{"id":32307,"date":"2018-03-14T06:48:15","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T11:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32307"},"modified":"2018-03-14T06:48:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T11:48:52","slug":"the-uk-government-is-manufacturing-its-nerve-agent-case-for-action-on-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32307","title":{"rendered":"The UK government is manufacturing its nerve agent case for \u2018action\u2019 on\u00a0Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The UK government is manufacturing its nerve agent case for \u2018action\u2019 on\u00a0Russia<\/a><\/h3>\n

Official claim that \u2018Novichok\u2019 points solely to Russia discredited\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Military personnel investigate the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Published by <\/em>INSURGE intelligence<\/em><\/a>, a <\/em>crowdfunded<\/em><\/a>investigative journalism platform for people and planet. <\/em>Support us<\/em><\/a> to report where others fear to\u00a0tread.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May announced<\/a> that former Russian spy, Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned with \u201ca military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia\u201d known as \u2018Novichok\u2019.<\/p>\n

The chemical agent was identified by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. May referred to the British government\u2019s \u201cknowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so\u201d as a basis to conclude that Russia\u2019s culpability in the attack \u201cis highly likely.\u201d<\/p>\n

On these grounds, she claimed that only two scenarios are possible:<\/p>\n

\u201cEither this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of\u00a0others.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The British government\u2019s line has been chorused uncritically by the entire global press corps, with little scrutiny of its plausibility.<\/p>\n

But there is a problem: far from offering a clear-cut evidence-trail to Vladimir Putin\u2019s chemical warfare labs, the use of Novichok in the nerve gas attack on UK soil points to a wider set of potential suspects, of which Russia is in fact the least likely.<\/p>\n

Russia did actually destroy its nerve agent capabilities according to the\u00a0OPCW<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet a concerted effort is being made to turn facts on their head.<\/p>\n

No clearer sign of this can be found than in the statement by Ambassador Peter Wilson, UK Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in which he claimed<\/a> that Russia has \u201cfailed for many years\u201d to fully disclose its chemical weapons programme.<\/p>\n

Wilson was parroting a claim made a year earlier by the US State Department<\/a>that Russia had not made a complete declaration of its chemical weapons stockpile: \u201cThe United States cannot certify that Russia has met its obligations under the Convention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet these claims are contradicted by the OPCW itself, which in September 2017 declared<\/a> that the independent global agency had rigorously verified the completed destruction of Russia\u2019s entire chemical weapons programme, including of course its nerve agent production capabilities.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK government is manufacturing its nerve agent case for \u2018action\u2019 on\u00a0Russia Official claim that \u2018Novichok\u2019 points solely to Russia discredited\u00a0 Military personnel investigate the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury Published by INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfundedinvestigative journalism platform for people and planet. Support us to report where others fear to\u00a0tread. On Monday, Prime Minister Theresa May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14273,2092,19271,694,820,2080],"class_list":["post-32307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-medium","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-nerve-gas","tag-russia","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32308,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32307\/revisions\/32308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}