Quote; "Mikhail Lyubimov, a former KGB London station chief in the 1980s, told Moscow-based Dozd TV that “you've got to be an idiot to suddenly do this right before our presidential elections.” Lyubimov’s conspiracy theory is simple: A Western secret service—he didn’t say which one—or “some kind of Russian gang linked to some Western secret services” carried out the attack to whip up anti-Putin feeling in the West."
..."an attempted hit on an officially exchanged spy undermines the whole logic of spy-swap protocol established during the Cold War. “Spy exchanges are a bargain—both sides pay a price to get their people back,” says one former British diplomat, not authorized to speak on the record, whose time in Moscow coincided with previous spy swaps. “If you start bumping off people [you’ve agreed to exchange], that goes against the spirit of the thing…. It makes it difficult to negotiate in good faith in the future.”
It’s possible Skripal’s would-be assassins may not care about the political fallout, which would be evidence, says Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations Prague, of “more cracks forming” in Putin’s control of his espionage services. And the murder attempt could have been the result of a rivalry between different security agencies.*" Go to: http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-lost-control-russia-assassins-840598 for full article.
*Italics mine.
Official claim that ‘Novichok’ points solely to Russia discredited.
Quote; "This assumes that the narrative that insists an exclusively Russian made nerve agent was responsible is correct, however an examination of the work of such an august body as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) suggests that this is not a conclusion that can be immediately drawn, quote;
"in the statement by Ambassador Peter
Wilson, UK Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),"."he claimed that Russia has “failed for many years” to fully disclose its chemical weapons programme.
Wilson was parroting a claim made a year earlier by the US State Department
that Russia had not made a complete declaration of its chemical weapons
stockpile: “The United States cannot certify that Russia has met its
obligations under the Convention.”
Yet these claims are contradicted by the OPCW itself, which in September 2017 declared
that the independent global agency had rigorously verified the
completed destruction of Russia’s entire chemical weapons programme,
including of course its nerve agent production capabilities.
OPCW Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü, congratulated Russia with the following announcement:
“The completion of the verified destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons programme is a major milestone in the achievement of the goals of the Chemical Weapons Convention. I congratulate Russia and I commend all of their experts who were involved for their professionalism and dedication. I also express my appreciation to the States Parties that assisted the Russian Federation with its destruction program and thank the OPCW staff who verified the destruction.”
The OPCW’s press statement confirmed that:
“The remainder of Russia’s chemical weapons arsenal has been destroyed at the Kizner Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility in the Udmurt Republic. Kizner was the last operating facility of seven chemical weapons destruction facilities in Russia. The six other facilities (Kambarka, Gorny, Maradykovsky, Leonidovka, Pochep and Shchuchye) completed work and were closed between 2005 and 2015.”
The OPCW’s reports on Russia confirm that the agency found no evidence of the existence of an active Novichok* programme."..
"the OPCW’s science board, which included Porton Down’s Dr Black as UK representative, concluded that:
“… it has insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of ‘Novichoks.’”
So
in short, the OPCW does not agree with the vague US and British
insistence that Russia failed to declare all its chemical weapons
stockpiles and facilities, and does not agree with the insistence that
Novichok stockpiles or production facilities exist in Russia. But it seems that neither does His Excellency Peter Wilson** himself.
In a statement
to the OPCW in November 2017, Ambassador Wilson congratulated the OPCW
on verifying the complete destruction of Russia’s chemical weapons
programme with high praise for its director, Ahmet Üzümcü. Wilson listed
the latter’s numerous achievements including:
“… the completion of the verified destruction of Russia’s declared chemical weapons programme.”" Also..."According to former British diplomat Craig Murray, for instance, it is more reasonable to cast the net of suspicion onto Israel for many of the same reasons cited by the British government:
for full article.“Israel has the nerve agents. Israel has Mossad which is extremely skilled at foreign assassinations. Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it. Well Mossad has an even greater propensity to assassinate abroad. And while I am struggling to see a Russian motive for damaging its own international reputation so grieviously, Israel has"..."Russian action in Syria has undermined the Israeli position in Syria and Lebanon in a fundamental way, and Israel has every motive for damaging Russia’s international position by an attack aiming to leave the blame on Russia.***”" Go to: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-british-governments-russia-nerve-agent-claims-are-bullshit-a69b4ee484ce
*The "Russian produced" agent held to be responsible by the British govt. for the poisoning of Segei Skripal, his daughter and a a member of the local police force in Salisbury.
**This was clearly before an accusation of failure on the part of the OPCW would have aided rather than hindered the man's political career.
***Italics mine.
"
In
the early 1990s Skripal was recruited by an MI6 agent Pablo Miller,
whom the British media declined to name. Miller was an MI6 agent in
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Miller’s main task was recruiting
Russians to provide information about their country to the British.
An interesting fact, possibly coincidental, was that the MI6 officer
under diplomatic cover in Moscow at this time was Christopher Steele.
Steele was later to become better known as the principal author of
the infamous Trump dossier.
When
Steele returned to London, he ran MI6’s Russia desk between the
2006 and 2009. The information that Skripal disclosed would have been
given to Steele, first in Moscow and later in London.
Skripal
was arrested in 2004. In 2006 he was convicted of treason and
sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. In 2010 he was released as part
of a prisoner exchange deal with Russian spies in U.S. jails. He went
to live in the United Kingdom where he has lived in supposed
retirement ever since. Another interesting fact, although again
possibly coincidental, is that Salisbury, where Skripal lived, is
only about 12 kilometres from Porton Down, the U.K.’s principal
research centre for nerve agents.
If
the Russians had wanted to kill him, they had ample opportunity to do
so during the years when he was imprisoned or the eight years he
lived in retirement in Salisbury. If they did wish to kill him, it is
not a very credible that they would do so very publicly and by a
means that could not be bought off the shelf in the local pharmacy.
The handling and the administering of these very dangerous substances
require professional expertise. The obvious candidates for the
attempted murder are therefore government agencies, but which
government is the unanswered question.
This
is where the facts become thinner, but the interesting connections of
Skripal offer scope for some tentative hypotheses. While living in
Salisbury, Skripal became friendly, according to a
report in the UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph, with none other
than the aforementioned Pablo Miller – whom the Telegraph declined
to name but has since been identified on the web.
Miller
is now working with a British security consultancy named Orbis
Business Intelligence. Again according to the Telegraph, Miller’s
association with this company has now been removed from Miller’s
LinkedIn profile.
The
obvious question again is: why do so now?
Orbis
is the same private intelligence agency as that of Christopher
Steele. It seems more than a mere coincidence that the same three men
who had personal and professional links going back to the 1990s
should have a continuing association at the same time as the Steele
dossier was being compiled and later as the so-called Russiagate
inquiry was imploding. Former FBI Director James Comey described the
Steele dossier as “salacious and unverified” in a Senate hearing. " Go to: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48985.htm for full article.
Quote; "In January 2017, BuzzFeed News published an intelligence dossier developed by a former British MI6 intelligence officer who was deemed credible by U.S. intelligence officials. The Dossier raises profoundly disturbing questions about whether there was improper contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and about the existence of compromising personal and financial information about Donald Trump. At the time BuzzFeed published the Dossier, it acknowledged that the allegations it contained were “unverified” and that the document contained “some clear errors.”
BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the Dossier has itself attracted a lot of attention. The Dossier is part of ongoing lawsuits filed by parties named in the dossier and may be part of congressional investigations.
Why is it Important?
The Dossier is a human intelligence document or [HUMINT] and therefore should be viewed not as evidence in a trial, but as a road map for investigators. The dossier’s high level of accuracy is rapidly becoming clear.
There are significant takeaways that are largely absent from the conversation about the Dossier:
- Christopher Steele is credible. Steele was not just a former UK MI-6
officer; he also worked on behalf of the FBI in the successful FIFA
investigation.
- Steele and the Dossier were credible enough for former FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to brief President Obama and then-President elect Trump on the contents of the dossier.
- Steele was writing the Dossier in real time and it largely contains intelligence related to internal Russian efforts to interfere, not intelligence about the Trump campaign.
- Steele was concerned about his safety after the Dossier was released and went into hiding.
- While much attention has gone to the salacious tape described in the Dossier, more should be paid to the allegation that for at least 5 years Trump was passing information on Russians living at his properties to Russian intelligence operatives. Steele cites four different sources – a former senior Russian intelligence figure (who is believed to have been murdered in his car on December 26, 2016), a current senior Russian foreign ministry figure, and two Russian emigres; these sources all indicate that Trump had a relationship with Russian intelligence and was providing information on the comings and goings of Russians at his properties. We know that Trump had a vast surveillance system of his properties, and that President Putin and Russian intelligence keep a close tab on Russian oligarchs. We also have separate press reporting that UK, Dutch, French, German, Estonian, and Australian intelligence agencies picked up intelligence on meetings between Trump associates and Russian intelligence going back to 2015." Go to: https://themoscowproject.org/dossier/ for article and view the dossier in full as published by Buzzfeed.
Furthermore Russian sources have suggested that as the attempt on Sergei Skripal's and his unfortunate daughter Yulia's lives was "botched" it was certainly not carried out by the Russian Security Services describing the attempt as "amateur" (but let's face it that's not like MOSSAD either), the newcomer to "the game" being infact the Trump administration itself!
All of which is of-course merely circumstantial but none of which has appeared in the msm suggesting that (yet again), a "convenient" scapegoat may have been employed to bolster a popular narrative, certainly the following inconvenient facts have not become part of that narrative, quote;
"On 16 January 2018, a Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva wrote a detailed article about the US bio-weapons research that spans across the world in 25 different countries. Gaytandzhieva wrote in her article that the US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of biological weapons, and that hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases. She added that bio-warfare scientists are using diplomatic cover (and testing, Ed.), man-made viruses at Pentagon bio-laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $2.1 billion military program called Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in countries such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, etc. Luckily, the Balkans seems to be clear.
Gaytandzhieva recently traveled to Brussels and attended the European Parliament in order to confront Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Health, regarding the number of classified bio-weapons research labs scattered through Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Kadlec categorically denied the existence of an American bio-weapon program as well as that information surrounding the labs in question were classified. Gaytandzhieva attempted to continue her follow up but was silenced by Hilde Vautmans, the EU official sitting next to Kadlec, who stated "This is not an investigation" to applause from the audience and an embrace between herself and Kadlec. Gaytandzhieva didn't stop there, however, following Kadlec to the elevator and continuing to ask him questions regarding the bio-weapons program which Kadlec refused to answer. Security staff then refused to let Gaytandzhieva on the elevator." Go to: http://balkanspost.com/article/468/bulgarian-journalist-gaytandzhieva-confronts-kadlec-over-us-secret-bio-weapons for full transcript of the exchange between Gaytandzhieva and Kadlec.
The Pentagon's Bio-weapons.
Quote; "The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons".."Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa." Go to: https://www.naturalblaze.com/2018/01/bio-weapons-pentagon.html for full article.
Also see: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/13/russian-businessman-close-associate-ofboris-berezovsky-found/
James Comey to reveal new information on Trump and respond to 'lies' about the FBI.
Quote: "Mr Comey, who was fired after Mr Trump admitted to becoming frustrated with the probe into Russia alleged interference in the 2016 election and possible links between his campaign and Moscow, has publicly remained largely silent since his firing. Mr Mueller has since launched his own probe into possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Four former campaign staff have been indicted with various offences."..
"It said that among the episodes that the book will cover will be a one-on-one dinner between the two men and the so-called Trump dossier produced by former British spy Christopher Steele.*" Go to: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/james-comey-book-tour-trump-fbi-former-director-lies-russia-mueller-investigation-a8259916.html for full article.
*Italics mine.
British Scientists Balked at Pressure to Link Nerve Gas to Russia.
Quote; "Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilisers. This substance is a “novichok” in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China.
To anybody with a Whitehall (government) background this has been obvious for several days. The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation “of a type developed by Russia” was used by Theresa May in parliament, used by the UK at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, “of a type developed by Russia” is the precise phrase used in the joint communique issued by the UK, USA, France and Germany yesterday:"''
"When the same extremely careful phrasing is never deviated from, you know it is the result of a very delicate Whitehall compromise. My FCO source, like me, remembers the extreme pressure put on FCO staff and other civil servants to sign off the dirty dossier on Iraqi WMD, some of which pressure I recount in my memoir Murder in Samarkand." Go to: https://russia-insider.com/en/bombshell-british-scientists-balked-pressure-link-nerve-gas-russia/ri22809#.WqwY1XsvwIw.twitter for full article.
Also see; ""We're poor little sheep who have lost our way! Baah! Baah! Baah!" #Mercer #Trump #Putin #CambridgeAnalytica #Bannon #Breitbart" go to: http://www.arafel.co.uk/2017/05/were-poor-little-sheep-who-have-lost.html
& "Squaring the Circle: #Intersectionalities #SERCO #Mercer #CambridgeAnalytica" go to: http://www.arafel.co.uk/2017/03/squaring-circles-intersectionalities.html
How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions.
Quote; "LONDON
— As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica
prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a
problem.
The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.
So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.
An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both Congress and the British Parliament have questioned Alexander Nix, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, about the firm’s activities.
Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”
“They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”
Details of Cambridge’s acquisition and use of Facebook data have surfaced in several accounts since the business began working on the 2016 campaign, setting off a furious debate about the merits of the firm’s so-called psychographic modeling techniques.”...
“In Britain, Cambridge Analytica is facing intertwined investigations by Parliament and government regulators into allegations that it performed illegal work on the “Brexit” campaign. The country has strict privacy laws, and its information commissioner announced on Saturday that she was looking into whether the Facebook data was “illegally acquired and used.”” ...
..”Today, as Cambridge Analytica seeks to expand its business in the United States and overseas, Mr. Nix has mentioned some questionable practices. This January, in undercover footage filmed by Channel 4 News in Britain and viewed by The Times, he boasted of employing front companies and former spies on behalf of political clients around the world, and even suggested ways to entrap politicians in compromising situations.
All the scrutiny appears to have damaged Cambridge Analytica’s political business. No American campaigns or “super PACs” have yet reported paying the company for work in the 2018 midterms, and it is unclear whether Cambridge will be asked to join Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign.
In the meantime, Mr. Nix is seeking to take psychographics to the commercial advertising market. He has repositioned himself as a guru for the digital ad age — a “Math Man,” he puts it. In the United States last year, a former employee said, Cambridge pitched Mercedes-Benz, MetLife and the brewer AB InBev, but has not signed them on.“ Go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html for full article.
The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.
So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.
An examination by The New York Times and The Observer of London reveals how Cambridge Analytica’s drive to bring to market a potentially powerful new weapon put the firm — and wealthy conservative investors seeking to reshape politics — under scrutiny from investigators and lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Both Congress and the British Parliament have questioned Alexander Nix, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, about the firm’s activities.
Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”
“They want to fight a culture war in America,” he added. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”
Details of Cambridge’s acquisition and use of Facebook data have surfaced in several accounts since the business began working on the 2016 campaign, setting off a furious debate about the merits of the firm’s so-called psychographic modeling techniques.”...
“In Britain, Cambridge Analytica is facing intertwined investigations by Parliament and government regulators into allegations that it performed illegal work on the “Brexit” campaign. The country has strict privacy laws, and its information commissioner announced on Saturday that she was looking into whether the Facebook data was “illegally acquired and used.”” ...
..”Today, as Cambridge Analytica seeks to expand its business in the United States and overseas, Mr. Nix has mentioned some questionable practices. This January, in undercover footage filmed by Channel 4 News in Britain and viewed by The Times, he boasted of employing front companies and former spies on behalf of political clients around the world, and even suggested ways to entrap politicians in compromising situations.
All the scrutiny appears to have damaged Cambridge Analytica’s political business. No American campaigns or “super PACs” have yet reported paying the company for work in the 2018 midterms, and it is unclear whether Cambridge will be asked to join Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign.
In the meantime, Mr. Nix is seeking to take psychographics to the commercial advertising market. He has repositioned himself as a guru for the digital ad age — a “Math Man,” he puts it. In the United States last year, a former employee said, Cambridge pitched Mercedes-Benz, MetLife and the brewer AB InBev, but has not signed them on.“ Go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html for full article.
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