In the illustration above, Gus hopes he interpreted the explanation given in Science Magazine correctly. See full explanation there: http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34789

 

A more complex view of this molecule (different colours used for the various parts) is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylcholinesterase

While Spiez Lab advises the public to wait for a new statement by the OPCW following its meeting tomorrow, some public pressure may need to be brought on the OPCW itself to immediately release ALL the information it has from ALL the laboratories it has used in the Skripal case.  Without such public pressure — and it is certainly not coming from any Western MSM — the OPCW may again do what it did on April 4, when by a vote of 15 to 6, with 17 members abstaining, it rejected Russia’s proposal for “a new, joint investigation” of the Skripal case.

Here’s the composition of OPCW’s Executive Council for May 12, 2017-May 11, 2018:

Chairperson: H.E. Ambassador Sheikh Mohammed BELAL Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the OPCW. View list of previous chairpersons.
Vice-Chairs: Permanent Representatives of Chile (GRULAC), Spain (WEOG), Sudan (Africa) and Slovakia (EEG)
Members by region
Africa: Algeria (2018), Cameroon (2019), Ghana (2018), Kenya (2019), Libya (2018), Morocco (2019), Senegal (2019), South Africa (2018), Sudan (2019).
Asia: Bangladesh (2018), China (2019), India (2019), Iran (Islamic Republic of) (2018), Japan (2019), Pakistan (2018), Republic of Korea (2019), Saudi Arabia (2019), Viet Nam (2018).
Eastern Europe: Azerbaijan (2019) Estonia (2019), Poland (2018), Russian Federation (2018) Slovakia (2018).
Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina (2019), Brazil (2019), Chile (2018), Colombia (2019), Guatemala (2018), Mexico (2019), Panama (2018), Peru (2018).
Western European and Other States: Australia (2018), Belgium (2018), France (2019), Germany (2019), Italy (2019), Spain (2018), Sweden (2018), Switzerland (2018), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (2019), United States of America (2019).

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/04/17/spiez-laboratory-the-skripal-case-an...

--------------------

And by the way, because the OPCW has so far found nothing in Douma — Douma being the "gassing event" that led to he bombing of Syria by MadDonald, grandma Theresa and littl' napoleon — a report of the TeeVee said that the Russians "had cleaned up the site"... I did not expect any less from our "experts" on Western shit.

London is ready to give answers to all questions posed by Russia on the Skripal case, the UK's Permanent Representative at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Peter Wilson stated.

The OPCW research results have confirmed British experts' analysis, the UK's Permanent Representative at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons  Peter Wilson stated, speaking at the OPCW Executive Council Meeting.

"On April 13, the Russian Federation handed over to the UK a list with questions under Article 9 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. We will respond as soon as possible (this will happen) within 10 days, as established by the Convention (on the prohibition of chemical weapons)," Wilson said.

According to the UK Ambassador to the OPCW, four OPCW-designated laboratories did not find the substance BZ in any of the samples collected in Salisbury. Still, London and the OPCW research haven't determined the nerve agent country of origin and production location, the UK Envoy noted.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201804181063676656-opcw-laboratories-salis...

 

I could be a dummy, but the poisoning occurred one and a half month ago, and we still have not seen any proper analytical detail, nor any of the victims. At this stage, the woman is being released from hospital but no-one has seen her independently of her "controllers". I am still prepared to believe that the "poison" samples could have been tampered with many times over by now — and that the Skripals were never poisoned. I could be wrong. But I can categorically say that the Russian government was not involved in this affair. 100 per cent. Completely. I know.

Mr. Chairperson,

I would like to start my speech with the words that belong to the great thinker Martin Luther, “A lie is like a snowball: the further you roll it, the bigger it becomes”.

This wise aphorism is fully applicable to politics. He who has chosen the path of deception will have to lie again and again, making up explanations for discrepancies, spreading disinformation and doing forgery, desperately using all means to cover the tracks of the lies and to hide the truth.

The United Kingdom has entered this slippery path. We can clearly see all of this on the example of the “Skripal case” fabricated by the British authorities, this poorly disguised anti-Russian provocation accompanied by an unprecedented propaganda campaign, taken up by a group of countries, and the finalized unprecedented expulsion of diplomats under a far-fetched pretext. Please, do not try to pass this group for the international community – it is far from that.

It has already been a month since the Prime Minister of Great Britain Theresa May put forward some extremely serious accusations against Russia of the alleged use of chemical weapons. We have been waiting for an explanation for a long time, counting on our British colleagues to eventually back up these loud statements with some at least halfway intelligible facts. We have repeatedly proposed to them to work together on the investigation of the events in Salisbury, have been requesting information. The response consisted in haughty, arrogant statements saying Russia should confess to the crime.

The British side continues to scatter absolutely unfounded accusations, disseminating more and more new, often senseless, versions of the events. The British politicians and officials simply cannot stop anymore and continue pouring down new torrents of lies. London sabotages every attempt to conduct a truly objective investigation into the incident in Salisbury with the participation of Russian experts. They have classified everything, supposedly conducting their own national investigation. Although the “responsible” have already been designated.

Why they are doing this is obvious. Great Britain strives to avoid at all costs the establishment of the truth about the events, hide all evidence, which could unmask them. They are simply playing for time. Because the further it gets – the more difficult it will be to figure out what really did (or did not) happen in Salisbury.

The lie always fears the truth, for the truth is the most terrifying weapon against lies. Let us, therefore, turn to the naked facts which demonstrate how insolently and clumsily the British government is disseminating the insinuations regarding the “Skripal case”.

LIE №1

Russia does not respond to any legitimate questions made by the United Kingdom on March 12, 2018 through the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to London A.V. Yakovenko (some of the allies of the United Kingdom keep repeating this like a mantra).

I would like to remind you that the British side has suggested that we confess to one of the two versions it has made up: either the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal was a purposeful action by Russia, or Russia has lost control over the arsenal of chemical weapons it allegedly has. Despite the brazen nature of this ultimatum, we definitely did not ignore it, but immediately gave an unequivocal answer: Russia has nothing to do with the chemical incident in Salisbury. Great Britain has not contacted us with any other questions.

LIE №2

Great Britain acts in strict compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The facts demonstrate exactly the opposite. Thus, the Article IX of the Convention stipulates that States Parties shall conduct bilateral consultations on any ambiguous issues. We see that in reality the United Kingdom has avoided complying with this provision and still refuses to interact with us. As far as the British ultimatum communicated through the Ambassador of the Russian Federation I have mentioned is concerned, it cannot in any way be considered a “proposal of cooperation” in the sense of the CWC or a “request for legal assistance”.

On our part, on April 13, we sent through the Technical Secretariat a note to the British side under the Paragraph 2 Article IX with a list of legitimate questions that we have regarding the “Skripal case”. We have been acting strictly in accordance with the Convention and expected that our partners from London would do the same. There still has been no response. It is as if the United Kingdom did not notice the Convention at all or did not want to act in accordance with its norms.

We also witnessed how London came up with a new form of work – “the independent verification by the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW of the British side’s findings.” I would like to underscore: there is nothing like this in the Convention. This is an invention by the United Kingdom. Instead of precisely following the provisions of the Convention, the United Kingdom tries to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

LIE №3

Russia refuses to cooperate in establishing the truth.

In the reality, it is exactly the opposite. Russia is extremely interested – probably, even more than any other country – in an honest, open and impartial investigation of the incident in Salisbury. We have repeatedly proposed, asked, demanded from the British side to cooperate in the investigation. We have put forward for the consideration of the 57thextraordinary session of the Executive Council a draft decision that contained the call for Russia and Great Britain to establish such interaction with the involvement of the Technical Secretariat. We expressed then and confirm now our readiness to cooperate with the OPCW and within the OPCW.

Unfortunately, all of our efforts stumble into a blind wall of complete unwillingness of London to interact.

LIE №4

The United Kingdom claims that Russia, allegedly, infinitely multiplies its versions of the chemical incident in Salisbury trying to divert from itself the wave of criticism for the alleged use of chemical weapons on the British soil.

In the reality, this is what the British side has been doing, disseminating through its so-called “independent” media the infinite versions: the poison first was in the suitcase, then on the door handle, then in the buckwheat, then at the restaurant, then in the flower bouquet, then in the ventilation system of the car, then in perfume, etc.

LIE №5

The Russian leadership has allegedly stated that the extermination of traitors abroad is the state policy of the Russian Federation.

This is slander and complete nonsense. Let them demonstrate where they saw this. Obviously, the United Kingdom will not be able to present a single example of a statement of this kind because nothing similar has ever been said by the Russian leadership.

LIE №6

The conclusions made by the experts of the Technical Secretariat based on the results of the analysis of samples collected from the Skripal father and daughter confirmed that they had been poisoned with a substance from the “Novichok” family. 

Our military experts are ready to present their evaluation of what was said in the report by the Technical Secretariat based on the results of the work of the group of specialists in the United Kingdom.

For now, I will only say one thing: the claim that the Technical Secretariat confirmed that this chemical points to its Russian origin is an outright lie. The report itself does not say a single word about the name “Novichok”; the CWC simply does not contain such a concept. And in the report by the Technical Secretariat there is also no confirmation of the “Russian footprint” in the chemical substance found in Salisbury.

Nevertheless, the British authorities immediately disseminated in the world media the fake news that the OPCW supposedly confirmed that the Skripals were poisoned with “Novichok”, and that the latter, they say, was developed in the USSR and Russia only, hence Moscow is to blame. This is how the findings of the report by the Technical Secretariat are being falsified.

LIE №7

The so-called “Novichok” is a Soviet invention and it, supposedly, could have been produced only in Russia.

It is necessary to remind that “Novichok” is the name invented in the West for a group of chemical agents which were developed in many countries, including in the United Kingdom. In one of his recent interviews, the Secretary of State Boris Johnson confirmed that the United Kingdom has samples of this substance at the laboratory in Porton Down. Actually, we have a lot of questions to ask this laboratory. It would be interesting to know how they determined that the Skripals had been poisoned with a “Novichok”-type nerve agent. Because any reasonable person would understand that you can establish this if you have the original component to which you can compare the chemical which has been found. It follows that this laboratory has a stock of “Novichok”, and, possibly, also the antidotes which were used in the Skripals’ treatment.

In Russia, there has never been any research and development or experimental work conducted as part of a programme under the name of “Novichok”. I reiterate, there has never been a programme with such a name. In the Soviet times, starting with the 1970s, not only the Soviet, but also the British and American scientists were working on creating new types of nerve agents. This is how the famous VX nerve gas was created. And in the 1990s, after the breakup of the USSR, the Western special services exported from Russia a group of chemists together with the documentation. The specialists in the West began to closely study the documents and, based on them, started working in this direction, achieved certain results, which were made public.

We know very well that the “Novichok”-type nerve agents were in production in a number of countries. And, unlike our Western partners, who are constantly rolling their eyes and saying that they know something but that it, as they say, is intelligence data and they cannot reveal it, we operate in a different fashion. We work with open sources. Thus, on December 1, 2015, the United States Patent and Trademark Office contacted the Russian agency responsible for issues concerning patents with a request to check the patentability of an invention made by an American scientist T. Rubin. Here is this document (demonstration).

This document talks about the invention of a special bullet, the distinctive feature of which is that it has a separate cavity for equipping it with different kinds of toxic agents. When using the mentioned invention, the lethal effect is achieved due to the effect of this toxic agent on the human body. In other words, this ammunition falls under the jurisdiction of the CWC. The principle of operation of the bullet consists in equipping it with binary components which interact with each other upon impact. And this is what we read on the page 11 of this official American document, “At least one of the active substances may be selected from nerve agents including… tabun (GA), sarin (GB), soman (GD), cyclosarin (GF), and VG, …VM, VR, VX, and [attention!] Novichok agents.”

In other words, this document confirms that in the United States the “Novichok”-type nerve agents were not just produced but also patented as a chemical weapon. And not some long time ago, but just a couple of years ago – the patent is dated December 1, 2015.

Moreover, searching by the key word “Novichok” on the digital source google.patents.com you can find over 140 patents issued by the United States, related to the use and protection from exposure to the “Novichok” toxic agent.

These are the real facts, not some idle talk, and the response to those who insolently claim that the “Novichok”-type nerve agents existed and were produced in the USSR and Russia.

LIE №8

One of the victims, a Russian citizen Yulia Skripal is, allegedly, avoiding contacts with her relatives and refusing the Russian consular assistance.

Presently, the British authorities are zealously hiding Yulia Skripal from the media and the public. Her whereabouts are unknown. The Russian side, as well as her relatives (her cousin Victoria was refused an entry visa by the British authorities) are being denied access to her. She does not have the opportunity to go back to Russia and undergo medical examination and treatment.

The abovementioned circumstances indicate that, in fact, the Russian citizen Yulia Skripal is being held hostage by the British authorities, held by force on the territory of the United Kingdom, subjected to psychological manipulation.

I have given just a few examples of how the British authorities spread disinformation and blatantly lie. This list of disclosures could, probably, go on, but we should probably stop here. It is typical that the United Kingdom is not even thinking about refuting any of their theses, despite the fact that they are completely unfounded.

I have no doubts that in the future, we can await new waves of disinformation, pseudo-leaks to the media, insolent attacks on us by the British officials. But no real evidence will ever be produced.

The United Kingdom demonstrates clear unwillingness to adequately cooperate regarding the investigation of this obscure story. This convinces us that the United Kingdom does not want any truth. They cannot allow it to come to light.

The report presented by the Technical Secretariat concerning the British specialists’ findings poses a number of questions and calls for additional detailed examination, including by the British side. Any specialist would understand that the final conclusions can be made only having before your eyes the materials of the chemical and spectral analysis of the mentioned samples. And the Technical Secretariat has passed these materials only to London.

We underscore, Russia will not take at face value any conclusions regarding the “Skipal case” until one simple condition is met: the Russian experts will be provided with access to the victims, as well as to the mentioned materials of the OPCW expert analysis and the entire volume of the real information regarding this incident London has at its disposal.

We have solid grounds to believe that all of this is a gross provocation against Russia by the special services of the United Kingdom. And if the British side continues to refuse to cooperate with us, it will only reaffirm our conviction that this is exactly the case.

Mr. Chairperson,

One cannot help but recall the following saying: for some people lying is not a means of justification, but a means of defence. On April 16, we heard yet another strange statement: the G7 calls upon Russia to respond to the legitimate questions of the United Kingdom regarding the “Skripal case”. You can consider this statement our response.

At the same time, we would like to hear from the British side the answers to the numerous and specific questions of the Russian Federation regarding the incident in Salisbury. Moreover, we would be grateful if the representatives of the G7 could explain to us why their countries launched a diplomatic war against Russia based on some fakes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/04/22/alexander-shulgin-to-the-opcw/

 

Read from top...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Department of Defense has seen no verifiable proof to support Russian claims of having in its possession intact Tomahawk missiles captured in Syria, department spokesperson Eric Pahon told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"On the claim the Russians have an ‘intact’ Tomahawk, we have seen no verifiable proof, other than statements made to Russian state-owned media," Pahon said. "If such a claim were true, we certainly would have seen proof by now."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201804251063908759-pentagon-tomahawk-ru...

 

The Russians are unlikely to do a song and dance about what they've got if they've got something... So, there is is no way the US murderers, the DoD, in Syria can see "proofs"... And talking of "proofs" we still have not seen any such thing in the Skripal case nor in the "gassing" in Douma. NOTHING. NADA. NIX.

 

Read from top.

"The Russians have repeatedly lied to us about the Novichok program," says Weber. For many years, diplomats, intelligence officials and politicians in Berlin, Washington and London largely accepted Moscow's inscrutable approach without too much complaint. They hoped that, as McDonald's spread across Russia and democracy took root, problems like Novichok would disappear, says British Rear Admiral John Gower, who is an expert on chemical weapons. 

But the Russians were also apparently disenchanted. Putin's generation, which grew up in the Soviet Union, had believed that after the collapse of the communist empire, the West would have no objections to Russia behaving like a ruthless superpower.

 

Read more of this (quite funny) shit in:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/novichok-has-long-overshad...

 

Yes, the USA never ever behaved like a superpower... America is like a lovely little flower bed from which you can grow lovely little McDonald's to spread like weeds. Still not a single proof that the Skripals were victims of a Russian administered poison of whatever colour. Indigestion? Sure. Maybe.

------------------

 

The UK security services are most likely hiding the Skripals as they do not want them to reveal any details about their case, former Czech spy Karel Koecher told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze.

“[Former Russian double agent Sergei] Skripal most definitely wasn’t a victim of any kind of operation or attack from the Russian side,” said Koecher, who was a Soviet mole who successfully penetrated the CIA. He went on to say that “as far as Russia is concerned, and I honestly believe it, they had absolutely no interest in Skripal at all,” adding that the mere fact that Moscow had previously agreed to swap him for Russian agents was evidence of that.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/424907-uk-intelligence-hide-skripals/

 

Read from top.

 

imagine the headlines: Swiss lab findings contrary to UK labs...

This would set the cat amongst the pigeons, wouldn't it? So from the onset, the Swiss lab could not contradict the UK labs on several grounds:

A) the sample tested was so "pure", there is no way the Swiss lab can be sure it is from the Skripal case. NO WAY.

B) the Swiss lab finding against the UK lab would send a MASSIVE CASCADE of retaliations, media denials and possibily the loss of several billion dollars investments in the Swiss Banking system... including the loss of faith in the Swiss lab.

C) in an interview with the New York Times, published on Thursday, Ahmet Uzumcu, who has led the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) since 2009, said that 50-100 grams of the Soviet-developed nerve agent were used in the March 4 Salisbury incident involving the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

According to expert estimations, 50-100g of a toxic agent such as the one Great Britain has been referring to would be enough to poison not just two people but everyone in the surrounding neighborhood. However, the two people in question managed to survive and recover, the British authorities say,” said Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.

D) be sceptical of the whole charade. All this is designed to vilify the Russians when they are trying to be nice.

 

In an article on 3rd May, the Guardian journalist, Luke Harding, made the following rather amusing observation:

“Since the Skripals were found stricken on a park bench, Downing Street has stuck to one version of events. Theresa May says it is ‘highly likely’ Moscow carried out the attack using a Soviet-made nerve agent. Only the Kremlin had the motive to kill its former officer, she argues.”

The funny part, in case you didn’t spot it, was his claim that Downing Street has stuck to one version of events. He is of course correct, but what he doesn’t tell his readers is that this one version of events has had a plethora of sub-narratives attached to it, none of which have been able to remotely support the main thesis. Sticking to one version of events is reasonable only inasmuch as that version can be supported by facts. On the other hand, if the version of events being stuck to is not supported by the facts, or if the “facts” constantly change, or if the “facts” are contradictory, then sticking to it is a measure not of reasonableness, as Mr Harding implies, but rather of absurdity, folly and irrationality.

G. K. Chesterton once cautioned us against the propensity towards indefinite scepticism:

“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

This is very true. But there is another, equally insidious, ditch which must be avoided. Let’s put it like this:

“Closing your mind too quickly can be worse than nothing. The object of closing the mind, as of closing the mouth, is to make sure that when you do, you have something solid inside.”

So is the narrative that Downing Street closed on so quickly after the incident solid? Does it stand up to scrutiny? Let’s see.

The Claim

The basic claim of the UK Government is as follows:

On 4th March 2018, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent, which had been put on the handle of Mr Skripal’s front door in Christie Miller Road, Salisbury. The substance used was A-234 (a Novichok agent), which is said to be around 5-8 times more lethal than VX (just 10 milligrams of VX on the skin can be lethal). It had been placed there by a person or persons either working on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation, or who had somehow managed to come into possession of the substance from stocks controlled by the Russian Government.

As Mr Harding implies, it’s all very straightforward. So let’s test it.

What would you have expected to happen?

The basic question one must ask is as follows: Given the scenario outlined in the Government claim, what would you have expected to happen? Here are four basic things one would reasonably have expected:

1. Sergei and Yulia Skripal found dead in or near Mr Skripal’s house, followed by a coroner’s verdict stating that they had died from heart failure or suffocation, as a result of fluid secretions filling their lungs.

2. Or – in the slim chance that they survived – a period of months in hospital with irreparable damage to their central nervous systems, and symptoms including cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, nerve damage and epilepsy.

3. A massive manhunt, both in Salisbury and in the rest of the country, especially in respect of the couple who appeared on a CCTV camera in Market Walk, of whom it was originally claimed were the Skripals, but who were clearly not the Skripals.

4. Mr Skripal’s house entirely closed off, with surrounding streets immediately evacuated, and the parts of Salisbury City Centre where the pair were known to have visited also evacuated.

What actually happened?

So much for what we would have expected to see. Now, more than two months after the incident, we can ask the question: What actually happened?

1. After they allegedly came into contact with the very lethal A-234 nerve agent, far from dying on the spot, Sergei and Yulia Skripal spent the next four hours driving into the City Centre, having a drink, and then going for a meal. They then sat on a bench, and at some point thereafter exhibited what appeared to be hallucinations, suggestive of poisoning by an opioid or non-lethal chemical weapon, rather than a nerve agent.

2. Rather than being hospitalised for months and suffering irreparable damage to their central nervous systems, just over four weeks later, Yulia Skripal telephoned her cousin, Viktoria, and assured her several times that “Everything is okay”. Crucially, she stated that “Everyone’s health is fine, there are no irreparable things.”

3. There has been no manhunt, and the couple who appeared on the CCTV camera in Market Walk have not been identified publicly, nor have there been any appeals for information about them.

4. Far from the streets around the house being evacuated, many photographs show police officers without any protective clothing standing just a few feet away from the door handle, which allegedly still had A-234 of “high purity” on it. Neither was the City Centre evacuated, but people who thought they might have come into contact with the substance were advised by Public Health England (PHE) to wash their clothing in a washing machine, and wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes.

 

What Would Holmes Have Made of it?

If you laid all that out in front of Sherlock Holmes – the claims, the expectations, and the reality – and asked him what he made of it, he would no doubt reply along the following lines:

“On the assumption that the substance known as A-234 is several times more toxic than VX, which all credible references to it claim that it is, then given that the Skripals did not die on the spot, and having survived do not appear to have any of the lasting and irreparable side-effects of being poisoned by this substance, it can be stated with reasonable certainty that they were not poisoned by it. Furthermore, given the symptoms that they displayed on the bench, according to eye-witness testimony, in all probability, Mr Skripal and Yulia were poisoned by a substance which can cause hallucinations, such as the opioid, Fentanyl, or an incapacitating, but non-lethal, chemical such as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ). This theory is given credence by the fact that Salisbury District Hospital originally believed the incident to be a case of Fentanyl poisoning.”

What Would Holmes do Next?

Having used the known facts to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the Skripals were not poisoned by A-234, what would Holmes do next?

The obvious thing would be to interview both Sergei and Yulia Skripal, since both are apparently alive and well. He would want to gather details about their movements on the morning of 4th March 2018, and whether they saw anyone acting suspiciously either near the house, or at the bench. He would want to know why Mr Skripal apparently became highly agitated in Zizzis. And he would of course want to find out from Mr Skripal about who he had dealings with in the weeks prior to the incident.

So what, you might ask, would he make of it if he found out that nobody, including him, was allowed to see Mr Skripal or Yulia? What, you might ask, would he make of the fact that nothing has been heard of Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey since his release from hospital more than six weeks ago? What, you might ask, would he make of the fact that there has been not one single police or press report looking into any of these things?

Holmes being Holmes, he would of course want to retain an open mind for as long as possible. But in the absence of any credible explanation for these oddities, or for the huge disparity between the UK Government claims and what actually happened, no doubt his great mind would soon start closing in on the suspicion that not only were the Skripals not poisoned by A-234, but it would appear that a cover up of what really happened has taken place.

 

Read more:

http://www.theblogmire.com/what-would-sherlock-holmes-have-made-of-the-g...

 

 

Please note:

 

"Excellent! I cried. "Elementary," said he.

Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson" in any of the stories by Conan Doyle. However, that phrase has been used frequently in the movies and was even mistakenly cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for 1937 and 1948. The actual quotation is as follows:

     "I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are at present busy enough to justify the hansom."

     "Excellent!" I cried.

     "Elementary," said he. "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbour, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader. 

 

Read more:

http://www.bestofsherlock.com/top-10-sherlock-quotes.htm

In the aftermath of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March, scientists are currently re-evaluating their understanding of A-234 – or Novichok as it is more commonly known. Prior to the poisoning, it had been thought that the substance was around 5-8 times more toxic than VX nerve agent, and therefore that just a tiny drop would be likely to kill a person within minutes or possibly even seconds of them coming into contact with it. In the unlikely event of a person surviving, it was believed that their central nervous system would be completely destroyed, and that they would suffer numerous chronic health issues, including cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, and epilepsy before dying a premature and miserable death, probably within a year or so.

However, according to an anonymous source at the Porton Down laboratory, which is located just a few miles down the road from Salisbury, scientists now believe they may have completely misunderstood the properties and effects of the chemical:

“All the available information we had about Novichok before March this year suggested that it was by far the most lethal nerve agent ever produced, and we had assumed that even the tiniest drop would kill a person within minutes. However, after studying the movements of the Skripals after being poisoned, we have now revised our understanding, and we now believe that one of its primary effects is to generate in its victims a strong desire to go out for a beer followed by a pizza.”

Yet it’s not only the effects of the substance that have led to this reappraisal, but also its mysterious ability to move about from location to location, seemingly at will. According to the source:

“At first, differing reports of the location of the poisoning baffled us. First it was the restaurant, then it was the pub, followed by the bench, the car, the cemetery, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge, and then finally the door handle three weeks after the incident. However, we now believe we have an explanation for this phenomena. When Novichok was developed, we think it may have been given the ability to appear in one place, only to then disappear and turn up in an entirely different place. This is what we saw in the Skripal case, where the media would assure the public that investigators had found the source of the poisoning, only to report a day or two later that it wasn’t in fact there at all, but somewhere else entirely. It’s all remarkably clever, and it seems to have been specifically designed to generate the impression to the uninitiated that investigators are simply making it up as they go along.“

Another quality of the substance, which at first puzzled the scientists, is its apparent ability to multiply:

“We now know that the substance was poured on a door handle,” said the source. “Yet according to all our experiments where we’ve replicated this scenario, no matter how carefully we’ve poured liquid on a door handle, what we’ve found is that it has an uncanny tendency to run off, leaving a fairly insignificant amount. Yet we know that from this tiny amount, the substance has been turning up in multiple hotspots around Salisbury. The most probable explanation for this, we think, is that the along with it being developed to appear, disappear and reappear in various places, it was also developed with the alarming ability to replicate itself.”

Asked why this hasn’t led to the deaths of hundreds or thousands of residents in the City, the source pointed back to their revised conclusion of the effects of Novichok as being more likely to lead to a craving for beer and pizza than to death.

They also mentioned another surprising revision that they have had to make, which is the seemingly mundane way in which objects that have come into contact with Novichok can be decontaminated:

“Given our prior understanding about the toxicity of Novichok, we had of course assumed that cleaning it up could only be done by specialists wearing protective clothing,” said the source. “And so when Public Health England advised people who thought they might have come into contact with it to wash their clothes and wipe their phones with baby wipes, I must admit we were a bit surprised. None of the research papers out there mentions baby wipes as being an effective method of treating exposure to Novichok, and we did wonder whether they were perhaps talking about another chemical altogether. But of course they can’t have been, can they? Still,” he added with a wry smile, “I guess it all goes to prove the old saying: you learn something new every day.”

Yet, although the new discoveries of the properties of Novichok mentioned above have taken the scientific community by surprise, the one that is causing the most excitement is the revelation that it can apparently render its victims invisible:

“To be frank, this has created a huge buzz,” said the source. “I mean, the Skripals apparently came into contact with Novichok over two months ago, as did Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. And yet since then nothing has been seen of any of them. It’s almost as if they’ve vanished into thin air, a bit like Bilbo Baggins at his 111th birthday party when he slips the Ring of Power on.”

 

Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/25/dont-panic-lighten-up-smiley-skripal-case-forces-scientists-to-revise-everything-they-thought-they-knew-about-novichok/

My conclusion is that Yulia’s statement was a negotiated document based on an original British carers’ first draft, substantially amended in negotiation with her.

As someone who has spent some of my diplomatic career negotiating texts, I know that it is a give-and-take process: you give a bit here, I give a bit there, and we each hold onto what we think are our respective sticking points . The result always contains some tensions and contradictions, accepted by both sides in the interest of reaching agreement on the package.

Reading the final statement in English, I feel confident that Yulia’s sticking points were:

1. Not to say or imply that any Russian agency poisoned her – the resulting silence on this was a big win for her. Undoubtedly the carers had wanted an anti-Russian accusation. It is not there. Because she refused to point the finger of blame at her country.
2. To express the hope of returning to Russia. She would have wanted to say ‘as soon as possible’. Her carers would have wanted to leave this thought out altogether, or if they had to include words on this, to stretch it out into the far future. The result is a compromise – actually, it is more of a win for Yulia, because just the presence of these words, by recording her wish to go home , would make it harder if her carers were ever tempted to have her killed and claim she had gone into hiding under a new identity. This would not wash now.
3. As far as possible, to protect her father and avoid a forced separation from him.

I believe her carers’ sticking points would have been:

1. That she should thank them and express fulsome gratitude to them. Important as preemptive insurance against any future possible claims by Yulia, after her hoped-for return to Russia, that her carers had held her in forced captivity beyond a time when her medical recovery would have allowed her to travel safely to Russia. This point goes to repeated Russian Govt complaints to Britain from the beginning of the affair, about British violation of signed consular treaties binding both countries. Luke Harding of the Guardian revealingly reports this British government concern.
2. That she should emphasise how sick she had been, in how much pain and discomfort etc. This strikes me as British-origin language, Russians are stoical people and would not choose to dwell on their suffering using language like ‘the clinical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing’. The carers wanted to emphasise her suffering. Had she condemned Russia, her condemnation would have been all the stronger.
3. That she should say she wants to remain in protective isolation and in particular that she does not wish to have contact with Russian Embassy. This was clearly a carer interest, they wish to maintain full control and isolation of Yulia.

So the result is a compromise, I would say highly probably freely entered into by Yulia, knowing how little power she had to substantially change the text her carers wanted . No wonder there was a spring in her step. She knew that in at least two important respects, she had outwitted her carers. Russians are smart and brave people. Yulia was smart and brave.

Does any of this matter? Only in the sense of clearing away the smoke and the dummy targets, and focussing on what matters most in this awful and sad affair:

(a) getting the Skripals home safely to their country, by forcing the UK government to adhere to its international obligations under consular law

And as a second order objective, possibly not achievable for many years to come,

(b) getting a full British govt apology to Russia and to the Skripals for the attack on them, and subsequent crimes of deceit and mental cruelty and forced detention and calumny.

In conclusion, to me this is not an Agatha Christie parlour game. I have been literally sickened by the corruption of diplomatic relations and simple decency instigated by British government agencies against Russia. Russophobia today in the West is worse than when I wrote about it in my Feb 2017 book ‘Return to Moscow’. The Skripal Affair has in my view been a major British government-instigated provocation against Russia, with significant negative flow-on effects for East-West relations generally, and for peace in hotspots like Syria and Ukraine . I want to see the unsavoury Skripal Affair decently ended and buried in the history books.

Former Australian career diplomat and independent writer Tony Kevin is the author of the 2017 literary travel memoir ‘Return to Moscow’

Read more: https://off-guardian.org/47218-2/

 

Read from top and see also: the sordid disinformation at the BBC...

 

On Wednesday, the German government informed a parliamentary oversight committee during a closed hearing that it still has not received any evidence suggesting that Russia might well be behind the incident that took place in early March, German TV station RBB reports.

“It is [still] only known that the poison used in the attack was a nerve agent called Novichok, which was once produced in the Soviet Union,” Michael Goetschenberg, a correspondent of German ARD and an expert on security services, told RBB, commenting on the results of the hearing, which he is familiar with. Apart from this information, which was released by the British authorities soon after the incident, no new data on Russia’s alleged implication in this case was provided to Germany so far, he added.

German intelligence has also found no Russian trace in this case so far, Goetschenberg said. “The BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence… has also contacted its own sources and tried to verify the information [about Russia’s potential involvement] in some way,” he told RBB, adding that it eventually failed to find any evidence pointing to Moscow as well.

Following the poisoning, which London blamed on Moscow using the now infamous wording “highly likely,” the UK and its allies expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, with Moscow giving a mirror response. Russia has categorically denied any involvement, and has complained that the victims were not allowed visits by Russian lawyers and diplomats, and the results of the investigation were kept secret. The Russian envoy to the UK has on several occasions alleged that London was even trying to “destroy” evidence in the probe.

READ MORE: Skripal poisoning case cost taxpayer £7.5 million so far and could rise, PCC says

Just days ago, Scotland Yard said it was still following multiple leads in the investigation, adding that it still “cannot discuss the results at this stage.” The probe has already cost £7.5 million ($10 million) to British taxpayers, according to the region’s police and crime commissioner.

Meanwhile, both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been released from the hospital following the incident on March 4.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/429057-germany-uk-no-evidence-skrpial/

The Swedish government has announced that it will no longer be boycotting the 2018 FIFA World Cup after its national team advanced to the knockout stage on Wednesday when it beat Mexico 3-0.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström made the big announcement at a press conference on Thursday, according to Local Sweden.

"We're in another situation now," the official told reporters from tabloid Expressen. "Football should be something that unites."

"Denmark will also send people, and the UK won't object to us traveling there. Exactly what they will do, understandably, depends on what happens in the football. I don't think they've decided. We will continue to cheer for our team."

The Swedish government made the decision to launch its boycott of the games, which are being held in Russia, in solidarity with the UK over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March 2018. Though the UK and its allies have repeatedly accused Moscow of orchestrating the Salisbury attack, Russia has rejected the accusations. Evidence of Russia's involvement has yet to be revealed.

Although which Swedish politicians will be attending the games has not yet been determined, neither Wallström nor Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will be in attendance, The Local Sweden reported.

During the conference, Wallström stressed that even though the boycott would be no more, the "political views remain the same."

"I think it was an important line to draw, but now we're in a different situation in a footballing sense. It's not at all double standards," she said.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/sport/201806291065905302-sweden-drops-world-cup-...

 

Using the fake-Skripal-poisoning as a political "footballing" is the summit of double standards, if one sees one. The Swedes have been the master of the Double-Dutch language for a long time now. Ask Assange. History is full of this Swedish brown muck that stains their winter snows...

Read from top.

By George Galloway  — a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.

'Novichok' survivor Charlie Rowley is in a "safe house" but has been denied access to television and newspapers, according to his brother. The ever-stranger case of the Salisbury-Amesbury poisonings gets curiouser and curiouser.

Whoever said 'Novichok' was a "military-grade lethal nerve agent" doesn't know their tables.

For a program which Boris Johnson told us had been 10 years in the making, had cost (presumably) millions of dollars to develop (and "train" agents to put poison on a doorknob), a 20-percent success rate must have been a bitter disappointment.

 

Four out of five of those affected by 'Novichok' – Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Detective Sergeant Bailey, and Charlie Rowley – have survived the contact, with only poor Dawn Sturgess, a homeless alcoholic, succumbing to its "deadly" effects.

 

A polythene bag would have been a rather more effective method of assassination.

Moreover, so little of their "training" had the assassins absorbed that they apparently "discarded" this valuable deadly nerve agent in a perfume bottle in a park, coincidentally close to the bench on which the Skripals had been found slumped four months previous. The bottle miraculously evaded the dragnet of "hundreds of anti-terror police" working on the case. Thus discarded, the perfume bottle carelessly provided evidence which could well lead to the indictment of the criminals involved. Doubtless such carelessness was not in the Russian "training manual" that Mr Johnson said was in the possession of British intelligence.

 

No information has emerged as to when or where Mr Rowley and/or the late Ms Sturgess happened upon this perfume bottle, or why in the middle of the swirl of the Salisbury events they picked it up, took it home, but either waited until the fateful day to spray it or alternatively the bottle had lain unattended for weeks – even months – despite the fine-tooth-comb search of the park by the authorities.

 

Some things are now clearer though. The settled narrative has been for months that the initial 'Novichok' attack on the Skripals had been via a "gel" on their front doorknob (in accordance with the manual and the 10-year training program). Not many believe this any longer, although unfortunately the taxpayer is committed to a way-above-market-price compulsory purchase of the house.

 

Apart from anything else, it is difficult to envisage a gel being dispensed via a spray from a perfume bottle.

 

More importantly, if this narrative were to be accepted, it doesn't explain how long (several hours) the substance took to work, nor the fact that it became effective on both Skripals at precisely the same moment – despite the huge divergence in their size, weight, age, and state of health.

 

It has always seemed much more plausible to me that the Skripals were attacked either in the restaurant where they had a leisurely full lunch, and where Mr Skripal was initially reported as behaving oddly towards the end of the restaurant experience, or on the short walk from the restaurant to the park bench, or on the bench itself. This would be far more consistent with their simultaneous collapse and, of course, would explain the perfume bottle discarded nearby.

 

The perfume bottle being thrown away at all casts significant doubt that this attack was by a state (any state) actor at all, unless that state actor wanted the substance to be found and wanted false inferences of its provenance to be drawn. It makes it much more likely to me at least that the assailants sprayed something at the Skripals for criminal rather than political purposes and for reasons we can only, for now, speculate upon.

 

Mr Rowley of course was a criminal – he had been imprisoned for possession of 11 wraps of heroin in Salisbury only a couple of years before – and is still a daily drug-user. In those circumstances, in any normal police investigation, Mr Rowley would himself be a suspect rather than only a victim in this crime. So far as we know this is not the case, though no-one can ask him in his safe house, even through his non-existent television or undelivered newspapers.

It will be evident that I think little of the official state narrative in the Salisbury-Amesbury affair, but you'd be surprised at the kind of people who agree with me.

 

American filmmaker and radio host Lee Stranahan, who works out of Washington DC, was a house guest of mine last week. During his brief visit to England, he took his camera to Salisbury. Without wishing to spoil the documentary he's working on, I know he won't mind me saying that of the dozens of people he spoke to at the heart of the crime scene, not a single one of them believed the state version of events.

 

I myself spoke to a senior British Army officer at a black-tie event in London last week. There were hundreds of them there, so I'm not giving his identity away. He asked me, who did I really think was responsible for the 'Novichok' affair?

"Russian criminals," I answered.

"Not the Russian state then?" he pressed.

"They are the least likely suspects," I said.

At which point this heavily decorated soldier leant over and whispered in my ear, "It was Ukraine."

He offered no evidence, I should say, and – but for his rank and position – I wouldn't even bother relaying it. But that is what he said.

Finally, I wish to place on record another of my dissident views on this matter. I do not believe that the substance used to attack the Skripals, and which we are told killed Ms Sturgess, was 'Novichok' at all – or any other kind of "military-grade deadly nerve agent." I am on the trail of this matter and you will be the first to know when I've found it.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/434120-uk-skripal-case-novichok/

 

Read from top.

 

I believe that since this was writen "'Novichok' survivor Charlie Rowley" has been able to do a press conference... 

 

LONDON (Sputnik) - A hurried cremation of UK national Dawn Sturgess, poisoned in Amesbury earlier this month, confirms the UK authorities are continuing to destroy evidence related to the Skripal affair, a source at the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom told Sputnik.

"The hurried cremation of Sturgess excludes any possibility of further investigation if, for example, new facts in the case would require the second examination or re-examination of primary data on the causes of death of the UK national. This is a serious cause for concern because the UK authorities continue to destroy any important physical evidence which they themselves somehow link with the poisoning of the Skripal family in Salisbury," the source said.

Sturgess was cremated on Monday after passing away in a hospital on July 8 as a result of being exposed to an unknown substance.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201808011066842218-russia-uk-embassy-ames...

 

Read from top...

 

from Neil Clark

 

'Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time' 'The dog did nothing in the night-time'. 'That was the curious incident', remarked Sherlock Holmes.

That famous exchange between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson in the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story 'Silver Blaze', springs readily to mind when one considers the strange silence of Sergei Skripal.

This week, the Times newspaper reported that the British authorities had rejected a claim by Sergei Skripal's niece that the former Russian double agent, who was poisoned with nerve agent in Salisbury on 4th March, could already be dead.

But if Skripal is not dead, then why haven't we heard from him, or seen any recent photograph of him? There have in fact, been no pictures of him, since 4th March, the day he was poisoned. He's become the 2018 equivalent of H.G. Wells' Invisible Man.

 

Let's think this through logically, without fear or favour. Skripal, we were told, was discharged was from Salisbury District hospital on Friday 18th May, over two months on from him being found unconscious-with his daughter Yulia- on a park bench near to the centre of the Wiltshire town. Five days later, on Wednesday 23rd May, Yulia appeared on video, making a short statement that was filmed in a secret location somewhere in England. She said: 'I take one day at a time and want to help care for my Dad till his full recovery. In the longer term I hope to return to my country'. She also said 'I want to re-iterate what I said in my earlier statement that no one speaks for me, or my father, but ourselves'.

READ MORE: Yulia Skripal Speaks — But There Are Still More Questions Than Answers

The next we hear from Yulia is in a telephone call to her cousin Vicktoria, which took place on or around 4th July. In it, she blames her cousin for making 'this public' and says 'I am just asking that no one interferes in this situation, that's all'. Yulia says that 'no-one' is stopping her returning home to live her life. 'I can do that any day. It's just that I am currently looking after my father and recovering myself'.

The investigative blogger The Blogmire, who has done some really excellent work on the case, surmises that Yulia Skripal did not know that Russia had been blamed when she spoke to her cousin. She had not been told this by the UK authorities. 'Had she been told, she could hardly have blamed her cousin for creating the publicity that is apparently preventing her return', The Blogmire writes.

It's clear also that Yulia doesn't blame Russia for trying to kill her, or else she would not have said that she could return home 'any day'. Why would she want to go a place where the government/state security services had tried to kill her and her father, even if it was her home country? Even more interestingly, Viktoria says another call with Yulia took place on 24th July, in which Yulia said 'I finally got the internet, and I read everything. I understood everything. Forgive me'. In that phone call, to her grandmother on her birthday, Yulia says that she is in London with her father. She says: "He can't speak because he's got a tracheotomy, that pipe, which will be taken off in three days.

"Now when he speaks with that pipe, his voice is first of all very weak and secondly he makes quite a lot of wheeze."

That would explain why we hadn't heard from Sergei up to then, but one more month has now passed. Viktoria said that Yulia told her her father would call on his own after the pipe had been removed, but there's been no word from him. Why no updates on his condition?

Another important question we need to ask is: why did the British authorities keep Yulia and presumably Sergei Skripal too, in the dark about them blaming Russia, at least until early July? Could it be because they knew Russia was not responsible and that they knew that Yulia and Sergei knew that too, because they had a very good idea of who had attacked them?

READ MORE: US Urges Russia to Allow Chemical Weapons Inspections Amid Skripal Sanctions

Let's suppose that someone else was behind the 'attack', to use Yulia's own term. The exposure of that would be hugely embarassing for the British government, and indeed for most of the political and media establishment, who decided Russia was guilty even before any kind of criminal investigation could begin. Not only did Britain expel 23 Russian diplomats, it urged other countries to do the same. There were even calls for the football World Cup to be taken away from Russia and for Russian media operating lawfully in the UK to be shut down. Don't forget too that only last week new US sanctions on Russia, imposed because of the Skripal case, came into force. The Russian claim for compensation, if the accusations are revealed as false, could run into billions of dollars.

Which begs the question: if it wasn't Russia, but some other actor- state, or non-state, would we ever be allowed to know? Surely if Yulia or Sergei agreed with the UK government line that Russia was responsible, the authorities would have done everything to get them in front of a camera, reading a statement to that effect. Think how that would aid the anti-Russian cause, which the British neo-conservative government is so keen to pursue. The fact that neither Skripal has come out with any such statement, is arguably as significant as Sherlock Holmes's dog that didn't bark in the night time.

As to the claims circulating that Sergei is already dead, a simple short video, or, if that's not possible, a dated photograph, could easily disprove that and end the speculation. The public needs to know what's going on. We need to hear from Yulia and Sergei Skripal and their account of what happened on 4th March. We need to see the evidence, as this is a matter of great national and international significance.

Is that really too much to ask for, Mrs May?

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201808271067499313-sergei-skripal-sil...

Britain will seek to intensify diplomatic pressure on Vladimir Putin after naming two Russian military intelligence officers it said were ordered to carry out the novichok poisoning attack in Salisbury.

In a special statement to a packed House of Commons, the prime minister, Theresa May, revealed the two suspects who flew into Britain to murder Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March with the military grade nerve agent were officers in the GRU, Russian military intelligence.

“The GRU is a highly disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command. So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state,” she said, apparently pointing the finger at Putin.

...

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "The names published by the media, like the photographs, don’t mean anything to us.” Zakharova said she “again urged Britain to refrain from public accusations” and work with Russian law enforcement authorities to investigate the attack in Salisbury.

Britain knows it has little chance of ever bringing the two suspects to justice. Russia’s constitution bans extradition of its nationals to foreign states and Britain has not formally requested it do so because it would be pointless.

Britain says it will turn private intelligence gathered by its intelligence agencies into a campaign to highlight hostile Russian activities, which May said included the illegal annexation of Crimea, cyber-espionage, election interference and the downing of the MH17 passenger plane.

 

Read more:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/comment/reply/34820/42255

 

As soon as May mentions "the illegal annexation of Crimea", you know that the rest of what she's talking about is utter bullshit. BULLSHIT!

Russia did not "illegally annex Crimea".

The USA and the UK have been doing FAR FAR FAR MORE cyber-espionage than the Russians or the Chinese for that matter.

There is NOT A SINGLE PROOF that the Russian State interfered with the US Presidential elections (nor is there any proof a single Russian manipulated the result). There is 100 per cent proofs that Rupert Murdoch support for Trump swayed the result.

There is not a single proof that the Russians had anything to do with MH17.

There are countless proofs that the USA interfered in Ukraine before 2014 and beyond.

 

NOTE: by the way, if the GRU was so good at black-ops, why were these fellows so "carelessly" recognisable on the pictures, when we can't even identify our local graffiti "artists" with the best camera possible ... and how come a street video camera in London is so sharp, when ours are sooooo fuzzy?... And why are they "together"? Spy 101, murder 101, for "intel" agencies is TO BE DISCREET beyond being seen... and the name Petrov? Did not this name send alarm bells in MI6?

 

 

Further questions have been raised regarding the released “evidence” of CCTV captures. Namely that 2 separate stills, of two separate men, from the same CCTV camera display the exact same time, down to the second:

NOTE: this picture is labelled by the police: 

CCTV2 = image of ‘Boshirov’ at Gatwick airport at 15:00hrs on 02 March 2018

petrov

NOTE: this picture is labelled by the police: 

CCTV1 = image of ‘Petrov’ at Gatwick airport at 15:00hrs on 02 March 2018. NOTE: this picture DOES NOT HAVE the (second) date ID as per the picture above.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/05/skripal-case-suspects-named-question...

 

One question that should be raised as well, unless the UK "intelligence" services are dumb — which is possible — these guys and these recordings would have been known at least by 24 hours after the alleged poisoning.

Why "release" this now, NEARLY FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE "FACTS' if not to keep this fake story bubbling along and remind the stupid MMMMM media that they have a job to do — blame Russia for anything and everything at every street corner. 

Another question: have these pictures been photoshopped as it looks the camera has moved angle? It could be that the camera was operated by a security agent. OR where there two cameras and two recorders using "different" timecodes. What is the chance of the two timecodes being the same in this recording of the two guys (1/10000 or more?)

And finally, (I am making this bullshit up) I recognise these two fellows. They were working as extras pedestrians on the set of "The Split" and got a new job as recently as last week to look like GRU nasty Russians. The main photos, obviously shot for "their" fake passports are a bit too neat and I can say without hesitation that the beard is fake-ish and the pictures have been photoshopped.

And by the way the pictures above are DEFINITELY not of the same guys as those below:

 

Read from top.

The time that “Borishov 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.

 

Read more:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/skripals-the-mystery-dee...

 

Read above comment, especially Gus':

And finally, (I am making this bullshit up) I recognise these two fellows. They were working as extras pedestrians on the set of "The Split" and got a new job as recently as last week to look like GRU nasty Russians. The main photos, obviously shot for "their" fake passports are a bit too neat and I can say without hesitation that the beard is fake-ish and the pictures have been photoshopped.

And, should you need more substance about making fake documentation, see:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34102

Some, mainly those who are struggling to accept the constantly changing official version of events, rushed to conclude that the footage must have been doctored.

However, if you look very closely, you can see that they are actually different corridors. The actual give away that the two men are in different spaces is in the bottom right hand corner, where there are different markings on the wall.

The corridors in question lead out into the arrivals area of Gatwick Airport, and are lined up side by side, so obviously have the same construction. 

Part of the confusion is that both men seem to have reached the exact same spot at the same time. But well-drilled soldiers from Russia’s military intelligence service should be marching in lockstep, after all.

READ MORE: Salisbury plot thickens, questions without answers multiply

The two men showed very little else to suggest they are highly trained operatives, what with booking direct flights from Moscow, seemingly smiling at every CCTV camera in the south of England, and dropping the evidence where anyone could stumble across it. At least they can march in time.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/uk/437802-gatwick-cctv-petrov-boshirov/

 

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Apparently the two gangways are similar. One of the pictures (published by the police — see previous pictures) shows a red line on one of the panels and the other picture has a small red patch, both on the right hand side. The encoding is also placed differently on the left: in one of the pictures the encoding goes through the "2" while on the other it goes between the "0" and the "1". The chances of both person being through the two different gangways at the same time, precisely in the same position to the second, is about 1/1000, unless they are being stopped by a closed door which is not the case as both appear to be walking through.

 

And the "real names" of the two "culprits" could be: Alfonso Pierro and Champu Barbero...

 

According to the NYT, Skripal’s alleged visits to Spain were confirmed by a current senior official, who refused to provide any additional details, but some former officials claimed that the ex-GRU colonel “would have been especially useful in crackdowns on Russian organized crime.”

 

The New York Times also suggested that Skripal had traveled to the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, in 2012 and to the Estonian capital, Tallinn, in 2016 to brief local intelligence officers. The trips were purportedly arranged and endorsed by MI6, who had recruited Skripal as a spy in the mid-1990s.

According to the media outlet, during his “lectures” to foreign spies, Skripal might have revealed information that later led to the exposure and ouster of undercover operatives.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201809071067825903-skripal-worked-with-spa...

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov told RT’s editor-in-chief they had nothing to do with the Skripals’ poisoning and are now scared to go outside, after the UK pointed to them as Russian intelligence agents on a kill mission.

Read the FULL TRANSCRIPT of RT editor-in-chief’s exclusive interview with Skripal case suspects Petrov & Boshirov

UK prosecutors claimed their names were not real, but Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov have confirmed their identities in an interview with RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.

Both men said emphatically that they were not Russian intelligence agents and were merely sightseeing in Salisbury. They said they wanted to visit the “wonderful town” of Salisbury but realized they came at a bad time – and not just because of the wet English weather.

The subsequent accusations caught them completely by surprise.

The two men told Simonyan they went to London to “hang out,” and decided to also visit Salisbury upon the advice of their friends. The town, situated close to the world-famous Stonehenge, also attracted them because of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “famous not just in Europe, but in the whole world.”

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/438350-petrov-boshirov-interview-simonyan/

 

Fun...

Police in the English town of Salisbury, where former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in March, have shut down a restaurant and surrounding streets after two people fell ill.

But hours later police confirmed there was nothing to suggest the nerve agent Novichok was responsible for the illness of the two people.

"Police were called by the ambulance service to Prezzo, High Street, Salisbury at 6:45pm today following a medical incident involving two people — a man and a woman," Wiltshire Police said in an earlier statement.

"As a precautionary measure, the restaurant and surrounding roads have been cordoned off while officers attend the scene and establish the circumstances surrounding what led them to become ill."

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-17/two-people-ill-in-salisbury-where-former-spy-was-poisoned

 

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No evidence is ever presented to substantiate the claims, but it has become almost a doctrinal "truth" that Russia is interfering in US elections, subverting Western democracy, endeavoring to sow division within NATO states and between allies, threatening to invade Europe, and so on.

 

The efficacy of propaganda is that large numbers of people begin to accept outlandish assertions as if they are fact. The corollary of this mindset is paranoia and suspicion towards Russia and Russians. The World Cup was an important counter to the mindset. Nevertheless, that was against a tsunami of Western propaganda demonizing Russia.

This anti-Russia mindset indoctrinated by the US and British, but also by pro-Atlanticist European politicians and media, is crass. It is a mindset leading to war.

READ MORE: Salisbury UK Plot Puts Innocent Men Into 'Witch Trial Environment' — Pundit

When Western authorities start criminalizing innocent Russian civilians simply on the basis of their nationality — "open season on all Russians" — then we know that the Western public is being conditioned to accept the unacceptable nefarious logical conclusion of such thinking — war.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201809151068058304-open-season-on-rus...

Here is a news item from March 18 1960... The Salisbury Journal (from Gus original bank of useless stuff and records):

 

 

The Masthead of the day:

 

 

Now you know... Read from top.

 

 

 

by Kenan Malik

 

I first met Roger Scruton almost 20 years ago at a symposium in Sweden. I admired the eloquence with which he could talk about Kant and the elegance of his writing on beauty. I learned from his conservatism, even as I disagreed with what he said. But although I got to know him quite well over the years, our relationship was always fraught. For there was another Roger Scruton, not the philosopher but the polemicist. For all his warmth and generosity, and for all the poise of his writing, his views were often ugly. “Whatever its defects,” Scruton wrote in his memoir Gentle Regrets, “my life has enabled me to find comfort in uncomfortable truths.” His death last week seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the “uncomfortable truths” of Scruton’s conservatism, and on the relationship between the philosopher and the polemicist.

 

It was Scruton the polemicist who became the founding editor of the Salisbury Review, established in 1982 to defend a traditional conservatism that many felt was being eroded by the Thatcherite revolution.

Today, the Review is remembered largely for the Ray Honeyford affair, in which the Bradford headmaster was forced to resign after a furore over a1984 article critical of multiculturalism. Honeyford’s polemic was, however, bland by the standards of the Review in the 80s.

The first issue published a talk by John Casey on the politics of race. The presence of “West Indian communities”, he claimed, “offends… a sense of what English life should be like” and “a sense of what is civilised behaviour”. Only the “repatriation of a proportion of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population” could forestall “the possible destruction of civilised life in the centres of the big cities”.

If race was one obsession, sex was another, especially gay sex. “A concern with social order,” Scruton wrote in an editorial, “prompts us to view… homosexuality as intrinsically threatening.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/18/the-uncomfortable-...

 

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Read also:

lesson of the roman genetic map... in democracy is getting weirder...

 

of the bitter-sweetness of life...

 

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Russian President Vladimir Putin that London's position on the incident in Salisbury had not changed, the office of the prime minister said Sunday.

"The Prime Minister met President Putin in the margins of the Berlin Conference on Libya. He was clear there had been no change in the UK’s position on Salisbury, which was a reckless use of chemical weapons and a brazen attempt to murder innocent people on UK soil. He said that such an attack must not be repeated", the 10 Downing Street statement read.

Johnson remarked that both the UK and Russia "had a responsibility to address issues of international security including Libya, Syria, Iraq and Iran".

On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping centre in the UK's Salisbury. London has claimed they were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent called A234 and accused Moscow of staging the attack, which provoked a huge international scandal. London has also said that it suspects Russian nationals Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who the government claims work for Russian intelligence, of carrying out the attack.

Moscow has categorically dismissed the accusations, pointing to the absence of any evidence and London’s rejection of its requests to cooperate in investigation and grant access to the poisoned Russian citizens. Petrov and Boshirov denied their involvement in the attack in an interview with the RT broadcaster, saying that they had visited Salisbury for tourism purposes and actually worked in the fitness industry.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/uk/202001191078079576-johnson-tells-putin-uk-sta...

 

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By Gordon Duff — a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War who has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

 

There is only so much stupid one can take and still survive. What I am talking about, of course, is the “controversy” over allegation that Syria has used poison gas against “its own people.”

Let me begin with a “slam dunk” and then we can move on to simple screaming.

OK, here’s the situation on the ground. Syrian troops, trained and supplied with the best weapons in the world, backed by Russian aerospace forces, have just surrounded a garrison of either ISIS or al Qaeda (both banned in Russia).

Placed alongside the terror groups who have been sucking the blood out of the local civilian population like so many vampires are the “usual suspects:”

• White Helmets paid by Western intelligence agencies, many of whom are also active serving members of recognized terrorist groups

• Fake journalists, usually trained in Israel who are in direct daily contact with Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, two allegedly fake news organizations funded by NATO.

• Reuters teams, brought in for an unnamed event, including not just film teams but smoke machines, prosthetic makeup kits, everything needed to fake videos depicting a poison gas attack

Making it worse, videos of these false flag fakers, call them “crisis actors” or what you will, hit Twitter and Facebook well before the “incident” that any rational person knew was coming.

Then, of course, Russian, Iranian and Syrian media began warning that a false flag gas attack was coming, featuring videos of the players, witness statements and predictions that, time and time again, came true.

So, let’s play this out. You are days from a final assault, units have been brought in from across Syria, Russia’s pinpoint bombing campaign has softened up terrorist hideouts and destroyed their weapons caches.

Then it happens, just as the pincer of Syrian armor begins to cut off the line of retreat, lo and behold, it happens. Headlines flash, “Assad is killing his own people, we have to step in, time to bomb the power plants and water supply for Damascus.”

Is anyone thinking about Gaddafi? This is from the UK Spectator dated February 2014:

What a vile piece of work Colonel Gaddafi was.

For some of you, perhaps, this will be a statement of the glaringly obvious. But I suspect there will be many others for whom, like me, this week’s Storyville documentary on the barbarity of his regime — Mad Dog: Gaddafi’s Secret World (BBC4, Monday) — was something of a revelation.

Sure, we’d all heard about the funny stuff: the time John Simpson went to see him and he farted noisily (Gaddafi, not Simpson) through the interview; the ridiculous outfits; the bullet-proof Bedouin-style tent that he insisted on bringing on his last world tour, complete with live camels to graze decoratively outside.

But the nastier stuff came as news to me: killing his foreign secretary, then keeping him in a deep-freeze in his palace so that he could regularly have a gloat over the body; visiting classrooms of 15- and 16-year-old girls, patting the ones he fancied on their heads, then having them dragged off by his security, gynaecologically inspected and shown pornographic videos (to educate them in his expectations) before raping them and then having them put away in asylums; deliberately shooting down one of his own domestic airliners, partly for the sheer hell of it, partly as a ruse to show the West that its sanctions were hurting Libya so badly that it couldn’t afford to maintain its own aircraft…

Anyone reminded of Trump’s term “Animal Assad?” If one were to ask one of Assad’s close friends, former US Secretary of State John Kerry

or anyone else who knows Assad, they quite universally would be more than clear. Assad is a medical doctor with a long personal history of reason and kindness and is well respected not just in Syria but by leaders around the world.

I have seen Assad arrive at the Dama Rose Hotel in Damascus, driving himself, in a Peugeot, not a Honda, and stride across the lobby.

Then again, there are his public statements, always reasonable, always truthful, or perhaps truthful only to those who aren’t addicted to childish propaganda or are too ignorant to know the difference.

This is also the great strength of the Russian leaders, Putin and Lavrov, always on task, always organized, always reasonable and invariably in line with their pronouncements, correctly quoting either international law or treaty issues.

None of this proves that Assad or Putin are kind or harmless, but it does prove one thing, that unlike so many American politicians, they aren’t obviously insane.

When I write about Syrian gas attacks, I have some familiarity with their leadership. I have met with Syria’s Chief of Security, General Ali Mamlouk, and discussed issues of policy and strategy. He is certainly not an idiot, not hardly.

Why would he order a last-minute gas attack on terrorist forces moments away from being captured?

Why then, even more frightening, would any western leader accept an intelligence report reflecting that Syria’s leadership or even Syria and Russia’s leadership, would choose to use chemical weapons against a defeated enemy at a time when film crew financed by Western intelligence agencies, and we will add Israel to the blend, have arrived on the spot just to film those attacks, which, of course, would be unnecessary and benefit only the terrorists?

Yes, that is right, Syria only uses poison gas, according to highly disputed reports by the OPCW, when it is the last thing they should do.

Is it because they can’t help themselves, like Donald Trump in an elevator with a young girl?

You know, I have some familiarity with not only America’s proclivity for lying but with America’s proclivity for doing really terrible things and blaming others.

This reminds me of an operational meeting I chaired back in 1981 between combatants fighting against the regime of Daniel Ortega which had just taken power a year before.

At the table were representatives of the US military operational groups within JSOC, who were then headquartered in both Fort Benning, Georgia and at advanced bases in Honduras.

Also at the table were representatives of the overthrown Somoza regime including former leaders of the Guardia Nacionale, the equivalent of Himmler’s SS in Germany.

The discussions, highly classified at the time, went in two directions. A naval operation, under the code name “Working Divers and Constructors” was to mine the harbors while a land operation, under the JSOC code name “Outdoor Adventures” (If only I were kidding) was to begin a 3-pronged incursion into Nicaragua using mercenary troops.

These troops were to “eliminate” the “Sandinista infrastructure.” As the discussion went on, it became clear that the XXX, working with JSOC was reorganizing the Phoenix Program that had been shut down in Vietnam less than a decade before.

In fact, the person sitting next to me was one of the people who had organized the Phoenix Program.

As the meeting went on, our friends and associates from the Somoza regime submitted names of those they wanted killed.

The team, with one exception, me, had already agreed to kill local leaders, teachers, nurses, journalists, union leaders, in fact to hit Nicaragua with a reign of terror reminiscent of Atilla the Hun.

Adding to the tragicomedy were the additions to the list, schoolyard enemies, former spouses and, in particular, people who were owed money.

Were I to reach further into the past, I could bring up stories from Vietnam or, moving in the other direction, where issues of secrecy are more likely to apply, add a dozen more scenarios like the one we have just referenced.

I can say the program, as outlined, was shelved, outlining my own role in this might well be childishly self-serving.

Conclusion

Is Assad an animal? I can say this, Ronald Reagan’s representatives at the 1981 meeting would have been perfectly happy to murder 300,000 or more totally innocent Nicaraguans in a totally fake war on “communism.”

There was another story as well, a very different truth about who was murdering thousands of Meskito people in an adjacent conflict that spilled across Central America.

There are worse stories about death squads in El Salvador. The “Fourteen Families,” aided by XXX trained death squads played out an identical agenda to what was planned by Reagan’s National Security Council in 1981 with no one there to say “no.”

Each of these “events” is real, and dozens, maybe more than a hundred, could be added, each one in the history books with “facts” totally opposite of truth.

 

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/05/12/i-can-t-stand-it-the-assad-opcw-fantasy-is-giving-me-gas/

 

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Read also: 

 

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33296

 

poopingcat...

 

 

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