Friday 16 March 2018

The Mafia are branching out.

On the recent Salisbury poisoning, Colonel Korbyn, Assistant First Directorate, UK district,  suggested the attempted murder might have been by criminal Russian elements.

Image result for russian mafia
These guys look like highly trained nerve agent assassins.

Can anyone think of any Mafia organisation that has a weapons grade, bio-chemical research facility. Of a kind of which there are less than ten in the world?
That they have a scientific staff.With some of the best brains in their field. And assistants. Guards. Power supplies. Hazchem environments..The whole criminal in a volcano villain thing.




Really? Is it remotely likely?

No. some say, that would be absurd. And instead say the Mafia purchased this exotic, extremely rare, extremely well guarded, highly monitored, highly controlled, highly secure substance from someone in the base. Maybe like Newman did in Jurassic Park.
 Image result for jurassic park newman

I suppose so.
It MIGHT have been Mossad.
The CIA.
ALIENS.
Or Joey from Friends.

Why not? 

 If you aren't going to offer any motive or any method, then you could, conceivably, blame anyone.
 It MIGHT have been me.
 My Nan went to Leningrad in 1986. Who knows what she brought back inside the 'supposed' gifts of Russian Dolls and the Sputnik paperweight?

Image result for sputnik toy

So, assuming the Russian {or, Korbyn really suspects, The Israeli} mafia, could buy, steal or make chemical nerve agents so secret we only recently found out they exist at all, why would they want to?
All the high risk, high cost expense to procure weapons grade toxins, so that when
'Miki the Frog, Koromski' absconds with half a million Roubles, he can get whacked in a way which doesn't identify the mafia?

My Mafia knowledge isn't great. But I'm fairly sure Al Capone wasn't overly troubled about gunning down his rivals in a garage, in daylight, using Thompson .45 Police sub machine guns.

Why?
Because
1} He wanted everyone to know he'd done it.
2}he already owned the police chiefs and judges to ensure he wouldn't be caught. And if accidentally caught, wouldn't be convicted.

And there are dozens and dozens more stories just the same.

So the theory, which is absurd, has to move to, well the Mafia want to frame Putin for some reason that we cannot guess why. But its up to YOU to prove they didn't! We are just making suggestions...

Someone I knew personally. Who did a property deal with a former business partner of mine. And with his proceeds, he went to Moscow. Got involved with the Russian mob. Found dead on the floor, in his Moscow apartment, with holes in his head. My partner identified the body and sorted out his stuff.
No Polonium. No cesium 137 radiating the building. Just shot in the face, for some reason, that no one knew, except him and the mob. And they didn't even take the cash from his wallet.

{Which, I was told, is so everyone knows it was a hit. Not a botched burglary. And, the money in the wallet at death, would have been far more than when discovered. Just to ensure the homicide squad did a really half assed job on the case.}

That is how the criminal world operate.

They don't concern themselves with managing to procure highly secret, highly toxic, highly dangerous nerve agents from military lockdown, in order to bump off a former GRU colonel who was swapped to the west many years ago.

Its childish to even imagine they would.

*****


On a separate point, but relevant.

I recently got around to listening to Vincent Bugliosi's audiobook,  Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
I've put it off for a number of years because it's 32 hours long. Even on my 4 hour car journeys, that's a stretch.

Bugliosi was a lawyer, who died only recently. He wrote this forensic examination of the Kennedy Assassination, and all of the conspiracy theories floated he could find. And he demolished every one. One by one. Some just to the point of looking very unlikely. But most to the point of  utter destruction.

Reclaiming History Bugliosi 1st-ed-2007 WWNorton.jpg

My prior Kennedy knowledge came from the Martin Sheen Kennedy film. Oliver Stone's epic JFK. And another documentary I must have seen. And the TV dramatisation 'trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.' 
I would say I thought, before the book, that there was maybe a 40% chance someone, somewhere, was also involved in the assassination. Because of ..like..how Oswald was conveniently killed. And the rifle had a bent scope and was a piece of crap. And Oswald was a spy for Russia. And how did Ruby just happen to be in the basement when Oswald came out for transfer. And the magic bullet. And 'back..and to the left..back and to the left"..and all that.

Thirty minutes into this audio book, I'm 100% convinced it was Oswald. Alone. And he was killed by Ruby, alone. And NO-ONE else was involved. He decided, maybe three days before, he was going to shoot the president. And that's why the shooting is not the most skillfully executed of plans.

Why? 
Because all the evidence is there. Evidence that I had never heard about before. Events and situations that have been willfully ignored, or altered, to make a conspiracy.

Evidence like, for instance, on the morning of the shooting Oswald, for the first time ever, removed his wedding ring and put into a cup on his wife's dresser. The notoriously short of cash Lee-Harvey also left all of his worldly cash and a note in the cup saying 'Take care of the children. Buy them whatever they want.'
Six or seven people saw the gunman in the window of the book depository before the shooting. One witness even pointed him out to his wife saying 'Look at that secret service guy up there."
And there are hundreds more bits of info just like this. And the links to the people who gave this info and testified to Warren Commission. Statements from police etc. etc.

So, thirty minutes in, I'm convinced. When the police arrived at the friend's house his wife was staying at and they asked' Does Lee have a rifle?' She said 'Yes. He keeps it in the garage.'
She knew he had a rifle. He'd asked her if he could keep it there. 
Oswald was arrested with two different I.D.documents in diferent names. One of them, in the name of the person who purchased the mail order rifle.
 And a revolver. A revolver that was later found to have killed officer Tippit. A murder that was witnessed by twelve people. Who mostly picked him out of three police lineups over then next two days.
And the first thing Oswald was charged with. 

So, why listen to another 31.5 hours if I'm convinced it was Oswald?
 Because it was compelling. And, mightily embarrassing to hear my own theories taken to pieces so skillfully.

Just two for-instances. 

If, as some have claimed, Oswald was a Mafia Hitman, why was he applying for jobs in the weeks before he was due to kill the President? Jobs that would move him from his strategic sniper hole in the Book Depository building, to a different location in Dallas where no presidential motorcade would pass by?

And when he got the job at the Texas School Book Depository it was for a general warehouse person. And the TSBD co had TWO building in which they sorted the books. 

In addition to its building at Elm and Houston, the Texas School Book Depository Company maintained a second warehouse at 1917 Houston. Several blocks north of the main building, the short four-story structure was well removed from the parade route, half-hidden on an unpaved section of Houston. 
Oswald's supervisor, Roy Truly, told the Warren Commission that he had had the option to assign Oswald to either building on his first day at work. 

"I might have sent Oswald to work [there]... Oswald and another fellow reported for work on the same day [October 15] and I needed one of them for the depository building. I picked Oswald."

That entry is from Wikipedia. Its in the Warren Commission files, and the files of the Dallas Police of course. But also on Wikipedia. Not that you'd ever know to look for it, unless you had a reason to do so.

Our readers here do love a conspiracy. But I was genuinely embarrassed to think how utterly foolish I had been to even briefly consider that the CIA. The FBI. The Dallas Police. The Press. The Secret Service. The Warren Commission. The Doctors at Dallas. The autopsy doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Robert Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson. The IRS. J. Edgar Hoover. The Mafia. The KGB. Castro. The Free Cubans. The US military. Had somehow, or some part of them, all conspired to shoot the nation's youngest president.

 How would you even hold that meeting? How would you arrange those people to meet to discuss their plans. And not just their plans but the cover up afterwards. For fifty years. In the age before the internet. Before computers. And who is in charge? Who funds. Where does the money come from. Where does it go? 
And why do it at all?

{The autopsy doctors are key in conspiracy theories. They have to be part of the plot as they disguise the front head wound from the grassy knoll. They disguise or conceal the other bullet wounds from other gunmen.}

In actual fact Jackie Kennedy was asked by a secret service man which hospital did she want the autopsy performed at. She said she didn't know. And the Secret Service man said it would be best a military hospital. And Jackie chose the Navy hospital. Because the President served in the navy in WW2. But his other family members were army. Jackie could have said 'the nearest.' 
It was partial chance she chose the navy hospital. She might have said anything. Might have said Vermont. Her husband's brains were still across her face and dress. As can be seen in the swearing in photo with Lyndon Johnson and when she leaves the plane in Washington.
 She refused to get changed until at the White House.


It was also chance which doctors were called. Not total chance,of course. But if you've just killed the president, you wouldn't have asked the First Lady at all. You'd have taken the body to your waiting men, at your destination,  to do their work. Without her involvement at all.
She was in shock. She wouldn't know as next of kin it was her decision alone to make.
 


33 comments:

Steven_L said...

Can anyone think of any Mafia organisation that has a weapons grade, bio-chemical research facility ... the whole villain in a valance ...?"

Silicon Valley, I'm telling you BQ, the likes of Zuckerberg and his bitch pull all the strings now.

Electro-Kevin said...

What I don't get is this then.

Why would Putin assassinate a traitor so messily and recklessly other than to signal to Britain that "we can fight a dirty war against you" ?

So why does he deny it when called out ?

Weapons can get in the wrong hands. We've been to war with backward states over WMDs.

I would prefer denial and passive aggression on our part right now.

I would prefer May standing up to the EU and cultural Marxism rather than Russia.

- Get fracking

- finance the army

Signal to Putin. Signal to cultural Marxists. Signal to the EU.



Anonymous said...

The situation you are describing is not "mafia" such as the Italian or South American versions but Kleptocracies. No longer the preserve of banana republics, these oligarchs are now operating openly and in support of each other. How else could Trump buy America.

Anonymous said...

This site has a good 3D reconstruction of the Kennedy assassination, based on the Zapruder film.

http://www.jfkfiles.com/index.html

His conclusion is also that Oswald did it on his own.

Don Cox

Anonymous said...

Most droll BQ - although there have been several incidents of 'death by cesium-137' in Russia - usually placed in the back of an office chair, though on one occasion in the side door pocket of a car, IIRC the driver lost a leg.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/radevents2.html

dearieme said...

The Kennedy theory I like best is that Oswald's shots caused such panic among JFK's security detail that one of them accidentally discharged his pistol, finishing Kennedy off.

As for conspiracy theories, surely among the sane the great worry about the official story is that Ruby bumped off Oswald? To keep a conspiracy secret you need few people involved, or the key player dead, or both. Any alleged conspiracy that needs a cast of thousands is intrinsically unlikely especially in a blabbermouth country like the US.

Anyway, the Salisbury case: we, the public, have no evidence. If the key argument is that only the Russkis could have done it, I laugh dismissively. My labours in the organic synthesis labs taught me how quickly book-learning can be put into effect.

Meantime, in a world of alleged conspiracies, maybe I should take seriously this conspiracy-minded chap.
http://www.unz.com/article/russian-to-judgement/

Bill Quango MP said...

Radiation poisoning in Russia is certainly not unheard of. At one time it was said some enterprising criminals realised the lorry park at Chernobyl contained thousands of private cars and military and state trucks and equipment of all kinds. And was a good source of spare parts for soviet and post soviet vehicles.

That they were highly radioactive didn't bother those canibalising the parts.

The Top Russian mafia could, if they wished, secure some radioactive elements.
But secret, TOP SECRET - Highest category, classified nerve agents? Why? Why bother?

Don Cox - I shall look at that. Thanks.
One of the embarrassing 'lawyer' questions asked of the conspiracy theories for more than one gunman is
"If there were more gunshots, where did the bullets go? If the bullet that hits Kennedy, does not also hit Governor Connoly, then where does it go?
No other bullets or bullet marks have ever been found. Not on any person. Not in the limousines. Not on the street or in the walls. The shot from 'the grassy knoll' if it missed, or passed through Kennedy, would end up in the crowd across the way.

SL - Facebook is the new Mafia - They could blackmail all of us with ease.

EK - The other side of your question also applies, if it wasn't the Russians, why would someone else do the murder in such a messy and hostile and provocative way?

There are theories for why Putin would do it.They don't seem particularly plausible. But the arguments that 'so it wan't the Russians..it was..XXX" or ewven less plausible.

Electro-Kevin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Electro-Kevin said...

"EK - The other side of your question also applies, if it wasn't the Russians, why would someone else do the murder in such a messy and hostile and provocative way?"

To cause a shit storm - which this most certainly has.*

I'm no conspiracist but nor do I buy the "It could only come from Putin" line.

If only for diplomatic reasons we should not be so certain.



* I was close to the end of a short standby turn (a rare thing for me to be on) and one of the females I was covering had issues over childcare because her hubby is in the army and was called in at short notice.

Mrs E-K was not happy.

Anonymous said...

Your JFK comments reminded me of the week or so it took me, back in the sixties, to plough through a borrowed copy of "Rush to Judgment" [sic] by Mark Lane, Lee Harvey Oswald's attorney. Although I was only a callow youth at the time, even I was not impressed by the practice of adding (or multiplying) various wild speculations together in order to produce a "credible theory" about who killed Kennedy.

On a slight tangent, it's a medically-proven fact that high consumption of "skunk" cannabis, the much more powerful variant of what we used to call "dope" back in the day, greatly increases the user's risk of developing life-long psychological damage such as schizophrenia. (I've had 2 work colleagues whose bright, teenaged, skunk-using sons became drop-outs this way.) Could this type of damage perhaps account for the increase in sightings of UFOs and Chemtrails, let alone a willingness to believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked? And think of what a government could get away with on a permanently-confused population if say, it were to legalise the sale and use of cannabis. Or oxytocin for that matter.

Anonymous said...

My young daughter has also seen a bright friend, whose mum didn't seem to mind his teenage use, wreck his mental stability (and future career) by skunk use. That stuff is so damn strong it should be illegal.

Electro-Kevin said...

I've seen ordinary cannabis do this to people too. Heavy use, of course and not everyone who uses it. They tended to be heavy drinkers too, to be fair.

Bill Quango MP said...

There is some evidence for the change of society's behaviour due to drugs.
America has been awash with guns since 1630.
Yet the common school shootings of today did not occur until the 1960s.
Freaky beatniks saw plenty of UFOs.

Personally, i think the modern ultra paranoia, where only a handful still trust the government to tell them what day it is, stems in the USA from the triple horrors of the Kennedy Assassination. The Vietnam war and Watergate lies and cover-up.

And in the UK directly from the endless 'black is white' New labour spin. And, the BIG LIE, of Iraq.

We looked, many years ago now, on this blog, on what caused so very many UK families to refuse to inoculate their children. The MMR crisis began in 1998. before the spin was even known to be spin. But it kicked off in 2002/3. Partly,as Tony Blair would not say if his child had had the triple dose.

Across the UK inoculation rates fell from 92% to 80%. And in the London boroughs of lewisham, lambeth and southwark it was down to 65%.

What is interesting about the MMR case is the doctors who put out the report have been struck off. There was zero credibility to the report. prosecutions took place.
All the messages of need and consequences by the medics was proved correct.

But the public, rather than remember the time the politicians begged them to listen for their own safety, just say "yeah..but ..Iraq..That was a lie."

And also, linked to our Russian story, people forget about what actually occurred in the Iraq run up.
The weapons experts - Hans Blix and pals, were repeatedly saying they had NO evidence of chemical weapons. Its why the EU wasn't convinced of any need for action.

So those weapons experts people today are saying lied to us about Iraq so can't be trusted, actually, never did.

Electro-Kevin said...

American gun laws were made in the days of the single shot muzzle loader. No doubt drugs are involved but also due to guns designed specifically for rampage killing and the fantasies that must cross the owner's minds when mum's downstairs cooking tea.

Electro-Kevin said...

I'm saying that we have (had) enough lee way to give Russia an obstensible benefit of the doubt, avoid confrontation now, cut dependancy on them and prepare for confrontation in the future.

Steven_L said...

I don't see the big issue anyway. It's not like there are a load of British defectors hiding out in Russia we can retaliate against.

If Russian defectors want to live here in freedom they have to accept the risk Putin will assassinate them, he's a powerful person. The only alternative is some form of house arrest or life in the secure section of an institution.

Nobody forced these people to live a life of notoriety, they are the authors of their own misfortune and I honestly can't see why ordinary folk should give two hoots about what happens to them.

Anonymous said...

"Why would Putin assassinate a traitor so messily and recklessly...?"

Putin did not carry out the attempted murders himself. Agents of the FSB did, as they have carried out similar previous crimes in the UK and elsewhere, more or less with impunity. (So not "recklessly", as far as Putin is concerned.)

As for "messily", the aim was to murder the traitor (which answers your "why" question)using a method which would cause a lingering death, much like the polonium used on a previous occasion. This would also serve to discourage anyone else thinking of spying against Russia. On this occasion, the agents appeared to have sprayed it more widely than would have been planned -- perhaps through haste, or because of finding more limited access to the targets.

One witness in Salisbury on the day saw a woman wearing a sars-proof mask (as used in the bird-flu epidemic)and carrying a bag, outside the door of a town-centre coffee shop. A separate witness saw a man with a hood, and a mask on the lower part of his face, hurrying past him. Each of these were in the area at the time. Evidential at least, and worth noting.

The Russian FSB had the motive, means and opportunity. Putin, or his spy-chiefs would have given the orders. No-one else had any such motive to kill a former Russian double-agent, and in such a way.


Anonymous said...

EK: only a few incautious people are likely to assert that "It could only come from Putin". Rather, what seems to be the consensus across several generally responsible allied countries is that Putin/Russia are very much the prime suspects, for a variety of solid reasons. It seems hardly likely to be paranoia, though some of the alternative (conspiracy) theories are tinged with paranoia.
Re the USA and guns, I know of no firearm "designed specifically for rampage killing", and you do not address BQ's point, made many times before, that the availability of guns per se is not the cause of rampage killings, since as he reminds us these are pretty much unknown prior to the 1960s. Indeed, one can draw a UK parallel. Serious "gun control" measures only date from the 1920 Firearms Act, prior to which gun crime was in any case at proportionately lower levels than today: these measures were ramped up progressively in stages, and were even more onerous by the time the first mass shooting occurred here at Hungerford in 1987... Until 1936 (IIRC) fully automatic weapons could be owned in UK - I know of no instance of their being used here in the commission of crime before that time, though in the 1980s druggies were using sub-guns for their turf wars. Go figure...

Electro-Kevin said...

The .22 calibre automatic rifle was for laying down optimal fire power in a spray pattern. Whereas the WW1 Enfield (British, only used as an example) was really a high calibre sniper rifle to be directed at one person at a time.

That change took place in several theatres - way beyond the provisions of the second amendment.

By 'messy' I meant that people other than the original target could be harmed. This was bound to cause a diplomatic crisis. So why does Putin deny when the obvious actually happens ?

Electro-Kevin said...

There have been no rampage killings in Britain since Dunblane.

Go figure.

Anonymous said...

EK: Your notions about smallarms are whimsical - smaller, lighter military rifles such as the M-16 and the much earlier British EM-2 were designed to be carried more easily and with more ammunition. “Spray and pray” was absolutely not the objective, indeed the British Army especially has always emphasised marksmanship and strongly discourages what you term so entertainingly a “spray pattern”. The WW1 SMLE, one of which I used to own and shoot, was an excellent rifle used to good effect at surprisingly long range by the Old Contemptibles, but was no sort of “sniper rifle”.
The US 2nd Amendment was based on principle, not smallarms capabilities or technology – the right to keep and bear arms.
You do not in any case correct or otherwise address your wild initial claim about weapons being "designed specifically for rampage killing". And Dunblane was not one of those: Hamilton, whose name goes down in infamy, murdered schoolchildren within a schoolroom. It was a cold, heartless, highly selective mass murder – not a “rampage”. Your mention of the latter in connection with Dunblane is therefore doubly obscure: what point are you attempting to make? One might just as well say there were no rampage killings on British soil prior to Michael Ryan at Hungerford 1987, a point to which I doubt you have any sort of credible riposte, given especially your apparent shaky knowledge of smallarms and (I dare say) your ignorance re the history of firearms legislation.
Your question about Putin must surely be rhetorical: Russia denies involvement in the same way it has always done, caring not whether anyone believes this, indeed flaunting the untruth so as to bully, intimidate and threaten. The latest incident has indeed produced some transparent threats voiced by Russian media as well as Putin, to add to the thinly veiled threats inherent in his transparently insincere denials…

Bill Quango MP said...

Malcolm Stevas

The Russians on UK tv today have again made their ridiculous assertions. But with even less credibility than usual. The ambassador was quite happy to say their defectors could have made the Novi stuff for the west and it has escaped., (though he called the scientists “ stolen away from the USSR” as if they were kidnapped rather than willing runners.) .
He was unwilling to countenance any going missing from the USSR or Russian Federation.

Which is classic Russian thinking. Because any missing from them suggests a lack of security. A failure by authorities. And Russia makes no mistakes. Lacks no security! .. Unthinkable!

The west, on the other hand, is always being compromised.

Boris Johnson followed this explanation from the Russians with the very sound observation that the Russians are not behaving as an innocent party, wrongly blamed.
They are behaving as a guilty party avoiding blame.

Not helping. Not offering any explanations. Giving a teenage, “I dunno! You figure it out. It’s your people dying. Nothing to do with us! “

On the issue of guns and mass killings that has sprung into these comments, I think there is evidence that the ending of restrictions on assault weapons did lead to more deaths. Which isn’t surprising.
And also that it may even have prompted more attacks.

But the 50% increase Bill Clinton suggested doesn’t seem to be true.

What is puzzling is before the 1960s mass killings are generally confined to family. Business. Gangster/Terror.
And after the 1960s schools and workplace and the drug turf wars.

It’s hard to know why.

In the UK, mass killings are not uncommon. There was one yesterday. But they tend to be family slaying.and under the “five” victim threshold for a mass shooting. Mum dad, two siblings. Or, as recently, mum, mother in law child and the Killer suicide.

I would not call these mass slaying st all. Even though they are, they have plausible motive.

And, EK, it does appear quite likely that Oswald shot Kennedy only because the route passed him by. If the motorcade had gone somewhere else, Oswald would have killed someone else, somewhere else, some other time. Or done something else completely.

He really was just a frustrated man, of very low achievement.
Who failed both sides of the iron curtain.

The typical, frustrated loner gunman.

dearieme said...

"By 'messy' I meant that people other than the original target could be harmed." Muskets usually harmed anyone except "the original target". They really were inaccurate at any sort of distance. That's why you drew up lines of men a few dozen yards apart, and blasted away.

Anonymous said...

BQ, quite: Russian assertions become more extreme, even surreal. Now we have their ambassador to the EU, Chizhov, suggesting the "Novichok" agent could have come from UK sources. They are completely brazen, but so far as I can see this is indeed the Russian way as you acknowledge.
Re those "assault weapons" I believe the jury is still out on there being any correlation between their misuse and the ending of that brief ten-year ban in 2004. The thing is, anti-gun arguments based on "more guns = more gun crime" fall at the first hurdle, since widespread gun ownership in both the USA and UK, prior to any serious restrictions, was accompanied by less gun crime - not more. In recent years for example, the 1997 ban on (most) handgun ownership here saw gun crime with (illegal) handguns increase in subsequent years: Home Office figures for 2000 recorded 42 deaths by handgun. I'm one of the 56,000 people whose handgun ownership was made retrospectively unlawful: we said at the time it would make no difference to gun crime, just like all the preceding Firearms Acts back to 1920...
It is indeed "hard to know why" mass killings didn't happen before the 1960s; but the evidence is that there is simply no traceable connection with gun availability.

Electro-Kevin said...

I watched the footage last night and looked at the autopsy photo.

Oswald could have made a darn good living hustling at fairground ranges is all I can say.

Have you any idea how difficult it is to pull off a shot on a moving target like that - let alone the pressure of such a prize target ? The first effort was fatal. The second (and I speak as a shot myself) was a beaut.

Look.

I don't believe the conspiracy theory either but sometimes things in the Cosmos just line up and change the path of history.

Ask Oswald to do it again and I bet he couldn't.

Electro-Kevin said...

Malcolm

Since Dunblane there has been a clampdown on firearms ownership. No rampage killings with guns since (I stick to the phrase, it is apt.)

The M16 (for example) versatility and portability but, ultimately, to kill multiple opponents at close range when things come on top.

Columbine would have been quickly averted had Harris and Clebold only had the muzzle loaders that the 2nd Amendment was written for.

Anonymous said...

EK, para 1: that's like saying the elephant deterrent devices I dug around my garden work, since I've seen no elephants since then... You ignore the point I made about there having been no rampage killings on British soil prior to Michael Ryan at Hungerford 1987: I wonder if you see the connection. What can you mean by "a clampdown" one wonders: the 1997 Act, put together by the outgoing Conservative government but enacted by Labour with few changes, banned the civilian ownership of conventional handguns. If this is what you refer to, it was no "crackdown" on firearms, it simply stopped the law-abiding from having handguns. It had no effect on criminals - who do not obey laws, since they're criminals... As The Guardian reported on 2 September 2000, "A continuing parliamentary inquiry into the growing number of black market weapons has concluded that there are more than three million illegally held firearms in circulation - double the number believed to have been held 10 years ago - and that criminals are more willing than ever to use them..."
All sorts of things kill people. Hamilton murdered 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane; four years later, Home Office figures show 42 people murdered by criminal misuse of handguns in the year 2000; a year after that, 3000 people died when the Twin Towers were targeted by hijacked airliners; in 2005 the London Tube bombers killed over fifty people... As we've seen in some of those cases, attempts at kneejerk legislative (or other) fixes do not cure anything but have unintended consequences.
And re your para 3, again you ignore my point that the 2nd Amendment was about principle, the right to keep and bear arms in a free society. Nothing to do with technology.

Anonymous said...

Good to see the united international condemnation of the Turkish invasion of Syria, the onerous US and EU sanctions that have been applied, and the expulsion of their diplomats from the UK after their murder of a British citizen in Afrin.


hovis said...

Oh dear BQ - you have fallen down the rabbit hole, you must have bumped you head on the way down to have come out with this.

Nice attempt to conflate anyone questioning the Govt/BBC line with being a "tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist". I guess you couldn't get away with accussing people of being paid Russian trolls or bot farms as many are regulars here.

Anyhow .. I think the best part in your post was was about Oswald and the 31 hour documentary, and why you changed your mind:

"Because all the evidence is there. Evidence that I had never heard about before. Events and situations that have been willfully ignored, or altered, to make a conspiracy."

Well that is the funny thing - unless you can point me to actual sources, the evidence is paper thin for it being "Russia". I'm not speculating who it might of been - nor does any critique need to.

Read Craig Murray's piece about Novachoks - and that Porton Down have never seen them. Then tell me about the evidence.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/the-novichok-story-is-indeed-another-iraqi-wmd-scam/

Aside - read the later posts too - intersting stuff it makes Johnson's guff appear as weak an nonsensical as it is.

Secondly - why have HM Govt. refused to offer a sample of this elusive nerve agent to the OPCW?

So all this talk by CU and yourself on "credulity" of anyone questioning you is quite funny and looks a bit thin skinned.

CityUnslicker said...

Hovis - Craig Murray is a proper conspiracy nutjob. You may get excitement from his musings but it won't do you much good. I think that is the point BQ and I have been trying to make - not that all conspiracies are untrue or that we should believe only the Govt, but that you we should not believe the conspiracy side first or if we do, try and fact/sense check it.

hovis said...


CU - he may or may not be conspiracy nutjob - it doesn't add to our discussion. The items he indicates are verifiable (or not). If true, and I have not seens anything but bluster in refuation, it raises serious doubts about the HMG actions.

And I'll repeat once again, looking to question a narrative does not involve believing in a "conspiracy" in any way. All that is being asked is that when we do not know, that is admitted. Something which as not been done.

Graeme said...

BQ why would a signatory to the chem weapons treaty make chem weapons and use them on a superranuated spy? Why not look at the people who have not signed up to giving up chem weapons? Why not look at a place 10 miles from Salisbury with chem weapons expertise?

Bill Quango MP said...

Graeme: Are you seriously suggesting the UK poisoned its own spy? With highly toxic nerve gas. In one of its own city centres?

On who's orders?
And for what purpose?

I cannot think of a post war Prime Minister less likely to authorise a hasty,risky, act of terror on its own citizens than Theresa May.