The Silence of the Skripals

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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 23, 2018 2:06 pm

Hmmm... two-minute written statement in Russian read out to camera & recorded by Reuters at "a secret location in London". No questions asked or answered. Video at the link.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brita ... KKCN1IO2L5

She appears to have a deep operation-scar in her throat.

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The author of the Reuters report is Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters Bureau Chief for the United Kingdom and Ireland. Looks like he spent at least 13 years in Russia.

Guy joined Reuters News in 2005, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, first as correspondent and then chief political correspondent. He moved back to London in 2012 to take up his current role which has included covering the Scottish independence referendum, the British general election and now a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Guy started out as an intern with Bloomberg News before covering company news, bonds, investment banking and politics for Bloomberg in Moscow 1999 to 2004.

http://lipperalpha.financial.thomsonreu ... conbridge/
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby RocketMan » Wed May 23, 2018 4:05 pm

She appears to have a deep operation-scar in her throat.


It's presumably where she was intubated while in coma.
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Jerky » Wed May 23, 2018 9:23 pm

No no no, RocketMan. That's obviously a laproscopic scar from where they put in the CIA mind-control chip! Note how close it is to the head, relatively speaking?

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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Burnt Hill » Thu May 24, 2018 2:32 am

RocketMan » Wed May 23, 2018 4:05 pm wrote:
She appears to have a deep operation-scar in her throat.


It's presumably where she was intubated while in coma.


Yes. That scar is a Tracheostomy that is healing. It is directly on her windpipe (Trachea).
The throat (esophagus) is directly behind the windpipe.
Normally they would intubate through the mouth into the trachea, but for various reasons it is not always accessible, at that point they would access the trachea through the neck.

She probably already has some sort of "micochipping" on or in her body.
I am guessing a lot of people do
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby DrEvil » Thu May 24, 2018 7:17 am

^^Probably not, at least not without their knowledge. Otherwise they would find out in a very unpleasant way next time they go in for an MRA.

That said, everyone is chipped, but we carry the chips in our pockets.
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Blue » Thu May 24, 2018 7:22 am

I think you meant MRI, Dr. Evil. :lol:
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby RocketMan » Thu May 24, 2018 8:31 am

Jerky » Thu May 24, 2018 4:23 am wrote:No no no, RocketMan. That's obviously a laproscopic scar from where they put in the CIA mind-control chip! Note how close it is to the head, relatively speaking?

J.


Stop yelling.

SATIRE usually challenges narratives of the powers that be instead of touting it. You're doing it wrong.
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Cordelia » Thu May 24, 2018 10:59 am

DrEvil » Thu May 24, 2018 10:17 am wrote:

That said, everyone is chipped, but we carry the chips in our pockets.


I carry mine on my shoulder (along w/my pet bird).
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby DrEvil » Thu May 24, 2018 1:18 pm

Blue » Thu May 24, 2018 1:22 pm wrote:I think you meant MRI, Dr. Evil. :lol:


Heh, yeah. Oops. :) I actually looked it up because I wasn't sure it was the correct abbreviation, and I got a hit for magnetic resonance angiography and just went for it because lazy. Stupid internet.

Just to be clear: MRAs are unpleasant all the time and I don't recommend anyone go in for one, ever.
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby conniption » Thu May 24, 2018 7:19 pm

MoA
(embedded links)

May 24, 2018

British Hostage Video Of Yulia Skripal Released

Yesterday the British news agency Reuters published a hostage video and a statement of Yulia Skripal:

[Miss] Skripal was speaking from a secret location in London as she is under the protection of the British state. She was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital about five weeks after the poisoning and has not been seen by the media until now.


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We had earlier noted the Silence of the Skripals, the D(SMA)-notices issued by the British government to prevent deeper British media reporting on the case and the obvious disinformation peddled by British government sources. (All previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case are linked at the bottom of this piece.)

The British government claims that the 'former' British spy Sergej Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a deadly nerve agent of the Novichok group. According to British government leaks to the media the nerve agent was applied either through a suitcase, a box, flowers, spiked drinks or food, car vents, mini drones, a front door, cereal or a door handle in the form of a spray, gel or liquid. The British government loudly accused "Russia" of being responsible for poisoning of the Skripals but has not identified any individual who might have carried out such an attack.

In the new Reuters video Yulia Skripal gives a memorized and pressed monologue which declares that she does not want to be contacted by her cousin, grandmother, the Russian government or anyone else. The statement was pre-written in stilted, bureaucratic English language. On camera Yulia Skripal used a Russian version of the English text which she likely had not translated herself.

If this would have been a video and statement of a British citizen in 'protective custody' of the Russia state the British media and government would surely claim that these were made under duress.

Yulia Skripal looked well but for a scar on her throat which might be from an earlier trachea cut.

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Reuters published an additional report and video which also shows her signing a handwritten statement (pdf) with the same text she read on camera.

The statement is quite similar to the earlier one issued by the Metropolitan Police on April 11 "on behalf of Yulia Skripal". Both statements include a bureaucratic expression directed at the Russian embassy which no freely speaking person would ever use:

At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services.


The English version of the handwritten statement is without mistakes, the Russian version has several corrections.

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The Russian embassy in Britain expressed its concerns:

We are glad to have seen Yulia Skripal alive and well. The statement she read out contains new information. However, the video shown only strengthens our concerns as to the conditions in which she is being held. Obviously, Yulia was reading a pre-written text. More than that, judging by quite a few elements, the text was a translation from English and had been initially written by a native English-speaker. The handwritten letters signed by Yulia in Russian and English confirm this impression.

With all respect for Yulia’s privacy and security, this video does not discharge the UK authorities from their obligations under Consular Conventions. The UK is obliged to give us the opportunity to speak to Yulia directly in order to make sure that she is not held against her own will and is not speaking under pressure. So far, we have every reason to suspect the opposite.


On May 18 Yulia's dad was reported to have been released from the district hospital in Salisbury:

Mr Skripal is being protected by 24-hour armed guard at an MI5 safe house after leaving hospital earlier this week, sources have revealed.


No pictures or statements of Sergej Skripal were published.

While still in hopsital Yulia Skripal had once called her cousin in Russia. Until yesterday Yulia Skripal's grandmother and her cousin in Russia had heard nothing else from their relatives:

Meanwhile, Skripal's mother has demanded she be allowed to speak to her son. Yelena, who has not heard from the former spy since he was poisoned, has told a relative today that she wants to speak to him.

Yelena's carer Viktoria Skripal, who has been twice refused a British visa to see him and her cousin Yulia said: 'We have just told the news to his elderly mother who has been waiting for more than two months for any word from him or Yulia,' said Viktoria. 'She is begging the hospital, or whoever now decides Sergey's freedom of movement and speech, to please allow him to call her.'


Some of Yulia Skripal's "handwritten letters" (plural) the Russian embassy mentioned above might address her relatives.

The British government blamed the Russian state for the presumed attack on the Skripals. Its sole argument is that the alleged nerve agent used was from a group of chemical agents which were originally developed in the Soviet Union. That argument was always nonsense. The Novichok groups of chemicals was well known, a book had been published about them, Iranian scientist had synthesized them and added their data to the international chemical weapon database. The Czech republic had admitted that it produced some of them.

In the early 1990s German spies acquired some Novichok substance from a contact in the former Soviet Union. It was analyzed in Sweden and the results were shared with some NATO allies:

The Germans were privy to the poison’s chemical formula in the 1990s thanks to a sample from a Russian scientist who defected, German media reported. The compound was first analyzed in a laboratory in Sweden. Afterwards, the formula was sent to Germany’s Ministry of Defense and the BND.

It was under orders from former German chancellor Helmut Kohl that the BND informed the CIA and MI6, the respective intelligence agencies of the United States and Britain. Since then, small quantities of the poison have been produced to test antidotes, gauges and protective gear. The Czech republic had also produced some Novichok.


The British government accusations against Russia have no sound basis. Its chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down, a few miles from Salisbury, surely has made Novichok agents. These are simple compounds anyone with knowledge of organic chemistry and access to a decent laboratory can create. Dave Collum is professor for organic chemistry at Cornell University. He had criticized the British claim that only Russia could have produced the agent that allegedly hurt the Skripals. He put his thesis to a test. Only one of his 15 students did not manage the task:

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The claims the British government made about the Skripal case are nonsensical. It is entirely possible that the Skipal's were victims of simple food poisoning or suffered from an overdose of Fenatnyl. The British government used the case to increase hostility towards Russia while diverting the public from its failures in the Brexit negotiations. There is historic precedence for such false accusations against the Russian state.

The Skripal case is also related to the "Dirty Dossier" the "former" British spy Christopher Steele created to defame U.S. President Donald Trump. Sergej Skripal may well have written parts of it. A fact which the British government is trying to hide.

The Skripal's were probably hurt. The British accusations against Russia caused huge damage in international relations. But the biggest casualty of the case might be the trustworthiness of the British media.

Where are the deep investigations, the intriguing questions, the door stepping of witnesses in this case? Why are no serious questions asked about the dubious claims made about the case? How did the Skripals survive a nerve agent "ten times as deadly as VX"? Why is there no further digging into the Steele dossier relation?

More questions need to be asked. Who is the media servicing with its obsequious behavior? Why?

---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:
March 8 - Poisioned British-Russian Double-Agent Has Links To Clinton Campaign
March 12 - Theresa May's "45 Minutes" Moment
March 14 - Are 'Novichok' Poisons Real? - May's Claims Fall Apart
March 16 - The British Government's 'Novichok' Drama Was Written By Whom?
March 18 - NHS Doctor: "No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury"
March 21 - Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean (Updated)
March 29 - Last Act Of 'Novichok' Drama Revealed - "The Skripals' Resurrection"
March 31 - Hillary Clinton Ordered Diplomats To Suppress 'Novichok' Discussions
April 3 - Operation Hades Blamed Russia - A Model For The 'Novichok' Claims?
April 4 - It's The Cover-Up" - UK Foreign Office Deletes Tweet, Posts False Transcript, Issues New Lies
April 5 - Novi-Fog™ In Fleet Street - Truth Cut Off
April 6 - The Best Explanation For The Skripal Drama Is Still ... Food Poisoning
April 7 - A Very British Farce
April 12 - New Developments In The Skripal Drama - Police Statement, OPCW Report Release
April 15 - Were the Skripals 'Buzzed', 'Novi-shocked' Or Neither? - May Has Some 'Splaining' To Do
April 28 - The Silence Of The Skripals - Government Blocks Press Reports - Media Change The Record
May 4 - Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such


Posted by b on May 24, 2018 at 06:35 AM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/ho ... eased.html

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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby conniption » Thu May 24, 2018 10:50 pm

off-Guardian

Published on May 24, 2018
Comments 19

Whose words was Yulia reading?

by Catte

Image
Yulia Skripal allegedly making voluntary statement May 23 2018


Yulia Skripal’s surprise video statement and walkabout yesterday has, as usual in this case, raised more questions than it has provided answers. The MSM has predictably addressed none of those questions and been content to simply air the video along with portions of her statement, laced with anti-Russian commentary and distorted summaries of the backstory (see here and here and here). Fortunately those in the alt media are free to try to do a little better.

Reuters broke the story, and claimed an exclusive, but have not yet clarified their bureau chief Guy Faulconbridge, whose name appears on the article actually, spoke to Yulia in person.

The strange prelude to the statement in which we see Yulia walking amongst foliage in a “secret location” as if she’s auditioning for a commercial or doing a promo for a true-movie about herself is surreal and bizarre. Why not a simple piece to camera? Why put her through the added ordeal of being taken to the woods somewhere and asked to wander about smiling? Are they trying to prove she’s ambulatory? Happy? free?

If so they have failed on two of the three counts. She doesn’t seem happy or even comfortable, and certainly doesn’t appear to be free to speak her own thoughts. Whose idea was it to film her in this location? How much duress was she under to comply.

continues...

https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/24/who ... a-reading/
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Harvey » Tue May 29, 2018 8:05 pm

OP: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&start=1530#p658735

Relevance makes cross posting here worthwhile:

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All Russiagate Roads Lead To London As Evidence Emerges Of Joseph Mifsud’s Links To UK Intelligence

Over the last few months, Professor Joseph Mifsud has become a feather in the cap for those pushing the Trump-Russia narrative. He is characterized as a “Russian” intelligence asset in mainstream press, despite his declarations to the contrary. However, evidence has surfaced that suggests Mifsud was anything but a Russian spy, and may have actually worked for British intelligence. This new evidence culminates in the ground-breaking conclusion that the UK and its intelligence apparatus may be responsible for the invention of key pillars of the Trump-Russia scandal. If true, this would essentially turn the entire RussiaGate debacle on its head.

To give an idea of the scope of this report, a few central points showing the UK connections with the central pillars of the Trump-Russia claims are included here, in the order of discussion in this article:

. Mifsud allegedly discussed that Russia has ‘dirt’ on Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails’ with George Papadopoulos in London in April 2016.
. The following month, Papadopoulos spoke with Alexander Downer, Australia’s ambassador to the UK, about the alleged Russian dirt on Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky Kensington bar, according to The Times. In late July 2016, Downer shared his tip with Australian intelligence officials who forwarded it to the FBI.
. Robert Goldstone, a key figure in the ‘Trump Tower’ part of the RussiaGate narrative, sent Donald Trump Jr. an email claiming Russia wanted to help the Trump campaign. He is a British music promoter.
. Christopher Steele, ex-MI6, who worked as an MI6 agent in Moscow until 1993 and ran the Russia desk at MI6 HQ in London between 2006 and 2009. He produced the totally unsubstantiated ‘Steele Dossier’ of Trump-Russia allegations, with funding from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
. Robert Hannigan, the head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share ‘director-to-director’ level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan.

Each of these strands of UK-tied elements of the Russiagate narrative can be substantially dismantled on close inspection. This untangling process leads to the surprising conclusion that UK intelligence services fabricated evidence of collusion in order to create the appearance of a Trump-Russia connection.

This trend begins with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese scholar with an eclectic academic history who Quartz described as an “enigma,” while legacy press has enthusiastically characterized him as a central personality in the Trump-Russia scandal. The New York Times described Mifsud as an “enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia”, citing his regular involvement in the annual meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Russian-based think-tank, as well as three short articles he wrote in support of Russian policies.

Mifsud strongly denied claims that he was associated with Russian intelligence, telling Italian newspaper Repubblica that he was a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Clinton Foundation, adding that his political outlook was “left-leaning.” Last month, Slate reported Mifsud had ‘disappeared’, as did some of the other figures linking the UK to the Trump-Russia scandal. This aspect will be discussed in more detail below.

To contextualize Mifsud’s eclectic academic career in terms of intelligence service, it is helpful to note that research undertaken by this author and Suzie Dawson as part of the Decipher You project has repeatedly shown the close ties – an outright merger in many cases – between the intelligence community and academia. This enmeshment also takes place with think-tanks, NGOs, and in the corporate sphere. In this light, Mifsud’s brand of ‘scholarship’ becomes far less mysterious.

Mifsud’s alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].”

The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: “…Training program on International Security which was organised by Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy.” The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant for a number of reasons.
Claire Smith standing with Joseph Mifsud, on the left side of the back row.

First, the training program Smith attended with high-ranking members of the Italian military was organized by the London Academy of Diplomacy, where Joseph Mifsud served as Director, as noted by The Washington Post. That Claire Smith was training military and law enforcement officials alongside Mifsud in 2012 during her tenure as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Security Vetting Appeals Panel, which oversees the vetting process for UK intelligence placement, strongly suggests that Mifsud has been incorrectly characterized as a Russian intelligence asset. It is extremely unlikely that Claire Smith’s role in vetting UK intelligence personnel would lead to her accidentally working with a Russian agent.

The connection between Mifsud and Smith does not end at bumped elbows in a photograph. Mifsud’s LinkedIn profile lists the University of Stirling as a place of occupation in connection with his service as Director of the London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD), where Claire Smith served as a visiting professor from 2013-2014 according to her LinkedIn profile. This adds yet another verifiable connection between a man who is at the center of already-flimsy Trump-Russia allegations and a high-ranking British intelligence figure.
Claire Smith’s LinkedIn profile details her service on the Security Vetting Appeals Panel while also occupied as a visiting Professor at Stirling University

Claire Smith also hosted a seminar titled “Making Sense of Intelligence” at the University of Stirling. The event registration form describes her career, including her service as Deputy Chief of Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office, as a member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and her completion of an eight-year term as a member of the UK Security Vetting and Appeals Panel.

A particularly compelling factor indicating that Mifsud’s working relationship with Claire Smith suggests his direct connection with UK intelligence is Smith’s membership of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), a supervisory body overseeing all UK intelligence agencies. The JIC is part of the Cabinet Office and reports directly to the Prime Minister. The Committee also sets the collection and analysis priorities for all of the agencies it supervises. Claire Smith also served as a member of the UK’s Cabinet Office.

In summary, Mifsud’s appearance with Claire Smith at the LINK campus, in addition to her discussion on intelligence at yet another university where Mifsud was also employed, as well as her long-standing role in UK intelligence vetting and her position as a member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, would suggest that the roving scholar is not a Russian agent, but is actually a UK intelligence asset. The possibility that such a high-ranking member of this extremely powerful intelligence supervisory group was photographed standing next to a “Russian” asset unknowingly is patently absurd. This finding knocks the first pillar out from under the edifice of the Trump-Russia allegations. It provides an initial suggestion of the UK’s involvement in procuring the ‘evidence’ that fueled the debacle.

Claire Smith is not the only British official associated with Mifsud. He was a speaker at an event by the Central European Initiative alongside former British diplomat Charles Crawford, whose postings included Moscow, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Warsaw. Crawford is listed as a visiting Professor with the same London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD) where Mifsud served as Director, associated with Stirling University. This adds more weight to the idea that Mifsud is a familiar figure among the upper echelons of the UK intelligence and foreign policy establishment.

The final nail in the coffin of the theory that Mifsud is a Russian spy is this photograph of Mifsud standing next to Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary, as reported by The Guardian. The photograph, taken in October 2017 – nearly a full year after the US Presidential election and nine months after Mifsud’s name appeared in newspaper headlines worldwide as allegedly involved in Russian meddling in that election – is either highly embarrassing for the hapless Mr Johnson, or it’s not, because Joseph Mifsud is actually a valued and security-vetted asset to the United Kingdom.
Image via The Guardian: Boris Johnson pictured at the dinner with the ‘London professor’, Joseph Mifsud (left) and Prasenjit Kumar Singh.

Another aspect of the RussiaGate claims tied to the UK includes the reported conversation between George Papadopoulos and Alexander Downer, Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK who was based in London. The pair reportedly spoke about the alleged Russian ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky bar in London. According to Lifezette, Downer is closely tied with The Clinton Foundation via his role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS.

He is also a member of the advisory board of London-based Hakluyt & Co, an opposition research and intelligence firm set up in 1995 by three former UK intelligence officials and described as “a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking”. Whereas opposition research group Fusion GPS has received all the media attention so far, Lifezette states that Hakluyt is “a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm… with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign”.

Yet another UK link to a central pillar of the Trump-Russia narrative is British music promoter Robert Goldstone, who was reported to have organized a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian nationals in June 2016. In the email chain setting up the Trump Tower meeting, both before and after the meeting, the only real ‘evidence’ of collusion with Russia come from Goldstone’s own emails; none-too-subtle heavy hints about ‘Russian help’ dropped by Goldstone but later – after the emails became public – walked back by him as “hyping the message and… using hot-button language to puff up the information I had been given.”

Some have speculated that Goldstone was also involved with British or US intelligence efforts to concoct the RussiaGate narrative. As soon as his name emerged in the press, Goldstone – like Christopher Steele and Joseph Mifsud – went into ‘hiding’. Multiple press reports claimed he had done so out of fear for his safety, a claim also made about Christopher Steele when his name first became public. Indeed, the UK government issued a DA Notice (a press suppression advisory notice) to the British press to suppress the ex-spy Steele’s name. It is notable that, of all the people swept up into the ever-burgeoning RussiaGate investigation, it is only the UK-linked witnesses – Mifsud, Steele, Goldstone – who have felt the need to go into hiding when their role has been exposed.

The New York Times summed up the contents of Christopher Steele’s dossier: “Mr. Steele produced a series of memos that alleged a broad conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election on behalf of Mr. Trump. The memos also contained unsubstantiated accounts of encounters between Mr. Trump and Russian prostitutes, and real estate deals that were intended as bribes.”

Press reports also relate that Steele was ordered by an English court to appear for a videotaped deposition in London as part of an ongoing civil litigation against Buzzfeed for publishing the unverified dossier, for which Steele was paid $168,000 by Glenn Simpson’s company Fusion GPS, who were in turn paid by Mark Elias of law firm Perkins Coie, lawyers to both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC.

In his thread on the role of UK intelligence interference in the 2016 US Presidential race, Assange also noted how Christopher Steele used another former UK ambassador to Moscow, Sir Andrew Wood, to funnel the dossier to Senator John McCain in a way that moved the handover out of London, to Canada. It’s often said that no one ever really leaves the UK security services when they retire – many ‘former’ MI6 or MI5 officers’ private intelligence businesses are dependent on maintaining good contacts among their ex-colleagues – so it is interesting to note that Sir Andrew Wood says he was “instructed” — by former British spy Christopher Steele — to reach out to the senior Republican, whom Wood called “a good man,” about the unverified document.

Lastly, Robert Hannigan, former head of British intelligence agency GCHQ, is another personality of note in the formation of the RussiaGate narrative and its surprisingly deep links to the UK. The Guardian noted that Hannigan announced he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. Jane Mayer in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing “deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level” is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ’s Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner.

https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/04/al ... elligence/
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 30, 2018 1:57 pm

Moon of Alabama
May 30, 2018
Propaganda Killing Kills Propaganda - First The Skripals, Now Arkady Babchenko Come Back From The Dead

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/pr ... -dead.html
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby JackRiddler » Thu May 31, 2018 1:19 am

.

Wow, the following is overwhelming stuff, pulls no punches at the end. Thank you Maya Dejevsky! More below.


http://www.independent.co.uk

These are the unanswered questions that still remain after Yulia Skripal’s shock reappearance

Sowing confusion is often seen as a typically Russian technique to blindside and divert the enemy. But the Russians have hardly needed to sow any chaos here, because the British have helpfully done it for them

Mary Dejevsky @IndyVoices
6 days ago 86 comments

Eighty days after being found with her father, collapsed on a bench near a Salisbury shopping centre, Yulia Skripal has made a near-miraculous reappearance. She was filmed at an anonymous park-like location, reading a handwritten statement about her plight. In substance, what she said added almost nothing to the two statements issued by the Metropolitan Police in her name before. But the whole short recording was crucial in the messages it was designed to send – to the British, Russian and international public.

It was designed, first, to reiterate the official British version of what happened, at a time when that version has started to fray rather badly. So, she said, she and her father had been the victims of a nerve agent attack; she had been in a coma for 20 days; the medical treatment had been extremely unpleasant in many respects – her tracheotomy scar was visible evidence. She was now much better, but still recovering. She did not wish to “avail herself” of the assistance offered by the Russia embassy.

But there were also conspicuous differences from the official British version. There was no blaming of Russia. There was no naming of the nerve agent. And Yulia Skripal gave no indication that she envisaged her long-term future anywhere other than Russia (contrary to an earlier British official “leak” that she and her father were to be given new identities and resettled in a third country).

Her appearance seemed, second, intended to quash some of the more extreme speculation flourishing mostly on social media – that the Skripals were dead; that there had been no nerve agent attack, and that even if the pair were alive, they would never, ever be seen again.

Skripal attack aftermath – in pictures
And, third, there was a message addressed specifically to Russia, countering its charges that the UK had “kidnapped” one of its citizens and was unlawfully refusing consular access. Here was Yulia Skripal – well, let’s presume it was not a hi-tech confection or a “double” – saying, on camera, that she did not wish to meet Russian diplomats, at least not now.

What we have here, it seems to me, is an attempt by the UK to limit the damage to its own reputation – damage perhaps it never envisaged, because it assumed everyone would “buy” the “wicked Russia” story. And the reason this had to be done, now, or at all, was that the UK’s silence – media blackout? – about the Skripals had become embarrassing; it invited unwelcome questions, and perhaps it also risked the UK’s “triumph” in orchestrating a collective Western expulsion of Russian diplomats. It is worth noting that some of the more persistent questions have come from journalists not in Britain, but in Italy, Germany and elsewhere.

At least one of the UK’s opening assertions – that Russia was the only country to have manufactured the nerve agent in question – was challenged early, by the head of the government’s own defence research establishment at Porton Down. Since then, it has been shown that the formula was in the public domain from the mid-1990s and that both the Czechs and the Germans had access to the substance and shared the expertise with their Western allies. So the presumption of Russian provenance, let alone Kremlin guilt, was always flawed.

Questions also surround the actual findings of the chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, which was sent samples for testing. Not only were aspersions cast on procedures and some actual laboratory findings, but the watchdog hardly enhanced its authority when its head, in a statement that was subsequently corrected, vastly overestimated the quantity of nerve agent supposedly used.

It is not just details so basic as the nature of the substance, its provenance and the quantity that are still in doubt, however, but a great deal else. Either that, or the information is being deliberately withheld.

Sergei Lavrov says the British government could have poisoned the Skripals itself

Here are just some of the many other still unanswered questions.

Precisely where and when were the Skripals poisoned? Sowing confusion is often seen as a typically Russian technique to blindside and divert the enemy. But the Russians have hardly needed to sow any chaos here, because the British have helpfully done it for them. Was the nerve agent a substance or a spray? Was it in their car, in Yulia’s suitcase, in a packet of Russian cereal brought by a friend, or smeared on the front door handle? What did a Salisbury hospital consultant mean when he wrote to The Times, saying that “no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning” and only three had suffered “significant poisoning”?

What could have been the motive for such an attack? Why would the Kremlin (or an aggrieved Russian colleague) have waited eight years to hunt down a traitor who – the Russians are on record as saying – had served his time? Why would the Kremlin have risked staging such an atrocity three months before hosting the World Cup? What of the convention that swapped spies are left alone by the country they betrayed so as not to jeopardise further exchanges in future?

Why the on-off searches and decontamination of parts of Salisbury? Why was the policeman, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, affected, but not the doctor who administered first aid? Why has nothing been heard from either? Did the policeman, as some have hazarded, belong to Special Branch and was his task to tail the Skripals? Where were they when their GPS was switched off that morning?

Why is there no suspect, beyond “Russia”? Why was there no national or international hunt for the culprit? There was a fleeting suggestion that an individual might have fled on the same plane he arrived on; then a flicker of an intelligence intercept from Switzerland that was so general as to mean nothing. Then silence. When the national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, appeared before MPs three weeks ago, he said there were as yet no suspects. That is an extraordinary – hardly credible – admission. So high-profile an attack, such an international rumpus, and still no one, no one, in the frame?

What had Sergei Skripal been doing with his time in Salisbury, aside from joining a social club? Had he done something to upset the Russians, or, indeed, British security? Had he perhaps – and this is the conspiracists’ favourite theory – maintained any connection with his former MI6 handler and neighbour? More to the point, did he have any connection, via his handler, with the ex-MI6 agent, Chris Steele, his Orbis security consultancy and the anti-Trump dossier?

Nearly three months on, and still so many questions and so few answers. Through these clouds of uncertainty let me hazard just three considerations. First, the Kremlin was not involved: the Russians were as surprised by what happened as anyone; Moscow was on something of a charm offensive in advance of the World Cup. There was no Russian interest in spoiling the international atmosphere. Could it have been a security or rogue Russian operator? Who knows?

Second, Yulia, because of her security connections (via her fiancé) in Moscow and her regular travel to and fro, may have been a tempting target for recruitment by MI5/MI6. Was an attempt made? Did it go wrong? At least, it would seem from Yulia’s reappearance this week, that making a visiting Russian disappear forever is, thankfully, a step too far for UK intelligence today. Holding her against her will, however, could be another matter.

And third, I rather suspect that both the UK and Russia know more than they have told. This would help to explain both the relatively mild diplomatic response from Moscow in the last few weeks and the recent summary halt to the UK’s anti-Russian invective. Alas, we may be no closer to the truth than this.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yu ... 67471.html



Fourth, the UK services are beyond incompetent, if they had a hand in this.

I'm going to work with the thesis for now that whatever it was that sickened the Skripals, it hit the UK coppers and spooks as much by surprise as anyone else. They grabbed it opportunistically, acted reflexively, shaped it instinctively into their preferred narrative without a thought of tomorrow, and rode it to their desired international crisis (just as the Tories were hitting Domestic Governing Crisis No. 21, or I've lost count through all their chaotic rule).

Now the authors of this improvised story are clueless and floundering about how to patch anything credible out of the remaining tatters, or what to do about the all-too-living Skripals whom they can't get rid of but can't let go.

But they also don't care. None of them are going to be held accountable in the state wherein an author of crimes against humanity and a primary instigator of the worst war of aggression in the 21st century, Blair, still walks and squawks freely on the telly.

This is the predictable degeneration of a once well-oiled propaganda machine--hell, a classic, the model for nothing less than Orwell's vision!--that no longer recognizes its limits, has gotten used to getting away with any lie, and totally believes its own bullshit; and has especially bought into the unbearably moralistic-absolutist tone that accompanies every word of it.

The fish dinner really does not seem so implausible. Also, it stinks from the top!

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JackRiddler
 
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Re: The Silence of the Skripals

Postby Elvis » Thu May 31, 2018 3:18 am

JackRiddler wrote:This is the predictable degeneration of a once well-oiled propaganda machine--hell, a classic, the model for nothing less than Orwell's vision!--that no longer recognizes its limits, has gotten used to getting away with any lie, and totally believes its own bullshit; and has especially bought into the unbearably moralistic-absolutist tone that accompanies every word of it.


So true, especially the attitude of impunity. Yet many people continue to trust them. :shrug:
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