Me on the Richie Allen Show: starts at 33 mins.

Nothing much makes sense in the Skripal story we’ve been given, and of course it’s not meant to. We don’t have evidence that anyone has been killed by ‘novichok’ or hardly even that this substance really exists. Yes two Russian citizens have been abducted by the British Government, and we will presumably never see them again.  Yes the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury has been totally bricked up.Yes a massive expulsion of Russian diplomats happened.

Yulia Skripal appears as the central figure of the drama. Consider this image where Sergei and Julia were photographed by ‘the man in the mirror’ – Pablo Miller perhaps? We see him reflected in the mirror. The MSM later obscured his image after the government issued two D-notices covering Pablo Miller and Orbis Intel.  From which we may perhaps infer, that this photo was taken on the very afternoon of March 4, 2018…
Two other pics of father and daughter have been released, wearing different clothes, from earlier visits,

O-kay, so you have an idea what she looked like. Note what side her hair is parted.

Then Yulia makes her wonder reappearance – her one and only – on a rather staged media event on  May 23rd –

So, here is your first QUESTION: IS THIS THE SAME PERSON?

This new, slimline Yulia (see video here) has poise and elegance, much thicker hair parted ON THE OTHER SIDE, and no longer needs glasses. Can she really have lost so much weight in hospital?

the Off-Guardian reckoned very reasonably that yes it must be her, because otherwise Russian sources would have pointed out the change. 

This was  totally staged event, and since then she has never reappeared. So was this some programmed MkUltra doll doing a one-off appearance, or is it the ‘real’ Yulia Skripal?  

You can see the ugly scar from a trachea operation, reflecting her words that her treatment had been “invasive, painful and depressing.”  And this links up with her phone call to her grandma: on July 24th, Yulia’s grandmother Yelena received the call, on her 90th birthday when she heard this extraordinary message:

She called and was actually with Sergei. She told me: “I’m with daddy he is beside me but he can’t speak as he has a pain in his throat”… He can’t speak because he’s got a tracheostomy, that pipe, which will be taken off in three days. Now when he speaks with that pipe, his voice is first of all very weak and secondly, he makes quite a lot of wheeze. He had been in some pain.

In this conversation, Yulia strangely kept saying to her grandmother, ‘Everything is fine, everything is perfect’ in a way that some found suspicious. 

Did both Skripals have the operation? ‘The doctors told the BBC that the Skripals were heavily sedated, to receive artificial ventilation and to protect them from brain damage.’ If you want to accept that, does that imply that yes this is the same Julia? 

     * ‘the rest is silence’ *

The doom of a double agent?

We’d like to hear some Russian  comment here, maybe about Yulia’s Facebook page or any recent pics of here … but these are not forthcoming. 

THE KEY TO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

It was, to start with, food poisoning. That’s the simplest theory. Let’s quote from the RT program ‘Sputnik‘, interviewing Bernhart of the ‘Moon of Alabama’: 

“I believe that the Skripals suffered from simple food poisoning. They ate a Risotto Peske with mussels at the Zizzi restaurant and unintentionally poisoned themselves with Saxitoxin, a natural ‘nerve agent’ that is also known as shellfish poison.”

Bernhard went on to explain that he suspects that British government officials lifted the Novichok explanation from Strike Back, saying, “A day later the government woke up to that fact that the Skripal case could be used to divert from May’s problems with the Brexit negotiations and help in upcoming elections.  They needed something splashy, to blame it on Russia.  Someone in the governments spin-master group came up with ‘Novichok’.

Here is the very first account of their being treated, on that park bench, about 4.30 pm on March 4th:

A doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions. The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father. She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripal’s face or body. The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, but added that she “feels fine”.

We note here (a) no hint or trace of a  nerve agent, and (b) normal symptoms of food poisoning.

So they were taken to Salisbury hospital.

At this point, top British liars got to work, inspired by the ongoing spy fiction program ‘Strike Back’ on Sky TV. This featured the semi-mythic nerve poison, Novichok. For example, ‘General Lázsló shuts down Section 20, forcing Donovan to work in secret. She discovers that Zaryn is in fact Karim Markov, a Russian scientist who allegedly killed his colleagues with Novichok, a nerve agent they invented’, etc. [supposedly it was a ‘binary’ weapon, made from mixing two different substances together]. There was a synchrony in the timing:
Episode 50 ran in the U.K November 21, 2017 and in the U.S. on Feb 23, 2018:
Episode 51 ran in the U.K November 28, 2017 and in the U.S. on March 2, 2018

This is a story with a moral. The moral is, there are liars, damned liars, and British politicians.

Sputniknews.com commented on the ‘curious parallels between the plots in Homeland and Strike Back and the media coverage of the Skripal poisoning drama:’

In the opening episode a government traitor is assassinated, poisoned with a nerve agent.  While it is initially unclear who the culprits are, in episodes that broadcast on March 4 (the day the Skripals were found) and March 11 make it clear that a Russian intelligence ‘active measures’ unit are behind the poisoning.

In the most recent episodes an FBI agent, Dante Allen, who had been turned by Russian intelligence is unmasked by our hero Carrie Mathison, who then poisons him with a nerve agent to trick him into thinking he is going to die, and to make him confess. The episode broadcast April 8 showed Dante recovering in hospital, with the Russian assassin demanding that his superiors let him assault the hospital to get to the agent.  On the same day the British media were reporting that the Skripals, who were still in hospital, were so terrified of rabid Russian assassins that they were going to be given new lives and new identities in America.

Here one can only quote the Moon of Alabama: “Isn’t it astonishing how ‘life’ follows the course of last week’s TV drama?”

To spin this story, Porton down agents are quickly summoned to deal with the couple in Salisbury hospital. The couple have to be put into a coma, using Fentanyl or something like it. The Mirror on March 6th reported: “The pair are currently in intensive care at Salisbury Hospital under supervision of experts from Public Health England’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards.’

The Salisbury Journal noted on March 5: ‘Emergency services at the scene suspected the substance may have been a powerful drug called fentanyl, …’ They may have got this story from UK Clinical Services Journal website which also put up such a story on the 5th (archived here). Also, Salisbury District Hospital declared a ‘major incident’ after ‘two patients were exposed to an opioid’ – Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, which makes people drowsy, it has a reputation as a ‘date-rape’ drug, and some take it as a recreational drug – it cannot be confused with a nerve agent.

The police officer Nick Bailey who was also put under, having allegedly been to the park bench  – or, was it the Skripals home? It didn’t really matter – said that his experience had been “completely surreal” adding that “normal life for me will probably never be the same.” That could be the effect of some Fentanyl drug-trip. We first heard about him on the 7th, as in a coma in hospital and ‘fighting for his life.’

Compare my account here with a very clear statement published in The Times, by senior medic Stephen Davies at Salisbury General Hospital on 16^th of March:

Sir,

Further to your report (“Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment”, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve gas poisoning in Salisbury…

ADDING THE NOViCHOK

The Porton Down experts were summoned. They had the tricky task of (a) deciding what ‘Novichok’ was and (b) adding it to the blood samples, that were to be given to the OPCW. This was not a substance on any official list of banned nerve agents, i.e. no-one in the OPCW really knew what it was.  

Thus “Finding a trail of Novichok would be more difficult because it is carried in two parts that are combined to create a viscous liquid only shortly before use, said Mr. Trapp.” (formerly on the OPCW) That didn’t prevent it from becoming something stored in a perfume bottle that could be squirted like an aerosol: but that was months later, in June.

On March 22nd a court judgement published a sworn statement by Porton Down from their analysis:

i) CC: Porton Down Chemical and Biological Analyst Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent.

-from which Craig Murray concluded, 

This sworn Court evidence direct from Porton Down is utterly incompatible with what Boris Johnson has been saying. The truth is that Porton Down have not even positively identified this as a “Novichok”, as opposed to “a closely related agent”. Even if it were a “Novichok” that would not prove manufacture in Russia, and a “closely related agent” could be manufactured by literally scores of state and non-state actors.

This constitutes irrefutable evidence that the government have been straight out lying – to Parliament, to the EU, to NATO, to the United Nations, and above all to the people – about their degree of certainty of the origin of the attack.

TESTIMONY OF AN HONEST MAN

There are, fortunately for us, one or two honest characters in this story. One of these was Ross Cassidy, a haulage contractor, who was Sergei Skripal’s one good friend in Salisbury. They knew each other for years and it was he who drove Sergei over to Heathrow airport to pick up his daughter on March 3rd.

On March 28th, Ross gave an interview (to Sky News, March 8, ‘Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack’) in which he frankly stated, that the couple should be allowed to die. Just switch off the life-support, he urged:

Quite frankly, what future have they got? I don’t know the properties of this weapon that was used on them and my guess is they are probably being kept alive by artificial means and what life will they have if they survive? We’ve already been told they will be severely mentally impaired and I don’t think they would want that.

Even he had not been allowed to see them in hospital.

HM Government had stated that military-grade Novochok had been used on them. That phrase carries a lethal meaning: nobody can ever recover from a military-grade nerve agent being administered, unless possibly they hang on as a living vegetable. We, the public, surely had to presume that they were both dead, or would die? Ross Cassidy was here accepting that view.

All that changed of course with Yulia’s phone message to her cousin Viktoria, made from Salisbury hospital on April 5th. If it is genuine – if – then it implies that no nerve agent had been given, but merely an anaesthetic. She told Victoria ‘I woke up over a week ago’ implying that they had been put into a coma for several weeks.   

Later, let’s talk later. In short, everything is OK … Everything’s OK. He’s resting now, he’s sleeping [i.e., her father]. Everyone’s health is OK. No one has had any irreversible [harm]. I’m being discharged soon.

Viktoria can be heard telling her cousin “If I get my visa tomorrow, on Monday I will fly to you” to which Yulia responded, “nobody will give you a visa.” That call was recorded and broadcast in Russia, and although its source is not stated, no-one seems to have queried its authenticity. Viktoria was puzzled, as to how Yulia had managed to obtain her nine-digit mobile phone number, but that does not here seem an insuperable objection. 

At this point the British narrative became, to put it mildly, incoherent. In mid-March at the United Nations, the UK justified the expulsion of two dozen Russian diplomats, ‘describing the nerve agent as “a weapon so horrific it is banned from use in war”.’ The Horror! the horror! But no wait, Yulia says she’s fine…. 

On 9th of September Ross gave one further interview, in which he recalled first of all that Mr Skripal had seemed rather jumpy: ‘Something had spooked Sergei in the weeks prior to the attack. He was twitchy, I don’t know why, and he even changed his mobile phone.’

He then recalled, that on March 4th the two Skripals had been at home until after 1 pm: as indeed one would expect, with a father and daughter just reunited.  He added a comment about the location of their home at the end of a cul-de-sac:

It would have been far too brazen for them [the two alleged perpetrators] to have walked down a dead end cul-de-sac in broad daylight on a Sunday lunchtime … Sergei’s house faces up the cul-de-sac. He had a converted garage that he used as his office – this gives a full view of the street… Almost always, Sergei used to open the door to us before we had chance to knock.

Thus, Sergei would normally see people coming before they arrived. Ross Cassidy’s account here reveals that the whole official story here is nonsense: no way could two killers stroll down the cul-de-sac road at midday on Sunday and start dabbing a deadly nerve-agent onto a door-handle – without any protective gear, so they would have instantly been contaminated. And Sergei would have seen them, watching from  his office. It’s the logic of a mad, dream-sequence. 

The British narrative is an incoherent and impossible fantasy, having no credible link to Russia. 

RUSSIANS PAY A VISIT

       Six months after the event, the British police revealed their chief suspects, viz. two Russians who had come to visit Salisbury on 2-4th of March. They arrived by train in Salisbury on the morning of the 4th, as would put them at the Skripals house a little after noon – had they wished to go there. They cannot have been at the Skripals home any earlier. The police have CCTV showing the Skripals out and driving by 1.30 pm that day: 

*    At 13:30 MR SKRIPAL’s car was seen on the way towards the town centre.
*    At 13:40 Sergei and Yulia go to Bishops Mill Pub in the town centre.
*    At 14:20 they dined at the Zizzi Restaurant.
*    At 15:35 they left it.
*    At 4.15 they are ‘slumped’ on a park bench.

This is a police photo of the two on Fisherton street at 1.05 pm. They look cheerful and relaxed and are just under a mile away from the home of the Skripals. They are walking in a north-Westerly direction towards the home. Check this on a map: at 1.08 the police photos put them at the junction of Summerlock Approach and Fisherton Street, and they have presumably just COME FROM Christie Miller Road where the Skripals live. Or, IF you reckon they are just going TO the Skripals home – after all, that is the direction in which they are walking – then they might just get there in time to wave hullo to the two Skripals as they got into their car.

Don’t forget, on this deranged, demented Goverment story, the couple have to double back again to go to the Queen Elizabeth Gardens, where they just, sort of, threw their deadly perfume-bottle into a skip (as you would); which miraculously remained unemptied for three months … And, no, it didn’t have their fingerprints on it.

NEED FOR A REAL DEATH

By early summer far too many people were disbelieving the story: it was incoherent, motiveless and was even becoming humorous – especially after Yulia’s cat left in their home had been put down.

By mid-April the cat was the only thing really dead in the whole story, which had caused hundreds of diplomats to be expelled. Debate about the cat-flap was definitely not what the government needed at this point. Also, Yulia’s glamorous return-from-the-dead seemed to deprive the story of real meaning. There was only one answer to this: thee had to be a real death. But how, several months after the event?

On June 29th, a homeless, 44-year old drug addict died of a heart attack, in Salisbury, which could possibly follow on from the 66-year old Sergei and 33-year old Julia.  Dawn Sturgess “was on the floor having a fit and foaming at the mouth”, which sounded just like Novichok poisoning.  Her partner turned out to be in the habit of rummaging around in bins, and so the story became, that he had picked up the old bottle of ‘perfume’ somehow left months ago in the stately old Queen Elizabeth Gardens,  and given it as a present to her. The gel-like Novachok had now become a spray. Initially the police supposed she had overdosed on heroin of crack cocaine. An inquest was opened into her cause of death, then adjourned…  

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” (Sir Walter Scott, 1808).