MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Questions Of The Day (Politics)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 96, 97, 98 ... 299, 300, 301  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Scenario One

The police find the chucked-away vial, inspect the video footage, identify an FSB agent scurrying away. [Essentially the Litvinenko scenario.] Bang to rights, the Russians can only say it's all faked, the rest of the world really gives it to Putin.

Policy recommendation: the British sigh and ask for no further action to be taken by the international community. After all, everyone has already acted -- and rather satisfactorily -- on the original Skripal poisoning. "We have to deal with the Russia we've got, for better and for worse," says a magnanimous Theresa May in a Commons statement.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Scenario Two

The police find the thing that contaminated the druggie couple. It clearly shows the novichock came from Porton Down. The Russians are now not just off the hook they have the massive high ground.

Policy recommendation: the Brits hold their hands up, apologise to the Russians and take the massive hit. Not too massive so long as they can show they behaved reasonably throughout. "Lessons have been learned, and changes have been instituted at Porton Down," says a grim-faced Theresa May in a Commons statement.

Commentary follows.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

From an AE perspective, as Borrie has pointed out, we still have a problem in either scenario: the geographical connection between Skripal and Porton Down. The second poisoning of course increases this factor. If the connection is merely fortuitous, i.e. Skripal just happened to settle down in Salisbury which just happens to be near Porton, the first scenario survives. But only fortuitously.

The second does not since if the novichock was an accidental release from Porton it is impossible to believe that its accidental victim would just happen to be an ex-Russian spy. This leaves the possibility that it was not accidental which would mean that Russia’s official explanation – ‘the Brits are framing us’ – was true. However, nobody but a Russian could possibly entertain such an unlikely theory.

We must therefore, and however reluctantly, entertain the the only theory that does not break our own one input/one output dictum: that the geographical connection between Skripal and Porton Down was not fortuitous. I’ll run some scenarios.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Scenario One

Skripal lived near Porton Down because he worked at Porton Down. Since he has no known background in bio-chemical weapons this presumably means that Porton Down is itself something larger than a bio-chemical establishment. As it is probably the best guarded location in Britain (bleedin’ hell, one hopes so!) it would seem reasonable to use it as an all-purpose spy establishment, of which Skripal was a fully paid up member and why he was targeted by the Russians. Or he got accidentally infected there.

Scenario Two

Skripal lived near Porton Down because this entire general area is a hang-out for the British secret establishment, of which Skripal was a fully paid up member and why he was targeted by the Russians. Those of us old enough to have lived through the Spies for Peace saga will know that Warren Row, just down the road, was the Regional Seat of Government in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Plus there’s Aldermaston, plus there’s um other places I can’t tell you about.

Scenario Three

I can’t tell you about this one either. But I will when I think of it.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Or he got accidentally infected there.

You haven't explained why Skripal would be in contact with a Class A nerve agent. He is clearly of use in an intelligence context though his usefulness has possibly degraded by now. Porton Down staff are more likely to travel to hear his lectures than Skripal to go to PD.

The Russians had Sergei under surveillance and of course know all about the 'secret' biochemical establishment. They do have a sense of humour, of sorts.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

You haven't explained why Skripal would be in contact with a Class A nerve agent.

Because he worked at Porton Down. Yes, I know unlikely in the extreme but the event is unlikely in the extreme. Look at it this way: if he had been known to be working at Porton Down would the world have so readily leapt to a Russian conclusion?

He is clearly of use in an intelligence context though his usefulness has possibly degraded by now. Porton Down staff are more likely to travel to hear his lectures than Skripal to go to PD.

His lectures where? Salisbury Public Library?

The Russians had Sergei under surveillance and of course know all about the 'secret' biochemical establishment. They do have a sense of humour, of sorts.

I did think of that but it doesn't explain the original Salisbury/Porton nexus. Though, since you mention it, I suppose that having observed the accidental concordance of where Skripal had decided to settle down, they chose, as per their sense of humour, to use a nerve agent to kill him.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The only misinformation from the Brits I can identify is this constant refrain from Public Health England..... that the danger to the general public is low......it clearly is not.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

It clearly is. Five individuals out of sixty million and nobody died. But I don't think misinformation is the issue. The British seem to have been playing with a relatively straight bat, though they missed a trick by not agreeing to Russian involvement in the investigation at an early stage, plus allowing them access to the Skripals.

However the question of the propinquity of events to Porton Down has clearly now reached the stage of deafening careful ignoral. Blimey, even Mark Urban hasn't said anything.
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Sergei's wife died of cancer, and his son 'of liver failure', not many years apart. He himself has been in good health till recently and giving lectures, presumably at Salisbury's military base. The Skripals' medical history might be worth investigating.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Yes, this 'cluster' (there have been others) has also been subject to careful ignoral, though Mark Urban did mention it, only to dismiss it. Though not, I thought at the time, with his usual authoritativeness. Urban himself had been interviewing Skripal fairly intensively before any of these events.but omitted to mention this during the events. A bit odd since journalists are normally only too keen to boast of unique prior access to 'people in the news'. But then again it is becoming increasingly clear that Urban is something more than a journalist.

What 'Salisbury military base'? One of the themes of the coverage is how peaceable Salisbury is. It feeds into the 'Russians bring terror to sleepy English town' angle. Though actually, it having Salisbury Plain on its doorstep, it really is no such thing.
Send private message
Boreades


In: finity and beyond
View user's profile
Reply with quote

In the view of the latest news, I'd like to delete my own post as in bad taste. Where's the delete button?
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Done. Let us mark her passing with some observations. Usually, when a victim dies, the police investigation is kicked into a higher gear but this can hardly be the case here. And yet it does make a difference. Before, there was undeniably an air of 'it's all a bit of a lark' not only because nobody had died but because 'spy antics' are treated differently from either war or crime. Something akin to the way we view gangsters rubbing each other out. Certainly the Russians have been able to get away with treating the whole thing with an indecent levity.

At first the identification of the two new victims as less-than-solid citizens was a huge embarrassment, and efforts were made to clean up their image, but it is now obvious that it is a key to the case. First, the fact that she was living in a hostel in Salisbury takes a great deal away from the 'Porton Down factor' since Amesbury may be eliminated; second, the news that he used to scour dumps (for what has not been made clear) points unmistakably to a Russian hand. If the novichok was home-grown it would have been home-disposed; if it was brought in from abroad it couldn't have been disposed of in any way other than dumping it.

With her death, it now presumably relies on him surviving long enough to say just what was picked up, and where.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I predict that Amber Rudd will be made Foreign Secretary.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Or possibly Jeremy Hunt.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Donald Tusk wrote:
Politicians come and go but the problems they have created for people remain. I can only regret that the idea of #Brexit has not left with Davis and Johnson. But...who knows?


This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of democracy.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 96, 97, 98 ... 299, 300, 301  Next

Jump to:  
Page 97 of 301

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group