Today is the grand opening of the Salisbury Festival of Russophobia, otherwise known as the Public Inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an unfortunate victim of imperialist spy games.
Do not be fooled. This is not in any sense a genuine public inquiry, supposed to get at the truth. This is an inquiry like the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, designed entirely to conceal the truth and further the official narrative.
In the Kelly case, the official narrative was that one of the world’s leading experts in chemical weapons, with access to instant-action neurotoxins, decided to kill himself after leaking that Iraq had no WMD. He chose to do so by cutting his wrist veins with a rusty penknife and waiting for a slow and painful death in the woods.
The ambulance crew who picked Kelly up testified that there was very little blood and they did not think that he could have bled out, but the Inquiry considered there was little blood because it must have “soaked into the soil”. Nobody thought to dig up the soil and check.
In the Dawn Sturgess case, we are supposed to believe that two top Russian agents sent to kill Sergei Skripal chose a “novichok” nerve agent as the manner of death. In broad daylight they painted this on the front door of his house, in full view of the neighbours and passers-by on the packed housing estate and without any protective equipment, despite the fact that a tiny droplet on your skin could kill you.
The agents then went for a walk in Salisbury town centre, looked in the window of an antique shop, and put the perfume bottle containing the novichok back in its packet including somehow resealing the cellophane wrapping. They then placed the “perfume” in a charity bin.
They then made their getaway on the notoriously unreliable Sunday train service.
The Skripals came back home, and both touched the door handle. Despite the novichok being instant-acting and extremely deadly, they then went out for lunch and ate a full meal and drank wine and had a high old time for three hours, being joined and photographed by their MI6 handler Pablo Miller (whose existence is D-noticed).
After their meal, the novichok finally took effect and they both collapsed on a park bench. Despite the fact that they were different ages, sexes and weights and presumably contacted differing amounts of novichok, they both collapsed at just the same moment, about three hours after contact, so neither of them was able to call for help.
But luckily the very first person to come across them on the park bench was, completely by coincidence, the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who just happened to be passing. They went to hospital and were saved and did not die after all.
A policeman sent to their house touched the door handle and also got novichok poisoning, and he later got ill and was hospitalised, but did not die either. He had returned to his own home and later it was found that he had got novichok all over the light switches and door handles there, but by great fortune his family, who continued to live in this house, did not get ill from it.
The official explanation of this is that it was “a miracle”.
Meanwhile, the “perfume” sat in the charity bin. It sat there for months and months, despite the fact that it was emptied regularly and despite the fact that Charlie Rowley was one of a number of people who also regularly stole from that bin.
Somehow both the bin’s official and unofficial emptiers continually missed the perfume bottle, again and again and again. Finally, several months later, the perfume bottle’s mysterious invisibility cloak failed and Charlie Rowley saw it.
He gave it to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess, who put some perfume on and died. Charlie Rowley got ill but did not die. He was later able to tell the press inconvenient facts, like the cellophane on the perfume was fully sealed and that he took stuff from that bin fairly often.
When Rowley and Sturgess were taken to hospital, the police descended and sealed off the house and made a massive terrorism theatre of searching it, that went on for days. They were searching for a small container of liquid.
Finally, after days and days of 24/7 painstaking combing through the house by England’s finest, somebody spotted a perfume bottle sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter, and the novichok was found!
Presumably the perfume’s invisibility cloak had spluttered into life again for a few days before fizzling out.
That really is the official story. Yes, it really is. You are not supposed to notice the massive glaring holes in it. If you want to check up on all the sources and links, here is one I made earlier.
I had intended to attend the inquiry in person. Even the most incompetent lawyer would be able to demolish this ridiculous official narrative with great ease. But then I realised that the entire Inquiry is structured to prevent that happening.
Nobody is going to ask difficult questions. The one person who could is the lawyer representing the family of Dawn Sturgess, but her family have been propagandised into total adherence to the official line, presumably by a combination of mainstream media and official hand-holding.
Sturgess’s family have understandably become focused on hatred for the Russians, whom they have been told killed their daughter. The line their KC is instructed to pursue is to query why the state was not more effective in protecting their daughter from those evil Russians.
The other “core participants” – the council, police and health authorities – will be back-covering on similar lines, and we can be pretty sure the Inquiry will conclude with plaudits all round about how well everybody pulled against the evil Ruski menace, and a few “lessons learned” saws.
The role of the “public” is to witness the show inquiry. Nobody else gets to ask a question. “Intelligence” material provided by the security services will not be made public. The Inquiry has already been told this morning by the British Government representative that this is essential to assure future informers of confidentiality.
The scene has been set by an utterly ludicrous attempt to stir up Russophobia by MI5. In the last week the Head of MI5 has solemnly assured us that Russia is attempting to launch chaos on the streets of the UK, and we are told by security service sources that the evil Ruskis plan to disrupt UK ambulances.
I am pretty sure Putin also has an evil plan to eat your grandmother.
Never Trust A Man Who Dyes His Hair
Dawn Sturgess died six miles from the official UK govt facility that manufactures novichok “for test purposes” – and incidentally where David Kelly once worked. Her death reinforced the official Salisbury narrative at a time when public scepticism was growing.
I am pretty sure poor Dawn, who had fallen on hard times and was just the kind of person the Establishment views as dispensable, was a victim of state violence.
I am quite certain that if so, it was not the Russians.
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I’m sure the Russians could have made a better job of framing themselves than this. If ‘novichok’ was involved, didn’t the Skripals nick or otherwise illegally acquire some in Russia and take it back with them? Or is that the kind of substance more traditionally couriered via diplomatic pouch?
In the very early days of the Dawn Sturgess fatality being reported I have a vague recollection of a local newspaper carrying an account of the local police saying that she had been cuckooed by drug dealers and that her flat was being used by them for nefarious purposes. Her death was thought to have resulted from an intake of the dealers’ dodgy drugs. Unfortunately I can’t provide any more details re the source and the initial police account has since been replaced by another.
The police themselves believed it was a drugs incident for days after it happened.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180704154845/https://www.wiltshire.police.uk/article/2902/Warning-over-contaminated-drugs-after-two-fall-ill-in-Amesbury
Dawn Sturgess was an alcoholic but she was very much against illegal drugs. She could, however, have been killed by unwittingly coming into contact with a small amount very powerful synthetic drugs left behind from the party in Charlie’s flat the night before.
Whoever had spread the ludicrous Skripal story months before saw an opportunity to add a sequel. It didn’t matter that that the new story was equally unbelievable. They knew that the media would report it as fact instead of questioning it.
Salisbury case was the reason that I dropped in here, and found it a good place, and stayed here, and learnt a lot.
It was the reason why I recalled my English lessons, participating in discussions and learnt even more.
Among the things I’ve learnt there were quotes, you may know them:
– Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
– History is written by the victors.
– The road to hell is often paved with good intentions.
Did you know all these quotes belong to the Berlin Diaries by William L. Shirer? There are some more quotes from him:
– Human beings, as I have always been able to observe in street crowds, are easily infected with panic.
– Propaganda feeds the masses with lies, creating a distorted reality.
– No one is immune to the grips of hatred and prejudice.
– The only way to stop the spread of evil is for a few brave individuals to stand up and resist.
– Evil can only triumph when good men and women choose to do nothing.
HI Tatyana,
also the title of Mackay’s book:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Same with me. 😀
I see Christopher Steele has been wheeled out on TV to trot out his already discredited dossier in the form of a new book of very old material. Without any shame he stated that it has all been proved correct..
Don’t forget the Toxic Dagger exercise that supposedly concluded shortly before the Skripals were taken ill.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/exercise-toxic-dagger-the-sharp-end-of-chemical-warfare
Re. Ken McCallum’s hair, I don’t know whether he dyes it but I always assumed the reason he sports such a comically back-combed and bouffed up style is because some English poshos said he had a low brow.
“Alex and Rus” may have looked in the coin dealer’s shop window, but they surely had another reason than interest in coins.
They are about as likely to be interested in coins as they are to have visited Salisbury out of an enthusiasm for clock.
Masterly review Craig, thank you once again.
“In the last week the Head of MI5 has solemnly assured us that Russia is attempting to launch chaos on the streets of the UK, and we are told by security service sources that the evil Ruskis plan to disrupt UK ambulances.
I am pretty sure Putin also has an evil plan to eat your grandmother.”
Presumably this would explain why our utterly ludicrous, way out of his depth, Prime Minister was recently on a one-man mission to start a war with Russia – yes, a real one, not the proxy one.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/16/keir-starmer-nato-ukraine-british-long-range-missiles-russia
Apparently that sane and decent chap Biden soon reined him in.
I dunno about eating anyone’s grandmother, but the line that Putin visited Tuva to take part in a shamanic ritual related to nuclear weapons has been spread far and wide in the British mainstream media, including in the Daily Heil, the Spectator, the Metro, the Times, and the Sun:
https://www.google.com/search?q=putin+tuva+shaman
Personally I would like to know whether he visited the island of Por-Bazhyn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Por-Bazhyn
Shoigu meanwhile collects Aztec sacrificial daggers. (Personally, although I doubt that either Putin or Shoigu want to eat anyone’s grandmother, I do have to admit that I am glad I am not knowingly acquainted with anyone who collects sacrificial daggers.)
As 31 October and the US election approach, there’s a strong feeling that it’s soon going to be a case of “here we go”. Watch out for Trump accusing Democrats of using black magic against him, for starters. He’s already halfway there, with what he has said about Megyn Kelly bleeding through her eyes at him, and Haitian people eating dogs and cats. Expect more.
Heh, my impression is this BS makes no real impression on the public. We’ve heard “Russia bad” all too often whilst knowing the British state is corrupt, mendacious & incompetent.
If the Russians tried to bugger up the system or the ambulance service. They might inadvertently improve it, at this point, given how badly run Britain is.
If this wasn’t so tragic it would merit a Black Comedy.
Two Russian Hitmen turn up on a drizzly/windy boring Sunday with a bucket full of Novichok to smear Mr Skripal’s door handle with a 4″ Paint Brush on the Storm Porch Handle (Yes – there were two doors – a Storm Porch Upvc and the inner door to the house – wood or Upvc?) and on a boring Sunday none of the neighbours noticed two Herberts in Hazmat Suits doing their thing. It makes no sense does it?
The pair it was reported turned off (by the way the only way to absolutely turn your mobile off is to take the battery out) both their mobiles in the morning of the day of poisoning (why?) in order to visit Mr Skripal’s Mother’s Grave in Salisbury.
So, we are asked to believe that whilst this was happening that the sneaky Russians smeared/walloped/plastered the door handle with Novichok willy-nilly, whilst not wearing any protection for themselves? This scenario is beyond crazy.
As far as Dawn and Charlie go we are asked to believe that Charlie dips a Charity Bin, finds what he thinks is perfume, opens the sealed packaging – connects the nozzle and gets IT all over his hands – washes his hands – still thinks Novichok smells like perfume? – and gives it to Dawn to spray all over her face?
Seriously?
Then the police look for days and find “Enough Novichok to wipe out thousands of lives” on the sink top? So, after Dawn fell ill, Charlie wrapped up the offending bottle and saved Salisbury from mass slaughter by leaving the dangerous stuff on top of the sink? Preposterous nonsense.
Ducks; Kids; Doors; CCTV (or lack of it); bin-dipping; mobiles off; Army Medics daughters; and my personal favourite – the colour of Yulia’s hair on the day (copper tone on arrival the day before – blonde according to some witnesses when seen on the bench) and her roots showing (ladies will know what I mean) when doing the Reuters stuff in an unknown location.
There is no doubt that all four were poisoned with something but three hours later – after a visit to the boozer, the restaurant and sitting on the bench in the Shopping Centre – is not the mark of Novichok poisoning. Proper Novichok will have you dead in minutes or less.
It’s utterly crazy.
Why the Skripals were nobbled and by whom – I have no idea.
But why Charlie and Dawn were picked on (set up?) two months takes on a different and sinister re-enforcement. That’s really nasty thing in my view.
But – if the PTB are sanguine about the atrocities in Gaza or Lebanon, what’s a couple of wastrels’ lives worth in the great scheme of things?
There’s not much point having an internal door made of UPVC. But maybe it was the original front door.
Brian Red.
You usually have a Storm Porch to protect a nice wooden door say with leaded lights.
A lot of people have two doors in Upvc. I used to fit them as my trade.
The point re: two doors is that if the Skripals returned at around noon after the dirty deed was done then the poison would possibly be on two doors and two handles/locks?
The police only took away the outside Storm Porch for questioning. And (I hear) sprayed the loft with something.
The main thing being that it is uncertain as to whether they came back to the house after visiting his wife’s ( ot his mother’s) grave?
The most plausible scenarion is that Sergei wanted to go back to Russia & handing over sensitive MI6 info from his job with them would’ve no doubt gained him entry back. MI6 got wind of the plan & poisoned the Skripals with fentanyl to stop him & detain him. The two Russian guys were there to assist in his escape & info exchange
And Nikolai Glushkov’s death?
And what about Dawn Sturgess?
The GRU may well have taken samples from the area because of Toxic Dagger. (That kind of thing is their job.)
How to add to that scenario though?
What Nursypants was carrying in her bag, I shudder to think. Will she be giving evidence? Not that there’s much point in hoping she’ll be asked some awkward questions, becsus
NBC exercises (ie. toxic dagger) do not use the real stuff, they use safe simulants, if they use anything physical at all. So there wouldn’t be anything to collect.
I think you’ve got it.
It’s that simple.
This is by Ian Proud. I am never quite sure how honest Proud is. Is it 50% of what he truly thinks or 90% or 100%?
Depending on who he is writing for.
He mentions Salisbury as a background and cause for difficulties for British Embassy personnel back when it happened.
“Britain is losing the spy game to Russia”
https://www.prouddiplomat.com/post/britain-is-losing-the-spy-game-to-russia
This one btw appeared in The Spectator. Which is why I think it´s so “sportive” in it´s POV as the final phrase sums up:
“We need a better plan for Russia expertise if we really want to outsmart Putin.”
In general he says what he usually does pointing out: GB lacking ever more RU expertise among the files and ranks of diplomatic staff.
One reason for me to question the degree of honesty is the fact that Proud´s book was vetted by MI-6 before publication. Now same was true for Short´s Putin biography either by self-censorship or other means.
“(…)
Most staff at the British Embassy in Moscow are also Russian, because of the Foreign Office’s model of employing less expensive local staff. That’s a good model in friendly nations. Less so in Moscow where the FSB has been known to harass locally employed Russian staff. When I left Moscow in February 2019, almost 90 per cent of the staff across the Russia and British Embassies were Russian. Add to that, a community of over 150,000 Russians in the UK against a small number of British expats in Russia.
There are seldom more than a few dozen diplomatically accredited Brits at our Embassy Moscow. After Salisbury, the loss of twenty-three colleagues cleaned out the political wing of the Embassy, leaving a few people like me, with mere months left on their postings, in a two for the price of one deal. Kicking out six political officers in August will have put a bit dent in the Embassy’s ability to function again. Where those officers liked to go jogging in Moscow is really a secondary issue. I took a lunchtime run from the Embassy once surrounded by a crowd of twenty agents, in one of the weirder stunts they pulled on me. The point is, it will take months for replacement staff to get diplomatic visas, if they ever do.
(…)”
If I recall correctly, our host had to submit his books for vetting ?
Well, see, I am fairly new to this business. On the other hand Proud hasn´t been kicked out and neither was he a whistleblower. But I am thankful for every bit of serious info. So Proud is part of the better half definitely.
Thank you for an entertaining summary of the vast farrago of deceit that was the Skripal Novichok fable. I’m surprised anyone has the temerity to display this linen in public but that’s the caliber of government agency we have these days.
I appreciate your restraint in avoiding the hundreds of permanently loose ends, logical conflicts, fantasy and dodgy evidence which would have added many pages to the account. Highlights might include the bizarre antics of the Russian “spies”, the totally compromised OPCW investigation, the curious exclusion of Skripal’s handler (the thoroughly debunked Mr. Steele), the vanishing of Sergei and Yulia, and of course the dead duck and those that were not, and the children who should have been ill but had no symptoms. It is, of course, a vast smokescreen. I can’t work out why anyone would bother? Did they just lose track of the narrative and then have to endlessly add patches to cover the holes in the inner tube? Surely there was an easier way to contribute a bit of Russophobia to help Hilary Clinton out of a tough spot as Muller closed in for the kill? Historians will be challenged to present a coherent account. Meanwhile, Dawn Sturgess deserves much better than to be an involuntary bit player in someone else’s very nasty snuff theatre.
Oops, Sergei’s handler was of course Pablo Millar. I think he was associated with the production of the Steele Dossier, but can’t confirm the source.
Yes he ran Steele and was Skripal’s case officer.
There is a theory that Sergei was milked for the dirt which went into the Steele dossier.
That he was disgusted, wanted to re-defect and offered the Russian the skinny on that dossier.
It is possible that we could look back on the Russophobia of 2024 as comparatively mild and rational. For an indication of where we may soon be heading recall the furore back in 2019 when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee in protest at racist brutality by US police.
Senator Kamala Harris of California informed Americans that his protest was due to “Russian bots”.
https://youtu.be/PJ7GI28ywCI?si=-ExHPKS9IzRa2FwI
I am reading the transcript of inquiry day 1, and for a gathering supposedly after facts, there seems to be a lot of speculation.
The alleged poisoners are “believed” to be members of the GRU. They are “believed” to have caught a Sunday morning train to Salisbury.
The movements of the Skripals that day do not start until 1:35pm, when a CCTV image of their BMW is seen driving towards Salisbury. I must conclude that the details of their whereabouts before this time are also official speculation i.e. unknown.
Sadly we cannot see the CCTV images presented to the inquiry, but the one of a man and a woman walking through a shopping centre is presumably the one which was argued about many years ago. I haven’t seen it recently, but after close inspection back then, I concluded it was definitely not the Skripals, but could possibly have been Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley.
The Skripals supposedly visited the graves of Skripal’s wife and son before driving into the town centre for lunch and either a pre prandial or post prandial pub visit – the before or after claim changed to better fit the story. Allegedly they turned off their mobiles that morning and put them into some kind of secure bag or similar technology to prevent their movements being traced. The official time line as relayed by the police and the government was forever changing.
Reading through all this analysis, and contemplating the different actors, brings up no clear plot line.
My favourite Russian spy was The Spy who came in from the Co-Op. When the police finally turned up on her doorstep to ask her a few questions she was just returning from shopping, at the age of 85, and she said, I’ve been expecting you. Her husband taught Physics at the local school and she worked as a secretary translator for the Civil Service. Both were Russian emigres, card carrying members of the Communist Party, and she handled communications with double agents in the nuclear program. She ensured that Russia was fully up level with British developments, and said she had done it for world peace, for detente.
As it was more than 30 years since she had retired and had had no more involvement she was found guilty and allowed to live at home. Such a very British civility and courtesy, back in the 1980s.
Corbyn would also have wanted peace and accord. The point is that he would, without doubt, have been elected Prime Minister without the intense media onslaught of lies and smears and newspaper headlines about killing him and photos of him in a coffin, or looking like a Russian against a red sky in his cotton cloth cap.
We didn’t know about the Israeli involvement then. Our concerns about the notion of a hierarchy of racism were incredulous and puzzled. Corbyn was totally anti racism in all its forms and he whole heartedly supports all factions of his North London constituency to get along together. He had his faults. Being a good person is not a common qualification for a Party Leader or a PM, and he could be very tedious in Prime Minister’s Questions, but Labour’s policies were wonderful, just as the Lib Dem policies had been before the Coalition Government scuppered so many of them.
Salisbury is something to do with this context: experimenting and creating a narrative with a purpose that might be clear to someone somewhere. Was it about preventing any change to the plans being made by the US in 2013 which are still playing out according to plan in Ukraine, and Israel concurrently? The Witch Hunt film about Mossad and Israeli Embassy control of the Labour Party reveals so much naive trust alongside the utter control they exerted in their efforts to remove Corbyn and his support within the Party. Israel was seen as a success story, of which British Jews were proud, and they saw UN support of its existence as ratification of its being right in its defence of its existence. The true horror was hidden all along, but live-streaming atrocities has changed that.
Most people would prefer not to know, I guess. Storm clouds on the horizon on an ordinary day. Everything has been underfunded and privatised by the last 14 years of greed and cuts to services. People have enough to worry about. The invisibility cloak over our democracy has left a stage of state actors holding a weak plot line together. But this microcosm of Salisbury is playing out before us now.
Wonderful comment Alyson,
I remember the “Spy who came in from the Coop” incident faintly…it was one of those strange news items that emerge suddenly and vanish quickly.. Quickly forgotten, but leaving in the minds of a few a suspicion that what happened was important if only we could bear it in mind for long enough to figure it out.
Dr David Kelly was a cover up re- no weapons found
as David Halpin said
video linki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv8wwe7TwiI
Most right thinking people cannot conceive that events like, for example, 911 was a false flag event in which their government was explicitly involved. Similarly, people cannot get their head around the possibility that David Kelly was actually murdered by the state with the explicit support of Tony Blair, jack straw and Alistair Campbell. It’s unbelievable but …
Oh, (according to O’Connor in the transcript) there seems to have been a change in the story of the two GRU agents in Christie Miller Road. They now appear to have gone there twice, and apparently their second visit almost coincided with the time the Skripals were leaving the house.
I’m not sure what alternative scenario the security establishment is trying to construct, but this new speculation adds a whole new dimension to the door handle story.
I looked back at the CCTV footage of the couple walking through the shopping centre, and they still appear to me to fit the Sturgess/Rowley dimensions, rather than Sergei and Yulia (who was quite short). The woman is carrying a large bright red bag, of which nothing seems to have been said in the official accounts, unless I missed it.
Of course, if the Russians were GRU, and if they were exchanging intelligence with Sergei, then there would have to be a ‘dead letter box’ nearby. And, MI6 would probably know this.
Very refreshing to revisit the Skripal saga. When current events are too intricate to follow, and the atmosphere too depressing, nothing like an old chestnut to bring back some pep.
Of course the official narrative is totally unbelievable. But as a former PM liked to say: “T.I.N.A.”
The Chief Nurse of the British Army was also involved in the strange case of the ebola infected nurse sent to a Scottish primary school.
RIP Alex Salmond he never sold out.
Before reading comments I believed it was great recollection and summary.
I forgot all other ridiculous stuff mentioned by commentators.
Txs everyone.
I have been following this blog and comments obsessively since the Scripal adventure.
This inquiry is becoming like Alice In Wonderland i.e. “curiouser and curiouser”. O’Connor stated yesterday (I assume he is reading from the official security services script) –
“So Petrov and Boshirov arrive back at the station for the second time at a little after 4.30 in the afternoon. On this occasion they got on a train and travelled back to Waterloo, having spent over two hours in Salisbury. Sergei and Yulia Skripal did not arrive back at Christie Miller Road until several hours after that, at about 7.30 that evening”
What? I thought Sergei and Yulia had been airlifted to hospital that evening?
For me it’s more like Fools and horses.
Del boy and Rodney & co.
I find this story extremely stupid and overcomplicated.
In fact, it would be much easier to hire a marginal person who would shoot two people on a park bench in broad daylight. Let him steal the wallet and it would pass for a robbery. I think it would not have cost me more than a couple of thousand dollars.
Broken brakes in the car and a fatal car accident would not have cost me a penny.
And, with no international scandal, I could have simply strangled Sergei in a prison cell in Russia, instead of releasing him to the UK.
In the Skripal case there are too many grotesque details, as if forcibly pulled together, but having no logical connection with each other. Like in a bad spy novel by an amateur.
I imagine a lot of the intellectually stunted types who are recruited by the SS spend a lot of time watching spy movies and reading spy stories, they then fantasise their roles. They also like ‘the enemy’ to know what they do and how clever they are. Spooks tend to be very sick people, IMO.
I try and keep an open mind about these things but as soon as Pears Morgaine appears working the comments like a deranged Trojan, i know the whole thing is utter bollox. Thanks Pears!
You should wait for JD Redux opinion to place a safe bet 😀
Most comical of all, didn’t Boris Johnson stand up in the House of Commons and claim to be in possession of a GRU assassination manual, detailing how to apply Novichok to doorknobs?
I wonder if that textbook also taught how to apply Novichok to Navalny’s underwear?
1. catch a Navalny.
2. pull his pants down.
3. make sure he has underwear on that you can smear a deadly nerve agent on.
4. do it now.
5. let Navalny go.
6. make sure you are not being followed.
7. use wet wipes to clean your hands.
Foggy memory but sounds familiar.
Maybe I am mixing with Bibi presentation of Iranian
Nuclear bomb manuals at the UN.😊
No obvious motive.
No witnesses claim to have seen the GRU agents in Skripal’s road let alone outside his house.
I think the government claimed that the GRU agents had earlier made a reconnaissance trip. This is problematic because putting something on a door handle does not require precision timing. It would not matter if they got delayed.
Why not just shoot him?
Skripal, I believe, had spied for money rather than for ideological reasons. He reportedly was broadly in agreement with Putin on foreign policy issues according to some articles that I read once on the inside pages of The Observer.
John Pilger suggested on RT that this might be a ‘false flag’ operation. For this, and other reasons, we are no longer allowed to see RT.
Cui bono (who benefits)?
People who profit from fear of Russia would certainly benefit from this.
Wonderful, really wonderful.
This article was aptly warning us about the creeping RUSSOPHOBIA that’s attacking our very existence.
But thanks to an unbiased observer such as Tatyana, seconded by countless others, we are now developing the most effective countermeasures.
RUSSOPHILIA, here we come! We couldn’t care less about the Skripals, dead or alive. We make the truth as we please. And you’d better believe it!
I already gave here a link to GG’s love address a few days back, so consider watching it again, with or without a hat…
Now, we’re ready for the next chestnut, unless we decide on more urgent matters…
Are you presenting yourself as unbiased, fair and reasonable truthteller? You are the person who told me that Russia and China are just as responsible for the genocide in Gaza as the western governments supplying all the tools for the slaughter.
Prompt gatekeeper. I don’t think I ever called myself by any such compliment, but since you know better, I don’t think I feel like contradicting.
Hair of the dog !
Play the ball, not the man, as they say!
BTW I love China
Tatyana never pretended to someone else.
She was providing interesting information over the years. Some info you take in, some you discard, and sometimes you debate in a polite way.
CM is far away from being a Russofile.
Attacking Tatyana for being Russian and biased is playing the (wo)man not the ball.
Btw GG rant was great and spot on.
Shame you didn’t provide a link.
For sure Ruskis are creating a mayhem in the UK and USA.
We lived in harmony until those Russians started interfering.
CM in one post while ago accused Tatyana of being
“Team Tatyana”.
I vividly remember my comment about Team Tatyana being polite in me arguing with “them”.
What I like about team Tatyana is consistency.
No contradictory facts, whether I agree with them or not.
I’m now fully convinced that you’re right.
About what?
Tatyana being Russian or you not playing the ball or CM not being a Russofile?
I am not 100% sure about “team Tatyana”!
What your sarcasm refers to?
some people are simply impossible to convince. They themselves do not seek to be convinced, they are quite comfortable in their personal belief system. This is the character – personal convictions are above logical arguments.
I think that there should be many such people in the West, where religion has not ceased to contribute to the mentality of society. And fewer in Russia, where several generations have grown up in 70 years of atheistic communism.
At first I was angry, but now I don’t care. I only regret that the moderation deletes personal attacks, otherwise over the years I would have saved a large collection. You can’t imagine how stupid and funny this looks to me, because I know exactly who I am. I would amuse myself by rereading from time to time.
If it hurts, don’t rub it in.
Better ask Craig whether he considers himself a ‘russofile’ or not.
Sorry for the delay in responding!
Wilshire
Even if CM confirmed to me I will not believe him.
Only on a few issues over the years he was giving benefit of a doubt to RF.
He was closer to being labelled Russophobe than Russofile.
Not believing that something happened the way we are told doesn’t mean you support or love the criminal.
For example I don’t believe 9/11 happened as they say. Am I Islamofile?
Am I terrorist supporter? I am “militant” atheist 😏.
What happened I don’t have a clue!
Certainly a highly choreographed day 1 of the Inquiry with McCallum having appeared in front of the curtain a few days ago to soften up any members of the public who might be remotely interested to hear about big bad Russia and Rasputin Putin – he likes poison did you know? I agree with others, the narrative, which we all by now know from previous accounts and blogs, is so pat as to be totally incredible.
The strategy of the Mansfield team acting on behalf of the benighted Dawn Sturgess seems one of making the narrative even more egregious – Adam Straw came across as the most Russia hating character so far – and Mansfield kept referring to “Putin and his henchman”.
Presumably this is done to make the contradictions in the official narrative even bigger to strengthen their central claim of gross negligence on the part of the government and to get more compensation for the Sturgess family.
There was Sergei in his witness statements saying that he was just living a normal life in a quiet cul – de – sac with a lot of ex – police people who looked out for each other (but none of whom evidently were out washing their cars on the Sunday morning in question) without any fear for his safety and no special house security. Travelling around Europe, family happily going to and coming from Russia. Could n’t conceive of being harmed by his ex – GMU colleagues although FSB a different matter.
Delusional, state of false security says Mansfield – the government should have known that he was actually a high security risk and done something about it to prevent it. He will no doubt continue with this line of argument but within the context of a general presumption of Russian guilt and no defence allowed. No doubt the Sturgess family will eventually receive a bob or two and make it a win win all round for the British establishment.
This whole saga is a farce concocted by the UK government from the get go, it is not known if the Scripals are alive or dead, hence the Judge not allowing them to testify [laughingly because of safety concerns]
“The six-year proceeding is due to close by Christmas. By then it will have violated every rule in British court practice on the admissibility of evidence. .
No testimony by the Skripals has been allowed by Hughes. Instead, he has decided that the police, MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service will publish their version of what the Skripals said during interviews they were obliged to give without legal representation in 2018”.
https://johnhelmer.net/over-by-christmas-timetable-just-announced-for-the-british-governments-novichok-trial-in-kangaroo-court/
This was linked up thread by Crispa. See also other posts by John Helmer on this matter.
The BBC have an article – ‘Novichok family ‘comfort’ that no-one else died ‘. It heads with a black and white photo of Dawn Sturgess. To me her face looks like it has been pasted on the body And there’s a different quality to the face compared with the clothes and the background.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to feed this report and all the comments into an AI program and then ask: “what really happened ?”
Maybe 1,000 years later the answer will pop out: 42.
Stevie Boy, you are probably closer to the truth than you think. In fact, in a number of years time I expect all this spook generated nonsense will have been fed into an AI version of Wikipedia, and younger generations will take the answers as gospel.
Charlie Rowley is an interesting chap. According to yesterday’s inquiry account he spilled some of the ‘perfume’ fluid on himself while connecting the spray attachment to the bottle. However, he quickly washed his hands with soap and water before giving the perfume to Dawn Sturgess.
I may not be the world’s smartest sleuth, but is that the natural reaction of someone who spills what he believes to be perfume over his hands? And if it looked or smelled rather dodgy, why carry on and let your partner spray it on herself?
Presumably this fiction was thought up as a way of satisfying those who question why he survived and his partner didn’t?
There again. If I spilled Perfume or After Shave on my hands I would also quickly wash them otherwise you risk spending the rest of the day smelling like a ‘tart’s boudoir’. Assuming his innocence raises the question what actually killed her.
Phew, we can save an awfull lot on Chemical Weapons protective gear.
Replace all that expense and military training with plastic sign:
In case of Chemical WMDs
” PLEASE WASH HANDS”
🙂
nothing really happened there.
Another staging for political purposes – to prevent the rapprochement of Europe and Russia, namely to intensify the confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Look at the timeline:
– after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Russia-NATO council was established. We help each other in the fight against terrorism and cooperate in every possible way to reduce tensions.
– in 2008, Georgia attacks Ossetia, Russia is blamed. NATO stops the work of the coordination bodies.
– in 2009, work resumes
– in 2014, we stop again, NATO did not like the unification of Crimea with Russia
– in 2016, we resume
– in 2018, the “Skripals are poisoned” and cooperation stops. NATO moves to Ukraine, closer to Russian border.
– in December 2021, I try to draw Mr. Murray’s attention to the events around the Russia-NATO treaty, a potential security system was discussed there. And literally a couple of months later, the war does happen.
The new round of events around the Skripals is most likely intended to draw NATO into a war with Russia.
After all, to maintain such a massive military alliance and line certain people’s pockets with taxpayers’ money, you need some kind of threat, don’t you?
Too many are eating too much from that trough to allow us to coexist peacefully.
Victor Suvorov [ nom de plume of Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezan ] wrote a book about the GRU called ‘ Aquarium’. He defected and acc.to Wiki lives in or around Bristol. The book tells the reader that the punishment for turning traitor is very heavy, to say the least. Apparently he’s been in the UK since 1978. One wonders why he’s not been got, if it’s so simple to eliminate a defector.
Not wishing to affect your good blog Craig…but add if I may as previously you were kind of cross posting I seem to recall-?-that Rob Slane’s 6 articles still seem to be available on offguardian, wikispooks and Intel Today… e.g. Joining up the dots in the Skripal Case tying up the loose ends. Pt 6. Hope people can download them for future reference as surely this “event” is not over yet and could run for years