In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story. Next week I shall look at alternative explanations.
Russia has a decade long secret programme of producing and stockpiling novichok nerve agents. It also has been training agents in secret assassination techniques, and British intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting nerve agent on doorknobs.
The only backing for this statement by Boris Johnson is alleged “intelligence”, and unfortunately the “intelligence” about Russia’s secret novichok programme comes from exactly the same people who brought you the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme, proven liars. Furthermore, the question arises why Britain has been sitting on this intelligence for a decade and doing nothing about it, including not telling the OPCW inspectors who certified Russia’s chemical weapons stocks as dismantled.
If Russia really has a professional novichok assassin training programme, why was the assassination so badly botched? Surely in a decade of development they would have discovered that the alleged method of gel on doorknob did not work? And where is the training manual which Boris Johnson claimed to possess? Having told the world – including Russia -the UK has it, what is stopping the UK from producing it, with marks that could identify the specific copy erased?
The Russians chose to use this assassination programme to target Sergei Skripal, a double agent who had been released from jail in Russia some eight years previously.
It seems remarkable that the chosen target of an attempt that would blow the existence of a secret weapon and end the cover of a decade long programme, should be nobody more prominent than a middle ranking double agent who the Russians let out of jail years ago. If they wanted him dead they could have killed him then. Furthermore the attack on him would undermine all future possible spy swaps. Putin therefore, on this reading, was willing to sacrifice both the secrecy of the novichok programme and the spy swap card just to attack Sergei Skripal. That seems highly improbable.
Only the Russians can make novichok and only the Russians had a motive to attack the Skripals.
The nub of the British government’s approach has been the shocking willingness of the corporate and state media to parrot repeatedly the lie that the nerve agent was Russian made, even after Porton Down said they could not tell where it was made and the OPCW confirmed that finding. In fact, while the Soviet Union did develop the “novichok” class of nerve agents, the programme involved scientists from all over the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia, as I myself learnt when I visited the newly decommissioned Nukus testing facility in Uzbekistan in 2002.
Furthermore, it was the USA who decommissioned the facility and removed equipment back to the United States. At least two key scientists from the programme moved to the United States. Formulae for several novichok have been published for over a decade. The USA, UK and Iran have definitely synthesised a number of novichok formulae and almost certainly others have done so too. Dozens of states have the ability to produce novichok, as do many sophisticated non-state actors.
As for motive, the Russian motive might be revenge, but whether that really outweighs the international opprobrium incurred just ahead of the World Cup, in which so much prestige has been invested, is unclear.
What is certainly untrue is that only Russia has a motive. The obvious motive is to attempt to blame and discredit Russia. Those who might wish to do this include Ukraine and Georgia, with both of which Russia is in territorial dispute, and those states and jihadist groups with which Russia is in conflict in Syria. The NATO military industrial complex also obviously has a plain motive for fueling tension with Russia.
There is of course the possibility that Skripal was attacked by a private gangster interest with which he was in conflict, or that the attack was linked to Skripal’s MI6 handler Pablo Miller’s work on the Orbis/Steele Russiagate dossier on Donald Trump.
Plainly, the British governments statements that only Russia had the means and only Russia had the motive, are massive lies on both counts.
The Russians had been tapping the phone of Yulia Skripal. They decided to attack Sergei Skripal while his daughter was visiting from Moscow.
In an effort to shore up the government narrative, at the time of the Amesbury attack the security services put out through Pablo Miller’s long term friend, the BBC’s Mark Urban, that the Russians “may have been” tapping Yulia Skripal’s phone, and the claim that this was strong evidence that the Russians had indeed been behind the attack.
But think this through. If that were true, then the Russians deliberately attacked at a time when Yulia was in the UK rather than when Sergei was alone. Yet no motive has been adduced for an attack on Yulia or why they would attack while Yulia was visiting – they could have painted his doorknob with less fear of discovery anytime he was alone. Furthermore, it is pretty natural that Russian intelligence would tap the phone of Yulia, and of Sergei if they could. The family of double agents are normal targets. I have no doubt in the least, from decades of experience as a British diplomat, that GCHQ have been tapping Yulia’s phone. Indeed, if tapping of phones is seriously put forward as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.
Their trained assassin(s) painted a novichok on the doorknob of the Skripal house in the suburbs of Salisbury. Either before or after the attack, they entered a public place in the centre of Salisbury and left a sealed container of the novichok there.
The incompetence of the assassination beggars belief when compared to British claims of a long term production and training programme. The Russians built the heart of the International Space Station. They can kill an old bloke in Salisbury. Why did the Russians not know that the dose from the door handle was not fatal? Why would trained assassins leave crucial evidence lying around in a public place in Salisbury? Why would they be conducting any part of the operation with the novichok in a public area in central Salisbury?
Why did nobody see them painting the doorknob? This must have involved wearing protective gear, which would look out of place in a Salisbury suburb. With Skripal being resettled by MI6, and a former intelligence officer himself, it beggars belief that MI6 did not fit, as standard, some basic security including a security camera on his house.
The Skripals both touched the doorknob and both functioned perfectly normally for at least five hours, even able to eat and drink heartily. Then they were simultaneously and instantaneously struck down by the nerve agent, at a spot in the city centre coincidentally close to where the assassins left a sealed container of the novichok lying around. Even though the nerve agent was eight times more deadly than Sarin or VX, it did not kill the Skripals because it had been on the doorknob and affected by rain.
Why did they both touch the outside doorknob in exiting and closing the door? Why did the novichok act so very slowly, with evidently no feeling of ill health for at least five hours, and then how did it strike both down absolutely simultaneously, so that neither can call for help, despite their being different sexes, weights, ages, metabolisms and receiving random completely uncontrolled doses. The odds of that happening are virtually nil. And why was the nerve agent ultimately ineffective?
Detective Sergeant Bailey attended the Skripal house and was also poisoned by the doorknob, but more lightly. None of the other police who attended the house were affected.
Why was the Detective Sergeant affected and nobody else who attended the house, or the scene where the Skripals were found? Why was Bailey only lightly affected by this extremely deadly substance, of which a tiny amount can kill?
Four months later, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess were rooting about in public parks, possibly looking for cigarette butts, and accidentally came into contact with the sealed container of a novichok. They were poisoned and Dawn Sturgess subsequently died.
If the nerve agent had survived four months because it was in a sealed container, why has this sealed container now mysteriously disappeared again? If Rowley and Sturgess had direct contact straight from the container, why did they not both die quickly? Why had four months searching of Salisbury and a massive police, security service and military operation not found this container, if Rowley and Sturgess could?
I am, with a few simple questions, demolishing what is the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I have ever heard – the Salisbury conspiracy theory being put forward by the British government and its corporate lackies.
My next post will consider some more plausible explanations of this affair.
Astonishing article on the beeb website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44834689
“Trump to leave after two night stay” is the headline. Not even awarded the title “President”. Were the two Bush war criminal Presidents treated with such disrespect? Were the Clintons ever treated with such disrespect? The beeb shows it’s true colours.
On CNN , it’s back to President Assad and the Syrian Government after months of Assad , the Monster and ‘regime’.
you’re complaining they didn’t call Trump president?? Unbelievable. What other calumnies has the BBC committed to accompany this outrageous insult to our dear US leader? I am shocked, I tell you.
Utterly outrageous. If they don’t commence referring to the corrupt moron as “The Supreme Leader of the Free World (and notable friend of a lot of filthy dictators too, ahem)”, I shall pen a letter to the Telegraph to declare my disgust forthwith.
Thanks for the Pavlovian responses 😀
No less than your rather silly (if you don’t mind my saying so) original post warranted. I hope you’re over your horror, disgust and – in your description – astonishment (!) – at the Great Leader being paid insufficient deference at every mention.
Russia Today is going on about Porton Down leaks this evening:
The Russian mission pointed out that both poisoning cases took place “in the vicinity of the secret military chemical laboratory in Porton Down,” which may well lead to the conclusion that “some kind of ‘leak’ from this laboratory might have taken place. This cannot be excluded.”
“We have already demanded that the UK reveal information concerning ongoing research and production of chemical warfare agents in Porton Down,” it added. [A pure formality: Russians have had informants inside PD since the day it opened in 1916, not to mention wall-to-wall hacking surveillance of today.]
…
The UK authorities say that the incidents in Amesbury and Salisbury are linked, but Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, Dave Collum, told RT that “it’s impossible to make a connection as there’s been no data presented” to the public to back those claims.
He also reiterated that London’s statements of only Russia being capable of producing the novichok chemical were “totally false.” He described the nerve agent as “a simple compound,” which is actually just “three steps from commercially available materials.”
“I’ve put it on a final exam on my course… and the students all got full credit. It was so easy, I knew none would lose credit because it’s like asking a bunch of bakers to [follow a] chocolate chip cookie recipe,” the US chemist said.
The thing that first annoyed me about the official original story of ‘only Russia could make it’ was that it sounded so unlikely. Unlikely that something being worked on decades ago in the USSR could not now be made in lots of more modern labs. And unlikely that only Russia got the information from the original lab. I remember reading that after the break up of the Soviet Union there was chaos, people weren’t paid, all kinds of things got out for a while. Then there are the original lab workers who have likely not all been traced.
About it being easy to make, I don’t know, I thought maybe the problem was more making it safely … or making it in the stable binary form that they wanted. I’m not a chemist.But being expected to believe that we had quickly found evidence of a secret poison that could only have come from Russia just sounded crazy, James Bond or Sherlock Holmes territory. A rare but unusually traceable poison?
“official original story of ‘only Russia could make it’ was that it sounded so unlikely.”
SC – we know that this could be produced by another country, because in 2016 the OPCW asked a lab in Iran to produce a batch whilst they monitored the procedure. Iranian chemists produced five batches of Novichoks and the information relating to these was added to the OPCW database. The Czech Republic also synthesised Novichock in 2017.
If our government backed up by our media, is happy to tell blatent lies such as that, then they will lie about everything and anything.
yes … all that came out gradually … I just mean the first version …
However implausible is Porton Down leak theory to the inquisitive skeptic, it could well be the most efficient counter-propaganda line available to Russia. It is a simple idea with obvious connections that is hard to debunk. Russia cannot substantially react to developments because it is cut off from the evidence base, so they fight back with what they can.
Will Rainbow Quisling, Grand Master of all things Gay, spend today closeted with President Trump at Turnberry’s nineteenth hole, working the concept of Scotland Independent and American moral, legal and logistical support?
With her “Love” teeshirt she will go far.
At the Guardian: Novichok: police take away 400 potentially contaminated items
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/14/novichok-police-find-more-than-400-potentially-contaminated-items
Totalitarians love scare stories like “terrorists” or “nerve gas” to push through their own agendas. Also perfect to pull the “secret” blanket over all their hanky panky.
The behavior of Mi6, CIA or FBI these days scare me much more.
It’s quite rare to find any news story on the Mi’s and their modus operandi.
Tho’ irish News today have a simple story of how a growing community leader was ‘visited’ (the officers didn’t directly harm him, contrary to the headline, but they did menace/intimidate which might have)
http://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2018/07/14/news/co-tyrone-man-claims-he-was-hospitalised-after-alleged-mi5-psni-informer-approach-1382374/
This of course in the context of ‘unknowns’ bombing former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. There’s no war like a perpetual war, or social/political instability that can’t be leveraged or invented nowadays?
I can tell you from personal experience how they operate:
1) FSD surveillance – phone taps, opening a few envelopes of your mail (to show you they can), phone calls calling you unpleasant things, trailing your car, sending foreign trainee spies to tail you (thank you NZ and SA for thinking me walking up hills in Snowdonia and the Lake District is a threat to national Security)
2) Hacking work computers – keystroke hacking to ensure nothing you can do with a computer is secret
3) Tracking mobiles, bank cards, passports at all times
4) Planting troublemakers in places of work
Etc etc
Their priority is preventing independent minds at all costs and keeping people as debt slaves: become debt free and you go from a great prospect to unemployable.
Nothing to do with security at all.
Everything to do with mind control.
Indeed. There is an axis of evil I am ashamed to say, and it likes to point its dirty finger.
Do you remember Snowden when in Hong Kong briefly, saying he was worried about one of the Triad gangs (organized crime syndicates) coming for him, at the behest of the CIA, as they frequently worked together . Snowden worked for the CIA remember, so he probably wasn’t BS’ing. Scary indeed.
They don’t like it up ’em.
Israeli minister wants to close embassy in Ireland after vote to ban imports of settlement goods
https://www.rt.com/news/433102-israel-embassy-ireland-ban/
This is the infamous Avigdor Liberman, ex nightclub bouncer, making yet another of his foolish statements.
‘Now, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has joined the protests, warning that the embassy in Dublin should be “immediately” closed as a result of the vote.
“The Irish Senate has given its support to a populist, dangerous and extremist anti-Israel boycott initiative that hurts the chances of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians; it will have a negative impact on the diplomatic process in the Middle East,” a spokesperson for the Defense Ministry told the Irish Independent. RT has contacted the ministry for comment.’
Dialogue!? Huh.
Would the minutes of that *dialogue* be bulleted……….???????
EU Not Ending Greek Crisis, They End Greece
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, July 13, 2018
With great fanfare at the end of June, the 19 EU Eurozone finance ministers announced the end to the eight-year-long Greek debt crisis that brought the entire Euro structure into its deepest crisis to date. The exercise is a deep deception. The EU ministers refused to write off any Greek state debt. Instead they did a destructive interest capitalization of the existing debt, similar to what Washington did to Latin America in the 1980’s. What in fact is going on we might justifiably ask.
Under the new scheme, the due date for loan repayments will be extended by 10 years. With loan write-offs off the table, Eurozone ministers agreed to extend maturities by 10 years on major parts of its total debt obligations, on a public debt still equal to 180% of GDP or €340 billion, despite cutbacks and reforms. The EU loaned an added 15 billion euros ($17.5 billion) in new debt to “ease” the exit.’
As one might expect, the name of Goodman Sachs occurs twice in the excellent piece. Madame Lagarde’s too.
Those poor Greek people. Shafted.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/eu-not-ending-greek-crisis-they-end-greece/5647441
Pity it was successive Greek governments that shafted their people in the first place. Not those who were helping out, even if not very well. Anyway, according to other reports, Greece is slowly mending.
You apparently have studied the matter vigorously.
Is it true that Charlie Rowley seems to have had an unusual change of address before becoming ill?
It’s a housing association house – part of the tiny requirement for social housing in new developments.
The post mortem on Dawn Sturgess will take place on Tuesday and the inquest will be opened on Thursday. I predict that it will be immediately adjourned. Ball into the long grass.
http://news.sky.com/story/more-than-400-items-found-in-amesbury-novichok-investigation-11436919
Her friends are arranging their own memorial gathering on Friday as it is likely the funeral will be delayed.
In the same way that we used to ask about Werritty, WHERE IS SERGEI SKRIPAL?
Ref Werritty, I saw that Liam Fox popped up yesterday to criticize the Trump protesters. He is a creep.
As for Trump, he is ceaseless. Now he is saying the Queen is in good health and that she has many more years in her!
http://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-calls-queen-fantastic-ahead-of-vladimir-putin-meeting-11437504
Skripal was a spy. Why couldn’t that the novichok be his? Rowley and Sturgess could have picked up a vial after it was clumsily disposed of by Skripal.
Now that the monstrous regiment of media women has exhausted itself of last week’s Trumpian caterwauling it is time perhaps to concentrate minds on the “100 Items to Disappear First from the Shops” on Brexit Day.
B-Day will be empty shelves day and it will be fun.
BoJo should become a real patriot, putting the crypto patriot rifkinds and wellbys amongst us to shame, by whistleblowing the truth about this fake novichok saga. Or it will be the hottest hamam in deepest Hell for the turk. Its about time we had a labour government the 99% are wide awake to the chicanery of the 1% Etonians.
Re: My post yesterday (July 14, 2018 at 23:37)
Local man Sam Hobson: “I came round at 11 o’clock in the morning, there was a load of ambulances parked outside and the door was open and I seen Dawn getting taken out on a stretcher.”
Whereas (https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2622250/incident-at-amesburys-archers-gate/)
“A South Western Ambulance Trust spokesperson told Spire FM News they were called at 6.20pm.”
So whose ambulances were in attendance at 11:00 a.m. that morning? The official story, courtesy of the BBC is that “on Saturday 30 June, paramedics were called twice to a flat in Muggleton Road in Amesbury – first at 10:15 BST after Ms Sturgess, 44, collapsed, and again at 18:20 BST after Mr Rowley, 45, also fell ill.”
Sam Hobson went on to explain how Charlie Rowley emerged into the street when Dawn Sturgess was being placed in an ambulance, explained the situation, then complained of being poisoned himself and broke out into a profuse sweat – not that he waited five hours before doing so.
Maybe Hobson elided the two accounts for convenience. Either that or he simply doesn’t know the time of day.
Doodlebug, I don’t understand your point.
Do you not see the inconsistencies? I repeat:
“A South Western Ambulance Trust spokesperson told Spire FM News they were called at 6.20pm.”
So whose ambulances were in attendance at 11:00 a.m. that morning?
Charlie Rowley is said to have fallen victim late in the afternoon (hence the second medical alert). Yet Sam Hobson describes him leaving the house as Dawn Sturgess is taken from it, feeling sick, claiming he was poisoned and breaking out into a sweat. Hobson’s description of events is contiguous, that is he makes no reference to any interval of time never mind a gap of five hours plus.
The bottom line is that Hobson’s eye witness account does not tally with the official time-line of events. Why not? Follow the links I have already provided and check it out for yourself.
I’m not sure that Hobson’s words “that’s when he started sweating really badly, he said he felt he’d been poisoned and that.” were said immediately after what precedes in the video.
There is a change of view just at this moment. Thus it is possible that words of Hobson explaining that hours passed were cut.
See here a more complete quotation :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/04/wiltshire-unknown-substance-leaves-pair-critically-ill-in-salisbury-hospital
Well…. Charlie and James definitely went to the Saturday afternoon Baptist church fete. and engaged with the hog roast. Many witnesses to that. I remembered that specifically… I thought he was being a bit callous not going to the hospital with Dawn but I guess he had James to entertain.
Thanks Inquirer.
I replied to this point of yours on p.6., and in so doing discovered that the Guardian has posted two slightly different versions of the same video clip. Either one is a re-take or they have each been edited slightly differently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tHIm5pWz3A
versus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K–2CaLXQpY
What do you think?
Coming up at 9 on BBC1. Theresa May, Sadiq Khan and Alan Bennett.
Papers reviewed by Amanda Platell (former SPAD to Hague), Ayesha Hazarika (former SPAD to Miliband E) and BBC stooge from Washington, Jon Sopel.
Alan Bennett is the only worthwhile contributor there.
May is giving out dire warnings – stick with the partei line or else. She has taken/been given space in the Heil on Sunday by the new editor, Geordie Greig, friend of royalty etc. LOL He succeeds Dacre as editor of the Heil in November. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie_Greig
PM Theresa May warns party not to put Brexit at risk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44836020
Duh. Greig not the ‘new editor of the MoS’ but the editor.
I see he is on the board of Lebedev’s outfit and ‘Independent Print Ltd’ as was Evgeny Lebedev and now with Alexander Lebedev.
Talk about spreading it wide.
https://companycheck.co.uk/director/909694056/GEORDIE-CARRON-GREIG/companies
You would think that they would have put Gideon on the Evening Standard’s two companies but no, he is isn’t there. Just the hired hand!
Does the propaganda come from just one source these days? Are they ALL in IT together?
France-Groatia play final today, 18-00 Moscow time. The last day of World Cup.
Emotional article in russian news, compares England team to young boys at summer camp, whos family were too busy to visit on week-end. I’m sorry for yesterday’s match result, and I say, England even never tried to win. They looked lost. It’s a pity they did so much effort and went beyond expectations, and just ‘сдулись’ had not much desire to fight for victory.
I have to disagree about not trying to win yesterday. They don’t have much cutting edge at the moment, but they had numerous chances to equalize in the second half. England also made more changes than Belgium who are clearly the better and more mature team. I personally think Belgium were the best team at the tournament and they just didn’t turn up the their semi against France.
It was also very hot for an England team who had one days less rest after having to play extra time and travel from Moscow to St Petersburg for the match.
They should at least get a new anthem or kneel down next time.
Disgrace.
I’m a mother of a boy and I feel for them. These young men did well anyway, respect.
Skripal is one of the ‘holes’ in the Steele story?
Breitbart today[on Strzok/Ohr]: then Steele paying whoever the heck he needed to pay to try to get some of the garbage that he got
= Skripal & D-notice
At the risk of boring people with American politics , [ it should be followed as whereas UK tries to hide everything, forever – the cousins for some reason like to get everything/everyone out in the open] ,
The “Steele dossier” — composed in 2016 by former British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele as a compilation of accusations against Trump and commissioned by the Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS — was used as a basis by the DOJ and FBI procure warrants for surveillance of Trump campaign persons via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) described the potential provision of the “Steele dossier” to the Obama administration’s DOJ and FBI via the Ohrs as politically incestuous.
“It’s really unprecedented to have the opposition party’s candidate; opposition research being supplied to the incumbent administration via the incumbent party’s candidate,” DeSantis said in a Friday interview on SiriusXM [Satellite Radio from the Rock & Roll satellites]
“It’s really unprecedented to have the opposition party’s candidate; opposition research being supplied to the incumbent administration via the incumbent party’s candidate,” DeSantis said in a Friday interview on SiriusXM
No it’s not. Watergate amounted to the same thing. Richard Nixon was both the incumbent president and the Republican party’s candidate for re-election. The covert ‘ops’, of which Watergate was but a part, were conducted with his approval.
Hmm DB, I can now see the parallels with the Watergate affairs, strange how our ‘bought’ media can’t focus on the obvious.
I thought that the 2016/17/18/19… American Civil War would have got the occasional mention, other than minority reports in the ‘States
“strange how our ‘bought’ media can’t focus on the obvious.”
That’s the damnable thing. Fifty years ago the press in America stood up for their constitutional rights and, by default, those of the American people. I know of no MSM challenge to the UK government over its flagrant lies regarding the Salisbury/Amesbury poisonings, or indeed other on-going episodes of deliberate deceit which I needn’t go into here.
It might be argued that with the rise of the Internet, Social media etc. it is the responsibility of the ‘blogosphere’ now to tread where the MSM dare not, and illuminate the truth. After all it was a blogger who provoked the downfall of journalist Mary Mapes in the USA over her reporting of Bush Junior’s apparent draft dodging during the Vietnam war. But that is not entirely true either, since it was really the press with a partisan axe to grind who fed off said blogger’s self-anointed expertise and forced the issue which led to Mapes’ dismissal, that of her colleagues, and basically the muzzling of investigative journalism during the Bush presidency (quelle surprise!).
Although the UK does not have a written constitution, certain fundamentals of democratic government have at least been historically observed through what are conventionally labelled ‘checks and balances’. Sadly, for those with eyes to see it, these principles are being dismantled before our very eyes, while the compliant media simply look on, apparently unconcerned.
Several differences:
IIRC, Nixon didn’t know about the Watergate break-in until after the event; it was the cover-up that did for him.
The “plumbers” were party operatives, not Federal employees who had a responsibility to be neutral between candidates for election.
The intelligence community was not weaponised by the incumbent party against the opposition during the election.
The intelligence community was not weaponised by the losing party in an election to try to prevent the winner taking office.
The intelligence community was not weaponised by the opposition party to undermine the ability of the winning party to govern.
Now, IF the Watergate beak-in had produced some innocuous information against the Democrats, that information had then been laundered through MI6 and tarted-up with unbelievable nonsense to make it look (marginally) damaging, that marginally damaging document had been used to illegitimately get warrants authorising blanket spying on the whole Democrat campaign, the Democrats had nevertheless won, and then Democrats in the new cabinet had been interviewed by the FBI and arrested because they couldn’t remember exactly what they had said in conversations months before that the IC had been recording because of the unjustified warrants, and so on and so on … THEN you might have a point.
And of course, Watergate probably was not unusual activity for American presidents. The reason that the Deep State sources fed information to the press in that case but not others was the same as the motivation for killing JFK and Bobby Kennedy, shooting Reagan, and attempting a colour revolution against Trump – namely getting rid of a (comparatively) peace-making president or candidate.
What you think is ‘the reason’ is in no way reflected by the story of Mark Felt, the former FBI no. 2 responsible for feeding information to Times Magazine and the Washington Post.
I don’t think one can consider Richard Nixon, who was personally responsible for scuppering an early Vietnam peace summit, as peace-making, even comparatively.
“Nixon didn’t know about the Watergate break-in until after the event”
And Bill Clinton ‘did not have sexual relations with that woman’.
It’s all here:
http://www.thejournal.ie/what-was-watergate-14-facts-richard-nixon-494970-Jun2012/
“the so-called ‘White House Plumbers’…was a group set up within the White House and tasked with stopping the leak of classified information to the media.”
Tasked by whom I wonder?
What on earth do you mean by ‘weaponised’?
“Now, IF the Watergate beak-in….blah, blah, blah…”
Underhand behaviours do not have to be identical in every poisonous detail in order to be comparable.
Just one thing about what was used to start the official FBI investigation. It’s my understanding that they have denied using the dossier as the basis for starting the investigation because of the obvious conflict of interest where the dossier came from and it would constitute a breach of FBI protocols. I think it was the Alexander Downer contact to the State department about his conversation with a drunken George Papadopoulos at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London in May 2016 was used officially to justify the FBI investigation.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-31/alexander-downer-allegedly-linked-to-us-russia-investigation/9295180
We also know that was bollocks because Downer was one of the illegal approaches to illicit a reason to spy on Trump.
The Israeli war criminal, Tzipi Livni, who was in Olmert’s government as Minister for Foreign Affairs that put paid to over 1,400 Palestinian lives in Gaza just after Christmas in 2008 when Israel enacted ‘Cast Lead’ upon the captive people there, has been admitted as a Trustee to the International Crisis Group. PCHR estimate that over 5,000 were wounded in that war and the ‘Gaza strip’ was bombed to smithereens including the infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%9309)
There is no irony in this blurb.
‘Our Mission
The International Crisis Group is an independent organisation working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world.
Crisis Group sounds the alarm to prevent deadly conflict. We build support for the good governance and inclusive politics that enable societies to flourish. We engage directly with a range of conflict actors to seek and share information, and to encourage intelligent action for peace. ‘
http://www.crisisgroup.org/who-we-are/crisis-group-updates/crisis-group-welcomes-new-members-board-trustees
The International Crisis Group was initially funded by Soros. You can see the name
of the wife of Stephen Kinnock there. She was the Danish PM. Also Malloch Brown who was the UK Ambassador to the UN. When you read that Obama and George W Bush have been honoured by them, you get the picture.
It is now one of these tax exempt set ups that AIPAC have helped to foster in the US. Based in Brussels, 43% of its funding comes from ‘governments’. No names. No pack drill.
http://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/ICG%202017%20FS.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Crisis_Group
Worst of all, the Zionist supporting Guardian have given Livni space to reject the Palestinians’ Right of Return.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/13/palestinian-right-of-return-peace-uk-israel
She has been in more political parties than we have had hot dinners. The latest – the Zionist Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzipi_Livni
Such violence within her.
Yes, I agree about the International Crisis Group. I once had to sit next to one of their pundits at a dinner. Very slippery and glib, but no better understanding of ME problems.
C*nts like that always stay lengths away from the real killing and dying.
Illustrative of the chaos within May’s government is the fact that the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (shades of Gilbert and Sullivan in that title) was not present when a question, of which there was advance notice, was asked of him.
To give him his due, Bercow does not let the Tories get away with anything.
‘Visit of President Trump: Policing
12 July 2018 11.12am
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department—or another Minister, if they care to turn up—to make a statement on policing during the visit of President Trump.
Mr Speaker
Has there been a change of plan or anything?
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
No change of plan; none at all.
Mr Speaker
No change of plan. My office was advised that Minister Hurd would be responding to the urgent question. [Interruption.] He is here now. May I just say to the Minister, while he recovers his breath, that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) has just put the question? I do not think that the Minister requires it to be repeated; I think that he knows the substance of the matter. I trust that the hon. Lady is content that she has put the question, and we look forward to the initial reply of the Minister.
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
Let me first apologise to the hon. Lady for not being in the Chamber when she put the question. I also apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House. blah blah
/..
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-07-12/debates/51552E0F-8CE0-4BB4-966B-9FCCD21C4E97/VisitOfPresidentTrumpPolicing
There are so many ministerial changes, they don’t know what the day of the week is or what they are supposed to be doing.
Off topic but worth mentioning.
Why is this Andrew Griffith schmuck (and I mean that in the true sense of the word) not charged with criminal offences? He’s an MP and they are just barmaids is that it? You don’t have to be physically attached to someone to stalk them. Telecom statutes don’t apply to disgraceful politicians eh.
Newspapers report they met him on social media. I don’t think so. More likely he sought them on social media.
” “Take off the bra and panties… you’ve got Daddy in such a frenzy” and “Daddy is going to have to put some manners on you”.
2000 messages. How much evidence do you want FFS. Those poor women’s lives must have been made a frickin misery. Not one, but two of them. Not even a caution. But do two miles over the speed limit and they can compel you to attend a ‘speed awareness’ course at a cost of about £100. In effect, both arrest and rob you. They truly know no shame whatsoever.
I’m sure President Trump was delighted to meet Her Majesty alone and not to have to put up with Charles and William’s whining.
It’s ironic, as Trump spouts Make America Great Again at every turn, whilst demonising China’s trade tariffs. That the majority of the MAGA hats are actually made in China, and that the price of them will rise due to Trump’s trade war with China.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/397048-some-maga-hats-made-in-china-may-increase-in-price-because-of-tariffs
Matters not a jot for Numptie Trumptie and his educationally challenged fan club in the rust belt and the flyover states. Obama put the economy on an expanding trajectory and orange Mussolini threw in trillions in fiscally uncosted tax relief. If there is one thing that Trump really does excell at it’s getting into debt. Ok, so the tax cuts were mainly targeted at the oligarchy and the corporations, but a rising tide and all that.
The pathological narcissist doesn’t give a fuck about the generations that will be working when the debt falls due. Like Bill Maher continually reminds, the Republicans are terrible at running the economy but ruthlessly brilliant at enacting their agenda.
Investing.com, Tec 21, 2016 — A new study by economists from Harvard and Princeton indicates that 94% of the 10 million new jobs created during the Obama era were temporary positions.
The study shows that the jobs were temporary, contract positions, or part-time “gig” jobs in a variety of fields.
Female workers suffered most heavily in this economy, as work in traditionally feminine fields, like education and medicine, declined during the era.
The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during the Obama era, who were working in these kinds of temporary jobs, increased from 10.7% of the population to 15.8%.
Love how you look down your nose at the working class.
Nearly all the emails going through Hillary Clinton’s private server were being sent to “a foreign entity unrelated to Russia”, according to a member of the House Committee on the Judiciary. Since the American intelligence chiefs haven’t told us about that before, I assume that the emails were sent to a ‘friend’ of the USA.
During his questioning of top FBI official Peter Strzok, Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert revealed that Strzok was briefed about those emails by Frank Rucker, an investigator with the Intelligence Community Inspector General:
“Mr. Rucker reported to those of you, the four of you there, in the presence of the ICIG attorney, that they had found this anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s emails going through their private server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails, every single one except four, over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list. (…) The problem is it was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia … ”
http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/12/ig-clinton-foreign-emails/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTAlUormPA
Probably her old civilian-bombing, terrorist-funding, woman-oppressing, gay-murdering,, Clinton Foundation-bankrolling pals down in Riyadh.
You haven’t understood, I suppose deliberately. It means “the only democracy in the Middle East”, cough, cough.
Why?
Obvious really.
The emails were being blind-copied automatically. You’re being disingenuous if you think Saudi has that sort of competence; they have trouble even speaking English (and I used to work in the country).
“I assume that the emails were sent to a ‘friend’ of the USA”
It might be China, who started developing an ultrasonic aircraft, remarkably similar to the US’s, shortly afterwards.
Talking about assassinations in general, have just been reading “We kill because we can” by Laurie Calhoun, it is about Obama’s drone programme and likens assassinations by drone as similar to contract killings. Obama has killed 1000 s of terrorist suspects and hundreds of children. apparently on his Tuesday meetings he would give the ok to the assassinations. Any male between the age of 15 and 50 who was killed is deemed as legitimate target.
Obama stepped up the drone assassination programme after Bush by ten times though he did try and keep US boots off the ground. Trump needless to say has continued, though he does not personally get involved in who gets killed.
It would be very interesting to compare the number of assassinations of Putin versus Obama……….I think I know who would be the winner !
@ Geoffrey July 15, 2018 at 11:28
‘Last Year President Obama Reportedly Told His Aides That He’s ‘Really Good At Killing People’:
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-said-hes-really-good-at-killing-people-2013-11?IR=T
And then there’s the Hildbeast with ‘We came, we saw, he died’ (re Qaddafi).
The Yanks sure know how to pick ’em (or should I say, the Bilderberg Group do).
Jimmy Carter has been the only half-decent President since they bumped off JFK (and JFK was no saint).
“Jimmy Carter has been the only half-decent President since they bumped off JFK (and JFK was no saint).”
I agree. He had a moral compass. I seem to remember reading that he was never happy with the pressure from aides and other advisers. He may not be an intellectual but I think he has a basic decency and common sense. He made a bad mistake in arming the anti-communist Islamic guerrillas but I feel he did much less damage across the globe than Reagan, Clinton and successive presidents since. With the inception of Reagan, the successive US administrations have become increasingly insane, corrupt, arrogant, dangerous.
A further point of Calhoun’s book is that all of Obama’s assassinations have been in very poor countries of very poor dark skinned Muslims.
Someone lost his Fentanyl or Carfentanil medication?
The Scottish police have collared the paraglider. What’s he in for?
Trump self-obsession is revealed throughout his Twitter. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
It might be better for his health and his BMI if he actually got out of the ‘buggy’ and did some walking round the course.
Trump tees off again before leaving UK
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44834689
The sooner he’s out of the country, the better. As for his use of fossil fuel and his carbon footprint, the least said the better.
Farage had Steve Bannon live on LBC earlier – Bannon the right wing racist who promoted Trump and then left the WH after a few months as Trump’s ‘chief strategist’. He left a week following Charlottesville. He talked about his background. From a working class family. Not well off but he got a MBA at Harvard following a Masters from Georgetown Univ while he served in the US Navy. Then guess where? Goldman Sachs. He found his colleagues to be mainly of a different class and with inherited wealth. It was an excellent education for him he said. I bet it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon
His page has been massively edited since it originated in 2013 after he joined Breitbart.
‘Stephen Bannon, the filmmaker responsible for the pro-Sarah Palin movie The Undefeated, has been named executive chairman. Bannon, a former naval officer with masters degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard Business School, was a mergers and acquisitions investment banker at Goldman Sachs and has also been a Breitbart News board member since its founding.’
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/andrew-breitbart-news-executives-death-301754
Yes, this is indeed a ludicrous conspiracy theory. But the most ludicrous conspiracy theory I have ever heard is the Official 9/11 conspiracy theory. You know, the one that defies the laws of physics!
‘Oh the buzzing of the bees and the cigarette trees……’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZNk4pOb2Ww
Those bees will be after the Russian pollen on the bottle.
Cr*p in the Heil.
Pollen on bottle which contained Novichok that killed mother ‘could prove it was used by Russian agents in attack on former double agent and his daughter’
•Police confirm the bottle will be analysed at Porton Down chemical weapons research complex
•Leading chemist says surface will have telltale dust, pollen and fibre particles
•Clues could help prove government’s accusation it was used by Kremlin agents
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5954861/Pollen-bottle-contained-Novichok-prove-used-Russian-agents-attack.html
Let me guess – pollen from Russian buckwheat. And the glass will have a chemical structure unique to the Shikhany chemical lab (I suppose Cyrillic letters on the bottle would be going a bit too far). Clear proof, so that all the huge holes in the official narrative won’t matter any more. And as Hamish de Bretton Gordon tweeted yesterday, “of course #OPCW can now attribute blame”.
The Mail is just filling space. Pollen in March? Glass works do tend to have a specific fingerprint as defined by rare earth oxides. You just have to be able to analyse a very broad spectrum of oxides with very high resolution. The UK has very good labs in that respect. The former Glass Research Council is excellent.
The BBC and other outlets eg.Guardian seems to have to keep repeating ‘Novichok’ – not ‘nerve agent’ because that’s too generic it’s always ‘Novichok’ in every headline and report. All May has said is , ‘of a type developed by Russia’, yet the BBC has to make it definitively Russian. It’s a bit like when the BBC kept calling Daesh Islamic State when other news organisations refrained because it was offensive to people of that faith.
Agenda much?
Actually, there is an even more obvious reason why Basu’s “explanation” as to why it took 9 days to find the bottle is utter bollocks. Biological or chemical evidence can degrade, especially during hot weather. It is unthinkable that police would prefer to wait a week and risk losing evidence rather than get more staff on the scene, giving them additional training if necessary. In reality, they probably had sufficient manpower and completed the search within typical timelines. The “evidence” entered the picture much later.
Where did it say they waited a week? Whatever evidence is in or on the bottle is already over four months old, another few days isn’t going to make much difference.
No matter what had happened with that bottle it would’ve been seized upon by the conspiracy theorists and made to look significant. If it had been found quickly that would’ve been suspicious, if it hadn’t been found at all again, suspicious.
Well of course. The whole narrative is so ridiculous that the bottle is always going to look like a plant, no matter what. At least if it had been found earlier the police wouldn’t have looked incompetent into the bargain.
If you research hazmat and decom equiment and operations (lots of info available online) you will find that the police could maintain continuous presence on the scene with no problem whatsoever. Working in contaminated areas is an old craft with many applications, including as eleborate as medical treatment. Large-volume hazmat and mobile decom equipment is readily available in firefighting units and civil defence.
Rowley and Sturges fell ill on the 30th, and it was recoginsed as nerve-agent related on the same day.
The only way the police would have allowed a bottle – obviously, a potential source of poison and/or biodegradable evidence, to sit at the scene for full ten days before it was analysed, is that they waited to recover it. Which I think unlikely. So the bottle was simply not there.
I don’t see why it would feed conspiracy theorists if the bottle was found in a day or two. This is the usual time to recover an item during a home search, if countless media reports are any indication.
If the bottle had been found promptly it would’ve given rise to claims that it had been planted. How else, you’d be asking, could plod have found it so quickly?
Nobody knows what conditions are like inside the flat, bloke could be a hoarder for all we know, and it’s unlikely the bottle would’ve been on the kitchen table with a label attached. It could’ve been at the bottom of a re-cycling bin.
Nobody apart from the police has enough information to say whether or not the time taken to find the bottle is significant. As I said it’s necessary to make something of it to prop up the usual lame conspiracy theory.
Sorry, I just don’t understand how can a bottle in a flat be found “too quickly” and look suspicious to anyone, especially one that was handled recently. Recycling bins would be an obvious starting place, of course. If the conditions inside the flat so incredibly hampered the search that it took 10 days to get to priority items of evidence despite having the resources to work full-time on the scene, it was Basu’s duty to mention this rather than give “timelines” which are unrealistic and at odds with so much public information, raising further doubts.
Your just spouting distractions here.
So police would never, first thing, turn their attention to a ‘re-cycling bin’?
Worse than conspiracists are apologists.
You’re not one of them fortunately.
You’re just funny.
Agree Igor, the evidence probably entered the scene post events . It’s either that or the couple were involved in the Skripal affair even if they didn’t know what they were really doing . They may be addicts but addicts don’t bring small bottles with unknown liquids/ substances home despite the narrative in that sense.
More appalling bias at the BBC. Their lead report on the World this Weekend today was about Brexit and the only people they interviewed were local Conservatives in Essex and Eric Pickles, complete with leading questions about May’s position and the obligatory swipes at Corbyn. Then they got on to advertising more protests against Trump, this time in Helsinki.
Never mind the country – it’s time to take back the BBC and put it back under the control of the people who pay the licence fee.