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Something is cooking...
@"Wallfire" 
Quote:1. The leaders of Europe are trying to point people away from the massive invasion of refugees, " Look bad ruskies "
I agree!
They see how Stupid and Gullible the vast majority of people are in America about the Russians and president Trump and assume their population is just as Stupid.
 
The stores were all closed, they couldn't buy any Petroleum Jelly as a lubricant.
Once A Rogue, Always A Rogue!
[Image: attachment.php?aid=936]
I wasn't going to approach this subject because it's been muddied by both sides of the 'Who-Dunnit' argument.

The images were provided by Reuters and it's the time-stamps that's causing the problem.
Gatwick Airport does have separate corridors and it could well be that the pair of accused poisoners left the
Customs area via separate exits.

But at exactly the same time? Possible I suppose, but the lengthy write-up by the BBC to dilute the suggestion
makes me wonder.

Quote:Sergei Skripal and the Russian disinformation game.

'When the UK authorities announced on Wednesday that they suspected two alleged Russian agents in the
poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, they released CCTV images
of the suspects arriving at Gatwick airport.

Two of the images, framed side by side, began to spread on social media, driven by pro-Russia conspiracy
theorists and suspected troll accounts. They showed the alleged agents -Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov
-passing through a non-return gate at the airport.

The images had identical timestamps. How could two men be in exactly the same place at the same time,
a flood of tweets asked.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4461]


Speaking on state TV, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that either "the date
and the exact time were superimposed on the image" or that Russian intelligence officers had "mastered the
skill of walking simultaneously".

Her remarks were echoed by pro-Kremlin accounts on Twitter and on the messaging app Telegram, which
is popular in Russia. Users suggested the CCTV images had been manipulated. They mocked the British
authorities and alleged it was an MI6 operation.

Soon it would not necessarily matter that the background of the CCTV images were not identical; that the camera
was at a different angle; that Google Maps shows that the non-return gates at Gatwick are a series of near-identical
corridors that the two men could easily have passed down, adjacent to one another, at the same time.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4462]


What would matter would be that some people following the story would begin to question what was real and what
wasn't. Some might even begin to question the very idea that there was a real, reliable version of events at all.

Russia denies any involvement in the Skripal case, and its embassy in London did not respond to a request for
comment from the BBC, but analysts say the Russian state is now the chief exponent of a new kind of information
warfare.

A loosely-defined network of Russian state actors, state-controlled media, and armies of social media bots and
trolls is said to work in unison to spread and amplify multiple narratives and conspiracies around cases like the
Skripal poisoning. The goal is no longer to deny or disprove an official version of events, it is to flood the zone
with so many competing versions that nothing seems to make sense.

"What is really striking is that you no longer see the Russian machine pushing a single message, it pushes dozens
of messages," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies Russian disinformation.
"The idea is to confuse people."

Other theories circulating on Wednesday included a claim that the suspects were British actors, stars of a
(non-existent) KGB spy series broadcast on British television in the 2000s. Another suggested the attempted
assassination in Salisbury, and the deaths of other Russian nationals in Britain, were part of an MI6 plot.
"Why do all these horrible events only happen in Britain?" asked Andrei Klimov, a Russian member of
parliament, on state TV.

"The more different theories you put out, the more different Google results you're going to get," said Mr Nimmo.
"So instead of seeing two or three different versions of the story you're seeing 20 or 30. And for someone who
is not following the story regularly that becomes more and more confusing until they give up.
And at that point, the Russian disinformation has had its effect."

Early evidence of the tactic can be traced back to the 2000s but it first drew serious international attention in
2014 when Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine, killing 298 people.
The evidence pointed to a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory in east Ukraine.

In the days and months after the aircraft was shot down, Russian state media and pro-Kremlin social accounts
pushed out a raft of different and wildly contradictory theories: that a Ukrainian Su-25 combat aircraft had been
picked up by radar near MH-17; that video evidence showed a missile being fired from government, not
separatist, territory; that Ukrainian fighters had mistaken MH-17 for Vladimir Putin's plane in an assassination
attempt; that the CIA was behind it.

"MH-17 is really the classic example," said Samantha Bradshaw, a researcher on computational propaganda
at the University of Oxford. "You saw a whole series of different conspiracies and competing narratives emerge,
attached to various hashtags and social media campaigns.
The goal was to confuse people, to polarise them, to push them further and further away from reality."

The technique expanded and evolved in the years after the MH-17 attack, with Russia linked to disinformation
campaigns around its actions in Syria, the 2016 US election, the murder of Boris Nemtsov, and a UK inquiry
into the murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Russia had already been accused of deploying crude disinformation techniques around its actions in east Ukraine
and its annexation of Crimea, but its response to being linked to the downing of MH-17 was on a different scale
-the "tipping point where Russian information warfare kicked into high gear", Mr Nimmo said.

In 2015, the European Union was sufficiently alarmed by Russian disinformation that it created a task force
-the East Stratcom team - directed solely at counteracting the perceived threat. The small team attempts to
debunk fake stories in real time, but it is reportedly vastly outmatched by the amount of material coming its way.

Peter Wilson, the UK ambassador to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said earlier
this year the OPCW had counted more than 30 different Russian theories swirling around the poisoning of
Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

The effectiveness and reach of this type of disinformation operation in the West is debatable. A YouGov poll
conducted earlier found that 75% of Britons believed that the Russian state was behind the Skripal poisoning,
while just 5% said they thought Russia was innocent.

But the sheer volume of Russian disinformation being exported abroad remained a major cause for concern,
said one EU official who works on the issue but was not authorised to speak about it publicly.

"Some people like to think this tactic was used around Brexit and it went away, or it was used around Skripal
and went away, but it's happening 24/7," he said. "Others also use disinformation, of course ... But this
aggression, this exporting of information narratives abroad, this is really something where Russia is number
one in the world."...'
BBC:

So now you know, I'm a Bot or a Ruskie Troll.

By the way, when the BBC quote the tweet: '...The images had identical timestamps.
How could two men be in exactly the same place at the same time, a flood of tweets asked...'

Notice they omit a question-mark to the question, that's an old trick to make sure the reader
doesn't subconsciously dawdle on the sentence and give the query mental-credibility.
Crafty buggers!


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Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 
It could well be that the two men pictured below did partake in the attempted assassination
of the Skripals, but surely this report is some kind of mocking-tactic by the MSM?
The laboratory's name... really?!

Quote:Dutch kicked out 'Russian spies' over alleged plot to hack lab investigating Salisbury novichok.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov dismisses the reports as the Swiss summon the
ambassador over the claims.

'Two "Russian spies" arrested in the Netherlands were reportedly plotting to hack a Swiss lab
investigating the Salisbury poisoning. The men are believed to have been agents for the Russian
military intelligence service, according to Swiss and Dutch media.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4492]

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov -the Salisbury suspects.

They were reportedly detained earlier this year and kicked out of the Netherlands.

"The Swiss authorities are aware of the case of Russian spies discovered in The Hague and
expelled from the same place," said a spokeswoman for Switzerland's intelligence service (FIS).

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4493]


Isabelle Graber said FIS agents had "participated actively in this operation together with its Dutch
and British partners".

She said the pair had attempted "illegal actions against a critical Swiss infrastructure" but did not
name the target. Swiss and Dutch media said the men had planned to hack the Spiez laboratory
which at the time was analysing novichok samples from the attack on Sergei Skripal and his
daughter Yulia.

Tages-Anzeiger newspaper reported that the men were carrying equipment that could be used to
break into the lab's IT network when they were arrested.
The lab had also been investigating data related to poison gas attacks in Syria.

Switzerland's foreign ministry said it had summoned Russia's ambassador on Friday to "protest
against this attempted attack" and demanded Russia "immediately" stop any spying in Switzerland.

"We have had indications that we have been in the crosshairs of hackers in the last few months,"
said a spokesman for the lab, Andreas Bucher. He said no data had been stolen.

The Dutch defence department declined to comment.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the reports, saying he could not believe the
arrests would not have been picked up by the media at the time. Stanislav Smirnov, a spokesman
for the Russian embassy in Switzerland, also shrugged off the claims, reported Russian state news
agency Tass.

"We believe that this is a new anti-Russian bogus story made up by the Western media," he said.
"We have seen this article and it gives rise to a lot of questions... It is absurd, just new groundless
allegations."

Last week, British officials identified Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov as the suspects in
March's novichok attack. Theresa May said they were GRU intelligence officers and that the attack
had been approved "at a senior level of the Russian state".

Russia's President Putin said this week that the men caught on CCTV in Salisbury were "civilians"...'
SOURCE:


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Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 
This is a bit embarrassing for the British Authorities who want to maintain the 'Russian Novichok' narrative!

Quote:Police rule out Novichok link to Salisbury diners becoming ill.

'Police say there is "nothing to suggest that Novichok" was the cause of two people falling ill at a restaurant in
Salisbury. Wiltshire Police declared a major incident after a man in his 40s and a woman in her 30s became
ill at Prezzo in High Street on Sunday evening.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4507]


Nearby streets were cordoned off "due to recent events" in the city, but restrictions have now been lifted.
Police say they are no longer treating the illness as a major incident.

A Wiltshire Police statement said: "Due to recent events in the city and concerns that the pair had been exposed
to an unknown substance, a highly precautionary approach was taken by all emergency services."
The two people affected were taken to Salisbury District Hospital and remain under observation.

In March Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury after being
exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. After weeks in hospital they were released, but in June two Amesbury
residents fell ill after being exposed to the same nerve agent. Dawn Sturgess, 44, died and a murder inquiry was
launched.

The UK government has accused two Russian men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of attempting to kill
the Skripals. But in an interview on a Russian state-run news channel, they claimed to be tourists. Russia has
denied any involvement in the poisoning...'
BBC:


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Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 
I think that Russia and GB should start looking at the Ukraine, they have the most to gain by setting Russia and the EU at each other.
Quote:Salisbury Prezzo is still on lockdown despite NO novichok: Police guard restaurant where
'Russian' couple fell ill with nerve agent-style symptoms - as male diner is in 'critical condition'

*Man in his 40s collapsed at restaurant in Salisbury with his female dinner guest
*Major incident declared when man and woman in 30s became unwell at Prezzo
*Roads were cordoned off and police wearing protective suits were deployed
*But police said there's nothing to suggest Novichok had caused them to fall ill

'The man in his 40s who collapsed at a restaurant in Salisbury with his female dinner guest was
said to be in a critical but stable condition today.

A major incident was declared yesterday when the man, who is believed to be Russian, and a
woman in her 30s became unwell at a Prezzo restaurant in the city. Roads were cordoned off
and police and paramedics wearing protective suits were deployed amid heightened tensions
following the deadly Novichok attack.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4513]

Police tonight said tests were 'ongoing' as officers work to establish whether the pair are
victims of an deliberate attempt to poison them. Tonight police officers were standing outside the
Prezzo, which remained closed and cordoned off, and staff were being allowed in.
It remains unclear when it will re-open for business. 

A Wiltshire Police spokeswoman said: 'Tests are continuing to help us build up a picture of what
led these two people to fall ill but, due to the recent nerve agent incidents in the county, tests were
immediately carried out which enabled us to rule out that they had been exposed to Novichok.

'The cordon at Prezzo is likely to remain in place at this time as a precautionary measure.'

Detective Sergeant Jonathan Davies-Bateman said: 'Although we were able to rule out the presence
of Novichok quickly, tests are ongoing to understand what, if anything, the pair have come into contact
with which may have caused them to fall unwell.

'It is crucial this is done methodically. At this stage, it is unclear as to whether or not a crime has been
committed.'  Fears the duo had become the latest Novichok victims were allayed after police said
there was nothing to suggest the nerve agent had caused them to fall ill.

Offices closed Prezzo and nearby roads after the 'medical incident' at 5.30pm near to where ex-Russian
spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned. Witnesses described police 'covering someone
up with a blanket', and claimed the victims were Russian. Police took diners to an empty shop after the
incident.

Amanda Worne, who was at Prezzo, tweeted: 'Salisbury leaps into action again as two Russians are taken
ill in Prezzos showing the same symptoms as before. We were next to them.' 
Sam Proudfoot, 16, tweeted: 'Trouble in Salisbury again near the cathedral.
There's a man in a full white body suit with a mouth-mask.'

Another witness told the BBC that one of the people taken ill was a blonde woman in her late twenties.
The female appeared to be at the table on her own and 'kept going away and coming back'.
The witness added: 'When she came back she was hysterical.
'She called paramedics and the next thing an ambulance turns up and they come rushing in.' 
The source added that the man the woman had been with had gone to the toilet and had had a fit.

Amanda Newton, who was in the restaurant, posted on Facebook: 'Two people sitting next to us taken
seriously ill and the whole area is closed. We may need blood tests at hospital.' 
Phil Downton, a member of staff at the nearby New Inn said that the diners were brought to the pub until
the all-clear was given at about 1am.

He said: 'We weren't allowed to go near them, they were on one side of the pub and we were told not
to go in there just in case of contamination if it was something.'
A business owner five doors away from the Prezzo said her company had suffered significant losses
since the first Novichok attack in March this year.

Sarah Orton, owner of Roly's Fudge Pantry, said her company are £25,000 worse off than they were
this time last year and last night's episode was an overreaction on the part of emergency services.

The 54-year-old said: 'They should have dealt with it quietly but instead there were multiple police
cars and ambulances, it just makes the whole incident seem worse than it is.

'The police are overreacting and it's having a huge effect on the city and the businesses here, it's
giving Salisbury a very bad reputation...'
MailOnline:

The rest is about Salisbury residents complaining about tourism loss.


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Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 
Well, we now know the tale of the weird nerve agent and how it came to be agreed on that it was not only from
Russia, but it was also delivered to the UK by two incompetent would-be assassins who would end-up being
unmasked as Dr Alexander Mishkin and Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.
Except in reality, we don't know that.
tinywondering

The outlines of the initial incident involving Sergei and his daughter seems to have been poorly reported by
some outlets as they had the first person on the seizure-scene in the Salisbury centre as Detective Sergeant
Nick Bailey.

Now the story has changed and Bailey is said to have been the first person to visit the Skripal residence.
Hence, he touched the alleged-contaminated door knob and the poison reacted immediately. (Even in a
hazmat-suit)
For Sergei and Yulia, it took another couple of hours to attack them.

It could well be that the narrative was never corrected by the security agencies in case of giving away vital leads
and it could be that the mainstream media just did what they always do and merely add conjecture in the form of
implied factual evidence.
Medias such as the BBC.
"16:15 GMT
...Emergency services receive the first report of an incident.
Police find the Skripals on a bench in an "extremely serious condition".
They are taken to hospital along with police officer Det Sgt Nick Bailey, attending the incident.
All three were later discharged..."
Link:

"...At 16:15 GMT, emergency services received the first report of an incident
Police found the pair on a bench outside Zizzi in an "extremely serious condition"
Det Sgt Nick Bailey, who fell ill after attending the incident, was treated in hospital
but discharged on 22 March.."
2nd Link:

So was the BBC lying or were they just guessing and calling it accurate reporting?
Below is another account that omits important information for the sake of emotive biased.
Nick Bailey was compensated -presumably with public money and his family's home and possessions replaced.

Accuracy eh... who needs it?!

Bailey was passing by in the park and somehow, also at the residence in a hazmat suit.
Magically, he was taken to hospital with the Skripals at the park and then returned home to contaminate
his family's possessions. I'm just disappointed there's no 'Once Upon A Time' at the beginning of all this!


Quote:'We Lost Everything' Salisbury cop poisoned by Novichok in Skripal attack reveals he had to quit his home
and destroy all his possessions.

DS Nick Bailey was the first to attend Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s home after they collapsed in the failed Russian
hit in March.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4805]

'The detective poisoned by Novichok has revealed he had to quit his home and destroy all his possessions after
becoming contaminated. DS Nick Bailey was the first to attend Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s home after they collapsed
in the failed Russian hit in March.

He described how he was contaminated from poison smeared on the door handle and how it spread through his
body leaving him “juddering” and “dripping with sweat”. After being treated in hospital for the deadly nerve agent,
the Wiltshire cop’s house and possessions had to be destroyed , leaving him “emotionally battered”.

Nick, who lived with wife Sarah and their two children in Fordingbridge, Hants, said: “Not only did we lose the house,
we lost all of our possessions, including everything the kids owned, we lost all that, the cars.
We lost everything. It’s been very difficult to kind of come to terms with that.”

The detective leading the investigation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, described how searching
for the attackers in 11,000 hours of CCTV was like looking for a “needle in a haystack”.
But he added that identifying the assassins Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov was a “gotcha” moment.

A scientist at Porton Down Lab, named only as Tim, said realising that the poison was Novichok was a “jaw dropping
moment”. He added: “I went through a number of emotions from disbelief to anger.
It’s one of the most dangerous substances known. It’s quite unique in its ability to poison individuals at very low
concentrations.”

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4808]


Dad-of-two Nick was left critically ill following the failed hit on ex-GRU agent Sergey, 67, and his daughter Yulia, 34, at
their home in Salisbury on March 4. Nick, 38, said: “I was the first person into the house.

“We had to make sure that there was no other casualties in the house. It was vital for us to find out what had actually
happened to them. “The house was in darkness. It just looked normal. There was nothing untoward.
Came out of the house, secured it again, took our forensic suits off, which we then bagged up and then went back to
the station.”

Shortly afterwards, Nick began to feel unwell, saying: “My pupils were like pin pricks. And I was quite sweaty and hot.
"At that time I put it down to being tired and stressed.” He went to bed at the end of his shift, but two days later he was
feeling even worse so his family rushed him to hospital.

He said, “Everything was juddering, I was very unsteady on my feet. The sweating had gone from my forehead down
my back. My whole body was dripping with sweat.” "Recalling the moment he was told blood tests revealed it was
Novichok, Nick said: “I didn’t understand how it had happened, scared because it’s the fear of the unknown because
it’s such a dangerous thing to have in your system.

"Knowing how the other two [Yulia and Sergei Skripal] were or how badly they’d been affected by it, I was petrified.
"It’s such an outrageous, dangerous way of doing something that it angered me as well because any number of people
could have been affected by that."
Nick was treated in intensive care of Salisbury District Hospital alongside the Skripals.

He said: "I was conscious, throughout the whole time. It was painful at the beginning.
"I had lots of injections. I had five or six infusions at any one time in my arms. One of the Skripals was in the room right
next to me. It was all guarded by the police."

The Novichok, which is fatal in the tiniest of doses, had been smuggled into the UK in a fake perfume bottle.
"It was found in Salisbury three months after the Skripals and Nick Bailey had been poisoned, by local man Charlie Rowley,
45, who gave it to his partner Dawn Sturgess, 44.
Both were poisoned and while Charlie survived, Dawn died nine days later in hospital.

Nick said: "I was in absolute shock when I heard about what happened to these two people and my heart goes out to Dawn
and her family because I was able to walk out of hospital and sadly she wasn’t.”
DAC Haydon said last night that the Novichok poisoning could have killed thousands.
He added: "The amount that was in the bottle and the way it was applied to the Skripals home address was completely reckless."

Dep Asst Commissioner Dean Haydon, who led the probe into the March attack, called it “completely reckless”.
Asked how many more people it could have killed, Mr Haydon said: “Possibly into the thousands.
The amount in the bottle and the way it was applied...'
The Sun:

But wait... don't feel too bad .


Quote:GRU boss behind Salisbury novichok poisonings dies after 'serious illness'

Igor Korobov was also accused of organising cyber attacks on the US and directing military intelligence operations in Syria.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4806]

'The head of Russian military intelligence, the organisation accused of being behind the Salisbury novichok poisonings, has died.
General Colonel Igor Korobov had been in charge of the GRU since 2016, the culmination of a 33-year career in military intelligence.
His death at the age of 63 was revealed by a Russian defence ministry source to the state-backed news agency Tass.
It said that he had died after a "serious illness".

"The leadership of the Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation, General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
(GSA) and Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inform with great sadness that on
21 November 2018, after a serious and long illness, head of the (GRU), deputy chief of the GSA Colonel General Korobov Igor
Valentinovich passed away at the age of 63," a statement said.

"The memory of a wonderful person, a true son of Russia, a patriot of the Fatherland Colonel General Korobov Igor Valentinovich
will forever remain in our hearts. We express condolences to his family and friends."

It is not the first time the organisation's chief has died in the job -Korobov's predecessor Igor Sergun died suddenly in January 2016
in circumstances described as "unclear". His death came three weeks after he was sent to Syria by Russian president Vladimir Putin
to demand the Syrian president step down.

Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar quoted a London-based diplomatic source as saying Mr Sergun was killed in a secret mission that
several Arab and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies took part in. The source hinted that he had been assassinated but Russian
presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov responded to this by saying: "We have already voiced everything we could."

[Image: attachment.php?aid=4807]

Igor Sergun.

In March this year two GRU operatives flew into the UK in what the UK government has said was a mission to assassinate double
agent and former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal. Russia denies the allegations...' (There's more in the link)
SKY NEWS:

Is this the end of the drama...?


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Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 


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