to be discovered somewhere – presumably somewhere indoors as it still looked new – by Mr Rowley four months later. However it had not been found by anyone else in the interim four months of police, military and security service search.
Frankly, the case for this being the bottle allegedly used to coat the Skripals’ door handle looks wildly improbable. But then the entire government story already looked wildly improbable anyway – to the extent that I literally do not know a single person, even among my more right wing family and friends, who believes it. The reaction of the media, who had shamelessly been promoting the entirely evidence free “the Russians did it” narrative, to Mr Rowley’s extremely awkward piece of news has been to shove it as far as possible down the news agenda and make no real effort to reconcile it.
By his own account, Mr Rowley is not a reliable witness, his memory affected by the “Novichok”. It is not unreasonable to conjecture there may also be other reasons why he is vague about where and how he came into possession of this package of perfume.
The perfume bottle is now in the hands of the Police. Is it not rather strange that they have not published photos of it, to see if it jogs the memory of a member of the public who saw it somewhere in the last four months, or saw somebody with it? The “perpetrators” know what it looks like and already know the police have it, so that would not give away any dangerous information. You might believe the lockdown of the story and control of the narrative is more important to the authorities than solving the crime, which we should not forget is now murder.
So, Charlie spilled the ‘perfume’ onto his hand and although he immediately washed it off still fell seriously ill.
And as we all know, the perfume was in packaging and had to be opened. So we can assume from that there was more than one bottle – probably the same, passed through customs as less than 100ml.
The other bottle used of course in the first poisoning.
Would it be too much too assume our would be assassin – knowing clearly how dangerous a substance this is – would have assembled the poison in a safe environment with protective equipment protecting him/her?
Clearly if a drop fell on the skin – and Charlie’s experience proving this – the assassin would know it could kill them even if it was immediately washed off.
Our assassin therefore, would then have to transport the assembled atomiser to the Skirpals home (however far that was) without spilling a single drop and apply it from a spray onto a door handle praying none of the mist would end up on the body where the assassin couldn’t immediately wash it off.
And if Charlie’s story is to be believed, the bottle itself was fairly flimsy.
Pretty unlikely, don’t you think?
@ Doug M July 27, 2018 at 21:38
If Charlie’ spilt some perfume on his hand, perhaps that red handbag was ‘his’.
Do you know “from the opposite” method? Today I was thinking about it:
If not Scripal, will they blame Russia? – no, only russian ex-spy will do
If not Novichok? – no, Novichok is direct link to Russia
If Russia invited into investigation? – probably it will be sorted out before we even knew about it from media
If not 2 people? – if only Sergei had been affected with russian poison it could be attempted suicide
—–
The main question that keeps me on this discussion, why, what’s the reason for this absurd theater? I thought noone would belive this.
For Max_B (if you’re looking in).
I’ve at last found the appropriate moments to read your back catalogue of comments (Max_B July 26, 2018 at 20:52).
Well-informed, and informative. Thank you for the links, which I can recommend to other readers as an aid to straightening out a number of the crooked turns this ‘novichok’ affair has taken to date.
I did reply to one of your posts here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/the-silence-of-the-whores/comment-page-5/#comment-765006
I thought that Press Release still being available behind the Wiltshire Police’s web site, although hidden from the front end was interesting… Although a lot of papers published a broadly similar story, I couldn’t find the source… that it was the police themselves gives the information included in there more weight… the timeline is interesting too… the way it’s worded suggests that it may have been written after the weekend… which would match with the earliest dates the newspapers published the story… if that was the case, then whatever else was said by the Anti-Terrorist Police later, the Salisbury CID DS was under the belief for some considerable time (2 days) that Dawn & Charlie’s condition was due to drugs… one can only assume that this belief was due to information from Salisbury hospital, and was based on the patients symptoms. Considering the hospitals experiences, and what was still going on in Salisbury itself, one would think information from the hospital would be pretty accurate.
Thank you Max. ‘Tis I who have been lagging behind. Sorry.
I applaud your thoroughness. As always, God (or the devil, depending upon ones perspective) is in the detail, and you’ve obviously dug way beneath the top-soil, to very good effect I might add.
What has Charlie Rowley got to do with the Skripals? Apart from absolutely nothing I mean.
Absolutely nothing, you’re right. We are shown that 1. Novichok exists as a substance 2. It can kill 3. It is somewhere in the area near Salisbury
We are shown no such things:
1. OPCW confirmed the “findings of the United Kingdom” without specifying what those findings were and if they were the same as reported in the media.
2. A person died. There is no independent confirmation that the cause of death was the same substance that OPCW tested in Salisbury.
3. If the officials truly believe the possibility of multiple containers there is no way to rule out that all of these contaminants are localized to Salisbury/Amesbury area (unless they know exactly where these containers are).
Russia received the full report from OPCW on Skripals and didn’t argue about novichok.
Dawn was tested alive and tests showed novichok. Her post-mortem examnation must have been issued on July 20, any news on it?
Do you have evidence that the full (classified) verison of the report was shared with Russia? I could not find any.
1. Russia never confirmed the findings as reported in the media. On the opposite, they claimed there was a different substance found in the samples tested by an independent Swiss lab.
2. According to the coroner’s report more tests are needed before the cause of death could be established. To the best of my knowledge there have been no *independent* test results published so far.
Both Russia and UK are interested parties in this story that already has had effects on the international relationships. It would make sense to take their claims with a grain of salt. In fact it would be highly disappointing for any of the interested parties not to try to spin the events in their favor.
Igor, Lavrov confirmed we received the full report, BZ became known from there. OPCW reports for wider public here
https://www.opcw.org/news-publications/news-listing/category/salisbury/
The Brave Adventurer
I’m russian and I’ll be more than pleased if Novichok affair never happened. I just try to stay open minded.
Russia never confirmed and never argued the findings, we are just not allowed into investigation. Here is press-releases by russiàn embassy
https://www.rusemb.org.uk
Here is the news, report received from OPCW, BZ found
https://www.rt.com/news/424149-skripal-poisoning-bz-lavrov/
Tatyana (and Igor), Alexander Yakovenko issues a statement from the Embassy of the Russian Federation in London on 13 April 2018 confirming that they had seen the OPCW report (which I took to mean the full report). Interestingly, he issued a further comment on 3 May stating that “The OPCW report lacked impartiality as the OPCW-designated laboratories were given only one task, which was to check whether the nerve agent identified by the UK was present in the biomedical samples, and the samples were taken only in the locations designated by the British side.” I recall Lavrov explaining that the reference to the presence of BZ only came to light when someone at the OPCW lab in Switzerland, which was one of the official verification labs, told him about it. It wasn’t evident to me as to who contacted who. But, as I understand it, for the reasons explained above regarding the OPCWs remit, there was no mention of BZ in the final full report; it only became widely known when Lavrov raised the issue. The OPCW came up with their official explanation for this but I have seen scientifically trained people refute the validity of their explanation. Personally I am not able to say one way or another whether BZ was present for innocent reasons, but from what I have seen in respect of other issues Lavrov’s judgement is usually pretty sound.
Tatiana, I’ve listened to Lavrov statement where he talks about BZ in full, if that’s the one you are referring to. He does not make it clear if full OPCW report was made available to Russia. He does state that the BZ-related findings by Spitz laboratory were not included in OPCW report, but he could have come to that conclusion based on the public summary we all saw.
1. A Novichok is just the generic label used for any chemical investigated by the Russian military for use as a weapon after the 1950’s, but sometime before 1994.
2. That Russian military research on fentanyls occurred before 1994 is evident from a passage in a book authored by General Antonov entitled “Chemical Weapons at the Turn of the Century”. A former director of the Military Chemical Institute in Shikhany. It states that: “…the action of analgesics is a knock-out blow, personnel subject to an attack of forces only a few minutes after the beginning of a chemical attack will lose their capacity to stand, not to mention move about. In severe cases people will enter an un-conscious state and *carfentanil* is one of the most active substances of the entire group of the studied derivatives of fentanyl. It manifests its activity for different pathways of entry into the organism, including inhalation of vapours or aerosol….”
3. Porton Down tested the clothing of two British survivors of the 2002 Moscow Theater Siege, in which the Russian Military used a chemical to render the theaters occupants unconscious, 125 people died. Porton Down published their findings:
Riches et. al. 2012 “Analysis of Clothing and Urine from Moscow Theatre Siege Casualties Reveals *Carfentanil* and Remifentanil Use ” published by the Oxford Journal of Analytical Toxicology,
4. The Survivors of the Moscow Theatre Siege took Russia to the European Court of Human Rights (Finogenov vs Russia). Russia denied using *Carfentanil*.
5. Fentanyl and it’s analogues, including *Carfentanil* are nerve agents, and in particular, they are capable of being used as a weapon. They are well known as chemical Weapon incapacitants. They also depress the central nervous system, which is the cause of wooden chest syndrome. (WHO confirms that the US Dept of Defense has specifically banned *Carfentanil* as a battlefield weapon).
6. However, at the time of the Salisbury incident, *Carfentanil* was still not an internationally agreed ‘Controlled Substance’ under the UN’s single convention on drugs. The UN’s 61st Commission on Narcotic Drugs was held on the 12-16th March and unanimously voted to make six Fentanyl analogues, including *Carfentanil*, ‘Controlled. Substances” by international treaty. On the 12th March, at the end of the opening day of the 61st Commission on Narcotics, Prime Minister Theresa May made her official statement to Parliament. This was the first official accusation towards Russia, and the first official description of the substance as a “Military Grade Nerve Agent of a type developed by Russia”, and that the substance “is part of a group of Nerve Agents known as Novichok”.
7. a) Russia can’t argue that the substance ( a Fentanyl analogue, probably Carfentanil) is not A Novichok, because General Antonov’s book confirms that it meets that criteria.
b) Russia can’t argue that they didn’t develop Fentanyl analogues, and specifically Carfentanil as a chemical weapon incapacitant, because General Antonov’s book confirms that they did just that.
c) Russia can’t argue that their military didn’t manufacture, didn’t keep stocks, and didn’t use Carfentanil as chemical weapon incapacitant beyond 1994, because their military used the substance to end the Moscow Theatre siege in 2002, killing 125 people.
d) Porton Down have the substance sample taken from the 2002 siege, and can apparently match that sample, with the sample taken from the Skripals.
e) Russia has denied using Carfentanil using the 2002 Moscow Theatre siege at the European Court of Human Rights.
There is no where for Russia to go, it can’t protest the substance used in the Salisbury Incident is Carfentanil, because it’s hemmed in by the evidence. It’s better to stay silent on this matter, as it is doing well geopolitically at present, and revealing the name achieves no benefit for it, and may pose a substantial risk. So it simply sticks to protesting that the Russian State was not involved in any way with the poisoning of the Skripal’s.
The UK Government has much to lose domestically and internationally by the Skripal affair, it’s a potentially dangerous political scandal capable of damaging this very weak government during Brexit. Revealing the substances name as the synthetic opioid Carfentanil, and not an Organophosphate would not be a good move.
The other OPCW members, as well as both states seem to have agreed to keep the substance name classified.
That’s where this matter will stay as regards reveling the substance name, it’s a stalemate.
@Borncynical
Lavrov was just being naughty with the the ‘whole truth’ like the UK… 🙂 BZ was almost certainly used as a control chemical. The OPCW inspectors always send the independent OPCW Labs two chemical samples, the unknown substance under investigation, together with the control substance.
The labs get IIRC 10 sample containers to test, and they work completely blind, the containers only have numbers on them. They just state what they found in each of the 10 containers. Only the actual OPCW inspectors know what the control chemical is, and in which containers it was placed.
These are very sensitive analysis, and the risk of contamination with a prior set of samples, or a miscalibration of the equipment is very real. The Labs need to get all the known control chemical results right in their report, this provides confirmation to the OPCW inspectors that their equipment is not contaminated, or miscalibrated.
If BZ was the control chemical used by the OPCW inspectors, and because the Labs are working blind, they have to report it. So BZ would in this case feature in the report.
If Lavrov had early access to the Swiss Labs report, and knew about one of the substances, i.e. BZ, he would also know the details of other substance shown in the labs report. But he only revealed the details of one substance, why didn’t he reveal the details of the other substance?
As I say, Russia doesn’t seem to want the substances name to come out any more than the UK does, but they both have different reasons…
Max_B
1) Once the enumeration of items has been established it is impolite to barge in with one’s unrelated enumeration lists.
2) Would you be so kind as to state your points without multiple negatives such as ” can’t argue that their military didn’t manufacture, didn’t keep stocks, and didn’t “?
Very interesting points you make, other than that.
@The Brave Adventurer
Oh dear, I didn’t notice how many negatives I was using… some of those sentences could be a little challenging to comprehend.
I’ll try to do better next time, no promises though. Being dyslexic, the practical writing bit, interferes badly with my thinking bit, which is often a pain when trying to compose something…
Max_B
Your bits interfering so much maybe you take a day off, ease up, meditate. Avoid conspiracies and hardships. Raging gay is good. Makes one seem authentic.
Very interesting, Max_B.
One question:
What about the A-234 in “a virgin state” mentioned by Lavrov? It could not have been contained in the control sample as somebody other than Russia then would have to have produced it.
One addition: Russia has not received the full technical report, it seems:
“The report presented by the Technical Secretariat concerning the British specialists’ findings poses a number of questions and calls for additional detailed examination, including by the British side. Any specialist would understand that the final conclusions can be made only having before your eyes the materials of the chemical and spectral analysis of the mentioned samples. And the Technical Secretariat has passed these materials only to London.”
https://netherlands.mid.ru/en_GB/web/netherlands-en/-/statement-of-a-shulgin-at-the-opcw-ec?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=/en_GB/web/netherlands-en
@Max_B (July 28, 2018 at 01:39)
Rigorous thinking, to which I subscribe, but even accepting your analysis of the issues underlying the ‘blame game’, there remains the question of who introduced the offending material into the Salisbury/Amesbury orbit, and why?
There being no obvious ‘common motive’, I am inclined to the view that both incidents were accidents in the wake of a commercial transaction.
My recollection is that the post mortem report at the first inquest hearing did not confirm the causes of death but stated further tests were being carried out. The police spokesperson talked about the nerve agent poisoning.
@doodlebug
Yes, when you put all the reliable evidence together correctly… the most logical result is that Skripal was involved in some way with the illicit drugs trade, and that the substance was a pure Fentanyl Analogue, most likely Carfentanil or some other lethally powerful synthetic opioid.
The anti-terrorist police know what happened very early on, Skripal’s been a bad boy, and he did it right under the nose of the UK’s intelligence services.
What he’s been up to has caused other substance abusers to die, like Dawn, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Fentanyl was the cause of death of that young 23 y/o man a few days later in March in the same building where Dawn was living. That case has been completely classified, the police won’t say anything about the circumstances of his sudden death, only that it was not suspicious. There are really only two options here Suicide or Drug Overdose… and I’ll bet your bottom dollar it’s the latter… and Charlie & Dawn were connected to the death in some way.
@Cherrycoke
I don’t know what A-234 is sorry. I’ve not come across the reference in any literature, so it must be some sort of non-standard internal classification system used by… somebody?
I think the Russian’s will be fully aware of the substance responsible for the Salisbury incident.
@Max_B July 28, 2018 at 15:04
You’re a veritable mine of information! I’d completely lost sight of the other incident you mentioned (shall ‘google’ forthwith), but your outline is sufficient to suggest it should be taken into account.
We may differ as to specifics (you have Sergei as a trader, I envision him as a recreational user) but both trains of thought proceed to the same terminus.
Sadly, for the younger generation (I’m simply an old ‘beer ‘n’ crisps patron), each historical wave of new drug introductions (marijuana, LSD, heroin, cocaine etc.) has been accompanied by an alarmist warning of the inherent dangers of taking them. Of course overdose has always been a risk, but we may now have a situation whereby the state would simply be dismissed as ‘crying wolf’ were it to go public in a big way over opioid abuse (many resented or didn’t believe the AIDS advice of yore), the result being that many will succumb to something that kills without a moment’s notice, a consequence I believe you flagged up in a previous comment.
Regarding the sudden death of a 23 year old in John Baker House in March (which I have never heard about), a google search brings up numerous results, all apparently from 20 March 2018, for example:
“A YOUNG man died suddenly in supported housing in Salisbury, police have confirmed.
The 23-year-old’s death at John Baker House in Rollestone Street is not being treated as suspicious.
Wiltshire Police said they were contacted at 2.30am on March 14 by the ambulance service.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene and his next of kin have been informed.
Police would not give further details of the circumstances surrounding the young man’s death.
A file is being prepared for the coroner.”
http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/16099466.Man__23__dies_suddenly_in_city_centre_supported_housing/
Could there have been a subsequent D-notice, like the one on any mention of Pablo Miller in connection with the Skripal affair (as reported by Craig in April)? It does seem strange that there has been no further public notice of this.
A D-notice? Good question Madeira, and one to which I had the answer. I wonder if anyone else can? If your suspicion were borne out it would vindicate everything Max_B has been suggesting. An exciting prospect (dare I say that?)
Correction to the above. Please read: ‘one to which I wish I had the answer’ (was it really me or has ‘auto-correct’ done the dirty on me again?)
Apparently the inquest into the death of Tyler Gray on 14th March 2018, at John Baker House was closed in the last week of July 2018. From what little information I’ve been able to glean, only a standard toxicology analysis was conducted. So it did not check for the presence of Fentanyl, Carfentanil, or many other toxic compounds. The standard report however did confirm his sudden death was due to a drug overdose, and Heroin was confirmed as present by the toxicology report. As the inquest has already been adjourned twice, The toxicology report may have been handled with a section 23, which is little more than a 15 minute formality for the Coroner to read the pertinent parts of the report into evidence. Apparently no friends or family were present.
So although we know his death involved heroin, we don’t know if any other substances like Fentanyl’s were present, because they were not tested for.
We’re not going to get anymore out of the Coroner, so barring contact with his family. Tyler’s death remains something of a mystery, considering it is speculated that Dawn Sturgess death, who also lived at John Baker House at the time of Tyler’s death, may also have involved her exposure to illicit narcotic’s.
It is also known from a national crime agency report last year (2017), that later police targeted reanalysis of stored blood samples from overdose victims in the north east of England, revealed that many deaths previously attributed to heroin overdose, were discovered to contain high levels of Fentanyl analogues.
Cutting Fentanyl’s with Heroin is a major cause of drug overdose deaths.
The question put by John2o2o above (What has Charlie Rowley got to do with the Skripals?) is not nearly as trivial as his own simplistic answer.
The government having decided that the Skripals were ‘novichok’ victims (and publicised their non-evidence based conclusion worldwide), a similar attribution in respect of Rowley and Sturgess was largely inevitable. However, while the Skripals may have been targeted, politically vengeful motives are unlikely to have been involved in the Amesbury case. So, how to explain the migration of the dastardly nerve agent?
The invocation of a perfume bottle, coupled with Charlie Rowley’s scavenging, allows for accidental contamination in Amesbury. The flow of the mythical material becomes: Salisbury – Amesbury, and Charlie Rowley has nothing whatever to do with the Skripals. However, should one take the view that neither the perfume bottle nor the nerve agent are genuine constructs, matters take a 180 degree turn.
If the symptoms remain a constant, then so too should the cause; a cause which undoubtedly resided, once upon a time, within Charlie Rowley’s flat. If, in extremis, one suspects the same batch was involved in both incidents (Salisbury and Amesbury), then the flow is reversed (Amesbury – Salisbury) and Charlie may justifiably be suspected as having had ‘something to do with the Skripals’ personally.
Doodlebug….could the connection be charlie was his dealer or vice versa. Seems strange for charlie to stay where he was unless he had means of income? And this has all been spun into a cock and bull story as suits the western geopolitical agenda? Seems to me just a bunch of junkies getting ruined on the strongest of gear.
Also as charlie is a dealer??? He has to go along with the story or be done for a minimum of manslaughter for supplying lethal quantities of synthetic opiate? It certainly seems more likely than the “official” story.
That I think is the top and bottom of it.
Part of the puzzle is the four month interval between the Skripal poisoning and that of Rowley and Sturgess, the latter occurring at Rowley’s address, where the same toxin also resided (not the same batch necessarily, nor did it arrive in any perfume bottle).
I bet Charlie watches TV and would have been familiar early on with official accounts of the Skripals being stricken by ‘novichok’. Had he (Charlie) been a source of (unbeknown to him) dangerously ‘cut’ cocaine, or heroin even, his thoughts would doubtless have been along the lines of, ‘that’s o.k., I haven’t been selling any of that stuff’.
Basically he wouldn’t have made the connection and would quite happily have taken a second batch of the same goods into custody at Amesbury for sale or personal use later on. The unexplained death of a young man at his partner’s hostel, barely 10 days after the Skripal incident, went largely unreported but for the barest of details. Had Charlie’s supply chain been behind that one it’s possible they missed the report altogether, although Dawn might have found out about it. ‘So what? The bloke OD’d. Shit happens’. Business as usual therefore.
I cannot believe that either ‘the Russians’ or HMG would have lined Rowley and Sturgess up for a ‘hit’ simply to re-affirm their menacing intentions or their story line, as the case may be. Nor would the pair have knowingly sampled a fatal ingredient. Amesbury was an accident waiting to happen therefore. That the Skripals shared the very same symptoms suggests to me that they also shared the cause and that their poisoning too was accidental.
Nothing about this adds up. The claim authorities identified two Russians who took a flight the next day doesn’t put those two in the city of the crime which is far more pertinent. Otherwise you just have two Russians taking a plane. But then that causes the problem of the second poisoning since those two were long gone. Then you have that it took like four hours for the Skripals to be affected but mere minutes for the other contamination. It is said they got 10x the exposure but then Rowley seems to be doing better than Sergei who has had more time to recover. I realize there is an age difference but Rowley is said to be a heroin user so that seems unusual.
Max_B, I can’t understand why Britain would hide the name Carfentanyl? What is the reason? Yet, how could Salisbury hospital and OPCW know and hide it? It is a lot of people.
The OPCW’s public report into the substance collected In Salisbury has classified the name and chemical structure at para 12. These reports are highly confidential, any state player, or Lab would be breaking the OPCW’s rules by releasing this information officially without the committee’s agreement.
Lavrov wont say officially. May won’t say officially. They all have access to the classified OPCW report.
I can only speculate as to the reasons… but on balance dealing with the incident in the way that they have they believe to be better… it ticks more boxes, kills more birds with a single stone. That’s just how it is. I’ve speculated a little earlier in this thread what some of those boxes are.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/the-silence-of-the-whores/comment-page-5/#comment-764830
The official secrets act covers most civil servants. As for hospitals, they keep thousands of patients details confidential everyday. they cannot say what the Skripals were suffering with, just like they can’t reveal what you were suffering with. They will also be dependent on the Porton Down labs for actual chemical details, and Porton Down ain’t saying – official secrets act. The on going investigation also gags most people. So if you ask officially they won’t give you an official answer. The media in the U.K. practices excellent self-senorship when they wish to. Nobody officially has lied as far as I can see, everybody has told the truth. Just not the whole truth, that allows them to ‘spin’ what they chose to actually reveal, making very clever associations for the public, which makes the public see things the way they want them to. Advertisers and marketing executives do that as a matter of fact for the everyday products you use, or they want to sell you.
I recall we had here discussion about chemical structure of the poison and symptoms of the poisoning. I have a feeling that it was proved non opioid, but organophosphate, and it corresponds with the medical treatment (something about acetylcholine in Skripals’ blood).
Am I wrong?
The consultant in charge wrote to The Times to explain that nobody was suffering from symptoms of organophosphate poisoning… a medical student should be able to distinguish pesticide poisoning from opioid overdose. And we have confirmation in both sets of poisoning that they were treated for opioid poisoning.
As for the measurements taken on Tuesday, two days after admitting the Skripal’s, they just suggest that they were treated with Direct or Indirect Parasympathomimetic drugs to reverse the effects of the severe opioid poisoning. Such drugs are organophosphates, and are commonly used to reverse opioid anesthesia. I’m guessing the poisoning was so severe that the use of preferential weaker opioids was ineffective treatment.
Indeed. The late Ben Bradlee, while Executive Editor of the Washington Post, summed it up perfectly:
“We don’t print the truth. We don’t pretend to print the truth. We print what people say.”
I’m with you 100% on the carfentanyl theory, its the only one that makes sense. As to the why, as you say maybe Sergei was a dealer, which would explain why the authorities want to keep it quiet, not very clever allowing your agent to deal highly dangerous drugs under your nose. Equally one has to consider he may have either been working for the UK authorities, as part of an operation to infiltrate the supply networks for these new drugs, and he was double crossing them on the side – bring in 3 bottles, give only 2 to the authorities, sell the other one. Or even Sergei has turned again, and has been importing the stuff for the FSB as part of a destabilisation operation they were running, don’t forget there are suspected links between Yulia’s boyfriend and the FSB. Any of those scenarios are highly embarrassing to the authorities and would require a cover up. And if Rowley was the person Sergei was selling on to, he’ll say whatever the authorities tell him to, in order to stay out of jail. The drugs theory gives everyone involved a massive incentive to lie and cover up – because the State has broken the law/endangered the public, and the victims are criminals and want to escape conviction.
I think we can keep it pretty simple… past Russian spies who come to live in the U.K. don’t get a lot of money. One famously went on hunger strike for 8 days in his sleeping bag outside Downing Street when Blair was PM., in an effort to get some publicity for his plight. Another was convicted for running a scam to defraud students of over one million pounds, and was sent to prison for 3 years. It’s difficult for them to find employment. They have a very particular set of skills, that it’s tempting for them to fall back on.
What I’m getting at is that they really do need to supplement their income. The skills Skripal has lends itself well to dabbling in illicit drugs. He has a nice house, a large BMW, and as far as I’m aware no employment beyond the occasional payments for meetings and lectures type of work pushed his way by UK governmental and nongovernmental organisations.
If you watch the CCTV video of him in the convenience store, he buys a large number of national lottery scratch cards and pays cash. Suggesting he has spare cash for gambling, and likes trying to acquire more of it. IIRC he spied on Russia for money too. Money was his motivation.
I could quite easily see Skripal dealing in illicit drugs for extra income. And it going wrong, when he got contaminated by the drugs he was handling.
We might ask did he know he was dealing in Carfentanil, rather than Fentanyl, or some weaker Fentanyl analogue… I don’t know.
I suppose we might also ask whether the British intelligence services were so incompetent that they didn’t know that he was involved in the illicit drugs trade?
That we are told both Yulia and Sergei turned their mobile phones off for a number of hours, may or may not be true. But if you don’t want to be tracked, or associated with any other mobile phones which come into your presence, this would be the correct type of behaviour to expect.
Perhaps that suggests our intelligence services were not aware. Or perhaps they had suspicions, but just turned a blind eye to his activities, so long as he didn’t draw undue attention to himself. Or perhaps they did know, and his contacts in British Intelligence dissuaded the regular authorities from investigating him.
Who knows… that he was involved in illicit drugs seems obvious to me. I can’t see any way for both himself and Yulia to have had any other reason to become contaminated by them. Unless he was handling them. Why else would they be in his and Yulia’s presence? What other reason could their be?
Apart from Nick Bailey, everyone else affected by this substance seem to be associated with drugs, whereas Bailey is associated with crime. And Fentanyl’s are on the rise in the U.K.
“… that he was involved in illicit drugs seems obvious to me”
As a vendor, a consumer, or both? Who might have been his suppliers, and his clients, if selling on?
@doodlebug
I don’t know, but IIRC the OPCW and Porton Down analysis suggested the substance was very “pure” without contaminates… that has always suggested to me that Sergi was probably handling illicit drugs higher up the chain.
As for Charlie, I’ve wanted to know for some time whether he purchased the new house he was living at in Amesbury himself, and what the price was… the housebuilder (I think Bloor) seems to suggest it was around 290k, or, whether he was renting, and what the likely monthly rent was? (The Land Registry hasn’t caught up yet). And, was he living there alone? Without that I’m just speculating… but to me, his residence looks like too sudden an increase in his standard of living, (I think he’s a laborer), my suspicion is his standard of living has increased because he was obtaining income from the sale of drugs… again. That’s why he also had access to a ‘pure’ substance.
For me I’d put Charlie as a bit of a dealer (and user), and I’d put Skripal higher up the chain than Charlie, I wouldn’t expect Skripal to be supplying to users.
Frankly, this whole episode passed my boredom threshold some time ago. All of the inconclusive and tedious minutiae is trotted out time and again and everything stays the same.
The important points are summarily missed. As follows
1. What possible motive does Russia have for poisoning the Skripals, given that he was released some time ago in a prisoner swap. And given also that it was staged at a time when Russia was hosting the world cup and Putin was facing re-election. Coincidence. Give me a break!
2. Novichok is not exclusively Russian and can be made anywhere
3. This powerful nerve agent will kill in seconds. The Skripals are – we must assume – alive and well
4. What has happened to the Skripals?
And so on and so forth. More and more this looks like a propaganda stunt, to make Russia look guilty.
It occurred to me that readers of this blog may be interested in watching this Magnitsky documentory / film . I watched it on Bitchute but it was removed within 24 hours.
It is being censored / taken down from various platforms so watch it while you can. It’s 2 hours long. https://youtu.be/njzZcdoLP6c
And this is the Director talking about how and who is censoring it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ek8BUJzac
Thank you. I have seen it and would share your recommendation. It’s an extraordinary film by an extraordinary man, a Russian who speaks fluent English and German – quite something when you consider that many (too many) native Brits cannot speak fluent English, but rely on a chain of similes and the ‘moronic interrogative’ (as defined by Rory McGrath).
But back to the film. It may be long, but the investigation it describes is meticulous and exposes, sadly, the realities of the world we live in. It plays out like a long game of chess which leaves the outcome in no doubt.
Thanks zig zag I had saved the link and not yet watched it . Best do it while still working .
Britain blamed Russia of using chemical weapons
Russia demanded OPCW handle the issue, due to Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)
Britain invited OPCW to take samples and run tests (technical assistance)
OPCW issued a report for Britain
Britain requested that the OPCW share the report with all States Parties to the CWC (Russia is the Party) and make Summary publicly available
https://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-issues-report-on-technical-assistance-requested-by-the-united-kingdom/
Lavrov says about BZ
Swiss laboratory says only OPCW can comment on BZ
https://twitter.com/SpiezLab/status/985243574123057152?s=20
OPCW commented, that BZ was added as control chemical
After Lavrov receives the OPCW report, he also receives information about the findings of the Swiss team, including BZ, not included in the report. He is asked how he obtained it and says obviously he cannot answer that question but a person in his position (Russian FM) has “his sources”.
Lavrov also categorically stated: “None of these factors, or anything about BZ, is mentioned in the final report.”
I don’t speak Russian so I’m going with Vesti News’ translation in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmrobY3ymAw
(BREAKING! Lavrov: Swiss Lab Certifies Skripals Were Poisoned With Nerve Gaz From NATO Arsenals – Vesti News on Youtube)
I believe you speak Russian so you could tell us if the translation is correct, please.
You can just forget about BZ, it has no significance whatsoever. It was almost certainly the control chemical submitted by the OPCW inspectors with the substance. The Labs work blind, so BZ will be in their report, along with the substance of interest. But it won’t be in the final report, because it’s of no interest.
Perhaps due to limited public information on OPCW methods and the Skripals’ symptoms, I cannot forget BZ just yet. There is nothing in your comment that I haven’t heard from the officials before, that would incline me to do so, although you are most welcome to try harder and I will certainly consider.
The mastermind/s of this operation could well have access to OPCW procedures and determinations on which control marker to use, and so the use of BZ in the operation could be considered feasible to incapacitate the Skripals, and be easily explained away if it came to light.
I have been asking science professors for details of how many positive and negative samples were sent to the OPCW labs, and if the control marker was included in the positive sample/s, and nothing was included in the negative sample/s. I’ve received no reply. I don’t think they can answer the question if they are not part of the OPCW team themselves, and if they were part of it perhaps they couldn’t answer it for security reasons. So it’s a Catch 22.
So that’s where I stand right now, wanting to know more about it, so that I can justifiably forget about BZ in this case, or not.
I note that the UK has very good influence in the OPCW and even managed to change the rules recently, so that the OPCW can apportion blame based on its findings. Something that is very dangerous in my opinion and will lead to the OPCW becoming more politicized.
A friend of the man who was in charge of human chemical weapon testing at Edgewood, Maryland, US, has recently said he had conversations with him about BZ and its effects. And that an interesting detail that came out of those conversations was that if you wanted to make something like Novichok safe, you would add BZ to it. The BZ in the right amount would presumably induce the conditions (coma, I imagine) required to allow the victim to survive while the body replaced the enzymes. I’m no chemical expert but I thought this very interesting.
So, even if it was the control marker chosen by someone at the OPCW, why should its possible use against the Skripals (possibly others) be discounted? That is what I need explaining, please.
*I’m native russian, living in Russia*
Lavrov says: NONE OF THESE factors…By these factors he means what he mentioned in former sentence. It is:
high concentration of A-234 in the samples reported,
experts say such concentration would kill Skripals inevitably,
base (non-metabolized) state of A-234 and its purity,
BZ and its precursors found,
symptoms of Scripals more like BZ poisoning,
None of this factors are reported, BZ is not mentioned at all – says Lavrov.
—-
For MAX_B
A-234 it is codename of the chemical in russian classification.
+ to factors, Lavrov says much time passed before samples were taken by OPCW, so initial state high purity and high concentration of A-234 is suspicious.
Me too think it is suspicious. I understand that a chemical must affect something and this is the way it reacts, making harm. If a chemical doesn’t change, it is known as inert substance, it makes no harm and no good.
Thank you for confirming, Tatyana.
PasserBy, thanks for treating me as a real peson and not a russian troll ))) I do really appreciate it so much! Best wishes to you from me!
@ Tatyana July 28, 2018 at 16:19
Please see my comment to you below, re likelihood of OPCW hierarchy giving an ‘unbiased’ account:
July 29, 2018 at 00:32
‘AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT GOING TO WAR WITH IRAN, NEW POLL FINDS’:
https://southfront.org/americans-overwhelmingly-reject-going-to-war-with-iran-new-poll-finds/
‘..The new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds the prospect of war with Iran out of step with the American public on a bipartisan basis:
Just 23 percent of the public say they’d support the U.S. deciding to declare war on Iran, while the majority, 53 percent, oppose the idea. Just 9 percent would strongly support declaring war, while 37 percent are strongly opposed…..’
The vote would have probably been even bigger if Americans had been asked too vote about America attacking Afghanistan before 9/11.
So, I suspect we are going to have a big ‘False Flag’ attack (or hoax) to be blamed on Iran.
I don’t have a clue on the timescale, but bet your bottom dollar a ‘False Flag’ will be the excuse for an attack on Iran, whether by the US and it’s Coalition cronies, or by Israel and/or Saudi Arabia.
Of course, they could have added the BZ as a ‘control’ substance; equally, or even more likely, in my opinion, they added the Navichocks.
@gailstorm
‘It is said they got 10x the exposure but then Rowley seems to be doing better than Sergei who has had more time to recover. I realize there is an age difference but Rowley is said to be a heroin user so that seems unusual.’
Firstly, he (Rowley) washed it off ! Remember that the attackers of Kim Jong-nam survived even though they used VX which, according to the Guardian, is “the deadliest nerve agent ever created”.
Secondly, his heroin and/or methadone use may have reduced and/or delayed the impact of the nerve agent. Effectively his own little medically induced coma. After all he didn’t go visit Dawn in hospital, instead he went to the ‘chemists’.
In connection with your comments about heroin or methadone reducing or delaying the impact of the nerve agent, I’m pasting a paragraph from my previous comment, as an alternative:
“A friend of the man who was in charge of human chemical weapon testing at Edgewood, Maryland, US, has recently said he had conversations with him about BZ and its effects. And that an interesting detail that came out of those conversations was that if you wanted to make something like Novichok safe, you would add BZ to it. The BZ in the right amount would presumably induce the conditions (coma, I imagine) required to allow the victim to survive while the body replaced the enzymes. I’m no chemical expert but I thought this very interesting.”
The source for that is Brian Hanley, and his comments can be heard in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzlAvyjWKEY
(LSD, Jim Ketchum, Skripal poisoning, VX, Novichok, and BZ for Jennifer Lawrence – BriPHan on Youtube)
The combination of BZ with something like Novichok and how it would be safe to use, is mentioned after the 4:00 mark.
I would be grateful if Hanley’s claim could be shared with experts who could give their opinion on it.
I am an expert on it. Jim didn’t tell me that BZ + a nerve agent like Sarin or VX would be safe. I brought it up some years ago pointing out you could use it as an antidote. He thought about it and said yes, but BZ is much longer acting. You can just look this stuff up. Action of physostigmine vs atropine. I discussed that in the short clip there.
Jim Ketchum has entrusted is archives on his work at Edgewood to me. I discussed doing a paper on it to get the data and results into peer reviewed literature. I just haven’t had the time to do it. I have a doctorate in microbiology, and I have developed gene therapies for aging.
I have a project ongoing for quite a few years on people that immunize themselves to snake venoms. We have over 20 man-years of injection, bite, and side effect data.
There are other problems with the Skripal case. Symptoms don’t line up right, nor does the timeline.
If there was a sealed bottle of perfume containing novichok lying around Salisbury waiting to be found by Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley it is surely reasonable to consider the possibility there might be others.
So why is the public not even being given a description of the bottle (brand name, shape, colour etc) in question? Surely the people of Wiltshire deserve this precaution at the very least.
Was the bottle an established perfume brand? If so, where does the brand originate? Does Porton Down do its own perfume?
The technical department of sis has the capabilities to create all types of products for espionage usage.
Which can be deployed.
https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2642649/safe-to-buy-perfumes-in-salisbury-and-amesbury-after-novichok-incidents/https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2642649/safe-to-buy-perfumes-in-salisbury-and-amesbury-after-novichok-incidents/
No suspicion of product-tampering at source apparently. Basically ‘Shop as per usual’.
(Therefore no ‘novichok’ in a sealed container, however acquired).
That link appears to not be working anymore. Do you have the link archived anywhere?
No. Sorry Steve. Pity I didn’t copy out a quote. The gist of the story is however part of the link itself thankfully, albeit the page has since been removed. I wonder why? (rhetorical question. I think we may guess).
https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2642649/safe-to-buy-perfumes-in-salisbury-and-amesbury-after-novichok-incidents/
@ Martin Hawes July 29, 2018 at 10:21
Whoops! I didn’t read your comment before answering Doodlebug.
Anyhow, the ‘Authorities’ are saying it was a Russian bottle, yet Rowley says it was a well-known brand. I wouldn’t have thought a Russian perfume brand would be ‘well-known to Rowley. And if it was under a French or whatever brand name, why put it in a Russian bottle? Customs aren’t stupid, and could well have sussed something fishy.
@ Doodlebug July 28, 2018 at 16:38
This looks like the link:
https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2642649/safe-to-buy-perfumes-in-salisbury-and-amesbury-after-novichok-incidents/
@Max_B July 28, 2018 at 15:04
With specific reference to your final paragraph concerning the deliberately obscured death of Tyler Gray:
http://www.yourvalleynews.co.uk/frontpage-news/cause-of-death-not-found/
“A post mortem failed to find the cause of death and toxicology tests were ordered on a 23-year-old man found dead by his partner.
“Unemployed Tyler Gray was found in his bedroom at his home in Salisbury.
“Paramedics rushed to the scene but he was confirmed dead just after 2am on March 14.
“The inquest in Salisbury was adjourned to a date to be fixed.”
As you mentioned (but ‘yourvalleynews’ does not) the deceased lived at the same hostel as Dawn Sturgess. This incident occurring barely 10 days after the Skripal poisoning appears to lend considberable weight to a ‘common source’ hypothesis.
Excellent find, that is pretty clear then doodlebug, the 23 y/o probably did die of a Fentanyl analogue, as they don’t carry out routine testing for these drugs, (the quantities are so small it’s more difficult).
There has been some recent pressure to start testing routinely. A police report I read explained that when the authorities have gone back and re-analysed blood from the deceased, they have found Fentanyl (they store blood from the deceased for 6 months). The police think that the death rate from these synthetic opioids may be much higher than official figures currently show.
Accumulating conjectures may not be terribly smart, but I am tempted to ponder the question of D-notices posed by Madeira (above) with an even earlier one on the previous ‘Holes’ topic by ‘Jim’ (July 13, 2018 at 10:20):
“What if the blonde woman in the CCTV pictures was Sturgess….and the blonde woman seen by several witnesses on the bench with Skripal (Yulia not being blonde) was Sturgess too?”
A D-notice in connection with the death of Tyler Gray would undoubtedly confirm it as an incident of more than passing significance to the authorities. And if Jim’s questions should also be answered in the affirmative…..?
In consequence we could place Dawn Sturgess in the immediate vicinity of the Skripals (who were poisoned), Dawn Sturgess at the same address as Tyler Gray (poisoned 10 days later) and see Dawn Sturgess fatally poisoned while at a drug dealer’s flat in Amesbury.
Wouldn’t that be suspiciously co-incidental?
I’ve also said at some point (before Dawn died) it would be interesting to see whether she and Rowley survived, because if they had the ability to contradict the official storyline, then the authorities would have a massive incentive for them not to survive. I did question whether they would receive the same amount of resources thrown at their healthcare that the Skripals apparently received. It was noticeable that Dawns life support was turned off only 8 days after she collapsed, the hospital authorities apparently ‘recommending’ it to the family. Now of course that can all be above board, but equally 5 people have come into contact with this stuff and 4 have survived, including a 66 year old man in not great health, and a known heroin addict, so the fact that one doesn’t survive could be significant. Or not, who knows?
“a 66 year old man in not great health, and a known heroin addict”
You appear to be describing Sergei Skripal. Could you perhaps flesh this out a little? I most probably missed it along the way, but what is your source for the claim as regards heroin addiction?
Sorry Jim. I think it’s me being dense again. Taking more notice of the comma I guess you were referring to CR as the addict. Apologies if so.
I was indeed meaning CR as the heroin addict. However there are mutterings that SS might have been also a user back in Russia, and any drugs connection between SS and CR flows from the latter to the former, rather than vice versa, as would be the obvious conclusion. To be honest it doesn’t really matter if SS was a user and buying from CR, or SS was the importer/dealer and CR was buying from him, either way I’m convinced some of the new synthetic opioids are at the root of this affair.
@Jim
Here I am, trying to catch up on previous ideas and one of yours has just hit me right between the eyes!
““What if the blonde woman in the CCTV pictures was Sturgess….and the blonde woman seen by several witnesses on the bench with Skripal (Yulia not being blonde) was Sturgess too?”
When I mentioned that in my comment above my mind was focused on the CCTV image of a couple which some would argue was Charlie and Dawn, and that’s how I envisioned the notion of ‘proximity’. I did not properly grasp what you had said about the blonde being ON THE BENCH with Skripal.
The CCTV picture shows the woman carrying a small red bag, and a red bag was gathered up and taken into evidence by the police.
There seems to be an implicit assumption that Sergei and his daughter were together on that park bench all the time. But what if Sergei had an assignation with Dawn for the purposes of an exchange of some kind, which was fulfilled while Yulia wandered off for a few minutes. What if Dawn left her bag with Sergei, and not by accident? She leaves, Yulia rejoins her father as he’s checking the merchandise, then all hell breaks loose.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/russian-spy-nerve-agent-plot-new-image-shows-police-at-scene-unprotected-against-deadly-toxin-a3784986.html
Photo caption: “Police put a red bag inside a police evidence bag immediately after the nerve agent attack on a Russian spy. Officers previously issued CCTV of a woman clutching a red bag (Solent news)”
Long read but well worth it . The similarities in some of the general elements of the story are there .
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/01/27/assessing-a-murder-case-against-putin/
Let me please another speculation about OPCW report and Lavrov’s comments.
Given, a chemical is found in the samples, it is stated it is high purity, high concentration and base (initial, non-degraded) state.
I would ask – is the level of purity the same in the blood samples and the environment samples? We expect environmental ones must contain changed chemical, due to minute chems in air, water and so on.
Does the concentration level exceed lethal dose?
Are any chemicals, preventing Novichok from its deadly action present in the blood samples?
Can we run an experiment in mice or in vitro to estimate conclusions of OPCW?
Can Porton Down scientists inform us about degradation rate of the chemical in different environvent, e.g. in presence of water, exposed to sunlight, temperature etc.
And one more speculation:
I get a blood sample, I put it under microscope, I can literally count the quantity if cells.
From my reference book I can estimate the expected quantity of receptors that interact with the poison (perhaps, very wide range, like from 100 to 100,000).
The poison can be present in the sample in changed state or unchanged state, I must run relevant tests and calculate quantities of both.
For example, found 50,000 units of the poison. 10,000 of them are changed due to reaction with e.g. iron from hemoglobin and 40,000 are in its initial form.
Thus we can conclude that 40,000 units of the poison didn’t interact, though there are many ‘spare slots’.
—–
If the test show only presence of certain poison, but nothing of its chemical interaction status – so what should we conclude from this test? Nothing but “there is Novichok in the samples”.
I understand it is very amateurish reasoning, experts please tell what is my mistake.
@ Tatyana July 28, 2018 at 20:41
What part of ‘totally controlled OPCW don’t you understand?
“WE KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS LIVE”: HOW JOHN BOLTON ONCE THREATENED AN INTERNATIONAL OFFICIAL’:
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kid s-opcw/
The US has been, for a long time, ‘Murder Incorporated’.
Do you expect anything has changed? That the US doesn’t ‘kick up a fuss’, threaten to pull out of the OPCW or threaten to stop it’s funding, or threaten the current head that ‘they know where his kids live’?
They have their ‘people’ (?) in place; objectivity has gone out of the window.
That is what ‘They’ do; place ‘their’ subhuman people (soul-sold) in positions of authority and power.
Masons, Common Purpose, Muslim Brotherhood, Skull & Bones….you name it.
Paul,
I posted a comment to you at 13.42 yesterday which you may have overlooked amongst the continuing influx of comments on this thread. It was with regard to the OPCW and their relationship with the US as analysed by Jose Bustani in 2002, after he was ousted as head of the OPCW. I was unable to provide a hyperlink to the relevant article, but the title is “Coup in the Hague – Mother Jones” (‘Mother Jones’ looks like a very interesting website which I intend to have a closer look at). It is essential reading for anyone interested – or indeed disbelieving – in the hegemonic thrust of US policies. Bustani’s account gives a shocking insight into what many of us already suspected. Among other things it reveals how the US manipulated the work of the OPCW to ensure that there was no threat to the US’s aspirations to overpower Iraq.
@ Borncynical July 29, 2018 at 10:47
Thanks for the info – I missed your original post.
The link is: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/06/coup-hague/
It obviously (and understandably) took time for him to get up the courage to publicly state the ‘We know where your kids live’ threat. But together with the other article, it does call into question any ‘findings’ of the current OPCW.
Exactly, Paul. And we know from the US’s relatively recent behaviour in the UN and their reaction when votes go against them that the threat of withdrawing funding (as a means to blackmail other members into submission) is a standard ‘m.o.’ for the US and they clearly see nothing immoral in it. As you say, I am sure they must employ this tactic as a matter of course in whatever international forums they are involved with; nothing but heinous bullies.
@Francis Lee
‘What possible motive does Russia have for poisoning the Skripals, given that he was released some time ago in a prisoner swap.’
So, you think the swap was ‘unconditional’ ?
I posted previously:- Could this be the ‘why’ ? http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Roscosmos_Research_Centers_Staff_Suspected_of_Leaking_Data_Abroad_999.html
They don’t say where the ‘leak’ was to, do they? You can be sure that they know but they are not crowing about it. Why is that then?
Today, digging into biology and chemistry I found out a fact, that I feel deserves to be brought to publuc discussion.
Antidotes to Novichok are atropine, or scopolamine.
Scopolamine and similar chemical substances are used as “truth-teller-serum” i don’t know special term in englih language. It means a chemical substance to be used on interrogated person, makes him/her tell the truth and also causes amnesia.
I’d like to know chem-experts to comment on this.
Is it possible to use Novichok as an antidote to Scopolamine? E.g. to hide the use of truth-teller-serum, which could perhaps explain the 4 hour turnn-off of their smartphones.
Further information on the provenance of the bottle, which is now reported as being incontestably of “Russian” origin:
______________________________________________________________________________________________
A Whitehall source said: “The net keeps widening – they almost can’t predict what’s going to turn up next. The bottle they put it in could only have been bought in Russia.
“The suggestion this didn’t come from Russia is almost laughable.
“If this bottle was sealed it means they used another on the Skripals’ front door.
“Where the other one is could be anyone’s guess.”
The source said the killers’ carelessness in concealing the nerve agent inside a Russian product suggests they probably also left the rest of the novichok lying around – regardless of who might find it. One or both groups of hitmen could have been in the UK for a considerable time before the March attack.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-novichok-two-bottles-salisbury-12996699
Strange then that Dawn should have recognised the brand. I wonder how often she did her shopping in Moscow?
The whole article and the comments from a ‘Whitehall source’ (hmm) are all based on the ubiquitous “theory” that the hitmen came from Russia carrying the bottle in their luggage. So in other words the statement that “The bottle they put it in could only have been bought in Russia” is true if (and it’s a big IF) the theory is correct. It doesn’t mean that there is an actual bottle that has even, as yet, been identified. Again, this is a case of the media manipulating what may or may not have been said to strengthen the ‘Russian perpetrators’ narrative.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Even a baby can see the holes in this. Charlie Rowley says he doesn’t remember where he found the bottle. So IF a perfume bottle & packaging were found, why haven’t the Police displayed photos of it? It would be common sense to ask the public if anyone had seen a bottle like this – especially as they think there might be other bottles of the stuff out there! But no, not one photo of the bottle. They obviously do not want us to see the bottle… I wonder why?
NOW they say that “the bottle they put it in could only have been bought in Russia”. That’s interesting. This bottle that we’re not allowed to see could only have been bought in Russia? So convenient that nobody can challenge that assertion since nobody is allowed to see the bottle.
Pull the other one!
What’s in a name?
http://www.bloomingprairieonline.com/dodge-county-independent/breaking-news-man-charged-dodge-center-murder
“Donte D’Andre Wilkins, 19, faces two counts of second-degree and third-degree murder in the death of Tyler Reed Gray.
“Wilkins is accused of causing the death of Gray on Dec. 8. Deputies responded to a Dodge Center residence where they found Gray unresponsive in a bathtub. They performed CPR on him, but he died at the scene. The official autopsy report indicates that Gray died from fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin toxicity.”
http://www.yourvalleynews.co.uk/frontpage-news/cause-of-death-not-found/
“…a 23-year-old man found dead by his partner. Unemployed Tyler Gray was found in his bedroom at his home in Salisbury.”
Two 23 year old Tyler Grays, both known to have consumed Fentanyl, one of them found dead in a bath.
Where did Charlie discover Dawn in severe difficulty again?
Oops. Error alert! Only one of those referred to above (the American) has been confirmed as a user. My mistake entirely. With several reports of that same incident showing on ‘Google’ I almost made it three Tylers (well it was very late).
Anyway, the ‘out there’ question that arose in my mind was whether, in the context of the Salisbury poisoning, ‘Tyler Gray’ might be ‘Britspeak’ for ‘John Doe.’ In addition, we have not been told the position in which the young Salisbury man was found. At home, yes, but was that kitchen, bedroom or bathroom (again)?
“we have not been told the position in which the young Salisbury man was found”
Oh yes we have. The bedroom. It seems I can’t even read my own posts now! (should have gone to Specsavers).
This is very curious, but possibly just a coincidence. A very unlikely coincidence, which makes it very intriguing. If both deaths occurred in March 2018, that would have been even more freaky, but the death of the US Tyler Gray was in Dec 2016.
It will be interesting to read the coroner’s report of the Salisbury’s Tyler Gray death.
For what it’s worth, I see that FindMyPast has an electoral role entry for a Tyler P Gray in Salisbury in 2013.
https://www.findmypast.co.uk/search/results?firstname=tyler&lastname=gray&sourcecategory=census%2c%20land%20%26%20surveys&collection=electoral%20rolls&sourcecountry=england
Thanks Steve. So a Tyler Gray living in Salisbury appears legit. This whole affair is so bizarre I guess no manner of coincidence, however outlandish, should come as a surprise.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/719709/novichok-russia-skripals-dawn-sturgess-hitmen-charlie-rowley-amesbury-salisbury-poison
I know it’s The Star but….
“Dawn Sturgess, 44, died earlier this month from the fatal nerve agent in Salisbury Wilts. The poison took just 15 minutes to take effect.”
“A Whitehall source told the Mirror: The suggestion this didn;t come from Russia is almost laughable. If this bottle was sealed it means they used another on the Skripals front door.”
And the Skripals, being made of sterner stuff, took hours to succumb to the poison, not just fifteen minutes (a hardy race are the Russians).
Hello ‘Madeira’
This is obviously a re-hash of the Mirror piece you quoted above. It was the Star’s ’15-minutes’ claim that caught my attention.
@ Doodlebug July 29, 2018 at 10:01
‘…AT least two teams of Russian hitmen are to blame for the UK Novichok poisoning which has left one woman dead and four hospitalised, COUNTER TERROR POLICE BELIEVE…’
My friend’s 4 year old child believes in the tooth fairy, and unlike the British ‘counter terror police’, actually has some evidence – the 50 pence piece left by the ‘fairy’.
‘..A Whitehall source told The Mirror: “The suggestion this didn’t come from Russia is almost laughable…’
But HMG’s narrative is not ‘almost laughable’, it is laughable. It is also patently absurd, just like the ‘Assad uses CW’s’ False Flag narrative, and their ‘Saddam’s WMD LIE’, and all the other lies HMG comes up with like rabbits out of a hat, but sans rabbits.
‘What? You didn’t see the rabbit? You’d better go to Specsavers.’
You know what I find fascinating about this whole Salisbury/Amesbury affair? The fact that there is practically zero YouTube videos out there that analyse and challenge the official story. This is spectacularly odd. When the Stephen Paddock mass shooting happened, there were thousands of amateur YouTube videos out there showing different challenges to the official story. And the same is true for many other incidents that occur in the West. Yet for this Salisbury/Amesbury affair, I don’t think I have found any youTube video that pieces together what we know, and summarising the problems with the official story.
Is this simply because I am terrible at searching YouTube? If anyone has any links to some of these videos, please post them here! If there aren’t any, then what are we to make of it? Has YouTube search been fixed to not show the results? Or are YouTube not allowing these videos to be posted?
Some of your thoughts on this would be very welcome.
Good question Steve.
About that Spire FM story – it seems I may have ‘dropped a stitch’ when I copied the link. It can still be accessed via a Google search under:
Spire FM – News – ‘Safe’ to buy perfumes in Salisbury and Amesbury.
No subterfuge therefore.
Well, we know that Google de-ranks search results:
Jul 27, 2017: New Google algorithm restricts access to left-wing, progressive web sites (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html)
Nov 21, 2017: Google announces moves to censor RT and Sputnik (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/21/gacl-n21.html)
YouTube does the same thing. The Jimmy Dore Show saw a sharp decrease in views in 2017, although its subscriber base grew twice and its Saturday live show viewership also grew twice. This can only be explained by de-ranking of search results and sidebar suggestions.
Incidentally, The Jimmy Dore Show has covered the absurdity of the Skripals affair:
Mar 14, 2018: Russia Convicted Of Nerve Attack Before Investigation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfA6_H080rY)
Mar 15, 2018: Corbyn Responds Rationally To Russian Nerve Attack – Immediately Smeared (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsnAIUZIt8M)
Apr 5, 2018: Experts Can’t Prove Nerve Agent Came From Russia Or Is Novichok (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu_78K4XbjA)
Another YouTube channel that has discussed it is Jamarl Thomas. You’ll have to search his channel yourself. (On the channel page, to the right of the “About” tab, there’s a looking glass icon. If you click on it, you will be able to search only his channel. Type in “skripal” or “novichok”. )
It is extraordinary that the police have not release a photo of the perfume bottle. This, I would suggest, puts the public at risk. The authorities obviously have no idea how many other bottles of this has been left around for citizens to find and become poisoned by. This coupled with the government statements which suggest that Russia is attacking UK citizens with nerve agents makes it extremely important that the public be informed of any potential danger.
I think everyone should write to the police demanding to see photos of the perfume bottle so that we can protect ourselves and avoid any possible further poisonings.
A number of us, Max_B here and George Galloway included, made this point very early on. On the face of it the authorities are behaving extremely irresponsibly – if you believe there ever was a contaminated perfume bottle that is.
Personally I suspect the reason no photographs of the perfume bottle have been published, nor the reportedly recognisable brand identified, is very simple. It is a red-herring. Whatever the toxin travelled in it was not an atomiser labelled ‘Dior’ (or whatever) with ‘Russia’ embossed underneath.
Did it not break? Rowley said it shattered.
Either way it would still be contaminated so hopefully it’s being kept in a sealed container inside a secure storage unit at Porton Down. There’s currently no suggestion that there are other unopened bottles of Novichok lying around waiting to be discovered by unsuspecting members of the public, even if there were it would a be dangerous assumption to believe that they are all masquerading as the same brand that Charlie Rowley said he found.
The bottle breaking was the first explanation Charlie came out with to account for how he got the stuff on himself. Later in his official interview he changed the story to having to fit the atomiser to the bottle and getting it on himself that way, which frankly makes even less sense.
“…hopefully it’s being kept in a sealed container inside a secure storage unit at Porton Down” – along with all the other key evidence like the table at Zizzi’s and the park bench, you mean? Oh, sorry, maybe not good examples. That’ll be the next tale being spun “Perfume bottle too contaminated to be safe to anyone – even experts trained in handling contaminated goods – so has had to be destroyed”.
“Did it not break? Rowley said it shattered.”
It was Rowley’s brother who said it broke. Charlie has since said he handed it to Dawn. A shattered bottle?
“There’s currently no suggestion that there are other unopened bottles of Novichok lying around waiting to be discovered by unsuspecting members of the public”
The official position is precisely that there is at least one other (see @Madeira earlier today July 29, 2018 at 01:14):
A Whitehall source is reported to have said:
“If this bottle was sealed it means they used another on the Skripals’ front door. Where the other one is could be anyone’s guess.” (end quote)
“even if there were it would a be dangerous assumption to believe that they are all masquerading as the same brand that Charlie Rowley said he found.”
Quite right. There’s already far too much masquerading going on in this case.
Fair point but as it contained the gel applied to the Skripal’s doorknob it’s unlikely to be a similar perfume bottle, it could be anything.
I’m intrigued by the mysterious MSM references to “a Whitehall source”. In my pre-retirement days working in Whitehall the lady who ran the cafeteria in our building could have potentially qualified as ‘a Whitehall source’! Any information pretending to be credible these days (the events we are witnessing today wouldn’t have happened in my day, of course!) would be officially stated by a Press Office spokesman, if not via an official press release. Unless the rules have been relaxed we used to be under strict instructions that you NEVER discussed anything with the press even If they phoned you directly – you HAD to transfer them to the relevant Press Officer who would be very guarded in whatever information they could reveal. You would certainly never discuss anything that wasn’t an official line with anybody outside the Department, whether or not they were from the press. All unattributed official quotes must be taken with a pinch of salt. Sounds to me like the sort of wording and terminology (“laughable”, “anyone’s guess”) an ignorant MP might come out with, trying to be clever whilst also defending the Government’s ridiculous narrative. I have one name in mind who has already featured in this thread and has an interest in the case!
OK being that the authorities seem to be giving us a load of codswallup, I’ll play the game. They’re saying now it was a Russian perfume bottle only available in Russia and packaged like that perhaps to evade a baggage check at customs. Who would be more a likely mule carrying perfume from the Russian mafia in their luggage…. a female. Who is a female traveling from Russia…..Skripals daughter. Why would she be delivering poison to Skripal…..he is a spy, he mixes in spy circles, he may have been engaged to knock someone off….or to supply the means for someone else to knock someone off. Maybe Skripal was just checking out his delivery and got a bit careless with it.
Now then lets see who is a nuisance at the moment, who could cause acute embarrassment to the UK in the near future. Maybe even a diplomatic incident if proof comes out that UK, via 5 eyes was, complicit in the plot to take down the US President. Who has the UK spent millions on, keeping him bottled up in an embassy even after the initial charges against him were let go, and all he did was break his bail conditions.
Ah, the thick plotens. But it still leaves us with the idea that DS was a victim of CR’s scavenging of the Skripal leftovers.
@ RAC July 29, 2018 at 12:23
And who would use a Russian perfume bottle, other than someone wanting to frame Russia in a False Flag hoax?
Someone said on here some time back that the bottle would have ‘Made in Russia’ on it. Seems they were right, but obviously that does not mean that the ‘Russkis did it’. Quite easy for a British ‘Diplomat’ to bring back a perfume bottle from Russia, and for Porton Down to fill it with BZ or Novichoks.
I had desire to stop following this case after they had reported the assassins’ manual. Now, after they have reported a unique russian bottle, I regret I’ve spent so much time on this trash.
Story for idiots, I’m sorry.
I regret I had so much believed in British govt’s dignity, decency, integrity.
I feel fed up with this sh*t. Back to my real life with good music, films, hobby, family. Enough.
I wish Russian officials stop paying any attention to it and just ignor any statements by Britain and her allies. Let them eat their sh*t themselves.
For those still interested I recomment this piece in russian
https://www.mk.ru/social/2018/07/04/novyy-rakurs-dela-skripalya-yuliyu-v-britanii-navestila-podruga.html
Briefly, russian friend Gulnara visited Yulia in Britain, June 9-13. Gulnara had conversation with the police. Yulias fiancee hides from any contacts. Some info on other Yulias activity and contacts, up to date
Interesting article… it’s great that you can provide links to Russian news sites with this amount of detail, it certainly gives a different perspective.
It almost seems like Yulia is ashamed of being the daughter of her father… and that her relationship to a Russian traitor was not well known about in Russia, and now that it’s out, it will ruin her life. Her boyfriend seems to have had the same reaction to the story, or perhaps the publicity… he also appears to feel that he will be tainted by association.
“I regret I had so much believed in British govt’s dignity, decency, integrity.”
There are a ‘few good men’ in every walk of life, including, dare I say it, politics. Unfortunately, as you have discovered, they are not necessarily numbered among those in government, whether in the UK or elsewhere.
I imagine Russian officials now view this story as ‘almost laughable’ – as ‘almost laughable’ as our Whitehall source thinks of others in fact.
Doodlebug, I sacrifised so much time to nothing and nearly abandoned my hadmade sales. I know I’m angry now and not very fair to people.
But I know only one ‘good man’, it is Austrian govt, they refused to expel russian diplomats. They said ” we will wait for proofs” and they said it straitly and loudly.
@ Tatyana July 29, 2018 at 13:49
Glad to hear someone doesn’t fall for the West’s lies, and demands proof (which obviously they don’t have, as the whole caboodle is a made-up nonsense False Flag).
Actually in Europe… Portugal, Switzerland, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovinia, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia, and Austria didn’t expel diplomats.
These countries all seem either Neutral, or Pro Russian…
There’s no shame attached to being angry about such things. The more people are prepared simply to ‘grin and bear it’, the easier it becomes for government to camouflage their misdeeds. If it depends on ‘proof’, then I think the Russian diplomats in Austria are likely to be safe there for a considerable time to come.
I sincerely hope that somehow we can get to the bottom of the Salisbury/Amesbury affair, no matter how much embarrassment it may cause Westminster. If government spokespersons are not smart enough to foresee the consequences of their own stupidity then they don’t belong there.
@ Tatyana July 29, 2018 at 12:44
‘..I regret I had so much believed in British govt’s dignity, decency, integrity…’
Blimey, you must have been wearing some real heavyweight blinkers! Glad you’ve discarded them now! Probably the last decent Prime Minister and government we had was Harold Wilson, 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. He kept the UK out of Vietnam, much to the chagrin of the US.
He was found ‘unacceptable’ by the Hegemon, so suddenly stepped down (thanks to MI5 and others’ machinations – I suspect due to a ‘honey trap’ set up to bring him down).
“Anthony Edward Howard Cox, formerly of Bishopdown Road, died on February 27 in a flat at Dennis House, Endless Street.
An interesting tale from 2015.
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/13503396.Salisbury_man_died_of_an_overdose__inquest_hears/
“Assistant coroner Dr Ian Singleton ruled the death was a drug overdose.
“The inquest heard the former labourer received some unexpected cash on the day of his death and went out. At 3.30pm he went into the bathroom and when he came out he was described as being “out of it” and the other occupants of the flat believed he had taken something.”
This incident took place at Dennis House, the former lodging of Tyler Gray before he was transferred to John Baker house, where HE died. The question it raises in my mind though is why Dawn Sturgess went into Charlie Rowley’s bathroom. It cannot have been to take a bath if she still had her clothes on.