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March 29, 2024, 06:32:13 AM

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Bond villain strikes again?

Started by Alberon, March 05, 2018, 06:52:15 PM

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Alberon

Looks like Putin's henchmen have struck again in the UK. This time a former spy is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance.

QuoteA man who is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance in Wiltshire is a Russian national convicted of spying for Britain, the BBC understands.

Sergei Skripal, who is 66, was granted refuge in the UK following a "spy swap" between the US and Russia in 2010.

Police declared a major incident on Sunday after a man and a woman were reported ill at a shopping centre in Salisbury.

The substance has not been identified.

Police are investigating whether a crime has been committed, following the incident which began at 16:15 GMT on Sunday at the Maltings shopping centre in central Salisbury.



It does remind me of the Litvinenko case where a Russian former secret agent was killed through radiation poisoning.

Fortunately, British Minions were quickly on the scene to clear up.



Recently, Putin claimed Russia had developed unstoppable hypersonic missiles and held the world to ransom for one million dollars. In just a couple of weeks Putin will win the Presidental election.



Why is it that we can have real Bond Villains in the world, but can't actually have James Bond as well?

bgmnts

Putin is just a competent Trump in my head. Nice of him to start developing crazy earth destroying weapons and killing spies with unknown substances because I have slept too much and worried too little recently.

mothman

Well, this just makes me want to go to work tomorrow.

Gwen Taylor on ITV

Boris Johnson ticks most of the Bond boxes.  He just needs to hit rock bottom before he can go on a Daniel Craig-era redemptive arc that involves saving the Thames from a German in a helicopter.

Blumf

Poison tipped umbrellas, radiation poisoning, and now whatever this turns out to be. Why do they have to be so bloody theatrical? Can't they just kill their target and stuff them into a duffel bag in a bathtub like our normal British security services?

Large Noise

Quote from: Blumf on March 05, 2018, 07:15:41 PM
Poison tipped umbrellas, radiation poisoning, and now whatever this turns out to be. Why do they have to be so bloody theatrical? Can't they just kill their target and stuff them into a duffel bag in a bathtub like our normal British security services?
Look, there was gay porn in his room.

If you've never met a gay man whose wanking routine involves whacking the heating up to maximum and locking himself in a hold-all in a bathtub covered some kind of cleaning product, then you need to get out more and start living in the 21st C

biggytitbo

What is the actual evidence the FSB/Putin was responsible for Litvinenko's death? - https://off-guardian.org/2017/12/12/the-litvinenko-inquiry-a-legal-critique-and-alternative-view/


At best it appears to be a pretty thin circumstantial case. The writer of the above legal critique of the dodgy pseudo-trial thinks the two people Russians found guilty in their absence might have done it (and its a big might), but that the case they were ever affiliated with the FSB is virtually non-exist.


Reading that its striking how many similarities there are to Russiagate, how the underlying evidence completely fails to support how massively overstated the case made by the media is, almost as if the case itself was irrelevant and was just being used as a vehicle to attack Russia regardless of the evidence.

Isnt Anything


mobias

Has anyone here read Bill Browder's book Red Notice? Fuck me its a bleak but utterly compelling book. I don't doubt for a single second Putin and the FSB are well up for assassinating spy's or ex spy's on UK soil.

Quote from: biggytitbo on March 05, 2018, 07:51:47 PM
At best it appears to be a pretty thin circumstantial case. The writer of the above legal critique of the dodgy pseudo-trial thinks the two people Russians found guilty in their absence might have done it (and its a big might), but that the case they were ever affiliated with the FSB is virtually non-exist.

Well they obviously poisoned Yushchenko. We know they have form for this kind of thing.

bgmnts

Did anyone actually SEE Putin poison the man?

biggytitbo

Quote from: Default to the negative on March 05, 2018, 10:11:51 PM
Well they obviously poisoned Yushchenko. We know they have form for this kind of thing.


What's the evidence the FSB was involved with this though? Nobody doubts Russia, the US, the UK etc kill people abroad, it just seems the evidence in this case is very thin. The two people fingered in that bizarre British inquiry/trial don't seem to have any connections to the FSB, quite the opposite in fact. It looks a lot like the 'Putin did it' narrative that is almost an article of faith in the West was largely the consequence of a massive propaganda campaign funded by arch Putin hater Boris Berezovsky and his PR agency Bell Pottinger.


I have absolutely no problem with the idea that the FSB would dispatch a troublesome character though, I just suspect the usefulness of this story in this case is largely as an anti-Russia propaganda device rather than it been something based on solid evidence.

biggytitbo

Quote from: bgmnts on March 05, 2018, 10:14:26 PM
Did anyone actually SEE Putin poison the man?

Did you read Alexander Mercouris' piece linked above though? If Putin did order it, the 'trial' went nowhere near to proving it, yet it was widely trumpeted on the press as some kind of slam dunk against him or the FSB. It's almost as if they wanted to believe.

Kryton

You never see wacky umbrella type weapons anymore do you? Bring back the good old days of well-dressed chaps shooting ricin pellets into some chap's leg from a lovely umbrella,  none of this Polonium in your cup of tea nonsense.

I reckon if Putin could put his mind to it, he could have some kind of portable helicopter thing that double up as a flamethrower or something. Plus it would keep him dry should it rain (the umbrella, not the flamethrower, although I guess that would work too).


mobias

Quote from: biggytitbo on March 05, 2018, 10:20:30 PM

What's the evidence the FSB was involved with this though?

Wasn't some of the evidence down to the fact that only the Russian state would have access to Polonium?

Kryton



Why does that gun need spikes? Seems a bit dangerous to me, you could have someone's eye out with that. Maybe that's why Putin has his eye shut? Maybe he had his own eye out with that.

biggytitbo

Quote from: mobias on March 05, 2018, 10:22:55 PM
Wasn't some of the evidence down to the fact that only the Russian state would have access to Polonium?

No, that was disproved in the trial itself, there is no way to trace the source of Polonium and it can and is produced all over the world:

QuoteThe other expert – identified only as A1 – flatly contradicted this advice. Her view is that it is impossible to trace the source of the polonium and that it could have been produced in any one of various facilities around the world.

It is quite clear that A1 – whoever she is – is the more senior scientist, and the Judge was obliged to defer to her.


Next time I will try to be there, personally, to catch Vlad right in the act. And I'll take a photo of it on my phone.

Although I think that still wouldn't be enough to meet Biggy's high standard of detective work.

mobias

Quote from: biggytitbo on March 05, 2018, 10:26:21 PM
No, that was disproved in the trial itself, there is no way to trace the source of Polonium and it can and is produced all over the world:

Fair enough but who other than the Russian state would want him dead? Enough go to the considerable trouble of poisoning him the way that he was.

biggytitbo

Quote from: mobias on March 05, 2018, 10:40:47 PM
Fair enough but who other than the Russian state would want him dead? Enough go to the considerable trouble of poisoning him the way that he was.

Again, the article shows that not only was the FSB motive for killing Litvinenko massively overstated, but there was no shortage of more credible alternative suspects, not least Berezovsky himself.

Blumf

Quote from: Kryton on March 05, 2018, 10:22:43 PM
I reckon if Putin could put his mind to it, he could have some kind of portable helicopter thing that double up as a flamethrower or something.

He's working on it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7RAPc2vg-A

Don't think it shoots flames though.

Dex Sawash


BlodwynPig

Of course it wasn't the Russians. Fucking Grumbleweeds again, no doubt.

BlodwynPig

Dame Malcolm Rifkind speculating that the FSB are behind this (whatever this is) before adding...any sort of speculation would be unhelpful at this time.

Sounds like LSD trip with a young woman after wife died

biggytitbo

A mind boggling biased discussion about this on BBC this morning with a supposed russia 'expert'.

SpiderChrist

Quote from: biggytitbo on March 05, 2018, 07:51:47 PM
What is the actual evidence the FSB/Putin was responsible for Litvinenko's death? - https://off-guardian.org/2017/12/12/the-litvinenko-inquiry-a-legal-critique-and-alternative-view/


At best it appears to be a pretty thin circumstantial case. The writer of the above legal critique of the dodgy pseudo-trial thinks the two people Russians found guilty in their absence might have done it (and its a big might), but that the case they were ever affiliated with the FSB is virtually non-exist.


Reading that its striking how many similarities there are to Russiagate, how the underlying evidence completely fails to support how massively overstated the case made by the media is, almost as if the case itself was irrelevant and was just being used as a vehicle to attack Russia regardless of the evidence.

As predictable as the sunrise.

biggytitbo

Now on the BBC we have someone saying 'before we know the details of what happened we should assume it was Putin'.

jobotic

Yeah. We should all know for a fact that it wasn't Putin like you do.

Utterly transparent.

biggytitbo

Now he's doing an extreme one sided anti-Russia rant blaming Putin for everything from Ukraine to Syria to destroying western democracy without any of his nonsense been challenged at all by the presenter.


The state broadcasting service indeed.

Buelligan

Quote from: biggytitbo on March 05, 2018, 10:53:24 PM
Again, the article shows that not only was the FSB motive for killing Litvinenko massively overstated, but there was no shortage of more credible alternative suspects, not least Berezovsky himself.

Who killed Berezovsky then?