Thursday 15th March 2018
Posted: Thu 15 Mar, 2018 7:09 am
Morning all.
Mishal Husain
@MishalHusainBBC
Former NATO Sec-Gen Rasmussen: No convincing answers from Russia on Salisbury, but this is not an Article 5 matter. Would be disproportionate to invoke it. But sanctions should be extended to 12 months (from 6) and should target wealthy individuals close to Putin
7:21 am · 15 Mar 2018
And preferably not for Labour anymore.@rosschawkins
Shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith says Labour accept that Russia is responsible for the attack @BBCr4today
says - that is our position now and I can assure you that is our front bench position
Nia Griffith says - I can't speak for Seumas Milne he has to speak for himself
Corbyn yesterday said what Trump had said the afternoon before and what May had said the day before that, but timing can be everything and even if he had a point he was still pinning a sign to his back saying 'kick me'.Willow904 wrote:
Ross HawkinsAnd preferably not for Labour anymore.@rosschawkins
Shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith says Labour accept that Russia is responsible for the attack @BBCr4today
says - that is our position now and I can assure you that is our front bench position
Nia Griffith says - I can't speak for Seumas Milne he has to speak for himself
Obviously it involves all countries in Western Europe working together, and preferably the US too. It also involves Western governments wanting more financial transparency. Not a path the Tories are comfortable with and I suspect Macron's reluctance to point the finger is based on a similar reluctance to lift the lid on financial murkiness, although hopefully I'm wrong because cleaning up the banks and global finance in general would be a good thing and our best defence against the insidious influence of Russian oligarchs.The Salisbury attack and relations with Russia after Putin’s re-election
It's a shame, because Corbyn's right about the malign influence of Russian oligarch money. It's just that in order to use the attack in Salisbury to mobilise against Russian money and influence we need to be clear that Putin is not our friend, that the threat from Russia is real and it's about wealth and power and the undermining of public trust in our democratic institutions to the point that we don't resist their undermining to the benefit of the wealthy elite.adam wrote:Corbyn yesterday said what Trump had said the afternoon before and what May had said the day before that, but timing can be everything and even if he had a point he was still pinning a sign to his back saying 'kick me'.Willow904 wrote:
Ross HawkinsAnd preferably not for Labour anymore.@rosschawkins
Shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith says Labour accept that Russia is responsible for the attack @BBCr4today
says - that is our position now and I can assure you that is our front bench position
Nia Griffith says - I can't speak for Seumas Milne he has to speak for himself
I think this is an interesting are, and well worth investigating, but I think that the kind of regulation they seem to be talking about will end up falling short of being meaningful. Either you're responsible for the material you carry or you're not. Historically the postal service or newsagents were not responsible for the content they provided but newspapers and magazines, for example, were. Google, Facebook and so on have managed to convince that they are the postal service. We here on a forum are stuck with being a newspaper. I have no problem with the idea of making the owners and directors of companies like Google responsible for the content they help you find, but the fact is we'd rather make it easy to find child pornography than have to rip up the way the web works and start again.Hancock suggested one area in which Britain might lead the way was by establishing a new set of laws placing social media companies halfway between traditional platforms and publishers. “The current law is that they are mere conduits,” he said. “That law was put in place to stop the people who were responsible for the wiring being responsible for what went over the wiring.
Sir Brian announced the court's decision that the Government's appeal had been allowed - but also said that the families had been given permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Brexit: Government 'paranoia' over secret business agreements
An attempt to enforce silence about outside discussions on trade border changes post-Brexit raises eyebrows across industry.
JJ Patrick has suggested she should suspend article 50, rather than revoke it. The circumstances are certainly serious enough, I think, to make it a viable option.adam wrote:Apologies if I read this on here and am just repeating somebody here, can't find it from yesterday, but there was one comment I think on the guardian that said that there was one thing May could do immediately that would seriously frustrate Putin's ambitions and serve as a big setback for him. She could revoke Article 50.
Willow904 wrote:Do we need cast iron proof to stamp down on dodgy Russian oligarch money coming into the country?
Do we need cast iron proof to be wary of being too dependent on Russian gas?
Do we need cast iron proof to implement the magnitsky amendment?
The answer is no. We could and should be doing these things anyway. The fact that Putin is highly likely to be responsible for the Salisbury poisoning gives real weight and urgency to the above arguments. It increases the need for the Tories to answer questions about Russian donations. It serves no one but Putin to muddy the waters over responsibility. He has both means and motive, Occam's razor most definitely applies and I feel we need to respond and that it's important that Labour is clear about the need to respond. No doubt Labour's idea of how we respond is going to be very different from the Tories, but that is different from the basic fact that Putin has been engaging in more and more aggressive interference in Western democracies and fanning the flames of doubt over that fact simply plays into his hands.
Dragging out the deaths would be more effective as a deterrent , mentioned as a possibility in the Luke Harding article in the Guardian . The one Russian scientist apparently poisoned accidentally lived painfully for 5 years iirc . Litvinenko lasted a few weeks ...howsillyofme1 wrote:Afternoon
Sorry to hear AKs news. My condolences
I am a little bit perplexed at the claims this nerve agent could only have come from Russia
These type of compounds are relatively easy to prepare if you have access to the necessary starting materials. If the structure is known any half decent organic chemist could synthesise it in a lab with sufficient containment
Without knowing the actual structure it is difficult to say hoe easy the raw materials could be accessed (many are controlled) but we have to remember the quantities needed here are very low
For use as a chemical weapon the challenges are much different. Acquisition of large amounts of starting materials, stabilising the product (often they do the final synthetic step as part of the delivery) and then a good delivery system
I think people who are commenting in the papers have not much knowledge of organic synthesis and how it is done. I suggest they watch an episode of Breaking Bad which shows you how simple it can be
I am pretty sure there is Russian involvement but without more information it is difficult to say that only a state could pull this off
If it was a state actor then they seem to have pretty incompetent in using an fairly exotic poison with known symptoms but actually managing to mess it up so badly. This stuff is toxic at the mg level and still they survived!
I do not disagree with comments on Put in but I stand by my postWillow904 wrote:Do we need cast iron proof to stamp down on dodgy Russian oligarch money coming into the country?
Do we need cast iron proof to be wary of being too dependent on Russian gas?
Do we need cast iron proof to implement the magnitsky amendment?
The answer is no. We could and should be doing these things anyway. The fact that Putin is highly likely to be responsible for the Salisbury poisoning gives real weight and urgency to the above arguments. It increases the need for the Tories to answer questions about Russian donations. It serves no one but Putin to muddy the waters over responsibility. He has both means and motive, Occam's razor most definitely applies and I feel we need to respond and that it's important that Labour is clear about the need to respond. No doubt Labour's idea of how we respond is going to be very different from the Tories, but that is different from the basic fact that Putin has been engaging in more and more aggressive interference in Western democracies and fanning the flames of doubt over that fact simply plays into his hands.
frog222 wrote:Dragging out the deaths would be more effective as a deterrent , mentioned as a possibility in the Luke Harding article in the Guardian . The one Russian scientist apparently poisoned accidentally lived painfully for 5 years iirc . Litvinenko lasted a few weeks ...howsillyofme1 wrote:Afternoon
Sorry to hear AKs news. My condolences
I am a little bit perplexed at the claims this nerve agent could only have come from Russia
These type of compounds are relatively easy to prepare if you have access to the necessary starting materials. If the structure is known any half decent organic chemist could synthesise it in a lab with sufficient containment
Without knowing the actual structure it is difficult to say hoe easy the raw materials could be accessed (many are controlled) but we have to remember the quantities needed here are very low
For use as a chemical weapon the challenges are much different. Acquisition of large amounts of starting materials, stabilising the product (often they do the final synthetic step as part of the delivery) and then a good delivery system
I think people who are commenting in the papers have not much knowledge of organic synthesis and how it is done. I suggest they watch an episode of Breaking Bad which shows you how simple it can be
I am pretty sure there is Russian involvement but without more information it is difficult to say that only a state could pull this off
If it was a state actor then they seem to have pretty incompetent in using an fairly exotic poison with known symptoms but actually managing to mess it up so badly. This stuff is toxic at the mg level and still they survived!
This article refered to a 'plant' in Uzbekhistan, tho as you say a big installation is not necessary ...
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/unli ... -1.3425736" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I'm still surprised that Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was so adamant that it could only have been manufactured in central Russia .
From the twitter thread I posted earlier, which has some more on the chemistry for those interested.The motive was to send a clear message to Russians at home that opposing Putin was high risk
and to the UK that this little country, with post-imperial delusions of adequacy, was increasingly isolating itself globally by leaving the EU and could likely not call on the US for any meaningful help
It is much much more than likely that you know more about this stuff than I do, I know, but it has to be said in response to this that there is no reason why you would use Polonium 210 in an assassination, which from what I've read could only have been sourced from nuclear reactors within Russia.howsillyofme1 wrote: Hmmm not convinced that you would use a nerve agent for this type of effect....the toxicity of these is very high and there is no safe dose. Suddenly the journalists and politicians become expert on subjects they have not studied for years....
Hello. I've been an energy-free zone for a while. Hopefully, I shall improve as the weather gets better\warmer. It is going to, isn't it?gilsey wrote:@PorFavor
I hope you're well, we haven't seen much of you lately. xx
HindleA wrote:She stuck to her appearance money demands and was successful.
Chris Giles
Verified account
@ChrisGiles_
57m57 minutes ago
More
This is not why we established the OBR - that was to take the historic bias out of official forecasts
Not to delegate the most sensitive political decisions to unelected officials
To summarise:
1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian “novichoks”. The UK government has absolutely no “fingerprint” information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.
2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world’s experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced “Novichoks” even exist.
3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.
4) “Novichoks” were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.
5) The “Novichok” programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.
Well, no.3 at least doesn't seem to be correct:GetYou wrote:Have we had this yet?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... -wmd-scam/
Interesting read.
To summarise:
1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian “novichoks”. The UK government has absolutely no “fingerprint” information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.
2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world’s experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced “Novichoks” even exist.
3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.
4) “Novichoks” were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.
5) The “Novichok” programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.
Other arguments made by Murray have been questioned as well, such as in a twitter thread by someone called Clyde Davis already linked here today:The row has also been playing out at the UN, where Britain called on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international chemical weapons watchdog, to verify its findings that Moscow is behind the Salisbury incident.
Mr Johnson confirmed the UK will submit a sample of the nerve agent to OPCW for it to carry out its own tests.
It's just a kind of mascot.HindleA wrote:I haven't got a cat as an advisor.