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When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspiracy?

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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Dilandu   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 4:00 am

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Please give me any reason why our GRU should bother itself with poisoning the outdated ex-traitor, who was exchanged, after all?
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Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Daryl   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 5:57 am

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This may explain it.

“Traitors will kick the bucket,” Putin says in the video. “Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those thirty pieces silver they were given, they will choke on them.”

Dilandu wrote:Please give me any reason why our GRU should bother itself with poisoning the outdated ex-traitor, who was exchanged, after all?


Whether Putin was involved at all, it would seem that some would want to curry favour by making his threat true. A historical example was the murder of Thomas Beckett by knights to ingratiate themselves with King Henry. A modern term is plausible deniability.
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Dilandu   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 7:06 am

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There is also a pretty good probability that it was british action, isnt it? ;) The MI6 is well-known for numerous political assasination in the past, and considering timing & course of events - the literally almost unknown former traitor, who was exchanged ten years ago poisoned by relatively rare suubstance which is NOT easily avaliable - it look pretty much like one of these.

Seriously, Russia gain absolutely nothing from this whole mess, especially just before elections. Britain, on the other hands, have both internal reasons ( to divert attention from painful Brexit process) and external reasons to do exactly that.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Bluesqueak   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:14 am

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Dilandu wrote:There is also a pretty good probability that it was british action, isnt it? ;) The MI6 is well-known for numerous political assasination in the past, and considering timing & course of events - the literally almost unknown former traitor, who was exchanged ten years ago poisoned by relatively rare suubstance which is NOT easily avaliable - it look pretty much like one of these.

Seriously, Russia gain absolutely nothing from this whole mess, especially just before elections. Britain, on the other hands, have both internal reasons ( to divert attention from painful Brexit process) and external reasons to do exactly that.


We have no reason, none whatsoever, to release a chemical toxin in the middle of a shopping centre. Further, the (pretty rare) tradition of political assassination in the United Kingdom, whether by MI6 or others, is to attack the person to be assassinated, only. Not their daughter, stray police officers and anyone else who happened to wander past.

My only reason for doubting that this was an official act of a Russian government agency is the utter incompetence of whoever did this. You may be right that the Russian government has nothing to gain by this - but they'd do better to discover which bloody amateur had access to restricted materials made in Russia.
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by gcomeau   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:06 pm

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Dilandu wrote:There is also a pretty good probability that it was british action, isnt it? ;) The MI6 is well-known for numerous political assasination in the past, and considering timing & course of events - the literally almost unknown former traitor, who was exchanged ten years ago poisoned by relatively rare suubstance which is NOT easily avaliable - it look pretty much like one of these.

Seriously, Russia gain absolutely nothing from this whole mess, especially just before elections. Britain, on the other hands, have both internal reasons ( to divert attention from painful Brexit process) and external reasons to do exactly that.



And here come the false flag conspiracies...

And "almost unknown traitor"? He outed *hundreds* of Russian agents. This guy was considered to be one of the two most damaging intelligence leaks in the history of Russia.

And they killed the other one.


As for what they have to gain from it, Russia has been getting steadily more belligerent and brazen in its provocations towards the west for years. Best guess, this was another escalation of that, sending the message "we're ruthless and will do what we want and you weaklings don't have the nerve to step up and do anything about it so just stay out of our way."

I mean, they've gotten off damn near scott free for attacking the US elections so far. So why not right?


(Although I suspect they didn't intend to have quite the collateral damage they did with this one, were probably going for death by nerve agent being scary and intimidating but didn't plan for it to spread so far and now they're catching more heat from it than they expected.)
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by The E   » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:59 pm

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gcomeau wrote:As for what they have to gain from it, Russia has been getting steadily more belligerent and brazen in its provocations towards the west for years. Best guess, this was another escalation of that, sending the message "we're ruthless and will do what we want and you weaklings don't have the nerve to step up and do anything about it so just stay out of our way."


Yeah, the gain here is pretty obvious. It's a warning to anyone else thinking about turning traitor and seeking asylum in the West. "Not only are we going to find you and kill you, the West won't even try to seriously stop us" and all that.
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Dilandu   » Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:05 am

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Bluesqueak wrote:
We have no reason, none whatsoever, to release a chemical toxin in the middle of a shopping centre. Further, the (pretty rare) tradition of political assassination in the United Kingdom, whether by MI6 or others, is to attack the person to be assassinated, only. Not their daughter, stray police officers and anyone else who happened to wander past.


Please. If the assasination is supposed to be blamed on other side, it's hard to believe that MI6 would follow standard protocols! The more public backlash the better.
And "almost unknown traitor"? He outed *hundreds* of Russian agents. This guy was considered to be one of the two most damaging intelligence leaks in the history of Russia.


You really overestimated his value. By order of magnitude, may I point out. In Russia, Skripal was almost completely forgotten up to those days.
I mean, they've gotten off damn near scott free for attacking the US elections so far. So why not right?


Yeah, yeah, and US gotten off scott free with attacking elections EVERYWHERE, including Russia. So what? It's how a game was played until your democrats went hysterical and claimed "this is outrage!"
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by The E   » Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:02 am

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Dilandu wrote:You really overestimated his value. By order of magnitude, may I point out. In Russia, Skripal was almost completely forgotten up to those days.


Which part of Russia? All of it? Or just the parts around you?
What about the intelligence apparatus? Or the executive branch of government? What about Putin?

Saying "noone in Russia cares" is ... well, bullshit. It's very probably true for the common person on the street. But to extend that to everyone involved in the organizations that would be executing a kill mission is not a jump you can make. It's like saying "noone cares about David Weber's books"; It's obviously true for the vast majority of human beings on the planet, but equally obviously completely false for the people buying his books.

Fact of the matter is, there's more than enough history here to make the theory that this was a russian operation plausible and not easy to dismiss off-hand like you are attempting to here.
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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by Michael Everett   » Sat Mar 17, 2018 3:58 am

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Let's take a look at the situation.

Every assassination needs three things. Means, motive and opportunity. We already know the means, Russian-sourced Nerve Agent. The Opportunity seems to have been application of nerve agent to car handle. That leaves the Motive as the main issue, although it needs to intersect with the other two.

America - Very unlikely, as Fidel Castro could have testified. America has a reputation for screwing up assassinations or having them backfire hugely. Add to that the fact that Trump is in charge and he is known to be very partial to the Russians for... reasons, the chances of America pulling a False Flag to incriminate Russia is so low as to be laughable.
In addition, it is in America's best interest to keep defectors alive and happy. Not only due to the information that they provide (including cultural observations) but also to encourage others to defect with the promise of a better life.
Anyone who believes America did it probably thinks that the British Monarchy is comprised of twelve-foot-tall lizards and that NASA has guards posted around the edge of the Flat Earth to stop people falling off.

The UK - Yes, we have Porton Down, but that mainly concentrates on coming up with counters to chemical and biological weapons. The risk of collateral damage in using a nerve agent is so high that even if it had been mooted as a possibility, it would have been vetoed instantly.
With the knowledge that all things leak in time, trying to pull a False Flag attack would have spilled by now. Chances of it being the UK? Ha-haha-hahaha... no.

North Korea - They have in the past assassinated those they see as threats, as well as kidnapped people for use in training their own intelligence forces, so in theory it could have been them. However, North Korea's reach is rather limited and setting up an operation like this would probably have been beyond them, partially due to capability issues and partially due to cultural mores. In addition, why would they target that individual? He wasn't a threat to them...
Possibility of it being NK? Same as them being behind the invasion in the film Iron Sky.*

Canada - ...wat.
Why would anyone think that they would...
...

The IRA - This one is, at first glance, scarily plausible. The IRA has attempted to decapitate the UK's government on at least one occasion and their willingness to target children shows that they do not discriminate between valid military targets and simple terrorism.
Second glance, however, shows that the IRA has avoided using radioactive, chemical or biological agents. If they had done so, the UK would have responded with an invasion, turning the Republic of Ireland into the Protectorate of Ireland. While this would have (technically) re-united Ireland, it wouldn't have been how the Southern Irish wanted, hence why they avoided anything classed as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
It wasn't the IRA.

Taliban/Isis/Daesh - Would they have used nerve agents on Western targets? In a heartbeat.
Could they have? Almost certainly not. While at their peak they may have been able to acquire such things, the 7-11 attacks were their equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Tactically brilliant, strategically terrible. They currently lack the wealth or technical capability to deploy Nerve Agents and given the general incompetence of the majority of their recruits (Abu Hamza went into preaching because the moron blew himself up trying to learn how to make explosives), any recruit trying to use Nerve Agents would probably poison themselves before having a chance to poison anyone else.
The target selection criteria is wrong, too. Islamic Fanatics try to strike at as many people as possible or launch attacks aimed at decapitating foreign governments. Remember, United 93 was aimed at the White House before it crashed. If they had managed to get their hands on any Nerve Agent, they'd be spraying it around in shopping centers.
It wasn't the Islamic Fundamentalist Loonies.

China - Very unlikely. China thinks in terms of Hard (military) and soft (economic) power, but is very insular. Historically, China has regarded those not of Chinese descent as being barbarians and unworthy of notice. While this has changed somewhat, the cultural mindset is all wrong for an assassination attempt like the one in Salisbury.
It wasn't China.

Russia - Russia has a long history of killing dissenters using various means. Livitnikov/Polonium and Georgi Markov/Ricin Pellet are two of the most well-known, but a rather startling number of former spies and dissenters have died due to mysterious circumstances masquerading as Natural Causes.
Putin himself has stated that traitors to Russia should expect to die and given how much power he has, what he says is effectively Russian policy.
The substance used in the attempted assassination was created by Russia specifically as a way of sidestepping the treaties regarding the development and deployment of Nerve Agents and would have remained secret if not for a defector who spilled the beans on it. Normal spying methods had not picked up any real indication of the project until then, showing that Russia had arranged for a high level of security to be put in place.
Chances of Russia misplacing a sample? Very low.
Russia has the means (Nerve agent), the motive (striking down one they see as a traitor as a warning to all others considering a similar act) and the opportunity.
Chances of it being Russia? Given that Putin gloated publicly over it, very high indeed.


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Re: When do we just call the Russia thing a criminal conspir
Post by gcomeau   » Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:11 am

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Dilandu wrote:
And "almost unknown traitor"? He outed *hundreds* of Russian agents. This guy was considered to be one of the two most damaging intelligence leaks in the history of Russia.


You really overestimated his value. By order of magnitude, may I point out. In Russia, Skripal was almost completely forgotten up to those days.


By you maybe.

By the intelligence services and Putin? No chance in hell.
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