With no small degree of fascination, over the past month I have been watching the narrative and accompanying rhetoric of the Skripal poisoning incident in the sleepy little town of Salisbury, England. My fascination comes not so much from the verbal diarrhoea spewing from the mouth of politicians from both sides of the fence but from the massive 10-tonne elephant in the room that is being all but totally ignored by the media.
Just to recap, on 4 March this year Russian spy turned British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia – still a Russian citizen – were found unconscious on a Salisbury park bench. The British authorities all too quickly determined that the father and daughter were exposed to a military grade nerve agent of a type that was developed in the Soviet Union during the cold war – Novichok.
On release of the news, the British Government, led by Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, was quick to condemn Russia for the “assassination attempt”. Without a shred of concrete evidence, the British Parliament – both Conservative Government and Labour Opposition – laid the blame at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Government.
Russia of course protested its innocence stating quite accurately that it had voluntarily disposed of all of its chemical and biological weapons under international supervision several years ago.
However, according to May and her Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, it was a lay down misere that the source of the nerve agent was Russia and the perpetrators of the crime were Russian spies.
As a consequence, Russia, already the victim of a many years long campaign of public pillorying at the hands of the Western bloc led by the Anglo-American alliance and their vassal state allies, is once again being dragged through the mud.
Diplomats have been expelled, new sanctions are being mooted, and countries which have very little to do with Russia on the global stage, such as Australia, have meekly fallen into line with their British and American masters and have followed suit with diplomatic expulsions.
Anyway, the chances are that anyone reading this already knows the basic story so now is a good time for a little multiple choice quiz.
If someone is poisoned by a military grade nerve agent in a sleepy little hamlet in England, the most likely source of the nerve agent is:
a) Russia
b) An asteroid from outer space
c) An established chemical weapons research facility 10 minutes bus ride down the road
Yes that is right people. Salisbury is right next door to Porton Down, which houses one of the few places in the world capable of making military grade nerve agents.
[]
The well known but secretive ‘research facility’, which developed and still manufactures the lethal VX nerve agent, reportedly gets a tax payer funded budget approaching $1 billion a year and has about 3,000 scientists on staff.
So why does Porton Down still manufacture VX? Well, you see it has to test the equipment issued to troops as protection against such weapons.
Fair enough. In that case, would it be reasonable to speculate that Porton Down also manufactures military grade nerve agents of the Novichok variety, which apparently is far more potent than VX?
Well, of course it would. How else would Porton Down be able to realistically test equipment and antidotes for Novichok if needed?
Thus, it would appear that the purveyors in the media of the official narrative in the Skripal incident seem to be suffering from a high degree of cognitive dissonance.
After all, how many of us on this planet could in all honesty say that we live practically within walking distance of a massive chemical weapons laboratory?
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the Skripals were poisoned by a nerve agent in a place that just happens to be next door to a plant that has stocks of those very same nerve agents? Yes it would be interesting to see a mathematician calculate the exact probability. I am not a gambler but I would be willing to put money down that the probability is less than one in a thousand – a lot less.
We are told with absolute certainty by the senior officials at Porton Down that the Skripals were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent of the Novichok type. After all, they are the experts and they would know. Well then, why is it not reasonable to assume that the Novichok used in the poisoning could have come from Porton Down?
Porton Down officials are of course emphatic that the Novichok used on the Skripals did not come from their facility. It is not possible that the Novichok came from a stockpile stored 8 km down the road from where the Skripals were poisoned they say. Really? Well what else would you expect them to say?
To their credit, Porton Down officials say that it is also not possible to establish that Novichok used on the Skripals was made in Russia. However, they also say that the nerve agent was so sophisticated that it ‘probably’ could only have been made by a ‘state actor’.
So the narrative continues to run in the media that the most likely source of the Novichok that poisoned the Skripals was Russia. Perhaps it was smuggled in on an Aeroflot flight? Apparently this is far more plausible than any theory that suggests that the Novichok came from the place just down the road.
Not sure I understand but go ahead and resteem this.