DIS remain rather more attached to the truth than MI6, so when Defence Minister Gavin Williamson tweeted out a thrilled endorsement of Bellingcat’s work on Colonel Chepiga, DIS urgently advised that he delete it. Which he did.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/spy-games/
Which is not to say DIS are sure it is not Chepiga; rather they believe – as would anyone with half a brain – that the Bellingcat photo falls a long way short of proof. The British security services have been unable to stand up the ID with facial recognition technology. The experts are describing the Boshirov/Chepiga identification as “possible”.
I have this information from an impeccable Whitehall source, who told me there is a concern in the security services that runs like this. They genuinely believe Boshirov and Petrov are GRU agents and the would-be assassins. (I judge that my source themself believes the security services really do think this). Bellingcat, while they are sometimes fed security service material, did not in fact get fed the Chepiga material by the CIA or MI6, whether or not through a cutout. The security services are worried the Chepiga ID may be a blind alley fed to Bellingcat’s sources by the FSB. If the UK government endorses it, this could be followed by the Russians producing Chepiga and apparently discrediting the entire British narrative.
Hence the fact no charge has been laid against Chepiga, and the charges are still in the name of “Boshirov”, plus the fact that no British minister or official has named Chepiga, with only the fool Williamson stepping out of line and being slapped down.
Please note I am not endorsing the views and beliefs of the British intelligence services; I am reporting them.
Russia is fascinating at the moment. Komsomolskaya Pravda reports Ministry of Interior identification experts unofficially endorsing the Chepiga/Boshirov identity. Now there is no way these experts in the Ministry of the Interior – who would not be hard for the authorities to single out – would have done that for Komsomolskaya Pravda without an official nod. Either the Russians are indeed egging on the British into a false identification, or some inter-agency rivalry is afoot in Russia. This follows on the very open report in Kommersant – which is very close to Putin – that opinion was divided in Chepiga’s home village.
None of which brings us an awful lot closer to the truth of what happened in Salisbury, which I suspect is a great deal more complicated than any official narrative. But it is a fascinating peek into a shadowy world most people never see inside, with which I was once familiar. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
An Israeli expert on international terrorism, writer Alexander Brass, shared his view on the case of the Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. Brass draws parallels between the work of the special services of Israel and Russia – he believes that if to compare the British version with the practice of the special agents, then the absurdity becomes obvious.
“Alexander, so what, in your opinion, happened in Salisbury?”
-There was a rough provocation by the British special services. In my opinion, this is obvious.
– Why do you think so?
“There’s a lot of stupidity on stupidity.” The story with Petrov and Boshirov does not hold up any professional peer review. According to the Brits, the Skripals were poisoned by GRU agents (this is what the department is called, although this is now the Main Directorate of the RF General Staff).
I want to explain how the special services work. If you need someone to eliminate, then this is a very serious operation, which is being prepared for a long time. A very significant material and human resource is allocated. We are talking about dozens of employees. On the territory of this state, an “advanced command post” is being created.
In the operation, a technical support group, a logistic group, a cover group, an external surveillance group and a group of performers are involved.
The performers themselves appear at the very last moment. They do not go anywhere, lighting up on cameras, do not use public transport, but move on rented cars, which they do not rent themselves. And the more they will not stop in hotels, but will live on safe houses provided by the logistics group.
Such groups do not come under the passport of their country, do not go to the embassy for obtaining a visa, leaving fingerprints. This is complete nonsense. Professionals do not work that way.
If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, leave their fingerprints there, get a visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies’ detective novels.
– Maybe it is unprofessionalism associated with the degradation and decay, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union took place in all structures and institutions of society, including in the special services? Lost skills, methods, no one to teach young people. There is such an opinion.
– This is an opinion at the level of kitchen conversations. Where did the armed forces and the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation manage to raise such a “bardak” to such a level as they could organize the World Cup and the Olympics at such a high level? The GRU has always been and remains one of the most professional and most intelligent intelligence agencies in the world.
If the GRU decided to eliminate Skripal, then I have a question: why was the “Novichok” used? This is not a remedy, it’s a chemical weapon of mass destruction. It’s like dropping an atomic bomb on a city to kill one criminal. When special services eliminate an object, they always try to do it so that no autopsy shows that he was poisoned.
– Can you give examples?
– I can give many examples. In 1978, the well-known international terrorist Vadia Haddad, one of the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed. “Mossad” did not take responsibility for this, but sewed in a bag you can not hide. A potent biological poison was mixed with chocolate. Within three months he died of a painful and incomprehensible illness in the GDR clinic. His autopsy was conducted at the University of East Berlin. No trace of poison was found. The doctors assumed that he died of leukemia.
– How did you know that he was killed by Mossad?
– Information about this began to leak a few years ago. It came from Algeria. One of the former Mossad agents during another trial gave evidence that he witnessed how this happened, calling the specific names of the performers. This man also confirmed that he was a participant in this operation. This information was also confirmed by other, non-overlapping sources.
– Were there any cases when the Mossad operation ended unsuccessfully and the enemies of Israel were still alive?
– Take the last unsuccessful attempt of the Israelis to kill Khaled Mashaal, one of the leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas. He would have been killd if he had not been given an antidote at the last minute.
Everything happened on September 25, 1997 on one of the streets of Amman – the capital of Jordan. Just some passer-by, who was next to Mashaal, “accidentally” stumbled and splashed the liquid from the can of Coke to his neck. The next day Mashal would have died of a heart attack, and no traces. But the performers were seized on the spot. After that, the King of Jordan Hussein demanded that Israel provide an antidote, and in return promised to release Israeli agents.
– That is, substances that leave no traces are not detected by expertise and imitate death from the disease, the secret services have long been known?
– That’s it. Could the GRU not have been able to use some other poison, and not the “Novichok”, which leaves traces everywhere? If such technologies were in the special services already in the 1950s, do not the GRU have them today?
Let’s talk about the cameras. The UK on this some kind of fad. In no country in the world there is such a number of surveillance cameras per capita.
If I’m not mistaken, about one camera for 15 people. Literally every meter is looked through. MI5, the British counterintelligence service, is considered one of the best in the world. And if Britain took care of Skripal, he was very well guarded. At least his house was hung with all the cameras, which are only possible.
If, according to MI5, these agents visited Salisbury, they came to the house of Skripal and coated the door handle with this substance – so show the records from the cameras! How can it be that it was at this point that the cameras suddenly turned off?
“But maybe these agents found the cameras and turned them off?”
“If you say that the GRU has deteriorated so badly that it has lit up everywhere and left its mark, why did this degraded intelligence agency manage to turn off the surveillance cameras near the Skripal house at the right time?” Where is the logic?
– When our agents killed the Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar, they got caught and were captured by the local police. True, they carried out the task …
“And how many Israeli agents were arrested?” This does not mean degradation. I do not know what happened after the collapse of the USSR in the GRU, but I know what happened in the Foreign Intelligence Service, since I had been friends with one of the very high-ranking officers of this service for many years in retirement. We had very close, friendly relations with him for many years. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago.
He told me that the degradation of the special services is only an appearance. He retired, because he already had years of service and he did not agree with the mess that was going on in the country. But there was no mess in the secret services! Who wanted to – left. But was there a leak of information? Have they discovered an agent network? Agents of Soviet special services worked all over the world. Have any of them suffered? No one. The mess can be anywhere, but not in the special services.
– Let’s admit. All this really looks strange – first let out Skripal, then kill him. Would not it be easier to just leave him in jail?
– Now about the personality of Sergei Skripal himself. The main version, which is voiced by the British side, is revenge. But in special services there is no such thing as revenge. Neither the Israelis, nor the Russians. Only the Cubans had it. We must understand that the special services are a very practical organization. Why revenge? A person is eliminated only when he can cause real harm. The Skripal has already done harm. He could not do more harm.
– For example, as a lesson to other potential traitors, no?
– No. I once asked my acquaintances who worked in your special services (I have never had any contact with active staff, only with retirees): “Why did not Kalugin be killed?” And they answered me with a counter question: “Why haven’t you eliminated the defector? “I said: he has already done harm. To eliminate him, it is necessary to develop a very serious operation, to send people, people should risk their lives. For the sake of what – for the sake of revenge? They say: “For the same reason, we do not touch Kalugin and do not touch anyone.” Israelis are not even exterminated by former terrorists. At the moment when the terrorist stops terrorist activities, regardless of what he did before, he is left alone. The only ones who were persecuted to the end were Nazi criminals.
– There is an opinion that he was eliminated because he taught at the counterintelligence school and taught young employees how to deal with the GRU.
– And what, in MI5, except for Skripal, no one knows how to do it? I think they know it better than him.
– In such cases, there is a very simple practice. When Skripal was taken on treason, he probably was intelligibly explained: either you go to life imprisonment and you will be in solitary confinement somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, or you will receive 12 years of strict regime in the European part of Russia. But for this, you must fully tell what you have handed over, and give evidence. To cooperate with the investigation.
Similarly, when the former colonel of the Defense Intelligence of Israel’s Defense Intelligence Department, I did not name him, went into business and got into debt.
He went to Lebanon to buy heroin and conduct a drug deal, and was captured by Hezbollah. He told everything he knew, inflicting enormous damage to Israel’s defense capability. Because he was an officer on this site, he worked for Lebanon.
The Israelis exchanged him, they pulled him out. He was told: let’s make a deal. You will not be prosecuted. But you must thoroughly, in every detail, tell what you told them. We need to know what they know. The same was with Skripal. And there was simply no need to eliminate him.
– So there was no motive for Russian special services?
– There was no motive. Then, imagine: they used “Novichok”, they carried it with them in a bottle from under the perfume. In the practice of special services this does not exist. Performers go light, with other people’s passports. They receive weapons on the spot. And when such a group of liquidators works, it works autonomously, without affecting the local residency. In case of failure, do not harm the residence. When the surveillance is working and the capture team is working, they do not know each other in person, they communicate only through certain communication channels.
– The question is also why the poison did not act instantly, and Skripal was still wandering about for a few hours.
– It’s a different matter. The British are so disrespectful to Russia that even provocation can not be done at a decent level. It’s even humiliating. Therefore, Russia does not comment on this in any way. And why is it necessary to comment on some kind of nonsense?
It took half a year to Brits to find the “suspects.” Although they left their full personal data and fingerprints in the embassy when they received visas. This is a separate nonsense. Then Russia said: please! Here they are, here’s their interview. If they were active GRU officers, they would not have left their fingerprints in the embassy for anything.
“Who are they?”
– I do not know who they are, but certainly not employees of special services. If the GRU needed to kill Skripal, he would now be dead. This would have been done quietly and without scandal.
“Why Britain needs this?”
– This is a well-thought-out strategy of demonization and international isolation of Russia. In the UK, as in the rest of the Western world, everything works very simply. Most people do not read newspapers at all. And those who read, do not understand half. But everyone sees the headlines. Provocation with the Skripals is needed to exclude the Russian Federation from the Commission for Investigating the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria. This is a minimum program.
Tags: EU; Russia; Skripal case; UK
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
An Israeli expert on international terrorism, writer Alexander Brass, shared his view on the case of the Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. Brass draws parallels between the work of the special services of Israel and Russia – he believes that if to compare the British version with the practice of the special agents, then the absurdity becomes obvious.
“Alexander, so what, in your opinion, happened in Salisbury?”
-There was a rough provocation by the British special services. In my opinion, this is obvious.
– Why do you think so?
“There’s a lot of stupidity on stupidity.” The story with Petrov and Boshirov does not hold up any professional peer review. According to the Brits, the Skripals were poisoned by GRU agents (this is what the department is called, although this is now the Main Directorate of the RF General Staff).
I want to explain how the special services work. If you need someone to eliminate, then this is a very serious operation, which is being prepared for a long time. A very significant material and human resource is allocated. We are talking about dozens of employees. On the territory of this state, an “advanced command post” is being created.
In the operation, a technical support group, a logistic group, a cover group, an external surveillance group and a group of performers are involved.
The performers themselves appear at the very last moment. They do not go anywhere, lighting up on cameras, do not use public transport, but move on rented cars, which they do not rent themselves. And the more they will not stop in hotels, but will live on safe houses provided by the logistics group.
Such groups do not come under the passport of their country, do not go to the embassy for obtaining a visa, leaving fingerprints. This is complete nonsense. Professionals do not work that way.
If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, leave their fingerprints there, get a visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies’ detective novels.
– Maybe it is unprofessionalism associated with the degradation and decay, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union took place in all structures and institutions of society, including in the special services? Lost skills, methods, no one to teach young people. There is such an opinion.
– This is an opinion at the level of kitchen conversations. Where did the armed forces and the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation manage to raise such a “bardak” to such a level as they could organize the World Cup and the Olympics at such a high level? The GRU has always been and remains one of the most professional and most intelligent intelligence agencies in the world.
If the GRU decided to eliminate Skripal, then I have a question: why was the “Novichok” used? This is not a remedy, it’s a chemical weapon of mass destruction. It’s like dropping an atomic bomb on a city to kill one criminal. When special services eliminate an object, they always try to do it so that no autopsy shows that he was poisoned.
– Can you give examples?
– I can give many examples. In 1978, the well-known international terrorist Vadia Haddad, one of the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed. “Mossad” did not take responsibility for this, but sewed in a bag you can not hide. A potent biological poison was mixed with chocolate. Within three months he died of a painful and incomprehensible illness in the GDR clinic. His autopsy was conducted at the University of East Berlin. No trace of poison was found. The doctors assumed that he died of leukemia.
– How did you know that he was killed by Mossad?
– Information about this began to leak a few years ago. It came from Algeria. One of the former Mossad agents during another trial gave evidence that he witnessed how this happened, calling the specific names of the performers. This man also confirmed that he was a participant in this operation. This information was also confirmed by other, non-overlapping sources.
– Were there any cases when the Mossad operation ended unsuccessfully and the enemies of Israel were still alive?
– Take the last unsuccessful attempt of the Israelis to kill Khaled Mashaal, one of the leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas. He would have been killd if he had not been given an antidote at the last minute.
Everything happened on September 25, 1997 on one of the streets of Amman – the capital of Jordan. Just some passer-by, who was next to Mashaal, “accidentally” stumbled and splashed the liquid from the can of Coke to his neck. The next day Mashal would have died of a heart attack, and no traces. But the performers were seized on the spot. After that, the King of Jordan Hussein demanded that Israel provide an antidote, and in return promised to release Israeli agents.
– That is, substances that leave no traces are not detected by expertise and imitate death from the disease, the secret services have long been known?
– That’s it. Could the GRU not have been able to use some other poison, and not the “Novichok”, which leaves traces everywhere? If such technologies were in the special services already in the 1950s, do not the GRU have them today?
Let’s talk about the cameras. The UK on this some kind of fad. In no country in the world there is such a number of surveillance cameras per capita.
If I’m not mistaken, about one camera for 15 people. Literally every meter is looked through. MI5, the British counterintelligence service, is considered one of the best in the world. And if Britain took care of Skripal, he was very well guarded. At least his house was hung with all the cameras, which are only possible.
If, according to MI5, these agents visited Salisbury, they came to the house of Skripal and coated the door handle with this substance – so show the records from the cameras! How can it be that it was at this point that the cameras suddenly turned off?
“But maybe these agents found the cameras and turned them off?”
“If you say that the GRU has deteriorated so badly that it has lit up everywhere and left its mark, why did this degraded intelligence agency manage to turn off the surveillance cameras near the Skripal house at the right time?” Where is the logic?
– When our agents killed the Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar, they got caught and were captured by the local police. True, they carried out the task …
“And how many Israeli agents were arrested?” This does not mean degradation. I do not know what happened after the collapse of the USSR in the GRU, but I know what happened in the Foreign Intelligence Service, since I had been friends with one of the very high-ranking officers of this service for many years in retirement. We had very close, friendly relations with him for many years. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago.
He told me that the degradation of the special services is only an appearance. He retired, because he already had years of service and he did not agree with the mess that was going on in the country. But there was no mess in the secret services! Who wanted to – left. But was there a leak of information? Have they discovered an agent network? Agents of Soviet special services worked all over the world. Have any of them suffered? No one. The mess can be anywhere, but not in the special services.
– Let’s admit. All this really looks strange – first let out Skripal, then kill him. Would not it be easier to just leave him in jail?
– Now about the personality of Sergei Skripal himself. The main version, which is voiced by the British side, is revenge. But in special services there is no such thing as revenge. Neither the Israelis, nor the Russians. Only the Cubans had it. We must understand that the special services are a very practical organization. Why revenge? A person is eliminated only when he can cause real harm. The Skripal has already done harm. He could not do more harm.
– For example, as a lesson to other potential traitors, no?
– No. I once asked my acquaintances who worked in your special services (I have never had any contact with active staff, only with retirees): “Why did not Kalugin be killed?” And they answered me with a counter question: “Why haven’t you eliminated the defector? “I said: he has already done harm. To eliminate him, it is necessary to develop a very serious operation, to send people, people should risk their lives. For the sake of what – for the sake of revenge? They say: “For the same reason, we do not touch Kalugin and do not touch anyone.” Israelis are not even exterminated by former terrorists. At the moment when the terrorist stops terrorist activities, regardless of what he did before, he is left alone. The only ones who were persecuted to the end were Nazi criminals.
– There is an opinion that he was eliminated because he taught at the counterintelligence school and taught young employees how to deal with the GRU.
– And what, in MI5, except for Skripal, no one knows how to do it? I think they know it better than him.
– In such cases, there is a very simple practice. When Skripal was taken on treason, he probably was intelligibly explained: either you go to life imprisonment and you will be in solitary confinement somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, or you will receive 12 years of strict regime in the European part of Russia. But for this, you must fully tell what you have handed over, and give evidence. To cooperate with the investigation.
Similarly, when the former colonel of the Defense Intelligence of Israel’s Defense Intelligence Department, I did not name him, went into business and got into debt.
He went to Lebanon to buy heroin and conduct a drug deal, and was captured by Hezbollah. He told everything he knew, inflicting enormous damage to Israel’s defense capability. Because he was an officer on this site, he worked for Lebanon.
The Israelis exchanged him, they pulled him out. He was told: let’s make a deal. You will not be prosecuted. But you must thoroughly, in every detail, tell what you told them. We need to know what they know. The same was with Skripal. And there was simply no need to eliminate him.
– So there was no motive for Russian special services?
– There was no motive. Then, imagine: they used “Novichok”, they carried it with them in a bottle from under the perfume. In the practice of special services this does not exist. Performers go light, with other people’s passports. They receive weapons on the spot. And when such a group of liquidators works, it works autonomously, without affecting the local residency. In case of failure, do not harm the residence. When the surveillance is working and the capture team is working, they do not know each other in person, they communicate only through certain communication channels.
– The question is also why the poison did not act instantly, and Skripal was still wandering about for a few hours.
– It’s a different matter. The British are so disrespectful to Russia that even provocation can not be done at a decent level. It’s even humiliating. Therefore, Russia does not comment on this in any way. And why is it necessary to comment on some kind of nonsense?
It took half a year to Brits to find the “suspects.” Although they left their full personal data and fingerprints in the embassy when they received visas. This is a separate nonsense. Then Russia said: please! Here they are, here’s their interview. If they were active GRU officers, they would not have left their fingerprints in the embassy for anything.
“Who are they?”
– I do not know who they are, but certainly not employees of special services. If the GRU needed to kill Skripal, he would now be dead. This would have been done quietly and without scandal.
“Why Britain needs this?”
– This is a well-thought-out strategy of demonization and international isolation of Russia. In the UK, as in the rest of the Western world, everything works very simply. Most people do not read newspapers at all. And those who read, do not understand half. But everyone sees the headlines. Provocation with the Skripals is needed to exclude the Russian Federation from the Commission for Investigating the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria. This is a minimum program.
Tags: EU; Russia; Skripal case; UK
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Mary Dejevsky @IndyVoices
Wednesday 10 October 2018 11:15
It is now more than seven months since assassins from Russia’s military intelligence service tried to kill a former double agent and his daughter with a nerve agent in Salisbury. Or did they? The only incontrovertible fact in that assertion is the location, Salisbury. Pretty much everything else remains speculative.
The Skripal case has troubled me since the first news broke in March. It is not the improbability of what was reported to have happened – improbable things are the stuff of news. It is rather the mixture of utter certainty, unsubstantiated claims and glaring information gaps that is so disconcerting, from the immediate rush by UK officials to blame the Russian state, to the way the main figures in this drama have simply vanished, and now to the contradictions that have gained blithe, and almost universal, acceptance.
When the Metropolitan Police showed the passports of two Russians they believed to be the assassins, they strongly hinted that the names on the documents were false. The invitation to establish their real names was taken up by investigative organisation Bellingcat, which has now – amid a blizzard of documentation, seductive reference to “open source” techniques, and not a little help from Russian whistleblowers – come up with what it says are their real identities.
One of them is Colonel Anatoly Chepiga; the other is a medically qualified agent called Alexander Mishkin, and both have received state honours from President Putin.
What’s so suspect about this, you may ask. Well, let’s start with Bellingcat, which has presented itself in the past as a microcosm of well-meaning and very British amateurishness, based in a Leicestershire bedroom, producing results that put the professional sleuths to shame. In fact, Bellingcat has grown rather a lot beyond its shoestring origins. It has money – where from? It has been hiring staff. It has transatlantic connections. It has never, so far as I am aware, reached any conclusion – whether on the downing of the Malaysian plane over eastern Ukraine, or chemical weapons use in Syria, or now, with the Skripals – that is in any way inconvenient to the UK or US authorities.
That need not cast doubt on its findings. But should the authenticity of the documents it cites not be subject, at very least, to the same scrutiny as might be applied to other evidence? And when, as this week, UK officials say they do not “dispute” Bellingcat’s identification of Chepiga and Mishkin, does this not prompt a few questions about whether, say, our “agencies” reached the same conclusions long ago, but kept quiet, or why most of the UK’s media apparently find Bellingcat a more trustworthy source than the UK intelligence services (possible answer: Iraq)? Might not the group’s good name be being used to get information into the public domain that officials do not want to vouch for? And, if so, would this be to inform, or to mislead?
What else do I find troubling? How about the UK and US focus on Russian military intelligence, still referred to as the GRU? I don’t recall any specific Soviet or Russian agency being so clearly fingered in this way before. Accusations might have been levelled at the KGB – or its Russian successor, the FSB – but this was usually in a generic, not specific, sense. Why the change?
Read more
GRU doctor ‘sent to Salisbury to administer novichok antidote’
Second suspect in Sergei and Yulia Skripal poisoning identified
Why the man accused of the Skripal poisoning is the ‘hero of Russia’
Putin calls poisoned Russian spy Skripal ‘a traitor and a scumbag’
What next for UK-Russia relations after unveiling of Skripal suspect?
The implausible claims made by Russians accused of novichok attack
The conspiracy theories about the Skripals which might be true
It could be, of course, because the UK knows for certain that it was the GRU that targeted the Skripals. But it could equally be that officials simply assumed this because the GRU was Sergei Skripal’s agency, or because the GRU was already in the dock in the US for alleged involvement in hacking. Or it could be because it sounds much scarier than just saying “intelligence”, or even – though I concede this is unlikely – to make clear to Vladimir Putin that we are not blaming him, because the GRU was never “his” agency.
But there is a big contradiction here. On the one hand, the GRU is being presented as a bunch of duffers, whose decorated and highly qualified agents were booked into an east London dive, behaved badly, were deterred by a bit of snow, abysmally failed in their mission, and now face the wrath of Putin. On the other hand, we are told that the GRU is the crème de la crème of state agencies, that Russia is mighty and malevolent and that we should be very, very afraid. Which is it?
Lastly, let’s consider the connections that the UK public is being encouraged to make. Between the two Bellingcat identifications of Chepiga and Mishkin, a clutch of western states, including the UK and the US, came out with a coordinated condemnation of specific cases of Russian cyber-espionage. One related to the chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, back in April; another to the World Anti-Doping Agency in Switzerland. All this was presented to the UK public at least in the context of the Skripal case.
But there is a broader and more obvious explanation for Russia’s “behaviour” here – which is that, whether in sport or in matters of chemical weapons, the western allies have closed ranks to exclude Russia from information it is entitled to as a member of these international organisations. In such circumstances, wouldn’t you try to find out what was going on? Might you not also wonder why an apparent attack in an English city was being treated not as a crime – so a police matter – but as “the first use of a chemical weapon in Europe since the Second World War”, which allowed it to be immediately shut behind the impenetrable wall that supposedly protects UK intelligence and state security?
And the point that troubles me. For all the “revelations” of recent days, we are no further forward in knowing what happened to the Skripals – or to Dawn Sturgess, who remains the only person to have died, or to her partner, Charlie Rowley, who has now, like the Skripals and Detective Constable Nick Bailey, disappeared from the media. The two men caught on CCTV in Salisbury may indeed be GRU agents – though why the GRU would squander its brightest and best on such an apparently incompetently executed operation raises doubts. But no UK court would convict them of even attempted killing on the “evidence” that has so far been produced.
The CCTV footage from Salisbury has huge lacunae – though it is established that the cameras were working in Salisbury that day – and does not include any of the pair less than 500m from the Skripals’ house, nor any of the Skripals themselves. Why not? We still do not know where they were for most of that Sunday morning, who they might have met, or for what purpose, or precisely when the presumed attack occurred. Those are huge gaps.
Now, it is also true that Russia’s information machine has hardly covered itself in glory. Its response to at least some of the UK accusations have been weak or in dubious taste, to put it mildly. The RT interview (which was also broadcast on Russian domestic TV) seemed designed to make the Salisbury “tourists” a laughing stock. And Russia has not been as vocal as might perhaps have been expected in demanding consular access to Yulia Skripal, which might seem to cast doubt on its claims of innocence.
Original news reports on 4th and 5th March were that Detective Nick Bailey was the first police officer to arrive at the scene at the park bench ... now the story has changed completely, it is now claimed that he went to the Skripals' house, with other officers, touched the front door handle, and then collapsed. Strange how he collapsed straight away, given that the Skripals only collapsed several hours after they had left home (and two hours before the alleged Russian assassins' train even arrived in Salisbury, raising the obvious question how they could have touched the handle when they weren't there! There is reportedly no cctv record of them returning home after they left home at 9.15am, whereas there are three cctv recordings showing their car leaving home in the morning. So how could the 'Novichok on door handle' scenario be possible?!)
Also, according to news reports at the time, it was initially believed by medical staff at Salisbury Hospital that it was a drugs overdose, and no special precautions were taken ... yet this report now claims that Hazmat suits were immediately worn at the park bench by firefighters! Why, since noone yet knew that it was 'a nerve agent'? Do they normally wear Hazmat suits when attending people who have If they were so suspicious immediately it happened at the park bench, then why were the doctors and nurses at the Hospital also similarly protected immediately the Skripals were admitted?
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Abigail McCourt has spoken about the Salisbury Novichok incident for the very first time.
The 16 year old, from Larkhill, was the first to spot two people collapsed on a bench in the Maltings on March 4th and didn't hesitate to help.
Abigail believed Sergei Skripal was having a heart attack.
The teen, who was out celebrating her brother's birthday quickly alerted her mum who is a nurse and together they gave first aid to the two Russians until paramedics arrived.
Abby used the first aid skills she had learned at school to help the pair, putting Yulia in the recovery position.
Maltings Novichok incident
The bench in the Maltings where the Skripals were found unconscious became part of a major crime scene.
Abby and her mum had to undergo hospital tests to make sure they weren't contaminated with Novichok.
It was an anxious time for the family but Abby says she has "no hesitation" that she would do the same thing again despite the risk to herself.
Spire FM
Abigail McCourt collects her award from Ellie Smith, of Smith England
Immediately following the incident and with the world's media focused on Salisbury, the pair didn't want any want press attention and kept their involvement quiet.
The key role Abby played has only come to light now because her mum,nominated her for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards.
Alison felt the the time was right for her daughter to be recognised for the "incredible" way she dealt with the scenario.
The judges were unanimous in their decision that Abigail was a very worthy winner.
Mum Alison, says she's extremley proud of Abby:
"As a qualified nurse it was a fairly routine situation for me but my daughter was amazing. Her prompt actions, spotting them in difficulty, and the way she assisted me to put Yulia Skripal in the recovery position had a significant impact on the outcome of the two victims."
Last night (19th January) Abby collected her award in front of 150 guests including the Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police.
Abigail McCourt Spire FM
Abigail McCourt collecting her Spire FM Local Hero Award
LISTEN:
Afterwards Abby gave her first ever interview to event hosts Martin Starke and Henrietta Creasey from Spire FM: _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
First responder in Skripal poisoning turns out to be Britain’s most senior military nurse
Colonel Alison McCourt. Photo from www.qarancassociation.org.uk
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Sergei and Yulia Skripal were given first aid by the British Army’s most senior nurse, who just happened to be nearby, according to a new report – adding further intrigue to the highly controversial case.
The latest development in the Salisbury poisoning affair will fuel the claims of skeptics, who don’t believe the official British narrative. UK authorities have claimed that the former double agent and his daughter were targeted by the Russian government in a bizarre failed assassination plot involving a military-grade nerve agent.
It was previously reported by British media that the first person to provide medical assistance to the Skripals after they collapsed on a bench in Salisbury was “an off-duty nurse who had worked on the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.”
However, the healthcare professional turned out to be not just any nurse. She was Colonel Alison McCourt, a veteran service member who currently holds the position of chief nursing officer in the British Army.
ALSO ON RT.COM
Skripal’s Salisbury home to be partly dismantled by British military
The revelation emerged after her daughter Abigail, 16, was given a Local Hero award from Spire FM, a local radio station. According to a story broadcast by the radio last weekend, Abigail noticed that the Skripals were not well, misdiagnosed Sergei as having suffered a heart attack, and called her mom. The teen, who has first-aid training, then assisted her mother in providing CPR.
Spire FM explained why the story was kept in the dark for almost a year, saying neither of the McCourt women had wanted media attention after the two people they helped turned out to be victims of a high-profile crime that pitted the UK and Russia against each other in a bitter war of accusations and stonewalling.
EXCLUSIVE: Teenage girl describes moment she found collapsed Skripals
Abigail McCourt has spoken about the Salisbury Novichok incident for the very first time.
spirefm.co.uk
See Spire FM's other Tweets
However, Colonel McCourt, who herself was decorated for her deployment to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, decided that her daughter also deserved an award and proposed her as a candidate.
Skeptics will say it’s a hell of a coincidence that Britain’s most senior military nurse and her family were celebrating her son’s birthday at just the right time, and in just the right place, to get involved in arguably the decade’s biggest spy scandal in Britain. Perhaps stranger things have happened…
ALSO ON RT.COM
Skripal spin doctors: Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative
The British military lab that studies chemical weapons also just happens to be located near Salisbury. The victims of the poison, which the UK government have called Novichok, collapsed at the same time, hours after allegedly coming into contact with the substance on the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s front door.
1982 According to his LinkedIn account (no longer available) Pablo Miller graduated from Oxford University in 1982 with a degree in Modern Languages and History. Following graduation he attended the British Army officer training academy at Sandhurst.
His commission in the Royal Tank Regiment took him to Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Brunei.
1984 Lt. Pablo Miller was given some assistance by General Sir Desmond Langley in Cyprus.
1995 Sergei Skripal, a colonel in the GRU, and a number of other Russians were recruited by Milller about this time. Russian author, Nikolai Luzan, in his espionage exposure “The Devil’s Counter-intelligence Dozen”, explains how Skripal was brought on board by the MI6 officer, Pablo Miller.
1997 Pablo Miller became First Secretary of the British embassy in Tallinn recruiting under the name of Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo. As things stood Skripal was already on a nice little earner secretly importing wine from the GRU authorities enabling him to make extended business trips to Malta and Spain. On one of these the GRU colonel was introduced to a Spaniard named Luis. According to Luzan it was Luis who introduced Skripal to Miller (then posing as Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo) and they went into business together.
Skripal was described as having a “thirst for profit”. He would sometimes take his wife, Lyudmilla, with him on his business trips. It seems however she knew nothing of his extra-business activities. Before entering into their partnership Miller took Skripal to a strip-club but it was not the Russian’s kind of thing and he went back home to his wife. Miller bought Skripal’s loyalty with a cheque-book and before long, using colleagues within the GRU, files had been collated on some 300 GRU employees.
1999 Skripal resigned from the GRU on health grounds. Soon after his resignation he was issued with a passport and went abroad. Again he made contact with Pablo Miller and resumed espionage activities, this time providing details on the structure of the GRU. Skripal was a greedy man. Greedy men are rarely if ever driven by morals in their decision-making. British Intelligence personnel would have known this and Skripal met with MI6 personnel frequently. He met them in the seaside resort of Izmir in Turkey under the pretence of being a tourist.
This year the Tomlinson list of 116 British Intelligence Officers was released. Apparently Pablo Miller’s name is not on the list and the controllers of the World Wide Web have done a creditable job in wiping clean this list from the internet. There are still a few hard copies available.
2000 Valery Oyamae was another recruit of Pablo Miller’s. Oyamae lived in Moscow and made frequent trips to Estonia. At the time Pablo Miller was operating from the British Embassy in Tallinn as its First Secretary – a cover for his intelligence work. On 15 March 2000 at 7 p.m. Oyamae was arrested at the Leningradsky railway station, Moscow, on espionage charges. He had risen through the ranks of the KGB becoming a senior officer. Though Oyamae was not mentioned by name at the time of his arrest, Pablo Miller, his minder, was named in both Russian and English-reading press.
While Skripal’s handler was Pablo Miller, Miller was answering to Christopher Steele in MI6.
Scot William Hine (or Hein) and Estonian Sergei Petrenko (see 2001) were arrested in Tallin on drug-smuggling charges. They were caught in possession of £2.4 million worth of heroin concealed in the fuel tank of the car they were driving. It is not clear if Robert Bruce Wright and Leslie Brown were with them at the time but they never stood trial.
spy hidalgo courtesy vesti
Pablo Miller in his younger de Hidalgo days (Courtesy ВЕСТИ)
2001 On 23 April 2001 Valery Oyamae was sentenced to seven years in prison in a Moscow court under article 275. His property was confiscated. Until sentence was pronounced his name had been kept out of the Russian and western media.
This year there was an extradition request from Estonia to the UK for Robert Bruce Wright (35) and Leslie Brown (44) wanted under suspicion of drug-smuggling in conjunction with William Hein (42) and Sergei Petrenko (41). Nobody knows the dark machinations of our security services but from what I can make out Wright and Brown claimed they were not drug-smugglers but secret-agents working against Russia on behalf of Pablo Miller at the British Embassy in Tallinn.
lenta.ru›articles/2007/08/15/spy/
20:57, 15 августа 2007 Шпион-идальго
It appears the two Estonians got 3 to 4 years in prison each and Estonia put in a request for extradition of the British citizens. I cannot find an English article on this drug-smuggling event – though there were some. Originally the BBC reported this story. And it was reported in Scotland. It has since gone dead. It looks like they were probably spooks.
2003 Pablo Miller, at this time calling himself Paul, is credited with having arranged the passage of Vyacheslav Zharko, Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko (FSB officer) to the UK, which added to the festering cesspool of oligarchs and Mafia-style businessmen already buying political favours and prime properties in London.
Skripal left his latest job in the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs.
2004 Sergei Skripal arrested and detained in custody on charges of espionage. He admitted the charges.
2006 Sergei Skripal convicted of spying and given a 13 year prison sentence. He allegedly confessed to everything. According to the Russian press It would appear that Skripal may have protected his minder because there was no mention of a Miller or Hidalgo by the FSB in 2006. (Source: Kommersant 16.08.2007, p. 4)
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko died from polonium 210 poisoning.
Pablo Miller took up a post in Bogota, Columbia possibly for his own safety. According to his deleted LinkedIn page he “led the British Government’s flagship project in Bogota, supporting the Colombian state’s programme aimed at countering high-level, drugs-related corruption and impunity.”
2007 Vyacheslav Zharko, a former tax police inspector, spilled the beans in claiming that Pablo Miller recruited him in 2003. He was not caught. Most pertinently he confessed to the FSB when Andrei Lugovoi was accused by the UK of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko. He lost total faith in MI6. It dawned on him that his minders (he named 3 including Pablo Miller) would say anything to try to denigrate Russia and no longer wanted to be part of it.
2009 Pablo Miller’s duty came to an end in Bogota.
Christopher Steele retired as head of the Russian Department of MI6 and founded Orbis Business Intelligence (based in Grosvenor Gardens, London). https://orbisbi.com
2010 Roberto Flórez García convicted in Spain of working for the Russians at the start of the century. It is said he betrayed Skripal as a spy.
Sergei Skripal was exchanged in a deal with the US having served four years of a thirteen year sentence. He came with his wife and daughter to live in Salisbury, the home town of his former minder Pablo Miller.
Pablo Miller was posted to Poland as a counsellor at the British Embassy in Warsaw. On 5 May (shortly before the UK National Election) he wrote a witty tongue-in-cheek letter to the Spectator from Warsaw criticising the apathy of modern youth in being too lazy to vote. This no doubt made his daughters very proud of him!
2011 The Spectator received a letter from Pablo Miller in Poland in praise of Ross Clark and Martin Vander Weyer criticising public sector chief executive salaries compared to those of commanding officers in Helmand, on a mere £70,000 per annum.
2012 Sergei Skripal’s wife, Lyudmilla, died from cancer.
2014 Yulia Skripal returned to Russia.
2015 Pablo Miller received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II. He retired from MI6 and joined his colleague and former boss Christopher Steele at Orbis Business Intelligence – the company responsible for the “dodgy dossier” on Donald Trump.
2016 Sergei Skripal’s son and older brother of Yulia, Alexander, died from liver failure on a high-speed train in Moscow. This prompted Yulia to remove all family photos from her Facebook account.
Orbis Business Intelligence releases its report on Donald Trump based to a large extent on information supplied by a former Russian intelligence officer.
There are many speculations that this intelligence officer was Skripal, who perhaps should have got out of the game when Zharko did.
2018 On March 5 the Clinical Services Journal (CSJ) reported “a major incident after two patients were exposed to what was believed to be an opiate . . . an incident . . . in which a man and a woman were exposed to the drug Fentanyl in the city centre.” The drug Fentanyl was redacted later and replaced by “a substance” with the footnote that: “This story was updated on 26 April 2018 to remove suggestion (which was widely speculated and reported at the time of writing) that the substance found was fentanyl.” All credit to the medical journalists who were forced to change the story.
And all credit to the author, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, of the blog which first exposed the Novichok lie. If I am not mistaken the photographer in the mirror on the first photo bears an uncanny resemblance to the artist’s impression of Pablo Miller in the featured image at the head of this timeline. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Here's one former BBC Salisbury reporter's take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltZbEi0Ptdo _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The recent titbit fed to us by Bellingcat (reputedly close to MI6) that a third Russian agent was booked on the flight from Heathrow to Moscow on the night of 4th March 2018 — the flight taken by the two alleged GRU officers filmed in Salisbury — but didn’t show up for it, has pointed to a possible solution to the baffling Skripal puzzle. What if the third man, or perhaps the man who was supposed to take his place, was by then lying in Salisbury Hospital in a coma from opiate poisoning? What if Sergei Skripal was a triple agent trying to escape back to Russia to tell the world the truth about the Steele Dossier, which he had helped to concoct as a scurrilous, obscene joke and which had unexpectedly become the new bible of the insane war party in Washington?
This is the alternative narrative I will set out in detail here so that the reader can judge whether it forms a more plausible and coherent story than the mishmash of improbabilities, absurdities and contradictions served up by the British police and MI6. Of course in the absence of all the facts we must sometimes use imaginative reconstruction to fill in the gaps, but the point is to see how many thorny problems, raised by the facts we do have, can be solved by this narrative and cannot be solved by the official one.
It is not necessary to decide whether Skripal was a triple agent from the start (that is, a plant sent across in a spy swap, a classic Cold War way of infiltrating the enemy) or whether he became a triple agent when he realized how important this grotesque Steele Dossier had become and how much the Russians would pay him to come back and demolish it. What evidence there is (his phone call in 2012 to his old school friend, Vladimir Timoshkov, whose account of it three weeks after the poisoning gained widespread UK media coverage) suggests he started out as a purely mercenary traitor. Disillusioned by the collapse of the USSR into a gangster capitalist state run by Yeltsin’s mafia cronies, he decided he might as well profit from it by selling the corpse of what had once been his country to the highest bidder. The Russians didn’t seem to think of him as much more than a common criminal (only worth a moderate 13-year sentence, instead of the death penalty he would have got in the USA for betraying 300 agents) or they wouldn’t have let him survive six years in their prison. Perhaps when they exchanged him in the spy swap they gave him a wink and said: “Since you’re just a money-grubbing whore, any time you want to come back with some interesting stuff learned from working for MI6, let us know and we’ll discuss the price.”
He soon got to learn that interesting stuff when he was sent to Salisbury, the home town of his MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller. Miller had recruited him in Spain in 1995 and later handled him from Estonia, when he was posted there as a diplomat. It is a little too much to believe Skripal’s move to Salisbury was a coincidence. The two men became friends again, met regularly in the pub, and there is every reason to think Miller resumed his role as handler. Miller was now working for Christopher Steele, his old boss at MI6, in his private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, based in Mayfair. This is one of the private intelligence-gathering outfits run by ex-spies of the kind Litvinenko used to work for. Just as Litvinenko got Lugovoy (his accused assassin) to help him out with due diligence reports on Russian businessmen because of his more up-to-date information, so Miller would have used Skripal in the same way. His help became vital when Steele got the commission from the Democratic Party to dig up Russian dirt on Donald Trump, and they had to invent some GRU set-up of the Donald with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Miller, the old Russia hand, would have done a good part of the work on this dossier and would have needed all the authentic detail his Russian agent could provide. Perhaps it was Skripal who came up with the scenario of Trump getting prostitutes to urinate on the bed the Obamas had slept in, which hidden cameras filmed. He must at least have given it his imprimatur as a typical GRU blackmail ploy to turn somebody into an asset. And that obscene fiction, the core of the Steele Dossier, became the basis of the neo-con legend that Trump was a Russian stooge — the insane underpinning of the whole mad Mueller probe into “Russian collusion”.
When Sergei the mercenary realized the vast importance this farcical, obscene Steele Dossier had taken on, that it was gospel truth for the whole anti-Trump, anti-Russia war party in Washington, he began to see how much it might be worth to the Russian state to blow it sky-high. If he were to describe on a prime-time Russian talk-show how he invented these obscene details over a beer with Miller and Steele in a pub, it would not only have all of Russia rolling on the floor with laughter. Heads would roll in Washington. The neo-con war party would become a laughing-stock. MI6 would be run out of town. Steele might face FBI perjury charges. The CIA might have its budget cut. Trump would be able to talk to Putin again. And the rewards for Sergei might be considerable. Not only seeing his 90-year old mother again, but perhaps even a * villa with a sea-view in Crimea or Sochi instead of that dank, shabby row-house in darkest Salisbury.
Was it Sergei who broached this subject to Yulia on one of her visits to Britain, or was she recruited by the GRU to put it to him? My bet is the latter, since after the poisoning her cousin Viktoria claimed Yulia’s new boyfriend and his mother both worked for the Russian secret services (before disappearing from view.) With all of Sergei’s communications monitored by MI6, the only way he had of talking to the GRU was through his daughter, living back in Russia again but able to visit Britain. Through her he must have managed to negotiate a deal for his return. Somehow MI6 got wind of their plans — perhaps Yulia, not a trained spy, was a bit naive or careless about listening devices. Steele became convinced they had made an escape plan for Sergei, to be carried out next time she visited Salisbury.
The thing that proves this was a British crime not a Russian one is the fact that Yulia was a prime target. The Russians had no motive to eliminate her, but if they had, they could have done it in Russia with a simple road accident with no questions asked. Only the British had to do it in Britain, since they didn’t have the resources in place to do it in Russia. And if she was not a prime target but collateral damage, why was Sergei not attacked when he was alone? Why wait for her to visit him? The fact they were both targeted the day after she arrived in Britain puts MI6’s signature all over it. She was a danger to MI6 because she knew of Sergei’s plan to return to Russia and trash the Steele Dossier, and she had to be stopped from revealing this to the world when he was killed. Silencing her at the same time was just as important to MI6 as silencing him.
To imagine that Putin would have ordered the assassination of an old double agent whom he had held for six years in prison (with ample opportunities to arrange his death) and then pardoned and swapped in a spy swap (part of the rules of the spying game on which his own life had been based), a week before the Russian elections and three months before the Football World Cup in Russia, which he hoped would lead to Russia’s re-acceptance into the community of nations, makes no sense. It carried only huge risks for a negligible benefit, and Putin does not take pointless risks, as his consistent prudence in Syria, even when his forces have been attacked, has shown. Compare the enormous gains this crime brought Britain. This assassination (as it was meant to be) gave MI6 a perfect opportunity to frame the Russians and incite a new anti-Russia frenzy to sabotage their celebratory Football World Cup (compared by the British Foreign Secretary to Hitler’s Olympics.) It would also show the EU Britain’s value as an anti-Putin cheerleader, bringing Europe and Britain together in an anti-Russia hate-week to distract from their Brexit quarrel, and uniting a fractious parliament behind a floundering leader. With any luck it would derail the Nordstream2 gas pipeline, a priority target for the US neo-con plan to ruin Russia’s economy, overthrow the regime and break up the country — goals MI6 fully shared, as their propaganda wing, the Integrity Initiative, has since made clear. In fact MI6’s plans to work for the total isolation and economic ruin of Russia, including sporting bans and ending cultural exchanges, date from 2015 and were leaked recently by Anonymous. The enormous preponderance of motivation on the British side, as well as the low risk in carrying out such a crime on their own turf with a grovelling press, a brainwashed public and tame police, point clearly to MI6 as the perpetrators.
Steele probably turned to his CIA friends for suggestions on how to frame Russia. They came up with novichok. This nerve agent invented by a Soviet chemist who later moved to the US and published the formula could be pinned on Russia as a uniquely Russian “chemical weapon.” Never mind that any decent laboratory could produce it, as a chemistry professor at Cornell has testified. Never mind that the British-invented nerve agent VX had been used to assassinate Kim Yong-Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur Airport without Malaysia screaming that Britain must have done it. Russia is different. Hysterical hatred can be instantly incited against Russia by the MI6-controlled media and MI6-brainwashed politicians. Anyone who doubts Russia’s guilt can be vilified as a Putin stooge. Whether the novichok was sent over from the US by courier or produced at Porton Down is not important. What is important is that MI6’s attempt to kill the Skripals with novichok failed disastrously.
Let’s take the famous Nina Ricci perfume bottle, laced with novichok, which was found in a rubbish bin or charity bin by a homeless man and given weeks later to his woman friend, who tragically died after spraying it on her wrist. The police/MI6 narrative is that this perfume bottle was used to transport the novichok from Russia in the baggage of one of the alleged GRU men caught on CCTV in Salisbury. The novichok was then sprayed on the door handle of the Skripals’ house. The assassins then callously threw away the bottle (which they knew contained enough novichok to kill more people) in a dustbin or charity bin, demonstrating their indifference to loss of life as well as their indifference to leaving clues all over the place. There are problems with this narrative.
The homeless man claimed he had found the perfume bottle still in its box sealed in cellophane, proof it was not reopened after it had been laced with novichok and professionally repackaged. The bottle could not therefore have been used (as claimed) to spray the novichok on the doorknob, or the cellophane seal would have been broken. Assassins far from home don’t usually carry around cellophane-wrapping machines to repackage opened perfume bottles, especially when they are just going to chuck them in the bin. Nor would they take the risk, having fitted the separate spray nozzle onto the bottle and sprayed the doorknob, of disassembling it again to put it back in the box, knowing that a drop on their skin would kill them. And where would they perform this delicate operation? On the street? This poisoned perfume bottle was therefore never reopened, never used and it affected nobody until it ended up in the hands of the homeless man. So who or what was it intended for?
Ladies’ perfume bottles are normally intended for women. How many women are there in this story? Only one. The only possible explanation for the existence of this unopened, unused bottle of perfume laced with novichok is that it was a poisoned gift meant for Yulia Skripal. Why didn’t she open it? Because she had a spy father who took one look at it and said: “Don’t touch it!”
So here is the alternative narrative. MI6 had the bright idea of putting novichok in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle and sending it as a birthday present to Yulia Skripal at her father’s house. Her birthday was on 17th March, but the present was probably delivered on the 3rd, the day she arrived, so as to nip their escape plan in the bud. It was meant to seem like a present from her family or boyfriend. No doubt the parcel had Russian stamps on it, designed to frame the Russian state when the Skripals were found dead in their house with an open perfume bottle in Yulia’s hands. Unfortunately for MI6, Sergei took one look at this Nina Ricci perfume bottle and his spy instincts smelled danger. He refused to open it, but instead went for a long walk with it and put it in a rubbish bin or charity bin half-way across town. There it was found by the homeless man and given to his woman friend, a victim of MI6’s murderous callousness. Even after MI6 knew it had gone missing, they did not warn the public to beware of picking up a Nina Ricci perfume bottle because they didn’t want to give themselves away as the assassins.
The failure of the perfume bottle to kill the Skripals must have alarmed MI6. They followed the pair around Salisbury the next day. Where did they go? We can’t be sure since we have not been given all the CCTV footage. But let us engage in some more imaginative reconstruction to cover the gaps. The Skripals’ car made some unexplained journeys towards the outskirts of the town. The two alleged GRU men caught on Salisbury’s CCTV walked in some unexplained directions, with not a scrap of evidence they came within half a kilometre of the Skripals’ home. What if the two unexplained journeys intersected? Not necessarily in time but in place. What if they met at that hoary cliché of spy stories, the dead drop, the discreet delivery point for a package? The hole-in-a-garden-wall just big enough to hide something? A Mossad spy, commenting on the British police narrative, said that no GRU assassination team would ever have flown direct from Russia using Russian passports. But a support team delivering a package? Why not? What did they risk?
Now what would the GRU need to deliver to Sergei Skripal to help him escape from Britain back to Russia? Clearly, a passport. MI6, once they suspected his loyalty, would have put him on an airport watch list. He would need a passport in a false name to get out, and perhaps a flight ticket to Moscow in the same name so he wouldn’t need to make an internet booking, easily spied on. But the passport could not be blank. It needed a UK visa and entry stamp. So the third Russian agent who Bellingcat now tells us didn’t show up for the flight back to Moscow must have intended his seat to be taken by Sergei Skripal, who would use the passport and visa which he had flown in with a few days before (delivered to Sergei by his two colleagues at the dead drop that day.) Either Sergei and the third man bore a sufficient physical resemblance or passport photos were switched by an expert forger in London. Unfortunately, though Sergei now had a usable passport, he was hit before he made it to the flight.
MI6, after the failure of the perfume bottle attempt, knew they had to act fast to stop the Skripals driving to the airport. Once they observed the package delivery at the dead drop, they would have guessed it was a passport. There was now no chance of using novichok. The Skripals were unlikely to return home and pack a bag, so they had to be knocked out in a public place. Using novichok and risking the lives of dozens of other people was too much even for MI6. So they decided to spray them in the street with an opiate like Fentanyl, and later on to add novichok to the blood samples they sent to Porton Down for analysis (without of course any controlled chain of custody except their own.)
We know that the Skipals were knocked out with an opiate and not a nerve agent because of a simple incident — in fact, a slip-up. The first person on the scene when the Skripals collapsed on their bench was an army nurse, the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, Colonel Alison McCourt, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Abigail. Does anyone believe she was there by chance and was not part of the MI6 team following the Skripals about and looking for an opportunity to drug them discreetly? Now Colonel McCourt had long experience both with Ebola in Sierra Leone and with the danger of chemical weapons during her service in Iraq, where protection against nerve agents was a priority. She knew the enormous precautions required in approaching a victim of a nerve agent attack. Yet Colonel McCourt encouraged her daughter to rush over to the collapsed Skripals and begin administering first aid to them, something very dangerous if a nerve agent had been used. She later even recommended Abigail for a medal for heroism for her action, which is why it got into the papers. How did Colonel McCourt know that a nerve agent had not been used on the Skripals, unless she was part of the team that had sprayed them with an opiate? Would she have allowed her daughter to touch the Skipals unless she was sure there was no nerve agent present? This is what is known as a smoking gun.
There has been extraordinary silence in the mainstream media about the fact that none of the first responders or the Salisbury Hospital staff were in any way affected by the deadliest nerve agent known to man, even though no precautions were taken against it for at least two days. The nurses assumed they were dealing with an opiate overdose. When the blood test results came back from Porton Down showing novichok present in the blood samples, the hazmat suits were donned and the hospital allegedly went into panic mode. We can assume most of this was a charade. Sergeant Bailey, allegedly contaminated with novichok though the police can’t decide where, recounts in the Panorama BBC film shown in November that the nurses who cared for him wore full hazmat suits, but his wife and children wandered in to see him wearing no protection at all. Clearly the nurses were engaging in an MI6-mandated charade but couldn’t bear to impose it on his family because they knew there was no novichok present. Bailey, no doubt also drugged by an opiate, had been selected as a fake British victim to stir up more indignation against Russia, and to add further fake proof that novichok had been used, which the total absence of contamination of first responders might cast doubt on. As part of this charade, all the poor man’s furniture and belongings were destroyed by the heartless brutes of MI6, which he recounts in tears, in order to incite more irrational hatred of Russia — which the British public, the most brainwashed on earth, came up with on cue.
Of course the failure of the perfume bottle assassination attempt, and the need to switch drugs and use an opiate instead of novichok, left MI6 and the police with the task of explaining how the phantom novichok was administered. The farcical story they finally came up with, that it was sprayed on the Skripals’ front door handle with the perfume bottle, has convinced nobody except the brainwashed masses. Even the clownish Foreign Secretary’s story that MI6 had shown him a Russian spy handbook which described how their spies had recently been practising putting novichok on door handles (a technical skill obviously requiring weeks of training and about to be unleashed en masse against Britain’s unsuspecting doorknobs) but unfortunately he couldn’t produce this handbook as it was classified, left people howling with laughter. It was worthy of a Monty Python sketch, something the Russians, who are great fans of British comedy, must have appreciated.
The idea that assassins could walk up to the front door of a terraced house in broad daylight, a door with clear glass panels in the middle and on both sides of it, so that anyone outside is visible from the hallway, and spray the doorknob with novichok while the Skripals were inside and their car was in the driveway, is simply not believable. These professional assassins did not even have a car or even bicycles to make a getaway if seen. And the two police versions of what time the attackers did this, first of all at 9.15 before the Skripals left home and then at 1.30 (after the police revised their timeline to fit the train schedule of the two Russians caught on CCTV) would both have left many hours’ delay before this deadly nerve agent took effect at 4.15 that afternoon.
We are asked to believe that two people of very different size, a man of 66 and a girl half that age, fell unconscious at the exact same moment either seven hours or three hours after being poisoned with a deadly “military grade” nerve agent. Why this delayed effect? Would this be useful in a battlefield chemical weapon — let’s leave the enemy active for several hours? And how to get a simultaneous collapse many hours later? No explanation. And if novichok was used to attack the Skripals, why was Abigail McCourt not affected when she gave them first aid and why did her highly trained army nurse mother allow her to touch victims of a deadly nerve agent?
The intelligent people who work in Salisbury Hospital cannot possibly be dupes to this grotesque deception, riddled with impossibilities. They are therefore accomplices and criminally responsible. I believe many of the hospital staff suspected MI6 was staging this whole thing but went along with it because of the high level of Cold War, anti-Russian brainwashing of the British population. They saw it as an exciting spy game they were taking part in with their wonderful secret services who had Won the War and Saved the World. It was a question of loyalty to Britain to defend this criminal lie. They must have suspected the Skripals’ blood samples had been laced afterwards with novichok. Perhaps the OPCW did too, since they claimed the traces of novichok were “very pure”. Was that a hint it had never been through any human body? One can sympathize with the Russians for trying to hack the laboratory computers to find out if any of the experts had expressed doubts to each other or suspicions the OPCW had set this up. Since they knew they were victims of a shameless NATO conspiracy to frame them, all they could do was try to expose it by any means they had.
The Russians’ patience and calm in the face of this campaign of lies and hate have been almost saint-like. If the West is not wiped out by the nuclear war they are constantly pushing for with Russia, then one day Britain and all the other NATO vassal states which wrongfully expelled droves of Russian diplomats will have to make Russia an abject apology and pay compensation for the misery caused the Russian people by their illegal sanctions. Is it too much to hope that some people at Salisbury Hospital or in the local police who know the truth will have the courage sooner or later to come forward and expose this vile warmongering deception, and the totalitarian media manipulation by the sinister forces that secretly govern Britain? Do they spare a thought for the Skripals and the state they are in right now — held incommunicado without any charge against them, not represented by any lawyer, and unable to communicate with their family or the public? Surely they are not fooled by that scripted video? Where are the human rights campaigners protesting against this totalitarian sequestration? What world are they living in? Has it not occurred to them that in the era of MI6’s proven involvement in torture, whether in Guantanamo, Abu Graib, black sites or extraordinary rendition to places where people can be tortured to death, Yulia Skripal might be listening every night to her father whimpering in the next cell as the voice goes on repeating: “You Ruskie b******, tell us when you started lying to us.”
The official narrative about the Skripals has been shot full of holes by various dissident commentators in the alternative media. That always begs the question: well, so what really happened? The above alternative narrative, combining both the known facts and speculations to cover the gaps where the facts are still missing, should allow the reader to judge its overall plausibility, compared to the official one. To prove an alternative narrative to the criminal’s story, a prosecutor does not need to establish every single event in the chain, many of which will remain unknown. He only needs to prove that certain key events in the criminal’s narrative are contrary to the known facts, and that these facts are compatible with the alternative narrative. The key facts in this case are the state of the Nina Ricci perfume bottle, clearly never opened after it was laced with novichok and repackaged, and therefore never used to spray novichok anywhere; the impossibility of a deadly nerve agent having a three hour delay in its effects and then affecting two very different people at the same moment; the unlikelihood of a senior army nurse allowing her daughter to touch victims of a nerve agent; the unlikelihood novichok was used (rather than an opiate), given the lack of any effect on the first responders, and the fact Sergeant Bailey’s children were allowed to approach him without wearing hazmat suits, which the nurses, however, wore.
Put those basic problems in the official narrative together with the speed with which the UK government blamed Russia for this event, when there was no more link between Russia and novichok than between Britain and the use of British-invented VX nerve agent to assassinate Kim Yong Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur airport. No nerve agent whose formula has been published is the monopoly of any nation, nor does its use incriminate any nation. This rush to judgment reveals a premeditated plan by Britain to use this event to sabotage Russia’s Football World Cup (which they compared to Hitler’s Olympics) as part of a long-term British goal to isolate, discredit and economically ruin Russia. The need for MI6 to prevent Skripal exposing the Steele Dossier, produced by Skripal’s MI6 handlers, since it would show the degree of Britain’s cynical interference in the American election to discredit Trump and destroy any rapprochement with Russia, formed the motive for MI6 to commit murder, for which it has a considerable reputation. Combining the two things, killing the Skripals and crucifying Russia for it, was no doubt seen as a great coup by MI6. It was seen as even more ingenious to follow up this alleged “chemical weapons” attack on British soil with the fake chemical attack at Douma staged by the White Helmets, founded and financed by MI6. This was aimed at relaunching the war to overthrow Assad and dismantle Syria, giving the Americans and the Israelis its oil fields, and allowing Qatari gas to be piped to Europe to replace Russian gas. All of these fit Britain’s and NATO’s known strategic goals. The speed of the knee-jerk response of NATO countries in expelling Russian diplomats, without any debate or demand for evidence in any parliament, raises the suspicion that this was planned not by MI6 alone but jointly with the CIA and other NATO secret services, which largely control supposedly democratic governments.
The continued NATO harassment, sanctions and campaigns of lies and false accusations against Russia, including the blatant war rhetoric of the British Defence Secretary, do not bode well for the future. For the US to tear up nuclear arms treaties and then blame Russia is beyond shameful: it is destroying all possibility of negotiations to avert war. The Kerch Strait incident staged by the puppet regime in Kiev, sending gunboats into the Kerch Strait without observing the 2003 Protocol requiring them to notify in advance the Port of Kerch (a protocol observed by the dozens of ships that go through the Strait peacefully every day) was clearly part of a NATO plan to set up a major naval clash in the Black Sea. That clash (followed by an attempt to recapture Crimea or at least blow up its magnificent bridge, a reproach to a man who cannot even build a wall) may be expected in coming months, perhaps as a distraction from Brexit or a way of derailing it. NATO, in short, is on a clear trajectory towards war with Russia, which their deluded worldview convinces them they can win. Their initial use of Russia as a scapegoat and bogeyman to unite the NATO vassals against a common threat, keeping Europe in subjection to America, has got out of hand, and is heading, under the impetus of hysterical rhetoric, towards actual war. Unless decent people unite to stop this escalation then the nuclear catastrophe will occur. Exposing the barefaced lie of the Skripal false flag attack may be a step towards averting that global cataclysm.
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 2568 Location: One breath from Glory
Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:04 pm Post subject:
The timeline of the perfume bottle interests me. Given when it was dumped in bin and how often the bins are emptied. That gap seems to big > Most bin collections are either weekly or fortnightly not 3 months. Also i doubt Charlie Rowley would have been able to rummage in the bottom of the bin so the bottle must have been somewhere close to the top..meaning it had lain close to top of the bin for months with no other rubbish being placed upon it.
This would suggest the placing of the bottle was much later in the timeline
The Independant said the bottle fell apart in Charlies hand...If he had picked it up for a birthday present for Dawn he would not have unwrapped it if it was sealed. Likely that if it was in an unsealed box then Charlie would have previously inspected it to make sure it wasnt just an empty or damaged bottle if he was giving it as a present
Just read an old BBC article that a friend of Mr Skripal used Sergeis car to go and pick his daughter Julia up at airport. Do we know who this "friend " was and why Sergei didnt go himself. Also Julia may have known this friend to recognise him at the airport or at least been told by Sergei. _________________ JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12
Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal had written to Vladimir Putin asking if he could return to his home country before he was poisoned in Salisbury, a friend has said.
The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to be pardoned so he could visit his family in Russia, Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.
Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok on 4 March.
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The 66-year-old had been accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.
He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.
According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, Mr Skripal did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.
“Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland,” he said.
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EU leaders prepare to expel Russian diplomats over Salisbury poisoning
“In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... [he told me] he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were [in Russia].”
The Kremlin later issued a denial that any such letter was sent to the Russian President.
The attempted assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.
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At least six countries in Europe are understood to be considering the expulsion of Russian spies after the EU took the lead and announced it would recall its ambassador to Moscow.
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Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while last Sunday the country’s EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov said that “from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him [Mr Skripal]”.
Russia’s ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday and wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals’ aid.
sergei-skripal.jpg
Sergei Skripal was freed in a 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States (AP)
Mr Bailey said his experience had been “completely surreal” after he was discharged from hospital.
outsider wrote:
Life wrote:
Skripal told one of his school mates in 2012 that he had made a serious mistake and wanted to go back to Russia. This would be more than enough for MI6 to revoke this idea and act. It looks like Theresa May gained European backing in her blaming Russia by handing over open borders two years after Brexit.
This means a bankrupt corporation has done a deal that will act against the nations peace and security to support a lie, aimed at the British public to form energy against Russia, and, to expand funding for chemical weaponry and a step closer to that coveted big red button called the corporate Contingency Act platform activation..
The Kremlin denies receiving such a lettr, which would make sense as the Post Office here would have likely intercepted his letter, which would have immediately put Skripal into the 'highly expendable' class, kept in mind till HMG wished to open up a big 'False Flag' demonisation on Putin.
_________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The Federal Security Service accused one-time British diplomat Pablo Miller on Wednesday of recruiting former tax inspector Vyacheslav Zharko on behalf of British intelligence.
Zharko, who turned himself over to the FSB in June, has said he was introduced to British intelligence officers by former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and later handed over information about the Russian economy.
The FSB said Miller also had been implicated in the espionage cases of retired intelligence agency Colonel Sergei Skripal and former FSB officer Valery Oyamyae. Skripal was convicted of spying for Britain last year and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Oyamyae was convicted of spying for British and Estonian special services in 2001.
At the time of Oyamyae's conviction, the FSB said Miller was an agent working as the first secretary of the British Embassy and accused him of working alongside the Estonian Interior Ministry's security police department.
The FSB said Miller also went by the name Antonio Alvares de Hidalgo.
The FSB allegations were made in a report carried by Interfax. An FSB spokesman confirmed the report but declined further comment.
The British Foreign Office refused to comment on Miller's association with Zharko or his current status within the British diplomatic corp.
The first public mention of a connection between Zharko and Miller appears to be an Aug. 9 posting on web forum Able2Know.com. The author of the post says he learned that Zharko had identified Antonio Alvares de Hidalgo as his "tutor" from MI6 some time ago, and questions whether the re-employment of an exposed MI6 agent stemmed from the agency's need to "retrench" or whether "the department officers of MI6 are so goofy they make such blunders."
The FSB spokesman refused to comment on when Zharko first identified Miller as his recruiter. He expressed surprise when told of the Internet posting and asked for the web site's address.
1982 According to his LinkedIn account (no longer available) Pablo Miller graduated from Oxford University in 1982 with a degree in Modern Languages and History. Following graduation he attended the British Army officer training academy at Sandhurst.
His commission in the Royal Tank Regiment took him to Germany, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Brunei.
1984 Lt. Pablo Miller was given some assistance by General Sir Desmond Langley in Cyprus.
1995 Sergei Skripal, a colonel in the GRU, and a number of other Russians were recruited by Milller about this time. Russian author, Nikolai Luzan, in his espionage exposure “The Devil’s Counter-intelligence Dozen”, explains how Skripal was brought on board by the MI6 officer, Pablo Miller.
1997 Pablo Miller became First Secretary of the British embassy in Tallinn recruiting under the name of Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo. As things stood Skripal was already on a nice little earner secretly importing wine from the GRU authorities enabling him to make extended business trips to Malta and Spain. On one of these the GRU colonel was introduced to a Spaniard named Luis. According to Luzan it was Luis who introduced Skripal to Miller (then posing as Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo) and they went into business together.
Skripal was described as having a “thirst for profit”. He would sometimes take his wife, Lyudmilla, with him on his business trips. It seems however she knew nothing of his extra-business activities. Before entering into their partnership Miller took Skripal to a strip-club but it was not the Russian’s kind of thing and he went back home to his wife. Miller bought Skripal’s loyalty with a cheque-book and before long, using colleagues within the GRU, files had been collated on some 300 GRU employees.
1999 Skripal resigned from the GRU on health grounds. Soon after his resignation he was issued with a passport and went abroad. Again he made contact with Pablo Miller and resumed espionage activities, this time providing details on the structure of the GRU. Skripal was a greedy man. Greedy men are rarely if ever driven by morals in their decision-making. British Intelligence personnel would have known this and Skripal met with MI6 personnel frequently. He met them in the seaside resort of Izmir in Turkey under the pretence of being a tourist.
This year the Tomlinson list of 116 British Intelligence Officers was released. Apparently Pablo Miller’s name is not on the list and the controllers of the World Wide Web have done a creditable job in wiping clean this list from the internet. There are still a few hard copies available.
2000 Valery Oyamae was another recruit of Pablo Miller’s. Oyamae lived in Moscow and made frequent trips to Estonia. At the time Pablo Miller was operating from the British Embassy in Tallinn as its First Secretary – a cover for his intelligence work. On 15 March 2000 at 7 p.m. Oyamae was arrested at the Leningradsky railway station, Moscow, on espionage charges. He had risen through the ranks of the KGB becoming a senior officer. Though Oyamae was not mentioned by name at the time of his arrest, Pablo Miller, his minder, was named in both Russian and English-reading press.
While Skripal’s handler was Pablo Miller, Miller was answering to Christopher Steele in MI6.
Scot William Hine (or Hein) and Estonian Sergei Petrenko (see 2001) were arrested in Tallin on drug-smuggling charges. They were caught in possession of £2.4 million worth of heroin concealed in the fuel tank of the car they were driving. It is not clear if Robert Bruce Wright and Leslie Brown were with them at the time but they never stood trial.
spy hidalgo courtesy vesti
Pablo Miller in his younger de Hidalgo days (Courtesy ВЕСТИ)
2001 On 23 April 2001 Valery Oyamae was sentenced to seven years in prison in a Moscow court under article 275. His property was confiscated. Until sentence was pronounced his name had been kept out of the Russian and western media.
This year there was an extradition request from Estonia to the UK for Robert Bruce Wright (35) and Leslie Brown (44) wanted under suspicion of drug-smuggling in conjunction with William Hein (42) and Sergei Petrenko (41). Nobody knows the dark machinations of our security services but from what I can make out Wright and Brown claimed they were not drug-smugglers but secret-agents working against Russia on behalf of Pablo Miller at the British Embassy in Tallinn.
lenta.ru›articles/2007/08/15/spy/
20:57, 15 августа 2007 Шпион-идальго
It appears the two Estonians got 3 to 4 years in prison each and Estonia put in a request for extradition of the British citizens. I cannot find an English article on this drug-smuggling event – though there were some. Originally the BBC reported this story. And it was reported in Scotland. It has since gone dead. It looks like they were probably spooks.
2003 Pablo Miller, at this time calling himself Paul, is credited with having arranged the passage of Vyacheslav Zharko, Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko (FSB officer) to the UK, which added to the festering cesspool of oligarchs and Mafia-style businessmen already buying political favours and prime properties in London.
Skripal left his latest job in the Russian Department of Foreign Affairs.
2004 Sergei Skripal arrested and detained in custody on charges of espionage. He admitted the charges.
2006 Sergei Skripal convicted of spying and given a 13 year prison sentence. He allegedly confessed to everything. According to the Russian press It would appear that Skripal may have protected his minder because there was no mention of a Miller or Hidalgo by the FSB in 2006. (Source: Kommersant 16.08.2007, p. 4)
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko died from polonium 210 poisoning.
Pablo Miller took up a post in Bogota, Columbia possibly for his own safety. According to his deleted LinkedIn page he “led the British Government’s flagship project in Bogota, supporting the Colombian state’s programme aimed at countering high-level, drugs-related corruption and impunity.”
2007 Vyacheslav Zharko, a former tax police inspector, spilled the beans in claiming that Pablo Miller recruited him in 2003. He was not caught. Most pertinently he confessed to the FSB when Andrei Lugovoi was accused by the UK of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko. He lost total faith in MI6. It dawned on him that his minders (he named 3 including Pablo Miller) would say anything to try to denigrate Russia and no longer wanted to be part of it.
2009 Pablo Miller’s duty came to an end in Bogota.
Christopher Steele retired as head of the Russian Department of MI6 and founded Orbis Business Intelligence (based in Grosvenor Gardens, London). https://orbisbi.com
2010 Roberto Flórez García convicted in Spain of working for the Russians at the start of the century. It is said he betrayed Skripal as a spy.
Sergei Skripal was exchanged in a deal with the US having served four years of a thirteen year sentence. He came with his wife and daughter to live in Salisbury, the home town of his former minder Pablo Miller.
Pablo Miller was posted to Poland as a counsellor at the British Embassy in Warsaw. On 5 May (shortly before the UK National Election) he wrote a witty tongue-in-cheek letter to the Spectator from Warsaw criticising the apathy of modern youth in being too lazy to vote. This no doubt made his daughters very proud of him!
2011 The Spectator received a letter from Pablo Miller in Poland in praise of Ross Clark and Martin Vander Weyer criticising public sector chief executive salaries compared to those of commanding officers in Helmand, on a mere £70,000 per annum.
2012 Sergei Skripal’s wife, Lyudmilla, died from cancer.
2014 Yulia Skripal returned to Russia.
2015 Pablo Miller received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II. He retired from MI6 and joined his colleague and former boss Christopher Steele at Orbis Business Intelligence – the company responsible for the “dodgy dossier” on Donald Trump.
2016 Sergei Skripal’s son and older brother of Yulia, Alexander, died from liver failure on a high-speed train in Moscow. This prompted Yulia to remove all family photos from her Facebook account.
Orbis Business Intelligence releases its report on Donald Trump based to a large extent on information supplied by a former Russian intelligence officer.
There are many speculations that this intelligence officer was Skripal, who perhaps should have got out of the game when Zharko did.
2018 On March 5 the Clinical Services Journal (CSJ) reported “a major incident after two patients were exposed to what was believed to be an opiate . . . an incident . . . in which a man and a woman were exposed to the drug Fentanyl in the city centre.” The drug Fentanyl was redacted later and replaced by “a substance” with the footnote that: “This story was updated on 26 April 2018 to remove suggestion (which was widely speculated and reported at the time of writing) that the substance found was fentanyl.” All credit to the medical journalists who were forced to change the story.
And all credit to the author, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, of the blog which first exposed the Novichok lie. If I am not mistaken the photographer in the mirror on the first photo bears an uncanny resemblance to the artist’s impression of Pablo Miller in the featured image at the head of this timeline.
An Israeli expert on international terrorism, writer Alexander Brass, shared his view on the case of the Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. Brass draws parallels between the work of the special services of Israel and Russia – he believes that if to compare the British version with the practice of the special agents, then the absurdity becomes obvious.
“Alexander, so what, in your opinion, happened in Salisbury?”
-There was a rough provocation by the British special services. In my opinion, this is obvious.
– Why do you think so?
“There’s a lot of stupidity on stupidity.” The story with Petrov and Boshirov does not hold up any professional peer review. According to the Brits, the Skripals were poisoned by GRU agents (this is what the department is called, although this is now the Main Directorate of the RF General Staff).
I want to explain how the special services work. If you need someone to eliminate, then this is a very serious operation, which is being prepared for a long time. A very significant material and human resource is allocated. We are talking about dozens of employees. On the territory of this state, an “advanced command post” is being created.
In the operation, a technical support group, a logistic group, a cover group, an external surveillance group and a group of performers are involved.
The performers themselves appear at the very last moment. They do not go anywhere, lighting up on cameras, do not use public transport, but move on rented cars, which they do not rent themselves. And the more they will not stop in hotels, but will live on safe houses provided by the logistics group.
Such groups do not come under the passport of their country, do not go to the embassy for obtaining a visa, leaving fingerprints. This is complete nonsense. Professionals do not work that way.
If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, leave their fingerprints there, get a visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies’ detective novels.
– Maybe it is unprofessionalism associated with the degradation and decay, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union took place in all structures and institutions of society, including in the special services? Lost skills, methods, no one to teach young people. There is such an opinion.
– This is an opinion at the level of kitchen conversations. Where did the armed forces and the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation manage to raise such a “bardak” to such a level as they could organize the World Cup and the Olympics at such a high level? The GRU has always been and remains one of the most professional and most intelligent intelligence agencies in the world.
If the GRU decided to eliminate Skripal, then I have a question: why was the “Novichok” used? This is not a remedy, it’s a chemical weapon of mass destruction. It’s like dropping an atomic bomb on a city to kill one criminal. When special services eliminate an object, they always try to do it so that no autopsy shows that he was poisoned.
– Can you give examples?
– I can give many examples. In 1978, the well-known international terrorist Vadia Haddad, one of the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was killed. “Mossad” did not take responsibility for this, but sewed in a bag you can not hide. A potent biological poison was mixed with chocolate. Within three months he died of a painful and incomprehensible illness in the GDR clinic. His autopsy was conducted at the University of East Berlin. No trace of poison was found. The doctors assumed that he died of leukemia.
– How did you know that he was killed by Mossad?
– Information about this began to leak a few years ago. It came from Algeria. One of the former Mossad agents during another trial gave evidence that he witnessed how this happened, calling the specific names of the performers. This man also confirmed that he was a participant in this operation. This information was also confirmed by other, non-overlapping sources.
– Were there any cases when the Mossad operation ended unsuccessfully and the enemies of Israel were still alive?
– Take the last unsuccessful attempt of the Israelis to kill Khaled Mashaal, one of the leaders of the terrorist organization Hamas. He would have been killd if he had not been given an antidote at the last minute.
Everything happened on September 25, 1997 on one of the streets of Amman – the capital of Jordan. Just some passer-by, who was next to Mashaal, “accidentally” stumbled and splashed the liquid from the can of Coke to his neck. The next day Mashal would have died of a heart attack, and no traces. But the performers were seized on the spot. After that, the King of Jordan Hussein demanded that Israel provide an antidote, and in return promised to release Israeli agents.
– That is, substances that leave no traces are not detected by expertise and imitate death from the disease, the secret services have long been known?
– That’s it. Could the GRU not have been able to use some other poison, and not the “Novichok”, which leaves traces everywhere? If such technologies were in the special services already in the 1950s, do not the GRU have them today?
Let’s talk about the cameras. The UK on this some kind of fad. In no country in the world there is such a number of surveillance cameras per capita.
If I’m not mistaken, about one camera for 15 people. Literally every meter is looked through. MI5, the British counterintelligence service, is considered one of the best in the world. And if Britain took care of Skripal, he was very well guarded. At least his house was hung with all the cameras, which are only possible.
If, according to MI5, these agents visited Salisbury, they came to the house of Skripal and coated the door handle with this substance – so show the records from the cameras! How can it be that it was at this point that the cameras suddenly turned off?
“But maybe these agents found the cameras and turned them off?”
“If you say that the GRU has deteriorated so badly that it has lit up everywhere and left its mark, why did this degraded intelligence agency manage to turn off the surveillance cameras near the Skripal house at the right time?” Where is the logic?
– When our agents killed the Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar, they got caught and were captured by the local police. True, they carried out the task …
“And how many Israeli agents were arrested?” This does not mean degradation. I do not know what happened after the collapse of the USSR in the GRU, but I know what happened in the Foreign Intelligence Service, since I had been friends with one of the very high-ranking officers of this service for many years in retirement. We had very close, friendly relations with him for many years. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago.
He told me that the degradation of the special services is only an appearance. He retired, because he already had years of service and he did not agree with the mess that was going on in the country. But there was no mess in the secret services! Who wanted to – left. But was there a leak of information? Have they discovered an agent network? Agents of Soviet special services worked all over the world. Have any of them suffered? No one. The mess can be anywhere, but not in the special services.
– Let’s admit. All this really looks strange – first let out Skripal, then kill him. Would not it be easier to just leave him in jail?
– Now about the personality of Sergei Skripal himself. The main version, which is voiced by the British side, is revenge. But in special services there is no such thing as revenge. Neither the Israelis, nor the Russians. Only the Cubans had it. We must understand that the special services are a very practical organization. Why revenge? A person is eliminated only when he can cause real harm. The Skripal has already done harm. He could not do more harm.
– For example, as a lesson to other potential traitors, no?
– No. I once asked my acquaintances who worked in your special services (I have never had any contact with active staff, only with retirees): “Why did not Kalugin be killed?” And they answered me with a counter question: “Why haven’t you eliminated the defector? “I said: he has already done harm. To eliminate him, it is necessary to develop a very serious operation, to send people, people should risk their lives. For the sake of what – for the sake of revenge? They say: “For the same reason, we do not touch Kalugin and do not touch anyone.” Israelis are not even exterminated by former terrorists. At the moment when the terrorist stops terrorist activities, regardless of what he did before, he is left alone. The only ones who were persecuted to the end were Nazi criminals.
– There is an opinion that he was eliminated because he taught at the counterintelligence school and taught young employees how to deal with the GRU.
– And what, in MI5, except for Skripal, no one knows how to do it? I think they know it better than him.
– In such cases, there is a very simple practice. When Skripal was taken on treason, he probably was intelligibly explained: either you go to life imprisonment and you will be in solitary confinement somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, or you will receive 12 years of strict regime in the European part of Russia. But for this, you must fully tell what you have handed over, and give evidence. To cooperate with the investigation.
Similarly, when the former colonel of the Defense Intelligence of Israel’s Defense Intelligence Department, I did not name him, went into business and got into debt.
He went to Lebanon to buy heroin and conduct a drug deal, and was captured by Hezbollah. He told everything he knew, inflicting enormous damage to Israel’s defense capability. Because he was an officer on this site, he worked for Lebanon.
The Israelis exchanged him, they pulled him out. He was told: let’s make a deal. You will not be prosecuted. But you must thoroughly, in every detail, tell what you told them. We need to know what they know. The same was with Skripal. And there was simply no need to eliminate him.
– So there was no motive for Russian special services?
– There was no motive. Then, imagine: they used “Novichok”, they carried it with them in a bottle from under the perfume. In the practice of special services this does not exist. Performers go light, with other people’s passports. They receive weapons on the spot. And when such a group of liquidators works, it works autonomously, without affecting the local residency. In case of failure, do not harm the residence. When the surveillance is working and the capture team is working, they do not know each other in person, they communicate only through certain communication channels.
– The question is also why the poison did not act instantly, and Skripal was still wandering about for a few hours.
– It’s a different matter. The British are so disrespectful to Russia that even provocation can not be done at a decent level. It’s even humiliating. Therefore, Russia does not comment on this in any way. And why is it necessary to comment on some kind of nonsense?
It took half a year to Brits to find the “suspects.” Although they left their full personal data and fingerprints in the embassy when they received visas. This is a separate nonsense. Then Russia said: please! Here they are, here’s their interview. If they were active GRU officers, they would not have left their fingerprints in the embassy for anything.
“Who are they?”
– I do not know who they are, but certainly not employees of special services. If the GRU needed to kill Skripal, he would now be dead. This would have been done quietly and without scandal.
English plane spotters and bird watchers have discovered the location of the Skripals in Gloucestershire. An hour and a half’s drive north of their well-known home in Salisbury, Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been hidden inside an airbase operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) for long-range B-52 and B-2 bombers armed with nuclear weapons targeted on Russia.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in the Salisbury city centre at about 4:15 on Sunday afternoon, March 4, 2018. They were then taken by separate ambulances to the Salisbury District Hospital. What happened to them next remains a state secret. Follow the latest report here.
The British Government has refused to allow consular access to the Skripals, although they are Russian citizens; the Russian Embassy in London has requested the access; British law and international treaties require it. Lawyers in London reveal there has been an informal atmosphere at the Bar deterring an application to the courts for a writ of habeas corpus on the Skripals’ behalf to compel physical access.
A London High Court judge reported publicly on March 22, 2018, that both Skripals were ““unconscious…heavily sedated…unable to communicate in any way”.
As they recovered consciousness, their contact with family members in Moscow was restricted. On March 29, a bulletin was issued by the hospital reporting that “Yulia Skripal is improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition. Her condition is now stable. Her father remains in a critical but stable condition.” This was the first of four Skripal bulletins from Salisbury Hospital officials; they can be followed here. The state news outlet BBC reported the same day that Yulia was “conscious and talking”.
On April 5, she made a furtive mobile telephone call to her cousin in Moscow, Viktoria Skripal; the details were reported here. A tape of the call was broadcast on Russian state television. The BBC then replayed excerpts, with English translation and an anonymously sourced claim disputing that the telephone conversation was genuine.
Left: Russian state television Rossiya Channel 1 broadcasting the telephone-call. Right: British state television BBC broadcasting that the call had been faked. Source: https://www.bbc.com/
That the telephone call was unauthorized by hospital officials and required Skripal to hide from her guards was also indicated by the consequences a day later. The hospital issued a statement on April 6 that “as Yulia herself says [in the telephone recording in Russian], her strength is growing daily and she can look forward to the day when she is well enough to leave the hospital. Any speculation on when that date will be is just that – speculation. In the meantime, Yulia has asked for privacy while she continues to get better – something I’d like to urge the media to respect. I also want to update you on the condition of her father, Sergei Skripal. He is responding well to treatment, improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition.”
In London later the same day, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement “on behalf of Yulia Skripal”. The police website link to that document has disappeared, though the police tweet remains.
News media quoting Scotland Yard reported Yulia as saying: “Everything is fine, he [Sergei Skripal] is resting right now, sleeping. Everyone’s health is fine, nobody has any problems that can’t be put right. I will soon be discharging myself [from hospital].”
Yulia was released from hospital on April 9, according to the official announcement a day later. The hospital’s medical director confirmed that Sergei remained in hospital. “He is recovering more slowly than Yulia,”, the director claimed. “We hope that he too will be able to leave hospital in due course.” On May 18, the hospital announced: “ ‘Sergei Skripal is well enough to leave Salisbury District Hospital,’ the hospital’s Chief Executive Cara Charles-Barks said in a statement.” Since then no independent or direct evidence of Sergei Skripal, nor proof that he is alive, has been published.
The Russian Ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, repeated the official request for consular access. “We are happy that he is all right,” Yakovenko told the BBC. “If they don’t want our assistance, that’s fine, but we want to see them physically.” The BBC reported that day: “Ms Skripal was released on 9 April and was moved to a secure location. It is not known whether Mr Skripal has been taken to the same location as his daughter.” The location, it now turns out in retrospect, was an American military base a 15-minute helicopter ride from the hospital.
The evidence of the location can be found in the film prepared by the Reuters organisation of New York and broadcast on May 23. Watch closely the scripted speech and the full video clip.
For the full story, including the Reuters English transcript, the video clip, and additional furtive signals by Yulia Skripal, read this.
Visual evidence in the film reveals in the background what appeared at first to be a chicken coop. Local sources have recognized it, as well as the surrounding foliage; remains of bark mulch; two differently constructed fences, one of diamond mesh and one of square mesh; a gate; and a right-curving path. The sources say this evidence identifies the Skripal film location in a corner of open parkland inside the air base known as RAF Fairford.
The sources request anonymity. They say the timber and mesh construction visible behind Skripal’s head is a ladder trap for crows and magpies; for confirming details, read this. That and the other features visible in the Reuters film have been pinpointed on the Ordnance Survey map of the base area where the park path, shown as a blue line, reaches the Alaska Avenue corner.
Source: https://www.google.at/maps/ The blue line is identified in the Ordnance Survey map key as "other road, drive or track,fenced and unfenced"; it is visible as such in the satellite image.
RAF Fairford is regularly monitored by local plane spotters, who follow and photograph the movement of USAF bombers and electronic intelligence aircraft in and out of the base’s runway which has been lengthened and reinforced to accommodate them. The base is in Gloucestershire, 55 miles north of Salisbury, 100 miles west of London.
The history of the base, firstly under Royal Air Force (RAF) control and then under USAF control, can be read here. Sources familiar with the base say the parkland was left to go to weed when USAF operations were reduced after 2010. But current plans call for upgrading and repopulating the base with several hundred fresh USAF personnel.
A US report claims that prepositioning of nuclear warheads for USAF aircraft flying out of British bases ended in 2008. At that time, the ordnance withdrawn was reported to be B61 nuclear bombs designed to be loaded on F-16 fighter-bombers. Since 2016 US experts report that the B-52 and B-2 bombers operating from bases like Fairford have been “denuclearized”. “A total of 30 operational B-52s will be denuclearized before 2018 to reduce the number of deployed nuclear bombers to no more than 60”, wrote Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in September 2016. Following the Ukraine putsch of February 2014 and the escalation of the US war against Russia, new Pentagon budget spending has sharply increased for “enhanced prepositioning” of cruise missiles for B-52 and B-2 aircraft. The dual capability of such missiles – conventional explosive and nuclear – is well known. Whether USAF nuclear warheads have been returned to the British bases is not known publicly.
Between August 27 and September 20, USAF aircraft were reported locally as deployed at Fairford, including B-52 and B-2 bombers. They flew missions from Fairford to the “Norwegian Sea”, as well as Iceland, the Azores, and over Britain “in world-first partnership with RAF F-35 fighters”.
Deployed on 24 to 48-hour orders from their home bases in the US, they are intended for rapid action against Russia, or other US and NATO operational targets. In the past, USAF aircraft from Fairford participated in the bombing of Serbia in 1999, operations in Iraq in 2003, and simulated Russia-attack exercises in Poland and the Baltic states recently.
US and British ground staff monitor flight fueling at RAF Fairford in September; source: https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/ The “beauty of this place” [Fairford], according to the bomber wing commander, Lieut-Colonel Rob Schoeneberg, “puts us closer to the adversary. It challenges their ability to know where we are at, and know our striking distance.” Schoeneberg acknowledges the operational importance of prepositioning and airbase readiness for rapid deployment of the bombers. He did not mention that prepositioning includes fuel, aircraft maintenance and support equipment, as well as ordnance. The nuclear armament, bombs and missile warheads, of the B-52 is described here and for the B-2 here.
The newly recognized evidence of Yulia Skripal’s location at RAF Fairford in May 2018 falls short of proving that she and her father continue to live there now. The newly available evidence suggests that the US Government took control of the Skripals immediately after their hospitalisation. Although MI6, the British foreign intelligence agency, had provided their home and security in Salisbury until March 4, 2018, it appears that Sergei Skripal is now a priority interest for the US.
“Being under US control is obviously why Russia has been denied consular access to the Skripals,” comments a Russian source. “HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] doesn’t have them.”
London sources speculate that the Skripals’ residence at the Fairford airbase was temporary, intended by the British and the American services to last only as long as Sergei Skripal took to recover. The sources point out that Yulia’s interview was broadcast only five days after her father’s release from hospital. They believe more time was required for Sergei’s condition to normalize enough for him to be self-sustaining in a new home. This is what has happened to his original one, bought for Skripal by MI6.
The sources suspect there was an agreement between MI6 and CIA for relocating the Skripals to the US, where they are less likely to be recognized. To fly them there by a US military plane from RAF Fairford was a simple, short-term expedient.
The recent titbit fed to us by Bellingcat (reputedly close to MI6) that a third Russian agent was booked on the flight from Heathrow to Moscow on the night of 4th March 2018 — the flight taken by the two alleged GRU officers filmed in Salisbury — but didn’t show up for it, has pointed to a possible solution to the baffling Skripal puzzle. What if the third man, or perhaps the man who was supposed to take his place, was by then lying in Salisbury Hospital in a coma from opiate poisoning? What if Sergei Skripal was a triple agent trying to escape back to Russia to tell the world the truth about the Steele Dossier, which he had helped to concoct as a scurrilous, obscene joke and which had unexpectedly become the new bible of the insane war party in Washington?
This is the alternative narrative I will set out in detail here so that the reader can judge whether it forms a more plausible and coherent story than the mishmash of improbabilities, absurdities and contradictions served up by the British police and MI6. Of course in the absence of all the facts we must sometimes use imaginative reconstruction to fill in the gaps, but the point is to see how many thorny problems, raised by the facts we do have, can be solved by this narrative and cannot be solved by the official one.
It is not necessary to decide whether Skripal was a triple agent from the start (that is, a plant sent across in a spy swap, a classic Cold War way of infiltrating the enemy) or whether he became a triple agent when he realized how important this grotesque Steele Dossier had become and how much the Russians would pay him to come back and demolish it. What evidence there is (his phone call in 2012 to his old school friend, Vladimir Timoshkov, whose account of it three weeks after the poisoning gained widespread UK media coverage) suggests he started out as a purely mercenary traitor. Disillusioned by the collapse of the USSR into a gangster capitalist state run by Yeltsin’s mafia cronies, he decided he might as well profit from it by selling the corpse of what had once been his country to the highest bidder. The Russians didn’t seem to think of him as much more than a common criminal (only worth a moderate 13-year sentence, instead of the death penalty he would have got in the USA for betraying 300 agents) or they wouldn’t have let him survive six years in their prison. Perhaps when they exchanged him in the spy swap they gave him a wink and said: “Since you’re just a money-grubbing whore, any time you want to come back with some interesting stuff learned from working for MI6, let us know and we’ll discuss the price.”
He soon got to learn that interesting stuff when he was sent to Salisbury, the home town of his MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller. Miller had recruited him in Spain in 1995 and later handled him from Estonia, when he was posted there as a diplomat. It is a little too much to believe Skripal’s move to Salisbury was a coincidence. The two men became friends again, met regularly in the pub, and there is every reason to think Miller resumed his role as handler. Miller was now working for Christopher Steele, his old boss at MI6, in his private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, based in Mayfair. This is one of the private intelligence-gathering outfits run by ex-spies of the kind Litvinenko used to work for. Just as Litvinenko got Lugovoy (his accused assassin) to help him out with due diligence reports on Russian businessmen because of his more up-to-date information, so Miller would have used Skripal in the same way. His help became vital when Steele got the commission from the Democratic Party to dig up Russian dirt on Donald Trump, and they had to invent some GRU set-up of the Donald with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Miller, the old Russia hand, would have done a good part of the work on this dossier and would have needed all the authentic detail his Russian agent could provide. Perhaps it was Skripal who came up with the scenario of Trump getting prostitutes to urinate on the bed the Obamas had slept in, which hidden cameras filmed. He must at least have given it his imprimatur as a typical GRU blackmail ploy to turn somebody into an asset. And that obscene fiction, the core of the Steele Dossier, became the basis of the neo-con legend that Trump was a Russian stooge — the insane underpinning of the whole mad Mueller probe into “Russian collusion”.
When Sergei the mercenary realized the vast importance this farcical, obscene Steele Dossier had taken on, that it was gospel truth for the whole anti-Trump, anti-Russia war party in Washington, he began to see how much it might be worth to the Russian state to blow it sky-high. If he were to describe on a prime-time Russian talk-show how he invented these obscene details over a beer with Miller and Steele in a pub, it would not only have all of Russia rolling on the floor with laughter. Heads would roll in Washington. The neo-con war party would become a laughing-stock. MI6 would be run out of town. Steele might face FBI perjury charges. The CIA might have its budget cut. Trump would be able to talk to Putin again. And the rewards for Sergei might be considerable. Not only seeing his 90-year old mother again, but perhaps even a * villa with a sea-view in Crimea or Sochi instead of that dank, shabby row-house in darkest Salisbury.
Was it Sergei who broached this subject to Yulia on one of her visits to Britain, or was she recruited by the GRU to put it to him? My bet is the latter, since after the poisoning her cousin Viktoria claimed Yulia’s new boyfriend and his mother both worked for the Russian secret services (before disappearing from view.) With all of Sergei’s communications monitored by MI6, the only way he had of talking to the GRU was through his daughter, living back in Russia again but able to visit Britain. Through her he must have managed to negotiate a deal for his return. Somehow MI6 got wind of their plans — perhaps Yulia, not a trained spy, was a bit naive or careless about listening devices. Steele became convinced they had made an escape plan for Sergei, to be carried out next time she visited Salisbury.
The thing that proves this was a British crime not a Russian one is the fact that Yulia was a prime target. The Russians had no motive to eliminate her, but if they had, they could have done it in Russia with a simple road accident with no questions asked. Only the British had to do it in Britain, since they didn’t have the resources in place to do it in Russia. And if she was not a prime target but collateral damage, why was Sergei not attacked when he was alone? Why wait for her to visit him? The fact they were both targeted the day after she arrived in Britain puts MI6’s signature all over it. She was a danger to MI6 because she knew of Sergei’s plan to return to Russia and trash the Steele Dossier, and she had to be stopped from revealing this to the world when he was killed. Silencing her at the same time was just as important to MI6 as silencing him.
To imagine that Putin would have ordered the assassination of an old double agent whom he had held for six years in prison (with ample opportunities to arrange his death) and then pardoned and swapped in a spy swap (part of the rules of the spying game on which his own life had been based), a week before the Russian elections and three months before the Football World Cup in Russia, which he hoped would lead to Russia’s re-acceptance into the community of nations, makes no sense. It carried only huge risks for a negligible benefit, and Putin does not take pointless risks, as his consistent prudence in Syria, even when his forces have been attacked, has shown. Compare the enormous gains this crime brought Britain. This assassination (as it was meant to be) gave MI6 a perfect opportunity to frame the Russians and incite a new anti-Russia frenzy to sabotage their celebratory Football World Cup (compared by the British Foreign Secretary to Hitler’s Olympics.) It would also show the EU Britain’s value as an anti-Putin cheerleader, bringing Europe and Britain together in an anti-Russia hate-week to distract from their Brexit quarrel, and uniting a fractious parliament behind a floundering leader. With any luck it would derail the Nordstream2 gas pipeline, a priority target for the US neo-con plan to ruin Russia’s economy, overthrow the regime and break up the country — goals MI6 fully shared, as their propaganda wing, the Integrity Initiative, has since made clear. In fact MI6’s plans to work for the total isolation and economic ruin of Russia, including sporting bans and ending cultural exchanges, date from 2015 and were leaked recently by Anonymous. The enormous preponderance of motivation on the British side, as well as the low risk in carrying out such a crime on their own turf with a grovelling press, a brainwashed public and tame police, point clearly to MI6 as the perpetrators.
Steele probably turned to his CIA friends for suggestions on how to frame Russia. They came up with novichok. This nerve agent invented by a Soviet chemist who later moved to the US and published the formula could be pinned on Russia as a uniquely Russian “chemical weapon.” Never mind that any decent laboratory could produce it, as a chemistry professor at Cornell has testified. Never mind that the British-invented nerve agent VX had been used to assassinate Kim Yong-Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur Airport without Malaysia screaming that Britain must have done it. Russia is different. Hysterical hatred can be instantly incited against Russia by the MI6-controlled media and MI6-brainwashed politicians. Anyone who doubts Russia’s guilt can be vilified as a Putin stooge. Whether the novichok was sent over from the US by courier or produced at Porton Down is not important. What is important is that MI6’s attempt to kill the Skripals with novichok failed disastrously.
Let’s take the famous Nina Ricci perfume bottle, laced with novichok, which was found in a rubbish bin or charity bin by a homeless man and given weeks later to his woman friend, who tragically died after spraying it on her wrist. The police/MI6 narrative is that this perfume bottle was used to transport the novichok from Russia in the baggage of one of the alleged GRU men caught on CCTV in Salisbury. The novichok was then sprayed on the door handle of the Skripals’ house. The assassins then callously threw away the bottle (which they knew contained enough novichok to kill more people) in a dustbin or charity bin, demonstrating their indifference to loss of life as well as their indifference to leaving clues all over the place. There are problems with this narrative.
The homeless man claimed he had found the perfume bottle still in its box sealed in cellophane, proof it was not reopened after it had been laced with novichok and professionally repackaged. The bottle could not therefore have been used (as claimed) to spray the novichok on the doorknob, or the cellophane seal would have been broken. Assassins far from home don’t usually carry around cellophane-wrapping machines to repackage opened perfume bottles, especially when they are just going to chuck them in the bin. Nor would they take the risk, having fitted the separate spray nozzle onto the bottle and sprayed the doorknob, of disassembling it again to put it back in the box, knowing that a drop on their skin would kill them. And where would they perform this delicate operation? On the street? This poisoned perfume bottle was therefore never reopened, never used and it affected nobody until it ended up in the hands of the homeless man. So who or what was it intended for?
Ladies’ perfume bottles are normally intended for women. How many women are there in this story? Only one. The only possible explanation for the existence of this unopened, unused bottle of perfume laced with novichok is that it was a poisoned gift meant for Yulia Skripal. Why didn’t she open it? Because she had a spy father who took one look at it and said: “Don’t touch it!”
So here is the alternative narrative. MI6 had the bright idea of putting novichok in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle and sending it as a birthday present to Yulia Skripal at her father’s house. Her birthday was on 17th March, but the present was probably delivered on the 3rd, the day she arrived, so as to nip their escape plan in the bud. It was meant to seem like a present from her family or boyfriend. No doubt the parcel had Russian stamps on it, designed to frame the Russian state when the Skripals were found dead in their house with an open perfume bottle in Yulia’s hands. Unfortunately for MI6, Sergei took one look at this Nina Ricci perfume bottle and his spy instincts smelled danger. He refused to open it, but instead went for a long walk with it and put it in a rubbish bin or charity bin half-way across town. There it was found by the homeless man and given to his woman friend, a victim of MI6’s murderous callousness. Even after MI6 knew it had gone missing, they did not warn the public to beware of picking up a Nina Ricci perfume bottle because they didn’t want to give themselves away as the assassins.
The failure of the perfume bottle to kill the Skripals must have alarmed MI6. They followed the pair around Salisbury the next day. Where did they go? We can’t be sure since we have not been given all the CCTV footage. But let us engage in some more imaginative reconstruction to cover the gaps. The Skripals’ car made some unexplained journeys towards the outskirts of the town. The two alleged GRU men caught on Salisbury’s CCTV walked in some unexplained directions, with not a scrap of evidence they came within half a kilometre of the Skripals’ home. What if the two unexplained journeys intersected? Not necessarily in time but in place. What if they met at that hoary cliché of spy stories, the dead drop, the discreet delivery point for a package? The hole-in-a-garden-wall just big enough to hide something? A Mossad spy, commenting on the British police narrative, said that no GRU assassination team would ever have flown direct from Russia using Russian passports. But a support team delivering a package? Why not? What did they risk?
Now what would the GRU need to deliver to Sergei Skripal to help him escape from Britain back to Russia? Clearly, a passport. MI6, once they suspected his loyalty, would have put him on an airport watch list. He would need a passport in a false name to get out, and perhaps a flight ticket to Moscow in the same name so he wouldn’t need to make an internet booking, easily spied on. But the passport could not be blank. It needed a UK visa and entry stamp. So the third Russian agent who Bellingcat now tells us didn’t show up for the flight back to Moscow must have intended his seat to be taken by Sergei Skripal, who would use the passport and visa which he had flown in with a few days before (delivered to Sergei by his two colleagues at the dead drop that day.) Either Sergei and the third man bore a sufficient physical resemblance or passport photos were switched by an expert forger in London. Unfortunately, though Sergei now had a usable passport, he was hit before he made it to the flight.
MI6, after the failure of the perfume bottle attempt, knew they had to act fast to stop the Skripals driving to the airport. Once they observed the package delivery at the dead drop, they would have guessed it was a passport. There was now no chance of using novichok. The Skripals were unlikely to return home and pack a bag, so they had to be knocked out in a public place. Using novichok and risking the lives of dozens of other people was too much even for MI6. So they decided to spray them in the street with an opiate like Fentanyl, and later on to add novichok to the blood samples they sent to Porton Down for analysis (without of course any controlled chain of custody except their own.)
We know that the Skipals were knocked out with an opiate and not a nerve agent because of a simple incident — in fact, a slip-up. The first person on the scene when the Skripals collapsed on their bench was an army nurse, the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, Colonel Alison McCourt, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Abigail. Does anyone believe she was there by chance and was not part of the MI6 team following the Skripals about and looking for an opportunity to drug them discreetly? Now Colonel McCourt had long experience both with Ebola in Sierra Leone and with the danger of chemical weapons during her service in Iraq, where protection against nerve agents was a priority. She knew the enormous precautions required in approaching a victim of a nerve agent attack. Yet Colonel McCourt encouraged her daughter to rush over to the collapsed Skripals and begin administering first aid to them, something very dangerous if a nerve agent had been used. She later even recommended Abigail for a medal for heroism for her action, which is why it got into the papers. How did Colonel McCourt know that a nerve agent had not been used on the Skripals, unless she was part of the team that had sprayed them with an opiate? Would she have allowed her daughter to touch the Skipals unless she was sure there was no nerve agent present? This is what is known as a smoking gun.
There has been extraordinary silence in the mainstream media about the fact that none of the first responders or the Salisbury Hospital staff were in any way affected by the deadliest nerve agent known to man, even though no precautions were taken against it for at least two days. The nurses assumed they were dealing with an opiate overdose. When the blood test results came back from Porton Down showing novichok present in the blood samples, the hazmat suits were donned and the hospital allegedly went into panic mode. We can assume most of this was a charade. Sergeant Bailey, allegedly contaminated with novichok though the police can’t decide where, recounts in the Panorama BBC film shown in November that the nurses who cared for him wore full hazmat suits, but his wife and children wandered in to see him wearing no protection at all. Clearly the nurses were engaging in an MI6-mandated charade but couldn’t bear to impose it on his family because they knew there was no novichok present. Bailey, no doubt also drugged by an opiate, had been selected as a fake British victim to stir up more indignation against Russia, and to add further fake proof that novichok had been used, which the total absence of contamination of first responders might cast doubt on. As part of this charade, all the poor man’s furniture and belongings were destroyed by the heartless brutes of MI6, which he recounts in tears, in order to incite more irrational hatred of Russia — which the British public, the most brainwashed on earth, came up with on cue.
Of course the failure of the perfume bottle assassination attempt, and the need to switch drugs and use an opiate instead of novichok, left MI6 and the police with the task of explaining how the phantom novichok was administered. The farcical story they finally came up with, that it was sprayed on the Skripals’ front door handle with the perfume bottle, has convinced nobody except the brainwashed masses. Even the clownish Foreign Secretary’s story that MI6 had shown him a Russian spy handbook which described how their spies had recently been practising putting novichok on door handles (a technical skill obviously requiring weeks of training and about to be unleashed en masse against Britain’s unsuspecting doorknobs) but unfortunately he couldn’t produce this handbook as it was classified, left people howling with laughter. It was worthy of a Monty Python sketch, something the Russians, who are great fans of British comedy, must have appreciated.
The idea that assassins could walk up to the front door of a terraced house in broad daylight, a door with clear glass panels in the middle and on both sides of it, so that anyone outside is visible from the hallway, and spray the doorknob with novichok while the Skripals were inside and their car was in the driveway, is simply not believable. These professional assassins did not even have a car or even bicycles to make a getaway if seen. And the two police versions of what time the attackers did this, first of all at 9.15 before the Skripals left home and then at 1.30 (after the police revised their timeline to fit the train schedule of the two Russians caught on CCTV) would both have left many hours’ delay before this deadly nerve agent took effect at 4.15 that afternoon.
We are asked to believe that two people of very different size, a man of 66 and a girl half that age, fell unconscious at the exact same moment either seven hours or three hours after being poisoned with a deadly “military grade” nerve agent. Why this delayed effect? Would this be useful in a battlefield chemical weapon — let’s leave the enemy active for several hours? And how to get a simultaneous collapse many hours later? No explanation. And if novichok was used to attack the Skripals, why was Abigail McCourt not affected when she gave them first aid and why did her highly trained army nurse mother allow her to touch victims of a deadly nerve agent?
The intelligent people who work in Salisbury Hospital cannot possibly be dupes to this grotesque deception, riddled with impossibilities. They are therefore accomplices and criminally responsible. I believe many of the hospital staff suspected MI6 was staging this whole thing but went along with it because of the high level of Cold War, anti-Russian brainwashing of the British population. They saw it as an exciting spy game they were taking part in with their wonderful secret services who had Won the War and Saved the World. It was a question of loyalty to Britain to defend this criminal lie. They must have suspected the Skripals’ blood samples had been laced afterwards with novichok. Perhaps the OPCW did too, since they claimed the traces of novichok were “very pure”. Was that a hint it had never been through any human body? One can sympathize with the Russians for trying to hack the laboratory computers to find out if any of the experts had expressed doubts to each other or suspicions the OPCW had set this up. Since they knew they were victims of a shameless NATO conspiracy to frame them, all they could do was try to expose it by any means they had.
The Russians’ patience and calm in the face of this campaign of lies and hate have been almost saint-like. If the West is not wiped out by the nuclear war they are constantly pushing for with Russia, then one day Britain and all the other NATO vassal states which wrongfully expelled droves of Russian diplomats will have to make Russia an abject apology and pay compensation for the misery caused the Russian people by their illegal sanctions. Is it too much to hope that some people at Salisbury Hospital or in the local police who know the truth will have the courage sooner or later to come forward and expose this vile warmongering deception, and the totalitarian media manipulation by the sinister forces that secretly govern Britain? Do they spare a thought for the Skripals and the state they are in right now — held incommunicado without any charge against them, not represented by any lawyer, and unable to communicate with their family or the public? Surely they are not fooled by that scripted video? Where are the human rights campaigners protesting against this totalitarian sequestration? What world are they living in? Has it not occurred to them that in the era of MI6’s proven involvement in torture, whether in Guantanamo, Abu Graib, black sites or extraordinary rendition to places where people can be tortured to death, Yulia Skripal might be listening every night to her father whimpering in the next cell as the voice goes on repeating: “You Ruskie b******, tell us when you started lying to us.”
The official narrative about the Skripals has been shot full of holes by various dissident commentators in the alternative media. That always begs the question: well, so what really happened? The above alternative narrative, combining both the known facts and speculations to cover the gaps where the facts are still missing, should allow the reader to judge its overall plausibility, compared to the official one. To prove an alternative narrative to the criminal’s story, a prosecutor does not need to establish every single event in the chain, many of which will remain unknown. He only needs to prove that certain key events in the criminal’s narrative are contrary to the known facts, and that these facts are compatible with the alternative narrative. The key facts in this case are the state of the Nina Ricci perfume bottle, clearly never opened after it was laced with novichok and repackaged, and therefore never used to spray novichok anywhere; the impossibility of a deadly nerve agent having a three hour delay in its effects and then affecting two very different people at the same moment; the unlikelihood of a senior army nurse allowing her daughter to touch victims of a nerve agent; the unlikelihood novichok was used (rather than an opiate), given the lack of any effect on the first responders, and the fact Sergeant Bailey’s children were allowed to approach him without wearing hazmat suits, which the nurses, however, wore.
Put those basic problems in the official narrative together with the speed with which the UK government blamed Russia for this event, when there was no more link between Russia and novichok than between Britain and the use of British-invented VX nerve agent to assassinate Kim Yong Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur airport. No nerve agent whose formula has been published is the monopoly of any nation, nor does its use incriminate any nation. This rush to judgment reveals a premeditated plan by Britain to use this event to sabotage Russia’s Football World Cup (which they compared to Hitler’s Olympics) as part of a long-term British goal to isolate, discredit and economically ruin Russia. The need for MI6 to prevent Skripal exposing the Steele Dossier, produced by Skripal’s MI6 handlers, since it would show the degree of Britain’s cynical interference in the American election to discredit Trump and destroy any rapprochement with Russia, formed the motive for MI6 to commit murder, for which it has a considerable reputation. Combining the two things, killing the Skripals and crucifying Russia for it, was no doubt seen as a great coup by MI6. It was seen as even more ingenious to follow up this alleged “chemical weapons” attack on British soil with the fake chemical attack at Douma staged by the White Helmets, founded and financed by MI6. This was aimed at relaunching the war to overthrow Assad and dismantle Syria, giving the Americans and the Israelis its oil fields, and allowing Qatari gas to be piped to Europe to replace Russian gas. All of these fit Britain’s and NATO’s known strategic goals. The speed of the knee-jerk response of NATO countries in expelling Russian diplomats, without any debate or demand for evidence in any parliament, raises the suspicion that this was planned not by MI6 alone but jointly with the CIA and other NATO secret services, which largely control supposedly democratic governments.
The continued NATO harassment, sanctions and campaigns of lies and false accusations against Russia, including the blatant war rhetoric of the British Defence Secretary, do not bode well for the future. For the US to tear up nuclear arms treaties and then blame Russia is beyond shameful: it is destroying all possibility of negotiations to avert war. The Kerch Strait incident staged by the puppet regime in Kiev, sending gunboats into the Kerch Strait without observing the 2003 Protocol requiring them to notify in advance the Port of Kerch (a protocol observed by the dozens of ships that go through the Strait peacefully every day) was clearly part of a NATO plan to set up a major naval clash in the Black Sea. That clash (followed by an attempt to recapture Crimea or at least blow up its magnificent bridge, a reproach to a man who cannot even build a wall) may be expected in coming months, perhaps as a distraction from Brexit or a way of derailing it. NATO, in short, is on a clear trajectory towards war with Russia, which their deluded worldview convinces them they can win. Their initial use of Russia as a scapegoat and bogeyman to unite the NATO vassals against a common threat, keeping Europe in subjection to America, has got out of hand, and is heading, under the impetus of hysterical rhetoric, towards actual war. Unless decent people unite to stop this escalation then the nuclear catastrophe will occur. Exposing the barefaced lie of the Skripal false flag attack may be a step towards averting that global cataclysm.
Michael Antony is a writer based in Switzerland, and his next book, about the coming nuclear war, is called Requiem for America. He has a blog, michaelantonyblog@wordpress.com
Sergey Skripal with his daughter Yulia in their favorite Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury
It’s been two years to the day since disgraced former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were allegedly found on a park bench in Salisbury, near unconscious and apparently very unwell.
A lot has been said about the unanswered questions revolving around the incident. But perhaps the best of way of demonstrating the peculiarity of the alleged situation is to simply relate, in full, the “official version”.
Here it is:
Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, so far as we know
Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.
The GU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite officers, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.
These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.
On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.
The day following, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquid Novichok on the handle of his front door.
No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.
The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.
Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.
The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.
Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 0.2mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.
Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did
The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.
DS Nick Bailey, a CID officer is in contact with the Skripals or their home at this time and subsequently becomes ill. It has never been stated how exactly he was exposed. It was initially reported he was a first responder to the scene, but that story was changed and it was later claimed he visited the Skripal hpouse. Despite the alleged lethality of novichok in even very minute doses, Bailey is fit to return home after 18 days.
Porton Down, the British government’s chemical weapons research centre, is brought in to help identify what chemical – if any – the Skripals/Bailey were exposed to.
Within a month they release a statement claiming the poison was “a novichok like agent”, but that they could not pinpoint its origin. How they were able to test for a (at the time) theoretical chemical without having a sample to test against, has never been explained.
Porton Down is 8 minutes away from Salisbury by car.
Nearly four months later, in late June of 2018, Charlie Rowley finds the unopened perfume bottle a full of novichok (whether he bought it from a charity shop or found it in a bin is unclear, both stories have been reported). Upon using the perfume Rowley’s partner, Dawn Sturgess, falls ill. Later that day Rowley also falls ill. Sturgess dies in hospital two weeks later. But Rowley survives. Making him the fourth person in this narrative to survive exposure to an agent lethal in doses as small as 0.2mg.
Sergei Skripal and Julia both recovered and allegedly chose to live secluded lives. Sergei has not appeared in public at all since allegedly being found on that park bench. Yulia made one brief press statement. Their current whereabouts are totally unknown. Their family in Russia have apparently been denied all access to them. DS Bailey was initially also keen to maintain his privacy but has subsequently given at least one interview some while after the event.
This is the UK government’s version of what happened. Unvarnished and unsatirised. None of it is disputed, exaggerated or speculative.
If you can see any unanswered questions, logical gaps or peculiar coincidences…you are likely a Russian bot.
Filed under: latest, Russia, Skripal case, UK
Tagged with: GRU, Novichok, Pablo Miller, russia, Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal
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Jim Winners
Jim Winners
In my opinion from researching the entire picture the Skripal fiasco was initiated for a number of reasons, 1 the Golden Showers Dossier invented by former head of the Russia desk at MI6 Mr. Christopher Steele loyal former MI6 agent at the Russia desk Pablo Miller and his former double agent Sergei Skripal. The fall out that the UK’s secret service had been working against the now POTUS could be devastating and any ‘loose threads’ needed to be pulled, Sergei was just such a loose thread. 2, Russia had ruined the UK’s plan to remove Assad in Syria via their proxy Islamist terrorist armies they’d been corralling since as early as 2009, turning Syria into yet another failed state which could pose no threat to the West’s new vision of the Middle East. This vision was now well and truly flushed down the lavatory thanks to Putin. 3, Humiliate Russia by ruining the World Cup, had half a dozen teams decided not to enter because of the fake novichok tale the World Cup would have been a total wash-out and Russia would not have been able to impress the World and its mother, a situation that came to fruition and tourism has had a massive boost since the World Cup. 4, peddle the lie that Russia is this James Bond like villain who goes to ridiculous lengths with ridiculous plot lines to murder its enemies with the most dangerous chemical known to man thus threatening many innocent lives, only luck stopped this happening. Of course motive is one aspect completely missing from the UK’s version, if Putin had wanted Sergei dead he’d have died in prison, or when he contacted Putin 3 years previous asking permission to return to see his mother, Putin refused, surely had he wanted the man dead he’d have said yes and then had him thrown under the wheels of a passing lorry? And we must remember that the highest levels of polonium in the Litvinenko case were found not in the tea pot or the hotel but in Litvinenko’s boss’ office the dodgy oligarch Boris Berezovsky. No explanation has ever been made for this fact.
00 Reply
Mar 9, 2020 12:03 PM
Hugh O'Neill
Hugh O'Neill
Looking once more at the photo of the Skripals above, is that a glass of Corona Sergei is toasting with? (Sorry for being so flippant. I was getting awfully confused/depressed with the other OffG story…)
I still cannot recall who the chap taking the photo is: was he dining with them, or maybe from a different table, or one of the waiter staff? Is he relevant to the narratives (official and alternative)?
00 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 8:06 PM
lundiel
lundiel
Thanks, Lundiel. Is he then protected by the D Notice? One wonders if he has a new job at Integrity Initiative, or maybe he is the new head of White Helmets….Lots of interesting job opportunities for these psychopathic liars. They are indeed like a contagion which seeks to infest and destroy the minds and lives of simple, honest, trusting people. It would be fascinating to read a psychiatric assessment.
60 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 10:37 PM
Jen
Jen
As far as I know, Pablo Miller is protected by a D-notice so if he were the individual whose reflection appears in the mirror of the photo, that photo would presumably have never seen the light of day in the first place and would not have been available for sharing since then. The individual taking the picture of the Skripals sharing a toast is likely to be someone else.
Some sources I have seen suggest that person was the driver who picked up Julia Skripal at the airport in London and drove her to Salisbury Saturday 3 March 2018 to meet her father. The driver was well known to both Skripals as the photo of the two holding up their glasses predates their March 4 disappearance.
00 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 8:29 PM
Tony
Tony
Not sure about that. If you compare to the photos of him on the web, the eyebrows are very different.
00 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 11:49 PM
Maggie
Maggie
I disagree Tony.. look at the bridge of the nose where the eyebrows meet. the creases are the same .. the photographer is Pablo Miller.
00 Reply
Mar 8, 2020 3:22 PM
Brian Eggar
Brian Eggar
Maybe,this could be like The Mouse Trap”.
Could the detective have been applying some BZ around the Skripal home and spilt some on himself.
That might explain why the Skripal home had to be virtually demolished along with everything else.
10 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 7:49 PM
Maggie
Maggie
You may be right there Brian? Perhaps that is why the ‘Detective’s home’ has been demolished?
00 Reply
Mar 8, 2020 3:23 PM
Brian Eggar
Brian Eggar
I had forgotten about that.
Again if Skripal had got hold of some of the viruses that Porton Down were working on then that might explain the paranoia exhibited by the British Government.
20 Reply
Mar 8, 2020 7:43 PM
Maggie
Maggie
Novichock is the red herring here Brian..
Skripal was working for MI6 on a dossier requested by Killary, intended to discredit Trump and prevent him being President. He knew his position was fragile, so to cover his back he kept a copy.
When his daughter came to invite him to her wedding in Russia, and said she had a safe passage for him, and two bodyguards had been arranged to escort them. The spooks had to act quickly to get them off the streets, so drugged their drinks, and then when they had been given the anti dote, MI6 tortured them to find out where the duplicated documents were. That is the reason they took the house to pieces, and even removed the roof?
Yulia and Sergei are now dead.
10 Reply
Mar 9, 2020 2:02 AM
Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
‘Wars really are started by the mainstrem media’
During the war on Iraq did you know America’s media watch-dog was run by Colin Powell’s son?
30 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 6:09 PM
Maggie
Maggie
I wasn’t aware of that Harry, thanks.
Are you aware that the Syrian Opposition Watch/ United National’s Democratic Council is controlled by the Butcher of Homs Rifaat al Asaad’s son Safir? Who is also the chairman of the Arab News Network, the first Arab satellite channel focused on Middle Eastern affairs, political news and analytical journalism. which broadcasts in both English & Arabic & is dedicated to News& entertainment. LONDON.
Safir and his brother Ribal can be seen constantly criticising his cousin, on Western media.
00 Reply
Mar 8, 2020 6:00 PM
willie
willie
God shave your queen,and her fascist regime,still stands.
3-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 4:03 PM
Daniel
Daniel
Well, this is disappointing. First it mocks the official narrative because the “highly trained assassins” were caught on CCTV (which is a particularly specious line of reasoning), and then it mocks it for them *not* being caught on CCTV. Apparently, without a hint of irony 🤦🏻♂️
Then it mocks the official narrative because the people who came into contact with the Skripals were unaffected, before proceeding to mention the policeman, who *was* affected 🤦🏻♂️
It repeatedly claims that the compound was much less deadly than Novichok, ignoring the facts that (a) it did kill somebody, (b) it’s wrong to presume that it was 100% pure, and (c) assuming, realistically, that they were using old Soviet Uzbeki stock of the notoriously-difficult-to-synthesise compound from the 1970s, the efficacy would have dropped significantly, because all drugs “go off” 🤦🏻♂️
They falsely hypothesise that the compound couldn’t have been identified as a Novichok-like nerve agent because Novichoks were unknown, hadn’t been characterised before, and there was no sample to test it against. The facts are that they’ve been known to intelligence agencies since the 1990s, samples were created and characterised in Iran in 2016 and given to the OPCW, and there was never any need for a reference sample because unknown compounds can be identified by mass spectroscopy (which is a very basic analytical chemistry technique) 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
There’s clearly some degree of obfuscation surrounding the events, but the author has just filled the holes in the official story with unscientific, irrational nonsense
2-25 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 11:52 AM
Daniel
Daniel
All those people disliking my post because they don’t agree with objective reality. SMH 🤦🏻♂️
0-13 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 2:25 PM
Ken Kenn
Ken Kenn
Sorry Daniel – the person ” killed ” was Dawn.
Her long running inquest into how she died and what she died of is apparently still ongoing.
No-one has provably died of Novichok poisoning.
Not according to the Coroner as of yet.
60 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 11:13 PM
Tony
Tony
The OPCW found the Novichok to be pure, even though it had been exposed to the elements, and was several weeks old.
The first responders (Army senior nurse and daughter) didn’t get infected. Children helping the Skripals to feed ducks in the park (one of them ate a piece of bread handed to him by Sergei) didn’t get infected. Nobody in the pub the Skripals were drinking in got infected. Nobody in the Zizzis restaurant the Skripals ate in got infected.
A year-and-a-half after Dawn Sturgess’s death ( yes, she had a name), and there STILL has not been an inquest.
Btw, shills being uncofortable about the personal details of victims when telling lies is always a dead giveaway.
13-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 6:15 PM
Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Not exactly. The OPCW found the Novichok in the blood samples of the Skripals to be pure, even though those samples were taken some twenty or so days after the Skripals were allegedly poisoned, which means that pure Novichok was added to the blood samples because after 20 days, if someone is poisoned with Novichok, much of the Novichok has been metabolized and is not pure at all.
100 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 7:13 PM
Tony
Tony
If the government narrative is to be believed, the Novichok spent some time exposed to the elements on the front door handle of Sergei’s house. As you point out, the fact that the Novichok analysed by the OPCW was found to be pure makes a nonsense of the government narrative.
90 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 7:45 PM
Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
I reckon you’ve squished Matt2 pretty comprehensively there.
10 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 9:46 PM
Jen
Jen
The author of the article has not said anything that departs from the official version of the timeline of the events surrounding the Skripals’ disappearance and the mysterious government and police treatment of their house. If anything, you are putting words into the author’s mouth (or fingers as it were) and insinuating that the author is smearing the official account with lies. Then you have the hide to whine when people see through your attempts to twist facts and derail the discussion.
Poor widdle troll.
5-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 7:32 PM
Mark
Mark
It’s just ‘Matt’, in his new mask. Now he’s a scientist. There’s upward mobility for you; only two years ago he was a computer-science student in his final year of university. And a Venezuelan to boot.
40 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 5:08 AM
Jen
Jen
Is he still receiving money from his family in Venezuela to pay off the student debt or is he sending money to his family because his folks are all poor and suffering from Maduros being unable to manage the economy due to the US sanctions?
🙂
20 Reply
Mar 8, 2020 3:25 AM
Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
Integrity Initiative have cloned ‘Matt’.
50 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 9:39 PM
Daniel
Daniel
“Btw, shills being uncofortable about the personal details of victims when telling lies is always a dead giveaway.”
Wind your neck in, Tone 😂 What on earth makes you think I felt uncomfortable about using her name? It was just an unnecessary detail. And I read the exact same article you did, so no need to repeat it.
I’m sorry for mistakingly using the word “pure” – I was speaking colloquially, and was actually referring to the concentration (which means something else in chemistry)🤦🏻♂️
“If the government narrative is to be believed, the Novichok spent some time exposed to the elements on the front door handle of Sergei’s house. As you point out, the fact that the Novichok analysed by the OPCW was found to be pure makes a nonsense of the government narrative.”
That’s a weird assumption to make 🤔 What makes you think that it being on the doornob would make it less pure? Or less concentrated, for that matter? 🤔🤔🤔
0-13 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 1:35 AM
Daniel
Daniel
“The author of the article has not said anything that departs from the official version of the timeline of the events surrounding the Skripals’ disappearance and the mysterious government and police treatment of their house.”
But that’s not true though, is it Jem? Literally every single paragraph is full of insinuations. Were you reading something else?
“Then you have the hide to whine when people see through your attempts to twist facts and derail the discussion.”
Okay, so having an opposing viewpoint, based on scientific fact, is “twisting” facts and “derailing” the discussion? It’s a funny sort of discussion that’s comprised of people just agreeing with each other, and ignoring the facts 🤦🏻♂️
– Did the article mock the official narrative for both having CCTV footage and *not* having footage of the suspects? Yes
– Did it mock the official narrative for people not dying after contact with the substance, and then acknowledge that someone (called Dawn – thanks!) actually did die? Yes
– Did it try to undermine the possibility of it being the drug in question based on dubious assumptions about its potency? Yes
– Did it falsely claim that the Novichoks were uncharacterized, and that it’s not possible to identify a compound without a sample? Yes
So, what exactly are you chumps giving me grief for? 🤔
Oh, because I’ve got a scientific education and I’m not dumb enough to fall for blatant Russian disinformation. Well done, guys! 👍🏻
0-13 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 1:55 AM
Tony
Tony
Daniel, repeating your lies after they have been completely debunked is as dumb as it gets. I really, really hope that you are just a lone moron, because the alternative is that the security services are scraping the barrel.
100 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 7:56 AM
Emily Durron
Emily Durron
“and ignoring the facts”
What facts? What actual real-life facts are there? And don’t try to fly off down some rabbit hole about what Novichok is or Novichoks are (your preferred formula is plural to blur the issue). It is irrelevant what Novichok is.
If there are any facts, they are that none of the alleged subjects of the case ever showed indications of nerve agent poisoning, as was confirmed in a letter to the Times by the senior consultant working on the case at the hospital. That is a fact that you cannot wriggle away from.
Stephen Davies of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust wrote an open letter to The Times, published on 16 March 2018, clarifying that contrary to reports, no nerve agent was involved: “Sir, Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, 14 March), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning”.
But you, at your keyboard, know better than that, eh? Because you just know.
70 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 9:02 PM
michaelk
michaelk
Poor Dawn Sturgess. Whatever happened to the inquest into the perculiar and vague circumstances around her death? The inquest seems to have disappeared.
It seems clear that the UK media has been ‘briefed’ by the Security Services about the ‘truth’ relating to the Skripal Affair and the editors have understood that for reasons of ‘national security’, asking too many questions wouldn’t be… ‘appropriate’ at this stage.
The BBC seems to employ something I call the ‘fifty year rule.’ One has to wait 50 years to tell the true story about certain events.
Like I was surprised to hear a recent docu about Northern Ireland in 1969 where they mentioned in passing that the British Army had issued the Royal Ulster Constabulary with heavy-duty, Browning machine-guns, which they fitted to Landrovers and began firing them in Catholic streets! These weapons were so powerful they could literally shoot through the front-doors of the average terrace house, pass through the front room, the kitchen and then out the back door. Pity about the people who got in the way of the bullets! At the time I’m sure the BBC and Guardian didn’t report any of this.
140 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 8:56 AM
lundiel
lundiel
There are many instances of the 50-year rule being stretched indefinitely. A lot of royal correspondence and security assessments will never see the light of day….or get accidentally shredded or lost. So imagine what will happen to all the conniving and lies since the second world war. It will mean a completely false history is recorded.
80 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 1:07 PM
paul
paul
The British state was running El Salvador style death squads over there for the best part of 3 decades. A lot of the bombings and shootings were false flags. All sorts of skulduggery.
100 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 1:11 PM
lundiel
lundiel
Just been reading MOA on the Skripal case. It turns out that there is no evidence of the existence of an arrest warrant for the two Russians.
He had requested information from various British authorities about the pending legal procedures around the cases. He finds that there is no evidence of any official legal investigation or court case that could bring light into the issue. This is astonishing as the British procedures seem to demand a further inquest.
Under the carpet.
120 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 8:02 AM
GEOFF
GEOFF
Yes and the idiot foreign Secretary at the time was prepared to go to war with Russia if you remember !
110 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 9:07 AM
Einstein
Einstein
All Foreign Secretaries are under orders. Why else would the FO be funding fanatical, barbarous mujahideen in Idlib? With public funds! Who voted for that?
And now politicians are beginning to show some independence (e.g. Priti Patel), the Swamp is getting a bit nervous.
1-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 3:41 PM
Frank
Frank
Covertly funnelling (even more) cash to Israel is ‘showing independence’ against the Swamp?
Got your story a bit twisted there, ain’t ya?
60 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 4:56 PM
Einstein
Einstein
Yeh, you may be right about Patel. I’ve heard conflicting stories, e.g. that the Israeli visit was set up by MI5 to discredit her because the Swamp knew she was trouble: too independent.
I’m open to persuasion either way in her case.
4-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 7:06 PM
Mark
Mark
Put me down as a Russian bot, because there are plenty of other holes. Sometime before the Skripals ‘fell ill’ (but on the same day and after the ‘poisoning’ occurred) they were feeding the ducks scraps of bread in a local park. Some children wanted to help, and took pieces of bread from Sergei Skripal’s hand and fed it to the ducks. One boy even ate a piece of the bread. None of the children exhibited any symptoms.
When the Skripals entered a multi-story car park, having come direct from Chez Skripal, one of them touched the meter, to obtain a time-stamped ticket, with a bare hand. The meter was never checked for toxicity, and nobody else was reported to have been poisoned by it.
In photographs of the operation carried out by British chemical-warfare specialists to obtain samples from the deadly bench upon which the Skripals were found – so toxic, remember, that it had to be burned, thus neatly destroying the evidence – we see chemical-warfare operatives clad in full-body Hazmat suits and masks working away, while several firefighters stand just behind them in simple turnout gear, with no breathing apparatus. The media alternated between frightening the * out of the town’s residents, and reassuring them that simply washing the clothing they were wearing that day would be protection enough.
Dawn Sturgess allegedly sprayed the toxic ‘perfume’ on her face and wrists, which is how she came to affected several hours later. A nerve agent dispersed as an aerosol is the fastest-acting of the media, and she would have been incapacitated in minutes, probably not even able to leave the house.
If Russia tried on a silly story like this, the British media would die of a snark overdose; they’d be stitched up in fits of laughter, and TV comedians would make it a staple for weeks. But because this originates with HM Government – or with those who give HM Government its marching orders – we are meant to take it seriously, and internalize its ridiculousness and somehow pretend it makes perfect sense.
280 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 4:30 AM
Vierotchka
Vierotchka
As I remember it, the train on which the two allegged Russian agents accused of the murder arrived in Salisbury well after the Skripals left home and were found on that bench.
100 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 2:09 AM
willie
willie
I think the point that we should understand all of us by now,is that it does not matter anymore if the tale told to the public,the narrative,is genuine,truthful,plausible or just impossible.Because truth is what they force up on us to know about.We can jump high or low,in the end it’s the media that tell us what to think.One is compelled to believe.Syria,Venezuela,Donbass,Bagdad,it’s the narrative that is the truth,period.Like in 1984 it can change from one day to the next day,there is no noticing of it allowed,the truth is what they state in an instant t.
I really think we should drag those mischievers from theit offices ans studios in the street and do some thing nasty to them,that is,in case we care about society.
170 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 10:00 PM
milosevic
milosevic
One is compelled to believe. Syria, Venezuela, Donbass, Bagdad, it’s the narrative that is the truth, period. Like in 1984 it can change from one day to the next day, there is no noticing of it allowed, the truth is what they state in an instant.
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
80 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 10:14 PM
Einstein
Einstein
That’s probably why the Uncivil Service ( the ‘US’) are getting their knickers in such a twist over Priti Patel. She’s questioning ‘the narrative’! Cannot be allowed! Call the Dirty Tricks dept.
4-1 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 3:47 PM
John Manning
John Manning
To someone like me, who has a degree in biochemistry, the British Government statements about the Skripals were full of lies from day one.
What troubles me now is that during Yulia’s one post poisoning interview she expressed a wish to return to Russia, her home. Since then she has disappeared. The last comment from the British Government was that the Skripals would be given new identities. The notion that someone, whose photo has been published in every major newspaper in the UK, can then disappear simply by a name change is another lie.
Has the British Government finally achieved its assassination of the Skripals. If not then let them speak in public again.
260 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 7:23 PM
Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Plastic surgery? Sent to the USA in a witness protection program? Or simply bumped off and incinerated?
110 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 7:51 PM
Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
I wonder how closely the coming BBC drama/doc about the Skripals and Salisbury will stick to the offical narrative outlined above? I suppose it’s possible they’ll turn it all into a black, grotesque, satire that lampoons the whole thing? Possible perhaps, but highly unlikely. Still, as the state’s version is full of holes, absurd and literally incredible; it’ll be… ‘interesting.’
40 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 6:50 PM
Ken Kenn
Ken Kenn
With the Novichok on the outer door handle theory what they all have to explain is:
There are two doors at chez Skripal.
One is the outer Upvc door ( a storm porch door ) and the door that opens into the actual house.
That’s two handles – the outside storm porch handle allegedly contaminated and if the Skripals did return to the house the alleged Novichok would not just be on the outer handle it would be on the inner handle (closing the door from inside the porch ) – on the outer handle of the actual front door or the yale lock into the house and the inside handle of the inner door – the one inside the actual house.
It gets even more bizarre if the Skripal’s never returned at midday or sometime in the afternoon.
The Russian asssassins were beautifully filmed in HD
Yet no-one has ever seen any beautful scenes of the Skripal’s feeding ducks or on the bench being nearly unconscious.
Perhaps Salisbury’s very own Cecil B- Demille was on a day off on a Sunday?
The Militart weren’t it appears.
110 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 10:33 PM
Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Is not the point that it was dominating the media for a few weeks?
Now the media is just fairy stories for grown ups, what does it matter whether it has any truthfulness or not?
After all, the aim was some Russia bashing, Vladimir Putin bashing and smearing Donald Trump by association (he apparently quite gets on with President Putin when not told to abhor him by Deep State Intelligence operatives too close to the Presidential circles of influence for comfort).
We killed a couple of junkies, we claimed to have poisoned one police officer (who recovered), so what?
I mean: in a state which sees human rights as only relevant to the rich and powerful, what is there to complain about?
We are not some nation providing moral examples, after all. Oh no: we are the gang members saying: ‘Yeah, right on!’ every time our gang leader puts it about with the other lot.
180 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 6:31 PM
Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
The Tories killed 200,000 with ‘austerity’, so two Russkies ain’t much trouble at all.
40 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 9:01 PM
milosevic
milosevic
Now the media is just fairy stories for grown ups, what does it matter whether it has any truthfulness or not?
— that’s a good way of putting it.
“Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.”
60 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 11:08 PM
Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
You’ve got to hand it to the “creative writing departments” of our Western intelligence services. The Skripnal saga story-line is right up there with the classic American narratives positing the existence of a “magic bullet,” and the contention that massive steel and concrete buildings can simply pulverize into a fine dust in mid-air – “because we say so.”
Perhaps we the masses could finally manage to warrant the attention of our clueless oligarchic betters and their professional intelligence services – “narrative managers” – if someone considerably more tech savvy than myself could simply design and widely disseminate plans for a – “3-D printable guillotine?” Just a thought. Ok, ok, I guess it’s really more of a “fantasy.”
130 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 4:06 PM
paul
paul
That is the way things work now.
Corbyn is an anti semitic communist terrorist – because we say so.
Assad gasses his own people – because we say so.
Putin is a corrupt dictator – because we say so.
Trump/ Sanders/ Tulsi Gabbard/ Julian Assange/ Wikileaks/ anyone who disagrees with us or challenges our narrative in any way, are Kremlin agents and Russian bots – because we say so.
Iraq/ Iran/ whoever else we dislike have got illegal nuclear weapons – because we say so.
Venezuela is a communist dictatorship – because we say so.
There are no Nazis in Ukraine – because we say so.
Throat slitting jihadis are moderate rebels – because we say so.
And because out state controlled BBC says so.
And because the rest of the corporate MSM says so – so it must be right.
And Elliott Higgins, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Atlantic Council all agree with us after we have sent them their cheques – so it must be right.
End of story. All settled. No further evidence required.
320 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 5:23 PM
Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Note that Amnesty International has finally organized a petition to save Julian Assange, so it isn’t all that bad after all.
Only because AI is being shamed to do what it was founded to do.
110 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 10:15 PM
Vierotchka
Vierotchka
Better than doing nothing with regard to Julian Assange.
40 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 10:44 PM
milosevic
milosevic
It is that bad. What the f*** have they been doing for the last ten years?
They’ve just now realized that enough people are concerned about the issue that continuing to ignore it may seriously impair their credibility with their target audience, so they have to be seen to be doing something, even at this extremely late date.
120 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 12:14 AM
Gary Weglarz
Gary Weglarz
Both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have shamelessly repeated American regime-change propaganda aimed at propagandizing Western populations into supporting the destabilization or invasion of multiple Middle Eastern nations. They are intimately complicit in massive numbers of deaths and the creation of millions of refugees, as well as the complete destruction and disintegration of Libya. They are not appreciably more ethical or accurate in their coverage of American imperialism in Latin America. Both have become over time simply extensions of corrupt Western imperial power – based on any objective and ethical analysis of their actual behavior. Yes they are “that” bad.
200 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 2:15 AM
Antonym
Antonym
More accurate: they got addicted to copious Wahhabi funding, which goes also beyond the ME. Partner CIA is also into the plot.
3-3 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 4:57 AM
milosevic
milosevic
It’s vastly more likely that they got addicted to copious zionist funding, as evidenced by the nature of the wars and regime change operations that they choose to shill for.
how’s your hasbara internship going? does it pay well?
Nope, all the shekels and all the fat cheques came from Israel’s butt goys in Washington.
40 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 1:20 PM
Richard Le Sarc
Richard Le Sarc
Amnesty were fully taken over when the US State Department droog, Suzanne Nossell took over, some years ago. HRW has ALWAYS been a Zionist front.
40 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 9:53 PM
milosevic
milosevic
— because we say so.
The truly astonishing thing is how well it works, at least on the functionaries of the Outer Party. Try arguing about the 9/11 event, Skripals, White Helmets, “ISIS”, any of it, with some middle-class liberal goodthinker. You can actually see the doublethink gears grinding away inside their heads. If you persist, sometimes they collapse into outright hysteria.
This is perhaps a worthwhile exercise, in that permanently destroying such people’s facade of rationality and intellectual competence, tends to weaken the elite consensus that sustains all the others.
Maybe they should have worn a tinfoil hat, like they’re always recommending to their social inferiors. a**holes.
150 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 12:30 AM
Hugh O’Neill
Hugh O’Neill
Unable to sleep for thinking about the Skripal case (due mainly to Emily Durron’s insightful comments) I have to add my not quite tuppence worth. I have never been a fan of crime/spy fiction and detest James Bond movies on so many levels. One level of my dislike is due to my inability to believe in the combination of ruthless killer, competence, intelligence, duty, courage etc. it’s all a James Fleming wet dream, and I suspect that the majority of so called intelligence agents are better represented by the Johnny English character but even he has some redeeming features, unlike them. Once you combine their colossal incompetence with their inability to tell the truth and put them all into one club which represents for them the only group deserving their loyalty, to whom petty matters like law, truth, justice apply only to those lesser mortals outside the Club. The police are not inside the club but must obey. Now add to that toxic stew the trend to create businesses and security consultancies, just as retired army generals, then you will get unofficial ops, but whose agents still have access to friends inside with access to the levers of power I.e. control of the MSM and the D Notice, then it is possible to see a linkage between the Steele Dossier, Pablo Miller, DNC, HRC, WikiLeaks, the murder of Seth Rich etc.
As Emily Durrow has suggested, the Novichok script was not a propaganda seeding op, but proves that the Skripal operation was a complete botched job and a hasty attempt was made to apply it in retrospect. The D Notice was to stop any awkward questions. The police had to be stopped too because even Clouseau would have seen through the nonsense after talking to the RSPB about the ducks….
I have asked before about the identity of the chap whose reflection in the mirror taking the photo of the Skripals, but cannot now recall the answer. Suffice to say that IF indeed Skripal had been the source of the fake intel in the Steele dossier and then been allowed back home to Russia, then the FSB would have access to some gems that would have destroyed the operation to destroy Trump, hurting the DNC, FBI, CIA, MI6. HMG is in thrall to the last 2 mentioned, as is our MSM. Julian Assange is collateral damage, as was Seth Rich, as were the Skripals. Dawn Sturgess may not be connected, but her misfortune has been weaved into the false narrative. As Sir Walter Scott wrote: Oh what a complex web we weave when first we try to deceive” (It’s 5am. The quote may be wrong)
110 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 4:06 PM
lundiel
lundiel
The modern spy is likely to be someone more like James Le Mesurier than Johnny English. Businessmen, charity workers and NGOs are their natural homes, their background is military intelligence. These days you don’t sneak into a military base to steal secrets, you use technology, bribes and blackmail. Behind the scenes the most important assets are academic researchers in places like Oxford and Cambridge university who work very closely with American post-grad academics studying here, along with journalists, and of course recruiters. This is where the real work of shaping opinion is done.
150 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 4:49 PM
EarlofSuave
EarlofSuave
To me, Steele is basically an unlikable real life version of James Wormold, MI6’s man in Havana.
40 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 5:24 PM
Mike Ellwood
Mike Ellwood
Poor Gareth Williams couldn’t even make his way out of a paper bag….. sorry sports bag.
(according to a pay walled Torygraph story) that might have been the Ruskies as well…)
10 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 6:57 PM
Ken Kenn
Ken Kenn
If you look at Yulias’ face in that restaurant shot it is rounder and she is fair bit heavier than
the copper haired slim young woman who was observed at the Russian airport.
That means to me that this photo was taken quite a while before Yulia arrived in March.
There were plenty of CCTV cameras in Salisbury Town centre to catch anyone up to no good but no Crimewatch style appeal was issued on the BBC.
Why?
Because there may have been people who are paid to get up to no good and I don’t think they were just Russians.
The visit routine doesn’t wash – they were there to meet someone or some people.
For all we know those people could have been internal state actors – hence no CCTV exposure to the public.
The lovely CCTV shots (they are the only decent CCTV shots we’ve seen ) of the Russian pair were as if they knew they were coming and where they were going.
I will re-iterate re: the door handle.
If a poison was found on only the outer handle of the outer storm porch door – the Skripal’s left and never went back into the house.
This means that the applicators must have done the dirty doorhandle deed whilst the Skripal’s were in the house.
It would be no use doing that after they left unless they knew the Skripal’s would be coming back.
10 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 11:29 PM
Hugh O'Neill
Hugh O'Neill
I don’t know the photo of “the copper haired slim young woman who was observed at the Russian airport”. But that description fits likewise to the Yulia who was in the scripted TV footage “I vont to be alone” with the visible tracheotomy scar. So there idoes appear to be a mismatch of photos, or from the wrong ends of the narrative.
10 Reply
Mar 7, 2020 2:13 AM
michaelk
michaelk
As the BBC is producing one of their infamous drama-documentaries about the strange events in Salisbury, it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the BBC and the media cover the programme, without wondering about where the Skripal’s are today and why they haven’t contacted their friends and family back in Russia.
It the Skripals were still ‘valuable’ to the UK Security Services and could be used as live propaganda against Russia, basically supporting the UK’s narrative about events in Salisbury; I’m convinced that they would have been produced and interviewed by one of those nice journalists from the BBC, or even the much nicer… Luke Harding from the Guardian. After all Harding’s whip smart and a trusted expert on all things Russian, he even doesn’t speak the language so he’d be the ideal interviewer.
That they haven’t been brought out to speak and smear their own country and have literally vanished, indicates that Sergie Skripal isn’t prepared to give the right kind of interview, or maybe his ‘price’ is too high?
It’s odd really, how little interest there is in the media about the Skripals and their strange fate. Journalists seem afraid to ask the correct and blindingly obvious questions for fear of being labeled as ‘upatriotic’ or, worst of all, being sypathetic to Russian fake news!
190 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 3:18 PM
Shardlake
Shardlake
I ask myself why the BBC is doing this (producing a programme about the Skripal saga) thereby inviting adverse comments from websites such as this one. Anyone with a grain of intellect doesn’t believe a word of what the BBC and MSM put out, so it has me thinking there might at some time in the not too distant future, be some further denigration of the Russian state or some such expedient issue and this envisaged programme will be proffered as ‘evidence’ to substantiate the government narrative.
60 Reply
Mar 6, 2020 10:05 AM
Harry Stotle
Harry Stotle
Is it true Guardian moderators earned more in overtime deleting comments that challenged the ‘official’ Skripal narrative than police officers who spent 7 years patrolling the Ecuadorian embassy?
Brilliant summary by the way – could never imagine anyone in the MSM setting out the chain of events in such lucid and compelling terms.
In fact haven’t we reached a stage where the MSM is the least credible source whenever controversial events like this arise – for example remember the arse Monbiot made of himself shooting his load all over the chemical weapons attack in Syria.
230 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 2:48 PM
Rich
Rich
I only read the Graun and the Indy if I want to start the day in a foul mood.
120 Reply
Mar 5, 2020 6:27 PM
tunde
tunde
Armed British police, plus ambulance and medical crews, drone and helicopter pilots, firefighters, and the head doctor of the Salisbury District Hospital's emergency department were preparing for the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal just four days before Russian military assassins arrived from Moscow allegedly carrying a lethal chemical weapon in a perfume bottle.
Not counting the Skripals and the Russians, the British forces numbered at least two hundred. They were mobilized through the afternoon and night of February 27 until the morning of February 28, in the centre of Swindon, Wiltshire; that is a city 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Salisbury, also in Wiltshire. The Skripals collapsed at 4:15 in the afternoon of March 4, in the centre of Salisbury. At least two of the paramedics who arrived at the scene to evacuate them to hospital had been practising in the Swindon operation.
"There is no intelligence that Swindon is at risk," a senior police officer had warned, "but I hope members of the public understand we need to be ready and prepared for any eventuality. This is Wiltshire Police getting ourselves - along with our colleagues in the fire and ambulance services - in the best position so we're ready for anything."
Until the Skripals are released by the British authorities and permitted to speak freely to their family, their lawyers, and the press, it is not known whether they too were warned in advance to be "ready for anything."
The British Government narrative of what happened to the Skripals is that they were taken by surprise and poisoned by a Russian-made nerve agent which British government and military officials call Novichok. Two Russians have been identified by name and charged with attempted murder and other crimes, including what then-Prime Minister Theresa May said on March 12, 2018, was "an unlawful use of force by the Russian State against the United Kingdom".
Swindon practice makes Salisbury perfect
skripals swindon exercise Salisbury suspects Theresa May
Left to right: Police cordon around the Swindon city centre, February 28, 2018; source; two alleged Russian assassins walk down a Salisbury street, March 4, 2018; Prime Minister Theresa May accuses Russia of chemical warfare against the UK, House of Commons, March 12, 2018.
salisbury swindon exercise police skripalsAnnouncing the criminal charges, May said on September 5, 2018: "only Russia had the technical means, operational experience and motive to carry out the attack...We were right to say in March that the Russian State was responsible. And now we have identified the individuals involved, we can go even further...this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state...this chemical weapons attack on our soil was part of a wider pattern of Russian behaviour that persistently seeks to undermine our security and that of our allies around the world."
Over the two years which have followed, the proof of what didn't happen has accumulated, along with evidence of fabrication, concealment, and contradiction in the official versions of the story. In parallel, the Skripals have been held incommunicado, cut off from their family and from the protection of the British courts. For the full story, read Skripal in Prison.
The chief doctor at the emergency department of the hospital to which the Skripals were taken is Rachel Oaten. She is a prolific tweeter, describing her work with the Wiltshire Police, the air and ground ambulance crews, and as a qualified pilot of police drones. Oaten was not on duty at Salisbury's Emergency Department when Sergei and Yulia Skripal were delivered, separately, by ambulance about an hour after their collapse in the town centre. At the time, and for the rest of the evening of March 4, Oaten tweeted that she was assisting a Wiltshire police inspector with "medical advice/support".
Dr Rachel Oaten (left) was not on duty at the Salisbury Hospital Emergency Department when the Skripals were admitted, and from her tweets during that evening (right), she was not aware of their case at the time at all. Oaten says she was assisting Inspector Gill Hughes; the latter is posted to Warminster, 20 miles west of Salisbury; before joining the Wiltshire police Hughes was in the military police.
Oaten is also listed as a director of a small private company providing medical services called Acos Medical Ltd.
One of Oaten's colleagues, Dr Stephen Davies, is a consultant at the Emergency Department, but like Oaten, he was not on duty when the Skripals were admitted. He was told the next day by colleagues what had been happening in his department before the Skripals were transferred to the Intensive Care Unit of Radnor Ward, one floor above.
Their swift transfer was required, Davies explained this week, "because they required sedation and ventilation, along with other treatments."
Davies was reported here to have been one of the early witnesses of the Skripals in hospital. Davies has now corrected this record, amplifying what the circumstances were, when he learned them, and from whom. In a lengthy email following his absence from the hospital for the past fortnight, Davies explained:
"my letter to The Times has been the cause of much comment and several conspiracy theories. My original letter was longer and clearer but was shortened by the letters editor for publication. Much of it pertains to the difference between testing and treatment, which are of course entirely different."
'Treatment', False - The Times; 'Testing', True - Stephen Davies
article skripal admission emergency retraction letterDavies confirms that three patients were tested, diagnosed and treated at the hospital for poisoning. But Davies now acknowledges he was not himself a direct witness, nor did he see them before they were transferred from Emergency to Intensive Care.
"I was not on duty the day the Skripals came in but the events regarding their admission were related by my colleagues the next day. I believe they were identified at the time of their attendance by documentation carried on their persons."
Davies was on duty, he now confirms, at the Emergency Department the following Tuesday, March 6, when Wiltshire police officer, Detective Sergeant Nicholas Bailey, was admitted.
"I did see Mr Bailey myself when he attended with symptoms and he was able to confirm his own identity...Nick Bailey never required ventilation but it was easier for many reasons to have all three patients in one area, so he ended up in ICU as well."
"The point of my letter was to refute the newspaper statement that many 'members of the public had attended hospital for treatment' which was not true. Members of the public had attended for testing and all had been found to have no signs of poisoning. No treatment was ever required or given to anyone other than the original three."
The three, Davies has reconfirmed, were the Skripals and Bailey.
Bailey's subsequent testimony to what he witnessed in the Intensive Care Unit indicates that police were posted as if the Skripals were under arrest and to keep them in the ward, not to protect them from possible attack from outside; read more.
According to Davies this week,
"there was great concern that 'members of the public' (i.e. not the intended victims) were somehow being exposed to a residual or persisting source of poisoning in and around Salisbury and my intention was to allay fears in this group as far as I could, hence my choice of words... In practice, I could have said that, other than those three, no one at all required treatment, public, professional or otherwise."
What exactly did Oaten, Davies and their colleagues test for? The answer is given by a leading British organophosphate chemist.
"In March 2018, the 'hot topic' was Fentanyl. Heroin dealers had been adding Fentanyl and some of its analogues to make their drugs more potent. Carfentanil was especially dangerous, and in the US first responders were dying due to inhalation of powders as they performed first aid to the collapsed users. This led to Naloxone as an injectable, and more personal protective equipment being deployed. Ambulance crews, paramedics, emergency department admissions personnel were all very well briefed on the dangers, and there had been many drills to ensure that their own safety was the priority. Two people of different ages, well dressed, are observed by members of the public; then more 'medically' qualified people approach (the Army Chief Nurse [Colonel Alison McCourt] and her daughter), then the real paramedics arrive. With the victims prone, comatose, breathing irregularly, foaming at the mouth, etc., to the trained and untrained eye this would have all the first appearances of drug toxicity. Especially as the two victims were displaying the same symptoms. At the scene, pulse, pupils, airways, physical injury, e.g. head trauma, bleeding signs, etc., would all be quickly determined. None of the above observations would cause any trained medic to consider that this was not drug poisoning, and of course, although many drugs could initiate these symptoms, Fentanyl was the topic in the news."
"As we now know, the two victims were admitted via the Emergency Department, and later admitted to the [ICU] ward. It was reported that on the Sunday afternoon around 5pm, two off-duty biochemists were at the hospital, and had just finished their Toxic Dagger exercise and training debriefing. [For details of this Army chemical warfare exercise which was held in the Salisbury area during first three weeks of February 2018, concluding on February 19, read this.] It is not known to me when the two biochemists first observed the two victims, but apparently they 'immediately' recognised the symptoms as 'nerve agent' poisoning, or possibly organophosphate poisoning from insecticide or herbicide ingestion. This observation, possibly in conjunction with the fact that by now Naloxone was having no effect, may then have persuaded the clinicians to attempt another treatment path. In the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, then and now, Salisbury District Hospital [SDH] is not accredited to perform a test for Acetylcholine Esterase. SDH's proximity to Public Health England at Porton Down and DSTL Porton Down would however make it possible for blood samples to be sent to either or both of these facilities in order for the depressed ACE levels to be determined and a new diagnosis made. This new diagnosis was of course vital. Until then the two victims were simply stabilised and ventilated. There was no treatment taking place. By some time on Sunday evening, the ACE levels were known, and possibly as early as that Duodote or similar was administered. Atropine-based antidotes would be vital to keep the victims from drowning by having fluid in the lungs."
According to this expert source, it is likely the initial blood samples from the two Skripals were sent from the hospital to the rare and imported pathogens laboratory (RIPL) at Porton Down, a civil public health facility, not the Ministry of Defence laboratory (DSTL), which share the same address.
It is also unclear why civilian or military medical personnel involved in the Toxic Dagger exercise were at Salisbury Hospital on March 4, two weeks after the exercise itself had ended on February 19 and its simulated medical clearing stations dismantled. Salisbury Hospital's Emergency Department had practised how to handle casualties from a chemical poisoning incident, but that was four months earlier, on September 14, 2017.
salibury chemical attack exercise Royal marine
Left: Salisbury Hospital Emergency Department staff in their chemical warfare exercise, September 14, 2017. Right: Royal Marine and DSTL personnel describe the Toxic Dagger exercise and its medical elements.
Source
Toxic Dagger
Oaten does not mention in her twitter stream that she participated. The Salisbury Hospital appears not to have been involved in the second exercise.
"Regarding other patients arriving at the hospital for testing," the organophosphate chemist continues, "on the basis that SDH could not test for ACE, any and all 'contaminated' people would be required to give a blood sample, and that sample sent away for testing. Some seemed to be symptomatic (headaches, slight nausea, etc.) and there seems no reason for their blood not to have been analysed. If normal 'within expected range' ACE levels were found, then these people would be passed fit. SDH would have seen the more 'emergency savvy' patients, who may have had the symptoms. Dr Davies and his team would simply be blood samplers in this exercise. Blood samples sent off with brief patient notes regarding vital signs, symptoms, etc. ACE levels would then come back within the expected range — job done, patients passed fit and healthy."
Martin Cook skripals anaesthesiology
Martin Cook , a specialist in anaesthesiology consulted on the Skripal case.
At Salisbury Hospital, the Radnor Ward Intensive Care Unit lists several consultants: Duncan Murray is the lead; Stephen Jukes is one of the consultants, as is Martin Cook , a specialist in anaesthesiology. Murray and Jukes have spoken at length with Mark Urban of the BBC and the Secret Intelligence Service. They refuse to answer follow-up questions.
Since the Skripal incident, Cook has given public speeches about what happened.
When asked this week to confirm whether he was on duty at the ICU when the Skripals were first admitted, or later when Bailey joined them, Cook did not reply. He also did not say whether he gave witness testimony about the medical condition of the three, which was recorded at the London court hearing on March 20-21, 2018.
According to Prime Minister May's statement to parliament in September 2018, "the same two [Russian] men are now also the prime suspects in the case of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley too. There is no other line of inquiry beyond this. And the police have today formally linked the attack on the Skripals and the events in Amesbury - such that it now forms one investigation."
This week Oaten was asked if she was on duty at the Emergency Department to treat Sturgess on June 30. Oaten has not answered. According to her Twitter stream, she was on holiday in Wales. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer May 25, 2020
http://www.gorilla-radio.com/2020/05/26/gorilla-radio-chris-cook-john- helmer-may-25-2020/
01:00:00
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Welcome to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, May 25th, 2020.
If I’m to follow to its logical conclusion the advice of the World Health Organization and, (quote) “limit [my] worry and agitation by lessening the time I spend watching or listening to media coverage I perceive as upsetting…” I’d be forced to in good conscience close shop too, putting an end to twenty-one years of Gorilla Radio’s dedication to (quote) “increasing agitation by presenting media designed to be upsetting”. And that I refuse to do; allowing the virus victory is not an option on my watch, as the grating saying goes.
So in this I take departure of the WHO, thank you. And, it appears I’m not alone in finding fault with they and their medical minions: The United States of America too is out of sorts with the UN agency, as is its ally, Australia the two leading a chorus of boos for the WHO’s failure to affix “proper” blame in the aftermath of the Covid-19 outbreak. All proving that, even in a World where everything is changed, some songs remain the same.
John Helmer’s a journalist, author, broadcaster, former political advisor to governments, and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. He’s also one of the most widely read Russia specialists in the business world for his news-breaking stories on Russian base and precious metals, diamonds, mining, shipping, insurance, food trade, and business policy. Helmer’s book titles include: ‘The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society’, ‘The Jackal’s Wedding – American Power, Arab Revolt’, (co-authored with Claudia Wright), the political memoir, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, and his latest, the two-plus year chronicle of the bizarre and completely unprecedented case of a Russian father and daughter disappeared by the British state for “their own protection”, ‘Skripal in Prison’. His recent article, ‘SKRIPAL SHOWDOWN, NOVICHOK PAYDAY — LONDON LAWYER THREAT TO CALL SERGEI AND YULIA SKRIPAL TO TESTIFY IN OPEN COURT FOR THE FIRST TIME’ continues presenting the upsetting facts behind the official Skripal fiction.
John Helmer and no men being islands in the Covid-19 stream in the second half.
Liked it? Take a second to support Chris Cook and Gorilla Radion on Patreon! _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The BBC’s new drama “The Salisbury Poisonings” concluded over the weekend. A three-part story “based on actual events”, claiming to tell the story of the alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.
It’s exactly what you’d expect. Schlocky tat. Poorly researched, badly written and woefully factually inaccurate.
The Guardian gave it four stars. Because of course they did. Because when you’re dealing with government-backed narrative everything that reinforces it must be described as having value. It’s one of the hallmarks of propaganda, that no story which supports the propaganda – however ridiculous – can ever be questioned, criticised or disputed.
There’s room for an in-depth review, and indeed Craig Murray has done a fine job deconstructing the series. But here, I just want to focus on everything they don’t tell you.
Here are five key facts the BBC simply forgot to mention.
1. ALISON MCCOURT
Alison McCourt and her family were walking in Salisbury town centre when they came upon the Skripals convulsing quietly on a park bench in the early afternoon. They were, supposedly, the first people to discover the pair, and Alison and her family stopped to provide aid. Her daughter Abigail was given a special award.
There’s no reason for the BBC to omit this information.
Except that Alison’s full name is Colonel Alison McCourt OBE. And she’s the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army.
Maybe the BBC thought that the Chief Nurse of the British Army strolling past during the (alleged) first-ever use of a “military-grade” nerve agent was just too unlikely to be believed. Which is fair.
Craig Murray, with his usual dry humour, likens it having James Dyson knock on your door asking for directions just as your vacuum cleaner breaks down. But it’s actually quite a lot less likely even than that. After all, Dyson vacuum cleaners do exist, and lots of people do own them, but – until March 2018 – “novichok” was entirely hypothetical.
Novichok didn’t officially exist in the real world at all, until it popped up just yards away from one of the few people trained to deal with it.
Weird the BBC wouldn’t mention it. But it gets weirder.
2. TOXIC DAGGER
Toxic Dagger was a military training exercise involving the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and 40 Marine Commando Brigade. It trains special forces on how to deal with chemical, biological or neurological weapons.
Toxic Dagger ran from February 20th – March 12th 2018.
Sergei Skripal was “poisoned” on March 4th 2018.
The DSTL headquarters is in Salisbury.
That Russia should attempt to use a neurological agent to assassinate a former double agent right smack dab in the middle of a neurological weapons training exercise is unlikely. That it should also happen in the same city where the exercise is taking place apparently proved too much for the BBC to handle.
Best to just ignore it.
3. PABLO MILLER
Pablo Miller is a former soldier in the Royal Tank Regiment, a diplomat with an OBE, and possibly current MI6 agent. He lives in Salisbury and was Sergei Skripal’s handler.
Miller’s name was first mentioned in a report for the Telegraph in the days following the Skripal’s alleged poisoning, from which Miller’s name has now been totally removed.
It was later revealed by a Channel 4 reporter on twitter, that the government had issued a D-notice on “Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler”:
alex thomson
✔
@alextomo
Replying to @alextomo
About the only decisive public move by the authorities has been to censor MSM via a D Notice last week from fully identifying Mr Skripal’s MI6 handler living nearby...
120
10:14 AM - Mar 12, 2018
Twitter Ads info and privacy
126 people are talking about this
[For our international readers, a “D-notice”, is an act by which the government directs the media to not mention certain facts which they claim might somehow endanger national security. It is not censorship, they’re quite clear about that.]
Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler being his next-door neighbour, and the subject of government gag, orders didn’t make it into the BBC’s drama either.
And neither did…
4. MARK URBAN
Which is weird, because Mark Urban is a BBC employee. He is their diplomatic editor, and personally fronted much of the coverage of the Skripal case when it was breaking news. As Craig Murray points out, despite the series’ regular use of real news footage, and despite it being a BBC production, Mark Urban is never seen once.
He’s not even listed as a consultant despite literally writing the book on the case.
What’s doubly strange about this, of course, is that Mark Urban was in the same Royal Tank Regiment as Pablo Miller. In fact, they joined on the same day, from the same officer training course.
He revealed, months after the event, he had regularly been interviewing Sergei Skripal in the months and weeks before his alleged poisoning. He claimed it was “for a book”.
The book in question was released in October 2018 under the title “The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy”. (The Guardian gave that a good review too).
What he would have called it, and indeed what it would have been about, had the poisoning not happened we’ll just have to guess. It would likely have been very dull, and not sold all that well.
5. SERGEI SKRIPAL (LIKELY) STILL WORKED FOR MI6
All the talk about Sergei Skripal has been he was a quiet retiree, living out his later years in sleepy Salisbury. Of course, that narrative is somewhat challenged by the facts his MI6 handler is his next-door neighbour, and he’s just a handful of miles from the UK’s military research laboratories.
Mark Urban’s book gives us even more interesting details – such as the fact Skripal’s house was purchased for him by MI6, and he had a special phone he used to contact his “team” at UK intelligence.
All of this paints a picture of a man still very much employed, or least kept on the back burner, by British Intelligence.
The Blogmire has an excellent article breaking all this down, including asking the most pertinent of questions:
How conceivable is it that the house purchase by MI6, for one of their double agents, did not have some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras?
Shouldn’t there be CCTV footage of the alleged assassins walking right up to the door and spraying/spreading/smearing the nerve agent on the door handle?
Of course, the BBC don’t ask this question. They don’t mention any of this at all, despite it all being in a book written by their own diplomatic editor.
Clearly, the makers of the program were given a brief: Take all these harsh angular facts, and force them together into some kind of coherence. Obfuscate where you can, invent when you must.
Their job is to spread a digestible story.
As such, they leave out everything that could implicate the British state, or anything which challenges the story on even the most basic rational level.
They don’t explain how the most toxic substance in the world only affected 5 people in four months, despite contaminating a hotel room, a restaurant, a pub and at least two trains. They don’t explain why, even after one of their officers was taken ill, Salisbury police were guarding the Skripal’s house without any protective equipment.
They don’t mention the ties to Christopher Steele and Orbis Security, or the original reports of fentanyl overdose being redacted after the fact, or that the bottle Charlie Rowley claims to have found was wrapped in cellophane (and therefore never opened). Or any of the other myriad details which render the “official version” obvious, absolute nonsense.
17 Jun, 2020 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments
The BBC plumbed the depths of hypocrisy in dressing up the final episode of the Salisbury Poisonings as a homage to Dawn Sturgess while systematically lying about the facts of her death, yet again to cover up the implausibility of the official narrative.
As I noted yesterday, the BBC drama appeared to show Charlie Rowley fishing the perfume bottle out of the charity bin at least two months ahead of when this really occurred, to make it more plausible that it had been dropped in there after the alleged attack on the Skripals. The question of how it had managed to sit in a charity bin for three months, when that bin was emptied regularly, was thus dodged.
The next alteration of a timeline by the BBC is just as crucial. The BBC had the discovery of the perfume bottle containing novichok happening before Sturgess’s death, whereas in fact the perfume bottle was not “discovered” until 11 July 2018, three days after Dawn’s death. The extraordinary thing about this is that the police had been searching Rowley’s flat intensively for “novichok” for over a week before coming across a perfume bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. As they were specifically looking for a phial of liquid, you would have thought that might have caught the eye somewhat sooner.
The final episode was more open in its attempts to provoke Russophobia than previous episodes, with images of Putin, Russia, and Boshirov and Petrov appearing. It is of course the case that the military, security service and arms manufacturing complex needs Russophobia to justify sucking away so much of our national wealth. So we should not be surprised this kind of propaganda is produced. We should also realise that those in the service of the elites that benefit from the political system will do everything they can to maintain the propaganda. It is possible to understand all of that, and still be very disappointed that so very many ordinary people fall for it. The sad fact is, propaganda works, and always has.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the Skripal incident was a propaganda initiative from day 1. The role of the Integrity Initiative and its Skripal group – in which the BBC was very much included – puts this BBC propaganda piece in its proper perspective.
I do not know what happened in Salisbury. I know that the British government story makes no sense whatsoever, and I know that the Russian government has not told us the truth about the identities of Boshirov and Petrov, otherwise their true identities would have been firmly documented and reported by now. What the Russians were doing remains a mystery, with possibilities ranging from assassination through liaison to extraction. What the British government was doing is equally murky, and whether the Skripals are willingly a part of MI6’s plans is by no means clear. Sergei’s continuing work for MI6 and his relationship with Pablo Miller are evidently key, while I suspect that Sergei’s role in Christopher Steele’s baroque, fabricated dossier on Donald Trump is probably the motive for the action.
The prosecutions of Julian Assange and Alex Salmond, and subsequently of myself, have stood in the way of my declared intention to make a documentary about the Skripal case, while the money you have so kindly contributed to my legal defence fund is almost as much as I needed to raise for the film. Attempting to counter the propaganda of the state while the state employs its legal mechanisms to drain your energy and resources is not easy. That is of course the standard lot of dissidents around the globe. It will not stop us.
——————————————
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:45 pm Post subject:
The incredible thing about this story is it started with the Skripals being STOPPED from travelling to Russia
Remember The Berlin Wall Stopping People Leaving The Soviet Union?
Only Now Its In Reverse, MI5 have become the Stasi!
outsider wrote:
Life wrote:
Skripal told one of his school mates in 2012 that he had made a serious mistake and wanted to go back to Russia. This would be more than enough for MI6 to revoke this idea and act. It looks like Theresa May gained European backing in her blaming Russia by handing over open borders two years after Brexit.
This means a bankrupt corporation has done a deal that will act against the nations peace and security to support a lie, aimed at the British public to form energy against Russia, and, to expand funding for chemical weaponry and a step closer to that coveted big red button called the corporate Contingency Act platform activation..
The Kremlin denies receiving such a lettr, which would make sense as the Post Office here would have likely intercepted his letter, which would have immediately put Skripal into the 'highly expendable' class, kept in mind till HMG wished to open up a big 'False Flag' demonisation on Putin.
Here's Pilger on Skripal:
'Skripal case is a carefully-constructed drama' - John Pilger ':
May Bulman @maybulman Saturday 24 March 2018 09:30
Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal had written to Vladimir Putin asking if he could return to his home country before he was poisoned in Salisbury, a friend has said.
The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to be pardoned so he could visit his family in Russia, Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.
Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition after they were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok on 4 March.
The 66-year-old had been accused of working for MI6 over several years, in particular disclosing the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe.
He was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison in August 2006, before being freed in the 2010 deal which saw 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States.
According to Mr Timoshkov, his friend, who he had known since school, Mr Skripal did not see himself as a traitor as he had sworn an oath to the Soviet Union.
“Many people shunned him. His classmates felt he had betrayed the Motherland,” he said.
“In 2012 he called me. We spoke for about half an hour. He called me from London. He denied he was a traitor... [he told me] he wrote to Vladimir Putin asking to be fully pardoned and to be allowed to visit Russia. His mother, brother and other relatives were [in Russia].”
The Kremlin later issued a denial that any such letter was sent to the Russian President.
The attempted assassination sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain, which has been supported by its allies in apportioning blame to the Kremlin.
At least six countries in Europe are understood to be considering the expulsion of Russian spies after the EU took the lead and announced it would recall its ambassador to Moscow.
Russia has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, while last Sunday the country’s EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov said that “from the legal point of view the Russian state had nothing against him [Mr Skripal]”.
Russia’s ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko sent his well wishes to Mr Skripal and his daughter on Friday and wrote to Wiltshire Police detective sergeant Nick Bailey, who was left seriously ill after he was exposed to the poison as he went to the Skripals’ aid.
Short story is that these 'Novichoks' are real compounds studied in the USSR at bench scale in the 1970s, at a time when several countries were studying possible new nerve agents.
The story of a secret programme in the late 80s / early 90s to develop a chemical super-weapon named "Novichok" was fabricated by Soviet counter-intelligence to successfully flush Vil Sultanovich Mirzayanov out as a US spy/leaker, and continued after the collapse of the USSR to confuse the US.
The authentic looking secret material which he was deliberately given access to as a test of his loyalty did indeed 'find its way' to United States intelligence.
He was arrested in 1992 but the trial collapsed under Yeltsin and he moved to live in the United States in 1995.
The US studied the toxicity of these compounds around 1996, and all indications were they are not as toxic as Sarin or VX.
Their structures have been publicly available since 2008, so anyone with a reasonable lab can make them at bench scale.
https://media.urmedium.com/video/2020/09/03/637346990745262676video.mp 4 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
It emerged this week that the first person to give first aid to the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia—poisoned in still unexplained events in Salisbury last March—was the most senior nurse in the British Army, Alison McCourt.
This adds a fresh layer to the ever-changing account cooked up by the British government and intelligence agencies, who immediately blamed Russia for the poisoning without providing any concrete information.
From facts that have been made public, Sergei and Yulia were found on a bench in Salisbury town centre on March 4, 2018 in an unconscious state. One witness, Jamie Paine, told the BBC that she saw them both in a distressed state. Sergei was “doing strange hand movements and looking up to the sky,” while Yulia was frothing at the mouth with her eyes “wide open but completely white.”
Paine decided not to intervene as “they looked so out of it that I thought that even if I did step in, I wasn’t sure how I could help. I just left them but it looked they had been taking something quite strong.”
It was known that a “nurse” did intervene, but hardly any details were made available. The Times reported last May, almost two months after the poisoning, “that the first person to respond to the Skripals when they passed out was an off-duty army nurse, who had worked on the ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. The nurse, a commissioned officer who has asked to remain anonymous, treated them before the emergency services arrived, and was vomited on but is not thought to have suffered novichok poisoning.”
Virtually no other details were provided.
In December, the Daily Mail cited the comments of PC Alex Collins who arrived on the scene to see that “The female [Yulia] was on the floor on her side. There was a member of the public, who turned out to be a doctor, helping her, maintaining her airway. I believe if that doctor hadn’t done that, she would have died.”
The Mail added, “The female doctor is believed to have placed Miss Skripal in the recovery position after discovering her vomiting and fitting on the bench and tended to her for almost 30 minutes.”
The fact is that the doctor/nurse was Colonel Alison McCourt, chief nursing officer in the British Army. This only emerged when her daughter, Abigail, was proposed by her mother for a “lifesaver award” at the local radio station for her actions in helping the pair, including helping administering CPR.
According to Spire FM’s report, “Abigail believed Sergei Skripal was having a heart attack. The teen, who was out celebrating her brother’s birthday quickly alerted her mum who is a nurse and together they gave first aid to the two Russians until paramedics arrived.
“Abby and her mum had to undergo hospital tests to make sure they weren’t contaminated with Novichok.”
According to an online biography, McCourt joined the Army in 1988 and became Chief Nursing Officer for the Army on February 1, 2018, just a month before the Skriprals’ poisoning. She received the OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) honour from the Queen in 2015. The biography, which includes a posed photo of McCourt outside the prime minister’s residence 10 Downing Street, notes, “Alison has deployed to Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Sierra Leone.” Subsequent assignments include Officer Instructor at the Defence Medical Services Training Centre and a deployment to Kosovo as the Senior Nursing Officer for 33 Field Hospital in 2001. During that operational tour she was the in-theatre lead for the establishment of the joint UK/US hospital facility at Camp Bondsteel.”
Camp Bondsteel is the main US army base in Kosovo and was set up as the largest “from scratch” foreign US military base since the Vietnam War.
According to the British government’s account, novichok is probably the most toxic and deadly substance ever invented. The Skripals’ poisoning was utilised by the May government to ratchet up tensions with Russia, with the prime minister stating in Parliament that the Putin regime had attempted to assassinate the pair using a “weapons-grade nerve agent in a British town” in “an indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom, putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk.”
The BBC wrote, “Novichoks were designed to be more toxic than other chemical weapons, so some versions would begin to take effect rapidly—in the order of 30 seconds to two minutes. The main route of exposure is likely to be through inhalation or ingestion, though they could also be absorbed through the skin.”
What then are the chances of administering CPR to someone who has supposedly been attacked by this substance only minutes previously—and who was witnessed as frothing at the mouth—while being able to avoid contact with the nerve agent?
Only a single police officer, Nick Bailey, who had substantially less contact with the Skripals and supposedly only came into contact with the nerve agent while wearing gloves, after being sent to their home where it had been allegedly sprayed on the door handle, was affected during the initial incident. He was hospitalised for three weeks and only resumed his duties last week.
On June 30 in nearby Amesbury, nearly four months after the Skripal poisonings, Dawn Sturgess sprayed a substance said to be novichock onto her wrists, thinking it was a perfume. She died in hospital days later on July 8. Her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, has suffered ill-health ever since the incident.
The more information that emerges about the Skripals case, the less there is that can be said for certain.
Nothing has been heard from the Skripals since they were spirited out of hospital months ago in a military-type operation and taken to a secret location. One can only conclude that they are being prevented from speaking.
At present the roof of Sergei Skripal’s home is being demolished and replaced, on the basis that it could be contaminated.
It should be noted that one of the authors of the above-mentioned Times articles was Deborah Haynes, the newspaper’s defence editor. The Times has played a critical role in the anti-Russia hysteria and is a regular forum where senior British military and intelligence figures parade their views demanding an escalation of preparations for military conflict with Russia and for a vast increase in military spending.
A number of Murdoch press journalists, including Haynes, were exposed in a document detailing the UK “cluster” of the Integrity Initiative, set up by the London-based Institute of Statecraft to spread propaganda on behalf of British imperialism. The cluster includes at least nine journalists with four from Rupert Murdoch’s Times/Sunday Times — Haynes, David Aaronovitch, Dominic Kennedy and Edward Lucas. Also named are leading BBC, Guardian and Financial Times journalists.
The Integrity Initiative has been heavily involved in the Skripal affair. The WSWS noted earlier this month, based on documents from the IoS/II’s servers made public by the Anonymous group, “Just days after the poisoning of the Skripals, the IoS proposed that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived’ in various countries. Within days, the II’s ‘Operation Iris’ swung into operation. As well as monitoring media coverage with its own team, it recruited the global investigative solutions firm Harod Associates to analyse social media activity related to the Skripals affair.”
With the government’s account of how the Skripals came to be poisoned shot through with inconsistencies, and the public’s scepticism in their ever-changing story growing, the II raised concerns just a week after the poisonings, that the government was “far too weak,” declaring, “[I]t’s essential the government makes a much stronger response this time.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
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Is this the most selfless mother of all? Inspiring courage of the British Army Colonel who left her young children at Christmas to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone
Lieutenant Colonel Alison McCourt is married with two young children
But her family will spend Christmas without her as she is in Sierra Leone
She is Britain's most senior soldier in the war against ebola
The outbreak has claimed more than 7,370 victims in Africa this year
By MARK NICOL FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
If you could personify hope, sacrifice and generosity of spirit this Christmas it would surely come in the form of Lieutenant Colonel Alison McCourt. Not only is the military mother Britain’s most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola, she is also the last line of defence for the Army medics and other healthcare workers fighting the deadly disease. For they will only see her if they catch it themselves, their own lives in peril because they have tried to save the lives of others.
Moreover, while Lieut Col McCourt serves in the remote jungle clearing that is now the Army’s Kerry Town Treatment Centre in Sierra Leone, her husband and two young children must celebrate Christmas at home in Hampshire without her.
For the 44-year-old commander of 22 Field Hospital, the most precious day in any family’s calendar will be marked by no more than a 5am phone call and the opening of gifts sent by her family, which she hopes will include a framed photograph of them all. But she is in no doubt her place is not with them but on the front line of the terrifying outbreak that has claimed more than 7,370 known victims in Africa so far this year, and triggered public health lockdowns in Europe and the US.
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Farewell: Lieutenant Colonel Alison McCourt, who is Britain's most senior soldier in the fight against ebola in Sierra Leone, will spend Christmas in the war-torn country rather than with her husband and two children +5
Farewell: Lieutenant Colonel Alison McCourt, who is Britain's most senior soldier in the fight against ebola in Sierra Leone, will spend Christmas in the war-torn country rather than with her husband and two children
For the cause: Lieut Col McCourt said her children, aged 12 and ten, 'know where I am and what I am doing and naturally that makes a big difference to me. They know the truth.' +5
For the cause: Lieut Col McCourt said her children, aged 12 and ten, 'know where I am and what I am doing and naturally that makes a big difference to me. They know the truth.'
‘It is my responsibility to be here,’ she says. ‘I miss my husband, my children, my mum. But we’re busy and focused on the people and the work. My children – Abigail, who is 12, and Cameron, who is ten – have emailed me video clips of them preparing for Christmas, decorating the house and even buying the tree. Cameron put the angel on the top and Abigail turned on the lights.
‘They know where I am and what I am doing and naturally that makes a big difference to me. They know the truth. I’ve learned not to kid them. Just before I left for Sierra Leone we went on a family holiday and my husband made the mistake of telling a white lie to Abigail, saying Mummy would be fine because the Army would vaccinate her.
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‘Abigail swam around for a while then came back to us and said, “Don’t treat me like an idiot. If there was a vaccination she wouldn’t have to go and there wouldn’t be a worldwide outbreak.”’
Her daughter’s response would have been funny had it not been so accurate. Nine months after the first case of the ebola virus was reported in Guinea in March, the true tally of the dead and dying remains unknown.
Ebola is a haemorrhagic fever that begins with flu-like symptoms and then lays siege to the body’s vital organs. Ultimately it causes unstoppable bleeding internally and through soft tissue such as eyeballs, gums and genitals. The death rate can reach 90 per cent, though Western nursing care can bring that down to about 60 to 70 per cent. Currently it is spreading faster in Sierra Leone than any of the other afflicted West African countries, according to the World Health Organisation.
It is highly infectious, spread through all bodily fluids including blood, vomit, sweat, tears and semen. Corpses are even more dangerous than a living patient.
Victim: The ebola outbreak has claimed more than 7,370 known victims in Africa so far this year and triggered public health lockdowns in Europe and the US; above a burial team carries a victim's body away +5
Victim: The ebola outbreak has claimed more than 7,370 known victims in Africa so far this year and triggered public health lockdowns in Europe and the US; above a burial team carries a victim's body away
There is no fully tested cure, which is why Lieut Col McCourt’s work is so crucial.
With hundreds of local healthcare workers and military nurses flooding the ebola zone, there has to be somewhere to treat them should they contract the virus.
Kerry Town Treatment Centre was carved out of jungle 20 miles south east of Freetown, the ramshackle capital of Sierra Leone. It is one of six UK-funded hospitals housing 880 treatment and isolation beds and built in the heat by the Army’s Royal Engineers. Construction began in September and the doors were opened on November 5, since when 64 ebola patients have died in its civilian wing and 41 have survived.
Crucially, there have been no British admissions to the 12-bed unit set aside for Army nurses and local healthcare staff. The patients have all been foreign nationals.
Lieut Col McCourt told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There are ten nurses on each shift and varying numbers of doctors and bio-medics. We weren’t infectious-disease specialists at the start of the tour but we certainly are now. It is exhausting work for my soldiers working inside those protective suits. Just putting on the equipment takes 15 minutes.
‘The work is very demanding so every 60 days the clinical staff are given a complete break from work to prevent burnout and complacency – given the risk of infection they cannot afford to take chances. The medics also watch each other closely, ensuring they put on and remove their protective suits with the due care.’
Field hospital: Kerry Town Treatment Centre, above, was carved out of jungle 20 miles south east of Freetown, the ramshackle capital of Sierra Leone. It is one of six UK-funded hospitals housing 880 treatment and isolation beds and built in the heat by the Army’s Royal Engineers +5
Field hospital: Kerry Town Treatment Centre, above, was carved out of jungle 20 miles south east of Freetown, the ramshackle capital of Sierra Leone. It is one of six UK-funded hospitals housing 880 treatment and isolation beds and built in the heat by the Army’s Royal Engineers
She longs to be among them – but her rank means she cannot. ‘I’ve offered several times to put on the protective clothing myself and go into what we call the Red Zone, where patients suffering from ebola are treated. But I have to accept that I’m in command now and it is not my job to do that,’ she says.
But she will be leading from the front on Christmas Day when, in accordance with military tradition, she will escort her troops to midnight mass and then serve a roast dinner – the centrepiece of which will be 30lb turkeys from the UK – to 200 junior personnel. Then she will put in her standard 12-hour shift. Even though Lieut Col McCourt is a veteran of campaigns in Iraq and the Balkans, she admits this tour of duty has taken a toll, and that she has depended on the support of her husband Hugh, a prison officer, to help her through it.
We will survive: Patients at the Kerry Town Treatment Centre show off the certificates that confirm they have been given the all-clear from ebola +5
We will survive: Patients at the Kerry Town Treatment Centre show off the certificates that confirm they have been given the all-clear from ebola
While this is her first Christmas apart from her children, she is accustomed to leaving them and her husband behind. In 2003, she left Abigail, then aged just eight months, in Hugh’s arms while she went to Iraq to treat British soldiers wounded in the Gulf War. She returned there in 2008 for a second tour of duty.
Lieut Col McCourt said: ‘I have a very supportive husband. On both occasions I went to Iraq he took sabbaticals from his job to ensure that our family life was maintained. Yes, it was hard to say goodbye so soon after having my first child but you immerse yourself in your work, and on an operational tour everyone is missing someone. This Christmas he’ll be with the children and my mum will join them at the family home in Aldershot. Of course I miss them all but our focus has to be saving lives here.’
NURSE WHO FLED WAR-TORN SIERRA LEONE RETURNS TO HELP
A nurse who fled war-torn Sierra Leone as a teenager has returned to save the lives of some of its youngest ebola victims.
Shocked: Amina Ajami
Shocked: Amina Ajami
She said: ‘My friends and family think I’m crazy for coming out here to care for the victims, even though I am originally from Sierra Leone. I must admit I’ve been shocked by what I’ve seen. The levels of suffering and the virtually non-existent local healthcare system have really hit me.’
Mrs Ajami arrived in Britain in 1990 but felt compelled to return to her home country this month.
She said: ‘We seem to have a lot of children coming with ebola symptoms. Working here has been particularly draining emotionally and will be particularly so on Christmas Day.’
Kerry Town and its sister hospitals are part of the UK’s Department for International Development’s £232.5 million drive to contain and ultimately defeat ebola. The Mail on Sunday was last week given exclusive access to both the sophisticated unit under Lieut Col McCourt’s command and the more primitive wards designed for local men, women and children with the deadly virus.
Every day, ambulances arrive. Sometimes the civilian healthcare workers, including NHS doctors and nurses, open the doors to find the patients are already dead. The living are categorised as early or late- stage victims and taken to the appropriate wards.
At all times staff working directly with the infected patients wear protective equipment from head to toe. It makes them utterly anonymous, but behind one such suit is junior NHS doctor Victoria Knott, 27, from Stockport, Greater Manchester. She left her post at Glasgow Royal Infirmary five weeks ago to respond to the ebola crisis, and tells how hard it is to offer care and compassion while clad in a bio-med suit.
She says: ‘You want to show them you’re a human being, that you care about them. But they can only see a thin strip of my face around my nose and eyes, and I’m looking at them through a mask which is steaming up due to perspiration.
‘We’ve tried putting our names on our suits, even attaching photographs of ourselves to our outfits – anything to build up a personal connection.
‘People are dying out here in awful circumstances but I’m very proud to be part of such a committed and energetic team of doctors and nurses from around the world. We’re all trying to save lives. There is a huge need for us to be here, and for me staying back in Britain simply wasn’t an option.
‘The mortality rate is very high and of course it is hard to see so many people dying but we are getting more survivors at Kerry Town now. When each patient is given the all-clear from ebola there’s a special ceremony at the hospital, with singing and dancing and certificates for them to take home. I finally get to meet the people who I’ve been treating and looking at through my mask for weeks, hoping they’ll recover.’
Yesterday, 116 more troops left the UK to relieve staff at 22 Field Hospital, maintaining a British military presence of 800 personnel that includes planners and engineers, as well as medical staff, in Sierra Leone.
But there will be no respite for Lieut Col McCourt. Her specialist unit is to increase its capacity from 12 beds to 20 and she is expecting an influx of victims after Christmas.
She says: ‘We are poised for a spike. People will be congregating together and may be more likely to pass on the virus.
‘We are here on our guard and ready to meet that challenge.’
33331 Views February 17, 2019 65 Comments by Michael Antony for The Saker Blog
The recent titbit fed to us by Bellingcat (reputedly close to MI6) that a third Russian agent was booked on the flight from Heathrow to Moscow on the night of 4th March 2018 — the flight taken by the two alleged GRU officers filmed in Salisbury — but didn’t show up for it, has pointed to a possible solution to the baffling Skripal puzzle. What if the third man, or perhaps the man who was supposed to take his place, was by then lying in Salisbury Hospital in a coma from opiate poisoning? What if Sergei Skripal was a triple agent trying to escape back to Russia to tell the world the truth about the Steele Dossier, which he had helped to concoct as a scurrilous, obscene joke and which had unexpectedly become the new bible of the insane war party in Washington?
This is the alternative narrative I will set out in detail here so that the reader can judge whether it forms a more plausible and coherent story than the mishmash of improbabilities, absurdities and contradictions served up by the British police and MI6. Of course in the absence of all the facts we must sometimes use imaginative reconstruction to fill in the gaps, but the point is to see how many thorny problems, raised by the facts we do have, can be solved by this narrative and cannot be solved by the official one.
It is not necessary to decide whether Skripal was a triple agent from the start (that is, a plant sent across in a spy swap, a classic Cold War way of infiltrating the enemy) or whether he became a triple agent when he realized how important this grotesque Steele Dossier had become and how much the Russians would pay him to come back and demolish it. What evidence there is (his phone call in 2012 to his old school friend, Vladimir Timoshkov, whose account of it three weeks after the poisoning gained widespread UK media coverage) suggests he started out as a purely mercenary traitor. Disillusioned by the collapse of the USSR into a gangster capitalist state run by Yeltsin’s mafia cronies, he decided he might as well profit from it by selling the corpse of what had once been his country to the highest bidder. The Russians didn’t seem to think of him as much more than a common criminal (only worth a moderate 13-year sentence, instead of the death penalty he would have got in the USA for betraying 300 agents) or they wouldn’t have let him survive six years in their prison. Perhaps when they exchanged him in the spy swap they gave him a wink and said: “Since you’re just a money-grubbing whore, any time you want to come back with some interesting stuff learned from working for MI6, let us know and we’ll discuss the price.”
He soon got to learn that interesting stuff when he was sent to Salisbury, the home town of his MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller. Miller had recruited him in Spain in 1995 and later handled him from Estonia, when he was posted there as a diplomat. It is a little too much to believe Skripal’s move to Salisbury was a coincidence. The two men became friends again, met regularly in the pub, and there is every reason to think Miller resumed his role as handler. Miller was now working for Christopher Steele, his old boss at MI6, in his private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, based in Mayfair. This is one of the private intelligence-gathering outfits run by ex-spies of the kind Litvinenko used to work for. Just as Litvinenko got Lugovoy (his accused assassin) to help him out with due diligence reports on Russian businessmen because of his more up-to-date information, so Miller would have used Skripal in the same way. His help became vital when Steele got the commission from the Democratic Party to dig up Russian dirt on Donald Trump, and they had to invent some GRU set-up of the Donald with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Miller, the old Russia hand, would have done a good part of the work on this dossier and would have needed all the authentic detail his Russian agent could provide. Perhaps it was Skripal who came up with the scenario of Trump getting prostitutes to urinate on the bed the Obamas had slept in, which hidden cameras filmed. He must at least have given it his imprimatur as a typical GRU blackmail ploy to turn somebody into an asset. And that obscene fiction, the core of the Steele Dossier, became the basis of the neo-con legend that Trump was a Russian stooge — the insane underpinning of the whole mad Mueller probe into “Russian collusion”.
When Sergei the mercenary realized the vast importance this farcical, obscene Steele Dossier had taken on, that it was gospel truth for the whole anti-Trump, anti-Russia war party in Washington, he began to see how much it might be worth to the Russian state to blow it sky-high. If he were to describe on a prime-time Russian talk-show how he invented these obscene details over a beer with Miller and Steele in a pub, it would not only have all of Russia rolling on the floor with laughter. Heads would roll in Washington. The neo-con war party would become a laughing-stock. MI6 would be run out of town. Steele might face FBI perjury charges. The CIA might have its budget cut. Trump would be able to talk to Putin again. And the rewards for Sergei might be considerable. Not only seeing his 90-year old mother again, but perhaps even a * villa with a sea-view in Crimea or Sochi instead of that dank, shabby row-house in darkest Salisbury.
Was it Sergei who broached this subject to Yulia on one of her visits to Britain, or was she recruited by the GRU to put it to him? My bet is the latter, since after the poisoning her cousin Viktoria claimed Yulia’s new boyfriend and his mother both worked for the Russian secret services (before disappearing from view.) With all of Sergei’s communications monitored by MI6, the only way he had of talking to the GRU was through his daughter, living back in Russia again but able to visit Britain. Through her he must have managed to negotiate a deal for his return. Somehow MI6 got wind of their plans — perhaps Yulia, not a trained spy, was a bit naive or careless about listening devices. Steele became convinced they had made an escape plan for Sergei, to be carried out next time she visited Salisbury.
The thing that proves this was a British crime not a Russian one is the fact that Yulia was a prime target. The Russians had no motive to eliminate her, but if they had, they could have done it in Russia with a simple road accident with no questions asked. Only the British had to do it in Britain, since they didn’t have the resources in place to do it in Russia. And if she was not a prime target but collateral damage, why was Sergei not attacked when he was alone? Why wait for her to visit him? The fact they were both targeted the day after she arrived in Britain puts MI6’s signature all over it. She was a danger to MI6 because she knew of Sergei’s plan to return to Russia and trash the Steele Dossier, and she had to be stopped from revealing this to the world when he was killed. Silencing her at the same time was just as important to MI6 as silencing him.
To imagine that Putin would have ordered the assassination of an old double agent whom he had held for six years in prison (with ample opportunities to arrange his death) and then pardoned and swapped in a spy swap (part of the rules of the spying game on which his own life had been based), a week before the Russian elections and three months before the Football World Cup in Russia, which he hoped would lead to Russia’s re-acceptance into the community of nations, makes no sense. It carried only huge risks for a negligible benefit, and Putin does not take pointless risks, as his consistent prudence in Syria, even when his forces have been attacked, has shown. Compare the enormous gains this crime brought Britain. This assassination (as it was meant to be) gave MI6 a perfect opportunity to frame the Russians and incite a new anti-Russia frenzy to sabotage their celebratory Football World Cup (compared by the British Foreign Secretary to Hitler’s Olympics.) It would also show the EU Britain’s value as an anti-Putin cheerleader, bringing Europe and Britain together in an anti-Russia hate-week to distract from their Brexit quarrel, and uniting a fractious parliament behind a floundering leader. With any luck it would derail the Nordstream2 gas pipeline, a priority target for the US neo-con plan to ruin Russia’s economy, overthrow the regime and break up the country — goals MI6 fully shared, as their propaganda wing, the Integrity Initiative, has since made clear. In fact MI6’s plans to work for the total isolation and economic ruin of Russia, including sporting bans and ending cultural exchanges, date from 2015 and were leaked recently by Anonymous. The enormous preponderance of motivation on the British side, as well as the low risk in carrying out such a crime on their own turf with a grovelling press, a brainwashed public and tame police, point clearly to MI6 as the perpetrators.
Steele probably turned to his CIA friends for suggestions on how to frame Russia. They came up with novichok. This nerve agent invented by a Soviet chemist who later moved to the US and published the formula could be pinned on Russia as a uniquely Russian “chemical weapon.” Never mind that any decent laboratory could produce it, as a chemistry professor at Cornell has testified. Never mind that the British-invented nerve agent VX had been used to assassinate Kim Yong-Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur Airport without Malaysia screaming that Britain must have done it. Russia is different. Hysterical hatred can be instantly incited against Russia by the MI6-controlled media and MI6-brainwashed politicians. Anyone who doubts Russia’s guilt can be vilified as a Putin stooge. Whether the novichok was sent over from the US by courier or produced at Porton Down is not important. What is important is that MI6’s attempt to kill the Skripals with novichok failed disastrously.
Let’s take the famous Nina Ricci perfume bottle, laced with novichok, which was found in a rubbish bin or charity bin by a homeless man and given weeks later to his woman friend, who tragically died after spraying it on her wrist. The police/MI6 narrative is that this perfume bottle was used to transport the novichok from Russia in the baggage of one of the alleged GRU men caught on CCTV in Salisbury. The novichok was then sprayed on the door handle of the Skripals’ house. The assassins then callously threw away the bottle (which they knew contained enough novichok to kill more people) in a dustbin or charity bin, demonstrating their indifference to loss of life as well as their indifference to leaving clues all over the place. There are problems with this narrative.
The homeless man claimed he had found the perfume bottle still in its box sealed in cellophane, proof it was not reopened after it had been laced with novichok and professionally repackaged. The bottle could not therefore have been used (as claimed) to spray the novichok on the doorknob, or the cellophane seal would have been broken. Assassins far from home don’t usually carry around cellophane-wrapping machines to repackage opened perfume bottles, especially when they are just going to chuck them in the bin. Nor would they take the risk, having fitted the separate spray nozzle onto the bottle and sprayed the doorknob, of disassembling it again to put it back in the box, knowing that a drop on their skin would kill them. And where would they perform this delicate operation? On the street? This poisoned perfume bottle was therefore never reopened, never used and it affected nobody until it ended up in the hands of the homeless man. So who or what was it intended for?
Ladies’ perfume bottles are normally intended for women. How many women are there in this story? Only one. The only possible explanation for the existence of this unopened, unused bottle of perfume laced with novichok is that it was a poisoned gift meant for Yulia Skripal. Why didn’t she open it? Because she had a spy father who took one look at it and said: “Don’t touch it!”
So here is the alternative narrative. MI6 had the bright idea of putting novichok in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle and sending it as a birthday present to Yulia Skripal at her father’s house. Her birthday was on 17th March, but the present was probably delivered on the 3rd, the day she arrived, so as to nip their escape plan in the bud. It was meant to seem like a present from her family or boyfriend. No doubt the parcel had Russian stamps on it, designed to frame the Russian state when the Skripals were found dead in their house with an open perfume bottle in Yulia’s hands. Unfortunately for MI6, Sergei took one look at this Nina Ricci perfume bottle and his spy instincts smelled danger. He refused to open it, but instead went for a long walk with it and put it in a rubbish bin or charity bin half-way across town. There it was found by the homeless man and given to his woman friend, a victim of MI6’s murderous callousness. Even after MI6 knew it had gone missing, they did not warn the public to beware of picking up a Nina Ricci perfume bottle because they didn’t want to give themselves away as the assassins.
The failure of the perfume bottle to kill the Skripals must have alarmed MI6. They followed the pair around Salisbury the next day. Where did they go? We can’t be sure since we have not been given all the CCTV footage. But let us engage in some more imaginative reconstruction to cover the gaps. The Skripals’ car made some unexplained journeys towards the outskirts of the town. The two alleged GRU men caught on Salisbury’s CCTV walked in some unexplained directions, with not a scrap of evidence they came within half a kilometre of the Skripals’ home. What if the two unexplained journeys intersected? Not necessarily in time but in place. What if they met at that hoary cliché of spy stories, the dead drop, the discreet delivery point for a package? The hole-in-a-garden-wall just big enough to hide something? A Mossad spy, commenting on the British police narrative, said that no GRU assassination team would ever have flown direct from Russia using Russian passports. But a support team delivering a package? Why not? What did they risk?
Now what would the GRU need to deliver to Sergei Skripal to help him escape from Britain back to Russia? Clearly, a passport. MI6, once they suspected his loyalty, would have put him on an airport watch list. He would need a passport in a false name to get out, and perhaps a flight ticket to Moscow in the same name so he wouldn’t need to make an internet booking, easily spied on. But the passport could not be blank. It needed a UK visa and entry stamp. So the third Russian agent who Bellingcat now tells us didn’t show up for the flight back to Moscow must have intended his seat to be taken by Sergei Skripal, who would use the passport and visa which he had flown in with a few days before (delivered to Sergei by his two colleagues at the dead drop that day.) Either Sergei and the third man bore a sufficient physical resemblance or passport photos were switched by an expert forger in London. Unfortunately, though Sergei now had a usable passport, he was hit before he made it to the flight.
MI6, after the failure of the perfume bottle attempt, knew they had to act fast to stop the Skripals driving to the airport. Once they observed the package delivery at the dead drop, they would have guessed it was a passport. There was now no chance of using novichok. The Skripals were unlikely to return home and pack a bag, so they had to be knocked out in a public place. Using novichok and risking the lives of dozens of other people was too much even for MI6. So they decided to spray them in the street with an opiate like Fentanyl, and later on to add novichok to the blood samples they sent to Porton Down for analysis (without of course any controlled chain of custody except their own.)
We know that the Skipals were knocked out with an opiate and not a nerve agent because of a simple incident — in fact, a slip-up. The first person on the scene when the Skripals collapsed on their bench was an army nurse, the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, Colonel Alison McCourt, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Abigail. Does anyone believe she was there by chance and was not part of the MI6 team following the Skripals about and looking for an opportunity to drug them discreetly? Now Colonel McCourt had long experience both with Ebola in Sierra Leone and with the danger of chemical weapons during her service in Iraq, where protection against nerve agents was a priority. She knew the enormous precautions required in approaching a victim of a nerve agent attack. Yet Colonel McCourt encouraged her daughter to rush over to the collapsed Skripals and begin administering first aid to them, something very dangerous if a nerve agent had been used. She later even recommended Abigail for a medal for heroism for her action, which is why it got into the papers. How did Colonel McCourt know that a nerve agent had not been used on the Skripals, unless she was part of the team that had sprayed them with an opiate? Would she have allowed her daughter to touch the Skipals unless she was sure there was no nerve agent present? This is what is known as a smoking gun.
There has been extraordinary silence in the mainstream media about the fact that none of the first responders or the Salisbury Hospital staff were in any way affected by the deadliest nerve agent known to man, even though no precautions were taken against it for at least two days. The nurses assumed they were dealing with an opiate overdose. When the blood test results came back from Porton Down showing novichok present in the blood samples, the hazmat suits were donned and the hospital allegedly went into panic mode. We can assume most of this was a charade. Sergeant Bailey, allegedly contaminated with novichok though the police can’t decide where, recounts in the Panorama BBC film shown in November that the nurses who cared for him wore full hazmat suits, but his wife and children wandered in to see him wearing no protection at all. Clearly the nurses were engaging in an MI6-mandated charade but couldn’t bear to impose it on his family because they knew there was no novichok present. Bailey, no doubt also drugged by an opiate, had been selected as a fake British victim to stir up more indignation against Russia, and to add further fake proof that novichok had been used, which the total absence of contamination of first responders might cast doubt on. As part of this charade, all the poor man’s furniture and belongings were destroyed by the heartless brutes of MI6, which he recounts in tears, in order to incite more irrational hatred of Russia — which the British public, the most brainwashed on earth, came up with on cue.
Of course the failure of the perfume bottle assassination attempt, and the need to switch drugs and use an opiate instead of novichok, left MI6 and the police with the task of explaining how the phantom novichok was administered. The farcical story they finally came up with, that it was sprayed on the Skripals’ front door handle with the perfume bottle, has convinced nobody except the brainwashed masses. Even the clownish Foreign Secretary’s story that MI6 had shown him a Russian spy handbook which described how their spies had recently been practising putting novichok on door handles (a technical skill obviously requiring weeks of training and about to be unleashed en masse against Britain’s unsuspecting doorknobs) but unfortunately he couldn’t produce this handbook as it was classified, left people howling with laughter. It was worthy of a Monty Python sketch, something the Russians, who are great fans of British comedy, must have appreciated.
The idea that assassins could walk up to the front door of a terraced house in broad daylight, a door with clear glass panels in the middle and on both sides of it, so that anyone outside is visible from the hallway, and spray the doorknob with novichok while the Skripals were inside and their car was in the driveway, is simply not believable. These professional assassins did not even have a car or even bicycles to make a getaway if seen. And the two police versions of what time the attackers did this, first of all at 9.15 before the Skripals left home and then at 1.30 (after the police revised their timeline to fit the train schedule of the two Russians caught on CCTV) would both have left many hours’ delay before this deadly nerve agent took effect at 4.15 that afternoon.
We are asked to believe that two people of very different size, a man of 66 and a girl half that age, fell unconscious at the exact same moment either seven hours or three hours after being poisoned with a deadly “military grade” nerve agent. Why this delayed effect? Would this be useful in a battlefield chemical weapon — let’s leave the enemy active for several hours? And how to get a simultaneous collapse many hours later? No explanation. And if novichok was used to attack the Skripals, why was Abigail McCourt not affected when she gave them first aid and why did her highly trained army nurse mother allow her to touch victims of a deadly nerve agent?
The intelligent people who work in Salisbury Hospital cannot possibly be dupes to this grotesque deception, riddled with impossibilities. They are therefore accomplices and criminally responsible. I believe many of the hospital staff suspected MI6 was staging this whole thing but went along with it because of the high level of Cold War, anti-Russian brainwashing of the British population. They saw it as an exciting spy game they were taking part in with their wonderful secret services who had Won the War and Saved the World. It was a question of loyalty to Britain to defend this criminal lie. They must have suspected the Skripals’ blood samples had been laced afterwards with novichok. Perhaps the OPCW did too, since they claimed the traces of novichok were “very pure”. Was that a hint it had never been through any human body? One can sympathize with the Russians for trying to hack the laboratory computers to find out if any of the experts had expressed doubts to each other or suspicions the OPCW had set this up. Since they knew they were victims of a shameless NATO conspiracy to frame them, all they could do was try to expose it by any means they had.
The Russians’ patience and calm in the face of this campaign of lies and hate have been almost saint-like. If the West is not wiped out by the nuclear war they are constantly pushing for with Russia, then one day Britain and all the other NATO vassal states which wrongfully expelled droves of Russian diplomats will have to make Russia an abject apology and pay compensation for the misery caused the Russian people by their illegal sanctions. Is it too much to hope that some people at Salisbury Hospital or in the local police who know the truth will have the courage sooner or later to come forward and expose this vile warmongering deception, and the totalitarian media manipulation by the sinister forces that secretly govern Britain? Do they spare a thought for the Skripals and the state they are in right now — held incommunicado without any charge against them, not represented by any lawyer, and unable to communicate with their family or the public? Surely they are not fooled by that scripted video? Where are the human rights campaigners protesting against this totalitarian sequestration? What world are they living in? Has it not occurred to them that in the era of MI6’s proven involvement in torture, whether in Guantanamo, Abu Graib, black sites or extraordinary rendition to places where people can be tortured to death, Yulia Skripal might be listening every night to her father whimpering in the next cell as the voice goes on repeating: “You Ruskie b******, tell us when you started lying to us.”
The official narrative about the Skripals has been shot full of holes by various dissident commentators in the alternative media. That always begs the question: well, so what really happened? The above alternative narrative, combining both the known facts and speculations to cover the gaps where the facts are still missing, should allow the reader to judge its overall plausibility, compared to the official one. To prove an alternative narrative to the criminal’s story, a prosecutor does not need to establish every single event in the chain, many of which will remain unknown. He only needs to prove that certain key events in the criminal’s narrative are contrary to the known facts, and that these facts are compatible with the alternative narrative. The key facts in this case are the state of the Nina Ricci perfume bottle, clearly never opened after it was laced with novichok and repackaged, and therefore never used to spray novichok anywhere; the impossibility of a deadly nerve agent having a three hour delay in its effects and then affecting two very different people at the same moment; the unlikelihood of a senior army nurse allowing her daughter to touch victims of a nerve agent; the unlikelihood novichok was used (rather than an opiate), given the lack of any effect on the first responders, and the fact Sergeant Bailey’s children were allowed to approach him without wearing hazmat suits, which the nurses, however, wore.
Put those basic problems in the official narrative together with the speed with which the UK government blamed Russia for this event, when there was no more link between Russia and novichok than between Britain and the use of British-invented VX nerve agent to assassinate Kim Yong Un’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur airport. No nerve agent whose formula has been published is the monopoly of any nation, nor does its use incriminate any nation. This rush to judgment reveals a premeditated plan by Britain to use this event to sabotage Russia’s Football World Cup (which they compared to Hitler’s Olympics) as part of a long-term British goal to isolate, discredit and economically ruin Russia. The need for MI6 to prevent Skripal exposing the Steele Dossier, produced by Skripal’s MI6 handlers, since it would show the degree of Britain’s cynical interference in the American election to discredit Trump and destroy any rapprochement with Russia, formed the motive for MI6 to commit murder, for which it has a considerable reputation. Combining the two things, killing the Skripals and crucifying Russia for it, was no doubt seen as a great coup by MI6. It was seen as even more ingenious to follow up this alleged “chemical weapons” attack on British soil with the fake chemical attack at Douma staged by the White Helmets, founded and financed by MI6. This was aimed at relaunching the war to overthrow Assad and dismantle Syria, giving the Americans and the Israelis its oil fields, and allowing Qatari gas to be piped to Europe to replace Russian gas. All of these fit Britain’s and NATO’s known strategic goals. The speed of the knee-jerk response of NATO countries in expelling Russian diplomats, without any debate or demand for evidence in any parliament, raises the suspicion that this was planned not by MI6 alone but jointly with the CIA and other NATO secret services, which largely control supposedly democratic governments.
The continued NATO harassment, sanctions and campaigns of lies and false accusations against Russia, including the blatant war rhetoric of the British Defence Secretary, do not bode well for the future. For the US to tear up nuclear arms treaties and then blame Russia is beyond shameful: it is destroying all possibility of negotiations to avert war. The Kerch Strait incident staged by the puppet regime in Kiev, sending gunboats into the Kerch Strait without observing the 2003 Protocol requiring them to notify in advance the Port of Kerch (a protocol observed by the dozens of ships that go through the Strait peacefully every day) was clearly part of a NATO plan to set up a major naval clash in the Black Sea. That clash (followed by an attempt to recapture Crimea or at least blow up its magnificent bridge, a reproach to a man who cannot even build a wall) may be expected in coming months, perhaps as a distraction from Brexit or a way of derailing it. NATO, in short, is on a clear trajectory towards war with Russia, which their deluded worldview convinces them they can win. Their initial use of Russia as a scapegoat and bogeyman to unite the NATO vassals against a common threat, keeping Europe in subjection to America, has got out of hand, and is heading, under the impetus of hysterical rhetoric, towards actual war. Unless decent people unite to stop this escalation then the nuclear catastrophe will occur. Exposing the barefaced lie of the Skripal false flag attack may be a step towards averting that global cataclysm.
Michael Antony is a writer based in Switzerland, and his next book, about the coming nuclear war, is called Requiem for America. He has a blog, michaelantonyblog@wordpress.com
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65 COMMENTS
Anonymous on February 17, 2019 · at 8:18 pm EST/EDT
I doubt it was even novichok. Fentanyl more like. We only have MI6 and porton downs word for it and anything sent to the independent lab in Switzerland could easily have come from porton down also. We have no proof the sealed bottle contained novichok either.
I think this version of events is plausible but, if it is so, then why don’t the Russians just spill the beans? Just come out with it, show their evidence and show up the British and Americans for who they are? It would utterly humiliate the US country, its security services, congress the idiotic Mueller ‘investigstion’ and thats before we even get to the farcical Brits (it would absolutely end Theresa Mays career and premiership overnight) leading to an election and a labour govt who would be far more amenable to Russias sovereignty and to trade. There are a lot of pros and not many cons to opening this can of worms for Putin.
This version of events certainly doesnt bode well for the Skirpals though, if MI6 know he was going to do a runner and Julia knew, what is ever going to happen to them?
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Conjecture on February 17, 2019 · at 9:16 pm EST/EDT
There is the distinct possibility that you have the wrong verb tense in that last sentence.
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B.F. on February 18, 2019 · at 2:56 pm EST/EDT
Anonymous
Only MI6 knows what was used against the Skripal’s. However, that is basically unimportant, including the real status of Colonel Skripal (double or triple agent). The point is that the Skripal’s were sacrificed in an absurd false flag which no government in the world believes. In fact this is one of the most foolish things I have seen in my entire life. Russia was to hold presidential elections and also the World Cup. All of a sudden we have the Skripal incident, as if Putin wanted this right before the two events. Why ? So that he could be vilified ? So that he could lose the elections ? So that the World Cup be cancelled ? Where is the logic in this ? What is also hilarious is that those two Russian “spies” brought the military nerve gas in their luggage, hoping it would not be discovered. What person of average intelligence would do something so incredibly stupid ? And yes, the author is correct. MI6 and others want to see the Russian economy ruined and the country broken up. As the late political economist Lyndon LaRouche stated, the only thing that can save the US dollar is the breakup of Russia and the plunder of Siberia and the Caspian region. Well, too late for that. And MI6 and their pals in the CIA ? We shall get more of the same from them, as they are incapable of accepting reality. They still hope to subvert Russia. A few years back descendants of the Romanov royal family started returning to Russia from the West and settling in Crimea, obviously trying to prove their patriotism. I smiled when I read that. It’s obvious what was happening. Since Western intelligence agencies could not overthrow Putin, they are now preparing for the post-Putin period, by planting political Trojan horses. Too late for that also. Somebody should have told them that there are Romanov descendants living in Russia. According to rumors coming from the Russian Orthodox Church, a candidate has apparently been picked.
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KMG on February 19, 2019 · at 6:10 am EST/EDT
The incapacitating agent used was identified by the OPCW as BZ by its breakdown products in the blood samples taken some three weeks after the event, whilst they made a point of calling the Novichok ‘fresh’. — Is how I read it.
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Richard Ong on September 13, 2020 · at 7:13 pm EST/EDT
The chief of the OPCW laboratory stated that a sample with BZ was prepared by the lab as a control and submitted to the Spiez lab along with the supposed Skripal samples.
I recall that the language of the Spiez report was that one sample was a “neat” or nearly neat sample of a Novichok-class agent. I presume that this was a sample of what was in the perfume bottle submitted separately. It couldn’t have been in any sample of the Skripals’ blood. As one wit stated in some comment on ZeroHedge I think: Novichok, the agent that doesn’t kill you but makes you famours.”
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Conjecture on February 17, 2019 · at 9:14 pm EST/EDT
A definitely more plausible explanation than the official one. Great effort! Now as with all ‘whodunits’ some holes need poking to advance to the conclusion:
The OPCW said the door handle swab was ‘very pure’, an impossibility after 4 weeks and exposure to snow and rain. Nerve agents need to break down otherwise invaders can’t themselves take over the territory safely. They also found traces of BZ knockout gas. End of Russian Novichok involvment right there. Case dismissed.
It’s also unlikely that this ‘novichok’ in a perfume bottle would retain potency and for many weeks stay uncovered by anything else or not get taken to the dump. At the very least MI6 would ensure that all garbage within a reasonable radius would be disposed of as soon as possible once that failure was noticed. On Sergei’s part he would have had far better ways of disposing of it and it would be naiive to think, given his profession, that he would not have been immediately suspicious of this ‘gift’. So why even try it? The risk of post office failure or accidental breakage and mass casualty is another contra-indication. Too risky.
Given all the druggies and muggings that occur ‘naturally’ there’s better ways of disposing of people precisely and openly and many ways of the same but by quiet ‘disappearance’. I don’t think there ever was any novichok involved until after the ‘hit’.
Another conjecture is that this was all cooked up by Mossad as revenge for the Steele dossier used against their client -Trump- and to embarrass both MI6 and Russia with the absurdities that MI6 et al were forced into making to try and salvage this fiasco.
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S75ponny on February 17, 2019 · at 10:32 pm EST/EDT
Truly, I am not sure how much of this saga I can handle. Official narrative was revealed long ago.
Just saying
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Conjecture on February 18, 2019 · at 12:24 am EST/EDT
Give it a few years to settle and it can come back as a ‘Major Motion Picture’ -or at least a TV series. Where Russia is concerned one can’t have too many ‘Novichoks’. All manner of twists, treachery and ‘villainy’ are possible -as long as they all point to the Kremlin.
Actually I’d be surprised if MI6’s BBC state propaganda broadcaster have not already created such a script ready to boost the russophobia to its ‘proper ‘ level should it ever begin to flag.
Elizabeth May could even have a cameo appearance.
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Dr. NG Maroudas on February 18, 2019 · at 4:07 am EST/EDT
S75, I agree; there is a limit to the pleasure of watching a tinsel butterfly of anti-Russian propaganda broken on the wheel of Logic — however skilfully.
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andrea iravani on February 17, 2019 · at 11:03 pm EST/EDT
As a shock to nobody, the CIA and MI6 are full of some of the world’s most incompetent, evil, criminals. Prior to jumping on Russian Novichok conspiracy theory, they should have realized that the New York Times had reported that the U.S. governmemt was overseering the Novichok site. The problem with these imbeciles is that they assume that everyone is as incompetent and stupid as they are!
Ego, corruption and incompetency always gets them in the end!
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cdvision on February 17, 2019 · at 11:36 pm EST/EDT
This is a plausible hypothesis. But….
Given the situation we are in now – chaos in the US with most of the establishment trying to derail Trump, and Trump himself in a state of maniacal confusion, and the country hopelessly split; and chaos in the UK with the Government repeatedly down-voted and in turmoil over BREXIT; and victory in Syria for Syria/Russia/Iran; and, not least, the informed people of the world laughing their heads off at the official Skripal narrative, and now dis-believing anything the MSM say. Well, you have to conclude this is a masterful Russian intelligence operation.
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Mulga Mumblebrain on February 18, 2019 · at 12:49 am EST/EDT
The months of delay between the Skripal incident and the second poisoning, of the members of England’s massively burgeoning underclass of unpersons, is also suspect. In what world, even England, are rubbish bins and charity bins not emptied for months? The perfume bottle was obviously deposited in the bin not long before it was found, and the MI6 clowns, like the rest of the English ruling class, are imbeciles (eg BloJo, Williamson, Fox, Rees-Mogg, May etc ad nauseam)who forgot to unwrap the bottle.
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Conjecture on February 18, 2019 · at 4:13 pm EST/EDT
Precisely, and I seriously doubt that Novichok was ever near anything except those lab samples.
If anything at all the perfume contained something like carfentanyl and Dawn Sturgess, who died, was likely either set up deliberately or allowed to overdose herself with her usual recreational drug habit. The red-herring perfume bottle set up contained just perfume but was removed afterwards to be salted with Novichok. Perhaps even that was unnecessary as only the test swab sent had to be doctored.
I doubt whomever took the pictures of the box and perfume was hazmat suited. These are the types of little details that might bubble up over time.
Since Sturgess was cremated (hope they were wearing hazmat suits and had good filters) any evidence is lost. How convenient.
vot tak on February 18, 2019 · at 11:39 pm EST/EDT
MM
Well spotted.
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Internal Exile USA on February 21, 2019 · at 1:08 pm EST/EDT
Good question. In the US, there are frequently big “rubbish bins” that are used/hired by cities/developers when cleaning up huge construction projects that typically sit around for weeks (months?) on end. These are often the targets of “dumpster divers”. The dumpster diver angle of this case is a big question mark, perhaps J. le Carre or Mrs. Marpole could enlighten us on the matter.
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JJ on February 18, 2019 · at 5:14 am EST/EDT
One wonders if removing the roof of the house absurdity was to find some secret documentation or usb or other secret information eg microdot that Skripal had hidden up there……
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Dr NG Maroudas on February 18, 2019 · at 6:58 am EST/EDT
JJ, c’etait fait pour epater les bourgois.
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Rob on February 18, 2019 · at 8:34 am EST/EDT
The suggestions made in this article are quite plausible. But still the sheer incompetence and arrogance is nauseating. I do not have high hopes that the *public* will pick this up. Even White Helmets, helping ‘nerve gas victims’ with their bare hands was broadcasted without people starting to laugh – everyone with just basic military training knows that’s a hoax.
These events must be seen in a broader perspective. The British are desperate to regain some of their former imperialistic ‘greatness’. ‘It’s all part of the plan’ said The Joker, but the real jokers are in charge. And it’s not even a plan, it’s a project. Project ‘Global Britain’. The British goal was to demonize Russia, even planning to have them expelled from the UNSC.
In 2018 Thierry Meyssan has written a nice article about this: https://www.voltairenet.org/article200375.html . (Especially the sarcastic last sentence is beautiful). So far it didn’t work out well. But some day they will overplay their hands, like trying to sabotage the Kerch bridge, and have their troops arrested and jailed for piracy.
Just like Assange is held hostage in an embassy, the Skripals are held hostage as well. It is hard to believe, that a young woman with a house, a job and a boyfriend in Russia suddenly wants to stay in the UK. Someday they will simply… disappear, I’m afraid.
Cheers, Rob
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nwwoods on February 18, 2019 · at 3:03 pm EST/EDT
The mysterious disappearance of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has certainly already occurred, unless anyone anywhere has uncovered evidence to the contrary.
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Tall, Bald and Ugly on February 18, 2019 · at 9:53 pm EST/EDT
No, my friend , the Joker did Not say it was all part of the plan. He only asked the question; Do I look like a guy who plans?
Apparently, these guys Never had a clue.
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Tom Welsh on February 18, 2019 · at 8:47 am EST/EDT
“…the point is to see how many thorny problems, raised by the facts we do have, can be solved by this narrative and cannot be solved by the official one”.
Actually there is no “official narrative”. Trying to assemble the many official statements, and to reconcile them with media reports and witness testimony, is utterly impossible. It would be like trying to build a house with onion skins.
I concluded shortly after the beginning of the Skripal comic opera that the only safe conclusion anyone could possible reach was that the British government was lying – cynically, wickedly, deliberately, and on an industrial scale.
Moreover, it seemed quite unperturbed by the obvious unbelievability of its stories. Either it believed that the British people (and others) are so stupid that they do believe them; or that the British people are so cynical that they just don’t care; or they positively wanted to see how the public would react to such an obvious stream of nonsensical lies.
In the Skripal case, this means that most British civilians have bought unconditionally into the “Russia is wicked” story, and cannot even perceive any facts that do not support it.
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Englishman on February 18, 2019 · at 12:38 pm EST/EDT
Never under estimate the British Publics capacity for bone headed stupidity, for decades many have voted for policies against their own interests,the outlook isn’t good,the herd have been brainwashed.
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Mulga Mumblebrain on February 18, 2019 · at 5:12 pm EST/EDT
Western publics are 50% of below median intelligence-many well below. They are relentlessly brainwashed by a 100% propagandistic fakestream media that slavishly follows the US Imperial and neo-liberal capitalist line in all topics that relate to the parasitic oligarchic elites’ power. The presstitutes practise 100% Groupthink, with virtually no deviations. Badthink and Thought Crime, if it ever is ventilated, brings swift and lasting retribution.
Western politicians lie much of the time, and even being exposed as liars is simply ignored. The chutzpah is psychopathic, but they have role models who have practised it for millennia. Here in Austfalia, NO stories appear regarding China, Iran, Russia, Corbyn, Venezuela, Zimbabwe etc, that are not negative, often viciously, hysterically and racially so. The Palestinians are unpersons who have ceased to exist save as ‘terrorists’ and any who dare support them are ‘antisemites’, who are vilified and intimidated with practised frenzy. And at the centre of this edifice of lying, hypocrisy and brainwashing is the Murdoch cancer, whose organs ceaselessly peddle lies, hate and fear-mongering, and character assassination, with unending vendettas, often prosecuted even decades after the victim has died, a specialty. It is said that a fish rots from the head, but Austfalia is rapidly decomposing from its fundamental orifice, with neoplastic excrement both poisoning and polluting the cosmos, and toxifying the doomed host as well.
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Tom Welsh on February 18, 2019 · at 8:54 am EST/EDT
Having concluded nearly a year ago that the British government was lying on a quite unbelievable scale and with almost unprecedented shamelessness, I had thought it impossible to come up with a reasonably credible narrative.
But Mr Antony’s explanation works for me. I can’t see any flaws in it.
As some other comments have stated, the main reason why most ordinary people could not bring themselves to accept Mr Antony’s version is that they could not bear the thought that their government is criminally wicked.
Which reminds me powerfully of this:
“The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil … therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big”.
– Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971; original version 1925), Vol. 1, chapter 10, p.231
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Helge on February 18, 2019 · at 9:11 am EST/EDT
The only point which stays open with this theory – Did Skripal become a hit-target, because he wanted to change sides – or did he want to change sides, because he smelled the plans for him to be “Litvinnenko-ed” soon.
I favor the latter somehow
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Realist on February 18, 2019 · at 2:37 pm EST/EDT
The English elite beleived they were so superior, they can make the rest of the world fall for their increasingly bizarre and fascisistic plots. It failed massively and the EU buisness communinty is now overwhelmingly pro Russian/Chinese and anti Anglo-American. The planned war against Iran and Venezuela failed because the Germany big finance that Anglo rely on didnt support it.
On the topic of English arrogance and neo imperialism- China scrapped plans for Brexit trade agreement after Minster of Terrorism Williamson said the South China Sea was not Chinese, and the Royal Navy would send a ship there, although they dont have any functioning planes or long range missiles. Honda and Nissan are closing their factories in UK and opening them in EU. And 1 in 5 of English live in total poverty and rely on charity food supplies, according to their own statistics. The UK will see a level of poverty in europe only rivalled only by Ukraine, Moldova and Kosovo.
According to Sputnik, Japan almost cut off trade talks as well after a insulting agressive letter from UK, and said the UK will get a much worse deal than the EU-Japan deal. Only fellow money launderers Switzerland and the Faroe Islands have signed deals so far! No one else wants to deal with the British Empire, the first Empire was a tradgedy, the second will be a comedy. UK will have even less trade agreements than North Korea, which at least has free trade with China and Cuba. Spanish Navy is taking control of Gibraltar by using its UN rights to seal off the waters around the coasts, and after Brexit they can close the land border completely and airspace above , meaning UK must give the Colony back unless they want all their colonists to starve. We Europeans are sick of English and American ruling this continent like they ruled India. EU Elections will put pro Eurasian parties in power and we can stop these illegal Anglo sanctions.
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Mulga Mumblebrain on February 18, 2019 · at 5:21 pm EST/EDT
And the Zionazis and their Blairite stooges are moving inexorably to destroy the threat of Corbyn and the Labour Party ending the neo-liberal reign of terror against the bottom 70 or 80% of the UK populace. Their campaign of vicious, filthy and entirely fraudulent accusations of the new ‘Supreme Crime’, ‘antisemitism’, aided and abetted by the entire fakestream media lie-machine, particularly the vicious Zionazi *-rag, the Guardian, has entered its final stage, with the defection of seven treacherous individuals, Zionazi and Sabbat Goy alike. Cleverly the traitors have left the bulk of the Fifth Columnists inside Labour, to keep poisoning the Party from within, while the external Quislings ramp up their propaganda work for the state to which the owe their prime, if not sole, loyalty, Israel, and that anti-human system, capitalism, that Milton Friedman observed long ago, is ‘..good for the Jews’. But, of course, Friedman did not mean ALL the Jews, but just the gilded elites that control almost all ‘Jewish’ institutions and stand-over gangs.
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Mulga Mumblebrain on February 21, 2019 · at 3:35 pm EST/EDT
Interestingly enough, 200 UK Jewish worthies wrote a letter to the Guardian sewer defending Corbyn against the entirely fraudulent accusations of ‘antisemitism’. Naturally no prominent mention of the letter was made on the rag’s news pages, and it will now be consigned to the ‘self-hating Jews’ Memory Hole, whereas, of course, a letter from 200 Zionazi fanatic haters denouncing Corbyn would have been front-page, with shrieking. It is vital to remember that not all Jews in the UK, by any means, are hate-crazed Zionazi liars, although it does appear that the ranks of Jewish ‘elite’ organs are more or less uniformly deranged. Needless to say, the Zionazis, and particularly the Sabbat Goyim at the Guardian are, as required, 1000% poisonous and deranged in their hatred, hypocrisy and mendacity, as it is here, in Austfailia, too.
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Internal Exile USA on February 18, 2019 · at 3:26 pm EST/EDT
There have been dozens of good articles summarizing all the contradictions and official b/s, but few proposed an air-tight plausible narrative. Bravo Mr. Antony, thank you for the excellent work, this piece is an instant non-msm classic.
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Conjecture on February 18, 2019 · at 5:44 pm EST/EDT
17.02.2019
Embassy Press Officer’s reply to a media question concerning the appearance of the Russian flag on the Salisbury Cathedral
Question: How would you comment on the reports by the British media that on Sunday morning someone hoisted a Russian flag on the scaffolding around the Salisbury Cathedral?
Answer: We saw these reports, but we do not have any official information on them. If the reports of hoisting a Russian flag are true, then it all looks to us like a well-staged provocation.
Everybody is aware that after almost a year the British side has failed to present any substantial evidence of Russian involvement in the incident and has classified the case, whilst simply ignoring the numerous requests from the Embassy. For this reason we consider the appearance of the Russian flag on the Cathedral to be yet another clumsy attempt to associate Russia with the sad events that took place in Salisbury last March.
G.Wilson on February 18, 2019 · at 6:23 pm EST/EDT
The possibility exists that a rational explanation may be correct. The possibility does not exist that an irrational explanation may be correct.
I appreciate this possible, logical and rational explanation. At the least, it must be bringing my understanding of this issue closer to the truth.
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William H Warrick III MD on February 18, 2019 · at 6:28 pm EST/EDT
From the beginning when you could see Miller in the mirror when he took the picture in the Pub, I thought this was why the Skripals were poisoned.
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Katherine on February 18, 2019 · at 8:46 pm EST/EDT
Why did Miller take the picture in the pub?
What was that supposed to prove? I mean, in terms of a conspiracy to kill the Skripalsj?
Wasn’t one of the theories that the Skripals were poisoned by pizza:
Was that pizza served at the pub?
Katherine
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Norumbega on March 06, 2019 · at 7:31 am EST/EDT
Someone in a previous discussion last spring (I don’t remember whether it may have been on this blog or another) posted information including photographs that the person in the mirror was much likelier to be a different friend of Sergei Skripal – not Pablo Miller. If my vague memory serves, there was specific evidence that this person had met the Skripals on the day of Julia’s arrival (Mar 3), which is also the date of the photograph. And why would the British authorities choose to release this one photo when they would likely have been concerned NOT to release anything that would draw attention to Pablo Miller?
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JTF on February 18, 2019 · at 6:33 pm EST/EDT
Nice torrough argumented alternative.
I agree most jurnos are sloppy, I always say “thank god they are not professionals, otherwise they will leave black mark on the profession”.
Everyone is saying the two alleged GRU agent flew from Moscow, funny no one bothered to check if there were direct flights from Moscow that day – I did, the only flights from Russia were from St. Petersburg.
More sloppy work, like all of the other cover-ups. Nothing new, really – just ordinary idiots being given the power by the sheeple and no one complains. That is how it has been and that is how it will be, until the end of days…
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BobHNZ on February 19, 2019 · at 5:56 am EST/EDT
The “two alleged GRU agents” admitted that they flew from Russia and visited Salisbury on consecutive days on or about the time the British claim. There is no dispute about these details.
The case rests around these two individuals – did they give a plausible account of why they were at Salisbury on those particular days? Do they have a plausible history that goes back to childhood, are they real or made up aliases?
For me it is not a big deal if the Russians tried to kill the Skripals, as Putin said he was a sumbag and a traitor. If I was GRU and asked to shoot him I would gladly accept the job.
The down side to this operation is that it was botched – Skripral was not killed and the two Russian “tourists” gave a strong connection back to Russia and therefore Putin had to expend a lot of political capital defending it.
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Larchmonter445 on February 19, 2019 · at 10:50 am EST/EDT
You propose an operation, said it failed and then accuse the Russians of defending it.
You are confused about links from whom to what.
You also obviously did not read the article or if you did, you failed utterly to comprehend it.
In other words, your comment is silly.
You might want to reread the article.
By the way Putin did not expend a scintilla of political capital defending anything.
The British have pissed their trousers over and over with this preposterous claptrap they keep manipulating.
It’s a botched Mi6 operation and propaganda blowup.
Like Douma sarin gas attack.
In the ‘tradecraft’, it is called bullsh*t. And the sh*t is all over Vauxhall Cross, not the Kremlin.
You ought to see if Porky in Kiev has an opening. He likes people who believe ‘10,000 Russian military are in Donbass’. You might fit in the Communications messaging for that bozo, also. You fell for the British crappola.
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BobHNZ on February 19, 2019 · at 9:28 pm EST/EDT
The article is a little too “Tinfoil Hat” for me to be interested in. The only thing I get from the article, is that the author and all that might agree with the article, believe that the “two tourists” caught on cctv by the British are in fact GRU agents.
So with that knowledge, whats the chance of it being Mi6 that botched operation?…not good. Just like Jim Carreys chances of going out with the girl in Dumb & Dumber, were 1 in a million. So like him you should be happy there is a chance.
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Conjecture on February 19, 2019 · at 11:30 pm EST/EDT
If you are not interested in the article then why are you writing lengthy illogical ‘non sequitur’ nonsensical comments? Just believe the official version and you will be happy as will the GCSB and partners.
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Stonky on February 18, 2019 · at 6:59 pm EST/EDT
This is a good effort Michael.
I’m sure you’re right about the reasons why Skripal became ‘problematic’. What must have seemed like a wizard wheeze – “Hey everybody! Let’s ingratiate ourselves with the incoming POTUS by smearing her opponent with a dodgy dossier!” – must have looked a lot less clever when events of November 2016 didn’t go at all according to plan, and suddenly we’re sitting across a table from the target of the dossier, begging for trade scraps in the leadup to Brexit…
At that point Skripal would transform from being the hero of the hour to a potential source of leaks that could be, very, as I’ve said above, ‘problematic’. And you might just want to get him out of the way.
But on the Occam’s razor principle, the ‘perfume as a gift to Yulia’ hypothesis is unnecessarily complex and fraught with as many potential pitfalls as the imaginary Russian plot. It’s just not plausible. Why go to all that trouble with a plan that could go so wrong in so many ways, when all you need to do is walk past two people on a park bench and spray them with something?
There are much simpler explanations for the perfume bottle:
1. We need a couple of new victims to keep the “Chemical Vlad is evil” pot simmering.
2. Who doesn’t count for much in the overall scheme of things? Jakeys and junkies.
3. Who rakes in charity bins? Jakeys and junkies.
4. If you put what looks like a brand new unopened package of expensive perfume in a charity bin, who would be most likely to find it? Jakeys and junkies.
5. Fine. Let’s do that.
The fact that the ‘Novichok perfume’ didn’t appear until June suggests that it might have been necessary to ‘seed’ the charity bin more than once before it was found.
This would also explain why the Russian ‘assassins’ have been charged with the attempted murder of the Skripals, but not with the actual murder of Dawn, who actually died, even though there is supposedly a direct evidence link from the ‘Novichok’ in the perfume bottle to traces of ‘Novichok’ found in the assassins’ hotel room.
In the unlikely event of the assassins ever finding themselves on trial, some lawyer could find themselves asking – however reluctantly – inconvenient questions about the location of charity bins in Salisbury, and the emptying schedules for charity bins in Salisbury. And it might then become very difficult to explain how a perfume bottle full of Novichok that was put in a bin by the assassins at the beginning of March was still there in June…
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Katherine on February 18, 2019 · at 9:01 pm EST/EDT
“The fact that the ‘Novichok perfume’ didn’t appear until June suggests that it might have been necessary to ‘seed’ the charity bin more than once before it was found.”
If multiple perfume bottles with Novichok were thrown into charity bins and were not found by an individual,
it seems possible that the bottles would have ended up crushed in a landfill somehwere and the nerve agent would have escaped into the e nvironment and killed someone or some animal or something.
Not sure how “charity bins” are handled in the UK. Or, actually, what “charityh bins” are. Are these dumpsters and the name charity bin is a sarcastic nickname?
Katherine
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Conjecture on February 19, 2019 · at 12:46 am EST/EDT
There never was any nerve agent in the perfume bottle. More like carfentanyl or nothing but perfume; the fentanyl overdose being easy to precipitate to a drug addict by other means. The perfume bottle was a red herring to distract everyone and connect to the Skripals. Unfortunately they (MI6) forgot to open it, making it difficult to connect to the Skripal BZ knockout gassing.
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Stonky on February 24, 2019 · at 8:09 am EST/EDT
Hi Katherine,
Just in case you’re still looking for a reply.
A charity bin is a dumpster outside (usually the back) of a charity shop. They use it to dispose of stuff they haven’t been able to sell, or stuff from donations that they don’t think they’ll be able to sell. Alcoholics, junkies and homeless people regularly rake through these bins hoping to find something usable/saleable.
As Conjecture says, there never was any ‘nerve agent’. Our security services are callous, but they’re not completely stupid. The idea would have been to create a couple of new ‘victims’ not to cause mass deaths.
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isw on February 18, 2019 · at 7:36 pm EST/EDT
Thanks for this, great food for thought!
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Andrew S MacGregor on February 18, 2019 · at 7:44 pm EST/EDT
Dear Michael,
I think that you have done well with this scenario. It does explain a lot of inconsistencies especially with the behaviour of the British Parliament. Again, I would think that the initial work done by MI5 in setting up this psy-ops would have been fairly competent, but once the wheels fell off, that’s when the professionalism went out the window, or the door so to speak.
What was new to me and extremely interesting was the scent bottle. I do not have a time line of these events, but for me the timing of the ‘finding’ of the bottle does not match the initial affair, so it has to link up something else. If I recall it took about six months for the entry into the UK of the GRU officers to be announced, and I would thus link the scent bottle to that announcement rather than the initial event.
I am a bit surprised though by the lack of comments by Mulga as this type of work was within his forte before his retirement, but Mulga had always insisted there was no such thing as MI6 as he preferred to call them by their official name of SIS.
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andrea iravani on February 18, 2019 · at 8:25 pm EST/EDT
It would appear that maybe the Brits are not as gullible as the House of lords would prefer. An example is this poll claiming that millenials are baffled by changing a lightbulb, or boiling an egg. I’m calling BS on this poll. I’m calling BS on all polls actually! Roger Waters has a pretty strong following. The polls are nothing but an establishments effort to exert peer pressure to conform to what ever their position is, formally referred to as consensus bias, because they realized that ” expert” bias has lost any and all credibility.
Gary Weglarz on February 19, 2019 · at 12:29 am EST/EDT
Excellent post. The word “Orwellian” simply doesn’t do justice to this ongoing theatre of the absurd post-reality passion play MI6 has been up to their neck in. Western oligarchy fomenting baseless inane fear of Russia and all things Russian. Somehow this seems so familiar, where could I possibly have heard that theme before?
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Nicholas Kollerstrom on February 19, 2019 · at 8:45 am EST/EDT
Shucks, so it wasn’t food poisoning at the Zizzi restaurant after all….
I;m a bit surprised that Mr Antony supposes that the two Skripals are still alive. A new, improved Yulia appeared at her post-Novichok press conference, hair parted on the other side, which most people reckon wasn’t her.
The ‘Novichek’ beauty product (Salisbury KGB edition) can be seen here courtesy of that superb site ‘Moon of Alabama’.
The Russian text subscript is ‘before’ and ‘after’. For all those credulous MSM masses it’s obvious that Novichok is clearly an unparalleled beauty enhancing product.
Furher down there is another picture ‘Just believe! The magic of Novichok’ .
In the ‘after’ pictures the hair is long and covering the ears. Ear shapes are very defining and obvious so are difficult to duplicate -irrelevant of course if concealed by hair.
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