#2001
mt.real
Post rating: +
gahaha this is blowing up. suck it anglo-american axis*





* ahem i mean this is a serious geopolitical event and i have a well-reasoned and calm opinion about this unusual revelation,
#2002
Post rating: +
The first casualties of the new Cold War :’(
#2003
Post rating: ~
OPCW published their report on the Skripal incident.

https://20years.opcw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/s-1612-2018e.pdf

what it confirms is that there was indeed nerve agent poisoning (structure not disclosed) based on the samples collected by OPCW. it's very carefully worded, nothing about origin, state actors, whatever speculated in there.

State propaganda of the May regime spins this into:

The international chemical weapons watchdog has confirmed the UK's analysis of the type of nerve agent used in the Russian ex-spy poisoning.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons did not name the nerve agent as Novichok, but said it agreed with the UK's findings on its identity.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: "There can be no doubt what was used."

He added: "There remains no alternative explanation about who was responsible - only Russia has the means, motive and record."

The OPCW said it received information about the medical conditions of the Skripals and Det Sgt Nick Bailey, it collected their blood samples, and it gathered samples from the site in Salisbury.

Mr Johnson said the UK had invited the OPCW to test the samples "to ensure strict adherence to international chemical weapons protocols".

The OPCW does identify the toxic chemical by its complex formula but only in the classified report that has not been made public.

In its summary, the report notes the toxic chemical was of "high purity".

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Landale said: "This is understood to strengthen the argument that this substance came from Russia because it is more likely to have been created by a state actor with the capability to make the nerve agent."

The report does not name the source of the nerve agent, a subject which is beyond the remit of the inspectors.


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43741140

One interesting point from the OPCW report:"The TAV team notes that the toxic chemical was of high purity. The latter is concluded from the almost complete absence of impurities. " --> it was a rainy day and the samples on the door (or car or whatever is the current explanation) were collected only at least a few hours after the poisoning, this means that the compound is not easily hydrolyzed, that it probably was not a binary agent and that it is probably not shelved material from the nineties (where you would expect at least some degradation over 20 years even in a gov facility).

edit: also interesting, they do not confirm it was a nerve agent explicitly. However they mention the UK gov monitoring the victims acetylcholinesterase status which is a clear marker of a nerve agent-style poisoning

Edited by lenochodek ()

#2004
mt.real
Post rating: +
also

#2005
Post rating: +

https://www.rt.com/news/424149-skripal-poisoning-bz-lavrov/.
The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The Swiss center sent the results to the OPCW. However, the UN chemical watchdog limited itself only to confirming the formula of the substance used to poison the Skripals in its final report without mentioning anything about the other facts presented in the Swiss document, the Russian foreign minister added. He went on to say that Moscow would ask the OPCW about its decision to not include any other information provided by the Swiss in its report.

Lavrov said that the Swiss center that assessed the samples is actually the Spiez Laboratory. This facility is a Swiss state research center controlled by the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and, ultimately, by the country’s defense minister. The lab is also an internationally recognized center of excellence in the field of the nuclear, biological, and chemical protection and is one of the five centers permanently authorized by the OPCW.

The Russian foreign minister said that London refused to answer dozens of “very specific” questions asked by Moscow about the Salisbury case, as well as to provide any substantial evidence that could shed light on the incident. Instead, the UK accused Russia of failing to answer its own questions, he said, adding that, in fact, London did not ask any questions but wanted Moscow to admit that it was responsible for the delivery of the chemical agent to the UK.

The scandal erupted in early March, when former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in critical condition in the town of Salisbury. Top UK officials almost immediately pinned the blame on Russia.

Moscow believes that the entire Skripal case lacks transparency and that the UK is in fact not interested in an independent inquiry. "We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence, classifying all remaining materials and making a transparent investigation impossible," the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, said during a press conference on Friday.


theresa may pokemon go to the Hague

#2006
Post rating: ~
Wait so the OPCW just said that they “confirm the findings of the UK” but now the Russian foreign minister is saying it wasn’t a nerve agent at all? Was it an organophosphate or wasn’t it, I’m so confused
#2007
Post rating: ~

MarxUltor posted:

https://www.rt.com/news/424149-skripal-poisoning-bz-lavrov/.
The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical Weapons (OPCW).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Quinuclidinyl_benzilate#Alleged_use
interesting that this substance was also alleged (with no evidence) to have been used by The Monster Assad in 2013

#2008
Post rating: +
Lavrov himself suggests that the OPCW report says that the sample contained pure A-234 (the "Novichok" agent) but ALSO contains BZ + BZ related products.

The Russian story seems to be that the Skripals got poisoned with BZ, put into a coma and then A-234 was somehow planted. Considering the A-234 was high purity without degradation products from being in the environment that explanation is so far a reasonable match with the facts we have.

BZ is a non lethal deliriant incapacitating agent - "of a type developed by NATO states" but again any person with a decently equipped lab can cook up a batch. Interestingly BZ is an atropine like agent so it functions in basically the opposite way of organophosphate nerve agents like VX, sarin, a234 etc. Atropine is one of the antidotes used for nerve agent poisoning and I expect BZ to have the same function (except that the onset of effects is probably too slow to actually be a useful antidote for acute poisoning).

The opcw-related lab that allegedly detected the BZ + A234 samples is being suspiciously cryptic on twitter


IMO if OPCW actually found BZ, they made a very serious mistake by not including it in the public report. And I'm not sure if Lavrov would say this if he doesn't know it's in there according to the OPCW report


#2009
Post rating: +
If we can believe the information from the OPCW: Lavrov got caught lying about the BZ, which actually turned out to be in the positive control sample, and not even BZ but 3-quinuclidinol which is a BZ precursor and metabolite, and not present in any of the actual OPCW field samples. Maybe someone framed the Russian MFA by leaking incomplete information, but without a proper explanation he now has a deadly credibility issue for any further alternative explanations. From Lavrov's point of view this is an incredibly stupid gamble he was bound to lose, and I don't understand that he didn't realize he will be corrected within days.


As it was clearly shown in the detailed and technical presentation, we should not have an iota of doubt on the reliability of the system of the OPCW Designated Laboratories. The Labs were able to confirm the identity of the chemical by applying existing, well-established procedures. There was no other chemical that was identified by the Labs. The precursor of BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the control sample prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW Team in Salisbury. This chemical was reported back to the OPCW by the two designated labs and the findings are duly reflected in the report.


from OPCW director general
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-59/en/ecm5902_e_.pdf

Some notes:
-The OPCW director Ahmet Üzümcü is a former NATO representative but I believe their chain of custody procedures are quite watertight and the experimentalists not compromised.
-The fact they chose 3Q as the positive control is a bit unusual because it's not closely related to A-234 at all. However it has been used in positive control samples before to check the general procedure of labs
-This still doesn't prove the A234 was produced and/or delivered by Russia, but now Lavrov was caught lying it will be an uphill battle to convince anyone otherwise

#2010
Post rating: ~
Random question, does anyone here know anything about Belarus? I know literally nothing and no one ever talks about them.
#2011
Post rating: ~
I know that they are a country, and
#2012
YUNG JIRO AKA SHOWA STUNNA AKA
Post rating: ~
I've always been under the impression that Belarus was the least privatized/devastated former Soviet country post-dissolution. Interested too in more info
#2013
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#2014
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#2015
Post rating: +++++
i may have posted about this before, but a couple years ago my roommate was looking through my movie folder and asking me things while i was trying to read, so when he asked about come and see i told him it was a comedy. he spent christmas that year with his girlfriend's family, and when they were trying to find something to watch he noticed come and see on netflix or whatever and suggested that. they somehow made it half an hour in waiting for it to get funny.
#2016
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

Dimashq posted:

Random question, does anyone here know anything about Belarus? I know literally nothing and no one ever talks about them.



https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Arhizzone.net+belarus

https://rhizzone.net/forum/search/?action=search&keywords=belarus&author=&forum=0&search_in=all&sort_by=0&sort_dir=DESC&show_as=posts&search=Submit

#2017
Post rating: +
Come and See is incredible, a film about war that succeeds in depicting it as traumatic and harrowing, instead of attractive, vital, or desirably masculine. Like, anyone who says with a straight face that Full Metal Jacket is an “anti-war” movie is abjectly full of shit. That movie is nothing but macho mystification. A real “anti-war” movie about Vietnam would have to do some semblance of cinematic justice to the depredation that the US militarily inflicted on women, old men, and children who had no recourse to violence. There’s like this cinematic blind spot where so many films are either “war films” and exist in a hermetic universe of young men and combat, or else they take place in the civilian sphere where the ongoing war is a source of background dramatic tension that maybe occasionally imposes itself (like Au revoir les enfants). Come and See is important because it avoids that trap, in my opinion anyway.

Edited by Ruzbihan ()

#2018
Post rating: +
jaded us special ops nerd goes around murdering people, the twist is he does it because he wants to be able to afford a bigger car
#2019
Post rating: ~
thanks for the movie rec, actually had no idea it existed.
#2020
Post rating: +

Ruzbihan posted:

Come and See is incredible, a film about war that succeeds in depicting it as traumatic and harrowing, instead of attractive, vital, or desirably masculine. Like, anyone who says with a straight face that Full Metal Jacket is an “anti-war” movie is abjectly full of shit. That movie is nothing but macho mystification. A real “anti-war” movie about Vietnam would have to do some semblance of cinematic justice to the depredation that the US militarily inflicted on women, old men, and children who had no recourse to violence. There’s like this cinematic blind spot where so many films are either “war films” and exist in a hermetic universe of young men and combat, or else they take place in the civilian sphere where the ongoing war is a source of background dramatic tension that maybe occasionally imposes itself (like Au revoir les enfants). Come and See is important because it avoids that trap, in my opinion anyway.



probably posted a billion times but here it is anyway

#2021
[account deactivated]
#2022
Post rating: ~
there's also this happy accident which is amazing


#2023
Post rating: +


I watched Come and See yesterday, thanks for the recommendation. Despite how dark most of the movie was, the scene that I linked above, where the partisan group are taking a photo really stood out and was a really beautiful (and funny) scene. Soviet cinema is really something else, they had such a vastly different experience and attitude to the events of the 20th century that none of us can really comprehend and this movie is something that everyone must watch I think, just to catch a glimpse of it.
#2024
[account deactivated]
#2025
Post rating: ~

jansenist_drugstore posted:

come and see is a comedy


unlike your posts.

#2026
[account deactivated]
#2027
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
you seen this dolphin propaganda shit, it’s beyond parody, especially when the Kiev rep explains that it’s Actually about honesty in military build-up
#2028
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
For anyone who missed it: Ukraine had trained dolphins in the Black Sea to I guess blow up mines by running into them and so on, like a few different navies have? but they weren't using them for military missions. The Kiev government claims that when Crimea broke away, some of the dolphins refused to eat and starved to death because they were khokhol Rodnovery dolphins & smelled the Russian blood of their new handlers.

The general response back has been that animals in captivity often die during wartime from non-crazy-person causes such as shock and old age, to which the Kiev guy said that it doesn't really matter how the dolphins died, what matters is, the death of our elite dolphin troops underscores how we need a huge amount of military hardware from the West to make up for the loss. of the special forces Ukraine Navy SEAL dolphin strike force.
#2029
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
if you need a good example of begging the question, a recent one is the EC adding a rep from the Nazi-aligned Kiev government to a joint committee to “investigate” a supposed Russian plot to shoot down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Eichmann To Bring ‘Balance’ As Nuremberg Judge
#2030
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
Babchenko.
#2031
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko congratulated security services on a "brilliant operation" in "saving the life" of Babchenko. On his official Twitter account, Poroshenko said Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are becoming "stronger in counteraction to Russian aggression." He later met Babchenko, embracing the journalist, and posted footage of the encounter on Twitter.

“These threats are real,” Poroshenko said at the press conference. “Babchenko is real, and strong, and he’s my friend.”
#2032
[account deactivated]
#2033
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
corey's sig except the vamoosh is in babchenko's fake bullet wound
#2034
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"my biceps are real, strong, and they're my friend" as i inject synthol into my arm
#2035
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
if Russian super murderers are trying to kill you, but you lie down in a puddle of Halloween store blood & no one figures it out for 24 hours, the assassins guild officially leaves you alone forever and the president has to kiss you on the lips. It's the law
#2036
UNUSUALY COOL
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#2037
UNUSUALY COOL
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if communists TKing diplomats with Ableton is stego's feel good story this summer, Kiev man lies face down in food coloring to own the Russians is mine
#2038
[account deactivated]
#2039
Post rating: ~
ah, my favourite john oliver tactic, when they're presenting a story so transparently silly that they make a throwaway joke comparing it to spy fiction
#2040
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +

Petrol posted:

ah, my favourite john oliver tactic, when they're presenting a story so transparently silly that they make a throwaway joke comparing it to spy fiction



i've seen three segments total from his terrible show and literally every single had that in it lol