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For months now, Democrats and some Republicans, in their zeal
to topple the Trump administration, have been beating the drum against everything and
everyone connected with Russia. I’m
expecting any day now that caviar, borscht, and kvas will soon be subpoenaed in
Brighton Beach, by order of Special Prosecutor Mueller. If you can indict a ham sandwich then why not
borscht?
Anyway, there’s nothing to wax eloquent about regarding these
paroxysms of Russophobia. Suffice it to
say that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not apply here. The British have declared that Russia and
Putin have ordered the poisonings of former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his
daughter Yulia.
The U.S. and the rest
of the world has been expected to get in line behind the British in putting
this crime on the Russian Federation, and also on Putin’s doorstep.
Unless the British or the sabre-rattlers provide something ever remotely
resembling proof, there are good reasons for deep skepticism of the British
claims.
First of all, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the countries
involved suffered through a period of free-for-all where state assets could be
bought cheap. Everything and anything
could be bought. A Showtime documentary airing now shows shady underworld
characters buying helicopters, motorcycles, and even a submarine at unimaginably
low prices. It was like Germany before WWII, even worse. There was no economy except for foreign
dollars. I would expect that somewhere a terrorist or criminal group has some
really nasty and deadly material, even including Novochok, which was developed by the Russians.
Consider the following:
Novochok is not
just a single substance. It has several varieties and compositions, with varying
lethalities. Novochok 5 is said to be
the deadliest. All are said to be binary
– meaning they need an activator or catalyst to become active. So now the story is someone activated the
substance and put in on the Skripal’s doorknob?
No security cameras operating? No one else (like the postman or a
visitor) touched the doorknob? For how long would the substance be an effective
killer? I
British first reports virtually swore that the Kripals were
poisoned in the park where they were found. Months later, the claim is that a
deadly nerve agent was put on the doorknob of their house. I don’t know how far the park is from the
Kripal house but if they were poisoned at the home, and the poison was to be so
deadly as to kill almost immediately, how did the Kripals manage a walk in and
to the park? We might get some answers
since Yulia Kripal has come out of her coma and is reportedly being interviewed
on those matters.
Russia does not deny the nerve agent was developed in a lab
of the former Soviet Union. British
security services say it was developed in the town of Shikhany, southeast of Moscow. The Russians say that their former stocks of
chemical weapons were not stored there. "All the bases where chemical weapons
were stored are well-known,” says Mikhail Babich, a former chairman of the Kremlin
commission for chemical disarmament,
The British newspaper “The Times” reports the
British defense lab analyzing the nerve agent could not say for certain the substance
came from Russia. So why are we hearing
this now? All of America has been bombarded with news that the British were 100
percent certain the substance came from Russia.
Several former Russian scientists including Vil
Mirzayanov say the Novichok group of nerve agents were invented by scientist
Pyotr Kirpichev in Shikhany. This is very
likely true, but that is old news.
Mirzayanov is a welcome defector who has long been living in a million
dollar house in ivy-covered Princeton, New Jersey. The scientist-teacher also said it was
difficult to establish where the poison came from.
Vladimir Uglev, one of the chemists who worked on the nerve
agent, told one newspaper that components to produce the weapon could be bought
in several countries. Isn’t this what happened with nuclear weapons in general? Once the secrets are out, anyone might be
able to get their hands on the formula. Thugs, criminals, terrorist factions,
non-state operators, the list is long.
The really dangerous thing about blaming Putin and Russia
for the poisoning is that everyone seems to accept the British version as if
handed down from God. And the west is
going down this blind alley of sanctions, hostility, revised foreign policy,
and accusations without any real evidence?
Why not give the Russians a sample of the substance for
their own analysis as they have requested?
We seem to believe Russian scientists are competent only after they have
defected. But why did the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons bow to political pressure
and decline to investigate the matter independently? That was also requested by the Russians – an independent
inquiry. So much for ‘global chemical
watchdogs,’ as the organization is described.
