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Granny Danger

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1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

The individual labs aren't supposed to comment in detail. The worrying thing is that Lavrov knows he can get away with spouting such easily disprovable tosh as enough people will believe anything coming out of the Kremlin.

If it's easily disprovable then I'm sure someone will be along to disprove it shortly. The Swiss lab need only have responded that Lavrov has made this up and they found no such thing.

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3 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

The individual labs aren't supposed to comment in detail. The worrying thing is that Lavrov knows he can get away with spouting such easily disprovable tosh as enough people will believe anything coming out of the Kremlin, even if they contradict themselves day after day.

You know you could replace the name Lavrov with Johnson and Kremlin with Westminster and your statement would be just as true.

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2 minutes ago, Antiochas III said:

You know you could replace the name Lavrov with Johnson and Kremlin with Westminster and your statement would be just as true.

Exactly, and the British have already been caught lying on this.

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8 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

If it's easily disprovable then I'm sure someone will be along to disprove it shortly. The Swiss lab need only have responded that Lavrov has made this up and they found no such thing.

 

Umm, they said -

 

Quote

Only OPCW can comment this assertion. But we can repeat what we stated 10 days ago: We have no doubt that Porton Down has identified Novichock. PD - like Spiez - is a designated lab of the OPCW. The standards in verification are so rigid that one can trust the findings

 

OPCW said

 

Quote

The results of the analysis by the OPCW designated laboratories of environmental and biomedical samples collected by the OPCW team confirm the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical that was used in Salisbury and severely injured three people.

 

Porton Down said it was Novichok.

 

 

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Another to add to the list.

Quote

Here are 20 different narratives offered by Russian media and officials for the poisoning:

– The United Kingdom did it to fuel anti-Russian sentiment (source: Russia 1 TV channel)

– Ukraine did it to frame Russia (Russia 1)

– The United States did it to destabilise the world (Russian 1)

– Theresa May helped orchestrate the attack because she is a friend of CIA director Gina Haspel (Zvezda)

– It was an attempted suicide (Russia 1)

– It was an accidental overdose (RIA Novosti)

– It was due to accidental exposure from Britain’s Porton Down research facility (Russia 24 TV channel)

– The Porton Down lab carried out illicit human testing and is lying about not producing Novichok (RT)

– Skripal’s future mother-in-law did it (Moskovsky Komsomolets: mk.ru)

– Terrorists did it (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson)

– American-British financier Bill Browder — blacklisted in Russia for denouncing corruption — did it (Russia 1)

– A drone did it (Zvezda and Russian defence ministry)

– Skripal was a chemical weapons smuggler (Pravda)

– The West is using the case to deflect attention from Russia’s successes in Syria (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson)

– Britain is using the case to deflect attention from Brexit (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei lavrov, Russian UN ambassador, Russian OSCE ambassador)

– The attack was an attempt by a rival faction to undermine Vladimir Putin (state TV)

– Russia has destroyed all its stockpiles of Novichok (Sputnik)

– Russia never developed Novichok (Interfax)

– Only the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Sweden have Novichok (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson). All three countries have denied the claim.

– There is no evidence that the nerve agent used against the Skripals was Novichok, Porton Down lab is struggling to identify the substance (RT)

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/figure-of-the-week-20/

Oh but Boris said something so we can trust the Kremlin.

Edited by welshbairn
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3 minutes ago, NewBornBairn said:

 

Umm, they said 

OPCW said 

Porton Down said it was Novichok.

The Swiss lab dodged the main point, which was the claim that they found a different nerve agent in the sample (BZ) alongside novichok. They only restated they have no doubt Porton Down earlier found novichok. It would be huge news if true, or would  take a single sentence/tweet to dismiss if it's false.

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9 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Another to add to the list.

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/figure-of-the-week-20/

Oh but Boris said something so Britain's much less trustworthy than the Kremlin.

A foreign minister or ambassador directly lying to advance policy is hardly the same as newspapers speculating on  a major story. 

By that logic the British version of the Salisbury poisoning has changed about 20 times too.

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4 minutes ago, Antiochas III said:

Why is the actual name and full make up classified?  

 

...UK 45 minutes away from being hit with WMD...

Not sure why the name should be classified, but the composition is apparently not made public in case some bad actor decides to try and make some.

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1 minute ago, Zetterlund said:

A foreign minister or ambassador directly lying to advance policy is hardly the same as newspapers speculating on  a major story. 

By that logic the British version of the Salisbury poisoning has changed about 20 times too.

Porton Down explained they could only identify the toxin, not where it was made, more than a week before Boris fucked up. Porton Down repeated their assertion the next day, as did the PM. Hardly a British establishment cover up. Lavrov issues a new and contradictory lie every day.

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10 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

As has been alluded to; that Spiez tweet does nothing to actually confirm/deny anything from both sides. Why mock Russia Today as a source? Surely the BBC and Sky are as equally partisan? 

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/01/05/kremlins-shifting-self-contradicting-narratives-mh17/

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2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Porton Down explained they could only identify the toxin, not where it was made, more than a week before Boris fucked up. Porton Down repeated their assertion the next day, as did the PM. Hardly a British establishment cover up. Lavrov issues a new and contradictory lie every day.

Boris didn't "f**k up". He specifically said he personally asked the scientists at PD and was told categorically that it came from Russia. He lied to justify the certainty of his position. And the UK ambassador to Russia said the same, on video, and this video/tweet was  deleted by the Foreign Ministry as soon as PD stated in a high-profile TV interview that they couldn't confirm it. I don't see how this could be interpreted any other way.

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48 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

As has been alluded to; that Spiez tweet does nothing to actually confirm/deny anything from both sides. Why mock Russia Today as a source? Surely the BBC and Sky are as equally partisan? 

RT is, by common consent and by stated intent, the propaganda vehicle of the Kremlin.  That's not to say it's always wrong - or that it doesn't at times provide valuable alternative views - but it is a mouthpiece for Putin, who has been known to be economical with the truth.

The BBC, as folk are want to compare it to, may well have editors who are identified as "unionist" or even "conservative/Conservative", but there's a big difference between having views that you disagree with expressed, and being a stated vehicle for one perspective.  Nobody regards the National as propaganda for the SNP, do they?

I don't trust Boris or the Tories a bit, but it's not at all hypocritical to say there are legitimate reasons to believe that the poisoning was a state-sponsored murder attempt, while also suspecting there to be highly suspicious motives for the missiles fired at Syria.

Edit: for what it's worth, the Channel Four investigation a month or so ago came to the same conclusion as Porton Down.

Edited by Savage Henry
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3 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

Boris didn't "f**k up". He specifically said he personally asked the scientists at PD and was told categorically that it came from Russia. He lied to justify the certainty of his position. And the UK ambassador to Russia said the same, on video, and this video/tweet was  deleted by the Foreign Ministry as soon as PD stated in a high-profile TV interview that they couldn't confirm it. I don't see how this could be interpreted any other way.

Who was he trying to fool when Porton Down were already on public record for saying they could not identify the source? He confused the fact that it was a toxin of a type originally developed in Russia with it's source being provably Russian without supplementary intelligence. When you blag your way through life it's easy to do. He's our Trump.

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11 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

 


Can I get a run-down? My works’ browser isn’t letting me near that.

 

It's about the numerous swiftly debunked theories offered up on RT to explain the shooting down of MH17, from the plane being loaded with corpses when it took off to an attempt by a Ukrainian jet to shoot down Putin's plane.

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55 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Who was he trying to fool when Porton Down were already on public record for saying they could not identify the source? He confused the fact that it was a toxin of a type originally developed in Russia with it's source being provably Russian without supplementary intelligence. When you blag your way through life it's easy to do. He's our Trump.

I don't disagree about Boris, but for the ambassador to roll out the line too suggests it was the official UK position. I wasn't aware myself at the time that PD had previously publicly stated they couldn't confirm the source. As far as I knew they were still saying 'not yet confirmed', so maybe the idiots in charge of our government assumed they would tell them what they wanted to hear.

 

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