♫ Can’t get enough of that Novichok♪ Novichok♪ Novichok♫...Can’t get enough....♪

(You just might be hearing the Sugar Crisp Bear’s jingle by ditty in your mind…)

From the Guardian, Aug. 6, Luke Harding and a couple other folks: UK poised to ask Russia to extradite Salisbury attack suspects, Exclusive: Kremlin certain to reject request that will reignite simmering diplomatic row’
“The British government is poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack that left one person dead and four injured, according to Whitehall and security sources.

The move comes after months of painstaking investigation by hundreds of officers from the police and the intelligence agencies. They have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from their entry into the UK through to their departure.

The Crown Prosecution Service, which prepared the extradition request, has completed the process and is ready to file, the sources said.” [snip]

UK intelligence chiefs have specifically blamed Russia for the attack.

“Police and intelligence officers believe the novichok used to attack the Skripals on 4 March was applied from a perfume bottle sprayed or smeared on to their front doorknob. Both of them recovered.


Police are working on the assumption that the bottle was dropped somewhere in the city, where it was later picked up by Rowley, who gave it to Sturgess. The pair were taken to hospital on 30 June.”

Was it a doorknob liquid later morphed into gel…was it a spray perfume?  Is it a bird a plane: no!  It’s Novickok! Or was it…as the Swiss Spiez Lab stated: the possibly hallucinogenic, incapacitating BZ toxin (3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate), not produced in Russia, but was in service in the US and UK, as well as other NATO member states?

A security source said the attack on the Skripals was ordered by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, rather than the FSB, which is roughly equivalent to MI5. Skripal, a former GRU colonel, was turned by the UK overseas intelligence agency, MI6. The GRU has a history of conducting crude revenge attacks on those who have betrayed it.”

Well, at least they indict the GRU, not just ‘Putin’ now.  But why would the GRU care about released-after-serving-his-sentence double-agent spy Skripal matter now?

Shhhhhhhh….keep this on the down-low, okay?  It’s a whisper campaign delivered to us by the self-same Luke Harding and homies:

‘Sergei Skripal briefed European intelligence services, reports say; Reported meetings between former Russian spy and several intelligence services in Europe may offer motive for poisoning’

“The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal gave briefings to European intelligence services in the years before the attempt on his life, which may offer a motive for why Moscow allegedly targeted him with a deadly nerve agent.” [snip]

“Although his operational knowledge ended with his arrest in Russia in 2004, Skripal was still regarded as being of value because of his inside knowledge of the workings of Russian military intelligence.

According to the Czech magazine Respekt, Skripal visited Prague in 2012 and held discussions with Czech intelligence. He briefed security officers on Kremlin espionage methods, and the meeting was described as “beneficial”. Members of Czech intelligence subsequently met Skripal in the UK at least once, the magazine reported.” [snip]

“He gave sensitive briefings to European intelligence agencies after he moved to Britain. It seems that MI6 approved of and facilitated these trips. In June 2016 Skripal travelled to Estonia and met a select group of intelligence officers there, the New York Times reported on Monday. It said it was unclear what they discussed.”

But wait!  Wot?  A caveat from Luke?

“Security sources in the Czech Republic said Skripal’s meetings with Czech intelligence agents would probably have been useful, but they dismissed them as a likely motive for the poisoning attack.”  Sounds like iron-clad innuendo from the Guardian and New Yawk Times again to me.  But this is cool as all giddy-up”

“The Czech Republic has expressed repeated reservations about the large number of Russian diplomats – estimated at around 100 – stationed in the country amid suspicions that many of them are undercover spies.”

They should chuck the bastards out and shutter the embassy like the West does, right?

Also the GuardDoggian ‘How the GRU spy agency targets the west, from cyberspace to Salisbury’; Accusations mount against the Russian army’s main intelligence directorate, Aug. 6, 2018, Andrew Roth

…Which is noteworthy mainly for the repeat focus on the GRU (not to be confused with the KSB), and that it’s not by Luke Harding, although there are some funny lines in it.  I particularly liked the caption under the photo below:


The Tower’, a GRU building in Khimki, Moscow, named by Robert Mueller as the base of one of the GRU units that interfered in the 2016 US election. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP’

But given the ever-evolving Novichok News, this one really is the icing on the Grand Novichok™  Cake (warning: set down your coffee cup before you read further):

Public toilet in Salisbury ‘may have been used by Russian agents to prepare deadly Novichok’, themirror.co..uk.com, Aug. 4, 2018

“A public toilet may be where Russian agents mixed deadly Novichok used to try and assassinate ex-spy Sergei Skripal , according to reports

It is thought Met Police counter terror cops are investigating the likelihood that the assassins smuggled the components to the nerve agent into the country then mixed it in a public toilet in Salisbury. 

Forensic teams have discovered low-level contamination in toilets in the city’s Queen Elizabeth Gardens.

A source told The Sun : “Novichok is a liquid agent made of two components. 

“The toilets in Queen Elizabeth Gardens are a key location where it could have been mixed, prepared or dumped.”

Me, I just hope they washed their hands after usin' the loo, don’t you?

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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wendy davis's picture

aaaaand OMG; not satire, methinks:

@wikileaks
‘Obama, who expanded drone kills 10x, oversaw the destruction of Libya, Syria, Yemen, the creation of ISIS and the African refugee crisis, and who prosecuted more whistleblowers using the espionage act than alll previous presidents combined, receives human rights award.’

@JeffreyGuterman
‘President @BarackObama to receive 2018 #RFK Human Rights Award: https://rfkhumanrights.org/news/2018-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-rippl... …’

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@wendy davis

to The Empty Suit, it diminishes both the award and itself.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

nod nod.. oh, my yes. couldn't even bring myself to click in. glad the wikileaks team posted it though. some of the subtweets or whatever they're called are purdy darned stooopid, as well as ignorant as well.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@wendy davis

6DDDC199-A5B5-4F53-893F-55B81863AB3B.jpeg

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

i'd almost quibbled with you over calling him 'the empty suit', given the enormous size of what's inside his chameleon-skinned suit. i'd add to that war crimes list domestic policies and unitary executive acts against the middle class and rabble poor, starting w/ jettisoning his 'cool' transition team and keeping dubya's hires in place, then bailing our wall street banks to the tune of trillions, quashing every meaningful bit of 'post angelides (not televised as was the pecorra commission, too risky that) 3-day commission' save for the groaner craptastic dodd-frank...oh well, i gotta go start some dinner.

i did get rid of his spidey creepy photo, though.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@wendy davis

promised to be the Hopey-Changey Transformational Prez and in the end did nothing for the plebs except stick us with goodness knows how many more military actions and the rich man’s gambling debts. As far as reality and the people in this country are concerned, he was a mirage. A liar that, instead of doing anything he said he would, he proceeded to pad his nest and cover for Wall Street, the healthcare insurance industry, Billy Tauzin and Big Pharma, corporate Amurika, and the MIC rather than keep his word. As far as the plebs were concerned, the man on the campaign trail didn’t exist. He was just an Empty Suit.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

wendy davis's picture

@Amanda Matthews

i'll call him a fascist con man who showed fascist trump how to do it, but more biggly. but i might call him other things on other days... (smile).

on edit: empty suit means ineffectual, lacking substance or ability. so i'll add that his 'suit' was overly stuffed with only too effective Dark Matter.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wendy davis We know it's Russians because only they have the super-special lab to make the stuff.

We know it's Russians cause we found some residue in a toilet. Maybe they made it there.

Dash 1 Dash 1 Dash 1

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

are filthy and sneaky enough to make it in a loo; the tweet tickled me with "British state, a few months later: "The Russian lads knocked their Novichok up in the bog", a bit of a double entendre, i think. ain't it a comedy? now they're searching the QE gardens grounds for incapacitated hallucinating squirrels or some such tell-tale signs.

gonna have the Novichok jingle in your head for awhile? gawd save me, i do and am. but what will the next iteration be?

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

the point darlin', it does look more like a brick shithouse, but that's just the poet in me (smile).

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wendy davis

Maybe this will get the jingle out of your head...

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

wendy davis's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

i hope it will, lol, but now mr. wd is singin' the novichok jingle, so...i may have to wait to enter a possible closing lullaby. was one of the commodores in sly and the family stone once upon a time? yeah, lionel ritchie i get, but another member? no matter; thank you.

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dystopian's picture

It doesn't pass the smell test start to finish. The official story has not been the same twice. What do we think of suspects that constantly change their story? They are liars. The best explanation I have heard is that it is the Ukranians trying to frame Russia. That is who would benefit most, just like MH 370, just like the proven false Crowdstrike claim (they had to retract) about radar hacking.

And just like the BS Syrian Assad chemical weapons attacks.

And now its Novichok. Yulia sure looked better after it.
novichok-before-after.jpg

Craig Murray has done lots of great work on this story.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

wendy davis's picture

@dystopian

stories, agitprop, 'anonymous sources', do-overs is what make it all so hilarious, really. and yes, thnk you, both craig murray and b at Moon of Alabama (well, for a short time he'd reckoned seafood poisoning) have deconstructed the bullshit so very well.

but these were new charges, and i so much wanted to have a piece of it as satirical psyop/agitprop; they just can't seem to get their stories straight, as either of the aforementioned have noted. what is twice past absurd? and past 'orwellian'? we need to coin some new terms, wish i could.

thanks for weighing in so very well.

on edit: 'ukrainians' is a thought worth thinking. georgians about to join Nato might be as well. but in the end, it might be all some psyop; love the graphic to bits.

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Alligator Ed's picture

I got a special shipment, made from left-overs concocted at Porton Down only 13 miles (or kilometers or WTF) from Salisbury. Salisbury is famous for a shredded steak compilation which is neither steak nor hamburger. At first I was fearful of using this extremely lethal (and also toxic) chemical. But when I learned that ingestants of that potent Porton potion woke from a brief slumber, very much alive, and looking much younger than before (see illustration above of dear Yulia), I decided, "hey, this is like Botox, only cheaper".

So, dear wd, I have another ditty to rid your brain from endless song loops, and instead implant one of my own choosing into your cranium.

It's poison, baby, it's all poison

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5w4-mPTURk&frags=pl%2Cwn]

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wendy davis's picture

@Alligator Ed

darlin'. i swear i’d almost linked to the sugar crisp bear eatin’ 'em then tossin’ a gator back into the swamp, but thought i’d have to announce ‘with all due respect to alligator ed’ just in case, so it’s triple the fun you’re here, and w/ as much wit as ever: botox yulia, lol.

but if i might add: lemoyne over yonder at the café had pinged billy preston’s ‘nothing from nothing’, mr. wd was playing stevie winwood’s ‘can’t find my way home’, but for closing time, i’m gonna go with w/ the other-worldy carlos santana givin’ a boost up to everlast cuz it sings to my soul:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCBS5EtszYI]

night, gator, night all.

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wendy davis's picture

@Alligator Ed

one would not be faulted for believing the before and after 'yulias' are two different people, both in deep dark badger holes in unknown locations under a D notice.

but you never mentioned the results: did your perfume take 20 years off your gator skin?

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wendy davis's picture

to find an assertion i'd thought craig murray had made about witnessing the destruction of russian experimental novichok under the eyes of the OPCW (perhaps Iran's as well), and i hadn't found it. but i did score his ouevre at consortium news, and many cross-posted at 21stcenturywire.com; this is their novichok-tagged titles and authors.

my crap memory being what it is, i'd totally forgotten this one: ‘Skripals Poisoned with Fentanyl, Initial Report Redacted’, May 3, 2018, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, 21stcenturywire (a few bits):

"“Former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were poisoned with the drug Fentanyl, not the Novichok nerve agent, the initial report on the incident reveals.
After I published this report on my Twitter account the information was immediately redacted and the drug Fentanyl [far, far stronger than heroin] was deleted from the original version.
Alex Thomson, chief correspondent and presenter of Channel 4 News tweeted about a D notice issued by the UK government to prevent media from publishing further sensitive information on 12 March: (under D notice)

“On 26 April I published on my social media accounts the initial report (dated 5 March) on the incident in Salisbury. It indicated the drug Fentanyl as the source of the poisoning which had taken place on 4 March.”

Fascinating. will we ever know what it was, or IF it was? craig murray did remind me that Novichok is just a classification of rather diverse nerve agents called such.

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thanatokephaloides's picture

..... and the walls come tumblin' down!

That's what jumped into my head when I read:

♫ Can’t get enough of that Novichok♪ Novichok♪ Novichok♫...Can’t get enough....♪

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

wendy davis's picture

@thanatokephaloides

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wendy davis's picture

time lullaby is by outKast. it's a black lawn jockeys parody of beatles in which the band travels to london to appear on an ed sullivan-esqe show. i'm pretty sure that andre 3000 plays all the parts. hope it makes you smile and dance in your chairs. g' night, and thanks for goofin' around w/me

[video:https://youtu.be/PWgvGjAhvIw]

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