Jane Merrick @janemerrick23
A brilliant thread from a real expert which should tell the people still defending Putin to, as it were, go away and shut up
RTB - Aka the one where Corbynite conspiracy theorists meet a chemistry expert:
CorbynSupporters50+ @corbyn50plus
The Novichok Story Is Indeed Another Iraqi WMD Scam:
www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/the-novichok-story-is-indeed-another-iraqi-wmd-scam/
Clyde Davies @deadlyvices
^"Yet now, the British Government is claiming to be able instantly to identify a substance which its only biological weapons research centre has never seen before and was unsure of its existence. "
You wouldn't recognise a mass spectrometer if it hit you smack in your stupid gob.^
Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg
And how does the mass spectrometer tell you the sample was made in Russia if you don't have an example of a Russian made one to compare? I shall listen to your reply with genuine interest, despite your completely unprovoked aggression.
Clyde Davies @deadlyvices
So now you're going to lecture me on chemistry? This ought to be interesting. Let me give you some background to all of this. When I heard who the victim was, and that it was a nerve agent, I immediately suspected what the chemical formula was likely to be 1/
This is because I knew about the 'novichok' agents. They were developed in the 70s and 80s by Vil Mirzayanov among others, who now lives as an exile in the US. He was so horrified that he went public an eventually to jail in Russia 2/
'Novichok' however is a generic term given to a family of organophosphorus acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. They look like this. The structure on the right is A-232 3/
VX in comparison looks like this. It has a different chemical structure. Just by looking at the structure, a chemist can tell you what the mass, infrared, NMR, UV and other spectra are likely to look like with a high degree of confidence 4/
This is because chemistry is a science, and sciences differentiate themselves from other kinds of discipline by allowing people to make testable predictions. It's a branch of inductive reasoning. 5/
These look like simple chemical compounds but in reality they are difficult to make safely. One tiny drop, about the size of a pinhead, of VX is enough to kill a healthy adult. These compounds are reputedly ten times more deadly 6/
Therefore anybody undertaking to make them has to take extreme precautions. If you just wanted to kill someone because you wanted them out of the way, why not shoot them? 7/
And unless you were a state, with the access to the kind of facilities this kind of chemistry would demand, why would you want to take the risks associated? Unless of course you wanted to leave an unmistakable and brutal calling card 8/
The Russians have proven past form with these compounds. Then we can triangulate the motive and opportunity against the means. The motive was to send a clear message to Russians at home that opposing Putin was high risk 9/
And to the UK that this little country, with post-imperial delusions of adequacy, was increasingly isolating itself globally by leaving the EU and could likely not call on the US for any meaningful help 10/
Your entire article is riddled with ridiculous claims. One of the most egregious is 'It is a scientific impossibility for Porton Down to have been able to test for Russian novichoks if they have never possessed a Russian sample to compare them to.' 11/
This is plainly bollocks. All molecules with the same formula have exactly the same properties and will exhibit the same characteristics as any other. Motive, opportunity and the particularly brutal and calculated means all point to Russia. 12/
And this other statement "If they exist at all, Novichoks were allegedly designed to be able to be made at bench level in any commercial chemical facility." Really? All of them? Some might have binary precursors, but even those are pretty vile in their own right 13/
Take sarin for example, which uses methyl phosphonyl difluoride as a binary precursor. This is an extremely unpleasant chemical and the reaction produces HF, which is a dangerous and corrosive byproduct 14/
Both those novichok structures would use very similar precursors and produce the same ^byproducts. The idea of some foreign assassin mixing up the ingredients in a hotel bedroom is risible 15/
Motive, means, opportunity: the essential components of any murder case. I've explained the means ad nauseam by now. The motive - especially given the victims - and opportunity, triangulate very well to the Russians 16/^
In my book, if something looks like a duck, swims and flies like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a bloody duck. Why in God's name some people have to argue the essential duckiness of a duck is utterly baffling 17/.
Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg
Would't the world be a lovely place if everyone just fell in with your right wing world view. And for somebody who lectures so insistently on scientific logic, you are peculiarly unaware of Karl Popper's swans.
Clyde Davies @deadlyvices
I'm not right-wing, you fool. I've voted Labour for the past thirty five years of my life, well before Corbyn arrived on the scene and hopefully well after he's gone. Now, if you wish to play the ball instead of the man, I'd like to hear your counter arguments
RTB - Merrick got in response to linking to the thread:
Shuan Longbeard #PCPEU @shuan_longbeard
Love this,. prime example of British media luvvies being used to silence gov critics
1) nobody is defending Putin, we are just not so gullible to believe what you and the gov tell us
2) Why are you not asking when Maginsky powers will be brought in
Jane Merrick @janemerrick23
My MI6 handler has told me to retweet this
To summarise.
Experts are all right wing (you will see other examples lining up behind Corbyn on this one if you look hard) This is because critical thinking is a right wing thing. Obviously. - attack on democracy and how we use enlightened reason to argue a point.
Journalists are all in allegiance with Theresa May. This is obviously why she got such a huge majority at the last election, and every newspaper article licks her arse. - attack on the concept of the free press.
And finally we have the lack of understanding of how the legal system works and how in any criminal investigation you need to think about the evidence, the motive and the opportunity and where that leads you. In this case, none of it matters because of a completely unrelated case some years ago, which is nothing whatsoever like this - this is a misunderstanding of how you would go about bringing a legal case.
These people are unwittingly (or perhaps deliberately) going after the three pillars at their foundation.
The spectacle is quite something.
I'm not a chemistry professor. But like Clyde Davies I'd love to know their alternative explanations.