The Skripals, and other fish stories

Unless you have had your newsfeeds or TV turned off since the first of March this year, you have no doubt heard the tale of the Skripals and the scandal surrounding their alleged poisoning with a military-grade chemical weapon – “of a type made in Russia”. The tale is straight out of a spy drama, a veritable giallo, as we call them here in Italy. For more, read on…

The story goes that on 4 Mar 18 at around 4:00 PM, Sergei Skripal, an ex-Russian double agent, and his daughter, Yulia, were both found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury, England, after having eaten out at a local restaurant. They were attended to at the scene. (Note for later that the medical people remained alive and well, and were unaffected. Later, it was determined that the Skripals had been poisoned. Not more than four days later, it was announced by the British government that the two had been poisoned by a military-grade chemical weapon, and that they were not expected to survive. Fingers were immediately pointed at Russian involvement. The allegations against Russia had been put forward with very flimsy evidence at best (actually, little to no evidence), with a rush to assert guilt, destruction of evidence, obstruction of investigations and media blitz that one typically sees with attempts at manufactured consent or false flag operations. In order to carry out a proper investigation, the OPCW process typically takes weeks, yet government officials had supposedly been able to determine in a very short period of time (a couple of days) that the agent used was something known as ‘Novichok’ – one of a class of deadly nerve agents that had allegedly been developed in the ex-USSR, but which had since been destroyed. As a result, both the US and the UK, along with token numbers by other Western nations, expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, with the US imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs with known or alleged ties to Vladimir Putin. Cue the TV show:

There have been several very good analyses by other sources as the Skripal story has unfolded, so we will not go over all the details. Perhaps two best independent analyses of the events surrounding this whole strange episode can be accessed here and here. It is advisable to read through them for a complete background on the story. Instead, we will focus on the astrology of the events and what it will mean for the UK and the US, as they are the two nations most vociferously agitating for action against Russia. As luck would have it, the Skripals mysteriously resurrected themselves from the ‘Novichok’ poison – for which there is not supposed to be any antidote – an Easter miracle(!) or one might say, an April Fool’s joke on the May government, and they are expected to make a full recovery. Yulia Skripal has been released from hospital but is under what would appear to be sequestration by the British government. Before we get to the astrology, there are a few points to keep in mind as we go along.

We have likely heard many theories as to why the Skripals would have been poisoned and why the hyperbolic rhetoric has been ramped up around Russia, and we might list some of them here:

• The Brexit negotiations were going badly for Theresa May and her government and the Skripals were an opportunistic distraction from that, in an effort to bolster her support.
• The incident was used in the hopes of discrediting Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader in Parliament, who called for a proper and thorough investigation before appointing blame.
• Russia was blamed in order to disrupt the construction of the Nord Stream II pipeline between Germany and Russia
• The rebels in the East Ghouta enclave of Syria were about to be defeated and there were fears in the British government about what might be exposed there. Apparently, British and other Western operatives were captured there.
• It was an effort to unite Europe and the US with Britain against Russia and Russian interests.
• It was a hit against Skripal to silence him about his involvement with the notorious ‘Steele dossier’ that was being used in an effort to oust Trump.
• It was an elaborate hoax which involved the Skripals
• It was a double suicide attempt
• It was revenge for Sergei’s having been a double agent
• It was used as attempt to disrupt the Russian elections/World Cup
• It was designed to distract attention from investigations into money laundering by Russian oligarchs and Russian mafia figures currently based in London^ix

However, there is another, even more sinister theory, which goes right to the heart of the matter and was probably one of the biggest strokes of genius by that sinister Vladimir Putin and his cronies in Moscow, designed to bring down the British government:

It was food poisoning.

The whole story is full of holes and obvious lies on the part of HMG (Her Majesty’s Government), so to start, the event chart is shown on the next page, for the discovery of the pair on the park bench. Before we get into the astrology, the timeline of events pretty much betrays the fabrication of government explanations as to what happened. The Russians have a dark humorous accounting of these events, which follow the timeline, that has been circulated widely on the internet within Russia, which is helpful to keep in mind as we go along:

If we are to accept that the Skripals were poisoned by a military grade nerve agent, then the act would have probably had to have happened close to this time. Just to be clear about what had to be involved, we have the following from Wikipedia:

“Poisoning by a nerve agent leads to constriction of pupils, profuse salivation, convulsions, and involuntary urination and defecation, with the first symptoms appearing in seconds after exposure. Death by asphyxiation or cardiac arrest may follow in minutes due to the loss of the body’s control over respiratory and other muscles.”

We will not go into all the classes of these agents. The cited article names and describes them, including the one that was allegedly used: Novichok. This purported Novichok agent is supposedly extremely toxic, acting within a couple of minutes, much more so than the more commonly known such agents. It was also designed to be permeable through hazard protection gear, rendering such suits useless as protection, undetectable by standard NATO methods and there was said to be no antidote. In addition, it is said to dissipate quickly. With these points in mind, does the chart of the event show such an attack?

The ‘park bench’ chart is shown below. According to the timeline of events, this is the first public evidence that there has been a poisoning:

Poisons are represented by Neptune, and in that chart it is conjunct the Sun, the latter ruling the target individual or group (the Leo ascendant). In addition, the Sun/Neptune conjunction was conjunct the 8^th house cusp (death, secret groups, transformation, etc.). Attacks, however, are normally shown by Mars or Pluto. Do we see that here? Saturn is at the midpoint of Mars and Pluto in the 5^th house, although none of them are in aspect with each other. That midpoint structure points to possible violence in its negative manifestation, with Mars/Pluto pointing toward “…the misfortune of having to suffer violent assaults, injuries…” and so forth. The 5^th house would show the location. But there is an interesting point about that: the 5^th house rules restaurants, especially as entertainments. It also rules children, and one of the victims was the daughter of Sergei Skripal. Was she the attacker? It is doubtful, and as to why we would think not, that will become clearer as we go along. These points being made, this chart in itself could indicate the attack, but the events that took place after the fact point to a different scenario, starting with the type of alleged poison.

From the above-referenced Wikipedia article, military-grade nerve agents work within a matter of moments, especially the more toxic ones, as Novichok is claimed to be. If we take certain factors into account, then the story given by HMG begins to fall apart immediately. Firstly, the fact that such nerve agents are so toxic, the fact that Novichoks were allegedly designed to bypass safety equipment and so forth, means that anyone coming into close proximity with the victims stood a high likelihood of being affected as well. The Skripals were not dead within moments, meaning that if it was such an attack, it was botched. There were firemen with no protective gear pictured in close proximity to where the victims were found, right next to people in full protective gear.

The first responders at the scene were unaffected, and suspected a fentanyl overdose, or something similar. Apparently, once a person has been exposed to Novichok, there is no cure and the exposed person is rendered to be an invalid for the remainder of their lives, requiring medical supervision. The policeman who was said to be affected made a full recovery within days and was released from hospital. At this point it is worth mentioning that these ‘Novichok’ agents were allegedly produced in the old USSR in Uzbekistan. The site where the research took place was destroyed with the help of the Americans after the fall of the Soviet Union. The man who reported that those agents had been produced was a disgruntled ex-Soviet worker at the plant. He was an analyst, and not a researcher. He defected to the US and is living very comfortably there now, having written a book which actually gives the chemical formulas for the agents. But, we do not know for certain whether the Soviets actually produced those agents or not. Even now, as of this writing, the British authorities are spreading the notion that the site of the poisoning (wherever that is) is still contaminated, a full month and a half after the incident. If it was Novichok, and such poisons dissipate quickly, why are they only now cleaning suspected attack sites? There are so many inconsistencies and unanswered questions.

But there is more. The latest installment from this spy drama is that it was not Novichok, but another class of nerve agent, called ‘BZ’. This poison is a supercharged version of LSD and is known as an incapacitating agent. The symptoms are consistent with what was described by people on the scene of the Skripal poisoning. The more interesting side to this story is that BZ is said to take about an 30 – 60 minutes to begin to work. This is similar to what one would see in a case of saxitoxin poisoning, which is produced in shellfish. The Skripals had eaten a seafood risotto with mussels (the more common offender with saxitoxin) about an hour or two prior to being found on the park bench. But if we move the time of the poisoning back an hour an, the astrology of the event becomes very interesting, shown below. Some sort of poisoning is indicated.

If the poison was BZ or saxitoxin, then the dose would had to have been given at least 30 minutes before the Skripals were found. An hour before puts Uranus on the Midheaven, much more in line with a sudden event and showing the very public shock value nature of the event, opposite the Moon, ruling the 12^th house of hidden enemies, which includes underworld groups. This event was meant to be very public, further supported by the Leo ascendant. The Moon is in the 3^rd house in that chart (above), which rules domestic intelligence services. And, the Sun/Neptune conjunction is fully in the 8^th house (foreign financial relations, international banking, death penalty and executions), with Neptune ruling the 9^th house (foreign intelligence services). And to add another note, Pluto then moves to the 6^th house – the police, army, emergency services, partners of secret enemies (and also domestic animals) – with Pluto (subterfuge, gangs, assassinations), and being square the Moon. The reader can decide which chart fits the evidence better, but I would tend toward the 3:00 PM chart, above, or even a bit earlier than that.

Regardless of which chart one uses, within a reasonable timeline, the outstanding feature is the Sun/Neptune conjunction with the involvement of the 8^th house.

There was almost certainly a case of poisoning with this event. Aside from that, though, it was also beyond a reasonable doubt the fact that HMG has used this event as a public relations stunt against Russia in order to justify certain other actions, but what those might be is a another story. As with all things in astrology, though, there are multiple interpretations here. The Sun represents public figures and national leaders. The poisoning took place on British soil, so the Sun here represents British authorities. The May government pounced on this story within days, touting it as an act of aggression by Russians against British citizenry, whereas the police and the OPCW had stated that an investigation would take at least several weeks. The story line from the government changed almost daily. Neptune in its lowest aspect governs obfuscation of the truth, outright deception, and it this case can also indicate evidence tampering. The 8^th house also represents investigations. These points being said, Neptune in its higher aspects represents refinement of thinking as one makes their way through uncertainty and clouds of various stories, educing critical thinking. In its highest, Neptune represents knowledge gained beyond rational thinking, employing rational thought after the fact – the so-called ‘gut sense’ – being able to know instantly whether a presented situation is the truth or a fish story.

It seems fairly clear in the face of all the evidence and the timeline that the one substance that was not involved was some sort of recently produced ‘Novichok’ agent, but instead, either a case of severe seafood poisoning, a fentanyl-like substance, or a BZ-type agent. In fact, it has recently emerged that the type of poison detected was one used by the US and UK. Russia does not produce BZ,  if that is what the poison was. The effects of BZ last for about four days. One final thing to note is that BZ toxin is very persistent, with a half-life of around 3 – 4 weeks. If BZ agent had been used, then that would go a long way to explaining why there is a clean-up going on in Salisbury now, as the agent would still be there, although degraded. So, who is correct – HMG or Russia? The reader can decide, but the fingers certainly appear to point in the direction of the British government, or even to the US.

The US has known about Novichok agents for some time, as evident in a 2013 patent application for antidotes to a whole series of military-grade nerve agents. There is also a similar patent application from 2004. For the UK to claim that Novichok was produced only in Russia is a clear misrepresentation of facts. Either that, or the British government is quite ignorant to the facts of the matter, which is even more reckless. For the Americans to have produced an antidote to Novichoks means that they would have had samples of the agent upon which to base their tests. The toxicity of the agents are also outlined in the cited patent application. If such agents are so toxic, and if Novichok was used on the Skripals on the park bench, then any person attending the Skripals at that location, as well as hospital staff where they were taken for treatment, stood a good chance of being affected by the agent. This in itself puts pay to the story that Novichok was used in the poisoning.

However, there is one more alternative explanation that is quite plausible: It was an assassination attempt by criminal Russian underground figures who had a vendetta against Skripal, using a badly degraded Novichok sample. This is a possibility that neither the Russians nor the British would want to make public, because it would mean that the so-called Russian mafia is active in Britain, and has not been reined in by either the British or Russian governments. Vials of the chemical agents that had been developed in Russian labs had been sold on to criminal organizations as long ago as 1994, and if one of those had been used in the attempt on Skripal, then it would have been so degraded as to be rendered non-lethal. Also interesting in this article is how Mirzayanov was put on trial by the Russians for revealing state secrets, rescued by the US government, George Soros and his wife, and brought to the US, where he now lives very comfortably.Russian authorities have consistently disputed the Novichok story, and if this scenario is true, it is understandable as to why they would do so.

Finally, as to how this saga might affect the British and American governments, this also makes for an interesting investigation, perhaps too much to go into here. But for a peek, the transits to the UK chart on 4 March show Saturn aspecting all the angles of that chart, with the retrograde station taking place firmly on the IC (opposition parties) of the UK chart conjunct the UK Sun (leaders) at the time of this writing. Mars had moved up in its approach to Pluto opposite the UK Moon (ruling the 10^th house, the sitting administration) at the time of the missile launch against Syria. The setup is for a downfall or severe blow for the government, which we may well see as Saturn goes through its retrograde period over the next months, or at least things becoming very difficult for the May government in this intervening period.

There are similar stresses in the US chart at the time. There was a t-square formed by transiting Mars to the natal Mars/Neptune square, which turned the event toward the weaponization of propaganda. The transiting Sun/Neptune conjunction was square the US horizon, blurring the rule of law and the public mood. Saturn was opposite the US Jupiter, which was around the time Trump started his trade war with China, all of which led to the US blunder of choosing to bomb Syria a second time on the basis of a false flag chemical attack. And that will most likely turn out to have been a blunder on the part of the Trump administration, serving to discredit them in the eyes of the international community. We will not go into that here, but the astrology is clear enough. This Skripal drama would appear to have been seized upon as a part of a larger plan aimed at disadvantaging and marginalizing Russia. That is my own opinion, of course. We’ll see what plays out in the meantime as Saturn completes its retrograde cycle.

So, whether one believes the British government’s version of events or one of the many other versions, the latter of which would be called ‘conspiracy theories’ in the mainstream press, we can probably all agree that this entire tale of the Skripal’s poisoning and miraculous resurrection would make a good backdrop for an Agatha Christie novel, a James Bond movie or an episode of Strike Back – tales “of a type made in England”, or even the US.

Update: As of the end of April the media has gone virtually silent about the Skripals. The word is that a D-notice had been issued by the British government (meaning that there would be no reporting on aspects of the case) with regard to Skripal’s MI6 handler – one Pablo Miller – who was involved in the notorious Steele dossier. The Skripals are now in seclusion, if not dead, it would seem. It has also emerged, after further digging into archives by independent journalists, that the Skripals were reported to have been poisoned by fentanyl, an opioid that is far more powerful that heroin. If these points are true, then they point to a cover-up by the British government, and to the whole affair being related somehow to the Steele dossier, as an effort to silence Skripal and to sour relations with Russia. But then, there is this, from a Russian pharmacologist:

1) Upon contact and or inhalation, the nerve agent takes 4 minutes to produce death. This is done by inhibiting the enzyme cholinesterase. When this is blocked, the neurotransmitter stays active leading the muscles to accelerating spasms, paralysing respiratory muscles and causing death by asphyxia. Had it been Novichok, the Skripals would have been dead before the paramedic had arrived. What I suspect is that the Skripals, if at all attacked, were sprayed with a pressurized canister while they were sitting on the bench. That canister would contain probably Fentanyl and a weak organophosphorus derivative. Fentanyl would cause immediate stupor and inability to leave the place.

2) A paramedic, (they are not doctors, not even nurses) would have absolutely not a clue as to what was affecting the Skripals. In the ambulance they were put on artificial ventilation.

3) On arriving to the hospital, the doctors would neither have a clue of what was the agent was. Would have first tested for narcotics. It then took a judge warrant before they were allowed to take blood samples. When taking blood samples, they would need to know what they were looking for, something that they did not know. Chromatographic separation of the chemical compound in plasma would have had to follow. Once isolated, infrared and mass spectrometry to determine the chemical structure of the agent would have taken place. This would have taken more than a day. If they finally suspected that it was a pesticide, they would have used pralidoxime in combination with atropine.

4) That a provincial hospital would be able to ascertain all that without having any hint is preposterous and ludicrous. The Skripals would have been dead 24 hours before they came up with a suspicion.

5) Assuming that they were attacked at all, the agent was weak and obviously non-lethal. It appears that Yulia accessed her personal web page on vk.com on March the 7^th, at 08:35 hours, that is, supposedly when she was in coma.

6) Because of all this, because of the behaviour, refusal to provide samples, refusal to let Russian experts having access to evidences, it is confirmed that the UK has staged and fabricated this.