(You just might be hearing the Sugar Crisp Bear’s jingle by ditty in your mind…)
From the Guardian, Aug. 6, Luke Harding and a couple other folks: UK poised to ask Russia to extradite Salisbury attack suspects, Exclusive: Kremlin certain to reject request that will reignite simmering diplomatic row’
“The British government is poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack that left one person dead and four injured, according to Whitehall and security sources.
The move comes after months of painstaking investigation by hundreds of officers from the police and the intelligence agencies. They have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from their entry into the UK through to their departure.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which prepared the extradition request, has completed the process and is ready to file, the sources said.” [snip]
“UK intelligence chiefs have specifically blamed Russia for the attack.
“Police and intelligence officers believe the novichok used to attack the Skripals on 4 March was applied from a perfume bottle sprayed or smeared on to their front doorknob. Both of them recovered.
Police are working on the assumption that the bottle was dropped somewhere in the city, where it was later picked up by Rowley, who gave it to Sturgess. The pair were taken to hospital on 30 June.”
Was it a doorknob liquid later morphed into gel…was it a spray perfume? Is it a bird a plane: no! It’s Novickok! Or was it…as the Swiss Spiez Lab stated: the possibly hallucinogenic, incapacitating BZ toxin (3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate), not produced in Russia, but was in service in the US and UK, as well as other NATO member states?
“A security source said the attack on the Skripals was ordered by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, rather than the FSB, which is roughly equivalent to MI5. Skripal, a former GRU colonel, was turned by the UK overseas intelligence agency, MI6. The GRU has a history of conducting crude revenge attacks on those who have betrayed it.”
Well, at least they indict the GRU, not just ‘Putin’ now. But why would the GRU care about released-after-serving-his-sentence double-agent spy Skripal matter now?
Shhhhhhhh….keep this on the down-low, okay? It’s a whisper campaign delivered to us by the self-same Luke Harding and homies:
‘Sergei Skripal briefed European intelligence services, reports say; Reported meetings between former Russian spy and several intelligence services in Europe may offer motive for poisoning’
“The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal gave briefings to European intelligence services in the years before the attempt on his life, which may offer a motive for why Moscow allegedly targeted him with a deadly nerve agent.” [snip]
“Although his operational knowledge ended with his arrest in Russia in 2004, Skripal was still regarded as being of value because of his inside knowledge of the workings of Russian military intelligence.
According to the Czech magazine Respekt, Skripal visited Prague in 2012 and held discussions with Czech intelligence. He briefed security officers on Kremlin espionage methods, and the meeting was described as “beneficial”. Members of Czech intelligence subsequently met Skripal in the UK at least once, the magazine reported.” [snip]
“He gave sensitive briefings to European intelligence agencies after he moved to Britain. It seems that MI6 approved of and facilitated these trips. In June 2016 Skripal travelled to Estonia and met a select group of intelligence officers there, the New York Times reported on Monday. It said it was unclear what they discussed.”
But wait! Wot? A caveat from Luke?
“Security sources in the Czech Republic said Skripal’s meetings with Czech intelligence agents would probably have been useful, but they dismissed them as a likely motive for the poisoning attack.”
Sounds like iron-clad innuendo from the Guardian and New Yawk Times again to me. But this is cool as all giddy-up”
“The Czech Republic has expressed repeated reservations about the large number of Russian diplomats – estimated at around 100 – stationed in the country amid suspicions that many of them are undercover spies.”
They should chuck the bastards out and shutter the embassy like the West does, right?
Also the GuardDoggian ‘How the GRU spy agency targets the west, from cyberspace to Salisbury’; Accusations mount against the Russian army’s main intelligence directorate, Aug. 6, 2018, Andrew Roth
…Which is noteworthy mainly for the repeat focus on the GRU (not to be confused with the KSB), and that it’s not by Luke Harding, although there are some funny lines in it. I particularly liked the caption under the photo below:
‘The Tower’, a GRU building in Khimki, Moscow, named by Robert Mueller as the base of one of the GRU units that interfered in the 2016 US election. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP’
But given the ever-evolving Novichok News, this one really is the icing on the Grand Novichok™ Cake (warning: set down your coffee cup before you read further):
‘Public toilet in Salisbury ‘may have been used by Russian agents to prepare deadly Novichok’, themirror.co..uk.com, Aug. 4, 2018
“A public toilet may be where Russian agents mixed deadly Novichok used to try and assassinate ex-spy Sergei Skripal , according to reports.
It is thought Met Police counter terror cops are investigating the likelihood that the assassins smuggled the components to the nerve agent into the country then mixed it in a public toilet in Salisbury.
Forensic teams have discovered low-level contamination in toilets in the city’s Queen Elizabeth Gardens.
A source told The Sun : “Novichok is a liquid agent made of two components.
“The toilets in Queen Elizabeth Gardens are a key location where it could have been mixed, prepared or dumped.”
Me, I just hope they washed their hands after using the loo, don’t you?
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
and two from the twitterverse:
(not satire, i assume):
@wikileaks
Obama, who expanded drone kills 10x, oversaw the destruction of Libya, Syria, Yemen, the creation of ISIS and the African refugee crisis, and who prosecuted more whistleblowers using the espionage act than alll previous presidents combined, receives human rights award.
Jeffrey Guterman, Ph.D.
✔
@JeffreyGuterman
President @BarackObama to receive 2018 #RFK Human Rights Award: https://rfkhumanrights.org/news/2018-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-ripple-of-hope-award-laureates-announced …
This Novichok ‘attack’ seems altogether too specific, convenient and yet somehow desultory to be called an attack. First the Russian defectors are poisoned but survive the dreaded nerve agent, and then weeks later some random person is given a lethal dose by some other person who finds somewhere, we know not where… perhaps in the loo?
The US and UK and the great technical expertise of the West is all over the form of Novichok and its preparation, yet somehow we are supposed to believe they have never made any. Hint: In order to test for it and get valid results they have to make some first, or their tests are likely to be uncalibrated junk science. Especially we are meant to believe that the UK never made any Novichok in the biological & chemical weapon research facility at Portdon Down just outside of Salisbury. Never made any – still the experts = bollocks.
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.
Looks too much like the Anthrax murders in the US directly after 9/11 that were carried out with a weaponized strain and preparation traceable to the US government. Pushing a Russia scare in the face of their failures and a Labour resurgence sounds like the Tories’ ancient playbook. We are supposed to believe the stuff is so deadly that two random people die weeks later, yet the supposed targets lived through it. Believe all that and still be afraid of these weirdly ineffective Russians?
Novichok, Novichok in a dish.
How many victims do you wish?
Two for the Russians, their country to shame.
Four for the killing, to deepen the blame.
Six for the… *Wait*What?!?*, they think we’re all hicks.
Anymore all calls to arms based on chemical weapons appear to be false flags – this one more than most.
The UK government should put their deadly serious alarm into their own foreign influence scandal around the Brexit election (Russia, yes but even more, the Trumpian US: Bannon, Mercer, etc.). Bet the Tories have come over to the ‘disaster capitalist’ POV on Brexit and look forward to making their bankster buddies richer in the short-term post-leave disruption and long-term libertine corruption. So… they got BZ on Russia [B-D] and on Brexit… not so much.
well, allegedly in a gift-wrapped perfume bottle under a park bench, but there are so may evolving stories that it’s akin to a staged drawing room comedy. but yes’, ‘they think we’re all hicks’ and most of the western imperial world has been psychologized forever to believe, but thanks for your poem, lemoyne. i may have missed a few of your berexit, ‘yes russia’ etc. allusions, but as the western hegemon senses that it’s no longer a unipolar world, and other alliances/nations are ascendant, the old enemies can stand in for the new enemies (axes of evil), no? more tomorrow, i’m knackered as my days start soooo early.
smoke again rules the sky here, both from fires north of us, and that california is seriously on fire, most especially the mendicino fire, largest in the state’s history.
https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/
so nice to see you, my friend. and thanks for the billy preston; great addition.
daddy skipal was either a double or triple agent, no one knows for sure, but a fellow over yonder posited that if anyone poisoned him with anything, it could have been ukrainian nationals w/ putin revenge as a motive for: ‘stealing crimea’. along those lines, i’d mention georgians, given that nation is about to join Nato officially. “today we are all georgians” ~ john mccrankypants
now crowley and sturgess (she later died of a heart attack) were reported to have found the novichok in a spray perfume bottle with the cellophane wrapper still in tact…four months later under or near a park bench, dunno how many miles away (17?) from skripal ground zero. crowley gave to sturgess, she sprayed some on…and whatever happened…happened. one part of the story craig murray laughed about was that his having washed hands w/ baby wipes later…was why he (ooof!) got better soon afterward. another tale was novichok on a discarded cigarette but; all of it’s pretty wild.
i can’t speak remotely intelligently on brexit, but the may gummint has gone crazy on the ‘assad/putin’ gassed syrian citizens w/ sarin and/or chlorine gas’. yes the sole time that the OPCW did collect samples in one of the key locations…they found nothing. it seems that most of the gas attacks were fabricated by the white helmets psyop, all of which has been deconstructed as ‘the west funding a major product in cahoots with (isis? al qaeda?) i’ve forgotten. but there are scores of videos showing them actually rehearsing for their ‘brave rescue’ videos. here’s vanessa beeley’s latest:
‘False Flag Fail: How Syrian Civilians Derailed White Helmet ‘Chemical’ Stunt in Eastern Ghouta’, july 2, 2018, although i didn’t see videos scanning.
but what do you mean here re the UK: (russia, yes’) please?
thanks for this info. what’s in a name? Novi-choke.
i’d been trying to find a fact ambassador craig murray had brought, but failed, but i did find his oeuvres at both consortiumnews.com, and his and others at 21stcenturywire.com under the tag ‘novichok’
but while i was at 21st century, i found this that my lamus brainus had utterly forgotten: ‘Skripals Poisoned with Fentanyl, Initial Report Redacted’, May 3, 2018, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, 21stcenturywire
“Former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were poisoned with the drug Fentanyl, not the Novichok nerve agent, the initial report on the incident reveals.
After I published this report on my Twitter account the information was immediately redacted and the drug Fentanyl was deleted from the original version. Alex Thomson, chief correspondent and presenter of Channel 4 News tweeted about a D notice issued by the UK government to prevent media from publishing further sensitive information on 12 March: (under D notice)
“On 26 April I published on my social media accounts the initial report (dated 5 March) on the incident in Salisbury. It indicated the drug Fentanyl as the source of the poisoning which had taken place on 4 March.”, and so on.
we’ll likely never know what happened to the extent that anything much did. but: because cold war 2.0, nato and it’s re-purposing, the broad dictates of both russiagate and the mueller investigations: conclusions are repeated ad infinitum, and few even question them: the roosians, putin, now the GRU: did it all.
who knew the end of the world would be so beautiful? or, How Green was My Apocalypse.
on Maggie’s farm, all we talk about is man & god & law. they cover the charnel house within with monumental speeches about human rights & war crimes & unprovoked invasions. it is pointless to state that a Nikki Haley condemns herself w/every utterance, but there it is.
I don’t know if the war planners of yesterday could foresee in 70 years the US population would be so fat & sickly that we can’t actually field an army. On my part, I take comfort in thinking that perhaps the overstuffed US cakehole & its non-functioning pancreas might save us all in the end, cuz no one wants to, or can, huff and puff to Moscow; and that the architects of the Cold War US state did not at all take into account the nature of capitalism within the US, i.e., they are all fucking major idiots. fer sher this makes use of technology, incl nukes, more likely, but I just keep trying to find a silver lining in America’s fat ass & our dear leaders’ grotesque incompetence. part of my naturally sunny disposition, I guess.
as to your silver lining, good on ya. but remember those 15000 new ‘troops’ will likely be special ops mercenaries as per erik prince’s offer to the DoD/herr yellow hair to run counter-insurgency (don’t ya love that all-inclusive term?) operations in afghanistan. but yes. all who know agree that chinese and russian weapons and weapons systems are far better. by the by: did you post this on the wrong diary? this is the novichok sugar bear jingle one.
but most military strategists realize that making war on russia or china would ignite a world war, even one israeli general had warned/admitted. goddess love ya, i hope you’re doing better than okay. which, come to think of it, juliania had mentioned at length on a different diary…
tonight’s closing lullaby is from outKast, a parody of the lawn jockeys as beatles in london on an ed sullivanesque show. i’m pretty sure that andre 3000 plays all the parts in the band; it’s brilliant and fun as all giddy-up. g’ night.