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Nerve Agent Attack In Britain.


Stuart Galbraith

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Children are a different kind of getting on your nerves mike. :)

 

 

I found this video on youtube, its not very pleasant, and I advise not watching if you like goats. OTOH, it does suppose the idea that this stuff was transmitted via contact through the skin, in that it took so long for it to have effect.

 

 

And some complete maniac used this shit in Britain. Incredible.

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Yes I guess so. And of course some of them might belong to first responders, so there might be some cross contamination.

 

Its increasingly looking as if the Car was the initiation point. Which explains why they were examining the Cemetery, they probably used it to go there.

 

https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2523696/russian-spy-poisoning-search-moves-to-skripals-car/

 

https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2523745/new-theory-over-ex-spy-poison-attack-in-salisbury/

Makes sense. If cemetery a regular trip than easy to plan. Could have doused steering wheel. Interior of car would be perfect vapor containment.

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Yeah, im not sure I buy that. They couldnt be sure she wouldnt be searched by airport security. I mean imagine the media headlines from THAT, Nerve Agent being found in a British airport. I think it came in as a binary, which would mean it would have to be assembled AFTER it arrived. But thats just pure speculation on my part.

 

My mother came up with the most interesting idea yet. There were flowers on the grave. Maybe the agent was on the flowers?

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Right. Which is why I think they did it that way. I mean think about it, flowers for his own funeral.

 

I mean, look at Litvinenko. They killed him with tea, in a country famed for it. They probably thought it was very funny.

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Right. Which is why I think they did it that way. I mean think about it, flowers for his own funeral.

 

I mean, look at Litvinenko. They killed him with tea, in a country famed for it. They probably thought it was very funny.

Wouldve had to be a persistant agent, which means wouldve found trace.

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Again, fair points Nils.

 

I was watching BBC Question time last night. I could probably find a link but I dont really want to inflict it on anyone. The Left in it suggested that we have a strong dialogue with whomever was responsible to show the error of their ways, but they didnt believe that military action is ever justified. And the right were for waving how stern their sanctions have been, and how we dont need further military expenditure to demonstrate resolve.

 

About the only one whom seem to get it wasnt a politician at all. It was a street poet whom suggested that whatever we have done hithertoo, it doesnt seem to be working. On target.

 

 

The British middle class absolutely has not changed from the 1930's, with its smug complacency and inability to comprehend dangerous change. Perhaps they will perceive the danger when they are unable to get theri favourite latte one morning because of a cyber attack. :)

 

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrmNOG-Wffw

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There was also a couple of priceless examples in the press preview on SkyNews, where one of them said the British Government is probably wishing they never find out who did it, because then they would have to do something about it.

 

Ive often asked myself how Britain remained so clueless and disinterested throughout the 1930's right up to 1939. Its no longer a mystery to me. Im sure King Harold had exactly the same problem.

 

 

I was listening to the BBC last night, supposedly one of his close friends claimed he spent much of his time on his computer playing WW2 tank games. So would appear to be a fan of World of Tanks. :)

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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There was also a couple of priceless examples in the press preview on SkyNews, where one of them said the British Government is probably wishing they never find out who did it, because then they would have to do something about it.

 

Ive often asked myself how Britain remained so clueless and disinterested throughout the 1930's right up to 1939. Its no longer a mystery to me. Im sure King Harold had exactly the same problem.

 

 

I was listening to the BBC last night, supposedly one of his close friends claimed he spent much of his time on his computer playing WW2 tank games. So would appear to be a fan of World of Tanks. :)

 

Well, FWIW, at least from after watching the show, or well, until well into the whole housing renting topic, I think clueless and disinterested is a little harsh. At any rate, it might be difficult to find a direct meaningful response to it, or at least, others could speculate better than I could. Probably the best response would be an overall general support for British forces and to do either, or a combination of, getting more out of the current defense budget and/or increasing the defense budget. And to maintain the posture of supporting the defense of the eastern European countries.

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Few more details here. Amber Rudd has another Cobra meeting, and there is some photographs of the Skripals grave before a tent was put over it.

https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2524466/live-latest-development-in-salisbury-ex-russian-spy-crisis/

 

Jason, how is this playing out in Japan, is it being discussed at all?

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Well, the news does have some serious competition right now, anything North Korea, anything South Korea, Trump meeting Fat-Kim, TPP, the tariffs, US carrier visiting Vietnam. I haven't noticed it over the week and first became aware of it from TN. But by doing a search, some things come up on it. I don't watch TV often, but these show that it's getting some air time. They are average length for international news.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQEUOlJlqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKrK9XofS_o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoSLvcFOY0A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2OAAm0j5Es

 

Checked over the past week of the usual right leaning talking heads to see if it came up in their list of things to talk about on DHC, didn't come up sorry to say.

 

Sankei has a couple of articles on it though.

http://www.sankei.com/world/news/180308/wor1803080014-n1.html

http://www.sankei.com/world/news/180307/wor1803070050-n1.html

One of them has this graph outlining Russia related assassinations.

http://www.sankei.com/world/photos/180308/wor1803080014-p1.html

2006-Alexander Litvinenko

2015-Boris Nemtsov

2016-Nikita Kamaev and Vyacheslav Sinev

2017-Denis Voronenkov

2018-now with Sergei Skripal

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Children are a different kind of getting on your nerves mike. :)

 

 

I found this video on youtube, its not very pleasant, and I advise not watching if you like goats. OTOH, it does suppose the idea that this stuff was transmitted via contact through the skin, in that it took so long for it to have effect.

 

 

And some complete maniac used this shit in Britain. Incredible.

 

"Some complete maniac"? The list of suspects is very short.

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Hasmat teams seem to be visiting zizi's restaurant again. Detective Sgts Baileys Vauxhall car has been recovered. Some good photos here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5484939/Chemical-teams-prepare-ENTER-Zizzi-spy-meal.html

 

There seems to be emerging cross party support for sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the UK if Russia is indeed repsonsible (and possibly even if they are not). McMafia seems to have made one hell of an impression.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5481713/Calls-grow-UK-freeze-assets-London-based-Russian-oligarchs.html

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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Hasmat teams seem to be visiting zizi's restaurant again. Detective Sgts Baileys Vauxhall car has been recovered. Some good photos here.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5484939/Chemical-teams-prepare-ENTER-Zizzi-spy-meal.html

 

There seems to be emerging cross party support for sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the UK if Russia is indeed repsonsible (and possibly even if they are not). McMafia seems to have made one hell of an impression.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5481713/Calls-grow-UK-freeze-assets-London-based-Russian-oligarchs.html

Yes, there was even a threat to lessen their presence at the World Cup in Russia. I'm sure the Russians are very concerned, very concerned indeed.

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Whether you believe in Russian Government involvement or some kind of splinter operation, occums razor suggests whatever was used probably emerged from here.
Incidentally, this is written by Luke Harding, whom has written probably the best book on the Litvinenko murder.
Russia's Lab X: poison factory that helped silence Soviets' critics

Details of the lab’s operations leaked out after the USSR broke up. Experts think its function remains largely similar today


 

Fri 9 Mar 2018 12.34 GMT Last modified on Fri 9 Mar 2018 22.00 GMT

 

The laboratory, in a squat, beige building on the outskirts of Moscow, has an unremarkable name: Scientific Research Institute No 2, or NII-2 for short. Most evenings, a few lights are visible through the windows, framed by a couple of scrawny trees.

The lab’s precise function is a state secret. But numerous former Russian intelligence officers – some retired and some defectors – have confirmed that the building is home to the Kremlin’s infamous poisons factory, established in 1921 on the orders of Vladimir Lenin.

Western intelligence experts believe its efforts were originally directed at using poisons en masse on the battlefield. The KGB concluded that the substances worked better on individuals.

It is too early to say whether the nerve agent used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury last Sunday originated in Moscow. Scientists at a UK government facility in nearby Porton Down are carrying out tests to determine chemical “attribution”. There will be a footprint.

If the agent was a rare, bespoke toxin, this would be highly suggestive of state involvement, one former Foreign Office official said. The official pointed out that the Soviet Union and Russia had a history of using poisons against alleged traitors, most famously killing Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 with a radioactive cup of green tea.

The most comprehensive account of what was referred to in Soviet official documents as Lab X comes from Pavel Sudoplatov, Stalin’s former spy chief. Sudaplatov wrote about the lab and its director, Prof Grigory Mairanovsky, in his 1994 memoir Special Tasks. It is a body-strewn account.

According to Sudaplatov, Maironovsky would inject people with poison under the guise of a routine medical checkup. The victims included Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who died mysteriously in Soviet custody, as well as Ukrainian nationalists and potential defectors. Soviet leaders gave the orders for execution. Sudaplatov covered up the operation afterwards.

The KGB was still silencing enemies during the late Soviet period. Oleg Kalugin, a KGB general, admitted that Lab X supplied the poison used to kill Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident murdered in London in 1978 with a ricin-tipped umbrella. The Bulgarians carried out the operation. It was justified on the grounds that Markov was allegedly a British spy.

Yuri Shvets, a KGB colonel who later settled in the US, described a visit to the top-secret lab in the 1980s. He had come to pick up a truth-telling drug to use on an American source. The technical operations directorate of the KGB had to approve any use. Shvets wrote that the lab manufactured a wide variety of substances, including poisons, narcotics and psychotropic substances.

Shvets left with a vial of SP-117 – concentrated alcohol to be dropped into a champagne glass. He noted that if the drug – used to make a subject rapidly drunk – was number 117 then then KGB’s toxic arsenal probably contained at least another 116 potions. He nicknamed the “small, portly” lab worker who briefed him on the chemical effects Aesculapius, after the Greek god of medicine.

The lab fascinated Soviet leaders, including the last one, Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1988 Gorbachev asked for a briefing. The KGB refused.

Details of its secret operations leaked out after the breakup of the USSR. There is no up-to-date information about the lab’s current work. Intelligence sources think its function is largely similar to that in KGB times.

In the Litvinenko operation, polonium was produced at another state-controlled facility, in in the town of Sarov, a UK public inquiry was told in 2015. It is believed the Moscow lab converted the isotope into a form where it could be taken safely to London. The polonium dropped into Litvinenko’s teapot may have been carried in gelatin-coated micro-pellets.

When the FSB’s current “scientific institute” was built on an impregnable and isolated site, locals assumed it was to treat wounded soldiers from the Soviet war in Afghanistan. That wasn’t the case. Putin-era possible victims of its activities include Russian investigative journalists, Chechen rebels and Ukraine’s former pro-western president Viktor Yushchenko, who was poisoned with something like dioxin.

Sudaplatov’s telltale book would be impossible to write or publish in today’s Russia, where the price for spilling secrets is known. The ageing spy boss was convinced that no special operation could remain secret forever. If the attempted murder of Skripal was indeed a state plot, at some point, possibly decades from now, the full details are likely to emerge.

“This is one of the great lessons of the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Communist party rule,” Sudaplatov wrote. “Once the dam is broken, the flood of secret information is uncontrollable.”

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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BBC News show the Army recovering all the ambulances on Army recovery vehicles. Wiltshire is going to be a bit short of them till they get decontaminated. Really does bring home to you how disruptive an attack like this is. I mean, only 2 people initially affected, and parts of Salisbury are still no go areas nearly a week on. Crazy.

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Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said there are 200 witnesses to the incident, and 240 pieces of evidence. There at least 240 counter terror police involved. This is a BIG investigation.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43353178

 

Sergei Skripal, the ex-Russian spy who is fighting for his life after being poisoned in Salisbury, was born in the Soviet enclave of Kaliningrad on 23 June 1951.

It was close enough to the West to pick up the sound of BBC World Service radio broadcasts and friends talk about him recalling the faint sounds.

He was physically strong and chose to join the elite Soviet airborne troop known as the Desantniki.

In 1979, Soviet troops went into Afghanistan and Skripal was one of the first to go in.

After this, he graduated from the Diplomatic Military Academy in Moscow.

 

There he seems to have been talent spotted by the GRU - Russia's military intelligence - and would embark on the second phase of his life as an intelligence officer.

His initial role in the GRU was in its First Directorate, which focused on spying in Europe.

This gave him the chance to serve overseas for military intelligence under cover as a diplomat.

Friends say he later spoke of this period with excitement, recalling jumping out of a plane in Afghanistan.

He had two postings in Europe - one in the 1980s and one in the 1990s.

It was during this time that it was alleged that he was approached by British intelligence - beginning the next phase of his career.

It would later be claimed by the authorities that he provided the identities of Russian undercover operatives to the British in return for money.

Spying arrest

In 1999 or 2000 (there is some debate on the date) he quit the GRU.

He was fed up with the corruption, the BBC understands from friends.

He was then believed to have gone to work for Boris Gromov.

Gromov had been the last commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan who was the last soldier to leave the country, crossing the so-called Friendship Bridge on 15 February 1989.

This led to a relatively settled period of Skripal's family life.

He had married Liudmila when they were still young. She had been his teenage sweetheart in Kaliningrad.

Their son Alexander - who was known as Sasha - would be born in 1974 and a daughter, Yulia, in 1984.

Sasha got married and settled into a job, while Yulia was described as the brightest spark in the family and she learnt English.

But in December 2004, the settled family life was shattered when he was arrested for spying.

It is claimed that his shoulder was deliberately wrenched from his socket by officers from the Russian security service (FSB) during the arrest.

TV cameras were there to capture the whole event.

He was convicted swiftly in a trial largely closed to the media and sentenced to 13 years in a labour camp - much spent in Mordovia (the same place a member of the Pussy Riot group was imprisoned in 2011).

Reports from those who have been imprisoned there describe tough conditions, but Skripal, friends say, did not succumb.

One advantage was Skripal had been a championship boxer in the Soviet army (explaining his slightly squashed nose).

This proved useful when on remand in Moscow, because it allowed him to deal with a couple of criminals whom he suspected had been paid to make his life difficult.

In the labour camp, even though he was now over 50 years old, he could take the blows from guards and few of the other inmates wanted to take him on.

The period did have its difficulties though.

His son Sasha lost his job and, it is thought, his marriage, because of his father being a convicted spy (something Sergei himself may have felt guilty about).

Move to Salisbury

Suddenly, in July 2010, he was released as part of a major spy swap.

When he had been in prison he had dreamt of ice cream and this was the first thing he wanted to eat.

He was reunited with Liudmila. They decided to set up home in Salisbury because they liked the area, the BBC understands from friends.

He first of all lived in a flat where he was welcomed by neighbours and then moved to the house in a cul-de-sac - the same house that is now a major crime scene for police.

The life of spies after they have defected or are swapped is rarely easy.

Much has been made of one of Britain's most infamous spies, Kim Philby - an MI6 officer who provided its secrets to the Soviet Union's KGB - and his time in Moscow, where he continued to listen to the cricket.

But friends say Skripal was a resilient character who had worked to make the most of the situation.

There have been reports that he may have given the odd lecture about Russia, but there is no outward sign he was involved in any ongoing operational activities.

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