Well now I think it has been. And I'm even more disappointed with Russia than I was in March. It wasn't the attempted assasination of the ex-GRU Skripal, but the casual and careless way that Putin's thugs discarded the poison container in a public bin, where it was retrieved by some poor bloke who gave it to his girlfriend; she sprayed it on her wrists and died. These Russian scum are heartless killers, utterly careless of human life, and we must now make their nation pay for their barbarity.
Both Russians and Africans seem to value human life far more lowly than do we Europeans; Russia killed 30m of her own people in the name of an ideological mistake. This inhuman brutality from the land of the knout, where men were still serfs six hundred years after Britons were free men, cannot be permitted in our continent. I've been happy to offer the carrot, but now is the time to use the stick. Russia must be tamed.
And I've learnt also that I should have trusted my initial instinct.
46 comments:
Russia must be tamed you say. How, and whose Army?
"Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline."
Read it d about it here -https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
This latest piece of obfuscation and misdirection is clearly working Raedwald.
The Russian federation is an assortment of robber barons masquerading as an oil state masquerading as a world power.
Bumping our oil and gas production would be significantly painful
It's far too late to flip Assad.
There's no other obvious weakness, that doesn't mean we can't wait for the next one.
We Brits take our time; we seldom rush into things and we are slow to anger. It has taken since March to gather up all the evidence and join the dots. We have amassed terabytes of data and parsed all the written, pictorial and verbal evidence; we have faces, names, dates, times (to the second) and all the travel evidence. Everything we have would stand up to scrutiny in a Crown court against a sharp barrister.
They could have got clean away with this if only they had been less thoughtless in their planning. If it was me on that mission, I would have disposed of the perfume bottle (a clever trick by the way) very carefully; I would have buried it somewhere deep, or tied it to a rock and rented a boat (whilst on my "holiday" to Britain) out to sea and dropped it down, never to be found.
But no, the assassins made a fundamental mistake; they underestimated our research capabilities and our doggedness and then they became complacent and careless. It may be (just may be) that "justice" will be meted out to the two agents by the GRU for their gross stupidity and utter carelessness and may be they will get an ice pick in Siberia, who knows? I doubt the GRU will reward their efforts.
As to punishing Russia, we don't need armies of the conventional type for this. Cyber and financial war will do the trick. Britain holds billions of dollars (Russian owned) in our UK banking system; if say a hundred billion were to be syphoned off as compensation and maybe sequestering a few oligarchs London houses, this would hurt Putin because it does the very thing that he fears the most - his wealthy and middle classes get hit hard. And they are not stupid; they also know how to join the dots and if their money goes missing and their lifestyle goes up in smoke, they will do our work for us. And this is without us having to call on our allies...
I'm amazed how well all those cctv cameras were working this time. Such clear pictures. Almost like actors.
Possibly Radders. I still think T May's grandstanding looks ridiculous.
You are dead right though about the careless approach to human life which characterises all absolutist regimes including Nazi Germany.
We are truly fortunate to have been born British and this curious British and West European attachment to human life is our most precious cultural asset.
The British Governments 'insistence' is still at major odds with their refusal to hand over any GENUINE evidence to even friendly countries (the Germans questioning the comments made in Parliament) let alone providing sufficient to Russia to allow a legally valid defence to be made.
As above, we rarely see video evidence of such quality - even that from Gatwick and rail stations is a lot worse than the sheer clarity of images from cameras local to the Skripals. How convenient?
A 'deadly' poison that allows you to take lunch and a stroll? Survivable? Let alone any serious motive. And what about the image timing? If true/valid then a serious mistake on behalf of our spooks. No discussion of links to Steele and that dossier... Spare me my cynicism.,.
But if this Skripals case scenario is followed by Russia/Assad using chemical weapons in Syria you just HAVE to question the convenient timing.
I'm disappointed that anyone could accept .gov statements on this subject. They have form, they have motives and they have had the means and opportunity to play this story to their own agenda.
Don't let the propagandists win.
Dave_G
I am expecting the Syria/chem weapons charade any day now.
There is a lot of military kit floating around in the Med right now.
CCTV Radders? I won't bother with 200 characters of BBWWAAAHHAAHHA.. etc. Take it as read.
All from the oh-so-honest-and-not-at-all-deceitful Fish Faced Cow. Them nasty Russians breaking International Red Lines like that.
BTW--You may all have notice that the new piece of remainiac shite at the Daily Mail is making his make with a editorial endorsing the Chequers shite. "Boris the boat-rocker" they say. Hopefully this will help to finish off the dead tree press even quicker.
Cui bono? Who benefits?
I am perfectly willing to believe that Russia (or some semi-official element within Russia) is capable of these actions. But I cannot see any motive or reason for doing it.
On the other hand, I can see why a state like Ukraine might want to spoil Russia's PR during the Football World Cup. Another former victim (like Russia) of the USSR. A country with an even more kleptocratic government than Russia, including genuine anti-Russian neo-Nazis. A country we have recently seen fabricate the assassination of a Russian journalist in order to generate anti-Russian headlines. And a country which as a former victim of the USSR also had access to stocks of Novichok.
Pure speculation of course. But it also suits the need for an anti-Russian narrative from our own government.
Hence the disquiet.
It's like Lockerbie. It was blamed on Libya, a country more than capable of carrying out such an atrocity. But why?
On 3 July 1988 an American warship shot down a scheduled Iranian passenger flight killing 290 people including 66 children. Iran Air Flight 655.
5 months later on On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie.
Libyan citizens may have been involved. Gaddafi eventually paid out compensation on that basis. But he always denied ordering the bombing take place.
What was his motive? I can understand why unofficial (or even official) elements of the Iranian government might want to carry out a revenge atrocity. But Gaddafi? Maybe. He was a nasty piece of work. But then, so are the Saudis, and they are welcomed with open arms.
Realpolitik is messy. I think scepticism is a natural response.
If the Russian Governmment had Skripal in custody at some time , Why didn’t he just “fall down the stairs” . Problem solved.
A GRU mission in an unremarkable town conveniently close to Porton Down with an antidote ?
Dodgy photos of Boris Ivanov and Ivan Borisov with their synchronised entry to the U.K. ?
The remarkable recovery of the Skripals and the expedient sacrificing of a junkie and her partner ?
Cui Bono ?
Something smells fishy and it’s not just the Fish Faced Cow.
A convenient distraction from Brexit .
I’m disappointed in you Raedwald.
Is it “ Arise Sir Raedwald” or has your Austrian residency been threatened ?
The smell of BS was strong after the alleged attack took place and after 12 minutes on the BBC 10 o'clock news and 4 pages in the daily mail it smells even stronger now.
Is it “ Arise Sir Raedwald” or has your Austrian residency been threatened ?
I hope that was a humorous dig and you just forgot the ':p' after. If it wasn't and you didn't then it was unnecessary.
Mind you I agree with you about "A convenient distraction from Brexit ." Laughter was expected when May joked that some had claimed she had invented novichok herself...the reaction of the House to that comment was telling.
It's like a comrade Corbyn echo chamber here, nothing of value ever came out of Russia, merely blood and tears.
Thud.
I don't know about that - Russian Standard Vodka is ok!
MB, If I look around my house, workshops or stone yard there seems to be zero Russian products, as for vodka I believe others do it better, mind you I'm a bourbon drinker...or my own allegedly home distilled apple brandy type myself.
Jack Ketch
The comment about “Sir Raedwald” was in jest - I’m not sure if he would even accept it.
I’m unsure if his Austrian residency is in doubt if he doesn’t knuckle under.
The usual cynical, questioning , investigative Raedwald seems to have been replaced by a U.K. government puppet.
Can we have the old Raedwald back please ?
Can we have the old Raedwald back please ?
I don't really recall the Old Raedwald as I haven't been reading here that long( since AR died) however this 'new' Raedwald, if new he be, seems to be very far indeed from being a gove puppet for May or TPTB. I gather from things he has said here that there was a time when he would have perhaps kept quiet for fear of upsetting the more frothy mouthed among his commentators-on whatever issue, perhaps that is what has changed?
The idea that GRU assassins would be so careless seems unlikely as Putin certainly wouldn’t countenance that level of incompetence. And was Skripal really worth the effort?
As others have noted the so called deadly novichok was nothing of the sort apart from the woman who was an addict. Then Craig Murray shows the clearly doctored CCTV images where both Russian ‘agents’ are pictured in the same corridor at exactly the same time, to the second, which defies the laws of physics and I smell a rat. The incompetence appears to be on our side, rather than theirs.
Many thanks jack - but I knew when I wrote this all my loyal 'kippers would give me a real fists-and-boots hammering for this one. It's goulash day, I have a new fass of apfelmost, have made 14kg of zwetschgen marmelade, laid a Douglas pine floor and my München chums are coming over later to watch British comedy dvds and drink, so let's get the bruising over with - today I can absord it ;)
JK. A gove puppet? very amusing.
The UK government case against Russia rests of one 'fact' - namely that the chemical used was 'Novichok', a Russian military grade nerve agent only the Russian State would have access to. Yet the OPCW has steadfastly refused to confirm use the word Novichok at all, merely stating that its findings are 'consistent' with the UK's findings, and repeatedly using the phrase 'toxic chemical'. Maybe because the idea of being poisoned by 'Novichok' is nonsense - Novichok is a description like Ford - if you were run over by a Ford it could actually be anything from a massive lorry to a small car and something that could have been manufactured anywhere between 1903 and 2018. Similarly Novichok relates to any chemical warfare agent developed by the former USSR in the 70s and 80s. The actual chemical could be any number of tens if not hundreds of different chemical formulae.
In its legal representations to the High Court in order to take blood from the Skripals while they were in a coma, a scientist from Porton Down stated (under oath) that the Skripals had been attacked by a 'nerve agent or related substance'. Thats it. No Novichok, no specific allegation of a military grade nerve agent, just nerve agent or related substance. Thats enough wiggle room to drive an armoured brigade through.
Without specific evidence of exactly what the Skripals were poisoned by, there is no link whatsoever to the Russian State. Indeed how incompetent does a 'secret' service have to be to send its agents to murder someone in a foreign land on a plane from their homeland, on native passports and native names, and then fly straight back home again? Its effectively putting a big sign up saying 'We did it!'.
If these men identified were in fact responsible for the Skripals being attacked, then it has all the hallmarks of an organised crime hit, not a state organised one.
Craig Murray has updated his post about the CCTV pictures to acknowledge that these men could have been in identical, but different corridors at the airport. Though that would mean that they got photographed at the exact same time at the same place in each one, which also seems beyond possibility. And neither man had anyone behind him as far as you can see down the corridor.
CM has also looked at the timelines and again the story we are being led to believe just doesn’t add up. These two men, whoever they are, seem more like Mr Bean than professional killers. How convenient that there are all these clear CCTV images and videos in the media, when there are big gaps in the Skripals movements around town.
Can’t wait to hear the convoluted official explanation as to how they were poisoned by the novichok on the front doorknob before leaving at 09.18am when these men didn’t even arrive in Salisbury until nearly midday.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/skripals-the-mystery-deepens/
I'm with Anonymous @6 September 2018 at 10:02
It didn't sound true then and it doesn't sound true now. The Russians had ample opportunity to kill him at their leisure whilst in their custody but didn't.
It also makes swapping spies at a later date a tad problematic.
All this "evidence" is easily fabricated and I don't beleive a word of it.
I'm just looking for the bit of news they want to bury.
Thud--what has Russian lack of commercial success--not surprising after 70 years of socialist shite forced down their throats-- got to do with the Skirpal caper.
Radders was got at by the Franco "experience" he revealed some weeks ago and by too much exposure to womiccumalobus BluLabour trash over the years despite his UKIP credentials.
I'm kinda in agreement with Sobers (although he seems to know the technicals and I don't). I take it as fact, because it is, that the leader(s) of every single sovereign independent nation on Earth, even the most democratic among them, reserve the right to have anyone anywhere extra-judicially killed, however much those leaders would deny it and perhaps pray they will never have to make that call during their time in office. Impossible to give a nation any kind of real security without that power. When that bearded gentleman on a full Ryan Air flight from Backwardstan to Heathrow ,is shown to the PM beyond doubt, to have a weaponized virus in him (or maybe just on him) then that Ryan Air Flight 123 will disappear in a ball of flame over the Med.
I also take it as a given that if Putin wants anyone anywhere deaded then they are unless they happen to be very well protected- think CIA exploding cigars for Castro and that if Putin had wanted the Skripals killed then they would now be pushing up the daiskis. Even if he had only muttered a 'who will rid me..' in passing.
Here I think is more truth than the current narrative: If these men identified were in fact responsible for the Skripals being attacked, then it has all the hallmarks of an organised crime hit, not a state organised one although I would counsel that Organised Crime in Russia is an arm of the Executive. Certainly I would have expected Putin to have sent an incountry sleeper to kill the Skripals- preferably a young black woman or dog walking OAP. Not two guys who scream 'former Spetsnaz'.
And then there is the ridiculously stupid choice of weapon.Such nerve agents are designed to be released remotely, not replace those archaic and totally unreliable neo-Welrod double taps. The two assassins should be grateful that the Skripals hadn't left the back door open when they opened the front door to a face full of novichok otherwise said assassins would have probably died before they got back to the car....the one bearing Russian Embassy plates no doubt /sarcasm
, I have a new fass of apfelmost, have made 14kg of zwetschgen marmelade, laid a Douglas pine floor-Raed
Not bad, a maybe 6 outta ten for 'du bist geBORGed worden' but the true sign that you have been ASSIMILATED into ze Kollectiv is , of course, decorating your flat in white painted woodchip.
JK - never ever will happen. Yes, the law is that one must have laminate floors , walls and ceilings only in white and here in the south, orange polyester unlined curtains are also compulsory. In fact there are home decor stores here that stock only those three items ...and I'm driving a bare naked wood, thermal lined English country house curtains and 18th century historic pigment paint colours train through it. I promise you, not a gram of Titanium Dioxide anywhere in the gaff ..
in fact there are home decor stores here that stock only those three items
First time I went into a 'Baumarkt' ('Obi' I think) I couldn't understand why the middle aisle was full with palettes of White paint and 'rauhfaser' wallpaper on 'Sonderangebot' (special offer). Huge great buckets and rolls of the stuff, of a size only professional decorators would consider buying here.
For those who know not Germania: there have been High Court rulings there that it is a legal requirement to leave a rented property in fresh white woodchip.
Raed, I must say those orange curtains sound delightful.Germans tend to have net curtains because it is another LAW that they must close their shutters/roll down the exterior blinds precisely one minute after 'lighting up' time (which is of course precisely regulated too). I jest not. Last time we were visiting Aged Father-in-Law there was a knock at the door and a concerned neighbour who was anxious for us to avoid a police visit because Father in Law had forgotten to roll his exterior blinds back up that morning one minute after sunrise (another offense). He had also forgotten to put his bedding in the open window to air...which isn't yet another offence under German law...yet. Just a major Faux Pas.
"nothing of value ever came out of Russia"
Some great music, great literature, great ballet, great films, and great painting. What more do you want ? Faberge eggs ?
Admittedly their cuisine seems to be rubbish.
Don Cox
Sobers said @ 6 13:54
'Without specific evidence of exactly what the Skripals were poisoned by, there is no link whatsoever to the Russian State. Indeed how incompetent does a 'secret' service have to be to send its agents to murder someone in a foreign land on a plane from their homeland, on native passports and native names, and then fly straight back home again? Its effectively putting a big sign up saying 'We did it!'.'
Spot on. Our lot chose a narrative they hoped would sell to the largest audience. Problem is it looks like an episode of The Simpsons:
Two rough looking men with Russian names fly from a Russian city carrying with them a hugely lethal chemical warfare agent, developed in Russia, and attempt to murder a former Russian intelligence officer. The two rough looking Russian men with Russian names then return to Russia - thankfully it was all recorded and that's why we know who they were, where they came from, what they were carrying and where they went back to. Fucking marvelous.
According Captain Doug Rokke – former Director of the US Army’s Depleted Uranium Project and an expert on chemical weapons, with a PhD in health physics – the claims don’t stand up to scientific analysis.
He told Washington's Blog (7 April 2018):
It is impossible to put liquid nerve agent on a door knob without trashing the entire area 100, 200 meters and more radius for a long time. Weeks months or more.
Any person who touched the so called exposed person would go down too.
You need level 5 ppe [i.e. personal protective equipment] and full decon [i.e. decontamination]… per fm 8-285 that is what we developed.
In other words..it is pure b.s.
The only partially useful antidote is a mark 1 kit - atropine, diazepam, prodoxyaline chloride..no good on VX tabun soman novachuk multiple 7.
Anyone who went near this would go down anyone who touched them would go down.
Full decon is required but useless. The area for blocks around would be hot deadly.
If it was there you can still find it now with m8, m9, m256 kit. And anyone coming close would get zapped.
So to apply the Novichok to Sergei Skripal’s front door the alleged “Russian spies” would have had to have worn full protective suits.
It’s not exactly inconspicuous and in a quiet English country town two men dressed like that would have been all too obvious. None of the Skripal’s neighbours saw anyone dressed like that prior to the poisoning. If they had we would be hearing all about it from the media.
What’s more none of Sergei Skripal’s neighbours were affected by the Novichok, as they would have been if it had been smeared on his front door.
Steve
Nothing of value? The US space industry relies on Russian rocket motors! I suspect Russia has many, many things we'd be interested in purchasing but the hype against anything Russian is, I strongly believe, being used to close down such opportunities. I wonder if any visitors to the World Cup could comment on Russian products had they shopped there?
I'll go with Anonymous at 16.46 The whole thing is BS So are Assad's 'chemical attacks' the last one the infamous WH, so beloved of this miserable government pulled a kid off the street and didn't know which toxin to fake So the idiots hosed down the kid and sprayed his eyes with Ventolin for double effectiveness (nerve agent or chlorine) Putin had no motive and I will go so far to say that w/out Putin and Lavrov ISIS could have migrated en masse to Europe from Damascus airport It is more likely to be Russian Mafia criminals or even MI5/CIA!
Hmmmm....I commented on this yesterday in the Cressida Dick post, but Google decided that too much criticism of the bewildered person posing as the prime minister was verboten and stuck it in the spam filter.(I assume)
It is comforting to see that many others understand that Novichuk is the go-to balm that the cabinet office applies whenever things are going particularly badly for PM May.
The exotic chemical murder is the whole point. In themselves Litvinenko and Skripal were nugatory threats. But there are thousands who would like to defect but are deterred.
I don't doubt that Putin could have organised a "botched" mugging or burglary, but that wouldn't have made the international media and would have zero coverage after a week.
GB gov is doing Putin's internal propaganda for him.
The exotic chemical murder is the whole point
You (and Raed by extension) may yet be proved right, although I doubt it. It would be the only other explanation that makes any real sense.
Amazing that this excellent good news coincided with the first day of term, PMQs and trumped the avalanche of Chequergate objections just poised to descend on May and waiting for an ERG member to simply fart under the precipice.
Then we see a couple of dodgy blokes (almost hand in hand) as they proceeded to expose themselves in full frontal on every CCTV Camera they can find.
Even Johnny English could work out how to get from Gatwick to Salisbury without such florid exposure?
Why the perfume? Is Skripal an ungent fetishist? Or were they after the daughter all along?
The ‘disposal’ in a bin? With such a professional GRU - what have we to fear?
Oh, and this was ‘almost certainly’ State Sanctioned. Well, there’s conviction for you.
And the icing in the cake ‘due to Russian law, we cannot extradite these individuals and to attempt it would be pointless. However, should they leave Russia at any time in the future we will make avery effort to return them to the UK to face our judicial system.......’.
Yeah, ok.
Is it time for South Park yet? I need some reality.
at any time in the future we will make avery effort to return them to the UK to face our judicial system.......’.
I'm amazed the brexsshiteurs haven't grizzled about May applying for an EU 'Arrest Warrant'.
Bernard: "Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.
Read it d about it here -https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ "
Yep, those photo's are complete bollocks and very poor photoshopping.
That's what the British 'intelligence' service serve up.
They've all been watching too many Hollywood trash movies.
Two men on a clandestine mission to murder a Russian defector, seem to have spent a awe-full lot of time together.
I wouldn't have thought they would have met up until they were to do the dirty deed, then separated an made their own different ways out of the country.
The whole scenario, right down to being in the same place at the same time is so unlikely as to be utter nonsense.
Schrodinger's spies, indeed.
Anon: "And the icing in the cake ‘due to Russian law, we cannot extradite these individuals and to attempt it would be pointless."
Yes. Right out of the Muller playbook.
Now that's not a coincidence.
Meanwhile ...
Iran's Republican Guard look to be ratcheting up tension in Baghdad and Basra - it almost looks as if they need a war to give an excuse to crack down domestically - I wonder if that Mr. Kerry has been talking to them again?
One observation I'd make about the Skripal business is that I'd have assumed that Sergei's residence would've been fitted with covert, remotely monitored CCTV - a damned good commercial system (Axis) can be purchased for less than £3k.
Lockerbie wasn't the only terrorism attributable to Libya
They blew up a string of German clubs favoured by American service men
Russian GDP per capita is 63rd in the world, in the area as places like Brazil and Mexico
Its GDP is twelfth, in the same area as places like Brazil and Mexico
The idea that its special forces have unlimited budgets for all things just doesnt pan out.
How many tens of thousands of man hours do you think Russia would have dedicated to offing the Skripals? How many millions of dollars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Mabhouh
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