DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]wo years ago, on March 4 2018, Sergei Skripal a British-Russian double agent and his daughter Julia were poisoned in the streets of Salisbury, England. The British government accused Russia of an attempt to kill the Skripals with a nerve agent.
We followed (see below) the strange story as it developed and found that the official UK government version of it made absolutely no sense. Many of the assertions made by the British government did not withstand any scrutiny. The story was also inconsistent with a later incident in the nearby Amesbury during which Dawn Strugess allegedly died of contact with a similar substance as the one that supposedly poisoned the Skripals.
Since the incident happened neither Sergei Skripal nor his daughter have been allowed to talk to the public. They have simply vanished. The British government is preventing them from reaching out to their family, the media and anyone else. Where are they?
John Helmer, who writes at Dances with Bears, has send me his book about the case. Its title is the answer to my question: Skripal in Prison.
It is most likely that Sergei Skripal was trying to go back to Russia. Skripal may well have been a source for the debunked Steele dossier and was probably willing to talk about it. But whatever his plans were the British government found it necessary to prevent him from executing them. It created an elaborate false story and fed it to the global media. The mainstream media swallowed it up without even the slightest sign of critical thinking.
That is the reason why Rob Slane of The Blogmire, John Helmer and I have all extensively written about the case. We know that the British government and the mainstream media are lying about it and we have all developed our own theories of what really happened and about the whys and hows.
John Helmer's book is a collection of his blog posts on the case with a new indroduction and additional chapters. This already makes it a valuable reference for anyone who wants to recap the story as it developed.
Helmer also adds two important and new factual points. He had requested information from various British authorities about the pending legal procedures around the cases. He finds that there is no evidence of any official legal investigation or court case that could bring light into the issue. This is astonishing as the British procedures seem to demand a further inquest.
There is also no evidence for the existence of the announced arrest warrant against the two Russian citizens which the British government has accused of being involved in the case.
Helmer's book has 327 pages including a quite useful index. It has a number of pictures and reproductions of official statements on the issue and includes many useful links to original sources. The book can be purchased as paperback or in electronic form.
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Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:
Posted by b on March 5, 2020 at 17:33 UTC | Permalink
With respect to the following statement:
The mainstream media swallowed it up without even the slightest sign of critical thinking.
The mainstream media's function is to accept and legitimize the official narrative no matter how inane it is, not to provide any sort of critical analysis. Across the board, the media's job is to convince a gullible and captive population that their ruling class is not holding the hostage and denying their freedom...without exception. This is why so many of us congregate here; it's like a breath of air after having your head held under water for too long.
Think of the Wizard of Oz on steroids, and that's the world we live in...only far, far darker.
Posted by: information_agent | Mar 5 2020 17:51 utc | 2
Excellent article, thank you:)
Earlier this morning I watched this:
"Andrey Vadjra: About the Coma Patients at the Service of Her Majesty"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtpMMS4MsSk&feature=emb_logo
It's a good documentary focusing on the elusive "novichok". I believe I got the link from a recent OFFGuardian comment section? I don't remember. Having followed MOA during the entire Skripal incident, most of what is in the documentary was already spoken of here. Still it's worth the 38 minutes of your time to watch it:)
Posted by: SharonM | Mar 5 2020 17:55 utc | 3
Perhaps the Skripals have in fact returned to Russia and the two Russians aren't being pusued as part of the same deal. Sergei has served his time there and is still a Russian citizen so the Russian government would have no objection to having him back. They would keep quit about the details if there is a deal or just because they have nothing in particular to say about it and nobody has asked.
Posted by: Johny Conspiranoid | Mar 5 2020 18:32 utc | 4
Here is an essay from about a year ago, that I found to be as believable as anything I had read on the Skripal's. The conclusion is that they were poisoned by MI6. I doubt very much that they are free anywhere but under a house arrest at an 'undisclosed location'. I certainly feel sorry for Yulia Skripal.
The Alternative Skripal Narrative
February 17, 2019
by Michael Antony for The Saker Blog
Posted by: SteveK9 | Mar 5 2020 18:45 utc | 5
What happened to the Skripals indicates just how much freedom and the Rule of Law actually exists within the UK, upon which we can append Assange's saga. And what of the Russians? Are they silent in the matter of their citizen Julia Skripal, seemingly kidnapped and disappeared by the UK government? I recall The Prisoner; seems it was far more realistic than many would like to believe.
Clearly Julia Skripal is fulfilling her dream of living in seclusion in a foreign country surrounded by British security agents. She’s just having too much fun to find time to call her family.
Well, it’s “highly likely”, anyway. God help her.
Posted by: David G | Mar 5 2020 19:16 utc | 7
Still no coroner’s inquest for Dawn Sturgess, the one fatality. The law carries no force. Darkness and decay and the secret state hold illimitable dominion over all.
Posted by: David G | Mar 5 2020 19:26 utc | 8
But whatever his plans were the British government found it necessary to prevent him from executing them.
__________________________________________
I try to avoid indulging in vacuous speculation about the Skripals.
When bloggers, e.g. Craig Murray, published Skripal-related posts arising from Skripal-related events or reports over the years (!), comments threads boiled over with enthusiastic and often impassioned theories and convictions about the truth of the matter.
It's a natural response, but the threads read like transcripts from meetings of aspiring writers of mysteries and espionage thrillers; it can be fun to build intricate houses of cards, using whatever circular or dubious information is at hand.
Despite that sanctimonious disclaimer, I'm not above having speculation thrust upon me. Since B.'s post induced a mild relapse of Skripal Fever, I'll venture to guess-- albeit presently without the benefit of Helmer's superior knowledge and insight-- that at least Skripal the Elder, and probably both of them, are no longer among the living.
Except for a few fragmentary reports of the Skripals contacting relatives, and/or Yulia's brief staged, controlled appearances after the first set of wheels fell off the official cover-up, the Skripals have effectively vanished from the face of the Earth.
There have been rumors that they might have been sent to a kind of indefinite detention in a US airbase, or even secretly relocated to the US in "Witness Protection Program" mode. Or even that they were allowed to return to Russia, pursuant to a secret agreement between UK and Russian authorities. I dismiss the latter speculation, because it seems unlikely that Russia would belatedly enter into a clandestine quid pro quo which amounts to the Russian government both condoning and participating in a clandestine military/intelligence operation that promoted and exacerbated virulent Russophobia.
Anyway, my thinking is that if the Skripals' role as pawns in a state-security apparatus plot was fulfilled, there is no obvious reason why they would still be considered "assets". On the contrary, their disappearance seems to reinforce the prospect that post-"poisoning", they are liabilities to the UK (etc.) government(s).
So the idea that they are being given the "Man in the Iron Mask" treatment, or have been bundled off to the US incognito, or quietly sent back home to a complicit Russia, to live happily (and secretly) ever after, seems improbable. Why risk the possibility that they could be found, and either expose hitherto-concealed truths or offer some scripted preposterous account of their incapacitation and subsequent whereabouts?
Likewise, why imprison them? True, the UK government is presently demonstrating its enthusiasm for subjecting political prisoners to slow death by sadistic incarceration-- but this is a public spectacle to teach future would-be Enemies of the State a lesson. Surely relatively solitary indefinite detention, whether in some UK/US "black site" or "house arrest", would not occur as a kind of reprieve, or act of mercy.
Better, I should think, that the troublesome Skripals be gotten rid of entirely, leaving the public and the would-be "bloodhounds" of the mass-media trotting about in perplexed circles. To paraphrase the quoted bit: What's to prevent the British government from executing them, i.e. the Skripals?
I'd be thrilled to be wrong, and see one or more Skripal burst into the spotlight to tell us all they know. But I'm not holding my breath.
Posted by: Ort | Mar 5 2020 19:44 utc | 9
b: Where Are The Skripals?
A better question is: Why the Skripals?
I agree that it likely had something to do with the "dirty dossier". But attempting to get dirt on a political opponent is nothing new. So what would cause the establishment to secret him (and his daughter) away so completely?
I can think of only a few things:
- Skripal knows that CIA/MI6 were involved in the dossier - and possibly of Gina Haspel's involvement (it wasn't just requested by a political campaign);
- Skripal knows that the dossier was MEANT to have false info;
- Skripal knows that Trump was meant to win (as surmised from #1 and #2) so that Russiagate (a new McCarthyism) would be initiated;
Why capture and secret away the Skripals except to protect CIA-installed Trump, not CIA-asset Hillary? (The head of MI-6 has already resigned over the whole affair so they aren't protecting him either.) Hillary (and Bill) is a discredited, unethical political has-been. It would be easy to throw her under the bus.
Why did Trump nominate Gina Haspel as CIA Director? She was tainted by scandal and she was publicly supported by his supposed arch-nemesis John Brennan.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 5 2020 20:14 utc | 10
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"b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
They have been disappeared without any explanation. It would be astonishing if we didn't already know how corrupt the US and British government have become.
Posted by: goldhoarder | Mar 5 2020 17:47 utc | 1