5 Facts BBC’s “The Salisbury Poisonings” Forgot to Mention
Kit Knightly
The BBC’s new drama “The Salisbury Poisonings” concluded over the weekend. A three-part story “based on actual events”, claiming to tell the story of the alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.
It’s exactly what you’d expect. Schlocky tat. Poorly researched, badly written and woefully factually inaccurate.
The Guardian gave it four stars. Because of course they did. Because when you’re dealing with government-backed narrative everything that reinforces it must be described as having value. It’s one of the hallmarks of propaganda, that no story which supports the propaganda – however ridiculous – can ever be questioned, criticised or disputed.
There’s room for an in-depth review, and indeed Craig Murray has done a fine job deconstructing the series. But here, I just want to focus on everything they don’t tell you.
Here are five key facts the BBC simply forgot to mention.
1. Alison McCourt
Alison McCourt and her family were walking in Salisbury town centre when they came upon the Skripals convulsing quietly on a park bench in the early afternoon. They were, supposedly, the first people to discover the pair, and Alison and her family stopped to provide aid. Her daughter Abigail was given a special award.
There’s no reason for the BBC to omit this information.
Except that Alison’s full name is Colonel Alison McCourt OBE. And she’s the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army.
Maybe the BBC thought that the Chief Nurse of the British Army strolling past during the (alleged) first-ever use of a “military-grade” nerve agent was just too unlikely to be believed. Which is fair.
Craig Murray, with his usual dry humour, likens it having James Dyson knock on your door asking for directions just as your vacuum cleaner breaks down. But it’s actually quite a lot less likely even than that. After all, Dyson vacuum cleaners do exist, and lots of people do own them, but – until March 2018 – “novichok” was entirely hypothetical.
Novichok didn’t officially exist in the real world at all, until it popped up just yards away from one of the few people trained to deal with it.
Weird the BBC wouldn’t mention it. But it gets weirder.
2. Toxic Dagger
Toxic Dagger was a military training exercise involving the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and 40 Marine Commando Brigade. It trains special forces on how to deal with chemical, biological or neurological weapons.
Toxic Dagger ran from February 20th – March 12th 2018.
Sergei Skripal was “poisoned” on March 4th 2018.
The DSTL headquarters is in Salisbury.
That Russia should attempt to use a neurological agent to assassinate a former double agent right smack dab in the middle of a neurological weapons training exercise is unlikely. That it should also happen in the same city where the exercise is taking place apparently proved too much for the BBC to handle.
Best to just ignore it.
3. Pablo Miller
Pablo Miller is a former soldier in the Royal Tank Regiment, a diplomat with an OBE, and possibly current MI6 agent. He lives in Salisbury and was Sergei Skripal’s handler.
Miller’s name was first mentioned in a report for the Telegraph in the days following the Skripal’s alleged poisoning, from which Miller’s name has now been totally removed.
It was later revealed by a Channel 4 reporter on twitter, that the government had issued a D-notice on “Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler”:
About the only decisive public move by the authorities has been to censor MSM via a D Notice last week from fully identifying Mr Skripal’s MI6 handler living nearby…
— alex thomson (@alextomo) March 12, 2018
[For our international readers, a “D-notice”, is an act by which the government directs the media to not mention certain facts which they claim might somehow endanger national security. It is not censorship, they’re quite clear about that.]
Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler being his next-door neighbour, and the subject of government gag, orders didn’t make it into the BBC’s drama either.
And neither did…
4. Mark Urban
Which is weird, because Mark Urban is a BBC employee. He is their diplomatic editor, and personally fronted much of the coverage of the Skripal case when it was breaking news. As Craig Murray points out, despite the series’ regular use of real news footage, and despite it being a BBC production, Mark Urban is never seen once.
He’s not even listed as a consultant despite literally writing the book on the case.
What’s doubly strange about this, of course, is that Mark Urban was in the same Royal Tank Regiment as Pablo Miller. In fact, they joined on the same day, from the same officer training course.
He revealed, months after the event, he had regularly been interviewing Sergei Skripal in the months and weeks before his alleged poisoning. He claimed it was “for a book”.
The book in question was released in October 2018 under the title “The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy”. (The Guardian gave that a good review too).
What he would have called it, and indeed what it would have been about, had the poisoning not happened we’ll just have to guess. It would likely have been very dull, and not sold all that well.
5. Sergei Skripal (likely) still worked for MI6
All the talk about Sergei Skripal has been he was a quiet retiree, living out his later years in sleepy Salisbury. Of course, that narrative is somewhat challenged by the facts his MI6 handler is his next-door neighbour, and he’s just a handful of miles from the UK’s military research laboratories.
Mark Urban’s book gives us even more interesting details – such as the fact Skripal’s house was purchased for him by MI6, and he had a special phone he used to contact his “team” at UK intelligence.
All of this paints a picture of a man still very much employed, or least kept on the back burner, by British Intelligence.
The Blogmire has an excellent article breaking all this down, including asking the most pertinent of questions:
How conceivable is it that the house purchase by MI6, for one of their double agents, did not have some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras?
Shouldn’t there be CCTV footage of the alleged assassins walking right up to the door and spraying/spreading/smearing the nerve agent on the door handle?
Of course, the BBC don’t ask this question. They don’t mention any of this at all, despite it all being in a book written by their own diplomatic editor.
Clearly, the makers of the program were given a brief: Take all these harsh angular facts, and force them together into some kind of coherence. Obfuscate where you can, invent when you must.
Their job is to spread a digestible story.
As such, they leave out everything that could implicate the British state, or anything which challenges the story on even the most basic rational level.
They don’t explain how the most toxic substance in the world only affected 5 people in four months, despite contaminating a hotel room, a restaurant, a pub and at least two trains. They don’t explain why, even after one of their officers was taken ill, Salisbury police were guarding the Skripal’s house without any protective equipment.
They don’t mention the ties to Christopher Steele and Orbis Security, or the original reports of fentanyl overdose being redacted after the fact, or that the bottle Charlie Rowley claims to have found was wrapped in cellophane (and therefore never opened). Or any of the other myriad details which render the “official version” obvious, absolute nonsense.
We’ll never know exactly who at the BBC decided to omit all these details. But we can make a pretty good guess as to why.
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Interesting about Urban and Pablo Miller. But it is yet another conspiracy theory. No. I believe Bellingcat who exposed the two Russian agents which was not a feature of this drama and much the worse for it Another fact. Off Guardian forgets to mention is that Off Guardian itself is pro Russia. Personally, I will never forgive or forget Vladimir Putin who ultimately is responsible for the appalling events in Salisbury which killed the innocent alcoholic Dawn.
Belingcat exposed nothing, they are a front for the scripters of Skripalgate. The fact that you believe this incoherent pretence of a story shows you may be from Belingcat itself and not an objective observer.
Trolls always personalise their disagreements.
So lot to occur over your amazing blog. Excellent post. I was always checking this blog, and I’m impressed!
Daftar Situs Judi Online
Where are the Skripals now?Are they alive? Why haven’t we heard from them apart from a totally scripted uninformative set up interview with Yulia? She talked about wanting to return to Russia. Is she under house arrest somewhere? These are questions that need answering. But the UK Government will never answer these.
Absurdity no. 1) The UK has more surveillance cameras per capita than any nation on Earth or close to, yet they’d have us believe that an MI6 house donated to a Russian spy in their employ would somehow not have any.
Absurdity no. 2) Knowing that the UK has more surveillance cameras per capita than any nation on Earth or close to, these inept Russian assassins sent by an inept Putin devised a clever plan to wipe the doorknob of the MI6 house donated to the very same Russian spy in their employ.
Those two simple observations alone are enough to tell me that the bats in Salisbury’s belfry eagerly bred with Washington’s wombats in a frankensteinian scientific first.
Don’t forget that Pablo Millar is Co-director of Orbis International. And who is the other director? That would be Christopher Steele of the infamous Steele Dossier. Millar, Steele and Skripal were all in Moscow in the 1990s……curious, eh?
Curious as a stinking carcass washed up on the shores of gullibility.
The one thing in all these facts is you are missing the point.
Putin must have authorised this act.
or are you, on his behalf, suggesting it was not Russia?
No. 6 The duckfeed.
Skripal, dripping with the world’s most dangerous nerve agent, parked his car and shared bread with three young boys, feeding the ducks.
Some 10 days later, when the door handle dosing fantasy was revealed, the Counter Terror team decided to interview the boy’s and their parents.
When the CT team initially viewed the CCTV, the boys were not at risk, but they then became in mortal danger, because the door handle had been sprayed.
TPTB work with scripts. Covid is a script, even many religious texts are scripts. 911 was a very intricate script. Skripal is a script. His handlers were working on a script we call the dirty dossier. We have to discuss their scripts.
We must grasp their IDEA. Only then do we have a chance of knowing what needle to look for, in what haystack. Only then will information make any sense at all.
As Theodore Roszack said: Even great discoveries start as observations and insights and theories not by putting bits of information together. Later they may find information that corroborates the idea.
As Jerry Day says the scientific priest class is no different to any other priest class: In 1100 AD a man would put on a priest robe and tell you that God has told him that you should hand over your money. I know what is good for the planet and I have to control your behaviour. The story comes first. The climate data comes second.
The script is separate from the agenda. The Deep Agendas are not usually published. They are the last thing you will discover. Study Catherine Austin Fitts who from her connections and experience has some insight into Deep Agendas.
Skripal was a cover story. Christopher Steele, author of the Dirty Dossier, employed Pablo Miller, handler and next door neighbour of Sergei Skripal, through his company Orbis Business Intelligence. What’s the betting that Skripal had input to the pee-pee dossier?
The British were the driving force behind Russiagate. If that became common knowledge, Skripal was to be poisoned to distract from Britain’s role …. as in ‘Putin lashes out at the noble spies and journalists who have exposed his secret control of Donald Trump’.
The pee-pee dossier was such BS that not even the Corporatist Mockingbird Media would touch it… they had to give it to Buzzfeed, who published it in Jan 2017.
Over the next year, something is going on with Steele, Miller and Skripal because in Mar 2018, the Skripal poisoning script is put into effect.
Given the scriptwriting abilities of Steele, and the psuedo journalists Luke Harding and Mark Urban, absolutely anything is possible at this point. As Paul Craig Roberts/ PW Laurie explain, in every operation the intel agencies always have several scripts ready to go, as events on the ground change.
Russiagate was an intel operation. Therefore there has to be one or more accompanying scripts… just in case Trump lashes out at Theresa May, or what if Trump mentions Russiagate during his official visit to Britain, or if it becomes clear that George Papadopoulos, Stefan Halper and Alexander Downer had all been put up to the job by Britain….
In the event, things went somewhat differently. Perhaps Steele and Miller failed to pay Skripal for his work, perhaps he threatened to spill the beans. Perhaps he was just no longer any use to Mi6 and they combined their desire to get rid of him with a need to distract from Britain’s role in the pee-pee dossier… thus it had to be done in a dramatic way, with the whole Salisbury Novichok charade.
The poisoning was faked. But Skripal has disappeared. Harding’s latest yarn is consistent with the Steele/Mi6 narrative – feckless politicians should have listened to their loyal spies. The pee pee dossier was real, etc, etc.
All good points Kit. Just a few small add-ons. I believe Toxic Dagger ended on Feb 20th, so not actually overlapping. but the teams involved were all keyed up to “go live” when the Salisbury circus started two weeks later. HdBG was closely involved too, and made the vital link with the Syrian Douma CW stunt on April 7th. Not to mention the OPCW, which of course the BBC also failed to mention.
Colonel McCourt is no longer Army chief of nursing, and given her experience dealing with Ebola in 2014, in Camp Bondsteel and in Iraq, I was thinking she would turn up in the current Coronavirus circus, specially where the army was involved. It’s surprising the authors of the “Poisoners of Porton” series didn’t talk to the people at Spire FM who awarded the local hero prize to Abigail McCourt. It is also strange that in your photo, the BBC replaced Alison with a police officer we didn’t hear about, but in the trailer a different woman was seen attending to Skripal while the girl in this photo was leaning over the unconscious Yulia.
(fwiw, to commenter below, I think Skripal was effectively blackmailed into playing his part with Yulia as ransom. He took BZ himself, but dosed her with Fentanyl in the pub, apparently a bit too heavily. Davies I don’t believe was ‘in on’ the scheme, and showed all the signs of BZ intoxication.)
While our Finnish friend has slightly overdone the IfS connection, it does appear to have been essentially an IfS operation, given the links of participants to the Integrity Initiative. Of interest also is what you state here that Pablo Miller lived next door – something I heard once but was unable to verify. It was said soon after the identification of Skripals house that police and investigators had taken over the house next door for their investigations, with no mention of the poor residents having to move out, so this fits.
As for “Novichok” A 234, there obviously wasn’t ever any of it anywhere in Salisbury town, which means that the whole circus of removing and cleaning and destroying stuff was a circus. Now it begins to look like some sort of bizarre rehearsal for the Coronavirus circus, which like Urban’s book, it perhaps was!
One last point – it’s important to remember that despite the Russian lads being identified as being in the East London hotel on May 2nd, it wasn’t until September 6th that their identities were ‘revealed”, and their passport photos stolen by MI6 contacts from their Russian travel agent months before their trip shown on TV. Had they been revealed earlier, Petrov and Boshirov might have appeared sooner and spoilt the plot.
It’s worth observing that looking back on it now, the whole operation “Nina” was highly coordinated and thoroughly planned to further goals which have now been achieved – to a considerable degree – as part of the Empire’s war on Russia and its allies; a war now extended to China by the “Wuhan virus”.
I do support the position of this article.
However, ‘Novichok didn’t officially exist in the real world at all, until it popped up just yards away from one of the few people trained to deal with it.’ sounds like a non sequitur to me
Then read more. Novichok was at best a theorised entity, claimed to exist by a defecting Russian scientist, but never, apparently, actually manufactured, or even verified to exist, prior to the Salisbury incident. Novichok, in Russian just means ‘new stuff’. Possibly someone’s joke.
Wow, that’s some serious disjunctive posting that completely buried the thread.
Did one of the earlier posts step painfully upon a few toes or get close to an inconvenient truth?
Novichok was produced in one of the xxxxistans, i can’t remember which one, after the fall of the soviet union the US ‘helped’ them shutdown the plant, you’re not telling me they and UK didn’t take samples which would explain how it looked exactly like soviet made novichok, it’s more likely us killing a useless asset who’s just costing money, for the americans to take the heat off Trump who was in the middle of his own democrat invented collusion episode
Uzbekistan.
strikeback mentioned Novichok months prior to this even in one of its episodes
Greetings from Finland. Below are contents of FCO-MOD -funded Integrity Initiative -document titled “Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia responsible?” that gives outlines to the official narrative. To wit: First Novichok-story was written by Dan Kasczeta, who is a member of Integrity Initiative. Integrity Initiative is a project of Institute for Statecraft which also gets government-funding.
“Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?
The Narrative: Russia has carried out yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly
nerve agent, on someone living in Britain. Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent
British subjects, affecting 21 people and seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the
first time such an attack has been carried out in the UK. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko
in London in 2006 using a radioactive substance, polonium, has been proven to be the work
of the Russian state; and a further 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin.
Furthermore, Russia has poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably the
then candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political
activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya
was also poisoned and later shot dead. Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin
has a history of poisoning its opponents in a gruesome way.
The British Response has been far too weak. It took ten years before an enquiry was
allowed to proceed over Litvinenko’s death, which then accused Putin of being involved; but
no punitive measures were taken. It is essential that the British Government makes a much
stronger response this time.
Russian Reaction: It is essential to realise that when dealing with Putin and his circle, you
are not dealing with politicians, but with hardened men who believe that they have a
mission to make Russia stand out on the world stage; for whom human life is a disposable
commodity; who are unaffected by emotions such as compassion; who have become
fantastically wealthy in Russia and will do anything to preserve that wealth. Litvinenko
accused Putin of blowing up and killing hundreds of his own Russian citizens merely to give
himself a public excuse to send the Russian Army back into Chechnya and in brutal fashion
subdue that republic. Under these men, Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 and went even
further in 2014 by illegally seizing Crimea from Ukraine and then sending troops into Eastern
Ukraine and starting a war which continues to this day and has cost over 10,000 lives. One
thing which links all of these events, including the murder of Litvinenko, is that these men
constantly and without shame lie about their actions. It is essential to understand their
ability to lie and to have no remorse for their murderous actions, be it an individual, such
as Litvinenko and possibly Skripal, or be it hundreds of their own people or thousands of
innocent victims in Ukraine or Syria.
Another feature of this mindset is that these men never forgive those who wrong them and
will seek revenge. But they are calculating and patient. They will seek a suitable moment to
take their revenge. They will allow the victim to be lulled into a false sense of security; and
by striking when they do they will both catch the victim off guard and give a warning to
others. Litvinenko was killed five years after his book was published accusing Putin of
blowing up Russian citizens. Skripal may have been pardoned and expelled in a spy swap in
2010, but this did not mean that the Putin regime would leave him alone. Litvinenko’s death
not only removed a man who had wronged Putin, it sent out a warning to others, notably
Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky died in suspicious circumstances in 2013. Have no doubts that
for Putin and his circle, “revenge is a dish best eaten cold”.
So what should Britain’s response be this time? Putin and those in his regime behave like a
bully. If you show weakness, they will exploit it. If you stand up to them, they will back
down. Britain’s weak response over the Litvinenko murder has undoubtedly encouraged
Russia to think that it can get away with other murders in the UK. Britain must try to gather
support from NATO, European and Commonwealth allies – accepting that this may not be
forthcoming or as enthusiastic as Britain might wish. But even if there were no active
support from allies, Britain is obliged to act to deter further Russian aggression. These
actions must be in ways which will hurt the Russian elite, as they are the ones who are
either in Putin’s circle or dependent on him for their status and wealth.
Possible, realistic, first actions:
Actively publicise the above facts about the Russian leadership, through regular
media, social media; and with the assistance of specialists such as those at The
Institute for Statecraft
Boycott this summer’s football World Cup, and try to persuade other nations to do
likewise. This might be a gamble, but the US boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games
in 1980 (following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) really hurt Moscow. This was
their big show on the world stage and the Americans spoilt it. The UK allowed
athletes to compete, but not under the Union Flag
Withdraw the British Ambassador from Moscow and order the Russian
Ambassador to leave the UK
Refuse or revoke visas to leading Russians who are in or dependent on Putin’s
circle – and their families. This would really cause disquiet at the top, especially if
their children who are at school here were forced to leave
Ban private jets carrying Russians from landing in the UK or British dependent
territories
Start discussions with the banks on stopping Russian access to SWIFT codes
Start a campaign to prevent construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
Ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK. They are not media outlets; their
constitutions make it clear they are merely the mouthpieces of the Kremlin
Engage with British Muslims to publicise what has been happening with their
Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion
Enlist cross-party help from MPs who understand the threat Russia poses to help
publicise that threat
Start a programme for schools to teach critical thinking and recognising false
narratives. Ask experts in combatting disinformation and outside education to help
draw up the programme”
Do you have a link to the Integrity Initiative document?
I made a pdf´s for my personal use as I envisaged that that kind of stuff shall disappear from the internet/external sources.
The text of this particular document is all there in my previous comment. There are other documents concerning the Skripal case like assessment of their Twitter-campaign success etc.
——–
SKRIPAL TWITTER ROUNDUP
23.03.18
Chris Hernon
Stephen Davies letter still getting play
New ‘proof’ there was no nerve agent is that Nick Bailey isn’t dead or seriously incapacitated
Backlash against Russia and those who congratulated Putin – Lithuania considering expelling
Russians
‘Proof’
Search on ‘Stephen Davies Salisbury’
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=stephen%20davies%20salisbury&src=tyah
Jimmy @JimmySecUK
Corbyn supporters are now slandering and mocking Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey for the crime
of not being sufficiently injured whilst serving the public.
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/976902098209181699
“It was a mafia group that bought it in the 90s”
Leo Strauss @DrLeoStrauss
As both Mirzayanov & V. Uglev, from GOSNIIOKNT, have explained in public: various #Novichok
strains suffer rapid decomposition, making specialized storage more difficult than creation.
Novichok agents from mid 1990s long since would be inert/ineffective for use today.
https://twitter.com/DrLeoStrauss/status/976890101618892800
The line about the Skripals probably having “limited mental capacity” after the attack seems to have
got good traction
Investigate Russia @InvestigateRU 3h3 hours ago
Russian agent may have limited mental capacity after nerve attack
http://reut.rs/2G50PkO
https://twitter.com/InvestigateRU/status/977047710061682688
Hans de Vreij @hdevreij
„An unidentified doctor who is treating the Skripals said they were both heavily sedated and
unable to communicate, and that it was not possible to assess when or to what extent either may
regain mental capacity.‟
Reuters Top News @Reuters
Russian agent may have limited mental capacity after nerve attack http://reut.rs/2pyCiO9
https://twitter.com/hdevreij/status/976953816179408896
Thread by Kasparov aide Mig Greengard
https://twitter.com/chessninja/status/977049371379425280
Including
Mig Greengard @chessninja
As if the US or Ukraine or whoever would risk the incredible blowback risk of getting caught
KILLING PEOPLE IN THE UK WITH A NERVE AGENT just to pin one more murder on Putin.
Mig Greengard @chessninja
Or for the next-level pros, “Yes it was Russian intelligence, but a rogue group! Putin is losing
control!” Sure. The Tsar knows all, but the Tsar knew nothing.
Backlash
Rikard Jozwiak @RikardJozwiak 14h14 hours ago
a dozen MEPs have written to @JunckerEU questioning the way he congratulated #Putin after his
election win & noted that he missed an opportunity to remind the leader of #Russia about the
illegal annexation & occupation of #Crimea #Ukraine
https://twitter.com/RikardJozwiak/status/976876949124583425
Edward Lucas @edwardlucas
This is vital test of whole international system. If you know politicians in
please urge them to follow Lithuania‟s
brave lead
http://bit.ly/2pCj0r0
https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/976846950799761412
Fabrizio W. Luciolli @FWLuciolli
Now is the moment for the friends of #Russia “to demonstrate their influence in and over
Moscow and convince President #Putin of the benefits of cooperation with #Europe and the
West. Equally, the same friends need to be clear about the implications of failure.” @FrencLindley
J.S. Lindley-French @FrencLindley
Blog Times for Russia’s ‘Friends’ to Face Hard Truths. Just how qualified is EU ‘unqualified
support’ for UK post Skripal. If Russia’s Euro ‘friends’ have any influence on Putin time they used
it. Read more http://www.lindleyfrench.blogspot.nl/2018/03/time-for-russias-friends-to-face-hard.html…
https://twitter.com/FWLuciolli/status/976909696530571264
Bill Browder@Billbrowder
Thank you Iain Duncan Smith MP for a great meeting in parliament to discuss Magnitsky
sanctions and how to hold Putin to account after his terrorist attack using chemical weapons on
U.K. soil.
https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/976907689790930944
Heather Nauert@statedeptspox Mar 21
Today, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said that “logic suggests” the #UK was behind the nerve
agent attack on #Salisbury. That‟s absurd. Logic and evidence actually show #Russia was behind
the attack. @mfa_russia
Henrik Breitenbauch @breitenbauch 13h13 hours ago
We need knowledge, defence/deterrence and outreach to deal with Putin’s Russia. Clearsighted
analysis on Western options by @CER_IanBond http://www.cer.eu/in-the-press/west-too-soft-putin…
https://twitter.com/breitenbauch/status/976896963852537856
Rogue state Russia, in decline
Photoshopped Hat � @sapient_ape
Why is Russia showing aerial footage of @PHE_uk (Public Health England) and claiming it‟s
Porton Down? Are they attempting to put staff there at risk or something?
Eliot Higgins@EliotHiggins
The new construction at Porton Down Russia is claiming in its press conference are new labs are
part of Project Helios, which is hardly a state secret, details of it is on the UK government’s
website https://www.gov.uk/government/news/building-state-of-the-art-facilities-at-dstl…
https://twitter.com/sapient_ape/status/976901828615995397
Guccifer 2.0 turning out (surprise surprise to be a Russian GRU officer)
Veli-Pekka Kivimäki @vpkivimaki
“But on one occasion… Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. Working off
the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of
the agency‟s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.”
The Daily Beast @thedailybeast
EXCLUSIVE: “DNC hacker” Guccifer 2.0 was, in fact, an officer of Russia’s military intelligence
directorate http://thebea.st/2FXFPAu
https://twitter.com/vpkivimaki/status/976958938599100416
Foreign PolicyVerified account @ForeignPolicy Mar 22
Russia’s economy is stagnating and Putin isn’t doing anything about it.
http://bit.ly/2pyBn0W
https://twitter.com/ForeignPolicy/status/976730313815724032
also this:
SKRIPAL
@GicAriana
FollowFollow @GicAriana More
Let’s not forget that #Russia also poisoned
former #Ukraine President #Yushchenko in
2004. Like all of its tactics, #Moscow relies on its
tried and true weapons. Russia may change its
poisons, but its attempted and successful
assassinations always bear the #Kremlin
signature.
Mig Greengard @chessninja 15h15 hours ago
Mig Greengard Retweeted ArianaGic/Аріянॳць
And @vkaramurza, who will be speaking at PutinCon tomorrow, has survived two poisonings for
his opposition to Putin.
https://twitter.com/chessninja/status/974395336558088198
@Biz_Ukraine_Mag NATO belatedly connects the many dots and publicly accuses Russia of waging
hybrid war against the democratic world
https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/974572752236634113
http://reut.rs/2Gyvacy
@GMLspokesman 2h2 hours ago
―What would the West do if it were to get serious about #Russian aggression? #Putin and his
cronies have billions of dollars stashed in the West. Freeze the money. Seize the properties. Hurt
them where it counts.‖ #RussiaSanctionsNow
https://twitter.com/GMLspokesman/status/974572855030665216
http://wapo.st/2G00qDF
@menqvist70
The Kremlin’s loyal friends in Europe https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/the-kremlins-loyal-friends-in-europe/… via
@GreenEUJournal By @A_SHEKH0VTS0V and Krisztian Simon.
https://twitter.com/menqvist70/status/974482861670699009
http://bit.ly/2FWZXSO
@edfranks
He’s right. At the very least the West, if not the UK, should boycott Russian propaganda circuses
like the 2018 FIFA World Cup. “Peter Dickinson: From Crimea to Salisbury: Time to Acknowledge
Putin’s Global Hybrid War” Atlantic Council
https://twitter.com/edfranks/status/974416243431100416
http://bit.ly/2DxSQL0
@jamiewrit 2h2 hours ago
RT ope-ed on #skripal says blaming Russia is similar to medieval claims of “Jews poisoning wells”
— a tad ironic, even ill-timed as Putin has suggested Jews might have been behind the meddling
in the 2016 US election
https://twitter.com/jamiewrit/status/974573511665766400
@TetySt
Ukraine first experienced an attack on the power grid in December 2015, The US had plenty of
time to take necessary steps to secure theirs.
Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews
The Latest: US accuses #Russia of penetrating US energy grid Save To Pocket
https://twitter.com/TetySt/status/974574296017375232
http://wapo.st/2Gyup3t
@Kateryna_Kruk
Sorry for my sarcasm, but the pattern was obvious already a long time ago.
@Reuters After nerve agent attack, NATO sees pattern of Russian interference http://reut.rs/2FLYo6O
https://twitter.com/Kateryna_Kruk/status/974552342426087425
http://reut.rs/2Gyvacy
@JuliaDavisNews
The Kremlin doesn’t care when we sanction agencies or trolls. Hit them where it hurts. Implement
―the Kremlin List‖ sanctions. Go after the oligarchs. What are we waiting for?
Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews
#Russia’s MFA spokeswoman referred to the UK’s expulsion of Russian diplomats as “trash,”
described @foreignoffice as “liars” & mocked the idea that the royals aren’t coming to
#WorldCup2018….
@DJack_Journo
It’s always Britain’s fault for the hard left …
@steve_hawkes
Top billing in Diane Abbott’s guest edited Labour List this fine morning … ―The British
Government’s response to Sergei Skripal proves we’ve learnt nothing from the Iraq War‖…
R. van der Noordaa @g900ap
Russian hackers seem to be targetting US
Scott Dworkin @funder
BREAKING NEWS: Russian hackers are conducting a broad assault on the US electric grid, water
processing plants, air transportation facilities & other targets in rolling attacks on some of the
country’s most sensitive infrastructure, US Gov’t officials say
https://bloom.bg/2FXXxTO
Otto English @Otto_English 13h13 hours ago
Audience member suggests that Chemical weapons attack on British soil is a “smokescreen” to
stop #Brexit – I’m done #bbcqt
https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/974426572123000833
“Putin has the West exactly where he wants it” – Edward Lucas
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/putin-has-the-west-exactly-where-he-wants-it-
l0nrknlsq
Clyde Davies @deadlyvices Mar 15
Motive, means, opportunity: the essential components of any murder case. I’ve explained the
means *ad nauseam* by now. The motive – especially given the victims – and opportunity,
triangulate very well to the Russians 16/
https://twitter.com/deadlyvices/status/974180023988097024
BBC Radio 4 Today @BBCr4today
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock says we should approach Fifa to move the World Cup to 2019 and take
it out of Russia #r4today
https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/974549002808049664
Russia’s Latest Message to Dissenters: You Are Next
https://www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/sergei-skripal-spy-poisoned-salisbury-uk-russia-
news-43100/
Tetyana S. @TetySt
I think with this statement Russia has basically admitted their responsibility for all Russia-linked
killings in the UK.
Chuck Todd @chucktodd
This is simply unnerving
Russian state TV warns ‘traitors’ not to settle in
England
http://bit.ly/2ItY4ew
https://twitter.com/chucktodd/status/974311837796896768
GeorgeMonbiot @GeorgeMonbiot 17h17 hours ago
A peaceful, constructive and useful form of retaliation against the Russian government? Shut
down money laundering in the City of London.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/974358188517740544
Integrity Initiative @InitIntegrity 18h18 hours ago
Gordon Guthrie: Why Salmond should quit Kremlin TV for sake of his party
http://bit.ly/2ItY4ew
https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/974348246066892801
Dan Kaszeta @DanKaszeta
Chutzpah is claiming that you destroyed every bit of the Novichok nerve agent that you
simultaneously claim you never invented but was stolen by Americans in Uzbekistan where it
never was in the first place because it never existed. Seems clear.
https://twitter.com/DanKaszeta/status/974326647716392960
Dan Kaszeta @DanKaszeta
And “Porton Down made the Novichok so that MI5/MI6 could poison one of their own
employees but they can’t identify it because they have no sample of it and you need to have a
sample already in hand to do analytical chemistry” has similar philosophical issues.
https://twitter.com/DanKaszeta/status/974333836636180481
Paul Canning @pauloCanning
And still they come beneath this yelling ‘false flag’, despite what Corbyn himself has said.
Anna Turley MP @annaturley
As a Labour MP I disagree with Theresa May – but not on Russia | Anna Turley
http://bit.ly/2FFjVSL
https://twitter.com/pauloCanning/status/974333892973998080
Jason Beattie @JBeattieMirror
Modern Russia should be the epitome of all that the left deplore. It is effectively a gangster state
run by an unpleasant oligarchy of exploitative capitalists who have trampled on free speech and
human rights.
https://twitter.com/JBeattieMirror/status/973939655212261376
The Kremlin’s Shifting, Self-Contradicting Narratives on MH17
http://bit.ly/2It9104
Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis Mar 15
Today’s twitter poll: Should the England football now team boycott the World Cup in Russia after
the events in Salisbury? Or should we just have officials boycotting (eg royals, ministers) Please
select the answer that is CLOSEST to your view (and feel free to explain why)
https://twitter.com/MartinSLewis/status/974196764969504768
Thomas Grove @tggrove
A day after Russian government said it destroyed all its Novichok agents, a Foreign Ministry
deputy says neither Russia nor USSR had any programs to develop it to begin with. So that
should clear things up.
https://twitter.com/tggrove/status/974298711894511618
Paula Chertok@PaulaChertok
ICYMI A feature of Putin’s Russia is breaking the rules. Russian spy’s poisoning in UK reveals GRU
operate abroad like they do internally—aggressively, messy, w/o rules & under the benevolent
protection of the Kremlin. This is what Trump is inviting to US.
Former Russian Spy Scandal Suggests the Old Espionage Rules Are Breaking Down (Op-ed)
http://bit.ly/2FMWK4V
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/971136019473944576
J.J. Patrick @J_amesp
We need to talk about Russian money.. Kremlin cash to MPs, a smoking gun, and an angry
producer Via @Byline_Media
https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1931
https://twitter.com/J_amesp/status/927863319242911745
and this:
Notes from colleagues in the Baltic States who are monitoring Russia carefully.
18 03 2018
Russians are working flat out across the region to exert influence wherever they have it, to get their
version of the Skripal case into people’s minds.
Their particular position is: “This is a judicial issue and there is no evidence that Russia did this”. They
are pushing everything towards “Procedure”, demanding facts, hard proof, access to the evidence etc.
“If you can’t produce this, how dare you blame us?” this gets quite a lot of traction, especially with the
Russian speakers. We need to check how it goes down with Russian diasporas elsewhere in Europe.
Of course, in reality, this was a military operation, all done in the clear understanding that the attack
would be investigated. So, they will have tried to leave no such evidence, and may even have left false
evidence. We need to look for signs of Maskirovka, voyennaya khitrost’ (military cunning), and reflexive
control.
A criminal investigation alone will not throw these essential clues up, and is unlikely to yield sufficient
judicial evidence. We need to be looking at, and explaining, this attack from a political and military-
intelligence perspective. That means educating our audience to understand how Russia sees this world
as being at war.
and this:
INTEGRITY INITIATIVE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT PERFORMANCE
Social media channels are indispensable for any project that wants to make an impact in the wider
information space. The Integrity Initiative has had a Twitter account since its inception, but the
project members did not have time to focus a large amount of effort on it. The situation changed
when a dedicated person was assigned to run the account.
The content has largely been retweets of, or comments on, other users’ tweets or articles tweeted
from newspapers and other sites. Being active in the relevant space brings some engagement;
tweeting in a distinctive, human and consistent voice garners more users; and tweeting our own
content should boost our profile even further.
Our most successful tweets have caught the attention of high-profile users with the right subject at
the right time. Attracting the support of big Twitter names will allow us to leverage our way to a
bigger audience.
For example, in October 2017 our Top Tweet featured a link to a BBC article about Finnish journalist
Jessikka Aro, who had been the subject of a vicious campaign by Kremlin trolls after she wrote about
investigating pro-Kremlin Twitter bots. Our comment praised her and earned 1,653 impressionsi
and
27 engagements (link clicks, likes and so on). Our total impressions were 6,467 in September, and
6,873 in October, so the Aro tweet constituted a significant portion of attention for that month.
Our top ‘media tweet’ (one containing a photo or video) that same month highlighted how Kremlin
propaganda outlets report supportive visits by members of obscure parties and organizations in the
West as if they indicated popular support for Putin’s regime. This attracted 750 impressions and 11
engagements.
We also gained 16 followers, compared to 10 in September.
A clear difference in performance can be seen after the dedicated tweeting effort began in mid-
October:
Month
2017/2018
New followers Impressions Profile views Number of
tweets
September 10 6,467 88 17
October 16 6,873 164 45
November 30 22,200 380 56
December 19 12,300 327 58
Up to 18th January 14 3,055 155 15
Our total number of followers was 328 as of 18th January.
Obviously, activity slows on all fronts in December and January.
In November, our highest profile new follower was Richard Sambrook, former Director of BBC News.
He is now Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University and tweets about what he calls ‘infosmog’ –
which includes disinformation. He has 12,600 followers, so attracting his attention is clearly
beneficial.
Tweeting from events can also earn attention and engagement. The II visited Lithuania in December
to learn about their efforts combating disinformation right on the frontline. The Lithuanian MoD
STRATCOM team’s briefing started with a description of how the Kremlin controlled the information
space when it crushed the 1991 uprising in Lithuania. A tweet with images on that subject, which
clearly resonates in today’s situation, earned 1,189 impressions and 49 engagements.
Adding more original content, including graphics and videos, and ensuring we are engaged with the
big themes, users and events of the day, we can certainly grow our audience and influence. We also
plan to open a Facebook page, as some people prefer to access their news through the platform.
The World Cup in Russia, for example, is a great opportunity to create and participate in hashtags
and involve high-profile users.
i
Twitter impressions are a rough measure of how many users saw your Tweet: not scientific but
useful for comparison to some degree.
Sprout Social defines impressions as “Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed,
no matter if it was clicked or not.” https://sproutsocial.com/insights/reach-vs-impressions/
SKRIPAL CASE IN ITALY
PRO RUSSIA REACTIONS AND DISINFORMATION
Update October 2018
– 1 –
SKRIPAL CASE IN ITALY – PRO RUSSIA REACTIONS AND DISINFORMATION
INDEX
SKRIPAL CASE IN ITALY – PRO RUSSIA REACTIONS AND DISINFORMATION ………………………………………….. 1
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 2
CLUSTER 1 – REACTIONS BY/ON PRO-RUSSIAN OUTLETS/JOURNALISTS………………………………………………. 2
CLUSTER 2 – PRO RUSSIAN POLITICAL REACTIONS……………………………………………………………………………… 3
CLUSTER 3 – PRO RUSSIAN REACTIONS BY/ON TRADITIONAL MEDIA OUTLETS…………………………………….. 4
CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 5
ANNEX …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 6
– 2 –
INTRODUCTION
Reactions to Skripal case have followed a well-known pattern in the age of internet and social media. The
first reactions of many Italian social media users were not based on analysis or reflections but mostly on the
ideological positions assumed before the 4th March poisoning. Therefore, are not surprising the skeptical
reactions of many users towards the linkage of the Salisbury attack and Moscow.
Moreover, to place the Italian reactions on the Skripal case in the right context, it is necessary to recall that
only one over three Italian citizens considers Russia as a major threat1
, one of the lowest rate in Europe. In
addition, various groups – often in network – spread pro-Russia information daily. As a consequence, many
Italians are dependent of a certain mental map, and react accordingly.
The evolution of some key Italian traditional media is even more interesting. In fact, misinformation and
more generically, doubts on the UK official version on the Skripal attack have been disseminated also by
important traditional medias such as “Il Sole 24 Ore” or “RAI”, the public radio-television network.
Finally, relevant political figures expressed doubts concerning the Russian guiltiness and on the reactions of
the Transatlantic countries.
Therefore, the present analysis will outline the influences on the Skripal Case coming from both the
information and political field which could be useful to provide a clearer picture on the Italian reactions on
Skripal case as well as on the possible future trends.
CLUSTER 1 – REACTIONS BY/ON PRO-RUSSIAN OUTLETS/JOURNALISTS
The pro-Russian network of accounts and websites started to spread disinformation immediately after the
attack. Some well-known outlets like PandoraTV2
, Sputnik Italia, RT, l’Antidiplomatico3 have been very active
in spreading counter-narratives on the March attach. Moreover, some journalists did the same. For instance,
Fulvio Scaglione and Marcello Foa, two well-known pro-Russian journalists, have written some articles about
1 http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/08/16/publics-worldwide-unfavorable-toward-putin-russia/ 2 An Italian website created by Giulietto Chiesa, former foreign correspondent in Soviet Union, who spread fake news
and conspiracy theories. On Skripal, see here:
– Website: https://www.pandoratv.it/tag/skripal/
– Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLPqOs1LVd0 3 An Italian website connected with the Five Star Movement, who spread pro-Russian news, fake news and anti-
Western ideas. About Skripal case, various articles were written on l’Antidiplomatico, criticizing the Italian approach,
considered too submissive. See, for instance: https://www.lantidiplomatico.it/dettnews-
caso_skripal_e_la_fantomatica_solidariet_atlantica_linsostenibile_leggerezza_della_diplomazia_italiana/5871_23527
– 3 –
the attack, indicating the Skripal case as a “fake news”4,5
. Both published their articles on recognized and
mainstream media, Linkiesta and Il Giornale.
Foa’s case is particularly relevant, as the new Italian Government has decided to appoint him as the new
president of RAI. Foa has often expressed pro-Russian views and circulated pro-Moscow news, and even fake
news, by articles and social networks. As President of the Italian national public network of information it will
be important to understand how his personal views will influence the direction and the fairness of the most
followed tv news service.
Moreover, the national newspaper Il Giornale hosts a blog by Giampaolo Rossi featuring articles raising
doubts on the UK version6
.
Another moderately pro-Russian well-known journalist, Alberto Negri – also Senior Advisor for ISPI7 –, raised
doubts about the Skripal case and criticized “Atlantic solidarity” both on social network and on national8 and
local9 TV’s.
Libero Quotidiano, a national newspaper who often adopt a pro-Russian line, published an article written by
Gianluca Savoini
10, President of Lombardia-Russia Association11, on the subject: “The Skripal Case is a Fake
News but the United Kingdom do not reply to Russia” (see the annex, image 1).
Finally, disinformation on the Skripal Case and pro-Russia contents has been spread widely by Italian social
media accounts. In particular, a 450.000 follower-strong facebook page, “Figli di Putin”12 (Putin’s sons),
created various memes to ridicule Italian and NATO approach (see the annex, image 2, 3).
CLUSTER 2 – PRO RUSSIAN POLITICAL REACTIONS
Reactions to Skripal case have outlined an Italian peculiarity: trolls are basically unnecessary because public
opinion and many political figures already have a pro-Russian attitude. key example is Matteo Salvini, who
4 https://www.linkiesta.it/it/article/2018/03/28/il-caso-skripal-e-una-bufala-la-guerra-delloccidente-alla-russia-e-
ter/37595/
5 http://blog.ilgiornale.it/foa/2018/03/27/putin-e-davvero-colpevole-qualcosa-proprio-non-torna-nel-caso-skripal/ 6 http://blog.ilgiornale.it/rossi/?s=skripal
7 Biggest Italian think tank on foreign policy issues. See: https://www.ispionline.it/it/bio/alberto-negri 8 https://www.raiplay.it/video/2018/03/Alberto-Negri-carionorevoli-quello-che-accade-fuori-dall-Italia-ci-riguarda-da-
vicino-b787b9a3-eb22-4649-a337-53eee088f620.html 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLGtals2A3w
10 An Italian journalist who is in close contact with Matteo Salvini and knows also Vladimir Putin. He is one of the men
behind the agreement between the Northern League and United Russia. 11 An independent association that promotes links between Italy and Russia and has ideas “perfectly aligned with those
enunciated by Russian President at Valdai Meeting in 2013”.
http://www.lombardiarussia.org/index.php/associazione/lo-scopo 12 This page had so much success that started to sell items to honor Russia and Putin.
https://www.facebook.com/figlidelpresidenteputin/
– 4 –
declared that if he had been at the government he would not have expelled Russian diplomats13. If, on one
hand, he confirmed that Italy must remain without any doubt in the Western alliances, on the other hand he
reaffirmed to be against the “isolation of Russia” and the NATO maneuvers and exercisesin Eastern Europe14.
Furthermore, Sputnik Italia reported that Salvini would have said that, basically, there is no evidence to
consider Russia guilty on the Skripal Case and that too many fake news about Russian hackers and trolls have
been spread on the internet15 . Thus, implying that also the UK and Allied version on the Skripal Case could
be listed as a fake news.
Several minor anti-Western, pro-Russian websites shared those words, but none of the mainstream media
did the same, raising doubt on the reliability of Sputnik’s quote. At the same time, it is interesting to see how
some network contribute at flaming pro-Russian narratives (see the annex, image 4).
CLUSTER 3 – PRO RUSSIAN REACTIONS BY/ON TRADITIONAL MEDIA OUTLETS
Relevant and alarming are some reactions occurred on traditional media. Indeed, doubts about UK’s version
were raised also by mainstream media and high-quality newspapers. In the first group, notably emerges “All
the Doubts of Skripal Case”16, a reportage made by “TG3 nel mondo”, a RAI network channel. In the
reportage, circulated by the public broadcast service, are mentioned also conspiracy theories. For instance,
among other things, at minute 5:40, the journalist in studio said that the attack appears to be an attempt to
create problems to Putin few days before Russian elections.
Another interesting article s the “Skripal Case, all doubts about Moscow’s guiltiness”17, published by “Il Sole
24 Ore”, the most prestigious Italian economic newspaper. The author, Antonella Scott, is Deputy Director
of the Foreign Affairs” section of the newspaper. In her article, she advances doubts on the Skripal’s recovery
– considered “maybe miraculous” – and recalls Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction case to blur the line
between known and unknown, suggesting that perhapsthe Skripal Case could also be similar to the Saddam’s
one.
13 http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2018-03-26/salvini-io-governo-non-avrei-mai-espulso-diplomatici-
201824.shtml?uuid=AE0HVNOE
14 https://www.liberoquotidiano.it/news/politica/13366389/matteo-savini-cosa-penso-davvero-di-vladimir-putin-e-
della-russia-chi-e-oggi-vero-nemico-italia.html 15 https://it.sputniknews.com/mondo/201803145772994-skripal-russia-matteo-salvini/ 16 https://www.facebook.com/tg3mondo/videos/675062142663988/ 17 https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/mondo/2018-04-07/caso-skripal-tutti-dubbi-colpevolezza-mosca-
145603.shtml?uuid=AEOsJcUE
– 5 –
CONCLUSIONS
The Italian reactions to Skripal case highlight and confirm a pattern already present in a previous report:
pro-Russian sentiments in Italy are mainly inflated not by trolls or fake news but thanks to a large network
encompassing politicians, journalists, media, websites etc. already aligned with Russian narrative. Websites
and people disseminating conspiracy theories and fake news on Skripal Case had a limited reach and impact.
Key politicians and even Member of the Government, journalists of major newspapers appear to be much
more effective.
Apparently, there is a shift of “conservative” political Parties towards Moscow’s views and autoritharism. In
fact, some reactions to the Skripal case appear connected with a political linkage of the “new right” with
Putin. As a consequence, reactions on events linked with Russia are often not guided by rational analysis but
by emotions and feelings.
To counter this Italian trend it’s important to properly address the key political leaders, their new populist
parties, and key editorialists, by an effective, discrete and articulated information campaign and narrative
and not to be exclusively focused on trolls and fake news.
ROUNDUP 21.3.18
Russians continue to throw out various, contradictory theories
Feeling that the West’s response has been weak, which will encourage Putin to push on
Lot of comment about how the West needs to kick out dirty Russian money
Some momentum for World Cup boycott
The “Let them talk” (Пусть говорят) programme on Russian Pervy Kanal is normally devoted to
scandals and sob stories. Last night it featured various experts discussing Skripal. Of course they
blamed everybody else and contradicted themselves (‘Novichok never existed’ ‘Novichok definitely
existed but….’). Something which was new to me though was an attempt to link Skripal’s,
Yushchenko’s and Litvinenko’s poisonings to Porton Down.
https://www.1tv.ru/shows/pust-govoryat/vypuski-i-dramatichnye-momenty/po-sledam-skripalya-
chto-to-nechisto-v-solsberi-pust-govoryat-vypusk-ot-20-03-2018
Glasnost Gone @GlasnostGone
Re #MH17 & now #Skripal attack. Welcome to Russia’s distraction propaganda. Moscow
suggested Sweden, Slovakia, Czech Republic & Britain were most likely source of ‘Novichok’
nerve agent. Now Russia’s ambassador to Sweden said it was “just a guess.” Via
https://www.thelocal.se/20180320/spy-poison-claim-against-sweden-just-a-guess-russia-sergei-skripal…
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/976365025630867456
Tom Parfitt @parfitt_tom
RIA Novosti has now changed the text of the article to say the “toxic system” Rink helped
develop was not actually called novichok, but received that name in the West. Some silly sleight
of hand with terminology going on here, it seems…
https://twitter.com/parfitt_tom/status/976143379401773057
Dmitry Zaks @dmitryzaksAFP
Ria Novosti ‘corrects’ its interview with the Soviet-era chemist who helped develop Novichok. He
now says that the nerve agent he himself was creating was not called Novichok but something
else. But otherwise, the interview was about Novichok…
https://twitter.com/dmitryzaksAFP/status/976115825747914752
C. Stelzenmüller @ConStelz
Interesting you should say that, RT
RT@RT_com
Toxic nothingburger: Cambridge Analytica exposé is dangerous political attack posing as
journalism https://on.rt.com/91i8
https://twitter.com/ConStelz/status/976188975818924033
Jeremy Corbyn is cynically cherry-picking information in the Sergei Skripal case to further his own beliefs
https://ind.pn/2FZOP4f
Jakub Janda @_JakubJanda
The Next Russian Attack Will Be Far Worse than Bots and Trolls
https://lawfareblog.com/next-russian-attack-will-be-far-worse-bots-and-trolls
Dan Kaszeta @DanKaszeta
The “Skripal would have been dead instantly” idea is bunk. Am reading accounts of guys literally
drenched in Sarin from Tokyo. Took them a while to die, and that’d be a much higher dose.
https://twitter.com/DanKaszeta/status/976181797359947776
Paul Goble @PaulGoble1
Moscow has ‘Long’ Tradition of Killing Traitors Abroad, Russian Military Information Agency Says
Stop the War hypocrisy! It rightly protests #SaudiArabia slaughtering civilians in #Yemen but
refuses to protest against #Assad slaughtering Syrians. Condemns UK & US backing for Saudi
but not #Russia & #Iran aid to Assad @J_Bloodworth @sunny_hundal @bobfrombrockley
@JeremyJHardy
Dmitry Zaks @dmitryzaksAFP
The diplomatic snub of Russia’s World Cup gathers steam as four countries say they are either
not sending officials in support of Britain’s partial boycott or considering the move: @AFP
https://goo.gl/ag3yGk
https://twitter.com/dmitryzaksAFP/status/976099412412981248
X Soviet @XSovietNews
Iceland’s foreign minister says the country is considering a World Cup boycott in connection with
the Skripal case, which is impressive, because Iceland’s World Cup qualification is huge for the
country.
Новая Газета@novaya_gazeta
Ранее частично бойкотировать чемпионат предложил министр иностранных дел
Великобритании https://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/2018/03/20/140321-islandiya-dopustila-boykot-chm-2018-v-znak-solidarnosti-s-velikobritaniey-po-delu-skripalya…
Nicholas Burns @RNicholasBurns
Indeed. In the wake of Putin’s theft of Crimea and interference in western elections and the nerve
agent attack, this is no time for the #EU to play to normalize ties with Russia. Quite the contrary.
Nicholas Burns added,
Tom Wright @thomaswright08
Truly outrageous. On so many levels. https://twitter.com/JunckerEU/status/976061272293871616…
https://twitter.com/RNicholasBurns/status/976084084085743616
Tom Wright @thomaswright08
Truly outrageous. On so many levels.
Jean-Claude Juncker@JunckerEU
Congratulations on your re-election, President #Putin. I have always argued that positive
relations between the #EU and #Russia are crucial to the #security of our continent. Our
objective should be to re-establish a…
https://twitter.com/thomaswright08/status/976075516460589056
J.J. Patrick @J_amesp
According to reports of Sberbank investments, Rees-Mogg may require the hat and Kremlin tint
treatment. You’re welcome.
https://twitter.com/J_amesp/status/976071494546620419
@LeaskyHT
Specifically we today are reporting that the coal
exports fuelling the economies of the Putin
satellite republics on eastern Ukraine are being
carried out through UK and Scottish shell firms.
http://bit.ly/2pyO0cD
https://twitter.com/LeaskyHT/status/976413450279768064
There´s even more but they´re mainly twitter-performance assessments discussing who said what and where and how to contradict it + who journalist in theit team wrote what article. As I said, I made pdf´s for my personal use and can post them to Off-Guardian if they email me.
pmsl what a load of bollox, russia already stands out on the world stage without this nonsense, which sounds more like a plan worked out by blojob johnson and gavin williamson after a drunken night out
I agree with you. Most of the Integrity Initiative -material is a load of bollox 😉 Then again it is understandable as it is produced by a ideological group of Russofobics with a mission to control the Narrative, paid by FCO, MOD and Nato.
How do I know? It is explained in one the their documents.
we know cos their output makes Johnny English films look like he’s James Bond… and i don’t mean when one of the other frauds played him… i mean Sean Connery! lol like a bunch of public school boys have written it… oppps nail on the head! while drinking lashings of ginger ale!
For those interested in another view, here is my alternative theory, which I posted on another blog in December:
I have an unusual theory – and I want to stress that it is nothing more than that – that Yulia Skripal herself might have been the poisoner. I first formulated this idea in the Summer. Respectful discussion of the issues raised is requested.
I have never believed that “Novichok” or any other nerve agent was involved in the poisoning of the Skripals. Initial reports suggested Fentanyl and that still seems the most likely poison to me.
Yulia Skripal, when interviewed after the poisoning had a tracheostomy scar. This is not consistent with nerve agent poisoning. Nerve agents are extremely toxic chemicals which poison by (paraphrasing wikipedia now) “disrupting the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages”. So you can be asphyxiated by the action of a nerve agent simply because your chest muscles are unable to move. The muscles can only move in response to nerve impulses which are blocked. A tracheostomy is not going to get rigidly paralysed chest muscles moving. The antidotes to nerve agent poisoning are other chemicals, not surgery. And they must be administered very quickly.
To me it makes no sense at all that a third party would carry out an assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal’s life while Yulia was visiting him. Yulia could alert her father if someone was seen approaching. She herself could be an unintended victim – and complication. (As she apparently is, of course). Any serious assassin would surely wait until she went home to Russia before making an attempt on Sergei Skripal’s life.
The fact that there are no leads other than these two Russian men is also suspect IMO. They don’t look like professional hit men to me, they looked terrified when interviewed by RT and they were never seen anywhere near the Skripals. Their story of wanting to visit Salisbury is almost too ludicrous not to be true! A professional hit squad would surely have had a better cover story.
Why would Yulia want to kill her father? Her mother and brother are both dead. Her father was a respected military man who brought great shame on his family when he was unmasked as a traitor. Russians are extremely proud of their country. I think Yulia would have suffered greatly due to her father’s fall from grace.
I am only speculating that it was her, but I feel that it is possible that she intended to kill her father and then herself. This may also explain why she was tight lipped about the circumstances of the poisoning in her interview. The poison may have been administered at the bench in Salisbury city centre shortly before they were found. If the British military were following then it may be that they had reason to suspect that Yulia was planning something like this.
Personally I think that Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley had nothing to do with it. They and everything that has happened since 4th March 2018 has IMO been a smokescreen to divert the public’s attention away from the scene of the poisoning, which I believe was the bench in the centre of Salisbury where the Skripals were found.
In my opinion this event has been a convenient way for the British Government to blame Russia, which it apparently wants us to view as the enemy. I believe that the official version of events at Salisbury is a pack of lies. I refuse to go along with it.
To this I added some additional points:
1. Sergei Skripal came to the UK as part of a “spy swap” in 2010. I am quite sure that the Russian Federation would have wanted to ensure that the agreement was honoured and that Skripal and the other people who were exchanged would be left alone.
2. That is to say, I am suggesting that Yulia Skripal – if it was her – was not acting on behalf of the Russian Government who would have tried to prevent her from carrying out the poisoning had they known about it. She was acting alone. (The timing of the poisoning so close to the World Cup being hosted in Russia would also make it extremely unlikely to have anything to do with Russia, given the political ramifications of such an action.)
3. I have mentioned that Yulia’s mother and brother are dead. They are buried in a Salisbury cemetery. If Yulia died with her father in Salisbury then she would be buried with her family.
4. It would have been easier certainly – if it was Yulia – for her to have done this when she was with her father in the house alone. However, it would be an emotional decision and she may have been hesitant. As long as they were alone and she was confident that the poison would act fast enough to ensure they were dead (or terminal) before anyone found them then the poisoning could be carried out anywhere. She had spent the day with her father, perhaps she felt the time was right.
5. The British military may have followed the Skripals as a matter of course anyway.
There followed some discussion at length, but I don’t think it would be appropriate to repeat it all here. I was able to explain all the discrepancies, and while this is just an idea – I won’t get too upset if you don’t like it – I think it’s a plausible one.
This sort of evidence-free making up of explanations only serves to provide the elite with further ammunition to discredit any criticism of official narratives by throwing around terms like conspiracy theory.
I’m no friend of any “elite” mr Hayes, but I know that some people (especially nationalists who want to break up the UK) like to pin it all on the British.
I just think it may have been a convenient excuse for the government and it’s allies to stoke Russophobia.
You say “evidence free”. I suggest you read the whole thing on the original blog before making such an assertion.
Please point to where I said “conspiracy theory”.
I never said that you said conspiracy theory.
Steve. You mentioned the phrase, I didn’t. I don’t believe it was any sort of conspiracy. I don’t know what happened. I came up with my alternative theory as it seemed to work. I don’t pretend that it is definitely true.
It is simply not valid to say, Steve, that “this sort of evidence-free making up of explanations only serves to provide the elite with further ammunition”.
TPTB work with scripts. Covid is a script, even many religious texts are scripts. 911 was a very intricate script. Skripal is a script. His handlers were working on a script we call the dirty dossier. We have to discuss their scripts.
We must grasp their IDEA. Only then do we have a chance of knowing what needle to look for, in what haystack. Only then will information make any sense at all.
As Theodore Roszack said: Even great discoveries start as observations and insights and theories not by putting bits of information together. Later they may find information that corroborates the idea.
As Jerry Day says the scientific priest class is no different to any other priest class: In 1100 AD a man would put on a priest robe and tell you that God has told him that you should hand over your money. I know what is good for the planet and I have to control your behaviour. The story comes first. The climate data comes second.
https://youtu.be/WJimioPERFk
Bill Rawls
Cannot verify original page on archive.org as the article is behind a paywall… “Pablo Miller” sounds like a pseudonym a teenager would come up with.
Another silence is the issue of what the substance was that allegedly poisoned the Skripals. The government and the corporate media state that it was novichok, the world’s most deadly nerve agent. But the case in the Court of Protection, which was brought by the government, with the Official Solicitor (ie, government) acting as the respondent tells a very different story. The case included a witness statement from Porton Down’s biological analyst as to the substance. According to the judge, that statement identified the substance as a “nerve agent or related compound”. This is a long way from identifying the substance as a military nerve agent called novichok from Russia. So in parliament, the prime minister asserted that the government knew it was novichok from Russia, but in court it could only assert that it was a nerve agent or related compound. And this was an uncontested case heard in secret.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/sshd-v-skripal-and-another-20180322.pdf
By the way, a “related compound” might well be any number of commonly available substances, such as glyphosate.
I’m not sure if “novichok” is necessarily the worlds most deadly nerve agent. How would you know? But the reason for bringing it up was in my opinion to pin it on Russia and Vladimir Putin, the “official” enemy. Surely if Russian intelligence had carried out the attack they would have used a poison that couldn’t easily be associated with them.
Although I am not against the United Kingdom as such, I am nevertheless, deeply disappointed by the aggressive attitude of our government and it’s allies in military intelligence towards the Russian Federation. They seem to be stuck in the 1980s with their “cold war” attitudes.
When this was first reported it was stated that it was believed to be fentanyl, which is certainly not a compound in any way related to novichok. It’s a synthetic opioid. So more akin to heroin and morphine, only apparently far more potent.
I’ve just tried to find a link to the story. it always stuck in my mind, but I cannot easily find it. I don’t know if it was mentioned on the BBC drama – I don’t pay any attention to BBC content these days.
In any event, I see no reason why it would not be fentanyl as was first suspected. It was only when the military got involved properly that it was asserted that it was a Russian nerve agent.
You appear to have completely misread my comment. I did not say that the Skripals were poisoned by novichok. Neither did I say that it is the world’s most dangerous nerve agent. These claims are fundamental assertions of the official narrative – a narrative that is so full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities that no rational person could reasonably find it credible.
No, you are taking my comment as criticism, which it is not.
This is hard work! I quote you:
“I did not say that the Skripals were poisoned by novichok.”
I NEVER SAID YOU DID!
And I was making an open comment about novichok, not criticising you for what you said. I gave you a thumbs up, but I have removed it.
This is a discussion board where relevant ideas can be expressed openly, not a forum for aggressive point scoring.
Excellent review, Kit 🙂
Another ‘fact’ which has just occurred to me is that Charles Rowley’s brother gave an interview to a British newspaper, in which he claimed Mr. Rowley had broken the perfume bottle of Novichok while he was attempting to fit the applicator; that it had broken in his hands, and that was how he became exposed. But he just washed his hands, and it was Novichok begone.
Well, maybe that was a different story – in this one, it broke in his hands after his girlfriend had applied it to her wrists and then handed it to him – perhaps she thought he might like to try some, too. You never know; this reporter couldn’t even get her name right in three tries.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5978565/Bottle-containing-Novichok-broke-nerve-agent-victim-Charlie-Rowleys-hand-brother-claims.html
In any case, the bottle somehow broke, which served as an explanation of how Mr. Rowley was contaminated as well. The same bottle which apparently was found intact by police, sitting on the kitchen counter in plain view, three days after the death of Ms. Sturgess/Burges/Burgess.
Overall, the story suffers from too many people trying to invent explanations for how things happened the way they did while still arriving at the official conclusion.
John Helmer points out, in his excellent dissection of the miniseries, the process known in the writing trade as retconning, or retroactive continuity – reviewing a story and inserting events and explanations which will help it make sense without changing the conclusion.
For instance, the BBC appears to have invented the ‘fact’ that Detective Nick Bailey entered the Skripals’ home when they were not at home themselves – getting contaminated in the process, according to the storyline – by nipping next door and borrowing the spare key from the neighbour. A key that was never mentioned before, but a bit of retcon which was necessary to get Detective Bailey, the Skripals and the alleged assassins all at the same doorknob in the proper sequence.
http://johnhelmer.net/too-crooked-to-lie-straight-in-bed-bbc-tries-to-right-the-wrongs-of-its-skripal-story/
The BBC miniseries was absolutely vital to paper over inconsistencies pointed out by the public which caused the official narrative to attract mockery. This is the first attempt at a comprehensive fix to restore coherence and believability. Unfortunately for the government, official documentation from the investigation which has already made it into the public domain still cannot be reconciled with this shifting version. Consequently the story is as silly as it was before, but now there’s an entertaining film about it.
Initially, so called Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was a “first responder” to the Skripals on the park bench and that was how he became contaminated. A week later, he was not a first responder, but had gone to Skripal’s home, which is had entered by the back door.
Hats off to the genius who put this together – not the perfume, the ad.
As a Manufacturers’ Note could be added: “No ducks were harmed in the process”?
Perhaps the BBC could employ Zhana Nemtsova to help their declining viewing figures. She certainly had Boris squirming by simply asking a few pertinent questions .
Soon after the Skripal ‘event’ , Boris (as Foreign Secretary) embarked upon a European tour to drum up anti rusky sentiment .
German Public Service Broadcaster DW News had him in to hear his sales pitch.
With levels of insincerity that only Prince Andrew can match he tells the proven big fat lie @ 5.45 and babbles incoherently throughout the interview.
Bear in mind that Zhana Nemtsova is the daughter of Boris Nemstov the Russian opposition leader who was murdered outside the Kremlin. She is a fairly fierce critic of Putin.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgGujo2h3A&w=1236&h=695%5D
It’s all a bit redundant – Russia’s eager adoption of the Coronahoax means that Salisbury was most likely panto for the masses.
Kit Nightly doing a Brilliant job of rehashing the Skripal story again (and almost totally destroying it. because it is a load of complete and utter bollocks) which I wrote about on Craig Murray’s blog the day before he wrote about it, then deleted what I wrote – and did his own account of events…
So no New news There, but both Kit and Craig, are being programmed by The BBC – who apparently put out this drama…
Which like Madeline McCann – is yet another distraction..from what is really going on, to take our minds off for a bit, from the Current World Attack on us
The attempted impoverishment of the USA and Europe by lunatics in BANKS AND the MILITARY.
I hope Craig Murray’s court case goes well, but this time I am not sending him any more money, but wish him well.
Might send Off-G a tip again.
They ain’t half got some balls.
Thank You,
Happy Solstice,
My wife and I used to do it at Stonehenge 1982-1984.
Tried to get in for the Battle of The Beanfield 1985 – but it was hopeless, so we carried on to Glastonbury and had to pay £10 each to get in.
Marillion were on, but we preferred Hawkwind, The Enid, Roy Harper et al for Free at Stonehenge…and we did both swim naked in the river at Amesbury, and hitched a lift back, and he was playing Robin Trower in his big white van (probably was Robin Trower and his singer on Bass James Dewar). We didnt know Bridge of Sighs then. Nice people.
“Robin Trower – Bridge Of Sighs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2afD0B0I-g
Yes, I now know they largely rebuilt Stonehenge in the early 1960’s, but they did use the same stones…just put them back on a concrete base.
My girlfriend and I were innocent then – still are, still here.
We are Grandparents now, still fit and healthy..and my wife still looks almost exactly the same, and even my hair is still growing out of my head. We go blonde in the sun (Vitamin D)
The upgraded version of the Russian Girl Yulia Skripal, doesn’t half remind me of my Ex who also looks pretty much the same 40 years later (we occasionally meet at gigs)
My wife really likes her. They get on.
They both put up with me and gossip together.
I don’t recognise the other girl.
Tony
Do you still fly gliders?
Kit, nice change from the usual covid 19 but has the Murraysian “British state” narrative stuck to it’s bum like a dry clinger.
I think it’s bad form to name drop like that so frequently.
I started an off topic thread on this fascinating subject on Murray’s blog before I fell out with his anonymous attack dog.
I would expect it is still there for those who are interested. It posits an alternative theory that I have never seen anywhere else. Namely that Julia Skripal was herself the poisoner. (An attempted suicide and murder). It’s just a theory. I know I lack Murray’s undeniable Establishment grandeur and charm, but those with a genuine interest in trying to figure out what happened in Salisbury in March 2018 might find it interesting. It should be easy to find. There was some lengthy discussion and I managed to explain all the questions I was asked before I left his blog.
(Now, for Murray’s lovers that come here. To clarify. In January of this year I had a row with Murray’s modbot on an off topic thread on the subject of moderators which I myself had started. To cut a long story short. I demanded that I be treated the same as everyone else. I was then threatened with a ban if I did not obey “it’s” edicts. I told “it” that this authoritarian attitude was not acceptable and that I would leave and never return. That was 13th January. I have kept my promise. Unless they removed it the row should still be there. I also pointed out to the modbot that it is in any event impossible to ban someone who is determined to keep posting. And I’m really not that desperate.)
You stalked the poster Tatiana John. I hold no favours for present or former mods on Craig’s site. I take no sides. Did you make personal advances to Tatiana? Did you send her gifts? Did Tatiana stop responding to you? We both know the answers to my questions John.
Can we not rehash real or supposed personal grievances re. ‘Tatiana’ (whoever s/he may be) on Murray’s blog. It’s been discussed here at length already and doesn’t seem totally appropriate.
Can you address John Pretty with your remarks please? He’s the one who dragged his personal issues into your btl (yet again), not me.
What has this got to do with you?
It has to do with me that you repeatedly use OffG’s btl to try to discredit one of our most important spokespeople because you were banned from his site for stalking a female btl poster. It’s bad enough having to fend off attacks on our leading lights from professional security services trolls, without having weird, grudge-bearing pervert stalkers like yourself doing the same.
Thank you.
I’m not going to answer this. My conscience is clear.
John Pretty, Well done.. You escaped The Craig Murray clan too, but I bet you still read it. I do…
But it is the Summer Solstice tonight – and they did have some great bands on at Stonehenge, and well yes it was bit like you might have read in The Daily Mail and The Express at the time.. a bit of afghan black maybe, but my other ex (and I really did love her) – don’t do the LSD. Even she had never done it with me – but she gave me the girl guidelines.
Number 1 You have got to feel safe and secure and be with someone you really love – who will love and protect you, and you have complete faith in. She will look after you…
So when we got back home I asked my new girlfriend (now my wife) – should we try it?
She didn’t smoke or anything – but looked like she did.
I never had a bad trip – it lasts for 6 hours – and you have all these colours in your head, and your mind kind of goes off the wall a bit – and you are listening to early Pink Floyd Syd Barrett who never quite came back
She had half a tab..and I had cooked my girilfriend the best fillet beef steak and fresh mushrooms in a pan..
She may have had a Pint of Cider and Black too…..
But my lovely new girlfriend on half a tab of acid (probably straight from Porton Down – just up the road from Stonehenge) thought she was a mushroom in a frying pan.
She was not impressed with LSD, and would never do even half a tab again
I just love her so much..
I did the full 6 hours of an acid trip, and came back and saw my lovely girl just holding me, and looking after me and making love.
I was fine in the morning, so asked her to marry me.
She said OK
So we did – gave up all the drugs and most of the alcohol and deliberatly tried to make a Baby.
So she stopped taking the pill – and it was now down to the p1ss tests
Wow – She’s Pregnant,,,we used to do the p1ss tests together – it didn’t take long
Just pure unadulterated Sex
We both wanted to make a Baby = and so we did.
He is doing O.K. on Father’s Day.
We are Grandparents now.
Just an ordinary Family.
Our son has no interest in drugs, nor alcohol but can be very quick at changing his youngest son’s nappy though both my wife and I and his older brother (4) think and are trying to teach him by example how to regulary use a potty (2) especially if he wants to do number 1 a pooh.
Tony
Many thanks Tony. I appreciate your posting.
Well obviously there wouldn’t be decent security in place like CCTVs on the front door because this pathetic excuse for a government has always been a bunch of cheap-skate bunglecunts
BoJo’s not in charge.
We are now ruled by King Mark Sedwill.
You’ve been watching too much UK column. Cummings is in charge and Boris approves because his sick old dad has filled his head with Darwinian tripe – probably why he bleaches his rapidly thinning thatch.
Obviously, the BBC is run by Josef Goebbels.
Talking of the beeb, they are up to their usual stuff and nonsense on the coronavirus. They have ‘fact checked’ the safety of The Muzzle:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53108405
The BBC wouldn’t know facts if it hit them up the face.
At the time of the Salisbury incident, a consultant at the hospital said outright, that no patients were admitted with nerve poisoning . He penned a letter to The Times (I think) stating this fact. Whatever happened to him? Apparently his name was removed from the hospital board . There was also a police officer – Nick Bailey – said to have been infected, yet survived . Where is he?
I have an image of the letter in the Times written by Stephen Davies (Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust) which reads as follows:
” Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.”
The Times badly edited Dr Davies letter, and gave the impression that there were NO nerve agent poisoning. Furthermore, he confirmed to that the three patients mentioned in his letter “were poisoned with a nerve agent, confirmed by blood tests and symptoms.”
LOL. No intelligent person would believe that. Yes I have seen that given as an excuse. Absolute bollox.
Nick Bailey is alive, and was interviewed recent on TV, and by several newspapers. Read the news.
Links?
Pray tell Lesley, who does Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey work for?
Fentanyl was probably the poison. That was the poison that was first reported in the media until the government got involved.
On the other contrary, I would have thought that a really good investigative journalist might certainly find out exactly who at the BBC decided to omit all these details. Naming names is undoubtedly our best option for justifiably ridiculing this scum and stopping it in its tracks.
Laura Kuenssberg was caught lying about Jeremy Corbyn (she used the tried and tested propagandist technique known as quote mining). Even the BBC Trust had to denounce her. However, the BBC “rebutted” the criticism, stating that she was an excellent journalist. She was promoted and presented with awards. These people are shameless.
Absolutely. Another problem is that there are so many of them (which is no coincidence either…) that they can hide behind each other. That’s the way they manage to feel safe.
But the rotten egg and tomato remedy can still be dramatically effective: https://youtu.be/-Pio9ZzYdPQ
And no doubt being paid handsomely (courtesy of the licence-payer) while doing so.
Last year the BBC received £5 billion of public funding. The television tax should be abolished.
Kussenburg is not a journalist. She has become the Secretary of State for Tory propaganda.
She is a disgrace to herself, her family, her profession and her country.
Your article is the biggest load of shite I’ve ever read. Written by an ill informed conspiracy theorist…or a Russian source?????
Perhaps you would care to provide us with a critique so we can all share your insight?
You know damn fine you are spreading anti-Western filth. If you want to mix facts and fiction in a story then carry on. Are you based in St Petersburg office, or a branch?
Try harder. And say hello to your MI6 supervisor.
Don’t flatter it.
Duh! It was penned by Vladimir Vladimirovich himself! Obvs!
You sound like a penis erectus hogs mains….c u next time
You are correct. But you are wasting your time. I suspect a Russian source somewhere along the line.
Jesus wept, GM, obviously the 77th & Langley are employing REAL morons, these days.
Q. – But, do you comprehend why, son?
Consider yourself branded as a piromaniac: talk about gaslighting!
Address the factual BBC deliberate OMISSIONS, you complete wanker.
You cannot, so carry on wanking… coz’ your comment was the biggest
Waste of space and jism ever read by me@OffG.
I’m sure everybody here already know that Steele was the guy who was hired by the Democratic National Committee back in 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump, right? His dodgy-dossier alleging that the Russians had a ‘pee tape’ of Trump served as the initial basis for justifying the FBI’s warrant to spy on an opposition presidential candidate, which ultimately led to the Russiagate Impeachment Saga.
Strange coincidence, eh?
The BBC don’t deal in facts.
They can no longer be considered media as media in Britain no longer exists.
It’s 24/7 lies and propaganda which we are forced to pay for if we watch any live tv.
They push the official narrative of everything and try and discredit anyone challenging it.
They are willing to lie and slander and make wildly false accusations against these people.
They don’t report of any other viewpoints.
After the recent controversy with Fawlty Towers episode John Cleese summed the BBC in one finely delivered sentence – ‘BBC are cowards, gutless and beyond contempt’.
Bravo Mr Cleese.
This morning on BBC News Annita McVeigh presented a piece on deaths because of COVID 19, which she pointed out are not counted as COVID 19 deaths, so COVID 19 deaths are under-counted, she asserted. The BBC provided examples of these “because of COVID 19” deaths. A child in Columbo with leukaemia who was denied treatment. A woman in Italy who had stroke and was denied treatment. According to the BBC, people who die as a result of being denied medical treatments are all COVID 19 deaths.
These people are destroying satire.
Now you’ve done it!
DunG will be along shortly to chastise you soundly.
I wonder if he works for the BBC.
“The world is madder than any satire on it.”
G. K. Chesterton
Western society is under attack from all angles (by the you know whos). The MSM are on board with this.
To call them “cowards” is a bit weak. They are the enemy inside the gates. They are vicious traitors.
watch an old man in a chair
“media in Britain no longer exists.”
off guardian excepted?
and uk column, lockdownskeptics.
There is still media in this country, but not all that much in the mainstream.
What I meant is there is no proper journalism within the mainstream media.
Off Guardian and Uk Column have indeed been excellent.
Must checkout lockdownskeptics
Toby Young’s project. He’s still kind of mainstream, but is very much against the official lockdown narrative.
Sergei Skripal helped Christopher ‘man of’ Steele day-dream the scenes in the Pee-pee Dossier. Probably over a pint in The Mill. Skripal’s handler Pablo Miller works for Chris Stalin’s company Orbis Business Intelligence. That’s Obi.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi, a member of a rare and ancient group of warriors who strike with expert precision and incredible power. Sir Alec Guinness played Obi-Wan. He also played George Smiley, a career intelligence officer with “The Circus”, or Mi6. Smiley is wisdom. Smiley is sage.
No bull. That’s how intelligence consultants think. They’re failed novelists. So are spies. Hire Christopher Stalin, get Obi, get Jedi precision, get Guinness, get Smiley, get Insight.
Did Christopher Stalin sell a crock of shit? Did the fancy bear goose Trump?
Chris and Pablo take it to the bank, cut out Sergei. He’s pissed. Skripal spots an opportunity to escape Mi6’s clutches and threatens to spill what he knows. March 2018 is the right timing.
Speaking of “narrative collapsing” (or collapsed) the current virus boogaloo has nearly obliterated exposure of “Russia-gate,” Barr and Durham quivering in a corner somewhere, dribbling out bits of the falsity/absurdity that composed that particular narrative. It’s not getting much attention.
Steele’s masterpiece as hand-in-glove with Clinton Foundation; Mifsud as Intel agent; Papadoupolis duped; Flynn railroaded; Comey and Brennan conniving, etc. Don’t see much on all this these days.
Also “the November election” has been shuffled off into a corner and silenced, only issue how far ahead Biden is in the polls (as was Hillary 2016). What happened to all the candidates? In lock-step on the lockdown?
Failed novelists yes–the level of “intelligence” in promotion of these schemes and the corresponding reception to them by JQ Public is disconcerting. It doesn’t seem to matter how weak and in-your-face/arrogant the pretexts progressively are.
Yep. Josef Goebbels showed us the power of total propaganda: it drove Germany over a cliff.
yes… novichok, the very lethal poisonous substance but the Skripals didn’t die. Oh and er…btw where are the Skripals?
My guess is their ashes are on a rubbish tip not far from a crematorium used by the security services. I can see no value for the security services in keeping them alive.
RIP the Skripals.
New Zealand, allegedly.
Middle Earth.
According to John Helmer, writing in December 2019 they are at RAF Fairford, an American air base in Gloucestershire. He’s written a lot about it, but I’ve not read much of his stuff recently.
http://johnhelmer.net/category/skripal/page/2/
Both sides are still allowing the FIRST lie to go unquestioned. The sides are arguing about details while accepting the FIRST lie.
There is no independent evidence that any poisoning happened, and no independent evidence that any substance at all was involved. The only thing we know from independent witnesses is that the Skripals APPEARED to be unconscious or drunk. Everything else comes from official sources. So the simplest and most LIKELY explanation is that the entire mess was a pure stageplay. Intel agencies constantly stage fake emergencies (like viruses) and fake disasters. They’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
Remember that the Skripals were EMPLOYEES of British intelligence, with a handler constantly present.
You are right. There us certainly no actual given evidence that the poison was there in the first place, not to mention the fact that they used the ‘scary enemy’, Russia. Classic False Flag Event right there.
On Sergei Skripal’s house having cctv, I recall his next door neighbour saying that Skripal had cctv and used it to monitor anyone approaching his house. However, I can no longer find this detail anywhere. I suspect the reason for that is because Skripal’s cctv would have recorded the GRU assassins in the act, if the official narrative were true.
Another detail that is missing relates to the ducks. Sergei gave some boys bread to feed the ducks and one of the boys actually ate some of the bread. However, none of the ducks died and neither did any of the boys. Yet if the official narrative were true, they were all contaminated by the world’s most deadly nerve agent. Moreover, the authorities didn’t even bother to look for these potentially fatally contaminated boys for weeks.
The ducks also played a part across the pond (please forgive the pun, but it is hard to take any of this seriously). Gina Haspel, the CIA director and well known torturer, showed President Trump pictures of the dead ducks in order to persuade him to sanction Russia (apparently they show him pictures when they want him to bomb or sanction). Haspel claimed the British provided the pictures, but according to the official narrative there were no dead ducks.
This list could be extended, and extended, and extended. The inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities of the Skripal narrative(s) are beyond satire or fiction (as the BBC have shown). Take as one example of that absurdity, the fact that Public Health England advised the people of Salisbury, who might have been contaminated with the world’s most deadly nerve agent, to wash their clothes and use a baby wipe on any hard objects. Who would have thought that decontamination procedures could be so simple and easy: certainly not the British army or those clever people at Porton Down, who specialise in chemical weapons, which are of course illegal and you have to bomb anyone who might have used them, as Theresa May said when she was the prime minister.
They don’t explain how the most toxic substance in the world only affected 5 people in four months, despite contaminating a hotel room, a restaurant, a pub and at least two trains.
They don’t explain it, because the answer is obvious – in an astonishing act of foresight and organisation, the security services ensured that anyone who might have been affected was provided with the PPE which is keeping us all safe from the coronavirus.
See? They really have got our best interests at heart! Take that, conspiracy theorists!
gwyn please!!! one cannot have a conspiracy theory. it is either a conspiracy (eg guy fawks) or a theory (hypothetical).
The 17th-Century False Flag that was perpetrated in order to persecute Catholics! Indeed!
No, there really was a plot to blow up parliament. Robert Catesby was the leader.
Yeah, there was a plot, but there were also rumours of possible government involvement in allowing it to happen/setting it up.
Various properties demolished due to ‘contamination’ by ‘novichok’?
“the novichok traces in that East London hotel”
and yet,
the hotel is still standing?
Novichok has a consciousness and is able to pick and choose who it affects on command from its masters. Much like covid-19, strangely enough.
🙂
Not only is the hotel still standing. The authorities knew the hotel was contaminated (according to their story) and for months said nothing to the hotel manager. For months (according to their story) they let workers and guests use a site they knew to be contaminated by the world’s most deadly nerve agent, a nerve agent more than eight times as lethal as VX (the British deadly nerve agent).
Yes, it’s the usual government sponsored MSM bullshit for the sheeple to eat.
I do not see how anyone who has paid attention to the story can find it credible. For example, when Theresa May and Boris Johnson were asserting that they knew Putin had sent two GRU officers to assassinate Skripal, Neil Basu, was asserting that the investigation had not identified any persons of interest, let alone suspects. So we were supposed to believe that the government had evidence of who was guilty, but refused to share that evidence with the police investigation.
“Their job is to spread a digestible story”…….You’re being too kind there Kit. Their “job” is what the BBC do constantly and that involves disinformation, news by omission and lying to endorse government propaganda. In short they are a cancer in our society.
What’s the bettting this “drama” wins some sort of an award
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.metro.news/novichok-on-a-cigarette-butt/1131371/amp/ This wasn’t mentioned
I’ve read Murray’s blog but not seen the fictitious BBC drama. However, I couldn’t help thinking about the paramedics. Did they arrive before or after the Army’s head nurse? And what made them think a well dressed couple, middle-aged and elderly, would have taken fentanyl? From the BBC’s fiction: “The paramedics assumed that they had overdosed on fentanyl so they gave them a shot of Naloxone, which happens to combat nerve agent toxicity. Plus, it was cold, further inhibiting the speed with which the substance took effect.” As soon as fentanyl was mentioned I immediately thought of the Moscow theater hostage crisis where fentanyl was thought to have been used. I also considered that it was possibly the actual toxic substance behind the Skripal’s collapse and may even have been the totally unrelated, accidental cause of death of Dawn Sturgess.
Bravo! 👏👏👏
Corona-chok and Novi-virus can liquidate brain cells while leaving low-level motor skills intact, as demonstrated by Matt Hancock.
Incoherent narratives are evidence of incompetence not malice, according to the pop mech skeptics and the self-described adults in the room. So let’s assume the State Narrative is well-intentioned but incompetent.
It was clear 18 months ago that the Duck feeding (CCTV) rendered impossible the Doorknob contamination on Skripal’s Mi6 house (no-CCTV).
TL;DR just read points 6 & 7 – https://www.theblogmire.com/summing-up-the-official-claims-in-the-salisbury-poisonings-weighed-in-the-balances-and-found-wanting/
One wit on The Blogmire quipped of the “D” or DSMA Notice — Duck’s Shan’t be Mentioned Again
“… as demonstrated by Matt Hancock.”
🙂
I was astonished to discover yesterday that Matt Hancock is the actual secretary of state for health. I’d assumed that the reason he was on telly so much was that he was just filling in for someone who was off sick, that no one else was available, etc.
Having this dimmest of dim bulbs in such a position of power makes a severe dent in any claims we might have to first-world status.
Yes, an oxy moron if ever there was one …
A lot of this was covered here: https://www.richplanet.net/richp_genre.php?ref=278&part=1&gen=99 it bears some repetition, however.
Very interesting. How that name Christopher Steele resonates . . .
A reminder folks this is metaphysical a D notice related to half a pentagram half a circle 4 as in D also relates to door – subconscious even down to the characters name has meaning scripted perfectly
also reminder folks for hypnotism suggestion as in hypnotism to keep working
the suggestion/s reforces the programmers of the spell
that usually comes in today from pretend independent you tubers re forcing the spell lie programmed as they are also hypnotized themselves repeat repeat repeat also called regurgitated.
the TV and netflicks shows will also have snippets of the programme running through them at the time and also what is known as predictive programming which is the wrong term, it’s projection perception using the subconscious to help create the multi different realities they want
The biggest net-flick show that started the Monday after the above was Killing Eve and remind us what that was about?? still running the show and hypnotism the script and repeat.
The snow that year was called that beast from the east, etc etc etc can you see it?
There Weak master manipulators.
this is one part of a massive tricks traps spells rituals they do every day all day and so on so forth
Wake up, start learning their code and what is being said there is also a magical beautiful side to this.
Sadly they dont like using it
ame yes but I don’t think most of the readers here understand what the various media blogs use mind programming( sub conscious and symbols) . IE they do not know about controlled narrative by using fake sites left that limits debates and the information. Or there are alot of shills commenting here now and the off Guardian’s childish like and dislike buttons are rigged for the purpose (like in facebook) .
any site endorsing politicians is Diciperati (the Deceivers) knowingly or unknowingly..
Some of the worse are the ex conspiracy turned political endorsers then mixing both. in today’s age saying my team is better than your whilst in lock down is the biggest form of magic on one self at the moment due to the stakes involved better wake the fuck up. thoses testing stations are not there for show.
the political you tuber will be the prefects/grasses in the prison camps
down votes may means the down voted have something to say
enjoy your solstice