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- This topic has 65 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 6 years ago by Ed P.
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- March 10, 2018 at 1:00 pm#17439Ed PParticipant
Unlike the jingoistic UK press (declaring cyberwar on Russia!), CNN has a very balanced opinion piece.
I find the whole affair really puzzling. Why would Russia even bother to get this aging ex(?) spy, and why now? As many have pointed out it would have been very easy to arrange an accident while he was in a Russian jail. Perhaps we should be seeking out those who will win from the incident.
Even the hospitalisation of the police sergeant is puzzling. Why was he affected but none of the first responders (who actually gave CPR to the victims) have been reported as being affected.
If it was a nerve agent why bring in the Army to look for evidence when nearby Porton Down is full of nerve agent experts and cutting edge detection equipment?
All very puzzling and as CNN posits the truth is elusive, but good for a great conspiracy theory.
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- March 11, 2018 at 6:25 pm #17499Bob WilliamsParticipant
The comments regarding the mess that is the Middle East are largely correct Richard. However, the fact that the USA always ignores, is that their drive to cure what they saw as British Colonialism, resulted in that mess. The USA was instrumental in having British forces and influence removed from many places far too soon. Nowhere did this have worse repercussions than in Aden, where there is now a terrible proxy war being fought between the Saudis and Iran, with various others joining in one form or another. In the middle is Syria, a well-chewed bone that has not yet experienced the worst that can happen, I fear.
The UK, USA, France, Russia and others are engaged in active weapons-testing, by selling arms to all sides.
I really miss the Cold War, sometimes…
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.March 11, 2018 at 7:57 pm #17501RichardParticipantBob, I agree with your analysis. I could add more, it was all a long time ago but I had direct work and family experience of the Aden/Yemen mess. My wife was a child evacuated out of the crumbling remains.
Do not miss the cold war it is being replayed all day every day, it is just that we are no longer very good at the war games any more.
March 11, 2018 at 8:35 pm #17502Ed PParticipant“we are no longer very good at the war games any more”
We are still a lot better than the US!
They often grab the strangest allies after being pushed by their commercial interests and compounded by the fact that US State Dept has never completely got to grips with the tribal/sectarian complexities of much of the world. The younger ones who learned the languages and history and tribalism of the areas soon came up against a brick wall of NIH and self interest, became disheartened and left.
While Trump has made a lot of stupid mistakes, but clearing out the deadwood in US State Dept was probably one of his better moves, however repairing their system will take years.
March 12, 2018 at 8:18 am #17505RichardParticipantWhile Trump has made a lot of stupid mistakes, but clearing out the deadwood in US State Dept was probably one of his better moves, however repairing their system will take years.
He might, or might not have removed the dead wood, the issue is with what has he replaced it, I venture to suggest they are not even organically wood and very possibly recycled plastic substitutes.
It all went south at an increasing rate after Suez an Anglo-French venture, when the yanks yanked support in an attempt to break our relationships – they broke more than that and we can now see the result. I venture to suggest that it takes a long time, possibly measured in several working lifetimes to build an understanding of such an area. Even then, you can only create an understanding if there are some minds open enough to start the process of learning. You rightly spoke of their commercial interests, they drive almost everything but remember it must also be larded by a not so subtle layer of patronage. ‘You gave my campaign millions and you ran a supermarket, you are just the person for XXXXXX’ style patronage. I can mean the most diplomatically important areas do not get the skill set they really need.
March 12, 2018 at 9:29 am #17508Ed PParticipant“…can mean the most diplomatically important areas do not get the skill set they really need.”
Certainly true at Ambassador level, but some of the most strategically important places are also the nastiest ones to inhabit. e.g. ‘How much NOT to offer me the Ambassadorship of Serbia, Sudan, Djibouti or whatever they are calling The Congo today’. The only ones that are really in the US patronage war are the ‘easy’ ones such as London, Paris, Berlin, Canberra, Singapore etc.
March 12, 2018 at 10:02 am #17511RichardParticipantED, we can easily agree on that, but what about the effect of that patronage system? Anyone who signs up for any post in something run on that basis knows there is no future in a plumb location without patronage so why bother at all. Yet those far from plumb places are where the greatest need for a presence and skilled diplomacy exist. Where can any one train for such roles in those critical places and where are the rewards for success? Big branches of anything are rarely great place to get good nitty-gritty training it can all too often mean you simply use a rubber stamp. If the big place is dedicated to supporting a prima-donna with money not relevant skills there will be no worthwhile development beyond managing social diaries.
March 12, 2018 at 10:31 am #17512Ed PParticipantThe US run a weird blend of professional career State Dept types, who suffer the same sort of unwritten patronage issues as our own Civil Servants (what school, college, fraternity, family etc), but in addition high level appointees are all subject to patronage. Nasty places such as Sudan are normally given to more junior professionals, but UK often appoint juniors to nasty places too!
I do not remember meeting anyone below Ambassador who was not actually a professional, I’m certain that the Commercial people were all career staffers.
Switching back to the OP, judging by the public advice that has been given it appears a persistent oily nerve agent such as the British invented VX was used. This substance can also unfortunately be manufactured by any competent chemist in an illegal lab, as it was used by the Aum doomsday cult to assassinate someone in Japan. link, Given the ubiquity of VX, and ease of manufacture it is probably going to be impossible to find a smoking gun that links directly to Putin or any other state actor. About the only hope would be to find the person who actually administered it.
March 12, 2018 at 11:35 am #17515Bob WilliamsParticipantAs a very young soldier, in a sudden rush of blood to the head and a hole in the wallet, I volunteered for a short stay at Porton Down. I still have no idea what was inflicted upon me in the name of “combatting the cold virus”. It was put to those of us who volunteered, that the eggheads were trying to ameliorate the loss of duty hours among Service personnel, by Sick Days. I felt no adverse after effects, but I was young and naive, as were all my fellow volunteers. We were well rewarded, btw.
Strangely (or not) despite some of the situations I had experienced in 12 years of service, the only episode of Service experience that I was warned about under the OSA, was Porton Down. I was warned not to speak about the location, which is the dumbest thing I was ever told: the whole world knows it. You could not make it up: the MOD is only careless with the genuinely important stuff.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.March 12, 2018 at 11:44 am #17517The DukeParticipantIf you have netfix job check out a short service called Wormwood. It’s very interesting, and I’m sure you’d like it, given what you just said.
March 12, 2018 at 12:09 pm #17518Ed PParticipantYou were lucky Bob! They were developing some really nasty stuff during that period.
However in the same vein as your OSA (non)-disclosure, when I was a young under-graduate student a part of the engineering course was to do document research and find ‘prior-art’. HM Patent Office was always my first port of call, and there I discovered the OSS post-war intelligence files (fore-runner to the CIA). During the post-war period the OSS went through German industry with a fine tooth comb. In addition to documenting and translating German work on producing chlor-halogens in concrete reactors (my project), I also unearthed data on the German standard condom (large, medium and small) and other such provocative stuff. However buried within all this snigger-inducing cruff were the minute details on the production of everything German including the full range of V-weapons (of which numerous nerve agents were a class). So at the height of the CND protests a scruffy young student had all the info needed to completely obliterate the Establishment! Lucky for them I could not give a rats-a#se about the Establishment, I was too busy getting my degree and getting wasted, the same as every other student.
I’ll bet you cannot get at those files today without triggering all sorts of security trip wires. At least I hope that is the case!
March 12, 2018 at 12:26 pm #17521Bob WilliamsParticipantThat’s an eye-opener Ed! You have a habit of producing some “interesting” stuff.
Steve, I don’t have Netflix yet, but found this Review and it is intriguing. I’ll visit daughter’s house and use her Netflix while family are at work and school. She has some lovely biscuits…
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.March 12, 2018 at 1:54 pm #17524The DukeParticipantMy inlaws just use my Netflix account. I only found out when I seem the kids watching it, and I asked when they got that, given it is well out of their wheel house, the MiL said “oh we had it about a year or more”, later I found out one of my kids set it up for her! Gods job I’m grandfathered in to the old original payment/muti user prices.
It’s about twice the price and more restrictive than it was when we took it out.
March 12, 2018 at 2:03 pm #17525Ed PParticipantJust out of interest Bob, it looks like much of the data has now been classified and moved to the National Archives. I would guess you now need a Readers Ticket and have to call the stuff out of the archives and then only get the boring stuff! When I was doing my bit of student research it was completely open access and more a question of blowing dust off the tomes. (from memory it was like a bookcase or three stuffed full of bound encyclopedias).
March 12, 2018 at 2:21 pm #17526The DukeParticipantGiven your input here Ed I think you 5oo would like Wormwood.
March 12, 2018 at 2:32 pm #17527JayCeeDeeParticipantI was just clearing out the paperwork from when I left BT and there was a sheet I signed reminding me that even though I’d left, I was still covered by the act regarding any knowledge I’d acquired from my days there.
I’d been on several MoD projects during my time, but the buildings I knew in London have probably been sold off and are now luxury flats or townhouses and those in the country were under muddy fields anyway!! ( Where’s the crazy emoji??)
March 12, 2018 at 3:20 pm #17529Ed PParticipantLots of crazy things happened during that period.
Probably as a result of the bad publicity from the CND and the revelation of RSG Government funk-holes, I believe that the Government of the day was having major problems with recruitment of engineers and scientists. As a result I managed to get on quite a lot of PR visits to a number of top secret establishments (no OSA chits).
Probably the highlight of the period was being taken into a small room in Aldermaston which was lined with wooden shelves on which were neatly arranged approximately 7 inch diameter 1/2 inch deep polythene wrapped dull-grey metal disks each positioned about eighteen inches from their neighbours. I was given one (warm) roughly half kilo disk in each hand and told that I was carrying the equivalent of an H-bomb trigger! (The disks were warm and shrink wrapped because plutonium is a poisonous alpha emitter). I was then severely cautioned not to bring my hands together. Imagine what the Elves of Safety would have to say about that today!
March 12, 2018 at 4:31 pm #17536Ed PParticipantI should have added that plutonium is like phosphorus and catches fire in air (main reason for the shrink wrap).
March 12, 2018 at 4:55 pm #17537tadkaParticipantI try to stay away from anything related to politics. I know one fact about it (and that’s all I need to know) – there is no honesty or truth there. But I just watched this video on YouTube due to pure boredom after it popped up on Facebook. I now actually regret having watched it as I just can’t stop thinking how screwed up this world is. But it’s an interesting video nonetheless. A link for those who want to watch it:
March 12, 2018 at 7:08 pm #17546Ed PParticipantWell it now looks like the poison was Russian or FSU sourced.
Novichok has now been named by Theresa May as the detected nerve agent (originally manufactured near Novosibersk). The military wikia reveals that this is far more deadly than VX but perhaps of more relevance it can be produced as a ‘binary’ in which two less deadly compounds can be mixed together to produce the final extremely deadly compound. This would obviously make the administration of the poison easier and perhaps mean two separate people could have been involved in the poisoning without putting either in real harm.
Russia was supposed to have used the following facilities to dispose of stocks of its chemical weapons: Gorny in Saratov, Kambarka in Udmurtia, Leonidovka in Penza, Maradykovsky in Kirov, Shchuchye in Kurgan and Pochep in the Bryansk Oblast. Last year Putin claimed that the last of all stocks had now been destroyed at the Kizner chemical weapons destruction facility in the Udmurt region (all other disposal sites had by then been closed and sanitized)
As Novichok was deemed an ‘undetectable’ agent perhaps it explains the delay in warning the general public in Salisbury but I think our Government could well be criticised for the delayed warnings. and putting people in Salisbury at risk.
As a side-note Novichok appears much more complex than VX/Sarrin which would raise the degree of difficulty in its manufacture, and perhaps put it beyond the reach of ‘average’ terrorists such as the Aum cult.
A smoking gun has certainly been produced, and the ball is now in Russia’s court to explain how such material could have reached Salisbury.
March 12, 2018 at 7:50 pm #17549SpedleyParticipantI try to stay away from anything related to politics. I know one fact about it (and that’s all I need to know) – there is no honesty or truth there. But I just watched this video on YouTube due to pure boredom after it popped up on Facebook. I now actually regret having watched it as I just can’t stop thinking how screwed up this world is. But it’s an interesting video nonetheless. A link for those who want to watch it:
I don’t believe it, looks like just a repetition of rumours. Well made but lacking in any real substance.
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