Exercising my self judgement doesn't make me pro Putin, nor does it make me a conspiracy theorist when I wonder why the flu killed more people in France in one month (jan 2017) than COVID in 10 months.
I have a brain, I use it. Maybe sometimes I come to the wrong conclusion but at least I don't just regurgitate what the media feeds me.
So in this case I find strange that the super Russian spies never manage to kill anyone even when they use military grade chemical agents that are supposed to kill full cities (remember the Skripal case, this one was fishy as hell too).
> So in this case I find strange that the super Russian spies never manage to kill anyone even when they use military grade chemical agents that are supposed to kill full cities
That's actually not surprising. Chemical weapons turn out to have lousy effectiveness in terms of killing people. In 1995, a terrorist group released sarin into 5 subway cars during Tokyo's rush hour and managed to kill a whopping 12 people in the process. A single grenade would likely have killed more people. Admittedly, sarin isn't the most lethal chemical agent, but it is one that was actually used in chemical weapons programs, and the stronger agents implicated are only like 10× more lethal. The notion that "military-grade chemical agents" are "supposed to kill full cities" is propaganda about the effectiveness of chemical weapons; it's not a realistic assessment of their actual capabilities.
At the same time, there's also a world of difference between a targeted killing of a single individual versus a generalized killing of a large mass of people. The mechanisms you need to use to achieve this are different: in one case, you want to deliver a more spiked concentration of chemical to one individual, preferably in a manner that allows it to take effect when those who delivered it are nowhere near. But killing an entire city requires you to have extremely fast diffusion with extremely high initial concentrations, so that you can kill people before they start to run away (or don protective gear). That someone screws up the dosing when trying to use it as a targeted weapon is easily plausible.
> That someone screws up the dosing when trying to use it as a targeted weapon is easily plausible.
Twice? What kind of first class spy agency would miss a target, let alone 2 (Skripal and Navalny)?
Murdering someone is not a hard feat especially when you are a government agency with all the resources necessary to do so.
In the case of Navalny, it was even easier as they were "playing" at home.
What's the point of re-using a super duper chemical nerve agent that already demonstrated that it was not a sure deal?
Now it's possible the Russians lost all the KGB experience (remember the Bulgarian umbrella?) and are subpar spies. Why do we need to be afraid of them then?
I believe that when a spy story ends up in the press, it's because we are the targets for propaganda. Else it stays in the shadows.
My theory (which is just that, a theory) is that the US is trying hard to block the Russian gas pipeline to Europe, and this kind of stories allow them to impose sanctions.
INSEE is the official French statistics agency, not some conspiracy quack.
Sorry this is in French:
> En outre, l’épidémie de grippe hivernale amorcée fin 2016 a entraîné un pic de décès exceptionnel en janvier 2017 : 67 000 décès en France métropolitaine ce mois-ci.
I can’t find any source that attributes over 60,000 deaths to the flu in France in January 2017. In fact, that’s close to 4x the most commonly reported figures for the whole 2016/2017 flu season in France. What numbers are you basing that claim on?
> En outre, l’épidémie de grippe hivernale amorcée fin 2016 a entraîné un pic de décès exceptionnel en janvier 2017 : 67 000 décès en France métropolitaine ce mois-ci.
I disagree with your reading. Specifically, it doesn't say that 67,000 people died of the flu, it says that 67,000 people died. The entire report is about all-cause mortality, and so is that sentence. The flu was the reason for a spike in deaths, but it was not the cause of all 67,000 deaths in France that month.
What I believe to be a more accurate translation:
"In addition, the winter flu epidemic that began at the end of 2016 led to an exceptional peak in deaths in January 2017: 67,000 deaths in mainland France this month."
Exercising my self judgement doesn't make me pro Putin, nor does it make me a conspiracy theorist when I wonder why the flu killed more people in France in one month (jan 2017) than COVID in 10 months.
I have a brain, I use it. Maybe sometimes I come to the wrong conclusion but at least I don't just regurgitate what the media feeds me.
So in this case I find strange that the super Russian spies never manage to kill anyone even when they use military grade chemical agents that are supposed to kill full cities (remember the Skripal case, this one was fishy as hell too).