Spy exchanges have happened over the years. For that to happen there must be something to swap. We don't send them some spies back and then get a couple of typists or admin workers in exchange.

https://twitter.com/AliBunkallSKY/st...83837759639559

well obv no1 gives a toss about that bloke, i brought it up to point out the extreme lengths to which you will go in order to avoid making any unpalatable conclusions

Looks like Boris wont be going anywhere since the UK rep to UN security council backed him to the hilt. 'No contradiction, fully consistent' etc. Her reasoning for all the 'highly likely/probably/general vague language' is the 'British judicial process that one has to be tried in a court etc and proven to be guilty If I gave a poo I would be embarrassed to be british right now.

Sorry jingos but the Russians just wiped the floor with ya, even corrected Boris on War and Peace and quoted Lewis Carroll (but also referenced midsomer murders...) Which brings us to the Russian infowars. What I've realised is they are

a) laughably bad at trolling as evidenced itt and the lol midsomer murders reference - who the f watches midsomer murders except braindead idiots who aren't paying attention anyway, and

b) we were doin alternative narratives waaaayyyyy before Putin et al, they just be nicking our ideas and undermining them re-selling back to us in troll form

BOIDS you are waaaay off the mark here. I have literally nothing to gain/lose/face to save etc by accepting there is/are a labour councillor/s/members/supporters whoever who are nasty little racists. I've personally not come across them directly but I'm open to the possibility they exist and judging by some of the more balanced assessments that have come out recently I am inclined to say there is definitely a problem to some extent.

I'd say on reflection this is to be expected since Labour has such an appalling record on foreign policy and pandering to racism when in government - though this is associated with the right wing of the party, not the left as is claimed at present. That said I accept that forms of anti-semitism exist on the left, often in quite nuanced forms relating to the association of Jewish people with the state of Israel. The solution is to educate, inform and debate ideas, to be open to new ideas and so on. This isn't work the gutter press/opportunist politicians are interested in being a part of or contributing to. I just refuse to entertain their little s*** parade.
(I add here as well, there is and has always been sexism on the left, often in forms of unconscious bias which reflects societal biases - the idea of the left being some perfect community is absurd)

But some of these anti-semitism accusations are so FOS they need exposing/contextualising/examining. It is frequently far right trolls, and some conservative activists have been caught with false accounts also

Re Russia - if the govt story ends up checking out then fine. But it is right to be skeptical, I marched with 2 million people and still Blair lied and started a war which killed millions. Right now the govt case for Russia is in tatters.

Kremlin AI is a nice nomenclature evolution from John from Leeds.

Deer Russian shill bots, we will give you a lot more lenience if you make us laugh.

oh i thought it was kremlin al, as in alfred

To be fair, these posts are pretty funny if you imagine Borat saying them.

Or Tomj.

That's not quite true (or at least depends on how you are using the word "Russia"). The inquiry said that:
- He was definitely killed by two FSB agents.
- There was a strong probability that the killing was approved by the head of the FSB.
- That the killing was probably approved by Vladimir Putin.

low count poster who turns up only to post pro Russia = 99.999% Shiill

I like the change of pace to ironical self reference though to try and triple level your way to legitimacy.

Given we have seen off the last two confirmed shills they must be sending in higher level shills now. Sorry, only the Boss shill will survive in this thread (maybe), then again I suspect Chezfarage of being the boss shill so who knows.

Its amazing that Tomj's level of conviction in the most unlikely explanation>>>>>>>>my level of conviction in the much more likely explanation, and I high a high level of conviction.

Russia meaning ordered by the Russian govt. This carries a greater weighting in the overall case given the forensics are so sketchy.
The whole thing is descending rapidly into farce if it wasn't there already. Eg. shut up and go away, Boris, Midsomer murders, dead Guinea pigs, dodgy policeman, no (confirmed) casualties, smeary door handle assassination technique.

Putin's been looking through his private collection of decadent Western pop records confiscated by the KGB, and came across this:

My only conviction is that the UK govt case is monumental turd as it stands. Its still possible that Putin and/or henchmen were behind it, whatever 'it' is. The true account of events isn't likely to follow the narrative of russian hit squad smearing nerve agent on door handle etc. And it's looking increasingly likely that the people weren't attacked with a nerve agent, or at least nothing that is of the standard commonly understood - no antidote, 10 times more powerful than sarin gas.

I haven't endorsed an alternative explanation. There isn't much point in speculating.

Pretty much exactly the m.o. they used after they shot down MH17.

They realise that there are many tomj's about who will choose absurd hills to die on.

woah slow down, just because a surface to air missile was shot at that plane doesn't mean they were trying to shoot it down. lets wait for the facts first shall we?

It's a common tactic used by Russia and as you say it was used during the shooting down of MH17. The idea is to throw out so much misinformation, rather than a coherent alternative explanation, that the idea of finding out the truth seems almost impossible. They then pounce on the version of events put forward by Western governments or media.

That's good news. I guess the dose will be upped next time.

Maybe they didn't read standard issue handbook smeary door handle technique carefully enough.

questions for you:

Do you believe a Russian hit squad smeared nerve agent on the skripals door handle in an attempt to kill either one or both of them?

Why have we had no photos of any victims?

Is it possible for a chemical weapon 10 times more powerful than vx gas to leave just 4* victims, 2 of whom are definitely fine, 1 is getting better and 1 is unknown?

Are you concerned by the contradictory messages coming from Boris and the FCO and the head of Porton Down re origin of the substance?

* a weird piece of information is that there was a 2nd unnamed police officer affected.

1) i've no idea how the weapon was deployed
2) privacy i expect
3) i'm not an expert on chemical weapons, so defer to those that are
4) no

boils down to this: i place my faith in western govts and institutions such as the bbc, you'd rather place yours in the kremlin. to each his own

It wouldn't be surprising given the complete **** up they made of the Litvenenko hit.

It's faith in the western government/institutions/Media vs lack of faith in it. Plus prior knowledge. What the kremlin says is a case of 'well they would say that' - it's almost entirely immaterial to what conclusions we should reach

This case is very different to the iraq war but there again our understanding of the WMD issue had nothing to do with what saddam had to say.

Nor, come to that, is it pro-may/tory to believe it was russia that done it. And none of us who believe it was russia, believed it because of anything boris said.