Tag: novichok

Magic Novichok

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23 October 2020 — Craig Murray

Craig Murray

The security services put an extraordinary amount of media priming effort into explaining why the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals had a delayed effect of several hours, and then failed to kill them. Excuses included that it was a cold day which slowed their metabolisms, that the chemical took a long time to penetrate their skins, that the gel containing the novichok inhibited its operation, that it was a deliberately non-fatal dose, that rain had diluted the novichok on the doorknob, that the Skripals were protected by gloves and possibly only came into contact in taking the gloves off, or that nerve agents are not very deadly and easily treated. Continue reading →

The Unexpected Poisoning and the Unsuspecting Victims

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24 September 2020 — American Herald Tribune

Nordstream Novichok b70e3

When the BBC’s “Salisbury Poisonings” went to air in the UK, it seemed inevitable that it would be screened in Australia, giving us at least a chance to prepare for this new propaganda onslaught. But just as it was “unclear” why the BBC had chosen to screen it in June, or for that matter to produce the “drama based on true events” in the first place, so it was hard to imagine what particular event or circumstance would make the rather ridiculous “Russian Novichok” story relevant again. One might have thought it foolish to remind people of it in case they weren’t so easily fooled a second time round, though for many people in Australia the first time mostly passed them by. “Putin did it again” was about the extent of their memory of the Skripal affair.

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The Novichoks story: chemical weapons programme or canary trap?

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16 September 2020 — Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media

Paul McKeigue

A Truly Poisonous Foreign Policy: A Ridiculous Proposal from The New York Times

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12 September 2020 — American Herald Tribune

Alexei Navalny 248af

Philip Geraldi

If one had been reading America’s leading newspapers and magazines over the past several weeks the series of featured stories suggesting that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is some kind of latter day Lucrezia Borgia would have been impossible to avoid. Putin, who was simultaneously being branded as some kind of totalitarian monster, apparently does not just go around chopping off heads. Instead, he prefers to slip military grade poison into people’s tea or wipes it onto their doorknobs. The case of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England is being cited as evidence that poisoning is a routine way of cleaning out the closets, so to speak, together with that of Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in England in 2006 under mysterious circumstances after reportedly drinking a radioactive isotope that had been placed into his cup of tea while dining at a sushi restaurant in London. Apparently the raw fish had nothing to do with it.

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Navalny Novichok Poisoning: The (Very Unlikely) Story So Far

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3 September 2020 — Off Guardian

“Maybe the Russians failed on purpose because they want to scare us.”

Kit Knightly

For those of you who haven’t been following the news – Russian politician (or “opposition figure”, as he is universally referred to in the Western press) Alexei Navalny was taken ill two weeks ago. It is now being reported he was “poisoned” with “novichok”.

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Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense

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3 September 2020 — Craig Murray

Once Navalny was in Berlin it was only a matter of time before it was declared that he was poisoned with Novichok. The Russophobes are delighted. This of course eliminates all vestiges of doubt about what happened to the Skripals, and proves that Russia must be isolated and sanctioned to death and we must spend untold billions on weapons and security services. We must also increase domestic surveillance, crack down on dissenting online opinion. It also proves that Donald Trump is a Russian puppet and Brexit is a Russian plot.

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The Scene and the Crime: The Salisbury Poisonings

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23 August 2020 — American Herald Tribune

Salisbury Poisonings 38f86

Nine months after Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned in March 2018, the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ screened a documentary about it, Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack: the Inside Story. The show backed the Tory government’s conviction that Russian GRU officers attacked the former Russian double agent and his daughter. But British experts pointed to its factual errors, and some ordinary punters – including the BBC’s own correspondent in Salisbury – were dubious.

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The Salisbury Poisonings: Skripal drama framed as anti-Russian propaganda

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27 June 2020 — WSWS

By Thomas Scripps

In 2018, Britain published its National Security Capability Review, outlining a new “Fusion Doctrine.” This called for the “use of all our capabilities; from economic levers, through cutting-edge military resources to our wider diplomatic and cultural influence on the world’s stage” to “project our global influence.” The BBC, especially its World Service, was named as a key instrument of UK “soft power.”

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The Skripals, Salisbury and the curious case of Dawn Sturgess’s inquest By Craig Murray

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23 October 2019 — True Publica

The Skripals, Salisbury and the curious case of Dawn Sturgess's inquest

The killing of poor Dawn Sturgess was much the most serious of the events in Salisbury and Amesbury that attracted international attention. Yet nobody has been charged, no arrest warrant issued and no inquest held. The inquest for Dawn Sturgess has today been yet again postponed, for the fourth time, and for the first time no new prospective date has been given for it to open. Alarmingly, the coroner’s office are referring press enquiries to Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command – which ought to have no role in an inquest process supposed to be independent of the police.

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New Developments in the Skripal Case Reveal it for the Sham it Always Was By James ONeill

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16 October 2019 — New Eastern Outlook

1072873556“The willing suspension of disbelief or the moment which constitutes poetic faith.” This has been defined as willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe something surreal. Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographic Literaric 1817.

The above quotation, now more than 200 years old, remains a perfect encapsulation of the ongoing farce (or tragedy) that is the case of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

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‘You have to prove Putin was involved’: Met Police push back against UK blame game in Skripal saga

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8 August 2019 — RT

A year and a half since the Salisbury poisoning, the UK appears to be left with egg on its face after Scotland Yard admitted it is impossible to build a criminal case due to a lack of evidence.

The Metropolitan Police scrutinized claims that an order to target former double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia came from the top echelons of the Russian government.

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Mainstream Media Hide Skripal’s Connections to Russiagate-Trump Case By Eric Zuesse

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15 July, 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation

First of all, everyone should read this:

“The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing US Media Failures on the Trump-Russia Story”.

It is important background for understanding what follows, because the following helps to explain what is displayed in that brilliant prior article:

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News has slowly been getting out that the British Government’s account of the poisoning of the Skripals is a fabrication which had been done in order to escalate hostilities against Russia, and that when information from Democratic Party and Clinton campaign computers subsequently became either leaked or hacked to Wikileaks, the Democratic National Committee hired, in order to investigate that, British contractors who were also involved in the Skripal fraud, and Skripal himself might have been a crucial part of the Russiagate-Trump operation.

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In Memory of Dawn Sturgess by Rob Slane

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12 July 2019 — Off Guardian – The Blogmire

I said at the beginning of the year that I wanted to move on from writing on this case, unless significant developments arose. That is still my intention, and I very much hope that this will be my last piece on it.

But I couldn’t let the anniversary of the Amesbury case, in which Dawn Sturgess lost her life, pass without comment. My thanks to Duncan, Liane, and Paul especially, and many other commenters for their observations which have helped in the writing of this. It’s a long read. Here goes…

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Odd NYT ‘Correction’ Exculpates British Government And CIA From Manipulating Trump Over Skripal Novichok Incident

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6 June 2019 — Moon of Alabama

A piece in the New York Times showed how in March 2018 Trump was manipulated by the CIA and MI6 into expelling 60 Russian diplomats. Eight weeks after it was published the New York Times ‘corrects’ that narrative and exculpates the CIA and MI6 of that manipulation. Its explanation for the correction makes little sense.

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