Russia--did you know?

[oldcolner]

Possibly BT but I got the impression that he was talking honestly about the changing situation there.

Putin came from nowhere to become acting President at a time it looked like Russia might become a democracy so he had backers whose interests must have benefitted from having a KGB man in place. Now he has fulfilled their wishes in reverting to a dictatorship and making himself and his friends billions at the expense of his people and where opponents in Presidential elections are killed outside the Kremlin they don’t need Putin as much and might just be doing their own thing.

If we think Russia didn’t do Salisbury, who do we suggest has the ability to make nowichok and the people authorised to kill their nationals on foreign soil by their own parliament and who have a track record of doing so.

What actions do we suggest the Government takes?
Corbyn - keep talking, stop Tories taking money from British passport holders who happen to be Russian, increase diplomats worldwide.

May backed by many Labour MPs, SNP Libdems - send Home spying diplomats, cancel high profile meetings and visits, target dodgy Russian money in the UK, get public opinion worldwide including Putins friend Trump on your side, plan action at NATO and EU, troops in Baltic States.

I’m sure Jeremy is talking to his mates in Russia .. a lot as he is their mouthpiece.

[sinkov]

It's all a big game politicians and diplomats play, it'll all blow over soon enough, 'it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

[oldcolner]

It's all a big game politicians and diplomats play, it'll all blow over soon enough, 'it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

It might well blow ... up too.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Our government has lost it's sense of perspective, two Russians get gassed in Salisbury and full diplomatic sabre rattling breaks out.

300 Syrian defenceless civilians have lost their lives already this week in Ghouta after being carpet bombed by Russian and Syrian jet fighter/bombers and the silence from Westminster in response is deafening.

Dirty, rotten hypocrites the lot of them and that includes Corbyn.

[sinkov]

And just precisely who are these 'rebels' under attack in Ghouta ?

Jaysh al-Islam: The Jaysh al-Islam, or Army of Islam, coalition is centered in the Damascus area and eastern Ghouta. It aims to replace the Assad government with a Syria based on Sharia, or Islamic law.

Faylaq al-Rahman: The Faylaq al-Rahman organization, or al-Rahman Legion, is also based in eastern Ghouta and is allied with Qatar. It is also connected to the Free Syrian Army, one of the biggest rebel coalitions formed at the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The organization describes itself as "a revolutionary military entity aiming for the downfall of the Syrian regime,"

Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham: The Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham organization, or Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is also known as the covert Syrian version of al Qaeda. It is led by Hasim al-Sheikh, also know as Abu Jabr, and is based in the northwestern city of Idlib. The organization believes in using violence to implement an ultraconservative religious doctrine.

Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki movement: The Harakat al-Din al-Zenki, or the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, is a Sunni Islamist group based in Aleppo. In June 2016, a video of the group circulated showing its members beheading a 15-year-old boy. The video received obvious attention, not only due to the cruelness of the action but also the fact that during that time the United States had financially backed the organization.

Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya: The Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, or Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant, aims to also form an Islamic state in Syria based on Sharia. It's membership is in the tens of thousands and merged with the Nour al-Din al-Zenki movement on February 18, 2018. The group has tanks, mobile artillery and anti-guided missiles it procured from its victories against the Syrian army.

Also embedded in that motley collection of jihadists and terrorists are elements of the Al Nusra Front, more lethal jihadist maniacs, and who has been financing and arming these so called 'rebels' in their fight against Assad, Iran and Russia ? None other than the wishy-washy hypocritical western democracies, including the UK and the USA, with their virtue-signalling desire to bring democracy to the Middle East by means of the Arab Spring. Remember the Arab spring, and the joy and delight with which it was greeted by lefties in this country, that went well didn't it ?

If you pour petrol onto a fire, as we have been doing by arming these Islamic maniacs, then don't express dismay and alarm when the fire flares up, and innocent people get burnt.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

"defenceless civilians" are the two key words.

[Balanbam00]

Russia's chemical weapons commander was a Mossad target

Despite commitments by Moscow in the 1980s that it would dispose of its chemical weapons and refrain from developing them, Israel attempted to inform the Kremlin that its chief scientist was secretly selling development know-how to the Syrians. When the warnings were ignored, the scientist mysteriously died on a plane. One of the heads of the Russian chemical weapons program and the individual who was considered to be the head of the Novichok project—which saw the development of a series of nerve agents by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. Russia had already begun developing chemical weapons by the end of the Second World War, and possibly even beforehand. At the beginning of the 1970s, the country’s scientists began creating more lethal nerve agents, among them the “Novichok,” the production of which was overseen by General Anatoly Kuntsevich—a physics and organic chemicals expert considered to be one of the foremost expert in the field in the Soviet Union.

In the middle of the 1980s, under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union declared that it would sign the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons. In 1987 the Soviet government announced that it would unilaterally bring to a halt its production and in 1989, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze said that his country would “completely” abandon its production of poison gas.
Over the next decade, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and under the rule of President Boris Yeltsin, Russia experienced an economic collapse and was in need of help from the West.
The United States demanded that it be involved in disarming of weapons of mass destruction, especially chemical weapons, and Yeltsin appointed General Kuntsevich to serve as his liaison with the West. However, Russia apparently disposed of only part of its chemical weapons arsenal and proof of the fact that it failed to relinquish control of all the materials necessary for producing them quickly became knowledge among spies and journalists in the West.

In the 1990s, worrying information began arriving in Israel indicating that Russia was conducting experiments for the development of chemical weapons more advanced than the simple mustard and nerve gases that they once had.According to the information, the knowledge to produce the advanced weapons was supplied by Kuntsevich. It would seem that his business with the Syrians was not a government initiative but rather an attempt by him to look after his own interests.
In July 1995, under the guise of a regular work visit as part of the positive military relations that remained between the two countries, he began to establish personal connections with leaders in Syria, and received huge sums of money in exchange for divulging his knowledge and providing some of his equipment for developing deadly chemical weapons.
On 29 April, 2002, in circumstances that remain unknown, Kuntsevich died during a flight from Aleppo to Moscow. The Syrians appear to be confident that the Israeli intelligence had succeeded in reaching and poisoning the general.

A top secret CIA document from the same period says that Syria managed, by the time of his death, to produce a large stockpile of particularly lethal chemical weapons. According to various other sources, during his final visit to Syria, Kuntsevich brought with him the blueprints for developing the “Novichok”. If Kuntsevich had not died on the way back to Moscow, the problems facing the West and particularly Israel could have been significantly more serious.

Dr. Ronen Bergman, a senior correspondent for military and intelligence affairs at Yedioth Ahronoth and a contributing writer for the New York Times, is the author of Rise and Kill First : The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations.

[Balanbam00]

BT: (and all ......)

''300 Syrian defenceless civilians have lost their lives already this week in Ghouta after being carpet bombed by Russian and Syrian jet fighter/bombers and the silence from Westminster in response is deafening.

''Sumats wrong becuz'' When Israel boombed Gaza, huge demo's. Free Palestine etc . Israel defended itself against rocket fire!!

''Sumats wrong becuz'' Now perhaps you can hear a pin drop? Could Dixon of Dock Green' shadow be waiting on the street corner?

[sinkov]

"defenceless civilians" are the two key words.

There has never been a war yet in which defenceless civilians weren't killed, injured and had their homes destroyed. Perhaps the happy-clappy supporters of the Arab Spring should have considered that, before they armed and financed the jihadist maniacs in their futile attempt to overthrow the Assad regime.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

My point is that two Russian citizens get gassed in Salisbury and Theresa May and Co go into political meltdown.

Kids are dying in Syria because of chemical warfare being waged against them and Westminster remains silent but continue to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to another despotic regime that will bomb another set of defenceless civilians in Yemen.

Images like this in 2018 really should not be happening. Should they?

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