English spies and their Yulia Scripal' :)

Actually I envy the 'vegetables' er, I mean the gullibles too. How can adults be so naive, even when stuff is laid out for them on a rhetorical platter. I guess it's all that dumbing down manifesting itself.

 

Russia and the Soviet Union clearly have assassinated various people over the years. But let's not pretend they do and we don't; that their poo stinks and ours smells of roses.

The fact is that most nations engage in assassination/extra-judicial murder to cover-up deeply stinky political affairs or for other reasons. Think Death of the Rock/Operation Flavius and the extra-judicial killing of three members of the IRA by a team of SAS assassins on Gibraltar in 1988, for example.

I personally knew the head of a team of assassins that worked for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (stylised on his CV a "carried out special duties for the British government in various parts of the world"). I also was in contact with a retired American assassin-cum-mercenary who operated mostly in Africa - and particularly South Africa - on behalf of French intelligence, Israeli intelligence and the CIA. His story has never been told.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to discuss the Litvinenko affair in more detail if you wish (and have done so on this forum previously). In the last analysis, the evidence doesn't point to Russia but rather the Italian, Mario Scaramella, and Mafia (HERE).

 

By that logic, North Korean media is really where it's at. No mainstream media there. Just a totally isolated and pure bastion of truth defended by an authoritarian regime.

I find it funny you can say this when a Russian journalist's body is not even cold yet. The truth is, the Russians lump any source they dislike under the generalization of "mainstream media." The reality is that the media is not a monolithic entity, but a number of independent individuals from various backgrounds. Tell me, is this argentine source also "mainstream" just like the BBC? What a conveniently broad category.

https://www.infobae.com/america/mun...n-periodista-ruso-critico-con-vladimir-putin/

 

I can speak Spanish but it will take me too long to interpret that, especially when I don't know if it's a strong enough link to have been worth my while. The dead Russian means nothing to me; nor do I anguish over his passing when I don't know why he passed? As I often say on here - if somebody plays with fire, they deserve to get burnt - and when they do, they'll get no sympathy from me.

 

More hard truths from my supposedly mainstream source.

https://www.infobae.com/america/mun...utilizados-por-rusia-siria-y-corea-del-norte/

https://www.infobae.com/america/mun...assad-uso-armas-quimicas-contra-la-poblacion/

 

Hard truths? Your first source (haven't bothered reading the 2nd one) is awful as far as factual accuracy is concerned.

The Douma chemical affair was a White Helmets film fairy tale. There were no chemical weapons involved. It was smoke inhalation from bombardment HERE & HERE.

 

To paraphrase - The bigger the lie, the more will believe it.

 

Russia vetoed a UN investigation. This amounts to an admission of guilt as far as I’m concerned. They are the ones who have consistently shown they fear international scrutiny.

The other link is not about the chemical attack at Douma. There have been what, 85 now that we know of? Many of them confirmed by chemical analysis. There was even a Syrian government facility in 2015, I believe, that tested positive for VX. There’s just no way the Assad regime is as clueless as it pretends.

Edit: Yep. Undeclared sarin and VX.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-chemicals-exclus-idUSKBN0NT1YR20150508

 

Meanwhile another Putin critic was shot today in the Ukraine.

 

We are not discussing those who are personally involved in the assassination, they are ten a penny, the whole point is those who ordered the crime. The SAS you referred to are serving soldiers and being so follow orders and the IRA never of course carried out assassinations themselves in northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ did they?

I did two tours of Ireland and like the lads I served with sometimes wished we had the same freedom of the SAS but we were handcuffed by the ‘Yellow Card’
In a dark alley one rainy night we found a sixteen year old catholic boy who had been kneecapped by the heroes of the IRA. His only crime was that he had a protestant girlfriend and so was crippled for life for his love for her. Don’t talk to me of the IRA scum.

 

By that logic all members of the UN who have ever used a veto are automatically guilty. The argument doesn't really hold water does it. For example, the USA have vetoed UN Security Council Resolutions 80 times since 1946. In fact, they are the second largest nation in usage terms.

As I said I didn't read the 2nd link. Although I do know that this is not the first time that chemical weapon attacks have been blamed on the Assad regime when the evidence (again) indicated fabrication or false flag operations by other factions. The most famous of these being the alleged Ghouta Sarin attack blamed on Syria which was later thoroughly discredited by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article in the London Review of Books (HERE).

More recently, Professor Postol of M.I.T., demonstrated that the Sarin gas attack at Khan Sheikhoun in 2017 was also highly questionable (HERE). I have a copy of his full report and analysis and can upload or link if you wish? Prior to his death, the late Robert Parry revealed that (again the Khan Sheikhoun incident), approx 100 patients turned up at a hospital an hour before the alleged Syrian aircraft arrived on at the location (HERE).

Over the years I've seen this strategy of false blame and false flag happen again and again.

Accordingly, it behoves us all be aware of that old adage: the first casualty of war is the truth.

I can't say that I overly care about an undeclared stock of chemical weapons in Syria as of 2015 (assuming the report is accurate in the first place - war and truth as a casualty etc) when the US continues to have a stockpile of over 3,000 tons of chemical weapons contrary to its formal agreement under the Chemical Weapons Convention (wherein it promised to remove its entire CW armoury by 2012).

Hypocrisy and double standards are no way to conduct foreign policy or win an argument. But sadly it's become deeply ingrained in our culture today.

 

Sorry to disavow you of your thunder, but Babchenko's alive. I just watched him on the BBC (HERE).

I think you used the wrong quote and assume you were referring to my post about Death on the Rock.

I agree with you that the focus should always be on those that order assassinations, rather those who carry them out (assuming they are under orders - not all are though). In the Gibraltar case this would've been Maggie Thatcher, although I doubt that could ever be proved. But such a sensitive operation involving extra-judicial killing would've have had political blessing.

My best friend spent time with with the "Hooligans". He got blown up in NI and still has the scars and damage to prove it.

And I've heard a tale or two over the years. And not all of them are pretty. Killing those on the same side for instance. Usually because they've become a nuisance or stand in the way of political expediency.

Imagine those 25 members of British security and intelligence and RUC SB types who - against standing orders - boarded that fateful Chinook at Aldergrove to attend a security conference at Inverness in June 1994. Shocking affair that was. They say it was an accident.

"They" also say that Dr. David Kelly's death was a suicide.

So I would save your bile for the politicians and others of power and influence who consider it fine to get kill and maim people for their own nefarious purposes.

 

In some cases yes, the US is guilty. Many of these vetoes involved Israel, which has been an endless source of trouble. I don’t have any love for them either. The US policy towards them is consistently disappointing. Allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia get too much leniency from the US, no doubt. But you are changing the subject. This is not a vindication of Assad.
...
Oh yes, the Assad loyalist and holocaust denial sympathizer. Postol seems like a real nut job. He changed his story numerous times about Khan Sheikhoun. Over a period of a couple weeks, he said there was no air strike then that there was one. He changed his story to say that he was (180 degrees off) on the direction of smoke plumes. He said that the French report contradicted the US report, then admitted that they didn’t, and that he had confused reports from two different attacks. This is the man you trust over the OPCW. Russia adopts this tactic of finding any “expert” and giving them s megaphone that makes them seem more credible than all others. These are the tactics of climate change denial and general science denial, which is where I first became familiar with these methods of distortion.

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/c...nd-the-syria-revisionists-regime-whitewashing

https://bbcwatch.org/tag/ted-postol/

As for the stockpile, it begs the question. Why violate the terms of the agreement? If they lie about this, then what else?