Things Noticeable this week

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

Sadly, this is just the kind of government generated story you'd expect to find in a paper like The Times. So, what's wrong with a degree of doubt when there is no evidence of any sort being presented? I have many reservations and I'm certainly not a Russian secret agent, a Corbyn supporter, or easily swayed by obvious media propaganda.

Where do you get Novichok A-232 these days? It isn't as though Russia is trying very hard to cover her tracks.

[rupertramjet]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Where do you get Novichok A-232 these days? It isn't as though Russia is trying very hard to cover her tracks.

TESCO BOGOF deal?

[Greenman]

Originally Posted by bloke57

He also speaks with a refined accent in a few cartoons with Bugs Bunny - Operation Rabbit and Compressed Hare - there may be others.

Yes very true for example "...and I'm a genius whereas you could hardly pass the entrance exams to kindergarten" and he even brings his own fold up door!

I find it a bit rich that Australian cricket haven't had the decency to fine Steve Smith and David Warner for their part in the ball-tampering scandal yet Cameron Bancroft who actually did the deed is fined 75% of his match fee. I also remember that Joe Root was accused of ball-tampering in the Ashes by Aussie players yet no proof could be found.

Yesterday the 164th Boat Race took place on the Thames and Cambridge took all 4 races, the main races for men and women and the reserve races fir Blondie & Goldie(Cambridge) never been done before.

Went to an 18th birthday party for a friend of ours' daughter last night and you couldn't help noticing these girls wearing very thin dresses, shorts & tall boots or just something akin to a vest- it wasn't warm last night either. There was a disco later, but we left before that but we are hoping for a slice of the cake(Harry Potter books and the Golden Snitch) later this week.

[otokonomidori]

Originally Posted by Greenman

....you couldn't help noticing these girls wearing very thin dresses, shorts & tall boots or just something akin to a vest- it wasn't warm last night either.....

I bet you were sweating though in the presence of all that unsullied [we hope] pulchritude.

[Greenman]

A little out of my age range some would be more like daughters to me - and I never sweat or get excited - those days are long gone.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

Where do you get Novichok A-232 these days? It isn't as though Russia is trying very hard to cover her tracks.

I could easily agree with you and would say that there are clearly grounds for looking towards Russia as the home of the culprits. However, I don't doubt there are a number of sufficiently good laboratories in the UK, US or other industrialised nations who could reproduce this particular agent if they really wanted to.

Hopefully, there will soon be some positive verification. However, is there any method of saying for certain that the agent was manufactured in a Russian laboratory?

I simply don't like this constant desire to turn guesses into claims of fact. Yes, it might well be the FSB who undertook the attack and the finger of suspicion is pointing in their direction, but lets see some proof and a reason for doing this before going any further. Sergei Skripal does appear to have been involved with Russian criminals and perhaps they were responsible? Maybe it was renegade members of the FSB with grudges? Who knows what happened as HMG is simply expecting us to go along with whatever they say and not providing any solid evidence.

[Puhbear69]

Carles Puigdemont, former Catalan president, detained in Germany

Catalonia's ex-leader Carles Puigdemont has been detained by German police acting on a European arrest warrant.

Mr Puigdemont, who is wanted in Spain for sedition and rebellion, was held crossing from Denmark on the way to Belgium, his lawyer said.

Mr Puigdemont had been on a visit to Finland since Thursday.

He has been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since Catalonia's parliament unilaterally declared independence from Spain in October.

The charges of rebellion and sedition that Mr Puigdemont faces in Spain could result in 30 years in prison.

He slipped out of Finland on Friday before authorities could arrest him.

"The president was going to Belgium to put himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian justice," his spokesman Joan Maria Pique said.

German police said that Mr Puigdemont was detained by a highway patrol in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, which borders Denmark.

Tensions in Catalonia are very high and its separatist leaders abandoned plans to name a new president following the arrest of the latest candidate, Jordi Turull, on Friday.

Crowds of protesters had clashed with police in Barcelona on Friday night after Spain's Supreme Court ruled 25 Catalan leaders should be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state. Mr Turull was among five people taken into custody in fresh arrests.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43532217
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Shame upon him who thinks evil upon it.

Usually the German authorities aren't having any clue, who is crossing the boarder to Germany; what they are having impressible demonstrated in case of several militant Islamic terrorists in the past.

The federal police (!) has stopped Carles Puigdemont on the Highway A7 in Schleswig Holstein back to Belgium.

(I suppose, he crossed the boarder with his original passport - opposed to the Islamic terrorists.)

[scoundrel]

If this was an isolated incident then I might be a little bit more receptive, but it isn't. The incident conforms with a very well established pattern which goes back at least as far as 1978 and the ricin tipped umbrella murder on Waterloo Bridge. The FSB have used this method in Chechnya and other places, not just here. Remember the dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushenko in Ukraine during their 2004 election campaign as well. You appear to believe there is a reasonable doubt, but I don't think there is.

[Brecht]

One of the creators of the Novichok agent, Russian-born chemist Vil Mirzayanov, published a book in the mid-90s that included the formula and thus made it possible for everyone with a training in chemistry to produce Novichok.

Obvsiously the British clown government thinks the British citizens are stupid enough to believe that the Russians are even more stupid to assassinate the Skripals right before a major election and an economically important event, the impending FIFA World Cup, without covering their tracks.

Apparently Theresa Bond (IQ 007) tries to distract the British public from her own disasters. She and that moron Boris Johnson are in deep shit already but are willing to sink deeper. Without a shred of evidence for their claims, they presume to provoke a major international crisis that could escalate quickly. Even the police deny that there's any evidence that could tie the Russians to the attempted murder in Salisbury. Besides, the investigation is facing serious obstruction from the British government.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Puhbear69

[B][SIZE="5"]

Tensions in Catalonia are very high and its separatist leaders abandoned plans to name a new president following the arrest of the latest candidate, Jordi Turull, on Friday.

Crowds of protesters had clashed with police in Barcelona on Friday night after Spain's Supreme Court ruled 25 Catalan leaders should be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state. Mr Turull was among five people taken into custody in fresh arrests.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43532217
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Shame upon him who thinks evil upon it.

Usually the German authorities aren't having any clue, who is crossing the boarder to Germany; what they are having impressible demonstrated in case of several militant Islamic terrorists in the past.

The federal police (!) has stopped Carles Puigdemont on the Highway A7 in Schleswig Holstein back to Belgium.

(I suppose, he crossed the boarder with his original passport - opposed to the Islamic terrorists.)

It was reported on Friday in the BBC that Mr Puigdemont was in Helsinki, though why he was there was not made clear. In view of the European arrest warrant I am not sure what his options really were. Any airport or ferry terminal would check his travel documents, at least his ticket, and this would surely alert the staff on the computer that he was wanted. He couldn't cross a normal border checkpoint with the Russian Federation and even if he did, would the Russian Federation be all that welcoming in view of their own separatist problems?

The Schengen agreement allows people to drive around the common travel area pretty much unchecked. I was never stopped on a border except to pay a motorway toll on either of the two occasions I rode to Italy from the Channel ports. But if it was known in Germany that Mr Puigdemont was in Finland and had shown the Finnish police a clean pair of heels, any motorised journey back to his sanctuary in Belgium can only pass via Denmark into Germany. It is then down to the German authorities to decide whether they are going to keep a lookout for him. Evidently they decided that they would.

I was mildly amused to note the discomfort of the SNP administration in Edinburgh, who have shown support for the declaration of independence in Catalonia, among the very few who have, and who will now preside over the Scottish police as they arrest Mr Puigdemont's education minister, Professor Clara Ponsati. Ms Ponsati is presently holding a chair at the University of St Andrews, but I suspect that, unlike Mr Puigdemont, she hasn't got the option to drive off. Maybe she might hitch a ride on a fishing boat and reach Belgium that way, but otherwise she will either surrender to a police station as she seems to suggest, or the police will find her. Either way, Nicola Sturgeon will say whatever she wants to say, but she will do nothing.