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Its just an off-line scan with the addition of a couple of extra A/V scans.. If you want this most A/V manufacturers offer a free off-line scan download. Even M$ does! link
Imo it is better (but less convenient) than a regular A/V package as many rootkits and malware have ways of avoiding/subverting on-line scans.
Wow! After giving the UK complete support for the stance taken over the Salisbury Nerve Agent attack, the US Secretary of State (Rex Tillerson) was sacked!
This is a crazy illogical move imo, Tillerson is extremely intelligent and knowledgeable of the world political and economic scene. There are not many countries that he has not personally visited or worked in. If he agrees with something then it should not be easily dismissed.
However, that said, I’m equally puzzled why we (the UK) did not adhere to both the letter and spirit of the International Convention on Chemical Weapons. In my books if you are seeking a broad church of international support and working from what others call a weak diplomatic position then you need to ensure you dot i’s and cross t’s. From what I gather, countries are currently expressing horror at the attack but are reluctant to directly blame Russia (implying others may have the responsibility and that more evidence is needed of Russian complicity).
(Before anyone asks what I mean by a ‘weak position’, I’m merely paraphrasing reports on the Beeb and world stage, it wasn’t a snipe at Brexit.)
To draw analogies just because the UK invented VX, we should not be blamed for every illegal act that uses VX. We should be very legalistic in our actions.
It all just leaves me completely puzzled again, and Theresa May must be thinking that everything she touches turns to ashes. Of all the moves, and all the timing one cannot help but wonder at the juxtaposition of events.
I assume you mean TV Soaps (or ‘Reality’ survival shows). Both have zero interest to me, but equally I could see others having similar feelings about Game of Thrones. I think if there is a section for TV & Entertainment it would be difficult to exclude a category that perhaps accounts for half the viewing content.
During the Vietnam war the CIA had regular drugs, guns, people flights around the Golden Triangle, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. They even ran their own little airline based out of Thailand. They are a very murky almost rogue organization that often seemed to run completely counter to the stated official US State Dept policies. link
I cannot vouch for much that Angelfire reports, but I heard parts of their story from other independent sources in the region.
I don’t know if anyone watched the Beeb clip showing the procedure used for measuring plastic in water. As shown it consisted of burying an open-ended cylinder into the bottom sediment then stirring that up with the water in the container. The resulting soup was then used to get the claimed numbers. OK it is obviously a possibly reproducible number, but plastic in actual water it isn’t. That is not to say there is anything to be proud of, but it is more a measure of pollution over time than the current level of water borne pollution. In the Beeb clip they said the Mersey near Manchester was more polluted. I can easily believe that comment.
As a side note, Denmark complains that currently sampling and analysis lacks the consistency necessary to establish regulatory standards for food and water.
Well it now looks like the poison was Russian or FSU sourced.
Novichok has now been named by Theresa May as the detected nerve agent (originally manufactured near Novosibersk). The military wikia reveals that this is far more deadly than VX but perhaps of more relevance it can be produced as a ‘binary’ in which two less deadly compounds can be mixed together to produce the final extremely deadly compound. This would obviously make the administration of the poison easier and perhaps mean two separate people could have been involved in the poisoning without putting either in real harm.
Russia was supposed to have used the following facilities to dispose of stocks of its chemical weapons: Gorny in Saratov, Kambarka in Udmurtia, Leonidovka in Penza, Maradykovsky in Kirov, Shchuchye in Kurgan and Pochep in the Bryansk Oblast. Last year Putin claimed that the last of all stocks had now been destroyed at the Kizner chemical weapons destruction facility in the Udmurt region (all other disposal sites had by then been closed and sanitized)
As Novichok was deemed an ‘undetectable’ agent perhaps it explains the delay in warning the general public in Salisbury but I think our Government could well be criticised for the delayed warnings. and putting people in Salisbury at risk.
As a side-note Novichok appears much more complex than VX/Sarrin which would raise the degree of difficulty in its manufacture, and perhaps put it beyond the reach of ‘average’ terrorists such as the Aum cult.
A smoking gun has certainly been produced, and the ball is now in Russia’s court to explain how such material could have reached Salisbury.
I should have added that plutonium is like phosphorus and catches fire in air (main reason for the shrink wrap).
That be verderer territory, near where they killed the bears!
When I was a young lad you could still get into a fight by asking ‘who killed the bear’, because at that time the tale had morphed into the menfolk hiding and their wives doing the killing!
Lots of crazy things happened during that period.
Probably as a result of the bad publicity from the CND and the revelation of RSG Government funk-holes, I believe that the Government of the day was having major problems with recruitment of engineers and scientists. As a result I managed to get on quite a lot of PR visits to a number of top secret establishments (no OSA chits).
Probably the highlight of the period was being taken into a small room in Aldermaston which was lined with wooden shelves on which were neatly arranged approximately 7 inch diameter 1/2 inch deep polythene wrapped dull-grey metal disks each positioned about eighteen inches from their neighbours. I was given one (warm) roughly half kilo disk in each hand and told that I was carrying the equivalent of an H-bomb trigger! (The disks were warm and shrink wrapped because plutonium is a poisonous alpha emitter). I was then severely cautioned not to bring my hands together. Imagine what the Elves of Safety would have to say about that today!
Just out of interest Bob, it looks like much of the data has now been classified and moved to the National Archives. I would guess you now need a Readers Ticket and have to call the stuff out of the archives and then only get the boring stuff! When I was doing my bit of student research it was completely open access and more a question of blowing dust off the tomes. (from memory it was like a bookcase or three stuffed full of bound encyclopedias).
You were lucky Bob! They were developing some really nasty stuff during that period.
However in the same vein as your OSA (non)-disclosure, when I was a young under-graduate student a part of the engineering course was to do document research and find ‘prior-art’. HM Patent Office was always my first port of call, and there I discovered the OSS post-war intelligence files (fore-runner to the CIA). During the post-war period the OSS went through German industry with a fine tooth comb. In addition to documenting and translating German work on producing chlor-halogens in concrete reactors (my project), I also unearthed data on the German standard condom (large, medium and small) and other such provocative stuff. However buried within all this snigger-inducing cruff were the minute details on the production of everything German including the full range of V-weapons (of which numerous nerve agents were a class). So at the height of the CND protests a scruffy young student had all the info needed to completely obliterate the Establishment! Lucky for them I could not give a rats-a#se about the Establishment, I was too busy getting my degree and getting wasted, the same as every other student.
I’ll bet you cannot get at those files today without triggering all sorts of security trip wires. At least I hope that is the case!
The US run a weird blend of professional career State Dept types, who suffer the same sort of unwritten patronage issues as our own Civil Servants (what school, college, fraternity, family etc), but in addition high level appointees are all subject to patronage. Nasty places such as Sudan are normally given to more junior professionals, but UK often appoint juniors to nasty places too!
I do not remember meeting anyone below Ambassador who was not actually a professional, I’m certain that the Commercial people were all career staffers.
Switching back to the OP, judging by the public advice that has been given it appears a persistent oily nerve agent such as the British invented VX was used. This substance can also unfortunately be manufactured by any competent chemist in an illegal lab, as it was used by the Aum doomsday cult to assassinate someone in Japan. link, Given the ubiquity of VX, and ease of manufacture it is probably going to be impossible to find a smoking gun that links directly to Putin or any other state actor. About the only hope would be to find the person who actually administered it.
I read them as things to be positioned on kerbs, and so help stop idiot SUV/4×4/White Van drivers who never seem to be able to park without swinging dangerously onto a pavement. As such I would love to see them on every UK kerb! The only problem is the amount of signage they would generate.
Similar claws can sometimes be seen in US hired-car parks to prevent stop people using the way-in as an illegal exit point.
My guess is that you did not follow the instructions and forgot to ‘mount’ the encrypted container. You have to mount it and unlock it before Windows Explorer can see it as a folder it can open.
Try these instructions for Veracrypt (should be applicable to Truecrypt too), they may be a little more simple for you to follow.
“…can mean the most diplomatically important areas do not get the skill set they really need.”
Certainly true at Ambassador level, but some of the most strategically important places are also the nastiest ones to inhabit. e.g. ‘How much NOT to offer me the Ambassadorship of Serbia, Sudan, Djibouti or whatever they are calling The Congo today’. The only ones that are really in the US patronage war are the ‘easy’ ones such as London, Paris, Berlin, Canberra, Singapore etc.
“we are no longer very good at the war games any more”
We are still a lot better than the US!
They often grab the strangest allies after being pushed by their commercial interests and compounded by the fact that US State Dept has never completely got to grips with the tribal/sectarian complexities of much of the world. The younger ones who learned the languages and history and tribalism of the areas soon came up against a brick wall of NIH and self interest, became disheartened and left.
While Trump has made a lot of stupid mistakes, but clearing out the deadwood in US State Dept was probably one of his better moves, however repairing their system will take years.
Truecrypt and VeraCrypt both encrypt either files or folders! Link
Richard only as you poke me when I cannot be bothered to respond.
No, I dislike political corruption in all shades, whether via monetary gifts or post-event speaking fees. In my ideal world all politicians or public servants would be subject to regular audits of their and their family’s wealth both in and out of office. I’d throw the book at them Singaporean-style including seizure of all assets for any detected anomalies or questionable off-shore arrangements.
Corruption stinks and I have seen its full malign impact in places like Africa.
Interesting Richard – how do you square your statements with the very large donations the Conservative Party happily accepted from Russians?
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