The time that “Boshirov and Petrov” were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack is all entirely within the period the Skripals were universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched off.
A key hole in the British government’s account of the Salisbury poisonings has been plugged – the lack of any actual suspects. And it has been plugged in a way that appears broadly convincing – these two men do appear to have traveled to Salisbury at the right time to have been involved.
But what has not been established is the men’s identity and that they are agents of the Russian state, or just what they did in Salisbury. If they are Russian agents, they are remarkably amateur assassins. Meanwhile the new evidence throws the previously reported timelines into confusion – and demolishes the theories put out by “experts” as to why the Novichok dose was not fatal.
This BBC report gives a very useful timeline summary of events.
At 09.15 on Sunday 4 March the Skripals’ car was seen on CCTV driving through three different locations in Salisbury. Both Skripals had switched off their mobile phones and they remained off for over four hours, which has baffled geo-location.
There is no CCTV footage that indicates the Skripals returning to their home. It has therefore always been assumed that they last touched the door handle around 9am.
But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals’ doorknob before noon at the earliest. But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving.
The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.
So even if the Skripals made an “invisible” trip home before being seen on Devizes Road, that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those “experts” leaping in to tell us that the “ten times deadlier than VX” nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.
In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast “Petrov and Boshirov” managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.
This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals’ location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.
“Boshirov and Petrov” plainly are of interest in this case. But only Theresa May stated they were Russian agents: the police did not, and stated that they expected those were not their real identities. We do not know who Boshirov and Petrov were. It appears very likely their appearance was to do with the Skripals on that day. But they may have been meeting them, outside the home. The evidence points to that, rather than doorknobs. Such a meeting might explain why the Skripals had turned off their mobile phones to attempt to avoid surveillance.
It is also telling the police have pressed no charges against them in the case of Dawn Sturgess, which would be manslaughter at least if the government version is true.
If “Boshirov and Petrov” are secret agents, their incompetence is astounding. They used public transport rather than a vehicle and left the clearest possible CCTV footprint. They failed in their assassination attempt. They left traces of novichok everywhere and could well have poisoned themselves, and left the “murder weapon” lying around to be found. Their timings in Salisbury were extremely tight – and British Sunday rail service dependent.
There are other possibilities of who “Boshirov and Petrov” really are, of which Ukrainian is the obvious one. One thing I discovered when British Ambassador to Uzbekistan was that there had been a large Ukrainian ethnic group of scientists working at the Soviet chemical weapon testing facility there at Nukus. There are many other possibilities.
Yesterday’s revelations certainly add to the amount we know about the Skripal event. But they raise as many new questions as they give answers.
Surely the UK police aren’t actually incompetent enough to believe that the assassins arrived in Salisbury about three hours after they were supposed to have applied the novichok to the door handle, are they? They wouldn’t be suspects, in those circumstances, would they?
No doubt, in a day or two, the cops will find CCTV images of the Skripals returning home at a time which fits the narrative that they are selling to the public and amend the time that the Skripals must have come into contact with the novichok.
It’s all a bit Keystone Cops, isn’t it?
Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?
Grundig, I think is may have been a reel to reel tape recorder, that I bought second hand from a shop in Oldham in 1964. It worked well, but it did not do stereo. It did however record Radio Luxembourg. Tony
I had to make do with a Philips, as I couldn’t afford a Grundig. Received Radio Luxembourg on my Pye but not on my Bush, and was never caught by the Cossors.
Prosperum iter facias!
The Grundig family is one of the richest in Baden-Baden (and there are many extremely rich families with a presence in that city).
I did know that Grundig radios were made in Furth, in Bavaria (it said so on the back panel). I went to Nuremberg on a school trip, and actually know Germany rather well.
Having Googled Grundig (as I’m sure you did), I saw a Wiki article, with a photo of Max Grundig from 1970, when he was 62. He looked like a proper old wurst-munching pisspot (and can you blame him?) I expect he removed to Baden-Baden for the therapeutic springs; he looks like he needed it!
For similar reasons to, let’s say, Bournemouth’s unusual affluence, I am unsurprised that Baden-Baden has a “presence” of “many extremely rich families.
At risk of being booted off for being off-topic, I wonder if you knew that rats cannot be sick, or that Beethoven was a terrible dancer? Or , indeed, that there is no name for the back of the knee?
…. there is no name for the back of the knee?
popliteal fossa
Sorry, Node, you win!
The rat/Beethoven/knee joke was referenced from “Sir Henry at Rawlinson End” (qv) by Vivian Stanshall. I think the point about irrelevant “general know-it-all” was well made, if a mite opaque.
At risk of being accused of obscurantism, I would suggest that at a purely semantic level, the popliteal fossa refers to the bone alone. Thus, at that same level, there is no name for the front of the knee either; the less recondite “patella” also referring to the bone. Ontologically (such a horrible word) we must form a string of words to convey one, unambiguous meaning and become horribly prolix.
In defence of Viv Stanshall, perhaps the quote should have been “there’s no word for the back of the knee”. Thanks you again node, at least I now know there are two words for something approximating it.
I haven’t watched the film in twenty years.
Max Grundig destroyed his business and Philips took control. He had relied on their technology after he lost ground to the Japanese. He had an affaire with his dying wife’s nurse Chantalle – she became his heiress and mother of his daughter. Grundig went bust years ago and the name belongs to the Turkish Koc combine – Chantalle set up a chain of luxury wellness hotels and a foundation in Baden-Baden. It is the fate of German consumer electronics – like optics – all down the pan – car manufacturing next to go
Nice info about Max having it Awayday with the nurse, the dirty old porker. Sounds like Chantalle was a good old-fashioned golddigga too, who homed in on the boozy old letch, to good effect. Deserved each other and all that…I wonder what was the real truth.
I am not surprised the brand has been bought by Koc Holdings. My girlfriend recently got an expensive Grundig “heat pump” tumble dryer from Currys. It’s supposed to use less electricity than a standard condenser dryer, but I found it does not dry the load so well as hoped. I therefore took it to pieces (carefully), and found it was full of Beko and Arcelik bits. Grundig my eye! Having lived in Ankara from 1998-2002, I’m extremely familiar with Turkish manufacturers. Nothing wrong that I could see, but I would not recommend you buy one.
I think Mr Grundig looked like he’d lived life to the Max, and couldn’t be bothered. Did he really destroy his business? Philips were massive players, he probably sensibly took the money and ran. Did he have any other children?
The last time I looked, German manufacturing was doing rather well, but who knows what the future holds? Economically brighter there than the UK would be a fairish bet though.
When I looked at the pictures you used I went to the BBC report and they had blanked out the date and time records so I went to the Independent Newspaper and they were showing the exact date and time stamps in your pictures. Your pictures are correct.
The BBC lose any argument by hiding the date and time.
We’ve seen a lot of pictures and a few videos of the alleged assailants but none of the assailed who were attacked at home
and then fed ducks – wandered into a bar and then a restaurant and finally ended up on bench out of the game.
All those cameras and not one clear picture of the Skripals.
We have the alleged perpetrators in shot so where are the pictures/videos of those perpetrated against on March the 4th 2018?
If the Skripals weren’t in Salisbury that would be a bigee.
“the assailed who were attacked at home”
Several hours before their alleged attackers arrived in Salisbury.
There was one picture released of them in the restaurant at lunchtime.
Colin,
Isn’t that the picture taken some weeks – more likely months – beforehand and (I think) taken from Yulia’s Facebook page to be used by the press to show us what Sergei and Yulia look like? I’m not sure if the police were aware that the picture was in the public domain when it first appeared…I imagine they would have preferred it to remain under wraps so no one could categorically say whether they recognised them.
It’s interesting to me that nobody, including Craig, has attempted to explain and understand the activities of Russians here, there, and everywhere in the terms of competition between elites and factions in Russia.
I’m not suggesting the Skripals were definitely murdered by Russians here but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. Would it really surprise anybody? By the same token, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that British, Israeli, or American agents were behind it or that the whole thing is make-believe and/or theatrics.
I’m not going to name names or give examples, there’s no need, but I don’t think its contentious to suggest that there’s hostile relations between elements within the Russian government and many economic emigres living in places like London.
It’s difficult for me to distinguish between hostilities along these lines and genuine Russian tradecraft, just as it’s difficult distinguish it all from organised crime, money laundering, corporate fiddling, etc.
I’m not singling Russia out here. The West is up to its eyeballs in this stuff too and has been assassinating politicians, union leaders, and anyone else that gets in the way of its schemes all over the world for many years.
Of course, not all Russians are equal in the eyes of the U.K. government which has probably, for understandable reasons, taken sides in this Russian dogfight. I can’t imagine many in Whitehall or Thames House would want to upset certain Russians who rely on London banking or financial services, for example, or those who play such an important part in the property market.
Anyway, as I said, it’s puzzling to me that those who wish to discuss this Skripal affair seem to have overlooked all this. My guess is that it’s probably key to working out what actually happened.
Hauteur, The Skripals are ALIVE,
…allegedly.
I accounted for the possibility that they’re alive.
St Hersh highly distinguished reporter has it on credible source that skripals were gathering intelligence on Russian mafia for m16, after the poisoning some Russians left Britain in a hurry
Ah ha! Seymour Hersh has maintained many contacts within intelligence agencies. A link would be appreciated.
It is plausible they were poisoned, but not by the nerve agent. That version may have been spun to implicate the Russian state.
I would tend to agree with that … but British secret services must have known this was going to happen, allowing the government to immediately present their cover version, which – as you say – had the specific, sole, purpose of demonising Russia and Putin. I’m reminded of the speed with which successive governments have ‘explained’ alleged terrorist incidents, including identifying the alleged perpetrator, almost within hours – meaning they knew about them in advance.
The tell-tale for me was the revelation that ‘traces of Novichok’ were allegedly found in the London hotel room in March!
Thanks Hatuey and can I add that there are excellent analyses of this affair on other sites (blogmire dot com for one) who do indeed assess the possible links to mobster factions especially in the mining sector.
Then there are possible trails that include those opposed to Sheldon Adelson or financier Carl Icahn.
No one seems to be discussing Simeon Mogilevitch though and he is a likely suspect as it is a high probability that Sergei Skripal (if not his daughter, Yulia) have crossed paths.
There is also a series of indicators that suggest that Trump’s presidency is an acute interruption of settled mobster management of the USA and that a turf war has broken out on a global scale. Certainly this may link back to Russia and Israel and Italy but it is equally resident in the USA.
Who wanted the Skripals alive and in their custody and who needed them dead? I doubt it was the Russian government in either condition. Trump might like them alive as he destroys those that set out to destroy his family, candidacy for President and then continuing to destroy his Presidency once elected. It all starts with Christopher Steele, Orbis and the UK government who backed Clinton.
” Trump’s presidency is an acute interruption of settled mobster management of the USA ”
Those would be the ” adults in the room ” faction I suppose.
Hey. First time poster, long time reader.
Uncle Tungsten – please try and find a way to watch a new documentary ‘Active Measures’ – it’s the most compelling and cogent expose of Trump/Russia I’ve seen. It features everyone from you man Mogilevitch to Viktor Yanukovych, from Hillary Clinton to our own neighbour racist, Nigel Farage. As well as trying to take it all in, I spent 2 hours trying to visualise what the Russia-apologist counter narrative would look like. I couldn’t. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd called people like you “sleepwalking”. Neoliberalism’s pervasiveness through Western culture and politics, in Waters’ view, has left many people with the inability to see and accept anything critical of the mainstream narrative.
“Part of the way it works is to anaesthetise people and almost make it uncomfortable for people to see anything real.”
I was very sceptical of the Russian connection back in March but, having thought about Trump’s “predicament” and his friendship with Putin, I believe it isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the New Malden killing of Glushkov and the messy business in Salisbury were simply warnings to those in a position to damage Trump in the Mueller investigation.
I don’t want to waste anyone’s time but I have a vague recollection of a very good article in the Guardian weekend magazine about the murder of Litvinenko. This was written close to the event.
By memory the writer, who appeared very well informed, put the hit down to complicated mafia stuff in Ukraine and Italy in which Litvinenko was involved and suggested that Mogilevich was responsible. This was the first time I had heard this sinister name. He appears to be as close to untouchable as can be.
….in the terms of competition between elites and factions in Russia.”…..
You’ve just moved the goalposts, Hatuey. Teresa May is adamant that this assassination attempt was authorized at the very highest levels of the Russian Government. That, indeed, this is a STATE-SANCTIONED assassination attempt.
The moment you presume a “competition between elites and factions in Russia” then you are conceding that this isn’t a STATE-SANCTIONED assassination attempt.
At which point the entire point of Teresa May’s histrionics falls down to the ground with a thud and you have to ask what the f**k is she on about.
Yeah Right, I intended to cover what you’ve said here but it would have been an even longer and more boring read.
What you’re saying about May is true but it is not so simple. The British know that they also count on Russian investment so they can’t simply blame and hammer all Russians.
This is why “smart” sanctions were invented — “yah, all Russians are bastards but not these ones here who happen to invest in our Property market, football teams, laundry services, etc…”
This sort of thing has cropped up before.
It’s very difficult to deal with well organasied crime. I was listening to a discussion on the radio earlier about what happened to the mafia.
When criminals are really organised they are indistinguishable from government.
“When criminals are really organised they are indistinguishable from government.”
The mafia is indeed “really organised”, but nobody claims that the well-organised criminal activity of the US mafia can be put on a slate against the Government of the United States of America.
Well, let me be clear. When I say indistinguishable I don’t mean in a superficial sense. If you look at the US government during the 1940 to 1970 period, I’d say that the mafia was to an extent in government.
Consider, for example, the role played by the mafia in Sicily during the war, the Kennedys also came from a crime background, the way people like Hoffa disappeared, look at Hoover and his known connections to organaised crime, the JFK assassination, and a million other things.
When I say criminals at a well organised level are indistinguishable from government, in a sense what I mean is that they become government or become so effective at manipulating politicians that they might as well be.
Who benefits?
Russian govt? No.
Russian opposition (backed by US/CIA/NATO)? Yes.
Other parties with an interest in discrediting Russia? Yes.
I do not understand why Theresa May and Saddiq Khan arranged the murder of >100 individuals in London this year. It is clear that everything that happens is willed by Theresa May and her acolytes. Quite why she set up the Manchester Bombing is unclear nor why Tony Blair arranged the London Bombings during G8 Conference at Gleneagles in July 2005 which was led by Mohammad Sidique Khan. (note the name Sidique Khan !)
Since it was G8 Putin was attending the Gleneagles Conference but no Russians were killed in the Tube bombings.
It is clear we can create a huge conspiracy out of assorted facts and thread any number of characters into the plot but are none the wiser.
MI5 is deeply involved in this 2005 Bombing just as every other event where the perpetrator “is known to” or “was under observation by”
Quite why British Media gives MI5 such wide benefit of the doubt and Russians none is bizarre. Then again looking at Chemnitz where DA and Counter Intelligence state there was NO evidence of organised attacks on non-Germans and the one video in the Internet may be fake the media and politicians refuse to accept Reality in place of Convenient Fiction.
Fake News is manufactured by Corporations with printing presses and broadcasting licences whose Fiction departments have overwhelmed their News desks. Rinse and Repeat
A little bit of murder and terror upon the UK populace is THEM believing we are being let off lightly, they regularly have scaled up operations across the world.
Millions have been living and running from them across the world every year.
Whether to influence elections, blackmail or murder unwilling politicians or to install ‘private’ solutions on ‘failing’ public services (policing, with regards the knives/bikes/acid narrative)
I fully expect them to ratchet the violence up, as they will not be able to hold off a GE, as a means of retaining some control by trying to create conditions that DEMAND a ‘coalition’ government rather than a democratically elected one.
Manchester never happened.
It’s obvious they’re following the “Gladio” script. Still far too few people have familiarised themselves with those events – primarily in Italy and for a political motive. The Bologna Station bombing killed nearly twice as many people as the London Tube and bus bombings. Real people died in Bologna, other places across Europe, and of course in London in 2005. Casualties in more recent events (including the “mass shootings” in the USA) have been low to non-existent, since it was discovered that the public could be fooled easily by employing crisis actors – a scam also used by the White Helmets in Syria of course.
Fair point
One other thing I’m baffled by – the Skripal story is never out of the news, but Glushkov was strangled to death in New Malden within a couple of weeks of the Salisbury event and the story seems to have disappeared into oblivion.
From what I have been able to read up on, I’d have put Glushkov in the more likely category for high level murder approval. He was eve expecting it if you believe some of the articles.
And yet Skripal, although technically a traitor, has served his term and if we are to believe those in the know, it’s not the done thing to murder spy exchangees.
Baffled.
Conveniently has just been resurrected on sky news
Surely the answer can be found by asking the simple question…. “which one is dead, and which one is still alive”?
One is “news” despite being alive, and the other “not-news” despite being dead.
Bearing in mind that military nerve agents are designed to deteriorate quickly I’m intrigued by the ‘tiny traces’ of Novichok found at the hotel .. The owner doesn’t know which rooms these guys occupied so every room would need to be searched with meticulous care for microscopic quantities of a liquid several weeks/months old . How is that achieved ?
If Novichok were radioactive then obviously a geiger counter would be used , however how do you detect a tiny trace of dried up liquid that has been subject to several weeks of hotel activity contamination . Do investigators use kamikaze sniffer dogs ? Was every surface of every room scraped and the detritus sent to Porton Down ? Did Elon Musk develop a Novichok detector ?
It’s “highly likely” we will never know …. but thank god that piece of the jigsaw has been put in place.
Ah, but Novichok is magic – it can do anything, like Snibbo.
http://www.edwards.eclipse.co.uk/JBM-TV.htm
” Do investigators use kamikaze sniffer dogs ? Was every surface of every room scraped and the detritus sent to Porton Down ? Did Elon Musk develop a Novichok detector ?”
Maybe they brought their own sample with them.
I’m slipping. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Maybe they brought their own sample with them.”
Probably. They are following the successful LItvinenko script as closely as they can.
(orders from above, perhaps from the very top)
(seen apart from the queen, that is )
Tom … Exactly .. This why the announcement of traces of Novichok in the hotel is of such huge importance for the official narrative.
It finally , after six months , moves the source of the Novichok outside of the Salisbury/ Porton Down area.
It says ‘Look .. here’s proof the Novichok came into the country from Russia.
its a pretty small place and I suspect the owner is suffering from selective amnesia.
“Did Elon Musk develop a Novichok detector ?”
He sent a self-driving submarine, but when they switched it on it headed for the nearest little boy.
Seriously – assuming they found the hotel novichok (still not revealing the actual chemical) in early May, shouldn’t they have asked the OPCW to check it out, even if only two weeks later?
This is not strictly true.
As my other post on a previous stated, I had the benefit of 13 yrs NBC training with the British Military and I gave a run down of what procedures were and how toxic nerve agent is claimed to be by the military.
one thing I left out for for reasons of brevity was that not only are there 4 types of chemical agent, but there are also 2 categories, non-persistant and persistant. The reason for this is for tactical battlefield use. For example, you need a runway to bring in tropps, supplies etc. so you attack the airbase with non persistant nerve agent. Everybody dies and after natural degradation of the agent the base can be used by your forces. At the same time, the Army base 5 miles away is bombarded with persistant nerve agent, which doesn’t degrade and has to ne cleaned up (decontaminated). This has 2 effects, not only does the existing personnel die, but the area is also denied to the enemy so they cannot recover equipment or re-occupy the area with reinforcements.
You are correct when you say that the agent would degrade, if it was non persistant. It would certainly go some way to adddressing the extremely low death rate of a supposedly military grade nerve agent. However, if we are to believe the government, Sturgess and Rowley are contaminated with the same stuff months later after finding it laying around, suggesting it is a persistant nerve agent. If that was the case, then given the various areas that have been decontaminated accross Salisbury, people would have been dropping dead on a regular occurence as they inadvertantly come into contact with persistant nerve agent as they go about their day.
From the start there has been for me, a huge inconsistency in what I was taught as a military man, what the goverment and media is telling me and what my own eyes are seeing in front of me.
I think the BBC no longer comission comedic farce, so they supplied their underemployed scriptwriters to MI6.
‘We wouldn’t last a week if we told the truth. I didn’t get where I am today by telling the truth!’
1970s insights from BBC….
Reading a large part of this thread, it seems to come down to one thing: many people seem to have a hard time getting their head around the fact that we are ruled by complete and utter psychopaths.
Watch events in Syria.
Exactly.
I have been Rob G. It sounds very serious.
Sharp Ears, We are trying to stop WWIII from starting at the moment. Let’s have a Group Virtual Cuddle. Tony xx
only an imperialist white man would say WWI or WWII
@RobG
It may be all a shell-game or the five-card trick,but I hope people will not just watch Syria , but make known their oppposition to FRUKISUS’s heightened intervention in Syria.
What was it Camus didn’t say about making love badly to onesself and viewing the Internet.
“Reading a large part of this thread, it seems to come down to one thing: many people seem to have a hard time getting their head around the fact that we are ruled by complete and utter psychopaths.
Watch events in Syria.”
I agree. However, I believe most of the psychopaths may not be among the politicians but among the members of the “Deep State” who manipulate them.
Talking of psychopaths, are you still itching to put a bullet through my brain RobG?
Clark, I like and respect you, and as far as I’m aware I’ve never advocated putting you up against a wall and shooting you.
Please provide a link that shows otherwise.
I have very strong opinions about the criminal psychopaths who rule us, and I do understand that for many people this is a very difficult concept for them to get their head around.
I’ll read this at another time.
After getting over the embarrassing, ludicrous posts you and Moon of Alabama and others made about time-stamps. It was obvious, at least to me, that the simplest explanation was that there might be multiple corridors of similar manufacture. DUH. And then it was doubled-down as being impossible or unlikely for them to gait at the same time, etc. I mean come on. This is so embarrassing that an “Update” on the original crap isn’t sufficient. You should make a new article explaining why you massively over-jumped instead of waiting for facts, some of which I guess were unapparent to you such as “manufacturers of corridors might make corridors look the same” or “there might be more than one corridor that looks similar in an airport which serves millions.
“mea culpa; oops” Not enough if you’re to be taken seriously on any other current, active events. And furthermore you’ve done a great disservice to actual cogent arguments against the existence of these two GRU master assassins. Good point made–“well lol, I heard those conspiracy theorist Putin bots tried to make a thing out of time-stamps”. So good points hand-waved.
Or at least for me, again, I’ll read it later as your first quick take lately has been counterproductive and ridiculous and you can’t wash it away with an “update it appears maybe it seems if true the thing in question pointed out some people are saying”…. Fucking Hell Craig. Investigate your own propensities. And divulge that. If not, yeah, goodbye from my bookmark. Why bother.
@ HippoDave September 7, 2018 at 22:58
I can’t in truth accept your waffle. Let’s put it this way – why the fu^k can’t our ‘Security Services’ just put out straightforward, un-blemished, un-doctored CCTV images?
Well, cat got your tongue?
No waffling on my part. I desire logic and well-based arguments. Even if the state is 99% crap, it’s counterproductive to claim the other 1% is crap, if it’s not crap. You disagree? If so you might be right on how public opinion is had, where true or false are meaningless. But I’m more interested in things that happen rather than how they can be lied about.
This Skripnal false flag business is utterly ridiculous. And should be ridiculed on true merits. Not via false claims. And if false claims are made by those stalwarts challenging the Skripnal business, then if ever wanting to be seen as stalwart, they need to make a big thing of being mistaken. Not just an addendum. Whether for the sake of integrity or for persuading public opinion.
HippoDave,
There still remains sufficient doubt in the minds of many that the pictures were tampered with in some way. As far as I can see, the corridors in question have opaque sides. The men wouldn’t have been aware that they were even walking alongside each other. Is it really likely that they would have passed through the same point towards the end at precisely the same second and not one pace in front or behind, which would probably have affected the timing by +1 or -1 second? Granted, no one can say it’s impossible.
Having said that, I acknowledge that the timing of the walk through is one of the more minor issues worthy of scrutiny in this whole saga.
Speaking of embarrassing ludicrous posts, here’s one from this past April featuring “boutique” Novichok expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5590067/Nerve-agent-used-poison-Russian-spy-designed-4-hours-work-allow-culprits-flee.html
You see, the Russians created “a less powerful ‘boutique’ Novichok that could be absorbed through the skin.” It took the form of a “clear odourless gel.” We know this to be true because de Bretton-Gordon was privy to “secret intelligence.”
And, of course, the DM quickly afterwards published a new article explaining why they massively over-jumped instead of waiting for facts, with full apologies from de Bretton-Gordon and his secret intelligence buddies for their counter-productive and ridiculous theories… Oh wait, that didn’t happen.
Yeah it’s funny (not) how morphable the poison is. Even just whether it’s “the [singular] Novichok” or “one of the Novichok types”. Reporters don’t really care, or are utterly ignorant aside from their little sphere. Nor propagandists. If it needs to be fast-transferable the first hour, then a dormant period, then simultaneous seizures on a bench, then that’s what it now is. If it’s the deadliest poison, then that’s why assassins used it, except it kind of sucks apparently at killing people. Impossible to make except in Russia, but then it was in Iran and Portland Downs knows enough about it to identify it. A “Russia-based Novichok”.
All poisonings should be further described as their origin. “A US-based Ricin”. “A German-based sulfur mustard”. So those states are always forever responsible and culpable for any future uses.
As it happens, I am privy to secret intelligence that Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is a moron with a fertile imagination. Sort of a stupid Jeffrey Archer.
“Sort of a stupid Jeffrey Archer.”
Wow that’s dark…
Wait, hang on: there’s a smart Jeffrey Archer???
Well, I never….
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon
http://www.militaryspeakers.co.uk/speakers/hamish-de-bretton-gordon-obe.aspx
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Novichok_Part_Deux:_A_Fusion_of_Media,_Government_%26_Military
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_CBRN_Centre
I think we can take it for granted Hamish belongs to the same Tank Club as Mark Urban and Pablo Miller and loves to spend time in Salisbury at one of the Toxic Training Facilities scattered around Wiltshire
why both touched the door knob? Perhaps after the father closed the door by udsing the door knob, he asked his daughter to touch the doorknob too as a ritual or something: “you also touch that knob before our eating out!” Lol
@ Andy September 7, 2018 at 23:10
Please forgive me for pointing out, that the highly specific, and ‘Top Secret’ instructional Manual re how to smear ‘Novitchocks’ (or ‘chuckles)’ onto doorknobs failed to explain how to do ‘the business’ if , rather than a doorknob, one was faced with a door lever’?
And how on earth did the pair of ‘Russkis’ get from ‘landing’ to ‘getting out’ through immigration and customs in under 25 minutes?
Hate to make probs, but – how? Maybe they were ‘expected’ by ‘our’ ‘Security Services’ (sic)?
Before worrying about that, ask yourself how the two “Russian assassins” managed to anoint the door handle three hours before arriving in Salisbury.
Because the door handle was post anointed by someone else. It was not the Pope.
The door handle theory is a crock as both Mr Skripal and Yulia collapsed at the same time on the same bench
suggestinga similar dose of nerve agent.
The problem with the collapse is that this is what we are told .by the authorities.
To date no pictures or videos which clearly show the Skripals ambling around the environs of Salisbury in apparently rude health have been shown to the public – whereas the two alleged assailants are as well known and seen as Boris Johnson.
The police response would be ; Well we don’t want to see the Skripals on the bench in distress – that would be tactless.
OK – then show them wandering round feeding ducks eating drinking and making merry ( or unmerry?) i n
Zizzis as proof that they were where they are said to have been that Sunday.
I’m not saying they weren’t attacked but we’ve seen the alleged attackers – let’s see the alleged victims pictures/videos taken on Sunday afternoon.
Tinfoil hatted Doorknob theorists.
J=Cognitive dissonance.
Humourless Joe? 😉
Tony, in my opinion Caitlin is really good, because her manner/style brings in the younger generation (large numbers of which are now reading her opinion pieces).
Rob you’re back!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b0l3QWUXVho
Watching RT this evening the photos were shown with no time or date showing, so perhaps the images we see are simultaneous screen shots? The names of the suspects were however challenged, firstly with a quote from British intelligence alleging that whoever was responsible they would most likely have entered the country under aliases. They then went on to describe how the names we have been given are indeed aliases with humour, in that the first man identified through his passport details, was interviewed by RT, and confirmed that he is not the man in the photograph and wasn’t out of the country at the time that his details were on the other man’s passport. There is a joke however, about who his grandfather was, that is an irony, but it went over my head, something to do with a fictional group of baddies in James Bond and a real group of spies in Russia that the man’s grandfather may have been part of, in the 1940s, so someone else will have to watch it again and explain. The name of the second suspect is a common Russian name, but is also the name of a screen spy, Petrov? who is popular in a series of films in Russia, with a new release out currently. So it is an in joke for a Russian intelligence circle, though the faces of the 2 men have not been identified in reality
@ Alyson September 7, 2018 at 23pet
Well, our ‘Security Services’ )sic) seem to be either complicit or extremely incompetent.
These ‘Russian’ geezers got though immigration and customs in under 25 minutes.
Is that not a Guinness Book Of Records contender, already?
hand luggage only?
or use of electronic passports to facilitate advancing “Subjects under Scrutiny” ahead of other passengers so they could be tracked.
As long as you understand that what they dispense is security for the rich, powerful, and unconstrained by law.
Against the rest of us.
Precisely Paul. Those 24 minutes are from landing , plane “parking” , attaching Jetty bridge to plane , exit aircraft , pass immigration as non EU citizens .
If by a miracle this is possible , it implies only hand luggage . This excludes that pesky fully boxed and wrapped in intact cellophane Nina Ricci bad fake perfume ever passing airport security .
By the way , we do have pictures from cctv of these men at the airport but do we have any pictures at all of them boarding or unboarding an Aeroflot flight ? I don’t think so . Just a thought .
The perfume. It might be that the novichok type agent was on the outside of the packaging? And if it was in a sealed airtight bag for carrying in hand luggage on the plane, it would have been within the size allowed. Julia or the agents might have opened the bag at the point of the handover, touching the packaging when they were in the park, and she might have just thrown it away without opening it just because she didn’t want it, and before the effects took hold?
And so the item that is missing, that might be a danger to bin men and dumpster divers is the airport sealed plastic bag, which is full of the oily liquid that Rowley washed off his hands, whereas his partner opened the packaging to use the perfume, ignoring the odourless oily stuff on the outside. Did the police officer throw it in the bin when Julia indicated she didn’t want it? Did he then go to their house and touch the door?
Bottles or containers with Liquids must be directly visible as in they cannot be inside the box, to pass in airport screening cellophane must be broken , perfume bottle removed from box and placed in a transparent bag . Wherever it came from it didn’t come in a plane as hand luggage .
Professional GRU assassins wouldn’t enter the country with their tools of the trade on their person. Why do that? Novichok-dispensing perfume bottles would come in as diplomatic baggage (remember, this is state-sanctioned assassination) to ensure it was never intercepted.
So these two dudes would have come into the country without the slightest bit of incriminating evidence on them.
Them set themselves up in a cheap London hotel and wait for the pre-arranged handover.
Then onto Salisbury for the foul deed.
That’s IF they were professional assassins tasked with state-sanctioned murder…..
Thus is what I think happened in the Skripal poisoning.
After his wife’s and son’s death Skripal became very lonely and isolated in the UK. He wanted to go home. His mother was elderly and not in good health. His daughter was in Russia.
So he made contact with the Russian government but he had to offer something valuable to the Russian government for his repatriation. Negotiations had to done through his daughter as obviously everything else would be monitored. Most probably he offered information on the dodgy dossier which he had helped compile and which had been commissioned by the UK government/Establishment to damage the chances of Trump in the election. Any evidence of this would have been dynamite for the Russian government.
However, his daughter would have most definitely been under intense surveillance in the UK so taking physical documents would have been impossible. So I suspect the role of the two guys in Salisbury was to check Skripal had the evidence he said he had.
According to news reports on 3 March the Skripals left home early in the morning with their phones switched off possibly to avoid being located. During that period Julia may have had an MI5/MI6 proof phone and was in contact with the two guys as they travelled to Salisbury, who they met sometime after their arrival..
Aware that something was odd was going on MI5/MI6 contacted Skripal once the phones were switched to tell him that they needed to meet at around 4pm in the park. This may well have been why Skripal was so worried and anxious in the restaurant. The couple filmed near the park carrying a red bag, may have poisoned him with fentanyl as it was necessary for MI5/MI6 to put Skripal out of action as soon as possible to stop the role of the UK government/Establishment in the dossier being revealed. Trump might very well have cut off relations with the UK. To put all this behind them the UK government invited Trump for a state visit.
Any holes?
But you still haven’t come to the conclusion that you are ruled by a bunch of criminal psychopaths.
Not among the worst theories, if you ask me. A natural follow-up would be the horrifying idea that the perfume bottle was planted afterwards by the security services (to convince people that the dangerous stuff really had been in use in the neighbourhood – after all many were baffled by the survival of the Skrips).
Horrifying, because should this surface as a fact a whole world would be shocked by the cynicism involved, needless to say. (Well, despite the fact that everybody knows that cynical thinking/actions in this sphere is common. So the whole world would be shocked rather by the sight of this kind of cynisiscm revealed for all to see, so to speak).
It would probably be the biggest scandal in British history ever. (At least since the king ran away with that married American woman). So everything would be denied by all means in the first place, of course, and distraction in form of war, say, would surely be an option.
Those responsible would never feel completely safe, however: There could be a handwritten suicide letter from somebody involved, photos taken secretly, recorded conversations, who knows.
Truly horrifying! Upheavals and havoc! Government members in handcuffs! Makes one almost hopes that the bottle was left in the bin by some scary Russkies instead- however unlikely that also may seem right now.
There are worse……you should look at how Mussolini was killed with MI6….or just why Hess Files are secret until 5000 AD…..or she of Churchill’s lovely letters to Mussolini or Edward VIII’s to his cousins were rescued by Anthony Blunt from Koenigstein in 1945……or just how Chamberlain was bounced into a Guarantee for Poland by FDR…….or how Lord Lloyd bounced Britain into war for France in 1914…….or the Zinoviev Letter…..or activities of Sidney Reilly and Boris Savinkov with Churchill………or how the first female head of MI5 had a father who met with Macmillan and the LCJ to “fix” the sentence for George Blake in 1961 by breaching indepence of judiciary and English law. Oh and Marconi Scandal and how Lloyd George made his AG the LCJ then simultaneously Ambassador in Washington
Thought most of the Hess files were supposed to be made public in 97 and remainder 20 years after in … er 2017. Oh !!
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/will-we-ever-know-why-nazi-leader-rudolf-hess-flew-scotland-middle-world-war-ii-180959040/
PRO only receives fully-weeded files
“But they dismissed the scheme and simply let the matter drop without ever knowing that Hess was the man behind the communication, the official files suggest.
However those files are far from complete. Some of the intelligence files on the Hess affair are known to have been ‘weeded,’ or destroyed. Whatever information they held is lost—but other classified files remain and have yet to be released.””
YET to be released!
WHY??
Why would you put what appeared to be an unopened package of expensive perfume, that actually contained some dangerous substance, into a charity bin?
Because you could be almost certain that the person who found it would be a jakey or a junkie. In other words, somebody expendable, that nobody is going to get overly worked up about.
Your theory makes a lot of sense Ruth. I suspect the British government and its agencies were feeling very pleased with themselves as they ingratiated themselves with the “Future President of the USA” through Steele and his bullshit dossier. Not that she would need it of course, but it never harms to be helpful…
Then November 2016 comes along, and oops dearie me well nobody saw that coming. Followed by a lot of caterwauling about “Russians hacking the US election”, and things become rather unpleasant. The Maybot finds herself facing a number of uncomfortable scenarios… What if Skripal spills the beans on the bullshit dossier? What if I have to stand up in public and explain why the UK government was deliberately “hacking the US election”? What if I have to go cap in hand to Donald Trump begging for a special trade deal and he tells me the UK can have a special trade deal supplying dossiers to Hillary Clinton?
At that point it becomes rather urgent that good old trustworthy Sergei should be gently removed from circulation. Your scenario makes as much sense as anybody else’s, and a hundred times more sense than the official drivel.
“The couple filmed near the park carrying a red bag, may have poisoned him with fentanyl”
On behalf of MI5? Really?
This is applying ockhams razor quite well, a much more streamlined theory.
Okay, how was the police detective poisoned or considering the awkward handling of his part in the narrative, why was it alleged he was poisoned?
Agree Ruth.
That is how I see it too on the whole. Once you discount Putin having ordered it (as a thought experiment – not because we have proof that he didn’t).
The guy must have decided that he would be able to get back to his homeland for the end of his days to the bosom of his remaing family, earning forgiveness from the state that he betrayed.
It is the most human motive.
Just like what did for ‘Karla’ and Smiley.
But – something scuppered the flight.
Was he ready to leave immediately – no packing, a quick flit, the pets abandoned?
Did the information leak to the state security either by GCHQ monitoring (switching off the phone is as much an alarm as anything) ; or by spy’s in the Kremlin (US media reports secret intelligence suddenly stopped in the weeks following)?
Either way – Pablo/Steele got tipped off. They stopped it by using the simple method of disabling rather than assassination, then scrambled to invent the story – via the overarching SCL/Bell Pottinger operation, luckily Hamish and his privatised CW unit were on hand, having just had an exercise in the vicinity, they used it, and the story was and has been manufacturef ever since.
As we know the PTB never waste any opportunity or event to further their long term goals.
There are other dots. I shan’t get into them here.
Unsurprisingly, your midnight narrative has garnered rapid approbation, and it certainly is one of the more self-consistent scenarios posited on this blog. Given the many thousands of comments made over more than half a year, that must be a thumbs up Ruth!
However, you did ask: “any holes?” Are you sure about that request? I think it might be more enjoyable to bask in the warm glow of such approval, but if you are serious in your request (and seriously believe your version of events at least approximates to an authentic analysis) please reply.
I shall do my best to fill in the gaps, although that might change the landscape rather dramatically. It would also be difficult to avoid prolixity, as the “holes” might be better described as chasms.
I’m serious, let me know if you are.
Greetings
Gruntig
Stop wasting space.
GPS does not work that way. ‘Switching off’ the device does nothing to stop it functioning, albeit at a different level – a bit like ‘sleep’ mode on a computer.
The only way one can be sure the device is truly off, ie, at the hardware level, is to remove it’s battery.
It seems, therefore (being an ex-spy) Sergei would know this – it suggests the pair were more interested in not being interrupted by calls from their ‘phones, and were not at all worried about their whereabouts being known to the ‘authorities’.
Sorry to upset you, Mr Blogs. Good name, btw succinct.
My offer to Ruth to point out the shortcomings in her take on this was genuine. It would, however, take much time and effort, and in honesty I’m not so much a JoeBlogs but rather JoePopsOnForALaughNowAndThen.
Whilst I’m still here: your assertion “GPS does not work that way” is wrong, it’s an urban myth. I wouldn’t wish to waste any more of your time, so please don’t waste your time and stop reading now. Please?
To debunk the urban myth about switched off cellphones still being active, and waste some time, you will need nothing more than a multimeter and some wire. When you connect the meter to show the current drawn from the battery (Dr Google will show you how), you’ll notice that when the phone is switched off, it draws zero current from the battery. Even a £5 digital meter off eBay will resolve down to one microampere, so a zero reading means, errm, well… zero. Keep it connected for some time to be sure it doesn’t occasionally “wake up” and send out a pulse signal (it doesn’t). Pretty obviously, for the GPS chip to function at all, it needs to draw some current in the tens of microamps, going into the low milliamp range when at transmit.
If you don’t believe me, and I’m sure many on here would not (and should not), go on eBay and buy a meter and do the “experiment”. If you doubt any of the schoolboy science, Google that too.
If Mr Blogs is still with us…sorry Joe, it really is an urban myth. You can prove it on your kitchen table.
If Ruth is, let me know about the holes. Unless you are Ruth Jo Blogs (no e)?
You are talking to a retired degree- level electronics engineer.
Take, for example, water meters – no battery at all, but still, the meter reading can be taken remotely by the utility company’s van, whilst it is in motion, too. Another example is contactless cards used to purchase in stores – no battery included in the card, but the reader will know everything about you when you pay for something with it, including the time and place you paid – as a bonus, your image will be stored on the CCTV cam above the till, as well.
Still another example is the security tags on high value items you buy. No battery on the tag, you checked for current with your meter and wire, so it should be fine walking out of the front door of the department store with it because it can’t transmit anything, right, because there’s no current being drawn? – good luck with that – I’ll read about you on the ‘look who’s in court pages’ of the local rag if you try it.
Why do you think the manufacturers would even bother with the expense of putting a GPS chip in the ‘phone in the first place, if it could be disabled by merely ‘switching off’ the ‘phone?
Forget Mickey Mouse meters off feebay; buy/borrow/beg a frequency counter that works into the GHz range, and see.
As I said, the chip still works on the hardware level.
To a retired degree-level electronics engineer, hello!
I just popped back here, thinking “Ruth” might have been genuine (silly me, I am new to this game), but was disappointed to find instead that you had ignored my request and wasted some more of your time. You must have plenty, but I suppose that retirement is good that way.
On the one hand, you claim “the only way to be sure a mobile phone does not send location data via GPS” [I’m assuming that’s the rough idea, it is the urban myth, anyway] is to remove the battery; merely switching it off will not do. You once again assert “the chip works on the hardware level”. [Not sure what you mean there, it works on hardware and software “levels”, obviously.] On the other hand, you cite water meters, contactless bank cards, and shop security tags as examples of devices which have no battery yet still transmit. I assume from “buy/beg/borrow a frequency counter that works into the GHz range”, you imagine this is all happening in the RF spectrum. You’re on the right wavelength there, at least!
Do you not realise you contradict yourself? According to your “analysis”, taking the battery out would not be sufficient- the GPS chip will still be “spilling the beans” like your water meter, security tag, bank card etc. Rather as in the Chris Morris film “Four Lions”, where Barry (Nigel Lindsay) eats the SIM card, nothing short of total destruction of the device would be necessary. That film was a black comedy, by the way.
I could waste more of my time explaining the difference between these systems to you. A girlfriend of mine kept setting the alarm off every time she entered (or left) Sainsburys. It became a standing joke with the store detective, whom I knew, as it went on for weeks; we just couldn’t get to the bottom of it. Eventually, it stopped being funny, and became rather annoying, and I Googled how these things work. It turned out an old foil-backed chewing gum wrapper in her bag had crinkled and cracked, and had thus become a perfect LC tank circuit, which set off the alarm.
LC tank circuit? You’ll know all about those as an electronics engineer, even if you retired eighty years ago. When you say frequency counter, I suspect you mean spectrum analyser? Buy yourself an SDR radio instead, they are really really cheap and work well. Anyhow, sorry chum, you are just wrong. To spill the beans, the GPS chip needs to be powered (as I think do some water meters). Switching the phone off cuts the power, no need to remove the battery. Or eat the phone!
At risk of sounding extremely pompous, but for your information: my degree was in philosophy with medieval and modern languages from Jesus Cambridge, I then obtained a professional law diploma (PGDL) and then took the BVC. I never practised. I subsequently obtained professional qualifications in computing (MCSE, and onwards). I’ve been a keen radio amateur since my teens. I completed an Open University degree in mathematics as a challenge about ten years ago, which was far harder than I thought, but very rewarding. I am not retired, but have been a British diplomatic passport holder since 1997. Personal interests include musicology, linguistics, electronics, international law, and history & philosophy of science. My other hobbies include photography, cooking, cycling and collecting light bulbs. I detest politics, and have come to loathe travelling.
I’ve been coming on here recently, inter alia, as I’m laid up in bed recovering from a broken collar bone (a cycling accident), and I’m bored.
I think we should both get out more.
First popularised by Alexander Petrov, the famous Russian chess player of the mid-19th century “Petrov’s Defence” (also called the “Russian Game” in the USA) is a chess opening characterised by the following moves:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nf6
There is also one Ruslan Bashirov (with an A not an O) listed as an unrated chess player on the FIDE website.
Two pawns and two knights in the field. There are a number of gambit lines in this fascinating opening. The following was written by Jeffrey St. Clair in Counterpunch, December 23, 2016 and he must be pinching himself now!
“The Russian Game is a chess strategy developed in the mid-19th Century by Alexander Petrov, a grand master from St. Petersburg. Petrov’s thinking about chess was deeply influenced by Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Essentially, Petrov viewed chess as a kind of military exercise and his Russian Game was a defensive plan to protect the “homeland” of the chessboard from attack by an overwhelming imperial force through deception, misdirection and infiltration.
Petrov’s Defense, as the Russian Game is also known, is a devious scheme of counterpunching, where the movements of your opposition are mirrored, creating the illusion that your opponent’s pieces are fighting themselves, until a line of counter-attack opens with devastating consequences. When played by a master, the Russian Game is meant to confuse, disorient and induce a feeling of paranoia in the invading force of pawns, rooks and knights” (!) Exclam.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/23/roaming-charges-the-russian-game/
We haven’t said much about Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess but one thing puzzles me. We are told that Dawn became ill almost immediately after spraying the poison on her wrists and an ambulance was called. Surely, the first question the ambulance crew would ask is: “Has she taken something that has made her ill?” I’d expect that Charlie would have said “Yes” and handed over the bottle. Apparently not. The bottle disappeared and then miraculously turned up again several days later. Can anyone explain this?
Blunderbuss
Of course if you believe any part of the story you will find inconsistencies. It’s like a bad dream and you try to connect the disconnected parts of your subconscious mind. Then you wake up properly and realise that’s a pretty pointless exercise. It’s totally futile to try to reconcile the parts of a narrative that is pure political fiction with absolutely no reality at all.
The West has been defeated by Russia in Syria. As a result instead of the UN being able to send in Israeli troops as peace-keepers in a war-torn country, to further the plan for a greater Israel, Russia, Turkey and Iran are busy deciding Syria’s future. The most important asset which USUKIS stands to lose are their proxy jihadists in Idlib who might switch sides and work for the winning power. At this point the light bulbs go out for the foreign policy brought in by David Cameron and William Hague to use jihadists proxies for colonial expansion across the Middle and Far East.
Trump is busy bashing Russia , Iran and Turkey on the head with his umbrella and bare fists. The UK and EU have undone their corset girdle and are trying to strangle them diplomatically at the UN. It was a stupid , regressive, recidivist Tory policy to try to regain Britain’s lost empire. Now being camouflaged by an equally silly quagmire of Agatha Christie and Midsommer murder. Our future lies with Corbyn’s unextinguishable thread of peace and honesty, and it is a bright future. The Tories were shoe-horned into power by the Clegg twat Liberals. A wooden stake must now be driven through both their hearts. Metaphor.
“Our future lies with Corbyn’s unextinguishable thread of peace and honesty, and it is a bright future.“
I’m quite stunned to see you reveal yourself to be such a trusting, naive, fool. I always knew you were, of course, but now everybody knows.
People said similar things about Labour, in 1945. Ernest Bevan, Labour’s Foreign Secretary back then, wasn’t nicknamed “Bulldog Bevan” for nothing…
I expect I’m a trusting, naive, fool as well but I was very happy with the 1964 Labour government of Harold Wilson.
Y U not love JC? Hate.
Hatuey
For once I agree with your comment.
Attlee’s ‘Labour’ government pronounced, following their landslide victory over Churchill’s government post WWII, Palestine to be “A land without a people, for a people without a land.”
They knew very well this was a lie, and that it would cause the most grievous problems for the world in the many years to come.
Corbyn is no different. I believe he was shocked and surprised at winning the leadership of the ‘Labour’ party – now he has to choose between his adherence to the Palestinian cause that gave him much of his grassroots support and oblivion, or to his new ‘managers’ – for whom he, tellingly, wears his red tie (as does Mr. Trump) and become PM.
It is as simple as that, to be assimilated, or to go down in the history books as someone ‘truly evil’ like (insert pariah of the day’s name here).
He will do an about-turn once in power: they all do.
Definitely no sense of humour.
See the thing is..
Novichok would Kill Pretty much Instantlay..Not a few Hours, or days later
To Buy into the U’k Lies on this… What Do we want WIII ..when do we want it NOW.Just Ask the Torie’s Hunt Ect
.
With Appolz If posted already.. The Comments are Racing up just now..Many Pages Fast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqPaSgFHmhM
they did not associate the perfume with her collapse. in his statement Charlie said she collapsed after taking her “medication” which I imagine was a euphemism for drug fix. I imagine they assumed that caused her collapse.
She was a junkie. He had done time for heroin wraps. It is pretty obvious the hospital knew Dawn Sturgess as a junkie as did Boots whose Methadone Window must have been white hot with activity in Salisbury area which is flooded with Fentanyl and Carfentanil and Oxy.
This is Drugland….just google the mix – and see how many arrests for dealers there were in the area…..Rowley went to prison for dealing
As far as the ‘assassin’ theory is concerned the Amesbury accident was an instance of ‘Murphy’s Law’. Once the Met. stapled the two cases together there was nothing for it but to establish/claim/hope to goodness the substance first used in Salisbury found its way to Rowley afterwards. Of course if the reverse were seen to be true then May, Johnson et al are exposed for the charlatans they are.
So you feel no sympathy for their plight and their addiction?
Rowley washed his hands to get the oily substance off them. Dawn went to the bathroom, where she may have washed the packaging before removing it, before using the perfume. I’m guessing the perfume wasn’t contaminated, just the sellophane outer wrapper, but the contact with the outer packaging was prolonged enough to expose her to a lethal dose. A present for Julia with no thought about who else would be exposed, also leaving a trail on the agents.
@Blunderbuss
Now that giyane’s irrelevant non-answer is out of the way, I think we should take into consideration that, at the time DS was taken ill, as well as when CR followed suit a little later, neither would have been aware, necessarily, of the nearly immediate fatal consequences of being exposed to a ‘nerve agent’ (and by that I do not mean ‘Novichok’ or any other organophosphate). Whilst I have yet to make up my own mind as to the origin of the perfume bottle, if we suppose CR thought it was just that at the time, then he would have had no reason to associate it with his partner’s condition. Something ingested is much more likely to have come to mind. The toxic effects of absorbing an opioid through the skin would have been beyond their experience.
I confess I didn’t fully understand the references on RT to the aliases. Is Boshirov a character in a James Bond novel? Nor the grandfather connection to the man who said his passport details were used. And the Nina Ricci perfume bottle, which is showing on news channels. Is this the one that Rowley allegedly found still wrapped in polythene, unopened? Is there another opened bottle. The Russians left a trail of contamination in their hotel rooms. Was it meant to? Are they affected too? Was Julia tasked with spraying the dossier before handing it over? Did she then throw the perfume bottle away after doing as she was asked? Asked by whom? If the Petrov name is as common as John Smith, is it the name given to the John Smith character in the Russian dubbed version of the matrix? The Russians left the country, so presumably they were not adversely affected. When was the doorknob contaminated? How was the policeman contaminated? Did Putin genuinely know nothing about the operation, which occurred in the middle of his reelection? Were they still Russian state agents anyway? And the dossier? Who decided what?
I think the Russians were probably couriers and there is a third party sleeper agent locally. There have been hints about this in the MSM. I think the secret services know who Bishirov and Petrov are but not the identity of the sleeper they met. If they could have left the stuff in a traditional “dead letterbox” to be collected.
I am puzzled over motive. Maybe all the time he stayed retired and inactive Skripall was safe. But maybe money was tight, maybe he liked the adrenaline, maybe he was made an offer he could not refuse, but somewhere along the line he got back into the game. ( The London Evening Standard ran a piece with a shop owner where he bought Polish sausages when he passed through London, saying he told him that he travelled abroad regularly.) Maybe he was involved in the Steele dossier. Maybe he was involved with Ujrainians. Whatever. But he stepped out beyond the terms agreed for his exchange and therefore had to be silenced.
Why Yulia? Maybe she was acting as an intermediary in whatever deal he was on. I doubt that UK security services would have used a novichok agent in their own backyard. Something straightforward like a car crash would surely be easier to stage or even a mugging.
Why use a high profile Novichok agent and not arrange a fall from a window or multi storey building,/sudden heart attack/staged suicide/food poisoning/house break in at night and strangling? All are ways Russian have died suddenly in the UK and the local police taken little interest. The use of such a high profile method as a nerve agent with such negative repercussions for Russia and so close to the Football world champs showcase, seems extraordinary.
I have not ruled out the Ukrainians.p but could they obtain Novichok agent, create fake packaging? Plot the whole thing and carry it out in secret? It will be interesting to see who Boshirov and Petrov really are, if that info emerges – of course another D notice might be issued on the whole business. Whatever happens I think the use of a nerve agent must show a message was being sent. By whom, to whom and with what aim is the mystery still.
I am very puzzled by the Perfume bottle we have been shown as I have never ever seen perfume available in this form, like a soap dispenser. That would comply with it being a gel but not a perfume. Did Dawn apply a spray or a gel to her wrists? Was it a recycled box or was the whole thing made specially which would have been a considerable investment? I imagine. if Charlie found it “unopened” that there were at least 2 such boxes designed to get through customs.. Finding one thrown away like that much later would suggest someone living locally is involved.
Has anyone thought that the Novichok might not just have been smeared on the Skripals door handles but used on them via somewhere else they went as well? Maybe it was on the front door but the dose that actually infected them was applied somewhere else?
I agree that both the Russians and the UK are unlikely to have used this method but third parties could have and have strong motives. The Ukrainians have a big interest in blackening Russia’s name and mobilizing the west against Putin, they have the motif, the ability (old Soviet weapons and know how shared) and form (witness the recent Babichenko false assassination, MH17 and others we have heard little of. What has also been little discussed in this blog and the MSM is the recent assassination of the leader of the DPR, Zakharchenko, following the killing of two other leaders. I fact there are indications that Kiev is planning an all out attack on Donbas. This is also obviously being done under the cover that all eyes are now on Idlib.
What became of “Gordon” who was an early suspect. Is he the sleeper agent?
My theory is that Sergei, Yulia and the policeman were all poisoned in the park. The door handle got poisoned accidentally by the policeman when he visited the house for an unknown reason. Was it to look for an antidote to the poison?
Where was the perfume bottle sold, at least as suggested by its batch number? If it was in Russia, wouldn’t they have said by now?
It has a barcode on the bottom but it is not readable in the configuration of the Met photo. The packaging is quite crumpled with the ‘gold’ ink abraded off on corners and edges. No pictures are available for the outer cellophane; it’s not clear it was even saved for fingerprint and dna forensics.
This product is not currently sold online; Nina Ricci has totally revamped the bottle and dispenser styles, with knock-off following close behind. Presumably it is a tampered purchase (or direct imitation) of something sold at airport gift shops at an earlier time.
Perfumes are volatile so they are always sold with a airtight cap that prevents any leakage during inventory or transport despite temperature and pressure swings. Otherwise, as some ingredients are more volatile than others, the relative proportions would change over time.
The contaminant was on the outer packaging. Rowley and Sturgess picked up an unopened new sellophane wrapped box with perfume inside
Professor Piers Robinson ** – Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism, Sheffield University.
On Sky News.
https://youtu.be/PHiAZfpXr5Q
**
‘Piers’ current research focuses on organised persuasive communication (OPC) and contemporary propaganda, with a particular focus on the current war in Syria. He is co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies (OPS) and convenes the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. Recent published work includes a new conceptual approach for theorising propaganda and analysis of propaganda and deception in relation to the ‘war on terror’ and the 2003 Iraq invasion (ses publications). He is currently writing a research monograph on OPC and contemporary propaganda with Professor David Miller (Bristol).
He has recently been appointed as speciality section editor (political communication) for the journal Frontiers in Communication. He also convenes three research networks: Organised Persuasive Communication and Contemporary Propaganda Network; Syria, Media and Propaganda Network; and the War on Terror and Propaganda Network.
Piers regularly provides comment to a range of media outlets, including BBC, RT and Sky News, and has published articles in Open Democracy and The Guardian.’
A case in point. This is how the state creates the propaganda.
I have just opened the link to the state broadcaster’s website and there, at the top of the page, is a large photo of Nikolai Glushkov under this heading!
Paramedic says Nikolai Glushkov believed he was poisoned – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45455464
It is followed by a script about his death IN 2013. It contains several links to other BBC ‘reports’ and includes large mugshots of the two alleged foreign visitors to Salisbury. YCNMIU.
There are very many uses of the words ‘Russia’ and ‘Russians’ within the piece.
At the bottom under a heading ‘Related topics’
UK
RUSSIA
RUSSIAN AN SPY POISONING
GOVERNMENT OF RUSSIA
Alongside now is a photo of Chuka !!! Scary stuff.
Chuka Umunna tells Jeremy Corbyn to ‘call off the dogs’ – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45453807
‘It comes as former Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was “not sure it is possible” for Labour “moderates” to take the party back from Mr Corbyn and the left – and hinted at the creation of a new “centre ground” party.
Mr Umunna has written to members of his local Labour Party in Streatham, south London, to deny reports that he is involved in talks about a new party, the New Statesman reports.’
This is just advance publicity for a speech the snake is making to members of Progress today.
Look upon it as a flag of surrender as that is exactly what it is.
What the Blairites are saying is that they have 50 million quid available for a new party with no policies and no leader.
Oh and none of them have got any alternative jobs lined up at the minute as they aren’t sure when the GE will be – 2 months of 4 years?
They could join the Lib Dems but Vince has declared his retirement day and doesn’t think that there are any good MPs in his own party up to the job in a post Brexit Britain.
Paddy Ashdown was available for comment but no-one could be arsed asking him.
Vince failed to show up for the vote the govt would have lost and led to an election by now.
‘Surrendering’ to the figurehead leader of the national party, elected by a majority of the whole membership is not the same as surrendering to the local memberships wishes of what they expect from their candidate.
Correction there. Mr Glushkov died last March. There was an allegation in the Guardian yesterday that there was an attempt to kill him in 2013.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/07/murdered-russian-exile-nikolai-glushkov-poisoning-attempt-bristol
They are ALL in IT together.
He was a gangster who had looted Aeroflot and he was at AvtoVaz which was a Berezhovsky business…….if you lift up the stone you find Berezhovsky tentacles everywhere………he was apparently LGBT too……so he had lots of reasons to die.
Funny thing is just how many GRU men have defected since 1930s and how few of them have been “deceased” by human hand. SMERSH has better things to do than look for old men with historical anecdotes……even Kim Philby was a useless old buffer whose knowledge of MI6 perished with his fading memory.
Salisbury is simply a Military Zone and I bet Russian Diplomats are prohibited from travelling there
You will also find that Berezhovsky played no bit part in Putin replacing Yeltsin – as Sharp Ears shouted they are all in it together. Who’d have thought that the Russian mafia would have internal disputes and battles as to who should be their Capo di Capo.
Putin was needed because the Yeltsin Family was so deep into corruption that once Boris died the KGB would devour the family and Berezhovsky. They needed protection: Khrushchev was the first Soviet leader “to retire” and Yeltsin wanted his family to outlive him. Putin was chosen so the Siloviki would protect Yeltsin’s daughter particularly who was a kleptomaniac. Berszhovsky found a “puppet”
If you look at the link between the Yeltsin Family Crime Family and Oleg Deripaska – Oleg’s wife Polina is Yeltsin’s granddaughter – you see how the Crime Families intermarried and Putin honoured his side of the deal – however Berezhovsky was a schemer and had used Litvinenko in games within FSB somewhat injurious to health
For anyone interested in the subject of propaganda I found ‘Easily Led, a history of propaganda’ by Oliver Thomson readable, it was published in 1999 and covers most of the aspects of the craft in a fair amount of detail. I bought my copy from a reduced price bookshop, but I now see it is being offered for ridiculous amounts on Amazon, it should also be available from some Libraries, if you can find one that hasn’t been closed yet.
Iraq; Libya; austerity/QE; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn the sickening racist; McCain the very best of us . . . all feed a general perception that the stories promoted by mainstream media are fake news. The response to waning public trust is to project the fake news tag onto dissenting media, with a view to seeing dissenters eventually erased. Orwellian times.
Why did the troughers have yesterday off? They have just returned after a six week holiday ffs.
On Monday, they will be extremely busy. Not. Perhaps the whole country should adopt their working pattern.
Monday, 10th September, 2018
2.30 pm
Oral questions
Education (including Topical Questions)
General debate
Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement – Mrs Theresa May
Adjournment
Gypsies and Traveller policy – Andrew Selous
I am always curious about the timing of such ‘announcements’….?????
We all know our governments lie to us it is the quality of the lies that is so insulting
@Jean
“(Seymour) Hersh highly distinguished reporter has it on credible source that skripals were gathering intelligence on Russian mafia for m16, after the poisoning some Russians left Britain in a hurry”
How about this?
* Skripal upset gang boss Glushkov, who was being harboured by Britgov, as Berezovsky was for several years
* Glushkov tried to have him whacked
* Someone then whacked Glushkov
Why have no expulsions, other diplomatic measures or trade sanctions been announced yet against Russia, following the British release of stills and clips of “Boshirov and Petrov”?
What has been called for is international cooperation against a “forward” branch of the Russian armed forces. That tells us a lot about the state of play.
Skirpals: The Hit Team In The Maltings Salisbury- NEW EVIDENCE
https://dailyshocker.news/skirpals-the-hit-team-in-the-maltings-salisbury-new-evidence/
Meanwhile its neck and neck.
The Britain Elects poll tracker has Labour finishing this week ahead of the Tories by just half a point: 10th Aug.
Lab: 38.9% (-)
Con: 38.5% (-2.6)
LDem: 9.1% (+1.0)
UKIP: 5.8% (+2.5)
Grn: 2.9% (-0.1)
https://mobile.twitter.com/britainelects?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5E699320055859974149&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwingsoverscotland.com%2Fstakeholder-engagement%2Fcomment-page-1%2F%23comments
Survation has Labour four points ahead though, pretty good under current circumstances:
https://www.survation.com/labour-gains-four-point-lead-over-the-conservatives-as-ukip-overtakes-the-liberal-democrats/
A very moving and eloquent plea from the Yemeni people to understand their plight and a beautiful example of Arabic music. Please distribute wherever possible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc8Ls5YDU2A
There is really very little new here apart from some photographs of two people who arrived from Moscow and travelled to Salisbury…
it still seems that dodgy Sergei Skripal is mixed up with handling illicit narcotics for money… probably Fentanyl’s / Carfentanyl or some such similar substance… These powerful synthetic opioid substances are nerve agent’s, and would also meet the definition of “a Novichok”. The Salisbury substances name, chemical family, or chemical structure have never been officially released. There has never been any official claim that the substance involved in either Amesbury or Salisbury was an Organophosphate, and there has never been any official denial (or correction) that the substance was a synthetic opioid as initially and officially claimed by Wiltshire Constabulary, And Salisbury Hospital. Finnish customs had already issued an alert that Synthetic opioids were entering Finland in glass bottles in liquid form. Canada customs issued an alert that synthetic opioids were entering Canada in counterfeit toner cartridge refill bottles.
With two Heroin addicts (one a convicted drug dealer) being affected by the same substance four months after the Salisbury incident, it’s very likely that the substance involved in both incidents was an illicit synthetic opioid.
We can ignore the arrest warrant (proposed arrest warrant?) issued by the UK state, Issuing an international arrest warrant is not any sort of indication of guilt before holding a trial. Spain issued an arrest warrant for President Carlos Puigdemont on charges of Rebellion…. for holding a peaceful non-binding referendum on Catalonian independence… Germany’s courts refused to extradite him because there was no evidence to meet the charge of Rebellion… Lol.
Good to see you here. The Daily Shocker post above makes it clear that the couple (male and blonde female) earlier captured on CCTV were indeed witnessed by Freya Church in the immediate vicinity of the bench where the Skripals were encountered. Should that couple have been Rowley and Sturgess then we have a chain of contact, with the red bag remaining behind at the scene.
Thanks again for your earlier research which ‘Sandra’ extended to very good effect. I posted this link a couple of days ago. It highlights the real issue:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/27/fentanyl-for-sale-to-uk-users-through-chinese-websites
I guessing here… but I suspect that the profit from drugs is really being squeezed by a massive increase in competition due to easy cheap imports, and new low volume, high strength compounds like fentanyl’s… and that this is one of the reasons criminal gangs are reverting to more traditional robberies again for funds… I mean the Cash Machine robbery crime thing is now off the wall in numbers throughout the UK… Here’s a piece for North Surrey…
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/14-ram-raids-surrey-north-15058099
elsewhere they sometimes blow them up with welders gas, and within London they are now using a new trend with hand guns to target security staff who are filling up these cash machines. As for those who are still trying to deal in drugs, the increased competition seems responsible for a good proportion of the increases in inner London knife crime
“I mean the Cash Machine robbery crime thing is now off the wall in numbers throughout the UK”
Literally.
I don’t disbelieve you for one moment. On the drugs question though, wouldn’t an ‘additive’ such as Fentanyl be a profit booster? The same ‘high’ offered at the same price but with less material – or have I got this wrong. I’m not into drugs from any perspective but I do recall instances of heroin users being additionally endangered by suppliers ‘cutting’ it with other contaminants. Presumably something similar could be achieved with Fentanyl supplied as a powder?
Powerful Fentanyl’s etc provided a short term profit booster, yes. But the supply has been opened up to anybody, so increased competition will drive the price of illicit drugs through the floor. Which is what is happening. The U.K. seems likely to move to a drugs policy along the lines of Portuguese model. Free drugs given away to addicts to self-administer in supervised units.
Once the old drugs model was a busted flush, the police will need to begin transfering more of their resources to dealing with rising robberies, and other forms of crime.
I’m pleased the old drugs model is collapsing, I hope the Government don’t fight it, and just let it go. But like any large boil that gets lanced, it’s going to get messy, before it gets better and heals. All those people to whom drugs policy gave an income, will be searching for a new source of income… fraud and robbery seem the new thing.
I wonder just how messy it’s going to get, and how many civil liberties we’ll be asked/told to give up.
i was curious that the time shown on video of Boshirov & Petrov supposedly windowshopping is 01:49:02 yet the time they arrived at Salisbury train station is 13:50:56, realising it is impossible to walk the 450 meters from Dauwalders shop to train station in the time difference of two seconds i looked closer and noticed THE DATE SHOWN IN TIMESTAMP OF VIDEO IN DAUWALDERS SHOP IS 03:04/2018, while the attack on Skripal took place on Sunday 4th March the date on video is Wednesday 3rd April.
Date (03:04:2018) and time can be seen in top right corner of pic in link below
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6138541/First-chilling-CCTV-two-Russian-novichok-assassins-Salisbury.html
I think the clock on the shop’s CCTV is wrongly set. It can’t have been 1.49 am because it would be dark.
it clearly says PM NOT AM in timestamp, look at pictures again.
One date is British little-endian, the other is US middle-endian. A certain ban ed subject did not occur on the ninth of November.
Ddmmyyyy
Mmddyyyy
Yyyymmdd
Etc.
Time? Is a setting which goes out of sync unless constantly reset.
The Daily Shocker too has some interesting things to say about distances travelled in the time available:
https://dailyshocker.news/the-skirpals-the-proof-we-are-not-being-told-the-truth/
This is how a Tory MP (anonymous) sees Johnson’s divorce.
””I think Boris Johnson is clearing the decks,” said one Conservative party source. “Clearing the barnacles off the boat.”‘
What a charmer.
Boris Johnson ‘clearing the decks’ by announcing divorce before potential leadership challenge
Sky’s Beth Rigby says to his critics the news makes him unfit for office while supporters predict it won’t hurt him too badly.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-clearing-the-decks-by-announcing-divorce-before-potential-leadership-challenge-11492537
Who’d have thought that Boris Johnson, would want to join the Single Market. ?
Single market in what?
Single people as in a divorcee, it was meant as a joke.
I expect if all that was on offer was the single market (as was the case in the 1975 referendum) a majority would have voted in favour.
MJ, the European Single Market started in 1993 (the one good idea Margaret Thatcher ever contributed, 13 years earlier).
Did you have a vote in the Brexit referendum? Or the 1975 EEC one?
Ha ha! Good one, very funny!
JMF.
Thank you, I thought it seemed apt for BoJo.
I guess his wife wasn’t too happy about the bloke Boris was having an affair with. Who was it, by the way?
>>not seen a perfume bottle with a soap dispenser handle
Note the enlarged scale of the photo makes the pump appear longer than it is; after assembly, it would stick out 4 cm or 1.6 inches, not that much though an awkward multiple of bottle width. The mechanism pumps air above the liquid line in the bottle, forcing perfume up the inner tube and out the very tiny hole at the end of white handle tube.
According to the label, the original was a ‘vaporisateur’ that sprays out a fine mist of a low viscosity liquid. I believe that this product was sold at airport gift shops in some countries at some earlier time; the perps bought one not realizing it was an Asian knock-off and simply poured out the perfume, replacing it with a syringe-full of novichok in a fume hood.
Eau means water; Eau de Parfum is a mid-range version of full strength; the order from highest to lowest concentration is fist Perfume, Eau de Parfum, Eau de Toilette, and Eau de Cologne. Met has not disclosed the viscosity or vapor pressure of the novichok but some idea can be had from the capillary curvature of the remnant liquid in inner tube.
People here are confusing perfume in the box which was meant to be applied by the victim (Yulia, Dawn) and the unknown other novichok source and applicator that was used on the Skripals. There is no second box that we know of. Two husky guys do not walk around holding Parisian eau de parfum bottles in mid-day Salisbury misting door handles.
To repeat for the 100th time, fentanyl and BZ are ruled out by symptoms, chemical analyses, hospital and OPCW statements, and treatment.
Misting (aerosols) is all wrong: too dangerous for the assassin. Better to use a simple squeeze bottle like saline or nasal spray to put out liquid drops.
The door handle was likely contaminated by police as someone suggested above. They were being ridiculed at the time for failing to even find the site of attack: the BMW air intake, car handles, funeral flowers, buckwheat, cosmetics and so on were bruited about. Police then settled prematurely on the door handle and today are stuck with it.
@Tom Smythe: “To repeat for the 100th time, fentanyl …[ ]… are ruled out by symptoms, chemical analyses, hospital and OPCW statements, and treatment.”
And for the 100th time you get it wrong… ha ha!
Fentanyl’s / Carfentanyl or some such similar substance are absolutely still on the table based on what little official information we have. These powerful synthetic opioid substances meet the broad definition of a nerve agent, and would also meet the definition of “a Novichok”, that’s just a fact, get used to it. Porton Down make the same arguments in their 2012 paper on the Moscow theater siege.
The Salisbury substances name, chemical family, or chemical structure have never been officially released, EVER!. There has never been any official claim that the substance involved in either Amesbury or Salisbury was an Organophosphate, EVER!. There has never been any official denial (or correction) EVER! that the substance was a synthetic opioid as initially and officially claimed by Wiltshire Constabulary alerts, and Salisbury Hospital. Then you’ve got two Heroin addicts (one a convicted drug dealer) apparently being affected by the same substance four months after the Salisbury incident, it’s likely that the substance involved in both incidents was an illicit synthetic opioid, certainly very likely that the substance was intended for use as an illicit narcotic.
In case you missed it the substance was identified
‘ Swiss lab says ‘BZ toxin’ used in Salisbury, not produced in Russia, was in US & UK service.
The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.
The Swiss center mentioned by Lavrov is the Spiez Laboratory controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and ultimately by the country’s defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.’
https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-british-us-toxin-not-novichok-used-in-salisbury-attack/
Mind you that doesn’t account for Dawn being killed by the substance
I have read that the BZ was a “control sample” and not the actual poison. I don’t understand this. How can you identify or quantify a substance by using a control sample which is a completely different substance?
Okay ignore my previous comment – for further info – ‘ I’m certain there is a concerted effort being made by different people, with different motives, to spin this story in as many ways as possible. The trace contamination found by the Spiez lab is just one attempt to sow seeds of doubt – ignore their main finding, that the agent they found in the sample was pretty pure novichok A234, and concentrate on the trace amount of 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate, an hallucinogenic agent discovered by the Swiss in 1951, but spin that so it looks like it was the US who came up with it. The US did experiment with it in the late 50’s, as did the UK, and at the time of those experiments NATO gave it the code name BZ. However, the trace amounts found in the Swiss sample could be contamination, or could have been in the A234, but either way the level was so low as to not be enough to cause any symptoms by itself.’
https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-606204-p-6.html
@Alyson: The Salisbury substance has never been officially released either by it’s chemical name, chemical family, or chemical structure.
We got both A-234 and BZ from Lavrov verbally, who quoted this from the Swiss labs…
“Following our analysis, the samples indicate traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its precursor which are second category chemical weapons. BZ is a nerve toxic agent, which temporarily disables a person. The psycho toxic effect is achieved within 30 to 60 minutes after its use and lasts for up to four days. This composition was in operational service in the armies of the US, the UK and other NATO countries. The Soviet Union and Russia neither designed nor stored such chemical agents. Also, the samples indicate the presence of type A-234 nerve agent in its virgin state and also products of its degradation.”apparently OPCW requires labs to test blind, so there is always a known control sample included to check that equipment is functioning accurately and is not contaminated”
OPCW labs test blind. A known control substance is included with the samples of interest by the OPCW inspectors, to check that the labs equipment is functioning properly and not contaminated. The Labs report on everything they find… they do not know which substance is the control and which is not.
“To repeat for the 100th time, fentanyl and BZ are ruled out by symptoms, chemical analyses, hospital and OPCW statements, and treatment.”
Others would beg to differ. Repeating something 100 times does not make it right. That’s the very reason this topic is such a live and contentious one.
When interviewed for BBC Newsnight in the aftermath of the Salisbury ‘attack’, Dr Christine Blanshard, Medical Director at Salisbury District Hospital, was asked what her response would be to those people who would say, ‘Oh if it was a nerve agent they’d be dead’”.
Her exact words were:
“Erm, well, they’re not. You know, the proof of the pudding is in the outcome. So we were very clear about what we were treating, erm, and I think that these wouldn’t be the first patients that have recovered from, for example, organophosphorous poisoning, or other nerve agents.”
One has but to read the lines, not between them. The ‘proof of the pudding’ being in the outcome and the outcome being that both Sergei and Yulia survived indicates that they were not the victims of anything going by the label ‘novichok’, nor indeed were they poisoned by, for example (to use Dr Blanshard’s interjection), an organophosphate
Definitely @Doodlebug… because of Salisbury, the OPCW is reviewing it’s classification… it accepts it’s definitions are out of date… and that some substances – and they specifically single out Carfentanil here – are as lethal as Organophsphate CW’s.
So Tom S, you are suggesting perfume/ dispenser found by Charlie Rowley was an obselete fake dispenser probably on sale historically as a Rip off product in the Far East. Nina Ricci could presumably tell us if they ever sold that perfume in that format and when and where..The photos indicate the perfume found by Charlie Rowley was still intact in its cardboard box and cellophane wrapping which suggests it cannot have been where he found it for long as the damp English climate would have caused the cardboard and cellophane to deteriorate rapidly if left outside for any length of time.
The closest I’ve been able to find to that type of long straight, round white plastic dispenser nozzle with is a “liquid dispense gun” – quote: “a perfect choice for dispensing acids and solvents. The longer nozzle allows for them to be inserted into a container thus minimizing splashing”.
https://www.compotech.it/images/Immagini/Prodotti/Linea_Teflon/liquid-dispense-guns1.jpg
OT: I referred to this a couple of months ago, but don’t think I got any response – has anyone checked out philipcross.com? See if you can chase down the quote.
Who authorized the poisoning? Highly unlikely to be Putin because of the timing (just before presidential election and world cup). Unlikely to be the British government because of the cost of the clean-up. Possible suspects: (1) Turf war between Russian criminal gangs or (2) A country which wants to worsen the already bad relations between Britain and Russia. The obvious suspect is Ukraine but Latvia and Estonia have also been mentioned. What does surprise me is that the British government has fallen for this con trick. It would have been much more sensible to say: “We won’t accuse anybody until we have completed our investigations”.
I”t would have been much more sensible to say: “We won’t accuse anybody until we have completed our investigations””
More sensible perhaps but also very old-fashioned. Modern thinking is that you jump to conclusions first and investigate later, if you feel like it.
“Modern thinking is that you jump to conclusions first and investigate later, if you feel like it”. Quite. Or if you’re Karen Pierce at the UN you cover both bases. To paraphrase her sanctimonious statements at this week’s UNSC: ‘the UK, unlike Russia, believes in innocent until proven guilty and that is why we have gone to such trouble to present the evidence we have of Russia’s culpability’. (I kid you not, that’s what she said, with no hint of a wink). But almost immediately, when responding to Nebenzya’s question as to why the UK hadn’t accepted Russia’s immediate offer of assistance, she replied that ‘You don’t invite an arsonist to help investigate fires and you certainly don’t invite them to help investigate a fire that they started’. Someone needs to take her to one side to explain the inconsistencies in her statements.
Knock knock, whose there?
Nobody knows so go for a walk or clean the car
Did you write this while cleaning your car?
Roger Waters: Neoliberal propaganda keeping voters ‘asleep’ like Orwellian sheep
https://www.rt.com/news/437915-roger-waters-rt-interview-politics/
I put that up before Jack. He is good.