Skripal – The Stupid Propaganda The State Can’t Let Go

Iain Davis
In This Together

The alleged Skripal chemical weapons attack is the UK state propaganda narrative it refuses to let go. Today (16/08/2019) the unquestioning parrot media are reporting that an unnamed police officer was poisoned with the deadly nerve agent Novichok during the immediate Skripal poisoning response. 

Eighteen months after the incident, they are still flogging this dead horse.

The whole fantasy has largely been propagated by the MSM. So I am going to cite them here, just to illustrate the numerous contradiction in their ludicrous yarn.

If you want to understand my take on this silliness then, before reading the rest, get a coffee, sit back and watch this video. [...]

According to the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Policing network (CTP) scientists from the the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton down have confirmed “that traces of Novichok were in the blood sample” of the officer concerned.

We need to be very clear about what Novichok (the family of nerve toxins) is supposed to be. It is said to be a deadly military grade nerve agent. The bottle supposedly used to deliver the Novichok was found a couple of months after the attack. The lead investigator, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Hayden, stated that it contained enough of the lethal nerve agent to potentially kill thousands of people.

He was right to be terrified, Novichok was said to be at least 5 times to 10 times more deadly than VX. It is unimaginably lethal, real nightmare stuff. Just 10mg of VX is enough to kill and Novichok is much worse. It is so deadly that Professor Alastair Hay (OBE,) a UK Government chemical warfare advisor, said just 50 micro-grams, that’s 50 millionths of a gram or 0.00005 g, is a lethal dose. To put this into perspective, that’s about a tenth of the size of a grain of sand.

Furthermore, Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of Dstl, reported that there is no known antidote to Novichok. The nerve agent was specifically designed to make possible oxim antidotes useless. Negating the third step in the three step process required if you ever hope to save anybody exposed to Novichok.

Exposure to Novichok is fatal unless aggressively managed. So the Skripal’s recovery was truly unbelievable because no one knew what they had been poisoned with a nerve agent for nearly two days and they were treated for a suspected Fentanyl overdose.

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Oops! NY Times Accidentally Unravels UK Government's Official Skripal Fairy Tale

Kit Klarenberg
Sputnik via sott.net

While London almost immediately blamed Moscow for being behind the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK city of Salisbury in March 2018, Russia has strongly rejected its involvement, stressing it's been denied access both to the investigation into the incident and the Russian nationals affected.

On 16th April, the New York Times published a glowing profile of Gina Haspel, who in May 2018 became the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The article referred to Haspel - the former head of a CIA 'black site' in Thailand at which an indeterminate number of suspected terrorists were viciously tortured - as an "adept tactician" blessed with "good listening, empathy and an ability to connect", and discussed the difficulties the intelligence chief faced in ensuring "her voice is heard at the White House", due to the intransigence of President Donald Trump and a White House that allegedly treats national security professionals "with deep skepticism".

So far, so obsequious - but buried in the hagiography is a fascinating disclosure. In a section titled 'The keys to talking to Trump? Realism and emotion', authors Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman document how Haspel "solidified her reputation" as one of the "most skilled briefers" of the President.

Following the 4^th March 2018 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, top national security officials are said to have gathered inside the White House to discuss with Trump how Washington should respond - at the time, Whitehall was preparing to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the UK, and aggressively pushing various key international allies to follow suit. 

Trump was said to have initially dismissed the significance of the poisoning, characterising it as "legitimate spy games, distasteful but within the bounds of espionage". However, Haspel lobbied the President to expel 60 Russian diplomats from the US - and persuaded Trump to take the "strong option" by showing him the Skripals "were not the only victims of Russia's attack".

"Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. Ms. Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option," the article states. 

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US military wants to know what synthetic-biology weapons could look like

Comment: US military telegraphing what they already know and what they are already experimenting with. Their "concerns" and curiosity are merely a way to suggest Russia is at fault or a legion of terrorists (most of which have been created and funded by the same minds). It's an interesting article when seen as a snapshot of their objectives. 

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Antonio Regalado
MIT Tech Review

A study ordered by the US Department of Defense has concluded that new genetic-engineering tools are expanding the range of malicious uses of biology and decreasing the amount of time needed to carry them out.

The new tools aren’t in themselves a danger and are widely employed to create disease-resistant plants and new types of medicine. However, rapid progress by companies and university labs raises the specter of “synthetic-biology-enabled weapons,” according to the 221-page report.

The report, issued by the National Academies of Sciences, is among the first to try to rank national security threats made possible by recent advances in gene engineering such as the gene-editing technology CRISPR.

“Synthetic biology does expand the risk. That is not a good-news story,” says Gigi Gronvall, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins and one of the report’s 13 authors. “This report provides a framework to systematically evaluate the threat of misuse.”

Experts are divided on the perils posed by synthetic biology, a term used to describe a wide set of techniques for speeding genetic engineering. In 2016, the US intelligence community placed gene editing on its list of potential weapons of mass destruction.

“Many different groups have written and spoken about the topic, with a wide spread of opinion,” says D. Christian Hassell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for chemical and biological defense, who commissioned the report in order to obtain a “consensus opinion from among the top leaders and thinkers” in the field.

Hassell says the military’s current view is that “synbio is not a major threat issue at the moment” but bears preparing for, in part because defenses like vaccines can take years to develop.

The current report attempted to weigh potential threats by considering factors such as the technical barriers to implementation, the scope of casualties, and the chance of detecting an attack. It found that while “some malicious applications of synthetic biology may not seem plausible right now, they could become achievable with future advances.”

Among the risks the authors termed of “high concern” is the possibility that terrorists or a nation-state could re-create a virus such as smallpox. That is a present danger because a technology for synthesizing a virus from its DNA instructions has previously been demonstrated.

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Keep Calm & Blame Russia: RT Documentary on Inconvenient Facts in Skripal Saga

Murad Gazdiev 
RT
via Sott.net

If countless Russia-bashing pieces don't help you get the big picture of the lingering Skripal saga, a report by RT's Murad Gazdiev may. He scrutinized the major slipups in the UK government's (and their pundits') narrative.

It is "highly likely" that Russia deployed a deadly weapons-grade toxin to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal. Porton Down, the UK's leading chemical research lab, says there is "no doubt" the toxin was Novichok-class nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. And Russia surely did it, because the very word 'Novichok' is Russian for 'newcomer.'

RT's Murad Gazdiev examines the stunning discrepancies that emanate from the Skripal case, as the blame game against Moscow continues.

The report includes commentary from renowned chemical weapon experts, both Russian and Western-based, who told RT the formula of Novichok-class agents is actually an open secret as any - yes, you heard it right - laboratory in the world may produce the same substance with the same degree of purity. Moreover, the pace at which the UK authorities identified the poison used on the Skripals raises even more questions.

Watch RT's report in full here: 

STUNNING coincidence? Chlorine containers from Germany and smoke bombs from Salisbury (Skripal poisoning) found in Syria

The Duran

The more this story goes on, the more the wheels fall off the wagon of the initial allegations” says independent journalist Martin Summers as Russia reveals to Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) they gave proof ‘Novichok’ was patented in US in 2015.

It gets better…Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated during a Thursday press conference that containers filled with chlorine from Germany and smoke bombs manufactured in the United Kingdom city of Salisbury were found in the East Ghouta region of Damascus, the location of the alleged chemical attack by Assad which resulted in the launch of 105 Tomahawks on 3 Syrian targets by US, UK and French forces last Friday.

Just to remind our readers, the Skripal attack was staged in…you guessed it, Salisbury.

US patented ‘Novichok’, UK-Salisbury smoke bombs, and German chlorine containers…are we looking at a coordinated NATO effort to demonize Russia, and eventually deliver on a hot war with Russia?

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About Those 'Nice, New, Smart' Missiles And The 'Chemical Weapons' Sites in Syria

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Throughout the 20th century, the US ability to project power and dominate global geopolitics was, to a large extent, based on the general perception that the US was the most powerful military force in the world. In most cases, the mere threat of this military prowess was enough to 'get things done' the American, or Western, way. The maintenance of the widespread belief in US military preeminence is therefore extremely important to the US establishment, and any event that might expose a different reality is to be avoided at all costs. When US/Western military might is physically demonstrated, a careful propaganda campaign and media management of the outcome is necessary, up to and including outright lies about the performance of the military tech used. No surprise there.

In the first 1990 Gulf War, for example, the performance of US Patriot missiles in shooting down Iraqi Scud missiles fired at Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait was lauded by Western powers and the media. A 95% success rate was claimed at the time, with then President George Bush claiming that the Patriot's record was "near perfect". Over the following year however, the US Army lowered this estimate to 79% over Saudi Arabian skies and 40% over Israel. A later report by the General Accounting Office concluded that Patriot missiles destroyed only 9% of the Scuds they attempted to engage. The Israeli Defense Force calculated the hit rate at just 2%.

On the night of Jan. 25, 1991 in Tel Aviv, three Patriots that were fired into the air fell back to earth and exploded. Two of them hit residential areas and the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported at the time that one Israeli was killed, 44 were wounded, and 4,156 apartments were destroyed. That incident and a few others like it led Ted Postol, an MIT weapons scientist, to testify before a congressional committee that, "it is possible that if we had not attempted to defend against Scuds, the level of resulting damage would be no worse than actually occurred."

In a documentary aired on Israeli television in 1993, Moshe Arens, who was Israel's Defense Minister in the Gulf War, Gen. Dan Shomron, who was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force during the war, and Haim Asa, a member of an Israeli technical team that worked with Patriots during the war, all dismissed the Patriot anti-missile system. General Shomron described accounts of the Patriot's success as "a myth." Mr. Asa called them "a joke." All concurred with a 1991 report by the Israeli Air Force, which concluded that "there is no evidence of even a single successful intercept" although there is "circumstantial evidence for one possible intercept."

The point being, the US has a track record of lying about the effectiveness of its missiles.

After 100+ cruise missiles or cruise missile variants were fired at targets in Syria early in the morning of April 14th, President Trump declared "mission accomplished" and tweeted that it was "a perfectly executed strike." Pentagon officials said that none of the 105 allied missiles fired were hit by Syria's Soviet-era anti-missile ground systems, that the raids were "precise and overwhelming," and Syrian air defences remained "largely ineffective."

An important point that seems to have gotten lost in the media propaganda offensive is that only 3 locations were targeted and hit. Or, at least, that's the official story. Lieutenant-General Kenneth F. McKenzie told reporters on Saturday that the prime target of the operation was the Barzeh Research and Development Center in the greater Damascus area. A total of 76 missiles, including 57 Tomahawk missiles, were fired at the facility, he said. He also said that 22 missiles were fired against a 'chemical weapons storage facility' near Homs, and some seven missiles at another 'chemical weapons bunker' in the same area.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, confirmed that only those three targets were hit, including the Barzeh 'scientific research centre' in the greater Damascus area, which he claimed was used for research, development, production and testing of chemical weapons, a facility just west of Homs which the US claimed was a centre for sarin gas production, and a command post located near the first facility.

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Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive

Eva Bartlett
In Gaza

The US, Britain and France trampled international law to launch missiles against Syria, claiming to have “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons. That evidence is based on terrorist lies.

After a week of outrageous tweets and proclamations by POTUS Trump, which included continued accusations that Syria’s president ordered a chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, east of Damascus, with Trump using grotesque and juvenile terminology, such as “animal Assad,” the very evening before chemical weapons inspectors of the OPCW were to visit Douma, America and allies launched illegal bombings against Syria. The illegal bombings included 103 missiles, 71 of which Russia states were intercepted.

For the past week, we were told that the US had ‘evidence’ and the UK had ‘evidence’ that Syria had used chemicals. The ‘evidence’ largely relied on video clips and photos shared on social media, provided by the Western-funded White Helmets (that ‘rescuer’ group that somehow only operates in Al-Qaeda and co-terrorist occupied areas and participates in torture and executions), as well as by Yaser al-Doumani, a man whose allegiance to Jaysh al-Islam is clear from his own Facebook posts, for example of former Jaysh al-Islam leader, Zahran Alloush.

This, we were told, was ‘evidence.’ This and the words of the highly partial, USAID-funded, US State Department allied Syrian American Medical Society, which, like Al-Qaeda’s rescuers, only supports doctors in terrorist-occupied areas.

On April 12, even US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the House Armed Services Committee that the US government does not have any evidence that sarin or chlorine was used, that he was still looking for evidence.

Syria, finding the claims to be lies and the sources tainted, requested that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) immediately come to Syria to investigate the claims. Accordingly, the OPCW agreed to send a team—the visas for which Syria granted immediately—which arrived in Damascus on April 14.

President Trump, instead of waiting for an investigation to confirm his ‘evidence,’ chose the very night before this investigative team would arrive in Syria to inspect the allegations, to bomb Syria. The timing of the attacks is more than just a little timely. And the bombings were illegal.

General Mattis tried to dance around the legality, stating, “the president has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to use military force overseas to defend important United States national interests.”

But he is wrong, this does not permit the US to illegally bomb a sovereign nation, and he knows it. So does Russia. In a statement on April 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the attacks as illegal, noting:

“Without the sanction of the Security Council of the United Nations, in violation of the UN Charter, norms and principles of international law, an act of aggression against a sovereign state that is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism has been committed.”

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Skripal Case Bombshell: Swiss Lab Reports 'BZ Toxin' Used In Salisbury - Chemical Not Produced In Russia, Only NATO States

RT via Sott.net

The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.

The Swiss center mentioned by Lavrov is the Spiez Laboratory controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and ultimately by the country's defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.

The Russian foreign minister said that London refused to answer dozens of "very specific" questions asked by Moscow about the Salisbury case, as well as to provide any substantial evidence that could shed light on the incident. Instead, the UK accused Russia of failing to answer its own questions, he said, adding that, in fact, London did not ask any questions but wanted Moscow to admit that it was responsible for the delivery of the chemical agent to the UK.

The scandal erupted in early March, when former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in critical condition in the town of Salisbury. Top UK officials almost immediately pinned the blame on Russia.

Moscow believes that the entire Skripal case lacks transparency and that the UK is in fact not interested in an independent inquiry. "We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence, classifying all remaining materials and making a transparent investigation impossible," the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said during a press conference on Friday.  

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Chemical Cover-up Continues: British Consider 'Disappearing' Skripals Somewhere in The Anglosphere

Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Having gone this far with their absurd theater of staging a chemical weapons attack and blaming it on the Kremlin, the British government has apparently decided that... it may as well keep going.

Thanks to Victoria Skripal having the wherewithal to record her phone conversation with her cousin once she got through to her, we now know that the Skripals are doing 'fine' enough that they expect to be discharged from hospital soon. We also learned from the cousin that she overheard someone coaching Yulia on what she could and could not say on the phone. When Victoria told her she'd apply for a visa in order to come to the UK and visit her and her uncle, Yulia foresaw - correctly, as it turns out - that it was unlikely her application would be successful.

In addition, the British continue to refuse Russian embassy staff in London permission to visit her - as they are required to do under international law.

The British now have a serious problem on their hands: what to do with the Skripals? If they let them return to Russia, they'll almost certainly divulge details embarrassing to the British government.

Today the British Sunday Times reports that:

'Sergei and Yulia Skripal offered new identities with CIA help - Poisoned daughter refuses to meet Russians'

The Times cites MI6 sources as saying they've discussed relocating the Skripals out of the UK with the CIA, and that the Russian nationals are to be "offered new identities and a new life in America", ostensibly to "protect them from further murder attempts." Are they to be 'offered' this choice, or manipulated and effectively forced into accepting it?

If not the US, then to one of the other 'five eyes' countries in the Anglosphere - Canada, Australia or New Zealand:

"The obvious place to resettle them is in America, because they're less likely to be killed there and it's easier to protect them there under a new identity. There's a preference for them to be resettled in a five-eyes nation because their case would have huge security implications."

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Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria? An Open Source Investigation

JOIN THE INVESTIGATION:  

  

www.corbettreport.com

No sooner has the idea of a US withdrawal from Syria been floated than Assad launched a chemical weapons attack on the suburbs of Damascus...or so we are being asked to believe. But this is not the first time we have been lied to about chemical weapons claims. What is the evidence about this situation, and what are the latest developments with regard to the international response? Corbett Report members are asked to contribute to this open source investigation by posting information and links about this breaking news event.

False-flag for war: New Syrian chemical weapons attack being reported by all the usual suspects

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium

The western propaganda machine is endlessly impressive. People are so pervasively brainwashed by mass media psyops that they now find it easier to believe that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are deliberately killing civilians with poisonous gas for no reason whatsoever than to believe that the same empire which deceived us into Iraq is deceiving us into Iraq's next-door neighbor Syria.

There are early reports of another mass casualty chemical weapons attack in Syria, as usual in a region crawling with known terrorist forces, and as usual just as those terrorists are suffering critical defeats. As usual, the attack is placed in a location replete with children and cameras. As usual, all the expected high-profile pro-regime change propagandists are all over it, from the White Helmets to Charles Lister to Eliot Higgins to Julian Röpcke.

Details are sketchy and unconfirmed, but the early narrative being promulgated is clear.

"If 30+ died in the CW attack in Douma, then it would be the most fatalities in a chemical attack in Syria since Khan Sheikhoun just over a year ago," said the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins of the attack. "This could be another major moment in the conflict, something depressingly dependent on whether or not Fox and Friends covers it." 

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British Government's Chemical Attack Narrative Falls Apart - Boris Johnson Lied About Russia

Niall Bradley
Sott.net

Boris has really done it this time hasn't he.

In a blockbuster twist to the Skripal saga, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and his British Foreign & Commonwealth Office has been caught lying to the whole world.

After almost a month of baseless claims and slurs - broadcast in media globally - about Russian involvement in the attempted murder of retired spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British government is now backpedaling faster than a Tour de France video on rewind.

In its previous iteration, the British government's argument hinged on the Porton Down chemical weapons facility having positively identified the alleged murder weapon, 'Novichok', as being Russian in origin. But now the most that the chief of Porton Down will say is that they have identified a "military-grade nerve agent" of unknown origin.  

[...]

This time it's Russia's turn to call an emergency UN Security Council meeting, and Britain's turn to field awkward questions.

The latest development today is that Yulia Skripal is awake and doing 'fine', as is her father. Russian media have published a recording of a phone conversation she had with a relative in Russia. I won't even ask how they got ahold of that, but more concerning is the following question this raises: how on Earth can the Skripals be doing 'fine' if they were exposed to a lethal nerve agent that is classed as a chemical weapon of mass destruction?

The British government says it sent its 'bestest proof' to fellow anglophonic countries - The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - the 'Five Eyes' that form the core of the Western Order, while everyone else in NATO-stan received just the 'basic package' of 'believe us, this is for realz'.

Despite being on just a 'need-to-know' basis, all but a handful of the quislings in NATO-stan fell into line by booting at least one Russian diplomat. Of the few countries that have not yet done so, Bulgaria is apparently considering it, while the US gauleiter in ambassador to Slovenia has warned his host country that its failure to toe the party line "surprised him", that the Slovenian government "ought to have expelled Russian diplomats," and that "Slovenians must decide where their interests lie; with the democratic free West, or the Russian model of society." 

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See also: Public Demands Resignation of Boris Johnson Over Skripal Nerve Agent Lies

'Theater of absurd': Russian envoy shows UK version of Skripal case 'falls apart' (VIDEO)

RT

Russia’s UN envoy described the UK’s attempt, without evidence, to pin the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on Moscow as "theater of absurd", in his address updating the UNSC on the scandal. 

The extraordinary meeting was requested by Moscow, following the announcement made by the secretive British Porton Down chemical laboratory, that it had not established that the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals was of Russian origin.

The top British officials explicitly cited the Porton Down laboratory when pinning the blame on Moscow, so following this revelation their theory started to fall apart, said Vasily Nebenzia, noting that the UK’s secret agencies rushed to help the government, producing new claims based on some “intelligence data.”

“I don’t even know how to comment on this. It’s some sort of the theater of absurd. You couldn't have come up with better fake story?” Nebenzia asked.

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

Moon of Alabama

It's Not The Crime, It's The Cover-Up:

When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up is often regarded as even more reprehensible than the original deeds.

The British government is trying to cover-up the lies it made with its false allegations against Russia. The cover-up necessitates new lies some of which we expose below.

Yesterday the head of the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down stated that the laboratory can not establish that the poison used in the alleged 'Novichok' attack in Salisbury was produced by Russia. This was a severe blow to the British government allegations of Russian involvement in the poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal.

Now the British government tries to hide that it said that the poison used in the Salisbury was 'produced in Russia' and that Porton down had proved that to be the case. The government aligned media are helping to stuff the government lies down the memory hole.

We all need to make sure that the new lies get exposed and that the attempts to change the record fail.

Yesterday the British Foreign Office deleted this from its Twitter account:

The March 22 tweet was part of a now interrupted thread which summarized a briefing on the UK government's response to the Salisbury incident given by the British Ambassador to Russia, Dr Laurie Bristow, to the international diplomatic community in Moscow.

After the silent scrubbing of the record was publicly questioned the Foreign Office admitted that it deleted the tweet:

After it emerged on Wednesday that the tweet had been deleted, the Foreign Office said the post was removed because it "did not accurately report" the words of Laurie Bristow, the UK's ambassador to Russia, which the tweet was supposed to be quoting.

Hmm - fool me once ...

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Russia ‘Novichok’ Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven’t Learned The Lessons of Iraq

"...how could UK government leaders have known ‘who did it’ in advance of any criminal forensic investigation or substantive testing by Porton Down or an independent forensic investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)?"

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 "...a substantial amount of evidence points to only two countries who are the most active in producing and testing biological and chemical weapons WMD – the United States and Great Britain. Their programs also include massive ‘live testing’ on both humans and animals with most of this work undertaken at the Porton Down research facility located only minutes away from the scene of this alleged ‘chemical attack’ in Salisbury, England."

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Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

If there’s one thing to be gleaned from the current atmosphere of anti Russian hysteria in the West, it’s that the US-led sustained propaganda campaign is starting to pay dividends. It’s not only the hopeless political classes and media miscreants who believe that Russia is hacking, meddling and poisoning our progressive democratic utopia – with so many pinning their political careers to this by now that’s it’s too late for them to turn back. As it was with Iraq in 2003, these dubious public figures require a degree of public support for their policies, and unfortunately many people do believe in the grand Russian conspiracy, having been sufficiently brow-beaten into submission by around-the-clock fear mongering and official fake news disseminated by government and the mainstream media. 

What makes this latest carnival of warmongering more frightening is that it proves that the political and media classes never actually learned or internalized the basic lessons of Iraq, namely that the cessation of diplomacy and the declarations of sanctions (a prelude to war) against another sovereign state should not be based on half-baked intelligence and mainstream fake news. But that’s exactly what is happening with this latest Russian ‘Novichok’ plot.

Admittedly, the stakes are much higher this time around. The worst case scenario is unthinkable, whereby the bad graces of men like John Bolton and other military zealots, there may just be a thin enough mandate to short-sell another military conflagration or proxy war – this time against another nuclear power and UN Security Council member.

Enter stage right, where US President Donald Trump announced this week that the US is moving closer to war footing with Russia. It’s not the first time Trump has made such a hasty move in the absence any forensic evidence of a crime. Nowadays, hearsay, conjecture and social media postings are enough to declare war. Remember last April with the alleged “Sarin Attack” in Khan Sheikhoun, when the embattled President squeezed off 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles against Syria – a decision, which as far as anyone can tell, was based solely on a few YouTube videos uploaded by the illustrious White Helmets. Back then Trump learned how an act of war against an existential enemy could take the heat off at home and translate into a bounce in the polls. Even La Résistance at CNN were giddy with excitement and threw their support behind Trump, with some pundits describing his decision to act as “Presidential.”

As with past high-profile western-led WMD allegations against governments in Syria and Iraq (the US and UK are patently unconcerned with multiple allegations of ‘rebel’ terrorists in Syria caught using chemical weapons), an identical progression of events appears to be unfolding following the alleged ‘Novichok’ chemical weapon poisoning of retired British-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire on March 4th.

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Russia Claims Skripal Poisoning Was Staged By UK Intelligence

"The UK still hasn't explained why out of the myriad of ways to kill a human being, Russia would use Novichok - certainly knowing it would directly implicate them in Skripal's death." 

Zero Hedge

Russia's Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, says that London's reluctance to share information on the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal has led Moscow to suggest that London authorities actually perpetrated the crime.

“We have very serious suspicion that this provocation was done by British intelligence,”Yakovenko told Russia's NTV channel - adding however that Moscow had no direct proof, but that the UK's behavior constitutes strong circumstantial evidence in support of their theory. 

Skripal case: How UK ‘explains’ why Russia is to blame in 1-minute VIDEO https://t.co/Dx0uqP0LrE pic.twitter.com/7UfX2gAwVr

— RT (@RT_com) March 30, 2018

Yakovenko also suggested that London had gained several benefits from the poisoning - both short and long-term, in that Theresa May's government is capitalizing on the event in order to boost support at home, while burying headlines over its failures to negotiate better Brexit terms. The long-term benefit, according to Yakovenko, is that London is able to elevate itself into a primary position in the ongoing confrontation between the West and Russia. 

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Moscow Confronts London With 14 questions on 'Fabricated' Skripal Case, France Implicated

RT

 

Russia’s Embassy in London has sent a list of 14 questions to the UK Foreign Ministry, demanding that it reveals details of the investigation into the nerve-agent poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. 

 

The questions, provided in full below, include a demand to clarify whether samples of the nerve agent А-234 (also known as “Novichok”) have ever been developed in the UK. The embassy’s statement calls the incident that started the recent diplomatic row a “fabricated case against Russia.”

1. Why has Russia been denied the right of consular access to the two Russian citizens, who came to harm on British territory?

2. What specific antidotes and in what form were the victims injected with? How did such antidotes come into the possession of British doctors at the scene of the incident?

3. On what grounds was France involved in technical cooperation in the investigation of the incident, in which Russian citizens were injured?

4. Did the UK notify the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) of France’s involvement in the investigation of the Salisbury incident?

5. What does France have to do with the incident, involving two Russian citizens in the UK?

6. What rules of UK procedural legislation allow for the involvement of a foreign state in an internal investigation?

7. What evidence was handed over to France to be studied and for the investigation to be conducted?

8. Were the French experts present during the sampling of biomaterial from Sergei and Yulia Skripal?

9. Was the study of biomaterials from Sergei and Yulia Skripal conducted by the French experts and, if so, in which specific laboratories?

10. Does the UK have the materials involved in the investigation carried out by France?

11. Have the results of the French investigation been presented to the OPCW Technical Secretariat?

12. Based on what attributes was the alleged “Russian origin” of the substance used in Salisbury established?

13. Does the UK have control samples of the chemical warfare agent, which British representatives refer to as “Novichok”?

14. Have the samples of a chemical warfare agent of the same type as “Novichok” (in accordance to British terminology) or its analogues been developed in the UK?


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UK to launch anti-Russian propaganda war as ‘Fusion Doctrine’ defense plan unveiled

Comment: Russia doesn't need to propagandize anything. It just listens, watches and observes the juvenile and desperate mess British intelligence is determined to create for itself.  What these clueless numbskulls are actually tasked with doing is to feverishly counter the logical conclusions that the UK is attempting to set Russia up as part of its cold war strategy. What's more, very few non-Western countries believe their lies anymore. A little more leeway for objectivity perhaps?

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RT 

Britain is preparing for a counter-propaganda war against Russia amid allegations that the Kremlin is spreading fake news regarding the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. 

Intelligence services will now be tasked with identifying trolling social media platforms in a bid to clamp down on what is deemed by the UK government as ‘misinformation.’ The new instructions are included in the Fusion Doctrine, unveiled as part of the National Security Capability Review, to be published on Wednesday. It seeks to tackle the perceived threat from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), Russia and North Korea.

Increased efforts to tackle fake news come amid security experts alleging, in the Telegraph, that Russia put out more than 20 stories “trying to confuse the picture and the charge sheet” over the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury earlier this month. 

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Skripal Likely Poisoned by British Intelligence in Effort to Smear and Silence Russian World View

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

The anglo-American establishment hates Putin because he took the broken pieces of a Soviet Union that was supposed to be one more Western vassal state and fashioned them into a modern, sovereign Russian Federation capable of pushing back against the Western vision of a unipolar world, a Pax Americana at gunpoint.

In radically transforming and strengthening both the Russian economy (making it largely immune to various types of economic attacks) and the Russian military, Putin effectively robbed the global empire of its manifest destiny to rule the globe unchallenged. In response, the empire-builders set out to do whatever it takes to destroy Putin and modern Russia. Yet due to Putin's expert moves on the global chessboard, the empire-builders find themselves with only one effective string to their collective bow with which to take Putin down: black propaganda and dirty tricks.

One example of this black propaganda campaign is the desperate attempts made by the US and its allies over the past 5 years to frame Russia (and Vladimir Putin personally) for carrying out chemical weapons attacks in different parts of Syria. On every occasion, Western governments and media failed to adequately convince Western populations that the allegations were accurate, or at least convince them that anything Putin was doing in Syria was worse than what they themselves were doing. Many people retain the ability to detect blatant BS when they smell it, apparently. 

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The UK government is manufacturing its nerve agent case for ‘action’ on Russia

Nafeez Ahmed
Insurge Intelligence

On Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned with "a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia" known as 'Novichok'.

The chemical agent was identified by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. May referred to the British government's "knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so" as a basis to conclude that Russia's culpability in the attack "is highly likely."

On these grounds, she claimed that only two scenarios are possible:

"Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others."

The British government's line has been chorused uncritically by the entire global press corps, with little scrutiny of its plausibility.

But there is a problem: far from offering a clear-cut evidence-trail to Vladimir Putin's chemical warfare labs, the use of Novichok in the nerve gas attack on UK soil points to a wider set of potential suspects, of which Russia is in fact the least likely.

Russia did actually destroy its nerve agent capabilities according to the OPCW

Yet a concerted effort is being made to turn facts on their head.

No clearer sign of this can be found than in the statement by Ambassador Peter Wilson, UK Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in which he claimed that Russia has "failed for many years" to fully disclose its chemical weapons programme.

Wilson was parroting a claim made a year earlier by the US State Department that Russia had not made a complete declaration of its chemical weapons stockpile: "The United States cannot certify that Russia has met its obligations under the Convention."

Yet these claims are contradicted by the OPCW itself, which in September 2017 declared that the independent global agency had rigorously verified the completed destruction of Russia's entire chemical weapons programme, including of course its nerve agent production capabilities.

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