The increasing desperation of government attempts to “prove” the Russians responsible for the Skripal attack has become increasingly bizarre. They now claim GCHQ picked up from Troodos a message from Syria to Moscow that “the package has been delivered”, and a further one that “two people have made their egress”.
Because of course, if you were sending a cryptic message back from Salisbury to Moscow, you would naturally route it back via Syria, in the certain knowledge that all such calls from Syria are picked up from Troodos. I am sure the Russians already knew that, even before I published it in detail five years ago.
Given Russian involvement in Syria, that somebody is reporting in Syria the delivery of a package to Moscow, would not lead any sane human being to conclude it was delivered in Salisbury.
As for the phrase “two people have made their egress”, presumably this was said in Russian and I cannot understand the translation at all. Exit, egress, go out, leave to outside – there is only one Russian word to express all of these and that is phonetically from the stem “vihod”, either as noun or verb. There is no egress/exit choice in Russian.
The only possible explanation is that the person actually said “two people have left” and the British government propagandists have translated this as the weird “made their egress” to try to make it sound more sinister and more like a codeword.
Reminding me of my previous Troodos article was extremely apposite. Because the point of that article was to prove that alleged communications intercepts proving it was the Syrian government which was responsible for certain chemical weapons strikes in Syria were not genuine. I am very sceptical indeed about the claims being made today.
When the Americans began the war to ‘liberate’ the benighted Iraqis the State Department had a tough time finding Arabic speakers. They eventually found a Lebanese-American military type whom they assumed, being an ‘Arab’, would know all about the place. He didn’t last.
Wonder how many Russophones in the FO?
Suppose they might be able to find somebody who did a subsid. In Russian Studies at uni. Очень Хорошо!
Well if you can get the personell of 13 sigs out if each others beds in Cyprus long enough to actually do meaningful sigint work you may gleen meaningful Intel . In my day every spy in the world was a licenced radio Ham and we all had key Ham related subjects to talk about that when said has covert meanings, and do not forget slow Morse training on 3565 in 5er groups from g4rs g3cio
I don’t think the Russians were involved in the Salisbury or Ghouta pantomimes.
I do think Yulia may well have brought a “package” into the UK,
I think both Russian and British Security Services were very interested in Yulia’s and Sergei’s movements on the 4th
I think Sergei’s reported frequent visits to Dubai should not be overlooked.
The Skripals may have been being vanished when they went missing c9:15am on the 4th, the people on the bench may not have been the Skripals.
Dey Sgt’s are not despatched to suspected drunken / drugged vagrants nor would the air ambulance be involved especially given the proximity of Salisbury hospital.
No one in Salisbury was poisoned with nerve agent the Doc said but he has not been heard of since.
Nothing makes sense but the Skripals in my view were up to no good. Why did they immobilise their phone’s tracking capability? So what if they were being followed if they had nothing to hide?
Were they (or had they been) couriering towards the New Malden home of Nikolai Glushkov? (That’s if it was his home. It seems too downmarket for someone in the hundreds of millions bracket.)
If she had brought the “Binary nerve agent” and made a mistake then they would be dead very quickly.
Why did the MoD move “Exercise Toxic Dagger” from April last year to Feb 20th (3 weeks) this year. This if involved would imply in depth planning for the staged event.
Every step our government has been delaying inch by inch.
Identification of the Nerve agent to blame Russia instantly to stop them gaining consular access.
Court of protection application for blood sample putting their well being in the hands of the courts.
Yulia coming out of the coma and saying now that she can decide if she wants to see the Russia embassy representative.
Questionable telephone call to give a third party confirmation that she is alive, lucid and in Salisbury hospital.
Blockage of Yulia’s cousin getting a Visa on spurious grounds.
I read, at Veterans Today I think it was, that the Russians had been tracking him because he had been selling weapons/cw in and out of Ukraine. They may have killed him but I doubt it for reasons that Craig has covered admirably.
The decision to give them safe passage to the US speaks to him possibly being a US funded weapons transporter, or not, maybe they just have a fondness for double agents.
I think you would find that in a tourist shopping area such as Salisbury police would quickly remove any person(s) who was foaming at the mouth and convulsing forthwith; the Sargent may just have been closest to the call. I also read that no air ambulance was involved, both were taken in ground ambulances.
Just doing what-ifs, I find the entire event surreal and the stupidity incredible.
We will probably agree to differ over the likelihood of a DS (CID or SB?) being detailed as a first responder to suspected drunks / druggies on a late Sunday afternoon in Salisbury.
But the Air Ambulance does have a twist of its own. It was called and landed in the adjacent car park. Several early media reports stated that Yulia was transferred to hospital in the aircraft.
After more than a week of concerns being made by members of the public about the fact the helicopter was still in use, what about contamination issues?
Eventually the story was withdrawn with the explanation that the aircraft attended the scene but did not transport a victim. Why the delay in correcting the early reports is not clear.
Nor is why the Helicopter online incident log fails to record the incident call-out on the 4th. In fact the log is blank from 28/2 – 6/3
http://www.wiltshireairambulance.co.uk/what-we-do/incidents
There is an online statement “ Not all incidents are posted online for a variety of reasons.”
Is it not unusual for an Air Ambulance to be used 2 miles from a hospital?
I took a screenshot. I put it on Twitter.
” Patient fitting, land assisted to hospital.
Time and Date: 16.19
04/03/2018
Where: Salisbury, Wiltshire
Hospital: Salisbury District Hospital”
The scramble time seems really fast. Land assisted means taken by land in regular ambulance.
The removal of it from public domain speaks volumes.
Have you got a link to that tweet, thanks!
Who on earth phones the police if they see druggies or drunks sitting or sleeping on a park bench?
Everyone in the UK who lives in a town or city of any size, sees this regularly, and we have all come to expect it, so unless they were bothering someone…?
But this is a high traffic, reasonably high end tourist shopping area, police would be called right away in my experience.
Great bit of research, congratulations!
Did someone from our security services immobilise their ( Scripa’ls)phone’s tracking device as part of a much larger plan? After all neither one has been seen again nor are they likely to be and their pets have been destroyed and I read there is consideration underway for the demolition of their house! All incredibly bizarre.
Yep, bizarre is the buzz word lately!
@Craig – Russian has a smaller lexicon than English, but it’s not true that “выходили” would be the only way to say “got out”/”exited”/”made a successful egress”. In fact, it wouldn’t even be a right way because it’s imperfective. You’d definitely want the perfective here. The perfective is “вышли” which can in some circumstances mean they got out on foot. There are terms for getting out by unspecified mode of transport and for flying out. I would imagine there are precise military terms too. “Egress” is a funny translation, for sure. If I knew what the Russian was, I could comment further. All I’ve found so far is two Russian sources that back-translate from “made a successful egress” to “успешно вышли” (“successfully got out”) and “успешно ушли” (“successfully got away”). “Made a successful” may be a translator’s way of underlining the meaning conveyed by the perfective aspect, or perhaps it’s an English language military term? Whatever. “Egress” certainly works well in the press reports to carry the message that “Russians are foreigners who talk with thick accents and weird word choices, they’re so inhuman that they talk about murder like it’s a job, and then they laugh afterwards and smash their glasses in front of the fireplace”, etc.
Thanks for making me study perfective/imperfective, unidirectional/multidirectional verbs of motion !
It’s a headache for we English. As well as verbs of motion there are reflexive verbs, transitive and intransitive verbs all conjugating in regular or irregular fashion, not to mention tenses. About nouns, adjectives and cases I decline to comment. 🙂
I don’t speak a word of Russian, but the English term “extraction” (also “exfiltration”) is used in a military context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_(military)
Maybe there’s something relevant on the Russian page for that term:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F_(%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0)
Isn’t “exfiltrate” always transitive?
We’ve got some little egresses round here. And a few ejits.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127161425@N07/16733723021/in/album-72157647518928915/
Must be White Russians!
Ejits are the ones who can’t spell egit, eejit or eegit.
Sorry N_ you are wrong. Vishli is of course just the past tense from the root Vihod. Its not a different word
See, stupid Brits shoudn’t have closed down so many Russian and Slavonic Studies university departments!
>
George Galloway now reporting that the poison has been discovered in the house and that this is where the police detective was contaminated. explains why the doctor who treated the Skirpals on the park bench wasn’t effected,
but at the same time open a whole new can of worms.
C’mon @Craig, I’m not wrong. Выход is the noun “exit”, formed from prefix вы and root ход. The root ход doesn’t appear in вышли. The prefix вы appears in both, meaning “out of”. There are two verbs here: выйти (perfective) and выходить (imperfective). Here we are talking about successfully completing an action and so we definitely need the perfective. You may possibly be confusing aspect with tense? Выходить has its own past tense: выходил.
On this topic, here is a link to a recent report from the nautilus Institute which looks at updates in the Echelon/Fornsat/Comsat/FiveEyes systems and capabilities.
Warning, it is 76 pages and very well researched, especially thanks to Duncan Campbell’s analysis of Snowden’s revelations.
Expanded Communications Satellite Surveillance and Intelligence Activities utilizing Multi-beam Antenna Systems
Desmond Ball, Duncan Campbell, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter
The recent expansion of FORNSAT/COMSAT (foreign satellite/communications satellite) interception by the UKUSA or Five Eyes (FVEY) partners has involved the installation over the past eight years of multiple advanced quasi-parabolic multibeam antennas, known as Torus, each of which can intercept up to 35 satellite
communications beams. Material released by Edward Snowden identifies a ‘New Collection Posture’, known as ‘Collect-it-all’, an increasingly comprehensive approach to SIGINT collection from communications satellites by the NSA and its partners. There are about 232 antennas available at identified current Five Eyes
FORNSAT/COMSAT sites, about 100 more antennas than in 2000. We conclude that development work at the observed Five Eyes FORNSAT/ COMSAT sites since 2000 has more than doubled coverage, and that adding Torus has more than trebled potential coverage of global commercial satellites. The report also discusses Torus antennas operating in Russia and Ukraine, and other U.S. Torus antennas.
https://nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Torus-SATCOM.pdf
And still they cannot prevent nerve agent attacks on British soil. Such waste!
Are your assumptions about troodos valid today? The last 15 years has seen most communications worldwide converted to fibre optic (underground or under water) with microwave being primarily used for cell phones. (perhaps in Syria it is still more old school), Also, encryption is widely used. (there was a time when communication satellites were all the rage, but are today mostly an obsolete technology, useful only in remote locations). This does support your argument that any communication intercept in Syria has nothing to do with Salisbury, and such absurd offerings do nothing but undermine the government’s case.
The only thing in this story that has any association with fact, is that there is a country named Syria.
Good point, but as you say, Syria seems to be susceptible to interception of mobile phone calls over satellite
Blacked-out Syrians turn to satellite phones
https://www.thenational.ae/business/blacked-out-syrians-turn-to-satellite-phones-1.649324
Infrastructure Deployment and Developing Competition in the Middle East and North Africa:
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/MNA/Broadband_report/Broadband_MENA_Chapter3.pdf
Clearly, Yulia wasn’t the intended target so mentioning ‘two’ is a bit strange.
“Two people, a pig, a cat and some guinea pigs have made their egg and cress sandwiches… nudge, nudge… wink, wink”
Could there be any link between Priti Patel’s walkabout in the middle East where she reportedly met with Russian officials and what happened in Salisbury? Nothing seems right with any of it.
Might be the enormous oil field found on the Golan Heights, and the fact that some well known faces have been invited on to the board of directors of the company (Geenie Oil) who will be extracting the said oil.
Halliburton,
Rupert Murdoch.
Dick Cheney.
To name a few!
There may be trouble ahead!
Excerpts from the KGB poisoning manual have been published! The link does not seem to work right now, but I copied the main section:
About applying Novichok to door handles. (copyright KGB/FSB).
The Novichok does not work well when applied to door handles, unfortunately.
(The enemy will not die, only get temporarily sick after a while, the delay being approximately 4 hours 6 minutes).
Use a medium size paint brush and strokes perpendicularly to the main direction of the handle. This is to not be confused with our CIA partners, always using brush strokes along the main direction of the handle.
How to dispose of the brush afterwards? … ( under revision).
In any case don’t touch it and don’t use the jar for drinking purposes. (Don’t get drunk as usual, bastards!)
In extremely urgent cases remember to give the Central a confirmation message upon completed operation, because we do not always listen to the news.
This looks like a fake. Technique for round doorknobs is not covered.
I am in possession of the revised edition. The disposal of the brush is covered there, and if memory serves me right (the manual is upstairs, on my nightstand) it is to be buried under the third lamppost from the left.
You’re all wrong! We all know that the US Navy have trained dolphins in the past. What happened here is so patently obvious: the missing cat (which incidentally came form Russia) is an agent personally trained by Putin. The cat was a sleeper until the time has come, the cat applied the appropriate agent to the door handle and then legged it! How can nobody see that?! It explains everything!
The only serious question that we could raise is about training: no one can assert that Putin did it directly.
But the rest is absolutely credible!
And does your copy also say that on completion of the mission you must relay a unencrypted message through East Ghouta?
Yes, it is in appendix ‘X’.
Btw., I need to make a small though perhaps crucial correction about the brush (and with a special heads up to the MET police): in countries with a Right-to-Left script, it is to be buried under the third lamppost from the Right. I repeat: third lamppost from the Right.
A page is missing from your copy, but present in mine, which I found near a dustbin, hastily abandoned no doubt, with a contingency method in case brush is forgotten:
“It is also well known best method to put on hand cream and smear substance all over the victims’ faces, at the same time laughing and calling April fool even if it’s not April, to deceive them. Four hours and six minutes later they will succumb to the attack. Is especially important to wash hands with baby wipes after the operation is carried out.”
This is no doubt the smoking gun, no matter what say Kremlin puppets who try to deceive.
The Salisbury incident was ordered by America, carried out by Brits… only 3 days after Putin’s eye-opening description of Russia’s new arsenal, so that if the US starts WW3, they will lose!! You can tell the op was MI5 because it was a cockup. The US wants to frighten the UK and Euros into upping their defence spending [ie buying American weaponry]. Sergei was probably on a list of victims ‘easy to get at’ in just such a case. Meanwhile [after the brexit derangement] the English have demonstrated that their 800 year pretence of rationality – ‘rule of law, innocent till proven guilty’ etc, was a massive con trick.
If it was a false flag then it was dome with long term and in depth planning. Unless it was pure coincidence that the MoD moved Exercise Toxic Dagger from April last year to Feb20th(3 weeks) this year and I don’t believe in them types of coincidences.
We learned the following over the weekend: “Completely by chance, doctors with specialist chemical weapons training were on duty at the hospital when the victims were admitted. They treated Sergei and Yulia Skripal with an atropine (antidote) and other medicines approved by scientists from Porton Down, the government’s top secret scientific research laboratory.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5590067/Nerve-agent-used-poison-Russian-spy-designed-4-hours-work-allow-culprits-flee.html
Do you think that these “doctors with specialist chemical weapons training” were part of Exercise Toxic Dagger?
The Daily Mail article on the “boutique Novichuk” is one of the most insane nonsense summaries I have ever seen. A commenter there deduces the article to be a “a test to see how far it is possible to stretch the limit of public credulity.”
Regardless of where they came from, how did they know to treat the Skripals for nerve agent poisoning?
It’s off topic but the ex Gurkha driver who caused the death of Lord Taylor of Blackburn by careless driving has been found guilty and sentenced.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/?s=Lord+Taylor+of+blackburn
I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:
Lorry driver sentenced for peer’s mobility scooter death – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-43698064
Two people have egressed the restaurant? Two guinea pigs have egressed their hutch? Did they turn off the light? Did the postman with the parcel only knock once?
What’s with all the dignifying of this load of crap by seriously discussing it?
thanks craig… bizarre is indeed the word to describe all this.. nothing else works!! it is hard to believe it is anything other then a complete con from the establishment… it has become so brazen, it defies any type of logic..
Funny thing – the MSM, and Boris Johnson himself, have recently used the word “bizarre” very often to describe Russia’s (usually very reasonable) position. I even elaborated on that a while back, noting how ubiquitous this method of throwing your opponent’s credibility (and even mental health) in doubt was becoming within the mainstream narrative.
Now that Craig has used it with regard to the “establishment’s brazen con”, as you put it, I had to revisit this thought.
At first, it seemed the word was indeed perfect to describe the actions of the establishment – not an overstatement but an accurate expression of utter bafflement at the situation.
But then I thought… why would it be bizarre to see the same actors perform the same play yet again, with a few minor changes in script? After all – the play works, the audience loves it, and it keeps the dough rolling. As for the naysayers – they’re hardly important in the big picture.
I certainly wouldn’t want to throw the actors’ and playwrights’ state of mind in any doubt: they are all knowing, conniving accomplices in the master design that is the play, each with his or her role which they are performing, faithfully sticking to the script.
In fact, the truly bizarre thing is that many of us are still surprised to see this play unfold…
Exactly. And the dying is done remotely.
Look at what “they” made you lot do: analyse some vague wording of a (rather plausibly fictitious) intercept rather than talk about the actual non-existent case that they pretend to have! Gotta love the reframe-when-you-have-no-answer approach! 😉
I don’t know about the OPCW, but there is definitely a case for the RSPCA.
The plan in now in motion as a fabricated connection is made between Sailsbury, Russia and of course Syria.
It’s all but certain that Syria will be found guilty of using chemical weapons against its people. The step after that is a full blown intervention into Syria to remove Assad, all based on nothing but lies and propaganda.
But where does Russia stand on this, will they continue to fight Assad’s corner? Or will they hold back knowing that Russian fighters would inevitably clash with Nato fighters over the Skies of Syria, and what will Iran do previously they helped Assad stem the tide of Western/Saudi/Israeli backed proxy fighters, can they afford to keep doing so. Knowning that to do so, would give Trump a chance to break the agreement and focus on attacking it.
The whole premise is built on blaming Russia and eventually Syria, is one giant fabrication begun in London, backed in Europe and the US, and pushed by the pathetic media.
The objective of all this is Iran. Like I said the other day, prepare for an early World Cup, if you know what I mean.
bj.
I agree that Iran is in firing line, however the focus for now is removing Assad. The fabricated connection between Syria, Russia and Sailsbury is being pushed, Moscow predicted this chemical attack several weeks ago. I’m pretty sure Putin et al know what’s coming next, for now Syria is the target.
The question will Putin openly defend Assad against a coaltion forces attack? Which then opens up a whole load of other questions.
Such as, if he does will a full scale war break out between the coalition forces and Russia, or will it once again be played out in Syria.
If Putin decides discretion is required Assad will fall, and Russia will lose a long term ally.
One thing one can be sure of is that the Russians have known for at least two months that this was coming. It was then that they landed troops in Damascus to avert the danger of a decapitation strike. They’ve had plenty of time to prepare.
The stakes have been raised, it’s one thing for Putin to destroy proxy fighters in Syria in the name of removing terrorists, the west did the same removing pro-Assad fighters from the likes of Iran etc.
However a direct full out conflict between Russia via Syria, with western coalition forces, is in my opinion something Putin will want to avoid.
The Russians know that the jihadi/wahabbi/takfiri terrorists will eventually be used against them, as they were in Chechnya, so it is a matter of life and death for the Russians. If they have the choice between not fighting NATO in a nuclear war and being destroyed by the terrorists in the future or being in a nuclear war and taking the terrorists and their US/UK/GCC etc backers and still being destroyed they will almost certainly fight a nuclear war with NATO.
TJ.
In my opinion, I doubt, Russia or Nato would escalate a conflict to a nuclear stage, it just doesn’t make sense. No I think the coming incursion into Syria by coalition forces, will see Russian intervention in a covert manner, and not a full blown outright approach. Direct conflict for Putin is to be avoided I think, a wise decision.
No Syria will stand or fall, probably fall, on how much aid Russia, Iran and possibly China gives it. However as usual it will be the poor citizens of Syria that will suffer the most.
But Israel will.
Israel might be an oppressive apartheid military state, however, in my opinion unless they were under a full scale attack, I doubt even they would launch nukes. Though they now possess nuclear subs, so in theory they could preempt a strike if Israel was threatened by nuclear destruction.
The Russians have already said if there is an attack against them or Syria then will destroy the origin of that attack, I do not doubt the Russians will be as good as their word.
TJ.
Could it be just sabre rattling by Russia, I’m still of the opinion, that the conflict will be played out in Syria, like a chessboard with black and white, as opposing forces, and Syria as the board.
The West, or nations therein, have fought out battles previously this way, in Africa such as Angola, and Afghanistan, when the west heavily backed the Mujahideen when Russia invaded Afghanistan.
Putin doesn’t do sabre rattling, he says what he means and backs that with his actions, if he or Lavrov or any of the spokex says they will destroy any attacking source he/they mean it and will carry it though.
Russia may have some sense but NATO are nutters and as for the Israelis – has no-one heard of “The Sampson Option”?
If only the modern world was built on people giving others bad haircuts when they had disagreements we would be all better for it. /s (yes I know what the Sampson option is, it’s an act of global genocide. no genome will survive).
Listening to the news tonight it seems that the USA intends to hit Syria within the next 48 hours.
The wording was slightly unclear but it sounded bad news.
As for Israeli attack.
It was a huge defeat.
Only 3 got through and it seems, having lost the fighter, they were too scared to enter Syria.
3 out of 8.
That fearsome invincible credibility just took an enormous whack.
Well done Syria.
Well done the boys who shot down the five – saving lives and damage.
Israeli jets very rarely enter Syria if they are bombing targets that can be his from outside the Syrian airspace and therefore air defence systems.
This technique is also employed by all air forces around the world, who use smart bombs.
They fly drones in to lock on the target then the jet that is flying at a high altitude launches the bomb/missile from miles away, before the enemy air defences even know they are being attacked.
Nothing to do with courage or lack of.
However Israel and the Western powers, will be very disappointed that only 3 out of 8 bombs got though, especially if this turns out to be as a result of the Russian made air defence systems that are in Syria. .
I cannot find the reports via-a-vis those bombs; any link(s)??
It’s so strange to disclose some indistinct message as an evidence, but not to show a single screenshot from street cameras or any of the leads that are usually part of any police investigation. This would be much more convincing.
Here’s a question that hasn’t been asked.
Are the Skripal’s dead ?
Apart from a very dodgy third hand phone call that could easily have been faked what evidence is there to support them:
1)still being alive.
2)still being in the country.
Just something to ponder.
I think they are and do what they are being paid to do. But this bogus message distraction today did make it cross my mind.
Dead or alive, they will never be seen again in public. Here’s a crazy scenario, please set my mind at rest but showing me how it is impossible:
1. Sergei is persuaded (or offers) to disappear, perhaps to avoid any future embarrassment of his connection with the Trump Dossier.
2. Not wanting to spend the rest of his life alone, he decides to bring daughter Yulia with him. She is perhaps not originally very happy (hence the reported argument at the restaurant).
3. After the restaurant they both ingest something to simulate the symptoms of Novichok (perhaps even a very highly watered down form so that it will show up in their blood).
4. When they arrive to Salisbury hospital the treating doctors, miraculously, are the specialists in chemical weapons (referred to in an earlier post) who are at the hospital, presumably as part of Toxic Dagger.
5. The doctors induce an artificial coma and treat them with an “antidote” (although of course there supposedly isn’t one).
6. The Skripals miraculously revive with no ill effects, and then disappear to their new life in a warm clime.
Madeira
Access to the Binary nerve agent.
Sergei embarrassed about anything he had done ? After what he did to his comrades. Doubtful.
Coincidence of Toxic dagger being moved from April to feb20th is still problematic.
Who put the nerve agent sample at the house and in the car.
What is the faked/real call to the cousin about.
The short period of time it took to treat and discover it was nerve agent(if there ever was any).
Why would our government go along with it all if they didn’t already know it was a setup they were controlling opposed to being one where our government could have been the target(in that case they would have been indecision on a massive scale before enacting any off the cuff plan to frame Russia).
The Skripals are not in Salisbury hospital. We shall not see their likeness again. Just to remind amid the constant novichok chatter: the Salisbury patient care chief said no nerve agent admissions.
How can Iran say that its response to an attack would be stronger than anticipated?
It has nukes, as I have long predicted!
(a) completely off topic, and
(b) depends what the anticipated response is, doesn’t it? If the anticipated response is that Iran would go back to having another round of meetings to come to yet another agreement, a “shut up and go away, we’re restarting our nuclear missile program” would be a very much stronger response than anticipated. Don’t you think?
The topic is about attacking the Shia because of their alleged gas attacks on Syria.
@Trowbridge H. Ford,
perhaps you ought to go back and re-read the lead story for these comments…
I’ve just had a horrible thought – if Russia was smart enough to make b*llockchops, suppose they have a secret weapon which has turned our government’s and MSM’s minds into cow pats? That might explain a lot.
I often wonder if the world’s gone mad, (present company excluded of course) can’t they see, or do they refuse to see that the west is determined to have its pound of flesh, no matter, the cost, no matter how much blood is shed, nor how many children may die in the process.
Will we, no we definitely will look back several years from now, and make close comparisons between the razing of Iraq to the ground, and the multitude of deaths which occured in the process, and the coming onslaught about to unfold in Syria.
History has a habit of repeating itself, I was going to say but we never learn. However in truth some just don’t want to learn.
look up “herd stupidity” 😉
Pre-social media yes but, in this day and age you can gather intel online if you look hard enough. Eventually you begin to see a pattern, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and now Syria, and Yemen.
Herd mentality applies to social media too, perhaps more so than the more traditional media.
As to patterns, official narrative presses its own (e.g. “brutal dictators murder their own people but are righteously deposed by the valiant West”).
You have a point there, but social media and the web, has given us a insight in the machinations of governments and politicians around the world that we never had before.
As you say herd mentality for some outweighs the need to search and check info for oneself, pity that.
Social media is all about herding people; isn’t that essentially what Cambridge Analytica did—identify herds that could be influenced in a particular way?
Indeed, but most of the “plebs” have exceptionally short term memory, and the mass disinformation media and the governments bank on that “bigly”!
“Eventually you begin to see a pattern” – Jesus H Christ – they spelled it out for you!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
The maxim :Cui Bono surely applies?
Unfortunately this is all down to a mistranslation from the Russian.
The weapon agent referred to was not “novichoks” but novi*jocks*: a highly-trained, secret team of hamster-averse Scotsmen, who were sent to Salisbury by Russia to conduct a deliberately-bungled poisoning, thus undermining Theresa May and the British government, and hastening the day when Scotland will become independent and the UK breaks up.
🙂
This international “diplomatic spat” over the C in NBC/CBRN is heading rapidly to the N of NBC/CBRN.
Annie Machon was just on Russian Channel 1 TV also poking fun at “the package” intercept by Hut 7 at Bletchley, but whilst she was smiling at the ‘fun’ of the weak arguments coming from SIGINT, the Russian TV tone this evening has been very very worrying, one commentator emphasised on-air that this provocation could lead to nuclear war.
Combine that with that RUSI/Chatham House/RIIA Canadian inner-circle expert on the BBC radio this morning, who also suggested to the passive sleepers that this situation might lead to nuclear war, and I see I will have to read “On the Beach” again, quickly.
Finally, if glowing isotopes by the weekend isn’t bad enough the pesky Russkies have revealed that Salisbury is going to have its The Mill pub removed & burnt!
Watching the film would be quicker, make it a double feature with “Threads”.
Maybe tangentially on-topic but — does anyone know on which days George Galloway’s TMOATS are aired, and at what time. And what is the ‘official’ Youtube page for them, and when the latest edition is put up? I can’t seem to make much sense of it.
Trump – ”Making Wahhabi terror great again” and ”Zionism first” would have been a more accurate campaign slogan.
The AL Qaeda death porn being broadcast on the hour every hour is discugting to have to avoid. Are there not laws against such things? Is there no depths the 1% will not stoop to in their quest for money? Every time the SAA advance nearer to the Golan = Murdoch global news goes into overdrive with snuff videos. Its as if he has a share in illegal oil and gas contracts near by………..?
Wonder if North Korea is taking notes on western ‘diplomacy’? When Trump inevitably attempts to humiliate the both Korea’s in the lead up to the ”historic meeting” between Trump and Kim, will the North react?
The US ”brains trust” continually states the North Korean regime are rational actors, won’t do anything crazy. Faced with overwhelming force, designed to wipe out an entire country, what is a ”rational” response? Was the Russian pilot, shot down, rational in pulling the pin on the grenades taking as many Wahhabi terrorists with him, rather than capture?
Every day gets darker with these out of control gangsters running ”the west” going unchallenged. The politicians, the businessmen, the academics, the ‘journalists’. Not in my name. I would not shed a tear if a serious dose of reality landed on their doorstep, it might just check their never ending campaign of slaughter for profit.
.This is the comment from dailymail: ” The message was real, however, the full story is it was intercepted by a listening post in CYPRUS.The message was transmitted from Syria, near Damascus. The term “package delivered” is used by pilots to indicate bombs have been dropped on target. The second intercepted message referred to a successful egress, terminology use by pilots to indicate that have left the combat zone.”
Though maybe everything in the world is about UK.
Government Propaganda Now Totally Bizarre:
Jeremy Corbyn should, on humanitarian ground, ask to visit the Skripal. It will be the straw that breaks the PM’s back
I’ve never voted Lab, but JC was amongst a handful of MP’s (surprisingly incl some Con) who are suggesting today a thirst for more FACTS not unicorn-droppings
For death pr0n , you can’t beat this site
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=350&lat=35.696111&lng=51.423056&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&fatalities=793338&injuries=1668350&psi_1=5269949&zm=8
you can recentre it where you feel, and play with the ‘toys’ to get a NATO/OTAN feeling of supremacy
#Republicofscotland:
Russia never threatens or is in the business of sabre rattling, as that’s considered language of the weak.
If Russia retaliates it’ll come as a very unpleasant unexpected surprise to the American fascist regime, like it did in Georgia 2008, the Crimea or indeed the ukraine.
This is an existential battle for Russia and it wont be intimidated, it abhors wars but stand as always ready.
“This is an existential battle for Russia and it wont be intimidated, it abhors wars but stand as always ready.”
Yes Keith, but not a direct threat to its existence yet. Neither Russia nor the US for that matter wants to play out wargames on home soil, for now in my opinion direct conflict isn’t on the cards.
The removal of Assad via the very dubious chemical attack, is the plan. I believe the Sailbury event is an attempt to alienate Russia and garner supoort against Putin’s next intervention in Syria to defend Assad.
In my opinion unless Russia is threatened with attack by the west, in which case Putin would probably go into full war mode. Putin’s forces will remain limited in Syria, and be more of a supporting role than a all out attacking force, China’s position in all of this could be an important factor in whether Assad stands or falls.
I don’t believe Russia will not abandon Syria; Russia has pledged its support to its historic ally and repeatedly has said that the leadership of the country is for its citizens to decide and no one else. And Russia isn’t going anywhere in my opinion. They also hold to that familiar adage about fighting them over there so we won’t be fighting them here.
Grrrr, my apologies for the double negative in my above quote:
corrected:
I believe Russia will not abandon Syria; Russia has pledged its support to its historic ally and repeatedly has said that the leadership of the country is for its citizens to decide and no one else. And Russia isn’t going anywhere in my opinion. They also hold to that familiar adage about fighting them over there so we won’t be fighting them her