The Skripal Poisoning - A Very Deep British Affair

[David Guyatt]

It is truly nauseating to watch the BBC News and Peston on Sunday - which I've been doing this morning. The bias and propaganda about Russia (the ever green fabricated Skripal affair for example) is disgraceful.

It is beyond evident that the Beeb is now completely in the neoliberal camp and regurgitates British government and British spookdom trash without the slightest hesitation nor application of any of what once were the prevailing journalistic standards for accuracy.

[David Guyatt]

Well worth reading. I think Cunningham has it pretty clearly summed up.

[url=http://Skripal and Syria... The Imperative of Criminalizing Russia Finian CUNNINGHAM | 10.09.2018 | FEATURED STORY Skripal and Syria... The Imperative of Criminalizing Russia There is a direct link between Britain's sensational allegations against Russia in the Skripal affair and NATO's losing covert war in Syria. That's not just the opinion of critical observers. Britain's ambassador to the United Nations made the explicit link when she called an "emergency meeting" of the Security Council earlier this week. The Security Council meeting was convened only hours after British counter-terrorism police released video images claiming to identify two Russian men, whom it said were responsible for the alleged poison assassination attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England earlier this year. The council meeting also followed swiftly on the heels of British Prime Minister Theresa May telling her parliament that the culprits were Russian military intelligence officers acting on orders from the Kremlin. May did not give supporting evidence. It was bald assertion. In this short clip, Britain's envoy to the UN Karen Pierce tells reporters the rationale of the British government in convening the emergency session at the Security Council. The envoy reveals more than she intended. She says that the United Kingdom and its allies would "continue to contest the Russian view of the world in which their state operatives can carry out these sorts of attacks [in England] and can encourage and support the Syrian authorities in their attacks on civilians." Pierce added: "So this is actually a continuum, if you like, of contesting that view of the world where you can act outside the norms of international rules and civilized behavior." Evidently, the British government is trying to criminalize both Russia and Syria at the same time, over the same alleged crime unlawful use of chemical weapons. That would account for why the British authorities have been unduly hasty in accusing the Russian state of culpability in the Skripal affair. By undermining and smearing Russia as a "pariah state", it is then possible to stifle Russia's crucial military support for Syria. This is especially urgent given the juncture in the Syria war where NATO-backed militants are staring at final defeat. The US, Britain and France have all recently threatened to use military power against the Syrian government forces "if" the latter launch chemical weapons attacks. That of course is a cynical pretext for the NATO states to find a legal cover for aggression against Syria. The allegations of "imminent" chemical weapon use by the Syrian government are also baseless since Damascus no longer possesses any such munitions, or indeed has any military need for such weapons. What the Skripal affair is therefore trying to do is inculcate in the public mind that Russia has no scruples about using chemical weapons to kill people, which in turn reinforces the notion that Moscow's Syrian ally also has no scruples about killing people with toxic materials. The NATO claims of Syrian national forces using chemical weapons have been shown to be false. In recent days, Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia demanded that the US present details of a Pentagon target list of chemical weapons sites in Syria. The US balked. By contrast, there is a healthy skepticism among the Western public about official allegations against the Syrian government. Pink Floyd's legendary singer-songwriter Roger Waters speaks for many when he recently called out the NATO-backed so-called rescue group, the White Helmets, as being implicated in orchestrating chemical attacks for propaganda purposes. In order to overcome the propaganda problem of demonizing the Syrian government and giving itself a pretext for launching military strikes on Syria, the NATO powers therefore have to boost their flagging "false flag" narrative of chemical weapons responsibility. By criminalizing Russia for allegedly using chemical weapons "on the streets of Britain", it is a ploy to augment the dubious narrative criminalizing Syria. Here is British envoy Pierce speaking again: "The reason the Security Council has not been able to act on CW [chemical weapon] use in Syria is because of Russia. There is a circularity here. Russia is the key to upholding the universal ban on CW use. And the world would be better if Russia would join us in making that ban absolutely watertight." Britain's use of the word "circularity" is certainly apt albeit for a completely different reason. The actual circular logic is to criminalize both Russia and Syria over chemical weapons. Russia, it is calculated, will then not have the authority to use its veto power at the Security Council in order to prevent the three NATO powers on the council from launching their much-desired military attack on Syria to salvage their losing covert war. The reckless haste by which the British authorities are accusing Russia over the Skripal affair a haste which makes a mockery of legal due process and diplomatic norms can plausibly be explained by the urgency of the NATO powers to free up their military plans on Syria. How can the release of video images allegedly of two Russian nationals in Britain be possibly attributed to the Kremlin? Two Russian men if indeed that is genuine information are supposed to be "compelling evidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an assassination. It is a preposterous leap of imagination and a travesty of legal process, but it is revealing of an execrable British prejudice of Russophobia. One possible theory in the Skripal affair is that the two alleged Russian men were members of organized crime. Reports emerged this week that former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal was working with Spanish state security services to crackdown on Russian underworld gangs. It is possible that the gangs uncovered Skripal's meddling in their illicit business model, and simply sent a couple of heavies over to Britain to deal with him. But how such a hypothetical account can be twisted by the British authorities to be "proof" of Kremlin involvement is a telling question. It is significant that the British authorities have flatly refused requests from the Russian side for information to identify the alleged Skripal hitmen. For example, British regulations require fingerprints to be submitted by all visitors to the country. Why have the British refused to give fingerprints to Russian authorities which could then lead to an identification and perhaps explanation of the two alleged suspects? The British don't want to know the truth, because their official narrative of criminalizing the Russian state is the imperative one. And that is because of the urgency for NATO to find a legal, political cover for its military aggression against Syria.]Skripal and Syria... The Imperative of Criminalizing Russia[/url]


Finian CUNNINGHAM | 10.09.2018 | FEATURED STORY






There is a direct link between Britain's sensational allegations against Russia in the Skripal affair and NATO's losing covert war in Syria.


That's not just the opinion of critical observers. Britain's ambassador to the United Nations made the explicit link when she called an "emergency meeting" of the Security Council earlier this week.


The Security Council meeting was convened only hours after British counter-terrorism police released video images claiming to identify two Russian men, whom it said were responsible for the alleged poison assassination attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England earlier this year.


The council meeting also followed swiftly on the heels of British Prime Minister Theresa May telling her parliament that the culprits were Russian military intelligence officers acting on orders from the Kremlin. May did not give supporting evidence. It was bald assertion.


In this short clip, Britain's envoy to the UN Karen Pierce tells reporters the rationale of the British government in convening the emergency session at the Security Council. The envoy reveals more than she intended.


She says that the United Kingdom and its allies would "continue to contest the Russian view of the world in which their state operatives can carry out these sorts of attacks [in England] and can encourage and support the Syrian authorities in their attacks on civilians."


Pierce added: "So this is actually a continuum, if you like, of contesting that view of the world where you can act outside the norms of international rules and civilized behavior."


Evidently, the British government is trying to criminalize both Russia and Syria at the same time, over the same alleged crime unlawful use of chemical weapons.


That would account for why the British authorities have been unduly hasty in accusing the Russian state of culpability in the Skripal affair. By undermining and smearing Russia as a "pariah state", it is then possible to stifle Russia's crucial military support for Syria. This is especially urgent given the juncture in the Syria war where NATO-backed militants are staring at final defeat.


The US, Britain and France have all recently threatened to use military power against the Syrian government forces "if" the latter launch chemical weapons attacks. That of course is a cynical pretext for the NATO states to find a legal cover for aggression against Syria.


The allegations of "imminent" chemical weapon use by the Syrian government are also baseless since Damascus no longer possesses any such munitions, or indeed has any military need for such weapons.


What the Skripal affair is therefore trying to do is inculcate in the public mind that Russia has no scruples about using chemical weapons to kill people, which in turn reinforces the notion that Moscow's Syrian ally also has no scruples about killing people with toxic materials.


The NATO claims of Syrian national forces using chemical weapons have been shown to be false. In recent days, Russian envoy to the UN Vasily Nebenzia demanded that the US present details of a Pentagon target list of chemical weapons sites in Syria. The US balked.


By contrast, there is a healthy skepticism among the Western public about official allegations against the Syrian government. Pink Floyd's legendary singer-songwriter Roger Waters speaks for many when he recently called out the NATO-backed so-called rescue group, the White Helmets, as being implicated in orchestrating chemical attacks for propaganda purposes.


In order to overcome the propaganda problem of demonizing the Syrian government and giving itself a pretext for launching military strikes on Syria, the NATO powers therefore have to boost their flagging "false flag" narrative of chemical weapons responsibility.


By criminalizing Russia for allegedly using chemical weapons "on the streets of Britain", it is a ploy to augment the dubious narrative criminalizing Syria.


Here is British envoy Pierce speaking again: "The reason the Security Council has not been able to act on CW [chemical weapon] use in Syria is because of Russia. There is a circularity here. Russia is the key to upholding the universal ban on CW use. And the world would be better if Russia would join us in making that ban absolutely watertight."


Britain's use of the word "circularity" is certainly apt albeit for a completely different reason. The actual circular logic is to criminalize both Russia and Syria over chemical weapons. Russia, it is calculated, will then not have the authority to use its veto power at the Security Council in order to prevent the three NATO powers on the council from launching their much-desired military attack on Syria to salvage their losing covert war.


The reckless haste by which the British authorities are accusing Russia over the Skripal affair a haste which makes a mockery of legal due process and diplomatic norms can plausibly be explained by the urgency of the NATO powers to free up their military plans on Syria.


How can the release of video images allegedly of two Russian nationals in Britain be possibly attributed to the Kremlin? Two Russian men if indeed that is genuine information are supposed to be "compelling evidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an assassination. It is a preposterous leap of imagination and a travesty of legal process, but it is revealing of an execrable British prejudice of Russophobia.


One possible theory in the Skripal affair is that the two alleged Russian men were members of organized crime. Reports emerged this week that former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal was working with Spanish state security services to crackdown on Russian underworld gangs. It is possible that the gangs uncovered Skripal's meddling in their illicit business model, and simply sent a couple of heavies over to Britain to deal with him. But how such a hypothetical account can be twisted by the British authorities to be "proof" of Kremlin involvement is a telling question.


It is significant that the British authorities have flatly refused requests from the Russian side for information to identify the alleged Skripal hitmen. For example, British regulations require fingerprints to be submitted by all visitors to the country. Why have the British refused to give fingerprints to Russian authorities which could then lead to an identification and perhaps explanation of the two alleged suspects?


The British don't want to know the truth, because their official narrative of criminalizing the Russian state is the imperative one. And that is because of the urgency for NATO to find a legal, political cover for its military aggression against Syria.

[James Lateer]

As I have mentioned on other threads, the trail of the Skripal-Christopher Steele-Russiagate apparently runs directly from actual "historical fascist" ie. card-carrying Nazis in Ukraine and probably Germany in central Europe to the anti-Brexit, anti-Trump globalists (Rothschilds??) in the UK and in the UK MI-6 community.

From there, the trail runs to Samantha Powers and Victoria Nuland in the US State Department, and then on to Brennan, Strzok, Comey, McCabe, Mueller and company.

This Skripal stuff is Siamese Twins with the Christopher Steele dossier issue in the US.

Who are these "historical fascist" globalists who are orchestrating this mess?

It will probably be a God-send to Trump if the Republicans lose the House in the mid-terms. If that happens, Trump will already know he will be impeached, so he will be able to fire Mueller, Rosenstein, and others and will be able to open up the hidden classified documents so the American people can judge the facts for themselves. He will probably be able to appoint a second special counsel to investigate these "neo-J Edgar Hoover" FBI executives. But that would be an insult to JEH (IMHO).

You may have heard that in Brazil the leading Presidential candidate was stabbed. We are getting pretty much to the level of a Brazil right here in the US with these willy-nilly political investigations and trials.

Does any intelligent person believe this is a good thing to be happening in our country? The Trump Derangement Kool-Aid has stricken a lot of people. Many of them (otherwise) very well educated and smart.

Well, from 1933 to 1935, Hitler had infected the German people with his own personal derangement. Many of them were also very smart people. But the Hitler show went on never-the-less.

James Lateer

[David Guyatt]

I think the Skripal affair has become a multi-tool of our British and US spookdom. It may not have started out that way. I doubt these people are that smart. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see it.

And it could easily, in my view anyway, vector into a Litvinenko type of affair, an organised crime event that misfired or went wrong, or was a revenge attack - or which caused embarrassment for the Brit security and intelligence community and which, therefore, had to quickly be spun in another direction (which would also account for the constant first-aiding of the ever changing British government narrative).

And thereafter the story was seen to have scope for a variety of manipulations; for example forcing Trump into sanctions against Russia to deny him any lasting benefit from his meeting with Putin, as well as hammering away at the evil Russia in the public mind to enable the Anglo-American-French camp to counter Russian success in Syria.

Btw, it appears (from a Bild report) that Germany is now considering joining a FUKUS attack on Syrian forces in the event that the expected false flag chemical gas attack occurs.

The bottom line is that it has become a useful - even though very widely disbelieved - media instrument to sustain the crumbling empire (and her willing hand-maidens).

[James Lateer]

This is the first I have heard about Germany going miltaristic in Syria. It would not be surprising to see Germany rear its ugly head again in Europe (God RIP my German ancestors).

Since the EEU was conceived in August, 1944 at the Strasbourg Meeting to be a replacement for the Third Reich (i.e. the Fourth Reich), if the EEU starts to run aground and hit the shoals, then certain things will follow.

There is a thousand-year history of Germans wanting to invade lands in the East (i.e. Russia) in order to gain Lebensraum (living space), not to mention Russian and Ukrainian resources. This dates back at least to the Teutonic Knights and the Siege of Konigsberg in 1262.

After World War II, the Germans forsook military conquest in favor of financial conquest. Through the EEU, they have sucked all the economic blood out of Greece, Italy, Spain and other of the less powerful countries.

But the fundamental power equation that has been in place in Europe since 1919 is this: the power is at the East and West margins of Europe. To the East, there is the vast and powerful Russian Empire which has bested Europe militarily time after time from the era of Napoleon to that of Hitler.

To the West, you have the Anglo-Saxon powers. Just the UK and Canada and Australia together defeated Germany in World War II, after most of the UK, French, German and Russian troops all reached the stage of mutiny. And that was before the entry of the US, which put the icing on the cake of the defeat of Germany.

Lenin famously said "he who controls Berlin controls Europe: and he who controls Europe controls the world." Although the EEU has 500 million people and most of the world GDP, it is still divided amongst dozens of ethnicities and lacks the central government that each of Russia, the US, the UK and the British Commonwealth have.

But Germany has a very, very bad record of starting wars in order to artificially create political unity within Germany. And also, they wanted to offset the severe religious and regional disunity that has always existed in Germany throughout recorded history.

Bismarck started the Danish War in 1864, the Austrian War in 1868 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Kaiser Bill started World War I in 1914 to foster German unity and boost the reactionary Junkers. We know the Hitler story in 1939. Same script.

So with a declining EEU, German militarism could reoccur. The current "Russiagate" scandal is all too obviously a standoff between the Pro-Russia faction in Washington against the Pro-German faction in Washington. It seems like Trump likes Putin much better than Angela Merkel. While the US has declined in manufacturing jobs from 27% down to 17% in two decades, Germany remains at 29% of people working in manufacturing. And German workers are building pricy stuff like BMW's.

Trump is one of the few (but influential) people who apparently know what Germany, China, South Korea and Japan have done to our economy. They have not been helpful (IMHO).

A resurgent German militarism could arise as a sort of cancer in Europe if Germany tried to follow the old playbook of Bismarck, Kaiser Bill and Hitler. Fortunately, there are dozens of "buffer states" surrounding Germany like Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, etc. etc. So the Armageddon scenario featuring a Russia armed to the teeth with nukes against the old German General Staff would not occur for many years.

But even without a direct German-Russian military confrontation, you could see Germany try to weasel and nibble at the edge of Russian resources (like ports, oil, natural gas, grain etc.).

Hopefully, the Western Anglo-Saxon powers to the West and the gigantic Russian Bear to the East will continue to work together as they have done since 1919 and prevent even worse catastrophes from happening (as if there could be something worse than WWII).

James Lateer

[David Guyatt]

A report I read this morning on the German story is that it is against the law in Germany to go to war without approval of the Bundestag and even then only if the UN support a military intervention. Neither will happen (Russia and China will object to any proposal in the UN) and while there are some in Germany who would support this mooted move, apparently there are not nearly enough of them to win a vote.

[James Lateer]

This looks like the cockroach theory to me:

If you hear a first appeal for Germany to intervene militarily in Syria, then always more variations on the theme inevitably appear.

The mention of German re-militarism may be the first cockroach. There are always more cockroaches.

Also, Germany back in 1963 was in total control of NATO. How could they want to control NATO and succeed in controlling NATO if they couldn't go to war?

If you think that Germany was at one time in total control of NATO and somehow they legally couldn't fight, then you are missing 99% of the pieces of this puzzle.

James Lateer

[David Guyatt]

Germany joining in with an attack on Syrians/Russians/Iranians in Idlib is a very curious story. And it gets curioser and curioser.

In the German language newspaper Deutsche Wirtsshafts (but not reported by our Western media that I could see -- and I looked, albeit not extensively), is an article headlined: "Merkel supports Russian military action in Syria" (HERE). This article report follows on from the recent meeting between Putin and Merkel.

Yesterday, an article on the World Socialist Web Site (HERE) reports following a meeting between Russia, Turkey, Germany and France, that Russia has decided to postpone its assault on Idlib. This has followed unprecedented and crazed threats from Washington that it would militarily intervene in a big way should Russia, Syria and Iran go ahead with their plans to take the last remaining Jihadi stronghold at Idlib irrespective of a whether a chemical false flag provocation occurs or not.

It seems that the US neocon war-mongers saw the writing on the wall regarding the planned White Helmets staged / faked gas attack (no one believes them anymore) and instead created a new red line overnight. In other words, Washington de facto set the scene for WWII and backed itself in to a corner for a potential nuclear exchange.

My take based upon what little I know is that Merkel and Macron sought to convince Putin to find an alternative and that he, sensibly given the situation, has agreed to do so. It might all come down to the mid-terms.

At least there are still some adults in the room.

But the basic take-away is that the US neocon/neoliberal ideologues clearly are utterly mad and would rather face a world war than lose their hegemony. But lose it they will anyway. It's only a matter of time before the US dollar crashes and burns (imo) and then spinning plates all come crashing down at more or less the same time.

[David Guyatt]

The below article from June this year seems to me to be the solution to the Skripal fiasco. It makes perfect sense that those responsible for poisoning the Skripal's were from Washington and not Moscow, and specifically the Clinton campaign, the DNC etc.

From The Spectator

Big Dots Do They Connect? Steele and Skripal Revisited

• DIANA WEST
  

June 28, 2018, 12:05 am

More on the world of Christopher Steele and Russian agents, poisoned and un poisoned.

Just came across an intriguing theory about Sergei Skripal, the former Soviet/Russian military intelligence agent who spied for Britain, and, along with his daughter Yulia, was nearly killed this spring by a dose of the nerve agent Novichok in the town of Salisbury, England, where they live.
In a March 21 interview on the John Batchelor Show, Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier.

Copley further explained (or tried to explain) to Batchelor (who kept cutting him off): "The people who wished to see Skripal become quiet were people in Washington, the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign, and people around Christopher Steele himself. I'm not saying necessarily that MI6 or the British government had a witting hand in it, but there are too many people who had an axe to grind to make sure that Skripal did not "

Did not… did not what? Batchelor steps on the end of Copley's sentence to interject a question about whether the Novichok attack on the Skripals could have been a "gangland" hit.

What Copley surely meant was to say was to make sure Skripal did not "talk."

Copley had already explained that in Skripal's UK "retirement," he did plenty of freelance work, providing researchers for a price with that perfect shot of authentic, but also custom-made, "Russian intelligence."

Copley: "He would write whatever people wanted. He would say, What are you trying to achieve, let me help you,' and he would do that. And he was apparently prepared to, if you like, to fold under pressure and admit that he had done that, and admit that what he had written about Trump in that dossier was pure fiction, written simply to provide his client with "

With…?

Batchelor steps on Copley again, this time to put in a question about legality. "… there's nothing illegal about this, correct, Gregory?"

Copley: "Not necessarily, until you get to the part where this was not just providing intelligence services to the Clinton campaign; it was providing a document for use in political warfare operations to influence an election. There, he was basically fabricating material purporting for it to be intelligence "

Batchelor steps on him again! He asks something about whether MI6 knew Steele was working with Skripal a question that just might have been able to wait three more seconds.

Even so, Copley's assessment, which he said he had based on "conversations we've had with people familiar with" Skripal, came through loud and clear: In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier; and he was prepared to say so. By Copley's logic, this meant that Skripal's enemies were also Trump's enemies: "people in Washington, the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign, and people around Christopher Steele himself," along with their MI6 and British government allies.

Is this correct? I have no idea. It's quite fascinating, however, as is the British government reaction to certain aspects of it, as seen below.

Copley: "Bear in mind that large elements of the British intelligence community had assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election; they had assumed that it was safe to work with the Obama administration during the eight years to help surveil US nationals, using GCHQ, the British electronic surveillance agency, to surveil US internal phone calls. The NSA is not allowed to do it, so they asked GCHQ to do it "

Batchelor cuts in. "Right. Right. That's standard, that's standard isn't Gregory? That was in place during the first Cold War."

Copley: "It was, but it got a little fast and loose during the Obama administration when there was an increased level of surveillance of US citizens and telephone calls coming out of the US. Bear in mind we've see a lot of those reports being used against the Trump people by, saying that their calls were surveilled and [unintelligible] evidence for the FBI " Yup, enter interviewer.

Since the spring, the Skripal poisoning has just sort of been sitting there, like so much Putin-bait, without any discernible context amid many unanswered questions and few, extremely non-satisfactory answers. After listening to the Copley interview, I began to understand part of the reason, at least, that there has been so little light shed on this gruesome incident.

After the poisoning, it turns out that the British government issued two related "D-notices" on the story a big, fat chill on British press coverage. What seems to have been uppermost in these censorship "requests" was to ensure that the British press protected the MI-6 connection to Sergei, which is interesting all by itself. Such protection would seem to include the name of the retired MI-6 agent who recruited Skripal, first discussed here. As has been reported outside of Britain, that retired MI6 agent's name is Pablo Miller. It has also been reported that Miller now works with another retired MI-6 agent. His name is Christopher Steele.

Some pretty big dots. Do they connect?

Politely, the Telegraph nonetheless reported on March 7 on a security consultant, presumably Miller, and his connections to Skripal and Steele both.

The Telegraph:

A security consultant [Pablo Miller] who has worked for the company that compiled the controversial dossier on Donald Trump was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has been claimed.

The consultant, who [sic] The Telegraph is declining to identify, lived close to Col Skripal and is understood to have known him for some time.
The Telegraph understands that Col Skripal moved to Salisbury in 2010 in a spy swap and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier.

The British security consultant, according to a LinkedIn social network account that was removed from the internet in the past few days, is also based in Salisbury.
On the same LinkedIn account, the man listed consultancy work with Orbis Business Intelligence, according to reports.
"The man" lives in Salisbury; he's close to Skripal; he works with Steele. Did this breaking news start a stampede? Hardly. British press reaction was, in the main, to get out there and tamp the Telegraph story down.

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera took to Twitter:

No link Chris Steele to Sergei Skripalources close to Orbis intelligence ex MI6 officer Chris Steele's company which did Trump dossier' tell me no links whatsoever to Russian targeted with nerve agent. No sign of operational activity so far leaves revenge as likely motive

The Guardians Luke Harding also tweeted to warn all off the story:

The @Telegraph story claiming a link between Sergei #Skripal and Christopher Steele's company Orbis is wrong, I understand. Skripal had nothing to do with Trump dossier. Nor did unnamed "security consultant" ever work for Orbis

Maybe that depends on what the meaning of "work" is. Still, isn't this group-finger-wagging a little weird?

The Financial Times, too, joined in the general hush-hushing:

Sources have also dismissed reports of a link between Mr Skripal and private intelligence groups, including Orbis, the company jointly run by Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the infamous Trump-Russia dossier.

The following may have something to do with the general freeze-out: According to Spinwatch.orgs report on the Skripal story D-notices, representatives from the Guardian and the BBC sit on what is known as the "Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee," the officially creepy government-media group that oversees British media censorship.

Whatever it is, it has largely worked. With some notable exceptions, Skripal's connections to Steele and thus to the dossier and thus to Trump-Russia and the rest have remained a non-story, a one-off.

Here's another journalistic outlier. Also on March 7, the Independent reported on a British Channel 4 interview with Valery Morozov, described as a "former Kremlin official" and "an associate of Mr Skripal after he too was exiled to the UK."

Morozov made the sensational claim that Sergei Skripal had been in regular contact with the Russian Embassy in London:

He also claimed Mr Skripal was keeping "dangerous" company, which is why he later chose to distance himself.
"Every month [he was] going to the embassy to meet military intelligence officers", Mr Morozov told Channel 4 News.

"For me being political refugee it is either certain danger or, frankly speaking, I thought that this concept is not very good for me. It can be bring some questions from British officials."

Now, that's quite interesting. If Skripal had been in regular contact with Russian military intelligence in London, and was also the "Russian intelligence source" for the Steele dossier, then we have this lovely line connecting many things. But is it true? "The Russian embassy said it was not aware of any meetings," the Independent reported, not that that means a thing.
The story continues:

Mr Morozov also said he was sure that Russian President Vladimir Putin had nothing to do with the alleged poisoning.
"Putin can't be behind this. I know how the Kremlin works, I worked there. Who is Skripal? He is nothing for Putin. Putin doesn't think about him", he said.
"There is nobody in Kremlin talking about former intelligence officer who is nobody. There is no reason for this. It is more dangerous for them for such things to happen."

He's nobody, but he meeting with military intelligence officers? He's a fabricator behind the Steele dossier, but he traveled around Europe offering "briefings on Russia to foreign intelligence operatives"? It's all very perplexing. More digging, more reporting, more revelation a nice, new defector, maybe are required.
If only somewhere had a free press.

[David Guyatt]

https://audioboom.com/posts/6739963-cui-...gn-affairs

Cui Bono Skripal's silence? 2 of 2: Gregory Copley Defense & Foreign Affairs.

22 Mar, 04:39

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AUTHOR.
(Photo:
English: Who left the gate open? Using an old road map I forgot about all the MOD land in the area! So much for a short cut to the A30.
Date 13 February 2010
Source From geograph.org.uk
Author Sebastian Ballard)
http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact
http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules
Twitter: @BatchelorShow
Cui Bono Skripal's silence? 2 of 2: Gregory Copley Defense & Foreign Affairs.
".........

1. It is important to note that the UK Government throughout its statements on the matter implied that only Russia had access to the Novichok agents, and that they were still in use with the Russian Armed Forces. Those allegations were incorrect as to the spread of knowledge and possession of the agents were concerned, and there is no evidence that the Russian Government retained Novichok in its arsenal (although it would certainly have samples in its archives). The reality was that several Soviet satellite states also were known to have had access to No-vichok during the Cold War, and Wikipedia notes: "In 2016 Iranian chemists syn-thesized six Novichok agents for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weap-ons Central Analytical Database." Moreover, the fact that the UK Government's chemical and biological warfare agency at Porton Down was able to identify the nerve agent used in the Skripal case as Novichok indicates that Porton Down al-so has presumably as with the US Army Medical Research Institute of Chemi-cal Defense (USAMRICD), at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and other concerned agencies around the world attempted to obtain samples of No-vichok agents and probably attempted to replicate them in order to discover anti-dotes. Vil Mirzayanov, one of the developers of Novichok, defected to the US in the early-1990s, revealed the project and delivered all the data, including produc-tion techniques, to the US and the UK.
   
2. A Parallel Case: What has thus far gone unremarked was the fact that the as-sassination on February 13, 2017, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of DPRK leader Kim Jong-Un (who later died in hospi-tal), directly paralleled the attack on Mr Skripal. It was alleged that Kim was at-tacked by two women with VX nerve agent. However, VX is gas, and the reality was that Kim Jong-Nam was killed with a Novichok variant: a viscous liquid con-taining the same nerve-paralyzing molecules as VX. It was assumed at the time that the North Koreans mastered the art of the Novichok's carrier-molecules but not that of the super-lethal agent. And it was presumed that this was on the in-structions of Kim Jong-Un. Sources indicate, however, that Kim Jong-nam was killed by a nerve agent from the Novichok family of weapons, which had been designed specifically to be more powerful and effective than VX (in fact, about five to eight times more powerful than VX, and more difficult to detect). Why has this parallel, which was known to Western intelligence agencies, not raised? Was it not raised because it might throw doubt on the "indisputable logic" of blaming the attack on the Russian Government? ..."