The Skripal Poisoning - A Very Deep British Affair

[David Guyatt]

From the Off-Guardian, another cynical analysis below.

Anyone would think that HMG Blighty can't be trusted to tell the truth...

Whose words was Yulia reading?

10 Votes

by Catte

Yulia Skripal allegedly making voluntary statement May 23 2018[/FONT]

Yulia Skripal's surprise video statement and walkabout yesterday has, as usual in this case, raised more questions than it has provided answers. The MSM has predictably addressed none of those questions and been content to simply air the video along with portions of her statement, laced with anti-Russian commentary and distorted summaries of the backstory (see here and here and here). Fortunately those in the alt media are free to try to do a little better.
Reuters broke the story, and claimed an exclusive, but have not yet clarified their bureau chief Guy Faulconbridge, whose name appears on the article actually, spoke to Yulia in person.
The strange prelude to the statement in which we see Yulia walking amongst foliage in a "secret location" as if she's auditioning for a commercial or doing a promo for a true-movie about herself is surreal and bizarre. Why not a simple piece to camera? Why put her through the added ordeal of being taken to the woods somewhere and asked to wander about smiling? Are they trying to prove she's ambulatory? Happy? free?
If so they have failed on two of the three counts. She doesn't seem happy or even comfortable, and certainly doesn't appear to be free to speak her own thoughts. Whose idea was it to film her in this location? How much duress was she under to comply.
Her statement is also very problematic. Allegedly it's her own words, written by her in Russian and in English. But this remains highly debatable.
For one thing, the handwritten English version contains a sentence lifted straight from the previous statement made on her behalf by the Metropolitan Police back in April. The words "At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services" appear in para two of that statement. And as you can see below these exact words are also in Yulia's hand-written text from yesterday

This is curious, because the Met Police statement was pretty clearly not written by Yulia, but by a very fluent speaker of a certain kind of English official-speak. And it gets even curiouser when you add the fact the Russian words Yulia is speaking to camera are not remotely similar to the alleged "translation." According to Craig Murray:

Of the Russian Embassy she said very simply "I am not ready, I do not want their help". Strangely this is again translated in the Reuters subtitles by the strangulated officialese of "I do not wish to avail myself of their services", as originally stated in the unnatural Metropolitan Police statement issued on her behalf weeks ago.[/FONT]
"I do not wish to avail myself of their services" is simply not a translation of what she says in Russian and totally misses the "I am not ready" opening phrase of that sentence.[/FONT]

The Russian Embassy, UK agrees with this take:
Why would Yulia or anyone translate her own Russian words using the same exact phrase previously used by the Met Police, which doesn't even convey the right meaning?
There currently seems to be only one plausible explanation doesn't there that these are NOT Yulia's words. That the English version of her new statement came first and was based on the original one from the Met Police in April. This was then translated into Russian by someone probably not Yulia and read out by her to camera. Murray again:

My conclusion is that Yulia's statement was written by a British official and then translated to Russian for her to speak, rather than the other way round.[/FONT]

I tend to agree. In fact, Yulia's statement looks just like that a statement written up by a police officer trained in the phrasing of such things, and not an informal composition by a civilian in her non-native language who simply wants to put a few things straight. Here's the entire thing:

The text of Yulia Skripal's statement in English, allegedly in her own hand and her own words[/FONT]

"I came to the UK on the 3rd of March to visit my father, something I have done regularly in the past".
"I have chosen to interrupt my rehabilitation"…"
"Also I want to reiterate.."
Well, of course Yulia may have written these words and even managed to spell "rehabilitation" faultlessly something beyond an awful lot of native-speakers. But under the circumstances a certain amount of scepticism is reasonable.
Altogether, whether her hand was holding the pen when those words were put to paper, it's currently looking pretty unlikely she actually had anything to do with composing them. Far more probably she simply took dictation.
It may also be noteworthy that in this version of her statement, Yulia says she would like to go back to Russia some day, while the previous version, which she did not deliver in person, didn't contain any such sentiment.
Are the authorities holding out the promise she may be sent home eventually? Is it her own free choice she isn't going home now?
If you were Yulia's family member watching the strange events of yesterday, how reassured would you feel right now?
[/FONT]

[Paul Rigby]

Yulia Skripal interviewed and filmed HERE:

Not since Sir Herbert Tooth emerged from a Donetsk pig-farm, covered only by a loin-cloth & reciting passages of Das Kapital, has there been such compelling proof of Russian perfidy.

And that Novichuk is amazingly kind to the hair.

Doctors now recommend using a small dose of "high purity" Novichok as an additive to toothpaste at night as this has proven to be highly beneficial to a long, comfortable nights sleep.

What hair?

It can only be the hare The Charlatans set running, as I have none on me 'ead.

But now for something completely, er, related:

Draft Version of Scotland Yard's Statement on Behalf of Sergei Skripal

May 25, 2018 Rob Slane

http://www.theblogmire.com/draft-version...i-skripal/

Warning: It is "highly likely" that this statement contains traces of satire.

"I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 18th May, more than two months after being poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.

Like my daughter Yulia, I find myself in a new and unique set of circumstances than the ones I faced before the 4th March, when I was poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.

I am now spending the time of my convalescence seeking to come to terms with my prospects, and looking forward to a future without trepidation, despite having being poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia.

I would like to take this opportunity to correct a number of erroneous stories that have been circulating on the worldwide web, especially on a number of sites devoted to the propagation of conspiracy theories.

The first is in respect to my alleged connections with my former MI6 handler, who also happens to live in Salisbury, and with whom I was in the habit of frequenting one of the City's establishments for the consumption of certain comestibles and beverages. I would like to assure those attempting to make these links that there is no credibility in them whatsoever, and that they should desist from making them. We were merely old friends who happened to share a passion for gardening, backgammon, and Châteauneuf-Du-Pape 2014 Réserve Des Oliviers. Any connection between this relationship and my poisoning by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia is entirely without foundation.

I would also like to address those who claim that I am being held against my will and denied my rights. I want to clarify that this supposition is very wide of the mark and bears no relation to the actualité. On the contrary, I have the freedom to go wherever I wish, naturally within the bounds of the beautiful location in which I currently reside, and I would also want to reassure everyone that I have full access to friends, family, and information. I am free to call my mother at anytime, and I may well do this, when I judge that it will not be prejudicial to my continued recovery. All such talk of disappearance or abduction is arrant nonsense.

I have been assigned specially trained officers who have helped to take care of all my needs and who have explained the details of the painstaking investigative processes that are being undertaken to establish how I and my daughter were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia on the door handle of my abode. They have also explained that the substance must have been carefully designed to take effect on the two of us at precisely the same time, some four hours after its administration, and after we had visited a public house and a restaurant in the City. They have also been very helpful in explaining how it was nothing short of a miracle that Yulia and I recovered from what I understand is ordinarily the most deadly of substances, with no irreparable damage.

I wish to make clear that I have been given the names and emails addresses of staff at the Russian Embassy in London, and naturally I am perfectly free to contact them at any time, should I wish to avail myself of their services. However, at this particular juncture, whilst I am simply overwhelmed by their abundant kindness in attempting to contact me, I would like them know that I do not wish to speak to them or see them, and I would ask them to kindly desist from all their efforts to pressure the British Government into granting access to me.

Although I feel perfectly safe and secure at my new location, which understandably cannot be disclosed, I do not yet feel able to face the media to give a full interview, although it is the deepest desire of my heart to one day do so. Until such time, I want to make it abundantly clear that nobody speaks for me or on my behalf, except of course the fully trained and highly professional officers of Scotland Yard, whom I have authorised to speak and release statements on my behalf.

Any suggestion that this statement was written by them without my knowledge, or that it was written by me whilst under duress, is to coin a popular English idiom manufactured from whole cloth. I would ask that, out of respect for my privacy, people desist from asking any further questions in this respect.

I want to end by thanking the British Prime Minister, Mrs May, and her colleague, Mr Johnson, who I understand acted swiftly, decisively and I might add courageously in dealing with the political ramifications of the poisoning, by a military grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia. Their actions in attributing culpability so swiftly are highly commendable and a demonstration of their undoubted bravery, their commitment to upholding the rule of law, and of course their remarkable fitness to lead in their respective ministerial positions.

I hope very much to be able to return to Russia one day, but in the short term, I look forward to being reunited with my pet cat and two guinea pigs, which I understand are being well looked after at an undisclosed location."

My previous (and less satirical) pieces on the Skripal Case:
♦ 30 Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ 20 More Questions That Journalists Should be Asking About the Skripal Case
♦ The Skripal Case: 20 New Questions That Journalists Might Like to Start Asking
♦ The Lady and the Curiously Absent Suspect Yet Another 20 Questions on the Skripal Case
♦ The Slowly Building Anger in the UK at the Government's Handling of the Skripal Case
♦ The Three Most Important Aspects of the Skripal Case so Far … and Where They Might be Pointing
♦ A Bucketful of Novichok
♦ What Would Sherlock Holmes Have Made of the Government's Explanation of the Case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal?

[Peter Lemkin]

Lower house Novichok debate ends before it begins

A lower house debate on statements made about Novichok by Czech PresidentMiloš Zeman ended before it began on Thursday. Only 40 deputies declaredthemselves present for the Christian Democrat-tabled discussion. As thequorum for the lower house is 57 declared MPs, the speaker abandoned thedebate.
Other deputies were actually in the chamber but had declined to place theirvoting cards in their voting devices. The Mayors and Independents VítRakušan described the situation as a new level of obstruction.
Critics were angered after Mr. Zeman claimed that a small amount ofNovichok had been produced and tested in this country. The nerve agent wasin the news after the poisoning of two Russians led the UK and otherstates, including the Czech Republic, to expel Russian diplomats.

[David Guyatt]

At least one mainstream newspaper adheres to the principles of journalism and asks questions that all should be asking (and investigating, though god forbid that will never happen).

The Indy.

These are the unanswered questions that still remain after Yulia Skripal's shock reappearance

Sowing confusion is often seen as a typically Russian technique to blindside and divert the enemy. But the Russians have
hardly needed to sow any chaos here, because the British have helpfully done it for them[/FONT]
[/FONT]
Eighty days after being found with her father, collapsed on a bench near a Salisbury shopping centre, Yulia Skripal has made a near-miraculous reappearance. She was filmed at an anonymous park-like location, reading a handwritten statement about her plight. In substance, what she said added almost nothing to the two statements issued by the Metropolitan Police in her name before. But the whole short recording was crucial in the messages it was designed to send to the British, Russian and international public.[/FONT]It was designed, first, to reiterate the official British version of what happened, at a time when that version has started to fray rather badly. So, she said, she and her father had been the victims of a nerve agent attack; she had been in a coma for 20 days; the medical treatment had been extremely unpleasant in many respects her tracheotomy scar was visible evidence. She was now much better, but still recovering. She did not wish to "avail herself" of the assistance offered by the Russia embassy.[/FONT]
But there were also conspicuous differences from the official British version. There was no blaming of Russia. There was no naming of the nerve agent. And Yulia Skripal gave no indication that she envisaged her long-term future anywhere other than Russia (contrary to an earlier British official "leak" that she and her father were to be given new identities and resettled in a third country).[/FONT]
Her appearance seemed, second, intended to quash some of the more extreme speculation flourishing mostly on social media that the Skripals were dead; that there had been no nerve agent attack, and that even if the pair were alive, they would never, ever be seen again.[/FONT]

Skripal attack aftermath in pictures

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[/FONT]
And, third, there was a message addressed specifically to Russia, countering its charges that the UK had "kidnapped" one of its citizens and was unlawfully refusing consular access. Here was Yulia Skripal well, let's presume it was not a hi-tech confection or a "double" saying, on camera, that she did not wish to meet Russian diplomats, at least not now.[/FONT]
What we have here, it seems to me, is an attempt by the UK to limit the damage to its own reputation damage perhaps it never envisaged, because it assumed everyone would "buy" the "wicked Russia" story. And the reason this had to be done, now, or at all, was that the UK's silence media blackout? about the Skripals had become embarrassing; it invited unwelcome questions, and perhaps it also risked the UK's "triumph" in orchestrating a collective Western expulsion of Russian diplomats. It is worth noting that some of the more persistent questions have come from journalists not in Britain, but in Italy, Germany and elsewhere.[/FONT]


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[/FONT]
At least one of the UK's opening assertions that Russia was the only country to have manufactured the nerve agent in question was challenged early, by the head of the government's own defence research establishment at Porton Down. Since then, it has been shown that the formula was in the public domain from the mid-1990s and that both the Czechs and the Germans had access to the substance and shared the expertise with their Western allies. So the presumption of Russian provenance, let alone Kremlin guilt, was always flawed.[/FONT]
Questions also surround the actual findings of the chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, which was sent samples for testing. Not only were aspersions cast on procedures and some actual laboratory findings, but the watchdog hardly enhanced its authority when its head, in a statement that was subsequently corrected, vastly overestimated the quantity of nerve agent supposedly used.[/FONT]
It is not just details so basic as the nature of the substance, its provenance and the quantity that are still in doubt, however, but a great deal else. Either that, or the information is being deliberately withheld.[/FONT]

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Sergei Lavrov says the British government could have poisoned the Skripals itself
[/FONT]
Here are just some of the many other still unanswered questions.[/FONT]
Precisely where and when were the Skripals poisoned? Sowing confusion is often seen as a typically Russian technique to blindside and divert the enemy. But the Russians have hardly needed to sow any chaos here, because the British have helpfully done it for them. Was the nerve agent a substance or a spray? Was it in their car, in Yulia's suitcase, in a packet of Russian cereal brought by a friend, or smeared on the front door handle? What did a Salisbury hospital consultant mean when he wrote to The Times, saying that "no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning" and only three had suffered "significant poisoning"?[/FONT]
What could have been the motive for such an attack? Why would the Kremlin (or an aggrieved Russian colleague) have waited eight years to hunt down a traitor who the Russians are on record as saying had served his time? Why would the Kremlin have risked staging such an atrocity three months before hosting the World Cup? What of the convention that swapped spies are left alone by the country they betrayed so as not to jeopardise further exchanges in future?[/FONT]
Why the on-off searches and decontamination of parts of Salisbury? Why was the policeman, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, affected, but not the doctor who administered first aid? Why has nothing been heard from either? Did the policeman, as some have hazarded, belong to Special Branch and was his task to tail the Skripals? Where were they when their GPS was switched off that morning?[/FONT]

READ MORE

• Yulia Skripal says she is 'lucky to have survived' Salisbury attack
  
• Sergei Skripal's niece Viktoria Skripal refused visa by UK government
  
• Russia claims Skripals poisoned using toxin possessed by UK and US
  
• What does a 1995 murder say about Russian involvement with Skripals?
  

[/FONT]
Why is there no suspect, beyond "Russia"? Why was there no national or international hunt for the culprit? There was a fleeting suggestion that an individual might have fled on the same plane he arrived on; then a flicker of an intelligence intercept from Switzerland that was so general as to mean nothing. Then silence. When the national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, appeared before MPs three weeks ago, he said there were as yet no suspects. That is an extraordinary hardly credible admission. So high-profile an attack, such an international rumpus, and still no one, no one, in the frame?[/FONT]
What had Sergei Skripal been doing with his time in Salisbury, aside from joining a social club? Had he done something to upset the Russians, or, indeed, British security? Had he perhaps and this is the conspiracists' favourite theory maintained any connection with his former MI6 handler and neighbour? More to the point, did he have any connection, via his handler, with the ex-MI6 agent, Chris Steele, his Orbis security consultancy and the anti-Trump dossier?[/FONT]
Nearly three months on, and still so many questions and so few answers. Through these clouds of uncertainty let me hazard just three considerations. First, the Kremlin was not involved: the Russians were as surprised by what happened as anyone; Moscow was on something of a charm offensive in advance of the World Cup. There was no Russian interest in spoiling the international atmosphere. Could it have been a security or rogue Russian operator? Who knows?[/FONT]
Second, Yulia, because of her security connections (via her fiancé) in Moscow and her regular travel to and fro, may have been a tempting target for recruitment by MI5/MI6. Was an attempt made? Did it go wrong? At least, it would seem from Yulia's reappearance this week, that making a visiting Russian disappear forever is, thankfully, a step too far for UK intelligence today. Holding her against her will, however, could be another matter.[/FONT]
And third, I rather suspect that both the UK and Russia know more than they have told. This would help to explain both the relatively mild diplomatic response from Moscow in the last few weeks and the recent summary halt to the UK's anti-Russian invective. Alas, we may be no closer to the truth than this.[/FONT]

[Peter Lemkin]

[FONT=&amp]What does a 1995 murder say about Russian state involvement in the Skripal poisoning?

Novichok scientist Vil Mirzayanov tells The Independent he too was offered cash for chemical weapons

• Oliver Carroll Moscow
  
• @olliecarroll
  
• Friday 13 April 2018 17:30
  

Police officers stand close to a bench in Salisbury where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found suffering from extreme exposure to a rare nerve agent ( EPA )




[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]This year, the talk has been of a poisoned door handle. Back in August 1995, the focus fell on the mouthpiece of a white telephone.
According to court documents, it was from an office phone that banker Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary, Zara Ismailova, received lethal doses of a military-grade poison. Within two days, both would be dead.
The gruesome murder is considered a forerunner to the Skripal affair the only other occasion that a poison resembling novichokwas suspected in foul play.

• READ MORE
  

Salisbury attack poison was novichok, weapons watchdog confirms
The banker's murder was eventually pinned on an acquaintance named Vladimir Khutsishvili. According to prosecutors, only Mr Khutsishvili was in Kivelidi's office during the hours the poison could have been applied. In their version, the poison, an organophosphate nerve agent, was procured on the black market from a scientist called Leonid Rink.
Professor Rink was a star of Soviet science. Born in Leningrad, he worked at the Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology in the closed town of Shikhany, in the southern Saratov region. From 1985, he was a member of the secret team that developed novichok nerve agents. He continued the research up until the mid-1990s.
By the time of Kivelidi's murder in 1995, Professor Rink was already well-known to law enforcement. A year earlier, he had been suspected and questioned over the sale of military-grade poison to Chechen gangsters.
When it came to court, Professor Rink was not the most consistent of witnesses. But by his third statement, the most comprehensive, he accepted he had sold a "poison designed for humans" to criminals after, he says, being threatened with violence. In total, eight or nine ampoules of this military-grade poison left his secret labs. This was easily enough to kill several hundred, as Professor Rink himself accepted in court.
The substance he sold was "known to a small circle of people", "a government secret" and "similar in toxicity to [nerve agent] VX", the court documents revealed.

The name of the chemical was not mentioned in the documents, but many have since drawn a straight line between it, novichok and the Skripals. Boris Kuznetsov, who initially acted as a lawyer for Mr Khutsishvili before leaving the country, has even claimed the mass spectrometry and infrared spectroscopy reports included in case documents offered the most physical evidence of the existence of the novichok programme. He said he had passed the reports to British authorities last month.
But mystery still shrouds the affair and earlier this week, Professor Rink added to the confusion by disowning his earlier court statements.
He had not sold military-grade nerve agents on the black market, he insisted in an interview given to independent Russian publication The Bell. Instead, he had "tricked" the criminals by giving them "rat poison" in a "controlled handover" under the watchful eye of the FSB, Russia's security services. He claimed to know "nothing" of the substance that killed Kivelidi.
A number of obvious questions arose from Professor Rink's new assertions. If indeed the substances were sold under the control of the security services, how was it that two people ended up dead? Did that not then mean that the security services somehow knew of, or played a role in the murder? And what does that mean for the poisoning in Salisbury?
The Independent has reached out to Professor Rink for comment but was told via an intermediary that he was not prepared to talk.
"Facts are facts," Mr Kuznetsov told The Independent. "Kivelidi was killed with a military-grade poison and Rink, in court, said he said he sold that poison. A man has served eight years in prison for murder. How can you now start denying things?"
For Mr Kuznetsov, Professor Rink's new testimony was an attempt to place distance between Russia and the poison: "If the substance in the Kivelidi spectrums matches the substance found in Salisbury, you can only make one conclusion: the same security agency was involved."

Skripal attack aftermath in pictures








But there is, in fact, little agreement on what the Kivelidi spectrum actually shows.
Vladimir Uglyov, one of the scientists connected with the novichok programme, has suggested the spectrum matches A-234, one of the secret novichok nerve agents. But other scientists surveyed by The Independent cast doubt on that assertion.
According to Vil Mirzayanov, the scientist who first revealed Russia's chemical weapons programme to the world, the substance most closely resembles tabun, a nerve agent first developed in Germany.
"There's no fluoride in those charts, that's the giveaway," he said. It was "possible" that the substance represented a newer analogue of the novichok class of nerve agents, he said. "Rink was researching new substances to take over from novichok compounds if those were banned. But the spectrum could also be a fake. We don't, of course, know if this spectrum is showing the material obtained on the crime scene. This is Russia."
Dan Kaszeta, a London-based chemical defence consultant, told The Independent that the case was yet to be proven. "The whole episode could easily have been a novichok. Or not. The Kivelidi case is shrouded in vague information of mixed value and credibility."
What the affair does show, however, was that in the crippling poverty of the Russian 1990s, dangerous military-grade poisons did occasionally go walkabout. And it is not likely that Professor Rink was the only scientist unable to resist criminal forces. Mr Mirzayanov himself told The Independent that he was also approached by criminals looking to obtain chemical weapons.
"It's the first time in telling anybody this, but yes, in 1994, once, I was offered a million rubles to synthesise a poison," he said. "It was a very short conversation. I said no. Everyone makes their own choices. When I didn't have money, I went out and sold jeans on the highway."
Such revelations undermine British suggestions that the Kremlin was "overwhelmingly likely" the only Russian actor capable of implementing a chemical weapon attack using novichok in Salisbury. With the substance floating about on the black market, any number of criminal and near-state groups could potentially have that capacity.
Three experts surveyed by The Independent agreed novichok-type substances sold in the 1990s could retain lethal potency two decades years later.
But even if poison were successfully smuggled into the UK, there are other barriers to it being used in an attack. Its application would, for example, likely require making a suspension with oil, and the substance would be very volatile. This, at the very least, would suggest expert involvement.
"These suspensions are so dangerous that even the smallest mistake will result in tragedy," says Mr Mirzayanov. "You're bound to have a mistake if you have no experience. And it's here that we're clearly talking about a state or military level of expertise."
Concurrently, poor handling would also affect the potency of any nerve agent.
"One of the biggest drawbacks of novichok is that it is hydrolysed immediately," said Mr Mirzayanov. "In retrospect, only an idiot would choose to use it for a murder in England with its 100 per cent humidity."
He added: "Most likely, the Skripals were saved by the British weather and its interaction with said door handle."


[/FONT]

[James Lateer]

I guess it's pretty obvious. The Question: who initiated the Russiagate spying and what is the deal with this Skripal poisoning?

The Answer: Both of these have been started by people in the UK. Keep in mind that out of the Five Eyes Countries, the Queen of England is the Head of State in four of them. I guess that also means commander of the military in all four, too. (In fairness, MI6 reports to the UK Foreign Office, not the military).

It's obvious that Prime Minister Theresa May is way, way too pathetic, harried and confused of a leader to orchestrate all of this stuff. You might think that Russiagate was invented by the clique of Comey, Mueller, Patrick Fitzgerald, Andrew McCabe, Strzok, Page, etc.

But that clique could not command the extreme cooperation of all these UK people like the Australian Ambassador, Stefan Halder and Christopher Steele. You don't need much eliminating of possibilities to put this at the foot of the UK Monarchy and their close allies, the ignoble nobility.

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

Wheel Out the Skripal Story Again

187

4 Jul, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments
Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the "Salisbury incident" dominating the British media. Two people have been taken ill in Amesbury from an unknown substance, which might yet be a contaminated recreational drug, but could conceivably be from contact with the substance allegedly used on the Skripals, presumably some of which was somewhere indoors all this time as we were told it could be washed away and neutralised by water.
Amesbury is not Salisbury it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much.

"I am all out of ideas Inspector. What can possibly be the source of these mysterious poisonings?"
Neither Porton Down nor the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has any idea where the substance to which the Skripals were allegedly exposed was made. Boris Johnson's great "coup" of obtaining a majority vote at the OPCW to expand its powers to place blame for chemical attacks, has proven rather otiose as the OPCW has no evidence on which to base any blame for Salisbury. In fact, four months on, May and Johnson's shrill blaming of Russia remains entirely, 100% evidence free.
I do however wish to congratulate the neo-con warmongers of the Guardian newspaper for verbal dexterity. They have come up with a new formulation to replace the hackneyed "Of a type developed by Russia", to point the finger for a substance that could have been made by dozens of state or non state parties. The Guardian today came up with "Russian-created novichok". This cleverly employs a word that can encompass "developed" while also appearing to say "made". It also again makes out that novichok is a specific substance rather than a very broad class of substances. The Guardian's Steven Morris, by this brilliant attempt deliberately to mislead his readers, runs away with this week's award for lying neo-con media whore of the week. His achievement is particularly good as the rest of his report is largely a simple copy and paste from the Press Association.
I most certainly hope that the couple in Salisbury hospital recover from whatever is afflicting them. The media is, by making this the lead story on all broadcast news after last night's football, inviting us to make the connection to the Skripals. In which case I assume the couple were perfectly well for five hours after contact, able to be very active and even to eat and drink heavily, before being mysteriously instantly disabled at the same time despite different ages, sexes, weights, and metabolisms and random uncontrolled dosages.
Replicating that would be quite a feat.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Amesbury Mystery

10

5 Jul, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments
We are continually presented with experts by the mainstream media who will validate whatever miraculous property of "novichok" is needed to fit in with the government's latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that "novichok" is "extremely persistent" and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park.
Yet only three months ago we had this example of scores from the MSM giving the same message which was the government line at that time:
"Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution it would effectively destroy the agent.'"
In fact, rain affecting the "novichok" on the door handle was given as the reason that the Skripals were not killed. But now the properties of the agent have to fit a new narrative, so they transmute again.
It keeps happening. Do you remember when Novichok was the most deadly of substances, many times more powerful than VX or Sarin, and causing death in seconds? But then, when that needed to be altered to fit the government's Skripal story, they found scientists to explain that actually no, it was pretty slow acting, absorbed gradually through the skin, and not all that deadly.
Scientists are an interesting bunch. More than willing to ascribe whatever properties fit the government's ever more implausible stories, in exchange for an MSM appearance fee, 5 minutes of fame and the fond hope of a research grant.
According to the Daily Telegraph today, the unfortunate Charlie Rowley is a registered heroin addict, and if true Occam's Razor would indicate that is a rather more likely reason for his present state than an inexplicably persistent weaponised nerve agent.
If it is however true that two separate attacks have been carried out with "novichok" a few miles either side of Porton Down, where "novichok" is synthesised and stored for "testing purposes", what does Occam's razor suggest is the source of the nerve agent? A question not one MSM journalist seems to have asked themselves tonight.
I am slightly puzzled by the picture the media are trying to paint of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess as homeless, unemployed addicts. The Guardian and Sky News both state that they were unemployed, yet Charlie was living in a very new house in Muggleton Road, Amesbury, which is pretty expensive. According to Zoopla homes range up to £430,000 and the cheapest ones are £270,000. They are all new build, on a new estate, which is still under construction.
Both Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess still have active facebook pages and one of Charlie's handful of "Likes" is a mortgage broker, which is consistent with his brand new house. They don't give mortgages to unemployed heroin addicts, and not many of those live in smart new "executive housing" estates. Both Charlie and Dawn appear from their facebook pages to be very well socialised, with Dawn having many friends in the teaching profession. Even if she has been homeless for a period as reported, she is plainly very much part of the community.
Naturally, there is no mention in all the reports today of MI6's Pablo Miller, who remains the subject of a D notice. I wonder if he knows Rowley and Sturgess, living in the same community? It should be recalled that Salisbury may be a city, but its population is only 45,000.
The most important thing is of course that Charlie and Dawn recover. But tonight, even at this early stage, as with the entire Skripal saga, the message the security services are seeking to give out does not add up. Mark Urban's piece for Newsnight tonight was simply disgusting; it did not even pretend to be more than a propaganda piece on behalf of the security services, who had told Urban (as he said) that Yulia Skripal's phone "could have been" tapped by the Russians and they "might even" have listened to her conversations through the microphone in her telephone. That was the "new evidence" that the Russians were behind everything.
As a former British Ambassador I can tell you with certainty that indeed the Russians might have tapped Yulia, but GCHQ most definitely would have. It is, after all, their job, and billions of our taxes go into it. If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.

[Peter Lemkin]

The Impossible Photo

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5 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig Murray | View Comments
Russia has developed an astonishing new technology enabling its secret agents to occupy precisely the same space at precisely the same time.

These CCTV images released by Scotland yard today allegedly show Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Borishov both occupying exactly the same space at Gatwick airport at precisely the same second. 16.22.43 on 2 March 2018. Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind.
There is no physically possible explanation for this. You can see ten yards behind each of them, and neither has anybody behind for at least ten yards. Yet they were both photographed in the same spot at the same second.
The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.
I am going with the Met issuing doctored images.

[David Guyatt]

Craig Murray has not stated that the pictures could've been taken from two different gates at the airport (HERE). Indeed, they do appear to be two different gates. However, I believe his argument about "extreme synchronicity" to still be valid. The chances of both pictures being snapped at the CCTV point in each gate is still, to my mind, so remarkable as to raise legitimate speculation of manipulation (somehow).

Below is Murray's latest piece on this affair. For me it is very telling that, so far as anyone has stated thus far, the Novichok gel was smeared on the door of Sergie Skripal's front door knob before they left home at 09:15. There are zero reports or CCTV images of them ever returning home before being found slumped on the park bench that afternoon at 16:15.

But the two alleged Russian assassins did not arrive is Salisbury until 11:48 on the same day and could not possibly have daubed the nerver agent on their door knob before 12 noon. The possibility that they did return home cannot be ruled out, but this whole scenario presents the official narrative with its own internal contradictions ---- the prior experts comments, endlessly repeated by the ever compliant media that the reason the Novichok was not deadly to either of the Skripal's or the policemen (almost certainly Special Branch, the political dirty tricks police section) was that its efficacy had been diluted by the weather and rain overnight.

The authorities can't have it both ways. But, of course, internal contradictions like this are simply ignored.

Besides this, it has been stated by the government that both these men are GRU. However, Asst. Commissioner, Neil Basu, in his statement about them (HERE) has made no such claim. In fact, Basu and the Met police could not even positively identify them, believing the names they used to enter the UK were aliases. However, we now know that at least one of them was the true name and he denies even having travelled to the UK according to a report on RT this morning, but most curiously he stated to a Russian speaking interviewer that his grandfather was a member of SMERSH, a Soviet era counterintelligence unit that also undertook "wet work".

From Murray's BLOG.

Skripals The Mystery Deepens

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6 Sep, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments
The time that "Boshirov and Petrov" were allegedly in Salisbury carrying out the attack is all entirely within the period the Skripals were universally reported to have left their home with their mobile phones switched off.
A key hole in the British government's account of the Salisbury poisonings has been plugged the lack of any actual suspects. And it has been plugged in a way that appears broadly convincing these two men do appear to have traveled to Salisbury at the right time to have been involved.
But what has not been established is the men's identity and that they are agents of the Russian state, or just what they did in Salisbury. If they are Russian agents, they are remarkably amateur assassins. Meanwhile the new evidence throws the previously reported timelines into confusion and demolishes the theories put out by "experts" as to why the Novichok dose was not fatal.
This BBC report gives a very useful timeline summary of events.
At 09.15 on Sunday 4 March the Skripals' car was seen on CCTV driving through three different locations in Salisbury. Both Skripals had switched off their mobile phones and they remained off for over four hours, which has baffled geo-location.
There is no CCTV footage that indicates the Skripals returning to their home. It has therefore always been assumed that they last touched the door handle around 9am.
But the Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals' doorknob before noon at the earliest. But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving.
The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.
So even if the Skripals made an "invisible" trip home before being seen on Devizes Road, that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those "experts" leaping in to tell us that the "ten times deadlier than VX" nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.
In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast "Petrov and Boshirov" managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.
This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals' location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.
"Boshirov and Petrov" plainly are of interest in this case. But only Theresa May stated they were Russian agents: the police did not, and stated that they expected those were not their real identities. We do not know who Boshirov and Petrov were. It appears very likely their appearance was to do with the Skripals on that day. But they may have been meeting them, outside the home. The evidence points to that, rather than doorknobs. Such a meeting might explain why the Skripals had turned off their mobile phones to attempt to avoid surveillance.
It is also telling the police have pressed no charges against them in the case of Dawn Sturgess, which would be manslaughter at least if the government version is true.
If "Boshirov and Petrov" are secret agents, their incompetence is astounding. They used public transport rather than a vehicle and left the clearest possible CCTV footprint. They failed in their assassination attempt. They left traces of novichok everywhere and could well have poisoned themselves, and left the "murder weapon" lying around to be found. Their timings in Salisbury were extremely tight and British Sunday rail service dependent.
There are other possibilities of who "Boshirov and Petrov" really are, of which Ukrainian is the obvious one. One thing I discovered when British Ambassador to Uzbekistan was that there had been a large Ukrainian ethnic group of scientists working at the Soviet chemical weapon testing facility there at Nukus. There are many other possibilities.
Yesterday's revelations certainly add to the amount we know about the Skripal event. But they raise as many new questions as they give answers.