[Peace-discuss] Russiagate: OPCW's slide into untrustworthiness, irrelevance fueled by their support for US-based Russiagate

[J.B. Nicholson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm_gZGrGx0I -- RT's latest report on Navalny's 
condition, Germany's demands that Russia cooperate, Germany's unwillingness to 
sharing their evidence with Russia (despite Russia's requests of both Germany & 
OPCW), Russia's membership in the OPCW, and the seemingly coordinated delaying tactic 
Germany & the OPCW are playing by redirecting Russia's requests for evidence to the 
other (Germany -> OPCW and OPCW -> Germany), and conflicts over allegations of 
Navalny being poisoned with one of the Novichok (Russian for 'newcomer') poisons.

Russia is all but being accused of stalling and being obstinate when the evidence 
says that Russia was quite helpful in the early hours when Navalny needed life-saving 
assistance -- if Russia were the obstinate actor western media would have us believe, 
Navalny might be dead now. Russia is being threatened with even more sanctions 
ostensibly justified by Navalny's poisoning. This reads as clearly opportunistic; one 
person's suffering is no justification for taking revenge (or making economic war) on 
the poor people of a whole country.

This RT report is very interesting viewing for anyone who follows the ongoing 
baseless Russiagate claims because this episode is falling apart on analysis like the 
other Russiagate claims. Think of this as your chance to get in on the ground floor 
of what could turn out to be yet another Russiagate smear.

How Novichok poisons work is a central part of this story. But western powers are 
getting these claims about Novichok wrong:

- Novichok is said to be very powerful -- a small amount of the powder form (said to 
have been used in the Skripal poisonings) can kill multiple grown men, according to 
RT circa the Skripal and Sterling poisonings -- yet multiple people who are said to 
have come in contact with a Novichok poison have lived. Only one person, Dawn 
Sterling, died from (what we're told was) her exposure to one of the Novichok 
poisons. Sterling's death is in question because she might have had a weakened 
constitution from being a former heroin addict (it's not clear whether she or her 
partner was the addict, one of them was said to have been).

One of the most interesting parts of this video is the interview with Novichok 
co-creator Leonid Rink.

- There's no way to target killing just one person with the Novichok poisons, we're 
told, yet we're supposed to believe that is exactly what happened with Navalny. We're 
told that Navalny came into contact with the poison via a water bottle. Navalny 
posted a video to his Instagram account of his team rummaging through his Tomsk hotel 
room shortly after he fell ill. This included footage of 2 water bottles, his 
bedding, and other hotel furniture. We're told that Navalny's team wore surgical 
gloves and collected 'evidence' in plastic bags and passed these bags to the Germans. 
Regarding the harm to Navalny's team, if this had been a Novichok poisoning Rink 
said: "They [Navalny's team] definitely would get [poisoned with] something; they had 
just simple surgical gloves and that's it. And also, imagine a bottle that had traces 
of the substance on the outside; it wouldn't be a very smart person who would try to 
fill a bottle with such a dangerous liquid and spill it all down the sides creating a 
dangerous situation for everyone.".

- "Navalny wouldn't have been able to leave the hotel; that's if he really touched it 
or drank something [poisoned with it...]. [E]ven in small and not very toxic doses, 
Novichok provokes pupil contraction in such a way a person would be almost blind so 
could barely move. So even with only very mild exposure he [Navalny] wouldn't have 
been able to get on a plane. There are photos of him in the hotel, in the plane, in 
the Russian hospital, and yet we can't we can't see any of the symptoms. Poisoning 
[and] novichok are not words to use for this case."

-J