UK has no proof of Russia’s role in Skripal poisoning - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14899537
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By now, all of you are supposed to firmly believe that Russia (or maybe even Putin himself!) is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal with a nerve- agent known as novichok on Sunday, the 4th of March. The fact that no evidence exists to support this belief does not seem to concern the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, MSNBC, the New York Times, and others who dutifully repeat the accusation leveled against Russia by UK Prime Minister Theresa May. This reckless, blind, and uncritical acceptance of claims by government officials (or unnamed experts and insiders) has become so normal that many mainstream news-outlets no longer bother with verifiable sources, leaving the public vulnerable to deceptive narratives. And the case of the Skripal poisoning is a perfect example…

Theresa May’s claim that Russia was behind the attack is (in her own words) based on the fact that the nerve-agent used in the attack — novichok — was developed by the Soviet Union in the ’80s. May’s reasoning is that, since novichok was made by the USSR and since “the government” assesses that Russia “views some defectors as legitimate targets,” the act is either a deliberate Russian attack on the UK or an act of negligence so criminal it might as well be an attack. But so long as May’s government is unable or unwilling to furnish supporting evidence for its claim to the press or the public, there is no way for any journalist to verify that May’s accusation has merit.

The prime minister’s argument seems to rest on the fact that the nerve-agent used to poison the Skripals was developed by the USSR, a country that collapsed 29 years ago in 1989. From this fact alone (assuming it is true), May’s government, the commentariat, and countless news headlines have concluded — and expect the public to conclude — that Russia committed a war-crime by using chemical weapons in an attempt to murder the Skripals on UK soil.

Despite a near-total lack of evidence to support Theresa May’s accusation, news-media across the UK and the US are now reporting Russian guilt as fact. A recent article published by the Guardian under the label “UK News” — not “Opinion” — begins with the words “insiders say all trails lead back to Moscow” but fails to provide any clue about the identity of these “insiders” or what the “trails” might be. This is typical of much of the so-called news about the Skripal poisoning. It continues:

“[Russia’s Foreign Minister] Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof the poison used against Sergei Skripal came from Russia. […]

Beneath this bluster, however, is cool calculation. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury with a Moscow-made military nerve agent, developed during the 1970s and 1980s during the cold war. Whoever wanted to murder him might have used a subtler weapon. Instead, his assassins picked novichok.”

From the start, the Guardian assumes Russia is guilty and expects readers to do the same. Instead of offering analysis or reasoning, the authors faithfully repeat May’s weak claim as if it were a fact.

Without considering other possible interpretations, the Guardian propagandists charge blindly forward:

“As those who organised the hit must have known, the trail goes directly back to Moscow. The incident even took place down the road from Porton Down, the government’s military research base, which swiftly tested and identified the toxin.

All of which means Vladimir Putin and his FSB spy agency have probably sought to engineer a confrontation with the UK. Why now?”

In the absence of other evidence, the Guardian bases its conclusion on what students of logic call a false premise. The logic implied by the article is that, since (premise #1) a nerve-agent is only used by its developers or those whom they allow and since (premise #2) the USSR developed novichok, then it must be true that either Russia used novichok to attack Skripal or allowed the attack.

Even if we ignore the obvious error of treating Russia and the USSR (which wasn’t just Russia) as the same country, the first premise is untrue. If it is true that a nerve- agent is only used by its developers or those whom they allow, then — since the UK developed the nerve-agent VX and since Masami Tsuchiya found a way to make VX and used it to kill three people from 1994 – ’95, then the UK must have either killed them or allowed it. And the Guardian’s reasoning is even more absurd considering the fact that, since the Brits developed heroin, they must also be guilty of Kurt Cobain’s death, as well as the untold millions whose lives were claimed by the deadly chemical CNS- depressant. By the same logic, the US would be guilty of everyone ever killed by weaponized ricin.

Or does this logic only apply to Russia when the UK is cranky?

To be clear, this post is neither claiming that Russia was behind nor not behind the Skripal poisoning. It only claims that no journalist or member of the public has enough evidence to make either claim until Theresa May is willing — or, perhaps, able — to provide more evidence, if it exists. In the minds of the “journalists” parroting the British PM’s claim, the possibilities that others might’ve figured out how to make novichok in the 30+ years since its invention or that it was obtained by others from the now-defunct USSR have somehow been ruled out. The editors of publications like the Guardian think it is best not to fuss over details like the absence of whatever evidence that may or may not exist to support one or all or none of these claims and, while that makes them pretty crappy journalists, they may still have a bright future in politics.

In solidarity,
John Laurits

Source
#14899624
The prime suspect is Israel. However although the western governing, intellectual and cultural elite have become ideologically enslaved to the Jews, that doesn't mean they're always happy with what Israel gets up to. So for example when Israel deliberately attacked the USS liberty and murdered 34 US Sea men, I'm sure American leaders weren't happy. But what could they do? They could hardly call out Israel for what it had done, without overthrowing the whole post world war theology of the Jews as the innocents of history. Its like when the Pakistanis got caught hiding Osama Bin Laden, again what could our leaders do but play along with the lies.

So here, British and European leaders know full well that this was Israel's work. they are probably deeply unhappy with Israel but what choice to they have but to play along with the pathetic farce of blaming Russia. Even Putin, rightly and courageously treated the allegations with the contempt they deserve, but even he can't afford to point the finger at Israel. It is of course no coincidence that the whole Corbyn "anti-Semitic" mural scandal has blown up now. A warning shot not just to Corbyn, but to any public figure tempted to not tow the line on this one.

Another example of this sort of thing was the false flag chemical attack in Syria under Obama. Our leaders were clearly not looking for a false flag attack. They didn't want to attack Syria. But once the false flag by the Sunni Arabs happened, they had no choice but to play along and blame Assad.
#14899629
Right. Everyone knows that this pair were trading in illicit Unicorn horn dust.

One whiff of that stuff and it looks just like Russian chemical weapons.

Everyone knows that too.
#14899630
Rich wrote:The prime suspect is Israel.

Only to an anti-semitic mind. To the rest of the world, Israel would have no motive for killing a Russian defector and his daughter. To most of the world, Russia is the prime suspect, because they are the only state with anything to gain from the murder - intimidation of Russians who might oppose Putin. It is possible that it's a group inside the Russian government who have effective immunity because they have bribed or threatened those who could blame them for it.
#14899634
A motive by Israel could be to demonize Russia given the war between the two states inside of Syria. Russia, after all, very likely gave the order to shoot down the Israeli plane in Syrian territory a few weeks ago, which killed an Israeli soldier.

Prosthetic Conscience wrote:To most of the world, Russia is the prime suspect...


From what I'm reading, it's increasingly the case that Russia is not responsible.

We have no evidence to prove anything either way, but the party line imho is very likely bullshit, since it usually is, particularly when no evidence is provided for anything.
#14899639
Russia has nothing to gain by this and an awful lot to lose. Israel is deeply unhappy about the consolidation and the stabilisation of Iranian Russia power in Syria. It has a very powerful motive for wanting to take Putin a couple of steps down.
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:Only to an anti-semitic mind.

I am not in the slightest bit anti-Semtic. That's an absurd accusation. I am very praiseful for example of Babylonian civilisational achievements. I have also been one of the strongest defenders of Amharic culture. There is much that is admirable about modern Israel. Modern Israel has achieved amazing things in its short history. I am anti Semtism. Semitism expressed as the Abrahamic (named after the notorious legendary sex slaver) religions is the disgusting racist ideology that claims the creator of the universe gave a privileged position to Semtites. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, none of these Semites spoke on behalf of the creator of the universe and any claim that they did is a racist lie.

I'm not even anti Israel. I would happily support an Israeli advance into southern Lebanon or (post 67) southern Syria. I just don't support the subordination of our conflicts with Saudi, Pakistan, the Bahrain regime, North Korea and China to the interests of Israel. I do not blame Jews for the faults of the banking and finance industries. I do not blame the Jews for destroying some idealised gentile morality or for the social ills of western societies. I do not blame Jews for starting the first or second world wars. I do not think it was reasonable of German Conservatives to blame Jews for their defeat in world war I.

I do however think that ultra Zionists dominate western foreign policy and that Jews have been angelified as some sort of eternal innocent victims of timeless Gentile malevolence. Jews had a privileged position in western Christian medieval societies. Jews had a privileged position in the pagan Rome empire.
#14899653
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:Only to an anti-semitic mind. To the rest of the world, Israel would have no motive for killing a Russian defector and his daughter. To most of the world, Russia is the prime suspect, because they are the only state with anything to gain from the murder - intimidation of Russians who might oppose Putin. It is possible that it's a group inside the Russian government who have effective immunity because they have bribed or threatened those who could blame them for it.


a) The Russian government
b) a group of renegades inside the Russian government

I agree that's most probable versions and most believable and all. However you miss the possibility that it was an inside job. There are some (weak) evidences for this:

  • The British Government made very particular statements about this very early. They immediately recognized it's Novichok, there is no other possibilities and it could only be done by Russia and no one else.
  • The murder very luckily happened in 8km vicinity of the only lab that is able to determine in shortest times traces of extremely rare and unusual killing gas. Nobody exactly says (I hope just yet) how they managed to achieve such success.
  • Britain lost nothing because the man was already sucked dry. Nothing besides the image of Britain as the country that can protect people that served its interests. There are so much those people dead in the last year I believe it's not a big loss.
  • However Britain gained a big political scandal. That is definitely unneeded by Russia but again makes no loss for Britain. And it happens that some state needs a political scandal and even uses assassinations to produce it.
  • Britain has the best intelligence service in the world that is very able to do such a delicate thing as an assassination, more so if they need to operate on their own soil. In comparison with Russia that has a bunch of drunkards needs to somehow be delivered to the UK yet to murder someone if they will not be immediately catched up by the best counter-intelligence service in the world.
  • Britain probably lies about Novichok if to believe the creator of Novichok who said the gas is much more lethal and if it would be the case they all would be already dead. They were poisoned in a restaurant and somehow went to walk in a park instead of dying while the policeman who searched their house (instead of the restaurant) somehow got poisoned too.

I don't really see the reasons to suspect Israel but I don't see the reason to exclude Britain yet. Besides "the UK is a democratic country, Skripal was its citizen, democratic countries don't kill their citizens and never do anything evil because they're good".
#14899664
This could be two things here:

1) Russians were sending a message.
2) This is the British themselves or some other European agencies or could be even elements of CIA itself. It is done in order to force USA to impose more sanctions on Russia and resume hostilities. Similarly how the staged chemical attack was a year back or so was designed for that purpose, but there it was aimed more at Assad regime. Remeber when Trump "retaliated" by bombing the empty Syrian air base.

Judging by how this was a low-key spy in exile and there was no reason for killing his daughter. And if it was the Russians they could have chosen so many other less obvious assassination options in their arsenal. (Like staging a fake suicide.) I'm more leaning towards the second option here.
#14899716
All of you are saying "this could have been/was done to make Russia look bad". You all miss the basic bit of logic here: for anyone to think "this makes Russia look bad", Russia has to be the prime suspect.

All you are doing is saying "yes, I know Russia is the prime suspect, but I refuse to use Occam's Razor and go with the straightforward explanation; that satisfies most people, but I need a special explanation that makes me look special for working it out".

It's just mental masturbation on your part. And all you're doing is wheeling out your personal favourite scapegoats, while ignoring Russia's previous form (Litvinenko) and likely form (14 suspected Russian hits in the UK).

Rich wrote:I'm not even anti Israel.

You just blamed the attack on a Russian defector in the UK on Israel, for no reason at all. Of course you're anti-Israel.
Jews had a privileged position in western Christian medieval societies. Jews had a privileged position in the pagan Rome empire.

This is so laughably wrong that I shudder to think where you read it. Mein Kampf?
#14899723
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:All of you are saying "this could have been/was done to make Russia look bad". You all miss the basic bit of logic here: for anyone to think "this makes Russia look bad", Russia has to be the prime suspect.


I don't follow your logic? How does an attempted frame up make Russia look bad? If it's plausible that Russia was framed then why would Russia be the prime suspect? We know that many of the entities which comprise the Western establishment have means, motive, and opportunity to frame Russia and that a high profile assassination at this juncture in world affairs would be extremely counterproductive for the Russian establishment. Russia's not even in the top three on the list of likely suspects.
#14899728
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:All of you are saying "this could have been/was done to make Russia look bad". You all miss the basic bit of logic here: for anyone to think "this makes Russia look bad", Russia has to be the prime suspect.


I personally say that this could be to produce a scandal. It's not the same as "to make Russia look bad". There are several scenarios in which a scandal can be used and they aren't all about "making Russia look bad" (from Britain's point of view). For example to push Russia further into an alliance with China or trade the withdrawal into some benefits. The politics is complex.

Prosthetic Conscience wrote:"yes, I know Russia is the prime suspect, but I refuse to use Occam's Razor and go with the straightforward explanation; that satisfies most people, but I need a special explanation that makes me look special for working it out".


You know, there are reasons why teenagers firstly using a razor walk for a couple of days with pieces of paper on their faces. A razor is a delicate tool and can cut parts of your body off if used in a wrong way and inaccurate.

The Occam's razor can be used only until the proofs of opposite are gained. For example quantum mechanics is extremely complex and senseless and Occam's razor was used against first quantum scientists heavily: "Can you really believe that the universe is so twisted at its lowest level? Nonsense!" And nothing could b done, they needed to spend hundreds of man-years to prove their opponents that had the beautiful Occam's razor that is always true and nothing can be done against it.

The Occam's razor is based at at the assumption that everything simple is more probable to happen that something complex. It's just not the law even in the case of the universe: the science constantly points that "Laws of physics are the same anywhere" is an assumption that facts go according to yet but there is no guarantee the universe really tends to be the most simple in our understanding. And the discussions go about what to do if we'll recognize the laws aren't universal. The existence of living creatures is laughable, they're senselessly complex, it's factories of mechanisms instead of mechanisms in mechanisms working at molecular level. Still, it's more probable that Earth would have these structures of high complexity instead of being a simple barren rock.

That's probably can be explained by that Occam lived in XIII (if I correctly remember) century and there were much interesting things invented since then. For example, one could say that using Occam's razor there is wrong because simplicity is not defined. You think "Russia is guilty" is the simplest explanation of all. There is some logic, it's just logically incorrect because it doesn't explain Why th British government said all the things it said including incorrect and contradictory ones. For Popper it would be enough to say that the theory is totally refuted. If you have one counter-argument against a theory then it's absolutely not valid anymore. From a Bayesian point of view these contradictions couldn't be the deciding point (there is still a probability that the second state of the world is ruled by idiots who talk random sentences) but slightly improve the probability of that the universe we are in is slightly more complex than we imagine and there is other agenda beneath the level of official declarations.

I quietly explained my reasons to not even suspect but suppose there are another possibilities and you went with "mental masturbation", "personal favourite scapegoats". Rudeness doesn't produce success especially when you're not at the bar of drunk truckers who found you're pretty and prepare to rape you but in the middle of a political discussion between intelligent people.

Prosthetic Conscience wrote:while ignoring Russia's previous form (Litvinenko) and likely form (14 suspected Russian hits in the UK).

It's actually to prove my point further. In this case the Occam's razor could say you that Russians including enemies of Putin live around the globe but somehow the lighting strikes UK again and again. And maybe after the 14th repeat it's simpler to suppose that there are some problems in Britain we don't know about. I didn't touch the link but know that among Litvinenko there will be Berezovsky. By Occam's razor Berezovsky was masturbating with a rope around his neck and accidentally hanged himself. Somehow this doesn't seem plausible and we aren't ready to use Occam's razor there but in the cases where it goes along our expectations we will.
#14899810
I'm lolling that people think it takes any effort to make Russia look bad. Like this was the thing that finally pushed people over the hump toward not loving a mafia run petrostate with staged elections.

Putin is like 5'2" and his ass is filled with cum. I could kick his ass no prob. I'd do that thing where I put my hand on his forehead as he continues running in place, windmilling his arms ineffectively.
#14899862
Of course it's very easy to demonize Russia, the state does it to itself. But that's not the issue here, the issue is quite an obvious false-flag and just because morons on this side of the Atlantic eat up the Russiagate long-and-boring-lie like pancakes for breakfast, doesn't mean the same should be expected elsewhere, where there are less morons. And I only say that as far as population size. :D

But if you want to stick on topic and prove who is responsible for this poisoning, go ahead. There's a bunch of us waiting for evidence to prove Russia is responsible. None has been provided yet, in the 3+ threads on this subject.
#14899933
OK so the Jews are innocent crowd. The Jews have never done anything wrong in the last 3000 years people. Do you deny that:

1 The Jewish scriptures extol genocide.

2 The Jewish scriptures deny the right to freedom of religion.

3 Traditional Jews considered gentiles dirty, not fit to share a meal with.

4 Jews set up ghettos to keep gentiles out and their women in.

5 The fact that Britain felt the need to issue the Balfour declaration, enraging hundreds of millions of Muslim within both the allied and central powers' empires, demonstrates the enormous power wielded by Jews internationally and in the United States even in 1917.

6 Modern Israel used murder and terror and ethnic cleansing to create the Israeli state.

7 The Israeli state deliberately attacked their ally's ship and murdered 34 crew member.

8 The Lavon affair clearly shows the Israelis were willing to slaughter their own people, in order to demonise their enemies.

The last two are particularly relevant. Israel has shown it self willing to kill innocent members of both its won people and of its allies. Why would they not be prepared to kill a couple of Russians and endanger the lives of British people.
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