Bond villain strikes again?

[biggytitbo]

Yes I read those comments. Sounds more like we're talking about 'Novichoks' here, rather than Novichoks. It is very confusing.

It's not clear whether the document shown in the Novaya Gazeta article is from the police or the court, but it does say in the same article that they showed these materials to Mirzayanov and he confirmed the substance was a 'Novichok', which either means he's a bullshitter, or GV was classified as a Novichok. There is no doubt the substance shown is GV is there?

I do suspect Mirzayanov is actually a crank though, he's an anti-Russia exile holed up in his expensive house paid for by the Americans, who declares himself the head of the "Republic of Tatarstan in Exile". I think he says what suits his new circumstances.

[BlodwynPig]

The Government could save a lot of CaB man-months by just coming clean on the whole story. I am sure Biggy et al have better things to be doing than speculating and probing.

[biggytitbo]

Craig Murray, who has proved he has senior FCO sources, say his senior FCO sources remain sceptical about the government's position on Russian guilt - https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/senior-civil-servants-still-deeply-sceptical-of-russian-responsibility-for-skripal-poisoning

Well-placed FCO sources tell me it remains the case that senior civil servants in both the FCO and Home Office remain very sceptical of Russian guilt in the Skripal case. It remains the case that Porton Down scientists have identified the chemical as a "novichok-style" nerve agent but still cannot tie its production to Russia – there are many other possibilities. The effort to identify the actual perpetrator is making no headway, with the police having eliminated by alibi the Russian air passenger on the same flight as Julia Skripal identified as suspicious by MI5 purely on grounds of the brevity of their stay.

[MojoJojo]

Apologies if this has already been posted - OPCW on the reports of BZ in the sample:

As it was clearly shown in the detailed and technical presentation, we should not have an iota
of doubt on the reliability of the system of the OPCW Designated Laboratories. The Labs
were able to confirm the identity of the chemical by applying existing, well-established
procedures. There was no other chemical that was identified by the Labs. The precursor of
BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the
control sample prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control
procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW Team in
Salisbury. This chemical was reported back to the OPCW by the two designated labs and the
findings are duly reflected in the report.

Third page, second paragraph: https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-59/en/ecm59dg01_e_.pdf

So who do we believe, the OPCW or the Russian Foreign Minister?

[biggytitbo]

Since they won't show us the evidence I don't see any reason why we should believe their press releases. Why was BZ in the control samples?

[MojoJojo]

To make sure the labs are testing for lots of different chemicals, not just the ones read about in the press. That's how control samples work. (if you actually read it it wasn't actually BZ anyway).

If you actually read the document it explains why procedures are kept confidential.

What evidence has Sergei Lavrov presented?

And are you really now suggesting the OPCW is in league with Theresa May?

[biggytitbo]

To make sure the labs are testing for lots of different chemicals, not just the ones read about in the press. That's how control samples work. (if you actually read it it wasn't actually BZ anyway).

Really? Explain more.

If you actually read the document it explains why procedures are kept confidential.

What evidence has Sergei Lavrov presented?

And are you really now suggesting the OPCW is in league with Theresa May?

In this mire of deceit this isn't good. Confidentiality and secrecy are fig leafs for spin and lies. I'm not accusing the OPCW of fabricating anything, I'm saying it's pretty clear there's some serious massaging of language going on and they're taking part. Their only public statement was saying the 'Novichok or related agent' claim of Porton Down was accurate, without actually naming anything specific themselves.

[MojoJojo]

Really? Explain more.

Deliberate ignorance isn't really a good position to be lecturing people from:

"When OPCW sends samples to laboratories, other substances are sometimes included in the samples as what is known as positive controls. It is to test the competence of the laboratories. They have to be able to identify this positive control in the sample. If they are not able to do this then all their results are thrown into doubt," Alastair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds, UK, told Sputnik.

From https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201804161063626247-uk-skripal-case-toxin-positive-control-not-lethal/

[Pdine]

Another possibility for the '3Q' sample is that it was used as a spiking agent for a positive control sample. This process is explained here:

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/emt/downloads/10-controls.pdf

Edit to add: ...as MojoJojo already posted :)

[biggytitbo]

Deliberate ignorance isn't really a good position to be lecturing people from:
From https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201804161063626247-uk-skripal-case-toxin-positive-control-not-lethal/

Well i'll take your word about the BZ, but until we see the full report its hard to say why Russia are saying this isn't it? The BZ thing wasnt the only thing they said which went against the official statement. Do you think the dastardly chemical warfare masters can't even read a report properly, or do you think the report is as obfuscatory and shifty as the public statements?

[Pdine]

Well i'll take your word about the BZ, but until we see the full report its hard to say why Russia are saying this isn't it? The BZ thing wasnt the only thing they said which went against the official statement. Do you think the dastardly chemical warfare masters can't even read a report properly, or do you think the report is as obfuscatory and shifty as the public statements?

The OPCW already explained that even the closed, full report of the technical assistance team to the State Parties does not contain full breakdowns of the testing results.

I should like to mention here that in accordance with the established practice the Secretariat does not share the full reports of the analysis of the samples that it receives from the designated Labs with the States Parties. This practice is aimed at protecting the identity of the labs which conduct off-site analysis of samples.

https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-59/en/ecm59dg01_e_.pdf

So I think it's likely that what happened here is that Russia somehow got hold of the Spiez results (to which they were not supposed to have access), saw in those results that a BZ precursor chemical was present in some of them, and noted that the full report said nothing about that. They thought this was suspicious and so publicised it, even though this outed an OPCW designated lab against the terms of their membership. Spiez responded to Lavrov by saying that the OPCW meeting on the 18th might make things clearer. Indeed, at the 18th meeting, the OPCW revealed that they had used 3Q as a spiking agent in a positive control sample given to Spiez.

[MojoJojo]

Well i'll take your word about the BZ, but until we see the full report its hard to say why Russia are saying this isn't it?

?  really? You can't imagine why Russia might want to discredit the official report and point the blame at the west?

[biggytitbo]

You think it wasn't mentioned in the classified report? Why not? Again though, why not release the report for transparency, with anything confidential blanked out?

How were Spiez 'outed' when its public knowledge they are an OPCW lab?

The Swiss defence ministry's Spiez Laboratory has earned the best score on a proficiency test administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Of the five permanent designated OPCW labs in the world that have been certified to perform chemical weapons tests, the Spiez Laboratory received the highest rating.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/safety-assessment---_spiez-laboratory-aces-chemical-weapons-test/41667498

[Pdine]

You think it wasn't mentioned in the classified report? Why not? Again though, why not release the report for transparency, with anything confidential blanked out?

Yes, the quote I posted explicitly says they don't give full results, and the Russians also said it wasn't there. No-one's arguing it was (except possibly you).

How were Spiez 'outed' when its public knowledge they are an OPCW lab?

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/safety-assessment---_spiez-laboratory-aces-chemical-weapons-test/41667498

As the quote I posted says, they seek to conceal which lab does which tests. Also, the Russians ought probably to explain how they got those results, surely?

[biggytitbo]

Yes, the quote I posted explicitly says they don't give full results, and the Russians also said it wasn't there. No-one's arguing it was (except possibly you).

As the quote I posted says, they seek to conceal which lab does which tests. Also, the Russians ought probably to explain how they got those results, surely?

How is this 'outing' Spiez though, what difference does it make who did what?

Russia must have got the results from someone at Spiez, presumably, if who did what was confidential.

So the question is, why would someone at Spiez leak this info?

[Pdine]

How is this 'outing' Spiez though, what difference does it make who did what?

I'm just repeating to you what the OPCW says. If you have ideas for how they should fulfill their role, tell them maybe?

Russia must have got the results from someone at Spiez, presumably, if who did what was confidential.

So the question is, why would someone at Spiez leak this info?

You're assuming they did; let's wait until we know that it happened before wondering why it (perhaps) happened.

You're also avoiding the larger issue here (why?) - that there's a rather dull but extremely credible explanation for the BZ/Lavrov statement. Even the Russians seem to have moved on to stressing the lack of a solid evidentiary link between the detected chemical and Russian production.

[biggytitbo]

The explanation does depend on how they got the info, if it was a leak from (at least ostensibly) Spiez then arguably Lavrov was set up - leak him the BZ thing, its not mentioned in the classified report so it looks a bit odd, then pull the rug from under him, thus undermining his other more legitimate criticisms.

[Pdine]

The explanation does depend on how they got the info, if it was a leak from (at least ostensibly) Spiez then arguably Lavrov was set up - leak him the BZ thing, its not mentioned in the classified report so it looks a bit odd, then pull the rug from under him, thus undermining his other more legitimate criticisms.

The explanation doesn't depend on that, and to be honest the BZ issue wasn't central enough in the public conversation for this to be anything more than a footnote. It's funny to note that the BZ-truthers were shouting about the lack of coverage previously, and now seem (or at Biggy you seem) to be trying to argue that this was a set-up public humiliation. If that were true, why wouldn't the 'compromised MSM' and the UK Intelligence's 'Media Assets' have been trumpeting the accusations prior to seeing them torpedoed? It just doesn't hang together.

[biggytitbo]

But if it was a leak, then how can your explanation be true? Why would Spiez or whoever it was leak something that has a trivial explanation? Lavrov's BZ claims did some reporting, albeit in the genre of 'look at what whacky disinfo the Russians are coming up with now'.


I await the story that Russian trolls have hacked into OPCW labs with anticipation, obviously leaving a trail of digital smirnoff behind them

[MojoJojo]

Does no one read anymore?

As it was clearly shown in the detailed and technical presentation, we should not have an iota
of doubt on the reliability of the system of the OPCW Designated Laboratories. The Labs
were able to confirm the identity of the chemical by applying existing, well-established
procedures. There was no other chemical that was identified by the Labs. The precursor of
BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the
control sample prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control
procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW Team in
Salisbury. This chemical was reported back to the OPCW by the two designated labs and the
findings are duly reflected in the report.

So Spiez took some detail out of context from the confidential report shared with state parties and tried to spin it to deflect attention away from Russia. There really doesn't seem to be any other way of interpreting it.

[biggytitbo]

Was BZ/3Q mentioned at all, anywhere by anyone, before Lavrov brought it up?

[BlodwynPig]

It would really help all you chemical weapons experts if Theresa May just admitted her government fabricated everything and Sergey Skripal is an unemployed bricklayer from Dunstable.

[Pdine]

But if it was a leak, then how can your explanation be true? Why would Spiez or whoever it was leak something that has a trivial explanation? Lavrov's BZ claims did some reporting, albeit in the genre of 'look at what whacky disinfo the Russians are coming up with now'.

Someone at Spiez might have leaked the entire results with no comment, and Russia drew their own seemingly erroneous but understandable conclusions. Alternatively the Russians might have got hold of it via some other route. You are assuming it's a deliberate leak of something controversial then saying it must be controversial because they leaked it. I think that's called begging the question.

[Pdine]

Does no one read anymore?

With respect, the section you quoted does not confirm that 3Q/BZ was mentioned in the confidential report. It says that the findings were, and goes on to say that the entire results of analysis are not included in the reports back to State Parties. The successful detection of a positive control sample isn't a finding in itself, arguably, more a means of confirming the actual finding.

So Spiez took some detail out of context from the confidential report shared with state parties and tried to spin it to deflect attention away from Russia. There really doesn't seem to be any other way of interpreting it.

As I said above, we don't know that Spiez or any of their staff voluntarily shared the results, or if they did what they were trying to communicate by doing so, or how much of the result set was obtained. We don't have any firm grounds to speculate, in other words.

[MojoJojo]

Sorry, meant Sergei Lavrov, rather Spiez. Sorry for being snippy.

[BlodwynPig]

Here's some utter tosh from Uglev

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43828580

Is Vladimir Uglev surprised that his country stands accused of carrying out a chemical attack in the UK?
"Not really," he tells me. "And it's not Putin who is to blame. All of us in Russia are at fault. If this is what our country is like, what has Putin got to do with it? Replace Putin with Margaret Thatcher, and do you think anything would change? It wouldn't. The problem is that our society doesn't want to change."

Cunt, and CUNT BBC for propagating that BULLSHIT, GRADE A BULLSHIT

[Pdine]

It reminds me of

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/bsp/hitler.html

[biggytitbo]

All sceptism is PUTIN BOT FAKE NEWS - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-news-salisbury-poisoning-twitter-bots-uk

Propaganda from Russian-operated accounts grew by 4,000% in aftermath of attack, Whitehall says

WHitehall said so so it must be true, rather than a meaningless out of context bullshit stat deliberately designed to mislead.

[BlodwynPig]

All sceptism is PUTIN BOT FAKE NEWS - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/19/russia-fake-news-salisbury-poisoning-twitter-bots-uk

WHitehall said so so it must be true, rather than a meaningless out of context bullshit stat deliberately designed to mislead.

Didn't the Americans say 2000% a few days ago, and prior to that it was 200%. What a bunch of cawing bastards.

So from the baseline of zero, its grown 4000% to zero.

[biggytitbo]

It's almost as though they don't know twitter is a global website and Russians have Internet access. They also neglect to mention that bots amplify all sorts of content, including their own warmongering bullshit. There's a guy on twitter who does great work analysing how a small number of centrist Democrats use a vast hive of twitter bots to amplify anti Bernie sanders talking points. It's all too common and deceptively selective to focus so much on 'Russian bots' as a special problem.

The bottom line is the vast majority of people sceptical about this are real people who are really, very rightly, sceptical, and amazingly for a story about Russia some of them are Russian.