Putin's Poisoners at it in Salisbury

Emp_Fab

So, @Myranda....  When did you say you were planning on sending ricin sarin VX C4 anthrax to The Queen, Prime Minister, Theresa May, Meghan Markle, Prince William, Harry, Kate Middleton, Donald Trump in the name of ISIS, Putin, FSB, MI6, MI5 while singing that song you wrote that goes “Allahu Akbar” ?

Myranda

Whelp... Now we're on all the lists... 

Axe_meister

The thing is other than holding on to power what is Putin's end game with all this Soviet style pestering it's not exactly going to provide economic prosperity to the Russian people.

NickBotfield

Dominic said:

Don't mess with the Richest man in the world

So Jeff Bezos is behind this?!  Amazon are really branching out their services.

ICBM

Axe_meister said:

The thing is other than holding on to power what is Putin's end game with all this Soviet style pestering it's not exactly going to provide economic prosperity to the Russian people.

The answer is in the question...

Phil_aka_Pip

Myranda said:

Whelp... Now we're on all the lists... 

Your name vill also go on ze list. Vot is it?

CHRISB50

ICBM said:

Axe_meister said:

The thing is other than holding on to power what is Putin's end game with all this Soviet style pestering it's not exactly going to provide economic prosperity to the Russian people.

The answer is in the question...

Indeed. It's about dick swinging. A scare tactic, a demonstration of power and two fingers up to the West.

There was an article written by the BBC a while back about his background during the Cold War. It's quite an interesting read...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32066222

goldtop

"Don’t choose England as a place to live. Whatever the reasons, whether you’re a professional traitor to the motherland or you just hate your country in your spare time, I repeat, no matter, don’t move to England. Something is not right there. Maybe it’s the climate. But in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with a grave outcome. People get hanged, poisoned, they die in helicopter crashes and fall out of windows in industrial quantities.”

Russian state TV.

As I said already: this is humiliation.

ESBlonde

This is a message, or more to the point messages. We are not the target for the messages, we are just some convenient little country that got used and abused.

Putin disposes of political opposition with trumped up jail sentances or worse! The electoret are proud of the mother country and thier strong leader. This incident warns political opponents of what he is preparred to do and makes him look strong for Russia at home. It also tells the world Russia is not to be messed with (notice how they have no ISIS terrorist incidents despite backing the Syrian government against them).

It's all rather neat and positive for Putin given that the repercussions will be swept aside and quickly forgotten. All that left wing richousness won't work with this one sadly.

FX_Munkee

ESBlonde said:

This is a message, or more to the point messages. We are not the target for the messages, we are just some convenient little country that got used and abused.

Putin disposes of political opposition with trumped up jail sentances or worse! The electoret are proud of the mother country and thier strong leader. This incident warns political opponents of what he is preparred to do and makes him look strong for Russia at home. It also tells the world Russia is not to be messed with (notice how they have no ISIS terrorist incidents despite backing the Syrian government against them).

It's all rather neat and positive for Putin given that the repercussions will be swept aside and quickly forgotten. All that left wing richousness won't work with this one sadly.

I agree with the general sentiment here but the bolded bit.
The Russian jet blown up over the Sinai?
The bombings in the Moscow underground?

Clarky

Myranda said:

chillidoggy said:

I heard that these nerve agents are not that difficult to make*. Hence I’m not convinced it’s Russia, it could be a stitch up.



*Obviously, I haven’t Googled the recipe.

A handful are easier to make - sarin for instance... Some are incredibly difficult - VX type stuff. 

But that's not to say its easy, cheap or that the person making it without expensive hazmat suits will survive to make more for the criminals... 

There is very good reason we almost never hear about nerve agents used in gang related murders... If you want to poison someone there are easier to obtain non-nerve agent toxins (botulinum toxin is biologically produced and the single deadliest substance to human beings there is... So why go to the trouble of nerve agents? 

Well... That post got on a watch list... 

and if you want to kill someone there are other more economical ways that don't involve handling hazardous substances and can still be made to look like a genuine accident...

like when someone accidentally falls down a really big staircase quite a few times

Clarky

Myranda said:

Whelp... Now we're on all the lists... 

if I were you I'd be very wary of a new fella joining the forum asking a few too many questions about pickups

Clarky

ESBlonde said:

This is a message, or more to the point messages. We are not the target for the messages, we are just some convenient little country that got used and abused.

Putin disposes of political opposition with trumped up jail sentances or worse! The electoret are proud of the mother country and thier strong leader. This incident warns political opponents of what he is preparred to do and makes him look strong for Russia at home. It also tells the world Russia is not to be messed with (notice how they have no ISIS terrorist incidents despite backing the Syrian government against them).

It's all rather neat and positive for Putin given that the repercussions will be swept aside and quickly forgotten. All that left wing richousness won't work with this one sadly.

I wonder what a graph would look like that plots the number of accidents etc that happen to opposition types with time..
and then see if there is a trend where these events start to increase approaching election days

VimFuego

FX_Munkee said:

ESBlonde said:

This is a message, or more to the point messages. We are not the target for the messages, we are just some convenient little country that got used and abused.

Putin disposes of political opposition with trumped up jail sentances or worse! The electoret are proud of the mother country and thier strong leader. This incident warns political opponents of what he is preparred to do and makes him look strong for Russia at home. It also tells the world Russia is not to be messed with (notice how they have no ISIS terrorist incidents despite backing the Syrian government against them).

It's all rather neat and positive for Putin given that the repercussions will be swept aside and quickly forgotten. All that left wing richousness won't work with this one sadly.

I agree with the general sentiment here but the bolded bit.
The Russian jet blown up over the Sinai?
The bombings in the Moscow underground?

agreed, my understanding is that the whole chechnya thing is a part of the ISIS/house of saud/wahabism thing. Lots of terrorist incidents against Russia.

rocktron

Clarky said:

Myranda said:

Whelp... Now we're on all the lists... 

if I were you I'd be very wary of a new fella joining the forum asking a few too many questions about pickups.

Then, it wouldn't be KGB agents he needs to worry about, but a lynching from the International Women's Movement!!!   

FX_Munkee

Clarky said:

ESBlonde said:

This is a message, or more to the point messages. We are not the target for the messages, we are just some convenient little country that got used and abused.

Putin disposes of political opposition with trumped up jail sentances or worse! The electoret are proud of the mother country and thier strong leader. This incident warns political opponents of what he is preparred to do and makes him look strong for Russia at home. It also tells the world Russia is not to be messed with (notice how they have no ISIS terrorist incidents despite backing the Syrian government against them).

It's all rather neat and positive for Putin given that the repercussions will be swept aside and quickly forgotten. All that left wing richousness won't work with this one sadly.

I wonder what a graph would look like that plots the number of accidents etc that happen to opposition types with time..
and then see if there is a trend where these events start to increase approaching election days

I suspect it would closely mirror a graph of deaths in soap operas as the Christmas special approaches.

thermionic

I found it strange that they’re focusing on the graves of his wife and son, who died a few years ago (and his son died in St Petersburg, not Salisbury). However, I now read that the police have said no bodies have been exhumed. Several accounts have said that the investigation seems to be centred on the memorial on the son’s headstone. This is my theory - whoever wanted to kill him knew he regularly visited the graves. Nobody else would go near them. Maybe there was a clever mechanism to release the nerve agent, or it could be so simple as just contamination, relying on the victim touching the gravestone with his hands or even lips. I’m guessing they didn’t bank on his daughter visiting from Moscow that day.

seany65

I wouldn't mind so much about the Brit Govt. going on about this if the 'evidence' they had was more than "Well the poison stuff seems to have been made in the Soviet union".

To me, that's like blaming Germany  if an ISIS terrorist uses a VW camper Van to run down and kill a few people.

VimFuego

well, it would be if the german government made the vans themselves in their own, tightly controlled factories, they made them in tiny quantities and over which they had very firm controls on their distribution and use. 

Blueingreen

seany65 said:

I wouldn't mind so much about the Brit Govt. going on about this if the 'evidence' they had was more than "Well the poison stuff seems to have been made in the Soviet union".

To me, that's like blaming Germany  if an ISIS terrorist uses a VW camper Van to run down and kill a few people.

I think the analogy only starts to work if the camper van was an enormously complex and dangerous machine which could only be driven by a tiny number of very highly trained personnel, all of the known ones being in the German military.

Sometimes you can't get certainty about things.  If the evidence shows a 95% degree of probability that someone intends to kill you, and you can never have incontrovertible proof, and that he will succeed unless you shoot him first, you have a choice to make.  I don't think the West can have the luxury of not reacting to Putin because it can't turn virtual certainty into absolute certainty.