Current Affairs Critically ill man is former Russian spy

[PhilM]

I never said they 'haven't got an idea' or that the public 'needing to be told all the information'. It is two weeks since the 'attack' and no one has been arrested for using a 'nerve agent' on UK soil. So there are people roaming the streets of the UK with a deadly 'nerve agent and I repeat there has been no one arrested. Don't police, MI5 and MI6 keep tabs on people in this country or entering this country? It seems not as the government have said they will 'tighten up on private flights from Russia'.

The government, and some Labourites like Yvette Cooper arch supporter of the WMD dossier, are bending over backwards and wanting to blame Putin but the evidence is as flimsy as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Maybe the police are looking in the right place or maybe they aren't. Or maybe the authorities are incompetent in dealing with two people slumped on a bench. We are told this is a deadly 'nerve agent' but the lorry that took the car away was then allowed to go back to its base for then to be 'quarantined'. An incredible response when they said it was a 'nerve agent' attack.

Salisbury nerve agent backlash: Residents outraged as 500 told they ...

Some people in Salisbury aren't to impressed with the authorities. The government can't try and pull 'The Russians are coming' with some deadly 'nerve agent' chemical attack and then have such an incompetent response. This smells like Blair's dodgy dossier all over again so the government can shout war, war against an enemy it doesn't like.

Firstly, you're instantly assuming that either the culprit(s) is either still on, or has ever been on, UK soil and is therefore able to be arrested.

Or, you're assuming that if they are on UK soil that they are currently in a state suitable for arrest or aren't covered by diplomatic immunity.

You're saying the evidence is flimsy - how do you know that? Do you know the evidence? Or are you simply assuming from what you don't know?

Sometimes, due process has to be followed and I'm confident that when the time is right, either there'll be arrests or correct disclosures.

 

[orchard]

At least we can agree that this government is a disgrace with its inability to transform it's rhetoric to action.

I never said they 'haven't got an idea' or that the public 'needing to be told all the information'. It is two weeks since the 'attack' and no one has been arrested for using a 'nerve agent' on UK soil. So there are people roaming the streets of the UK with a deadly 'nerve agent and I repeat there has been no one arrested. Don't police, MI5 and MI6 keep tabs on people in this country or entering this country? It seems not as the government have said they will 'tighten up on private flights from Russia'.

The government, and some Labourites like Yvette Cooper arch supporter of the WMD dossier, are bending over backwards and wanting to blame Putin but the evidence is as flimsy as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Maybe the police are looking in the right place or maybe they aren't. Or maybe the authorities are incompetent in dealing with two people slumped on a bench. We are told this is a deadly 'nerve agent' but the lorry that took the car away was then allowed to go back to its base for then to be 'quarantined'. An incredible response when they said it was a 'nerve agent' attack.

Salisbury nerve agent backlash: Residents outraged as 500 told they ...

Some people in Salisbury aren't to impressed with the authorities. The government can't try and pull 'The Russians are coming' with some deadly 'nerve agent' chemical attack and then have such an incompetent response. This smells like Blair's dodgy dossier all over again so the government can shout war, war against an enemy it doesn't like.

 

[hullefc]

Wow, some terribly partisan people on here. A military grade nerve agent has been used on the streets of the U.K. and all you lot can do is blame the Tories. If Gordon Brown was still in office and the exact same circumstances happened, just ask yourselves if your responses would have been the same. This is not a political issue, most Labour people, of a sensible mind, totally agree with the government....

What is 'military grade nerve agent'?

 

[PhilM]

What is 'military grade nerve agent'?

It's a term the government have coined for professionally produced chemical (or persistent) agents that are highly concentrated and effective.

Basically, they've been produced by a military establishment and could be used by the military, whereas the other are earlier G-Agents.

These are much cruder and less effective forms of chemical agents such as sarin, which while deadly are much simpler and less effective.

Theoretically, using insecticides, suitable equipment and the knowledge of chemistry you could make your own nerve agent - not military grade.

 

[tsubaki]

Wow, some terribly partisan people on here. A military grade nerve agent has been used on the streets of the U.K. and all you lot can do is blame the Tories. If Gordon Brown was still in office and the exact same circumstances happened, just ask yourselves if your responses would have been the same. This is not a political issue, most Labour people, of a sensible mind, totally agree with the government....

Pete - if Brown (or any Labour government) had done what this Government and its immediate predecessor had done since 2010 you'd be the first one on here posting up allegations of treachery.

 

[tsubaki]

Firstly, you're instantly assuming that either the culprit(s) is either still on, or has ever been on, UK soil and is therefore able to be arrested.

Or, you're assuming that if they are on UK soil that they are currently in a state suitable for arrest or aren't covered by diplomatic immunity.

You're saying the evidence is flimsy - how do you know that? Do you know the evidence? Or are you simply assuming from what you don't know?

Sometimes, due process has to be followed and I'm confident that when the time is right, either there'll be arrests or correct disclosures.

All of this is true, but the truly absurd thing about it is that the one person who has publicly stated that due process has to be followed is the one that 95% of the media are calling a commie traitor.

 

[PhilM]

All of this is true, but the truly absurd thing about it is that the one person who has publicly stated that due process has to be followed is the one that 95% of the media are calling a commie traitor.

Rightly or wrong, while you're to an extent correct I do believe that Corbyn's history and previous stances haven't done him any favours.

That, or even with the evidence that has been disclosed to him he's still being overly cautious for whatever reason - but that's speculative.

 

[orchard]

Interesting anecdote Phil. The fact remains that the bbc has been diluting it's credibility for a long time now.that's not negated by your friend not realising RT may be similar.

I feel that a wave of support for these false-flag, anti-government mentalities has a huge part to play in while people are doubting the validity.

In no way am I saying the government is perfect and I do appreciate that their view of the truth is often somewhat jaded, but it's become absurd.

If growing swathes of the populous think the world is bloody flat, then believing that this is some form of Brexit conspiracy is for them small-fries.

Only last week, I had someone claiming that the BBC was untrustworthy because it was manipulated by the government, so they used RT instead.

The irony of it all simply went over his head! Often, the simplest and most logical argument is the correct one - it's not all bloody perverse.

 

[hullefc]

Firstly, you're instantly assuming that either the culprit(s) is either still on, or has ever been on, UK soil and is therefore able to be arrested.

Or, you're assuming that if they are on UK soil that they are currently in a state suitable for arrest or aren't covered by diplomatic immunity.

You're saying the evidence is flimsy - how do you know that? Do you know the evidence? Or are you simply assuming from what you don't know?

Sometimes, due process has to be followed and I'm confident that when the time is right, either there'll be arrests or correct disclosures.

The public has been told that a detective sergeant was the first on the scene when the two people slumped on a bench, and he himself got ill from this contact. But no one else has been ill from the scene or the pub or the Italian restaurant. Strange really.

The country is full of CCTV but they can't identify and arrest someone by now. If the 'culprit' was out of the country the government would be filling the airwaves with 'This is the Russian responsible and we demand Putin hands them over'. They were quick enough to identify publicly, and arrest the person, who put an explosive device on the tube that went of at Parson's Green. Maybe he was under surveillance. And maybe Sergei Skripal had a police minder.

As far as the 'evidence' released for our consumption is concerned, it is as flimsy as Blair's weapons of mass destruction. But apart from the likes of Corbyn and others, the 'evidence' was not challenged and so became perceived wisdom. The same is happening now. The government has blamed Russia and only Russia and which is now the perceived wisdom.

 

[tsubaki]

Rightly or wrong, while you're to an extent correct I do believe that Corbyn's history and previous stances haven't done him any favours.

That, or even with the evidence that has been disclosed to him he's still being overly cautious for whatever reason - but that's speculative.

I am not sure that his history or previous stances come into it - he is left wing (though he was never pro-Soviet) and what that has to do with the current Russian authoritarian / nationalist regime in any case is a bit of a mystery. It seems that the media is just lazily conflating the two.

Also there was a report last night via the Times that he wasn't given full disclosure (ie: sat in on the meeting where this was discussed), just had the necessary disclosed to him as a Privy Counsellor - though its also questionable how relevant that is, most of his questions on Wednesday were about asking the Government what it had actually done rather than blindly accepting its claims that it had done something.

 

[Mutzo Nutzo]

I’m waiting for the next phase of this op.

Putin has turned up the heat, now watch out for an “incident” in Estonia involving British troops and local ethnic Russian civilians resulting in it kicking off big time.

 

[Tubey]

Momentum idiots enraged about a "photoshop" of Corbyn... that didn't happen of course but facts are an irrelevance when dear leader is besmirched in the eyes of the comrades.



All the BBC are guilty of is a colour shift to fit in with the overall design of the creative, which any and every designer does on a daily basis - like when they made him blue here:



Anyway, just found it funny how the hard left take offence to being called snowflakes, yet become stereotypes of that phrase over a hat.

Outrage culture really is getting on my nerves. If you're going to be outraged by something, at the very least research the thing that is outraging you so that you're definitely sure you should be outraged ffs.

 

[hullefc]

It's a term the government have coined for professionally produced chemical (or persistent) agents that are highly concentrated and effective.

Basically, they've been produced by a military establishment and could be used by the military, whereas the other are earlier G-Agents.

These are much cruder and less effective forms of chemical agents such as sarin, which while deadly are much simpler and less effective.

Theoretically, using insecticides, suitable equipment and the knowledge of chemistry you could make your own nerve agent - not military grade.

'A term the government has coined for professionally produced chemical agents'. The government, says it all really.

So it is military because it is produced by the military professionally? It is military because it has been used on a battlefield? Which military establishment produced it and when? The OPCW have no evidence to say this 'novichok' exists backed up by the UK and the US.

I wonder what those three people in hospital are ill from.

"There is no independent evaluation of the alleged poison. The British government claims that its own chemical weapon laboratory at Porton Down, only a few miles from where the incident happened, has identified the poison as one of the 'Novichok' chemicals.

But in 2016 a leading chemist at Porton Down had doubts that such chemicals exist. (Paul McKeigue, Professor of Statistical Genetics and Genetic Epidemiology at Edinburgh University, Piers Robinson, Professor of Politics, Society and Political Journalism at Sheffield University and the former British Ambassador Craig Murray pointthis out):

As recently as 2016 Dr Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at the UK’s only chemical weapons facility at Porton Down, a former colleague of Dr David Kelly, published in an extremely prestigious scientific journal that the evidence for the existence of Novichoks was scant and their composition unknown.

In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, ‘Novichoks’ (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the ‘Foliant’ programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published.(Black, 2016)

Robin Black. (2016) Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents. Royal Society of Chemistry

The Scientific Advisory Board of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has not recognized Novichoks as chemical weapons because it found scant evidence that they exist at all. The U.S. and the UK are both part of the organization and both agreed with this evaluation:

[The SAB] emphasised that the definition of toxic chemicals in the Convention would cover all potential candidate chemicals that might be utilised as chemical weapons. Regarding new toxic chemicals not listed in the Annex on Chemicals but which may nevertheless pose a risk to the Convention, the SAB makes reference to “Novichoks”. The name “Novichok” is used in a publication of a former Soviet scientist who reported investigating a new class of nerve agents suitable for use as binary chemical weapons. The SAB states that it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of “Novichoks”. (OPCW, 2013)"

 

[hullefc]

I’m waiting for the next phase of this op.

Putin has turned up the heat, now watch out for an “incident” in Estonia involving British troops and local ethnic Russian civilians resulting in it kicking off big time.

And Estonia will call in NATO for more protection and the UK military will get their way with increased spending.

 

[PhilM]

The public has been told that a detective sergeant was the first on the scene when the two people slumped on a bench, and he himself got ill from this contact. But no one else has been ill from the scene or the pub or the Italian restaurant. Strange really.

The country is full of CCTV but they can't identify and arrest someone by now. If the 'culprit' was out of the country the government would be filling the airwaves with 'This is the Russian responsible and we demand Putin hands them over'. They were quick enough to identify publicly, and arrest the person, who put an explosive device on the tube that went of at Parson's Green. Maybe he was under surveillance. And maybe Sergei Skripal had a police minder.

As far as the 'evidence' released for our consumption is concerned, it is as flimsy as Blair's weapons of mass destruction. But apart from the likes of Corbyn and others, the 'evidence' was not challenged and so became perceived wisdom. The same is happening now. The government has blamed Russia and only Russia and which is now the perceived wisdom.

You're missing my point - the evidence released for our consumption is rightfully nowhere near what is actually available as per normal procedure.

When there's a murder, do the police release all their evidence? No, as to do so would prejudice any future proceeding and weaken their case.

In such cases, we simply have to rely on the judgement of those in the judiciary and those we've rightfully elected into positions within power.

So to say it's flimsy, when you have received very little of what's available, is in my humble opinion questionable if not naive.

As regards to the Detective Sergeant, I mentioned in a earlier post that he 'reportedly' he also searched the man's home soon after the incident.

So, perhaps he came into direct and close contact with the agent in it's carried form? Or with the person who may have unwittingly carrying it?

And once again, you're asking about about why there's no arrests with all the CCTV - go back to my earlier post about possible reasons why.

Think about this one carefully... his daughter arrived from Moscow the day before and there's multiple traces of contamination since she arrived.