Skripal: Theresa May set to hit back Russia over spy attack

[MacCruiskeen]

Former ambassador Craig Murray has been essential reading on this blatant scam since day 1. Two new posts today, succinct and informative, attentive to the evidence, and un-mealymouthed. See also the short embedded videos:

The Poison in our Body Politic
233 comments
4 Apr, 2018

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... y-politic/

Johnson and May Hide as their Lies Dissolve
263 comments

4 Apr, 2018

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... -dissolve/

[alloneword]

Sorry, just realised it's not been posted here* - this whole scrabble to delete the tweet etc. came about because the Chief Exec of Porton Down - Gary Aitkenhead - gave an interview to Sky News yesterday... well, see for yourselves.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/9811 ... 28/video/1 -or-



He couldn't quite weasel around the reporters questions.

Worth noting as well: at 3.30 in the youtube vid above, he says "something that's probably only within the capabilities of a state actor"...

A statement that morphs into:

UK scientists: Only 'a state actor' could make chemical weapon poison used in spy attack
by Joel Gehrke | April 03, 2018 05:13 PM

Only “a state actor” could have produced the chemical weapon used to poison a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom, British military scientists said Tuesday.

"[The poison required] extremely sophisticated methods to create, something only in the capabilities of a state actor,” Defense Science and Technology Laboratory CEO Gary Aitkenhead, who leads the British military’s research arm, told Sky News.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/poli ... spy-attack

You couldn't make it up...

*edit: Mac, you beat me to it - oh, well...

[MacCruiskeen]

^^Damn, that Washington Examiner report is some spin on the news. Twisted, really.

FWIW, the news that Porton Down could not identify the origin of the stuff (and that the UK govt was, therefore, caught with its trousers down) was top item on the German radio news today, quite uncontorted.

Meanwhile:

‘UK investigators set to hide the truth, not find it’ – Litvinenko’s father on Skripal case
RT – April 2, 2018

[...]

Litvinenko senior says the poisoning of his son was designed as a widely-publicized false-flag operation to show the world that Moscow was extremely “cruel,” and the way that it allegedly “deals with its enemies.” The ongoing Skripal scandal, in its turn, was launched to provoke a reaction from Russia, he believes.

“They realized that they have screwed up big time [with the Litvinenko poisoning] and decided to change their tactics a bit. Therefore, they do not show [any evidence] now, but keep it all in secret waiting for Russia to react to it. If there was, as they say, the ‘Russian trace’ there, everything would have been clear long time ago,” Litvinenko said.

He believes that, given the different goal, the ongoing investigation is significantly less transparent than it was back in 2006, since it is easier to hide the truth from the beginning than to try and sweep it under the rug afterward.



“It’s the same with Sasha [Aleksandr], if there was the ‘Russian trace,’ it would emerge over and over again up to this day. But the Scotland Yard was not looking for a criminal. Scotland Yard was covering the tracks,” Litvinenko stated. “Now they do not want to show these tracks altogether, since they know they will have to cover them up the same way as with Sasha.”

The Skripal scandal would eventually backfire on those who initiated it, Litvinenko said. “It will be very difficult to hide it all. And they will eventually fail. They will be caught, and Theresa May will be very ashamed. And this clown, their Foreign Minister [Boris Johnson] – he will be very ashamed too.”

Devil’s bargain

[...]

https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2018/0 ... ipal-case/

[MacCruiskeen]

A typically scrupulous documentation & analysis by the excellent Moon of Alabama:

April 04, 2018

"It's The Cover-Up"
UK Foreign Office Deletes Tweet, Posts False Transcript, Issues New Lies

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/04/it ... .html#more

[Belligerent Savant]

.

And yet, the initial fever-pitched missives by the MSM (and some here in RI, by extension) were practically drooling to render Russia Guilty As Charged prior to any sober assessment of the facts (or lack thereof).

It's been an ongoing theme in our culture of late. Problematic, to say the least.

(to repeat the standard disclaimer: no one here is claiming Russia/Putin/TRUMP are noble characters; no entity in our current political climate is noble; far from it. But the RUSH to condemn blindly, absent details/evidence, is disappointing* to observe).


*euphemism/understatement.

[Grizzly]

^^^^
Ding, ding, ding...This this, this...

Hat's off to ye, Belligerent Savant!

[Spiro C. Thiery]

.RUSH to condemn.

In the nineteen-eighties, theretofore Randian fanboy Neel Peert decided to become useful and turned his critical eye toward the weapon and those who'd invent it, the enemy within, the big money and other territories largely influenced by the then zeitgeist, The Cold War. Plus ca change.

[Heaven Swan]

Thank you to Jack and the others who responded civilly, graciously and without mocking sarcasm to my post. I’m hoping that this style of constructive discourse can become the new normal here. And I think it’s important. The Skripal case demonstrates how “conspiracy talk” is no longer a niche or side issue. Russia is accusing Britain of a deadly, extremely high level, false flag operation.

Intelligent analysis of conspiracy talk and issues is so needed, but has been largely suppressed here by the insults, threats and aggressive attitude of certain posters. The attacks shut down the discourse and I guess that’s why they do it. I sincerely hope a new day of respectful debating is dawning here. Verbal abuse Is a real turn off..

Anyway, what I wrote about Russian culture wasn’t to say that I know for sure who is behind the poisoning. None of us are in the lab analyzing the samples so no one here can do that. My bafflement is with the hysterical attitude of so many, here and on other alternative sites, that happens to harmonize with Russian propaganda. Russia can do no wrong! A tweet was deleted.!!! OMG This is equivalent to a declaration of World War III.

Why are some you doing unpaid Russian troll work? Trump supporters okay, I know why. But could the rest of us tone down the hysteria so we can examine the issues? The world desperately needs a place where “conspiracy” issues can be looked at with intelligence and to quote the mythical Jeff, with “rigorous intuition”. And I’m actually seeing a glimmer of hope that RI could, once again, be that place.

.

Heaven,

I certainly believe that "Russia" could be responsible for this murder attempt. This is irrelevant. "I wouldn't put it past them" or "it seems like something they would do" or even "they have done it before" are not illogical things to say, but do not in any way constitute standards for evidence. They are potentially relevant as context, nothing more. They thus also of limited use in speculation. In explaining any event, we can make up many plausible scenarios that are not actually what happened. My gut feeling often works, but not always.

Now it is confirmed (and I was certain from the start) that the UK government was lying about this case. The lie was that they claimed to know for sure who was responsible for this murder attempt, which would have been impossible at the time they started claiming it. Clearly, they also do not know now, they have only performed a chemical analysis that supposedly matches "novichok," and they don't have evidence as to its origins. It may eventually turn out true that "Russia" is responsible, since it's plausible. (There are other plausible scenarios. There is no point in assigning probabilities to them at this time.) Even if so, May and Johnson would have still been liars who rushed to a reckless conclusion they could not support, creating a grave global risk, out of whatever motive one can guess.

.

[Heaven Swan]

Russian counter-propaganda exploiting UK weaknesses over spy poisoning

Scientific research and political rhetoric operate at different velocities, leaving a gap that Moscow has exploited

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Wed 4 Apr 2018 09.19 EDT


A diplomatic drive in the UK to corner Russia for the Sergei Skripal poisoning has been set back in the past 24 hours, due in part to self-inflicted wounds – notably Boris Johnson’s loose language – but also to Russia’s ability to keep up a relentless counter-propaganda assault that British ministers seem unable to match.

The controversy underlines how rapidly UK intelligence material becomes shop soiled in heated political debates.

The chief executive of the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory issued a statement saying samples taken from Skripal and his home had been identified as the military-grade nerve agent novichok.

This could have come across as an affirmation of the British position. After all, no country other than Russia is known to have novichok. The idea was to solidify the UK’s case before a meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Wednesday, convened at the request of Russia.

Instead the story emerged as a negative – that UK scientists could not state unequivocally that Russia had been the source of the nerve agent.

Arguably, it was never the expectation that scientists could reach such a level of certainty. The best British position had been always to say that there was no other plausible explanation for the attack other than Russian involvement, either directly or by their failing to control stocks of nerve agent.

Unfortunately for the UK government ministers began to say that overwhelmingly the only explanation was Russian state involvement. In an interview with a German broadcaster, Johnson went further, saying he had personally spoken to scientists at Porton Down and that they had been unequivocal about Russian responsibility.

It is possible the government scientists have now backtracked, at least in public, but Johnson has form in making unforced errors in sensitive foreign policy fields, notably in implying that the British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was working as a journalist in Iran, rather than on holiday, before she was detained.
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In the case of Skripal it seems likely the foreign secretary overstated or misremembered what Porton Down had told him. But in a battle for world opinion, precision matters. Many EU governments, notably Germany, have gone out on a limb with their own public opinion to back Britain’s case against Russia, so it is critical that the British case is coherent and coherently stated.

Russia will also be delighted that on Wednesday morning it spotted a now deleted Foreign Office tweet from last month that attributed responsibility, saying Porton Down had found that the novichok used in the Salisbury attack was definitely “produced in Russia”.

The Foreign Office admitted that the tweet had truncated remarks by the UK ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, and had left a misleading impression.

At one level this episode is trivial but anything that discredits the UK on social media is gold for Moscow.

There has been a second, wider, problem for the UK. Ministers have been forced to wait on the painstaking criminal inquiry in which police, scientists and intelligence agencies cannot produce evidence to order. The OPCW laboratories to which the nerve agent samples were sent need at least another week to complete their work. Scientific research and political rhetoric operate at different velocities.

That has left a vacuum in which Russia, a master of counter-propaganda and sowing doubt, has been relentless. Jean Pascal Zanders, a former chemical weapons project leader at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, claims Russia is testing its arguments through social media pickup and has managed to “turn the tables on London”.

On Wednesday Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, suggested that the Skripal poisoning was a “grotesque provocation rudely staged by the British and US intelligence agencies”.

Even though many of the arguments have been ludicrous, Zanders said they had a cumulative impact designed to depict Russia as a victim. Much of this was for domestic consumption, but was also designed to isolate the UK.

Britain has made something of contradictory Russian explanations, calling them a diversion and saying they are apiece with the way Russia rebutted charges of doping by its athletes and how it denied that the Assad regime was using chemical weapons in Syria.

With a bluntness not normally associated with the diplomatic service, UK diplomats attended a broadcast Russian government briefing on Skripal, effectively challenging the briefer’s bluster on live TV.

It may yet be that the OPCW, as opposed to British scientists, puts Russia back on the defensive by declaring the Salisbury nerve agent was novichok of a kind produced by the Russian state. But the OPCW works cautiously and by consensus.

It may also be the case that police work tracks down passenger records that identify a Russian likely to be responsible for delivering the nerve agent.

But there is a ready audience on the left and the right across Europe, including in the UK, willing to disbelieve the intelligence services in the wake of the Iraq war fiasco or to view the services merely as tools of government.

What seemed like a rapid diplomatic triumph for the UK is emerging over time to be an uphill struggle. For Russia and now the UK, too much of their mutual reputations are at stake to ever concede defeat. This may yet be a long, bruising, struggle in which the evidence gives neither side the vindication they crave.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -poisoning

[seemslikeadream]

UK locates source of novichok nerve agent used in Salisbury

Security services pinpoint secret Russian lab

updated
Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent | Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor |
April 5 2018, 12:00pm,
The Times

It is understood that Britain knew about the Russian facility where novichok poison was made before the Salisbury attack a month ago

Russia’s culpability in the Salisbury poisoning is “beyond reasonable doubt”, the security minister said today as Russia took the spiralling row to the United Nations Security Council.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that Britain had “legitimate questions” to answer over its assertion that Moscow was responsible for the attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

He called for Britain to present its evidence, alleging that Britain was using the case “as a pretext, either made up or staged, for the groundless expulsion of Russian diplomats”.

President Putin seized on remarks by a Porton Down scientist to sow doubt over where the nerve agent came from

Russia lost a vote yesterday at an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague demanding that its experts be involved in the investigation. Britain told the…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news ... -nx8p39kqv

A report in the Times of London, however, states that security services have been sure about the source of the poison since days after the attack, when the first government security meeting was held.

Sources told the newspaper that intelligence sources were used in addition to the scientific tests to determine the location, and that Russians had also conducted tests around using the chemicals for assassinations.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/u ... -1.3915701

[MacCruiskeen]

So, Heaven Swan and slad, why do you think the UK's Tory government lied to the British public and the rest of the world? Why did they claim that Porton Down's scientists had confirmed the source of the stuff as Russia, when they demonstrably hadn't? I mean, you just ignored that lie. Why should they tell such a whopper if they didn't need to?

Please reply in your own words, rather than retreating behind another seven veils of copied-and-pasted propaganda. Such as this airy nothing, this flatulent emission from The Thunderer (Est. 1785):

UK Boris Johnson and his team of anonymous spooks locates claim to have located source of novichok nerve agent allegedly used in Salisbury, but present absolutely no evidence to support that claim

Security services [claim to] pinpoint [alleged] secret Russian lab [and of course we're expected to tug our forelocks and take their word for it. ]

updated
Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent | Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor |
April 5 2018, 12:00pm,
The Times

It is understood [by whom, exactly???] that Britain [sic] knew [sic] about the [alleged] Russian facility where novichok poison was [allegedly] made before the Salisbury attack a month ago

Russia’s culpability in the Salisbury poisoning is “beyond reasonable doubt”, the security minister said ["Well, he would, wouldn't he?" *] today as Russia took the spiralling row to the United Nations Security Council.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that Britain had “legitimate questions” to answer over its assertion that Moscow was responsible for the attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. [Damn right "Britain" does, i.e the Tory govenment and their spooks do..]

He called for Britain to present its evidence, [quite rightly] alleging that Britain was using the case “as a pretext, either made up or staged, for the groundless expulsion of Russian diplomats”.[Indeed. Lavrov is calling the Tories' bluff, successfully.]

President Putin seized on [spook parlance for "noticed"]remarks by a Porton Down scientist to sow [spook parlance for "raise"] doubt over where the nerve agent came from

Russia lost a vote yesterday at an extraordinary meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague demanding that its experts be involved in the investigation. Britain told the…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news ... -nx8p39kqv

A report in the Times of London, however, states that [sic] security services [unnamed] have been sure claim to have been sure about the source of the poison since days after the attack, when the first government security meeting was held.

Sources told the newspaper [sic] that intelligence sources were used [LOL! Sources told the newspaper that intelligence sources were used! ] in addition to the scientific tests to determine the [alleged] location, [unnamed] and that Russians had also conducted tests around [ What? This is not English.] using the chemicals for assassinations.[/b]
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/u ... -1.3915701

This is teh quality.

*© Mandy Rice-Davies, who in 1963 already knew something about the trustworthiness of UK government minister's public claims and assertions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies

[MacCruiskeen]

Thank you to Jack and the others who responded civilly, graciously and without mocking sarcasm to my post. I’m hoping that this style of constructive discourse can become the new normal here. And I think it’s important. The Skripal case demonstrates how “conspiracy talk” is no longer a niche or side issue. Russia is accusing Britain of a deadly, extremely high level, false flag operation.

... after the UK had accused Russia of murdering Skripal on UK soil, which you, being you, entirely neglect to mention..

Intelligent analysis of conspiracy talk and issues is so needed, but has been largely suppressed here by the insults, threats and aggressive attitude of certain posters.

No one insulted you, threatened you, or was aggressive towards you. So stop whingeing, and above all: stop lying, especially about a matter of this importance, and most especially at my expense. . We are talking about murder as a casus belli here; we are not exchanging Thanksgiving recipes at your dinner party. And: name names. I have aways been polite wth you, even when you accused me (vilely) of stalking slad. But now I have really had my bellyful of your incessant insinuations and your sneaky passive aggression, which strikes me not as typically Russian, but as all-too-typically US-American in the age of Oprah, Twitter and Homeland Security. And spare me, spare all of us, your incessant affectation of superiority. Because it is unwise to attempt condescension unless you are actually in an elevated position, and your anti-Russian cod-anthropology was the diametrical opposite of intelligent.

The attacks shut down the discourse and I guess that’s why they do it.

What "attacks"? Nobody attacked you, certainly not I. Quotes or it never happened. I disagreed with you, and no wonder. And by "shut down teh discourse", you mean my reply left you lost for an intelligent response, which leaves you deeply miffed. Tough. You are on a Discussion Board called Rigorous Intuition.

I sincerely hope a new day of respectful debating is dawning here.

Like hell you do. You mean you sincerely hope you can assert or insinuate whatever the hell you please, even at my personal expense, without fear of contradicton, refutation, or even protest. Wrong. You are not at home here. You are discussing murder, lies, diplomatic uproar and the consolidation of The New Cold War, probably very soon to become Hot, on a Discussion Board called Rigorous Intuition. So get real.

Verbal abuse Is a real turn off.

Nobody verbally abused you. Stop telling lies. Quote or it didn't happen. And NB: even verbal abuse is not nearly as much of a turn-off as your obnoxious, sanctimonious, self-worshipping, self-pitying, disingenuously shitstirring shtick. See above.

Anyway, what I wrote about Russian culture wasn’t to say that I know for sure who is behind the poisoning. None of us are in the lab analyzing the samples so no one here can do that. My bafflement is with the hysterical attitude of so many, here and on other alternative sites, that happens to harmonize with Russian propaganda. Russia can do no wrong! A tweet was deleted.!!! OMG This is equivalent to a declaration of World War III.

Ffs. And you have the nerve to complain that other posters lack intelligence. With brains like yours, who needs adenoids? (Yes; now I'm attacking you (back).

Worse: not only are you not more intelligent than Moon of Alabama, Craig Murray or LItvinenko senior, you are nowhere near as brave as they are.

Worst of all, you are deeply dishonest. For all your pretence, you know precisely why it matters that that tweet "was deleted" (sic! Your own -- very telling -- choice of the passive voice!) It was in fact -- as you very well know -- the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office that actively composed that tweet and then actively deleted it, many days later, and you know precisely why they did so: in a hamfisted attempt to cover up a warmongering lie.

Why are some you doing unpaid Russian troll work? Trump supporters okay, I know why. But could the rest of us tone down the hysteria so we can examine the issues?

Jesus crist almighty. Do not accuse me of being a Russian troll, just because I reported on a serious lie by UK spooks & the UK Tory government, which you are too miffed, too dishonest and too mean-spirited to admit was a lie. As for your asserted desire to "examine the issues", you are, to put it mildly, profoundly disingenuous. (Being a saint, I deleted three Anglo-Saxon monosylables there, one of them an expletive. Let no one accuse me of lowering the goddam tone round here.)

The world desperately needs a place where “conspiracy” issues can be looked at with intelligence and to quote the mythical Jeff, with “rigorous intuition”. And I’m actually seeing a glimmer of hope that RI could, once again, be that place.

"The world desperately needs". Spare us your sanctimonious impersonations of honest yearning. What the world really needs is more honesty and more actual intelligence. (The two things are very closely related, y'know.) You would not have survived five minutes here in the days when Jeff still ran Rigorous Intuition, because Rigorous Intuition back then was a place where where actual argumentative rigour was respected just as much as accurate (truly sensitive) intuition, and where toadies. sneaks, unintelligent shitstirrers and evasive self-worshippers justifiably feared to tread. Because, to paraphrase the great and brave and intelligent American Muhammad Ali, they would have got their ass metaphorically whupped.

(Damn, I miss America. Where the hell did it go? It vanished under a tsunami of cupcakes and Diet Coke.)

“conspiracy” issues

Sic. I rest my case.

[Sounder]

https://www.rt.com/uk/423234-britain-sk ... te-wimmer/

The UK is exploiting European solidarity and behaving like a ‘mafia state’ by pushing forward warmongering accusations and excluding Russia from the Skripal poisoning probe, the former vice-president of OSCE assembly told RT.

Britain’s behavior in the Skripal poisoning scandal is “a major danger to international peace,” believes Willy Wimmer, who held the vp position with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) assembly from 1994 to 2000, and who had previously served as state secretary to Germany’s defense minister.

“I think we would call this state a mafia state because it is against all European and international rules and regulations how the British government has behaved in a criminal case with regard to another country,” Wimmer told RT.

EU uses Russia as ‘tool’, creates hostile situation – former OSCE Assembly VP Willy Wimmer

The UK has a history of pressing forward warmongering rhetoric, Wimmer said, recalling Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq. “We, as Europeans, have an experience with the British. We only have to look back to Tony Blair. They lie from one war into the next one.” The long awaited Chilcot report, published in 2016, offered a damning critique of Blair, stating that he deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by the Iraqi regime and had relied on “flawed” intelligence.

“And that is why I think as long as the British don’t behave in a proper, legal, international way, I think we all should believe that this is another British lie, at least to go for war against Russia,” Wimmer added.

The former OSCE assembly vice-president said the EU’s position of standing in solidarity with the UK was standard allied behavior but warned the bloc might think twice before doing so again in the future.

“If a country asks for solidarity and for support, it is given by the others because otherwise you can’t run certain organizations like EU or NATO. What the British are doing – the government of Theresa May is exploiting this will of solidarity, which is a basic foundation of the European Union and NATO.

“This is a blow to the European solidarity and this is a blow to the European Union as well as NATO. They will never do it again.”

[MacCruiskeen]

^^Well said, Willy Wimmer. It's not the first time he's spoken out in this way. Despite being CDU, he was one of the very few German politicians to protest strongly and persistently against the invasion and destruction of Yugoslavia while Fischer (Green) and Scharping (SPD) were pushing for it with all their might. In the nearly 20 years since then, Wimmer has often shown real courage and integrity in his ongoing battle against the warmongers, Blair and Bush first and foremost among them.

Today he's joined by Gernot Erler, the German government’s coordinator for Russia:

WORLD NEWSAPRIL 5, 2018 / 12:52 PM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO

Up to UK to prove Russia was behind attack on spy, German official says

Reuters Staff

2 MIN READ

BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain needs to show proof that Russia was behind last month’s poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in England, the German government’s coordinator for Russia said on Thursday.

Gernot Erler said pressure was rising on Prime Minister Theresa May’s government after Britain’s military research centre, at Porton Down, said on Tuesday it could not say yet whether the nerve agent used in the attack had been produced in Russia.

“That contradicts what we had previously heard from British politicians and will certainly raise the pressure on Britain to show further proof that the traces plausibly point to Moscow,” Erler told German broadcaster ARD.

He added that additional secret service information appeared to have led Britain to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attempted murder of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

“Apparently, there were such reports from the British side, based on secret service information, so that not only Porton Down played a role but also additional information,” Erler said.

“But these (reports) are not known publicly and now there is pressure for more of this information to be made known, otherwise the whole thing is not transparent,” he said.

Germany has joined Britain, the United States and other Western countries in expelling Russian diplomats over the attack in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4. Russia responded with its own diplomatic expulsions.

Escalation of tensions between the West and Russia must stop, Erler said, calling for a pause while Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons carries out an independent investigation into the toxin used in the attack.

Writing by Paul Carrel, editing by Larry King

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-briti ... KKCN1HC193

[MacCruiskeen]

Just as I suspected all along: