Several million people have now read my articles on the lack of evidence of Russian government guilt for the Salisbury attack. That’s over 300,000 unique visitors on this little blog alone so far, and it has been repeated on hundreds of sites all over the internet. My own tweets on the subject have been retweeted over 12,500 times and received 8 million impressions. I know that journalists from every mainstream media outlet you can mention have seen the material, because of numerous tweets from them none of which address any of the facts, but instead call me a “Conspiracy nutter” or variants of that, some very rude.
Yet what I wrote has not been refuted. It would be very easy to refute were it not true. The government would just have to say “Porton Down have stated that they have definitely identified the nerve agent as made in Russia”. They have not said that. Most extraordinarily, not one mainstream media “journalist” has asked a minister the question: “You keep using this phrase the nerve agent is “of a type developed by Russia”. Are you able to confirm it was actually made in Russia?” .
There is no excuse for this. Literally hundreds of mainstream media “journalists” have slavishly reproduced the propaganda phrase “of a type developed by Russia” without a single one of them every querying this rather odd wording, or why it is the government always uses that precise wording again and again and again.
It goes without saying that not a single mainstream media “journalist” has reported that fact either that until recently Porton Down believed that “novichoks” had probably never actually been synthesised successfully and that the OPCW has never banned them on the grounds that there was no evidence of their physical existence.
Finally I wish to repeat these important facts:
1) Israel has major undeclared stocks of chemical weapons
2) Israel is one of a handful of countries, including North Korea, not to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention and commit to destroy its chemical weapons
3) Israel is not a member of the OPCW and refuses to declare its chemical weapon stocks to the OPCW.
These are also facts you will never, ever see reported in mainstream media and entirely predictably the corporate lickspittles of the mainstream media have been out in force on socal media justifying their refusal to act on any of the information I have given on the grounds I am an “anti-semite”. A more extreme example of using any criticism of Israel to allege anti-semitism is hard to conceive.
The contribution of Jewish people to human development in fields including science, literature, music, art and commerce has been simply magnificent and utterly disproportionate to their numbers. The genocidal policy of Israel towards the Palestinians these last seventy years, and its rogue state status as regard chemical and nuclear wmds is a completely different question, for which I in no way blame the generality of Jewish people. In fact my position on this is the opposite of a BDS position. I actually want Israel to join OPCW, be a full member and cooperate in the destruction of its chemical weapon stocks.
I think I might now have a vodka. Of a type developed by Russia. Made in Warrington.
“I think I might now have a vodka. Of a type developed by Russia. Made in Warrington.”
Brilliant!
Craig, I’ve recently uploaded a blog posting that dissects a highly manipulative BBC news article: is it okay to put the link here? I do think it’s of relevance, both to what is currently being attempted by the UK state and its media, and to the resistance of the thoughtful public.
http://markdoran.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/sneer-and-smear/
Regards,
Mark D.
Why did you block me on Twitter for having the insolence to say I liked P.G. Wodehouse? It’s not a crime, you know, and it doesn’t have anything to do with my political position. J
Wodehouse was an acute satirist and political commentator; why do you think that the fascist blackshorts don’t like the word “Eulalie”? Why did his characters give aliases like Leon Trotsky? ;O)
“A more extreme example of using any criticism of Israel to allege anti-semitism is hard to conceive”
It’s like having to investigate who stole the cream on the basis that you’re not allowed to accuse the cat – who is sitting in the corner contentedly licking its paws – on the grounds that that would be anti-feline.
MJ, that must be the best analogy (i think that’s the correct word) i have ever heard. I have 2 cats, so you can’t call me anti-feline…
Well said Craig, the so called journalists who seem to have forgotten they were lead by the nose by a previous #warmongering govt and stories of wmd. One would think #shamed me once……….
thank Jebus for you Craig.. a lighthouse in the darkness of media fucknuttery.
Hear, hear
Ah, I see in now becomes that little bit clearer.
… without a single one of them every querying this rather odd wording,…”
and
… not a single mainstream media “journalist” has reported that fact either …
and
These are also facts you will never, ever see reported in mainstream media …
The MSM’s ability to ignore a topic is even more powerful than their ability to lie about it.
“My mom always said life is like a box of novichoks… You get the box home, and there’s nothing in it — because they were never able to produce them…”
Well Craig makes a good point that it may have been the Palestinians but i think he may have missed the point that signed up members of the OPCW might have done it too (some have form in the False Flag arena)
The point Craig does succeed on is distracting from what actually happened to the Skripals.
Well done Craig. Again
Have you noticed that attempted distractions from Israel’s frequent clandestine interference in global affairs are often counter-productive?
It is of interest in this context that the actual proven interference by the state of Israel in UK politics has been ignored whilst the fairy tale of Russia hacked the US elections is still being pursued despite no evidence.
All of this stuff is hopelessly counterproductive – it’s seems to be driven by a collective bunch of ancient Cold Wariors in the UK, US and the unruly western colonies in Palestine who just will not retire. The same we can see in the UK papers, the ancient Barclay bros age 84, Rupert Murdoch aged 87 and the meer youth Dacre at 69. All of these people are at odds with the modern world unfortunately I think we’re going to have to wait for them all to die off.
Don’t you just hate the poshboy Tory scum?
“Lord” Ricketts said:
“The biggest losers from this closure of the excellent British Council programme are the Russian people.”
Ah, the white man’s burden!
Kinnock’s son, Stephen, so good at assassinating Jeremy Corbyn’s character and antecedents, had the job in their St Petersburg office.
He had hair (just about) then.
;British Council row escalates as Russia arrests director
Background: the British Council
Luke Harding in Moscow and Allegra Stratton
Wed 16 Jan 2008 17.19 GMT
Stephen Kinnock, director of the British Council’s St Petersburg office, pictured the day after he was detained and released. Photograph: Kirill Kudrjavtsev/AFP
The row between Russia and Britain over the fate of the British Council dramatically escalated today after the council confirmed that one of its senior British staff members – the son of Neil Kinnock – had been arrested.
The council said it was “deeply concerned” for the safety of its British and Russian staff in the country following the arrest last night of Stephen Kinnock, the director of its St Petersburg office, and the interrogation of other employees.
Britain lodged an immediate diplomatic protest today, summoning Russia’s ambassador to London, Yury Fedotov, for an urgent meeting at the Foreign Office.
Peter Ricketts, the head of the British diplomatic service, was expected to tell Fedotov that any “attack” on Britain’s cultural arm would damage the Russian government’s reputation.
Talking about the meeting, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, said: “Any intimidation or harassment of officials is obviously completely unacceptable.
“The only losers from any attack on the British Council are Russian citizens who want to use the British Council – and the reputation of the Russian government.”
Russian police detained Stephen Kinnock at 11.30pm last night when he was driving in the city. They claimed he had a “heavy smell of alcohol on his breath” and had violated traffic rules. Officials held him for an hour and then released him.
The cultural organisation rejected the claim that Kinnock had been drunk. It said he appeared to be the victim of a sinister pattern of state-backed intimidation and deliberate harassment against its staff.’
/..
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/16/politics.russia
The Kinnock daughter was given a job in Brown’s office. Ghastly lot.
Yes, don’t you just hate those Western Imperialist pigs at the British Council with their Western Imperialist ideas like giving British students scholarships to study at Chinese universities?
https://www.britishcouncil.org/study-work-create/opportunity/study-abroad/china
(Link not specifically Russia-related, but it’s the first thing I noticed on their website.)
Keep it up, Craig. No let-up, please.
So little in UK press about those who are or might be motivated to stitch up V Putin so royally. So little in the UK press about what the Skripals might have been up to in recent times to have made them targets.
The UK press has one intention – to underpin and legitimise UK Government policy to demonise Putin. Why? One-word answer – Syria, and response to Russia’s frustration of the West’s efforts for its favourite strategy: regime change, whatever the cost to the nationals of the country as happened in Iraq and Libya.
Motivation? Russia is holding up progress –
“I don’t think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all, for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price; because they are holding up progress, blockading it. That is no longer tolerable.”
– Secretary Clinton at a 2012 Paris meeting of governments supporting Assad opponents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8a4QOyOQlA
Yes! Who needs progress when you have a murdering, torturing dictator? What was Secretary Clinton thinking suggesting that the people of Syria might want to get rid of Assad?
Martinned
Remember when we got rid of a murderous dictator in Iraq? We caused the murder of many more people over one million, far more than he did, and destroyed a whole advanced country. And this was just Iraq. The fallout is still ongoing. So we do the same again and again because we are always right?
I’m not sure that the people of Iraq are worse off as a result of the invasion. Many people died, but we don’t know what would have happened otherwise. All else equal, people should have their freedom or the opportunity to fight for it.
The reason why both the Iraq war and the Syria war are wrong is that this is not a decision that we should make for other countries. But that goes both ways: keeping a cruel dictator in power is at least as evil as aiding those that seek to overthrow him.
Yes, how imperialist of me to think that non-Western people might also want liberty…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_liberty,_or_give_me_death!
SA, agree with you 100. This noble missionary mission of the West to sow the seeds of liberty in not really civilised nations, we don’t of course call them that way but all agree that’s the premise, right? So Putin is the only imperialist in the world, right? I worked in Iraq in 1999 thru 2001 and still have connections with those i worked with, most fled to Jordan. The degree of corruption now is insane and in no way comparable to the Saddam era. State resources are under the clan control and the clans fight vehemently over them stripping off the country and the people. No sign of exported democratic progress, quite on the contrary.
One simple question: in favour of whom?
Clinton the criminal against humanity and common criminal?
You’ve hit it on the head. Clearly the people of Syria don’t want to get rid of Assad – and no amount of training or funding or arming of ISIS mercenaries is going to change that.
It takes a special kind of talent to watch seven years of news about the civil war in Syria and conclude that the people of Syria don’t really want to get rid of Assad. Congratulations.
It takes special talent to not notice propaganda but hey ho.
I’ve seen plenty of reports suggesting that Assad is quite popular. How many votes did he get in the election?
It takes a special talent not to see that the ‘moderate rebels’ are actually supported by Wahabis and with many imported foreign jihadists trained and protected by US UK and France.
For a more objective view on Syria go to https://ejmagnier.com/author/elijahjm/
Yes, we need more courageous people like Clinton who take pride in turning entire nations into failed states and then walk away leaving the people to fester in a hellish limbo while she lectures and harangues leaders of other countries for opposing the US murder regime. The hypocrisy, cynicism and psychopathy on display is breathtaking. And the mainstream media gives people like her a free pass. How free and democratic of it!
I sometimes wonder what happened to the lady doctor who attended to Yulia, as reported by the BBC on 8th March.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43326734
The sections reads:
‘Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions.
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripal’s face or body.’
I went to News Sniffer to see what changes to the article had been made.
The headline changed from the original
‘Russian spy: Police seek to identify nerve agent source’
to
‘Russian spy: Attack was ‘brazen and reckless’, says Amber Rudd’ Version 7
to
‘Russian spy: Salisbury attack was ‘brazen and reckless’ Version 12
Only when I reached version no 13, the paragraphs about the lady doctor appeared and there they remained on the final and 14th version! The changes took place in just under 12 hours.
I thought for one minute that the BBC had managed to expunge the whole thing.
https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1561450/diff/12/13
News Sniffer has been hacked previously and was not working. That fact alone makes you think?!! It is a very useful tool for the unbelievers..
Thank for this. I was wondering what happened to the lady doctor first reported now expunged from the internet. Has anyone else found any more reports of her presence at the ‘ incident ‘?
I don’t think any of this happened. I think it’s a Giant PR campaign to get Corbyn. As for the tit for tat expulsions it’s good for may *and* it’s good for putin – makes him look strong on the eve of his election and let’s face it, he doesn’t want a Corbyn government freezing his London assets either.
You don’t need a giant PR campaign of this sort to make Putin’s Russia or Corbyn for that matter look bad.
Stupid comment triumvirate.
How might you persuade Israel to destroy its chemical weapons without using a boycott, divestment, and sanctions? What language do they understand?
Israel is already “in”. This Nazi-style regime with its tentacles everywhere is a full member of the UN, etc. etc. None of the major powers gives a shit about Israeli nuclear and chemical stockpiles. Very few leading figures in any major country are going to risk their career to break ranks. If they were that sort of person, they would probably have been weeded out from getting to a leading position, back when they were at university if not when they were still at school.
What you may get is people who’ve played along with it for a long time finally deciding enough’s enough – when the latest thing they’ve been told to swallow is simply too much for them – and then they can either resign or say a few things (probably with not much clarity, given their anger and hurt) once they’ve been sacked. Imagine if two of them wanted to cooperate to bring pressure while staying in their jobs. How long would they last? Almost always if they fall, it’s singly, like Jenny Tonge.
Very interesting BBC article from 1999 says they were produced & tested, in Uzbekistan.
Senior defector unnamed of course. Any idea who, Craig?
‘According to a senior defector from the Soviet chemical weapons programme, the Soviets used the plant to produce small batches of a lethal new generation of nerve agents called Novichok, or New Boy in Russian. They were designed to escape detection by international inspectors.
‘Some of these were then tested on the nearby Ustyurt plateau, a forbidding desert west of the Aral Sea, in contravention of treaties Moscow had signed.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/415742.stm
Another in a series of terrific articles. Thanks.
Stuff like this makes you realise just how big the British establishment is. The press are meant to hold the government to account, but none of them are asking any awkward questions at all. Why isn’t anyone asking Boris Johnson how he can think it’s overwhelmingly likely that Putin ordered the attack when he doesn’t even know in which country the batch of nerve gas used in Salisbury was made?
And the unanimity of their complicity only makes the whole thing look staged, because any reasonably inquisitive person (let alone a journalist whose job is to be inquisitive) would be asking more searching questions that the press and broadcast media are currently asking.
Yes, it makes you wonder why no one is asking the awkward questions about global warming or the sphereness of the earth. Must be a conspiracy too. Good thing we have the blogosphere!
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/08/200-proofs-earth-is-not-spinning-ball.html?m=1
We already have the evidence is why. Can you explain why these questions haven’t been asked? Or from a legal point of view would you be satisfied with the evidence? Thought so. Next!
Do yourself a favour, please, Martinmed. You have a brain – use it!
I have yet to read or hear the Tory government actually stating that this henious act was definitely carried out by the Russian state. That are being very cautious with their choice of words by inferring rather than stating that the Russians are culpable.
MSM have their instructions with the agenda of setting up WW3.
That’s the objective of all this Russophobia. Your comments on the Salisbury False Flag are a shining light in the darkness that is the disgrace known as media journalism.
Keep up the good work.
Of course! Why wouldn’t the MSM and their evil illuminati overlords not want WW3? Everybody knows that capitalists thrive in a world war.
http://libertystreeteconomics.typepad.com/.a/6a01348793456c970c01b7c7ab411c970b-450wi
the arms industry and security/spying industry certainly thrive in a cold war
Sure, but a cold war isn’t the idea that I was mocking.
Cop out
Huge profits are made by some in hot war too.
Meanwhile, two months ago the British government shelved proposed “defence” cuts pending a new review. It doesn’t look like they’ll be happening now, does it? That is certainly part of the picture here.
Not only cold war. Any war. And actually peaceful times as well. For the mosr recent insight into the power of arms industry lobby look into the gun control dilemma in the US after school shootings. All reason and humanitarian messages abandonded for the sake of financial interests. Sad.
The MSM and thier masters don’t necessarily want WW3 but want to maintain conflict and want a unipolar world under the US where we can all live comfortably in the west and exploit and order the rest of the world. They will go to any extent to maintain this and play chicken, but this may misfire.
THE UK TORY GOVERNMENT – CATAMITES OF THE NEO-CON NUTCASE U.S. EMPIRE !
MAY-DAY MAY-DAY MAY-DAY
It’s nearly impossible to find UK or US MSM news sources that don’t completely accept the ridiculous Muppet Stream Media lies. That, and speakers who bellow past each other.
So the following was a pleasure to watch – a model of thoughtful, informed and very polite discussion. You know something is up when Liberal Lembit Opik and arch-Conservative (but non-Neo-Con he says) Ben Harris-Quinney vehemently and very politely agree!
– Ep. 588: ‘Russian Spy Attack’ Special: what is next for Russia & the United Kingdom? – 14th May 2018 – Going Underground @ RT – Youtube –
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCjFPvw3I8M
Lord Balfe in the follow up program, today, was also good – calm, amused and insisting that talking _will_ have to be used to resolve the issue. Eventually. (Ep. 589)
The Russian ambassador to Britain was a model of, well, diplomacy. Calm, not rushing to judgement, and not making up the Iraq War dossier lies. (Ahem, Looking at you Tony Blair!) –
– “UK using Skripal case to divert attention from Brexit setback” – Russian ambassador to Britain @ RT, 16th March 2018 – Youtube –
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53XCYOFBQ7Q
“But they are a foreign station,” you say. Well yes, but sometimes ‘they’ know more about what ‘we’ are up to. (Gore Vidal).
No change there then! ; )
MAY-DAY MAY-DAY MAY-DAY
“YOU SAY I’M A U.S. EMPIRE WHORE LIKE IT’S A BAD THING”
Those UK government liars and lying lies they tell: The Iraq War dossier.
“Alexandr Shulgin, Russia’s permanent representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and ambassador to the Netherlands, discusses the issue of Skripal incident.” –
– “UK accuses Russia of Skripal incident but they had cases of lying in the past – OPCW representative” @ RT, 16th March 2018 – Youtube –
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbj-3XpQ5fg
Includes the section that N_ below pointed out at March 17, 2018 at 13:47:
“(In the early 1990s, foreign) special services took a group of scientists… with the research that existed since the Soviet times” out of the country so that they could go on with their studies.
“We know the exact countries where such work continued, achieving certain success,” Shulgin said, without naming any. “The positive results of those studies can now be found in open sources.”
“Therefore, we can assume that the source of the substance used (against Skripal) in Salisbury is concealed in one of the countries where this research continued and achieved certain success”
– Shocked. Shocked! To find that the Neo-Con Nazis of the U.S. Empire or Israeli did it.
No change there, then!
Well done, Craig. Not only have you increased your readership but it confirms the suspicions of many in Britain that people just aren’t falling for it. Western conservatives wringing their hands over a man who, when active years ago, they would have dismissed as a “commie”? Now they’re risking war with Russia, over one of their own “reds”? And now to bolster their failing argument they’ve turned to the Russian who claims to have made the stuff! (Yahoo News UK) YCNMTSU.
Indeed, many in Britain aren’t falling for it!
https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/974426572123000833
Yes those countries that haven’t ratified the CWC, can and probably have produced unregulated nerve agents, as you say one country stands out in particular, having the capabilities to do so.
I wonder if we should be looking in their particular direction as to who could’ve produced the unidentifiable nerve agent, and to what ends they deployed it.
Checking past events it seems completely plausible that their security services or agents would have no qualms about using deadly chemicals in foreign countries.
However are the British government aware of that possibility as well? However even if they are and I’m sure they are, they’re intent on blaming another nation. The likely culprits have a strong and influential support in Britain.
UN members that haven’t ratified the CWC are Israel, North Korea, South Sudan, and Egypt.
Being a contrary sod, I would be fascinated to learn about any links between (either brand of) Korea and the “Russian” mafia etc.
On the other hand, none of these lengthy blog posts or any of the thousands of comments have explained why it matters where the chemical was made. If it was made outside Russia, does that somehow make it less likely that it was the Russians that done it?
Making something “more likely” or “highly likely” does not give anyone the right to blame somebody. Only facts do.
….huh?
Are you well? He obviously means before you start slinging accusations around it’s a good idea to make sure you have the facts to back them up. Otherwise shut up and move along.
“Likely” means “might”, it’s a euphemism for “uncertain”; more or less or highly or lowly are meaningless when juxtaposed with that word. It’s like hearing an American on the telly say “best guess”.
Or alternatively it’s an acknowledgement that you don’t get 100% metaphysical proof of….well, anything.
Proof is for maths and alcohol – what evidence are you expecting? The Russians to rock up and go “it was just a prank bro”?
Are you serious when you say you’re trained in law?! “Doesn’t matter where evidence comes from as long as we have some” stunning insight.
Is that what you think I said? Let me try again: I don’t see why anyone would believe Russian agents only murder with weapons made in Russia. That’s like saying Russian agents couldn’t possibly have murdered someone because he was killed with a Glock.
“none of these lengthy blog posts or any of the thousands of comments have explained why it matters where the chemical was made. If it was made outside Russia, does that somehow make it less likely that it was the Russians that done it?”
Since pretty much the only “evidence” adduced by HMG and its media stenographers in their unseemly rush to pin this incident on Russia was the fact that the chemical supposedly used was allegedly “of a type developed in Russia”, it’s pretty fatuous to ask why it’s significant where it was made.
Apart from the assumed origin of the chemical, as the BBC helpfully explained yesterday, it’s just spurious speculations about “motive” and “track record” and a supposed lack of any alternative hypotheses. Of course, the BBC doesn’t ask awkward questions such as why, if the Russian government supposedly has a known practice and intent of attacking men like Skripal, was he living openly and unprotected under his own name and with his address in the public domain? Nor does it consider the fact that the only reason there are no other hypotheses in the mainstream debate is that the BBC and its ilk simply don’t mention the obvious motive for trying to pin a high profile and propagandistically highly charged crime on Russia, on the part of all those states and groups desiring confrontation of Russia, or the possibility of other personal issues involving Skripal and various shadowy criminal and US/UK political activities.
But presumably you knew all that.
“I know that journalists from every mainstream media outlet you can mention have seen the material, because of numerous tweets from them none of which address any of the facts, but instead call me a “Conspiracy nutter” or variants of that, some very rude”
I think it is high time to stop giving these hacks and propagandists the title of “Journalist”.
On the BBC Click programme today there was an item about applications of AI (artificial intelligence). Apparently there are instances of it being introduced into newsrooms, the inference being that it is being trialled in that vast room that is constantly being shown on their news channel. The reporter’s words made me laugh. ‘Journalists will be given more time to produce journalism’. At the BBC? Don’t make me laugh, again.
Let’s be frank, the two nations have been at war for hundreds of years. In that context, it’s all fair – just another move on the chessboard, just modern way.
However, what I fail to understand is to whom it benefits. To Russia – highly unlikely.
To the UK – setting up its diplomatic troops for a symbolic execution in Moscow – the logic escapes me.
Third parties – big question mark.
My hope is that the government knows what they are doing and that they have a plan. Otherwise, we are all in trouble. And it has nothing to do with Russia.
The benefit for Russia is straightforward. Winning an election with 90+% of the vote is no good if no one turns up to vote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/world/europe/putin-russia-election.html
Are you suggesting that Russia did it in order to encourage voter turn-out?
Yes. There are easier ways to kill someone, but not if getting blamed is part of the point.
The people who encouraged voter turnout are Teresa, Boris and Gavin. They should have kept stumm until next Monday. Who advised them? Or should they be investigated for interfering in the Russian election on behalf of Vlad?
That’s certainly what I would advised them (based on my current understanding of the situation). But in a democratic country with a free press there’s a limit to how little you can say, unless you’re going to try to keep the entire murder attempt a secret.
Yes, why isn’t anyone asking that difficult question eh, Martinned? ! !!
Putin wants a high turnout, and he’ll get one – he would have got it anyway. My guess is that it will exceed the psychologically important 70%. But if it is only 66%, that won’t matter much.
The Putin team are saying they want 70/70, meaning 70% voteshare, 70% turnout. Change those figures to 70.7% and you get 50% of the electorate, which would also be welcomed. But a few % here and there isn’t that important.
Putin is likely to win more than six times the number of votes of the second-placed candidate, on a turnout which is likely to be around two-thirds of the electorate. If he does worse than expected and instead of 6 it’s 5.7 and instead of two thirds it’s 64%, so what? He is highly popular – far more popular than Trump, May, Macron, Merkel, etc. – and the election will confirm that. That’s all, really. This attack wasn’t mainly about influencing internal opinion in Russia about anything.
“Free press” 85% of which is owned by 5 people one of whom is a Russian oligarch.
“My hope is that the government knows what they are doing and that they have a plan. Otherwise, we are all in trouble. And it has nothing to do with Russia.”
If only the Government knew what they are doing.
Momentarily off-topic, listening to Chris Grayling on BBCQT talking about the forthcoming post-Brexit borders between the UK and EU was a perfect example of the Government being in a bubble of ignorant, arrogant, self-promoting denial. He did not have a clue. Whichever side you are on it is obvious that coming out of the EU, out of the Single Market and out of the Customs Union means there have to be borders between the UK and EU countries – including in N. Ireland and Dover. When I go to Norway out of Sweden I have to cross the border and show papers + commercial documentation to do with my work. Same going from Canada into the USA. How could Grayling sit there and talk such claptrap?
All the relentless “Vladimir Putin ate my hamster” headlines and the stories about seizing Russian citizens’ London apartments are such short term nonsense which damages the communication we need with Moscow. Elsewhere we hear that the greatest global threat to the civilised world is Militant Islam and we are in partnership with Russia to confront the problem, yet our Minister of Defence told Russia to “go away and shut up or I’ll tell my mum”. What a twit.
Our Government has no clue about Salisbury except they have received an edict from elsewhere to use any and every opportunity to demonise Putin. Whether it is from Washington, Tel Aviv or Riyadh who knows? Wherever it came from it is an ill wind which will do the UK a lot of harm.
Israel is afraid of the consequences for it if the defeat of the Western powers in Syria is allowed to proceed.
Alexander Shulgin, permanent Russian representative at the OPCW:
“(In the early 1990s, foreign) special services took a group of scientists… with the research that existed since the Soviet times” out of the country so that they could go on with their studies.
“We know the exact countries where such work continued, achieving certain success,” Shulgin said, without naming any. “The positive results of those studies can now be found in open sources.”
“Therefore, we can assume that the source of the substance used (against Skripal) in Salisbury is concealed in one of the countries where this research continued and achieved certain success”
(…)
“My guess is that our British partners are afraid that, should our experts examine those samples, they will discover some catch in this whole case.”
“In case nothing is presented to us… we’ll proceed from the fact that Britain has nothing”
(Source: RT.)
> N_ March 17, 2018 at 13:47
Interesting, not least because the Russian leaker of the Novichok nerve agent’s existence ended up … in Cheney’s Neo-Con Nazi Empire. Coincidence? HA!
SO. It certainly _could_ have been Israel, as Craig suggested. But it could also have been the Neo-Con Nazi U.S. Empire. Same difference? Both murderous fascist swine …
Repeated also in this RT report –
“Alexandr Shulgin, Russia’s permanent representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and ambassador to the Netherlands, discusses the issue of Skripal incident.” –
– “UK accuses Russia of Skripal incident but they had cases of lying in the past – OPCW representative” @ RT, 16th March 2018 – Youtube –
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbj-3XpQ5fg
Craig
The argument has now moved on. It is irrelevant what poison was administered, the narrative that has been painstakingly built over the last few years is how bad the Russian are and recite thier sins in Ukraine, Georgia and Syria and of course Litvinenko. It is now KNOWN that that is the roguish state who does not observe the rule of law and that Putin is the devil incarnate so how dare you question us.
So really now trying to use reason to address this issue is not going to gain any traction.
The OPCW inspectors could probably solve this case sooner than later, if only they had access to the IIBR, at Ness Ziona.
I find you are very believable – you state it simple enough. As Einstein said ” If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well”
Have one on me Craig.
Your straight forward, no nonsense, open minded approach is the perfect opposite of the speculative theorising that has gripped our country.
Mark Ames tweets:
Ukraine is imploding. Western darling Nadia Savchenko—”the Mandela of Ukraine”—says she saw neo-Nazi parliament speaker Parubiy order snipers to kill Maidan protesters as provocation. In turn, Kiev regime accusing Savchenko of plotting coup
As with most of these ‘Russian controversies’ over the past decade, essential details are still to be satisfactorily cleared up.
To the satisfaction of whom?
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence.
Brilliant analysis, exemplary courage, Mr. Murray. Thank you, thank you.
Brilliant last paragraph!
Well done Craig