Marking the occasion of the anniversary of Trump's ordered missile strike on Syrian airbases in 2017,Israeli aircraft launched their own missile strike against a Syrian airbase. As per their protocols for such incidents,the Israeli high command refused to confirm or deny any such event.But it was Israel.
There are several previous recorded and verified incidents of Israeli airstrikes against Syrian airbases,their excuse being that they were targeting Iranian military facilities at those bases.Well,that makes it all hunky dory then.A country that is officially not at war with another country can pop across the border and do a bit of bombing,run off back home and thumb their noses at International Law.
The world just took once huge irrevocable step toward triggering a Nuclear 1914.Apparently the Israeli regime was incentivised ( or thought it was jolly good idea ) to strike at Syria prior to the US doing so because it seems that Herr Trump is once again hugely aggrieved at reports emerging from the imbroglio that is the foreign-engineered Syrian civil war,of poison gas being used against civilians.
Erdogan's blitzkrieg and the meticulous ethnic cleansing of Kurdish populated regions bordering Turkey are not so much of a concern to the pseudo-moralistic posturing on Syria by the US and its NATO satrapies with,of course dutiful bootlicking lackey Tory UK austerity regime to the fore with its otiose cant.
Turkey is a NATO member,Erdogan's original wheeze of a scenario was to try and persuade the US that the Kurdish Syrian militias-part of the US backed SDF anti-Assad coalition- were themselves posing an outside existential threat to the Turkish state,which if it were actually true would oblige all NATO members to come to Turkey's ( Erdogan's ) immediate aid and declare all out war on the Kurds. Who,darn it from Ankara'a point of view are not a state actor;which is why NATO legally can't act.
And on and on.The Saudis and Qatar continue to ply Syrian based Al Qaeda affiliates,who've undergone dozens of changes in nomenclature to try and fool the CIA ( not all that difficult) with vast amounts of money,arms and intel support.This Wahabi ultra extremist strategy marries up nicely with the super scale atrocities the KSA is perpetrating in Yemen even as NATO member states including the UK has military advisors on the ground witnessing and sanctioning this unspeakable barbarism being carried out with a knowing nod and wink from Washington.
Head for the hills,is I fear no longer a viable survival strategy.
Monday, 9 April 2018
Thursday, 5 April 2018
fahrenheit451:245
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”
Two weeks after Mr Johnson gave an interview to the German broadcaster DeutscheWelle, and was asked why he believed the chemical came from Russia.
He said: "When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory..."
Mr Johnson was asked if they had samples.
He said: "They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, 'Are you sure?' And he said, 'There's no doubt'."
Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, said scientists had not "identified the precise source".
The Foreign Secretary was urged to explain the answer he gave when asked why he was certain the novichok nerve agent originated in Russia.
And in the meantime, the entire corporate MSM domiciled in the UK ( notionally "right" and notionaly "left" ) have spent the past few weeks lambasting the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP who urged caution and circumspection in regard to making accusations against Russia prior to establishing the facts and presenting the evidence.
Which naturally enough the decrepit,bumbling minority Tory regime were never ever going to hang around for before attempting to single-handedly re-ignite the Cold War. None of this habeas corpus,due process,let the Police investigate the crime,establish the facts,uncover the empirical evidence to give to the CPS to present in court at a trial -none of that nonsense.
Just wantonly defame and slander a sovereign nation state with whom the UK is officially, at least for now,still at peace and instigate hand in glove with the US neocon State Department a co-ordinated wave of diplomatic expulsions involving most but not all EU and NATO satrapies who accept the " evidence " as vouched for by a deluded haridan and Thatcher impersonator.
I'm no longer sure that Schadenfreude covers it.
Two weeks after Mr Johnson gave an interview to the German broadcaster DeutscheWelle, and was asked why he believed the chemical came from Russia.
He said: "When I look at the evidence, I mean the people from Porton Down, the laboratory..."
Mr Johnson was asked if they had samples.
He said: "They do. And they were absolutely categorical and I asked the guy myself, I said, 'Are you sure?' And he said, 'There's no doubt'."
Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, said scientists had not "identified the precise source".
The Foreign Secretary was urged to explain the answer he gave when asked why he was certain the novichok nerve agent originated in Russia.
And in the meantime, the entire corporate MSM domiciled in the UK ( notionally "right" and notionaly "left" ) have spent the past few weeks lambasting the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn MP who urged caution and circumspection in regard to making accusations against Russia prior to establishing the facts and presenting the evidence.
Which naturally enough the decrepit,bumbling minority Tory regime were never ever going to hang around for before attempting to single-handedly re-ignite the Cold War. None of this habeas corpus,due process,let the Police investigate the crime,establish the facts,uncover the empirical evidence to give to the CPS to present in court at a trial -none of that nonsense.
Just wantonly defame and slander a sovereign nation state with whom the UK is officially, at least for now,still at peace and instigate hand in glove with the US neocon State Department a co-ordinated wave of diplomatic expulsions involving most but not all EU and NATO satrapies who accept the " evidence " as vouched for by a deluded haridan and Thatcher impersonator.
I'm no longer sure that Schadenfreude covers it.
Monday, 2 April 2018
fahrenheit451:244
There is no recognised,valid international agreement that has magically granted authorisation nor any shred of legal legitimacy to the activities of the US.UK,Turkey or France whose forces are currently ensconced on the territory of the sovereign state of Syria. The only foreign forces who are incontestably legally,legitimately assisting the Syrian government are those of Russia,Iran and the forces of Hezbollah.
That the corporate MSM in the UK choose to announce the death of a British forces soldier in Syria whilst serving with US Special forces does nothing to alter or mitigate the brazen violation of all manner of International Law and norms governing the relationship between sovereign states who are at peace with one another.
Mad dog Erdogan's instigated blitzkrieg against predominantly indigenous Kurdish dominated provinces bordering Turkey are a major case in point.Turkey's NATO membership further deepens an already insoluble imbroglio. The Kurds under attack were until a few weeks ago a strategic ally of the US ( and France and Germany ) in the hydra-headed Syrian civil war scenario.
Now it seems that France has declared its renewed support of the Kurds much to the consternation of Erdogan whose vainglorious territorial ambitions remain unabated by this latest complication.
And given the diplomatic spat initiated by the UK's beleaguered,ailing,minority Tory regime against Russia over an as yet unresolved attempted assassination of a former Russia traitor on British soil,the climate of international relations has entered a period of deep depression.
The Washington Deep State continues to remorselessly tighten its grip on what remains of Trump's avowed non-interventionist stance that helped him get into the Oval Office.
The various jihadist factions are engaged in a variety of interconnected blood feuds that have come back to life after their collective failure to achieve anything more lasting than their own infamy.And two ISIS butchers- bizarrely nicknamed "The Beatles"- because of their british accents, whose UK citizenship was revoked are in the hands of the mainly Kurdish SDF anti-Assad forces who don't seem capable of simply giving these two the coup-de-grace.
And so it goes.Turkey is appointing its own governors to administer the territory it has annexed in its avowedly racist,anti-Kurdish blitzkrieg,which if nothing else has spooked the US and UK into an embarrassing omerta,all their supposed international diplomatic muscle rendered useless,except of course in their lunatic,hybrid warfare out-of-theatre assault on Russia.
As someone else has already opined, we could indeed be heading into a Nuclear 1914 scenario.
Duck and cover ain't going to help.
That the corporate MSM in the UK choose to announce the death of a British forces soldier in Syria whilst serving with US Special forces does nothing to alter or mitigate the brazen violation of all manner of International Law and norms governing the relationship between sovereign states who are at peace with one another.
Mad dog Erdogan's instigated blitzkrieg against predominantly indigenous Kurdish dominated provinces bordering Turkey are a major case in point.Turkey's NATO membership further deepens an already insoluble imbroglio. The Kurds under attack were until a few weeks ago a strategic ally of the US ( and France and Germany ) in the hydra-headed Syrian civil war scenario.
Now it seems that France has declared its renewed support of the Kurds much to the consternation of Erdogan whose vainglorious territorial ambitions remain unabated by this latest complication.
And given the diplomatic spat initiated by the UK's beleaguered,ailing,minority Tory regime against Russia over an as yet unresolved attempted assassination of a former Russia traitor on British soil,the climate of international relations has entered a period of deep depression.
The Washington Deep State continues to remorselessly tighten its grip on what remains of Trump's avowed non-interventionist stance that helped him get into the Oval Office.
The various jihadist factions are engaged in a variety of interconnected blood feuds that have come back to life after their collective failure to achieve anything more lasting than their own infamy.And two ISIS butchers- bizarrely nicknamed "The Beatles"- because of their british accents, whose UK citizenship was revoked are in the hands of the mainly Kurdish SDF anti-Assad forces who don't seem capable of simply giving these two the coup-de-grace.
And so it goes.Turkey is appointing its own governors to administer the territory it has annexed in its avowedly racist,anti-Kurdish blitzkrieg,which if nothing else has spooked the US and UK into an embarrassing omerta,all their supposed international diplomatic muscle rendered useless,except of course in their lunatic,hybrid warfare out-of-theatre assault on Russia.
As someone else has already opined, we could indeed be heading into a Nuclear 1914 scenario.
Duck and cover ain't going to help.
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
fahrenheit451:243
One year from now,the UK will be on the very cusp of leaving the EU.The terms and conditions of Article 50 will have been fulfilled
Fat bloody chance!
The metropolitan ruling elites' Remain campaign has still another twelve months to inflict further damage to what is already a hideously disfigured,beleaguered,battered and bruised Brexit. Remoaner seditionist EU shills have out-thought and out fought the always far from cohesive forces favouring the UK leaving the EU.
The ineluctable proof of this can be found in the wording of the terms and conditions of what is commonly referred to as the " Transition Deal " in effect an extension to our EU membership for a further punitive 21 months after the expiry of the mandatory Article 50 exit,which keeps the UK incarcerated until December 2020 only after which time the UK will be deemed to have actually left the EU.
The smoke and mirrors coup-de-main of the UK domiciled seditionist Remoaners aka the government in cahoots with all the other parties, in practice extended the mandatory period of notice required under Article 50 without the self-defeating farce of having to consult all 27 constituent EU member states' parliaments and the EU "Parliament" and all having to unanimously approve the extension to the Article 50 withdrawal period. Tacking a wholly spurious and superfluous transition period onto the negotiations post- Article 50 gives the grand betrayal a far more elegant and acceptable superficial appearance- though betrayal it remains..
The re-emergence of Tony Blair into the the mainstream of what is now a largely empty and meaningless continuation of a threadbare public debate around the theme of brexit,is at best a hideously conceited distraction from the genuinely treasonable machinations of the benchwarming fraternity in westminster.
The same goes for that ghastly windbag,Lord Adonis whose innate ability to appear irrelevant and yet somehow superficially important to any debate is a remarkable quality.
For example his pet project, the #StopBrexit campaign, had organised several regional marches across Britain over the last weekend.the vast wave of social media agitation created an expectation of significance surrounding these physical outpourings of anti - brexit hostility.The much heralded " Great Northern March " planned for Leeds was clearly hyped as terribly imporatnt. The optimistic Remoaner sentiment was hoping for a turn out of 50.000 but reasonably self-assured for around 20,000 on the day. On the day itself,the Remain organisers declared a wonderful success with 5,000 attending.
Even the public Remoaner legions are worn out by the claptrap and duplicity that their own metropolitan elitist leadership have been purveying for far too long.Ultimately,the elites don't want people on the streets in any impressively credible numbers.
The cause of choice of these people is to the elites a complete irrelevance.
Fat bloody chance!
The metropolitan ruling elites' Remain campaign has still another twelve months to inflict further damage to what is already a hideously disfigured,beleaguered,battered and bruised Brexit. Remoaner seditionist EU shills have out-thought and out fought the always far from cohesive forces favouring the UK leaving the EU.
The ineluctable proof of this can be found in the wording of the terms and conditions of what is commonly referred to as the " Transition Deal " in effect an extension to our EU membership for a further punitive 21 months after the expiry of the mandatory Article 50 exit,which keeps the UK incarcerated until December 2020 only after which time the UK will be deemed to have actually left the EU.
The smoke and mirrors coup-de-main of the UK domiciled seditionist Remoaners aka the government in cahoots with all the other parties, in practice extended the mandatory period of notice required under Article 50 without the self-defeating farce of having to consult all 27 constituent EU member states' parliaments and the EU "Parliament" and all having to unanimously approve the extension to the Article 50 withdrawal period. Tacking a wholly spurious and superfluous transition period onto the negotiations post- Article 50 gives the grand betrayal a far more elegant and acceptable superficial appearance- though betrayal it remains..
The re-emergence of Tony Blair into the the mainstream of what is now a largely empty and meaningless continuation of a threadbare public debate around the theme of brexit,is at best a hideously conceited distraction from the genuinely treasonable machinations of the benchwarming fraternity in westminster.
The same goes for that ghastly windbag,Lord Adonis whose innate ability to appear irrelevant and yet somehow superficially important to any debate is a remarkable quality.
For example his pet project, the #StopBrexit campaign, had organised several regional marches across Britain over the last weekend.the vast wave of social media agitation created an expectation of significance surrounding these physical outpourings of anti - brexit hostility.The much heralded " Great Northern March " planned for Leeds was clearly hyped as terribly imporatnt. The optimistic Remoaner sentiment was hoping for a turn out of 50.000 but reasonably self-assured for around 20,000 on the day. On the day itself,the Remain organisers declared a wonderful success with 5,000 attending.
Even the public Remoaner legions are worn out by the claptrap and duplicity that their own metropolitan elitist leadership have been purveying for far too long.Ultimately,the elites don't want people on the streets in any impressively credible numbers.
The cause of choice of these people is to the elites a complete irrelevance.
Thursday, 22 March 2018
fahrenheit451:242
The UK's Tory minority regime is currently embroiled in a convoluted existential mess and finding itself in the proverbial hole,has opted to carry on digging.
Russia has now been elevated to the vaunted status of grave threat to the international order and future security of the european continent. This Will O'the Wisp has been latterly conjured up by the embattled Tory Austerity regime, caught as it is between a rock and a hard place - the rock of national betrayal of the vote to Leave the EU and the rock of diplomatic and military impotence and delusion in the wider world.
Regarding the matter of immediate domestic concern to the metropolitan-domiciled ruling elites,that of maintaining the EU's supremacy over the British people,it has taken the faux-adversaries of Remain and Leave a little while to finesse and implement their joint strategy for a de-facto annulment of the verdict of the June 2016 EU Referendum.
But in spite of some efforts to honour and implement said verdict to Leave, the combined forces of mendacity,hypocrisy and servile loyalty to a hostile foreign power - the EU - have at last managed to cobble together a transition deal. This transition deal pretends to extend the interim period of time from the expiry of Article 50 at the end of March 2019 to December 2020 for there to be no, imaginary, cliff edge exodus from the confines of the EU that might have,had we ever really gone ahead with it,been an economic shock of trading on WTO rules following the UK's departure-which in any event is now confirmed as never ever going to eventuate.
The very same mendacious invertebrates who for generations now have singularly failed to defend and promote the interests of the British people vis a vis the EU, are now posing themselves as hardened Cold War hawks ready to engage Russia.
Boris Johnson the EU Leave campaign's leader-manque who impugned and denigrated the EU and all its institutions so viscerally is now at the front of the UK's campaign to get the self same EU to stand shoulder to shoulder against the imminent,highly implausible threat coming from Russia.
The yawning gap in credibility is even at this distance plain for all to see.
Treachery at home,discarding the democratic vote of the Electorate is coupled with resorting to infantile posturing that passes for international diplomacy abroad.
Drawing parallels between the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia with the Berlin Olympics of 1936 in Nazi Germany is of course another way of making sure that fuses are lit.
Russia has now been elevated to the vaunted status of grave threat to the international order and future security of the european continent. This Will O'the Wisp has been latterly conjured up by the embattled Tory Austerity regime, caught as it is between a rock and a hard place - the rock of national betrayal of the vote to Leave the EU and the rock of diplomatic and military impotence and delusion in the wider world.
Regarding the matter of immediate domestic concern to the metropolitan-domiciled ruling elites,that of maintaining the EU's supremacy over the British people,it has taken the faux-adversaries of Remain and Leave a little while to finesse and implement their joint strategy for a de-facto annulment of the verdict of the June 2016 EU Referendum.
But in spite of some efforts to honour and implement said verdict to Leave, the combined forces of mendacity,hypocrisy and servile loyalty to a hostile foreign power - the EU - have at last managed to cobble together a transition deal. This transition deal pretends to extend the interim period of time from the expiry of Article 50 at the end of March 2019 to December 2020 for there to be no, imaginary, cliff edge exodus from the confines of the EU that might have,had we ever really gone ahead with it,been an economic shock of trading on WTO rules following the UK's departure-which in any event is now confirmed as never ever going to eventuate.
The very same mendacious invertebrates who for generations now have singularly failed to defend and promote the interests of the British people vis a vis the EU, are now posing themselves as hardened Cold War hawks ready to engage Russia.
Boris Johnson the EU Leave campaign's leader-manque who impugned and denigrated the EU and all its institutions so viscerally is now at the front of the UK's campaign to get the self same EU to stand shoulder to shoulder against the imminent,highly implausible threat coming from Russia.
The yawning gap in credibility is even at this distance plain for all to see.
Treachery at home,discarding the democratic vote of the Electorate is coupled with resorting to infantile posturing that passes for international diplomacy abroad.
Drawing parallels between the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia with the Berlin Olympics of 1936 in Nazi Germany is of course another way of making sure that fuses are lit.
Friday, 16 March 2018
fahrenheit451:241
And still it rumbles on.The Salisbury imbroglio. The tiniest molehill has over this last few days been assiduously turned into a proverbial mountain.
Tory Minority Westminster Regime Leader May even went walkabout in the erstwhile largely overlooked Wiltshire County Town,as if she was Margaret Thatcher at the height of the Falklands conflict.
Opposition Leader Corbyn ( barely two years on from being massively no-confidenced by 90% of his parliamentary "colleagues" who still want nothing to do with him as their Party's duly elected leader after all this time ) has tried to inject a dose of reason and level-headedness into the hyperbole strewn bluster aired from all directions in the House of Commons chamber as if it were the set of " The Darkest Hour ".
And still it rumbles on. Expulsions of Russian embassy staff has been ordered;the nature of the incident itself has now Orwellian like been recategorised as a direct attack on UK sovereignty and the first use of a chemical weapon attack by one state on another in europe, the first since 1945.
The very same utterly detestable venal politicians and parties that for decades now have systematically betrayed the UK's sovereignty and independence and ensured our enslavement to the EU and USA are now the ones prattling on about attacks on our sovereignty.
The corporate MSM are strutting and posturing, filling cyberspace and the airwaves and diminishing acres of newsprint with fatuous drivel and archaic references to a Russian menace.And most itinerant Westminster benchwarmers are also behaving and acting as expected. Labour worse than the Tories since it is Labour,historically, that is the party of war and foreign interventionism.
And to cap it all ,the Minority regime's Secretary of State for Defence. the jejeune Gavin Williamson uttered the immortal phrase that Russia ought to shut up and go away.
Russia has just won,again. Schadenfreude!
Tory Minority Westminster Regime Leader May even went walkabout in the erstwhile largely overlooked Wiltshire County Town,as if she was Margaret Thatcher at the height of the Falklands conflict.
Opposition Leader Corbyn ( barely two years on from being massively no-confidenced by 90% of his parliamentary "colleagues" who still want nothing to do with him as their Party's duly elected leader after all this time ) has tried to inject a dose of reason and level-headedness into the hyperbole strewn bluster aired from all directions in the House of Commons chamber as if it were the set of " The Darkest Hour ".
And still it rumbles on. Expulsions of Russian embassy staff has been ordered;the nature of the incident itself has now Orwellian like been recategorised as a direct attack on UK sovereignty and the first use of a chemical weapon attack by one state on another in europe, the first since 1945.
The very same utterly detestable venal politicians and parties that for decades now have systematically betrayed the UK's sovereignty and independence and ensured our enslavement to the EU and USA are now the ones prattling on about attacks on our sovereignty.
The corporate MSM are strutting and posturing, filling cyberspace and the airwaves and diminishing acres of newsprint with fatuous drivel and archaic references to a Russian menace.And most itinerant Westminster benchwarmers are also behaving and acting as expected. Labour worse than the Tories since it is Labour,historically, that is the party of war and foreign interventionism.
And to cap it all ,the Minority regime's Secretary of State for Defence. the jejeune Gavin Williamson uttered the immortal phrase that Russia ought to shut up and go away.
Russia has just won,again. Schadenfreude!
Monday, 12 March 2018
fahrenheit451:240
Every so often journalist,commentator,columnist non-pareil Peter Hitchens hits the proverbial nail on the head.
The other week in the otherwise not terribly important Wiltshire county town of Salisbury a most unfortunate incident occurred. A former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter were apparently subjected to poisoning by what authorities describe as a deadly nerve agent. This incident happened,so it seems,whilst they were having dinner at a local restaurant.
MSM and social media platforms went ballistic over this. Boris Johnson, the Minority May Regime's Foreign Affairs Secretary even more so. Boycott of the FIFA World Cup, A myriad of potential targeted and general sanctions against Russia and so on and so forth.
In his Mail on Sunday column ,Peter Hitchens ,as usual, managed to put some perspective on the entire burgeoning imbroglio.
The West,or rather the since 1945, USA and its host of european NATO satrapies have become woefully unskilled and increasingly incompetent in matters of diplomacy and wider international relations.Their OCD reliance on acts of egregious violent blitzkrieg campaigns as the sole means of reinforcing Washington's failing hegemony marks them out as deluded psychopaths and a menace to the future of the entire planet.
Hence this Monty Pythonesque over reaction to what seems a little peripheral household cleaning, albeit in an inappropriate public space on the territory of one of a wannabe enemy.
A tisket a tasket.
The other week in the otherwise not terribly important Wiltshire county town of Salisbury a most unfortunate incident occurred. A former Russian intelligence officer and his daughter were apparently subjected to poisoning by what authorities describe as a deadly nerve agent. This incident happened,so it seems,whilst they were having dinner at a local restaurant.
MSM and social media platforms went ballistic over this. Boris Johnson, the Minority May Regime's Foreign Affairs Secretary even more so. Boycott of the FIFA World Cup, A myriad of potential targeted and general sanctions against Russia and so on and so forth.
In his Mail on Sunday column ,Peter Hitchens ,as usual, managed to put some perspective on the entire burgeoning imbroglio.
" 10 March 2018 10:18 PM
PETER HITCHENS: We're goading Russia into a 'dirty war' we CANNOT win
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column As I so often tell you not to be taken in by the current anti-Russian frenzy, you might expect me to have some opinions on the horrible events in Salisbury. And so I do.
I was reluctant to believe without proof that this was a Russian state operation. I still think some people have jumped too readily to conclusions without facts.
But the more I look at it, the more I think that the message from this outrage is as follows. If Britain really wants a war with Russia, as our Government seems to, then Russia will provide that war.
But it will not be fought according to the Geneva Conventions. It will be fought according to the law of the jungle.
Before we embark on this, could someone explain why we actually want such a war? We are a minor power on the edge of Europe. What national interest does it serve? What do we gain from it? And will we win it?
What will we do? Withdraw from the World Cup? Break off diplomatic relations? That will make them cringe, in the SVR’s Yasenevo headquarters in the birchwoods on the south-western edge of Moscow, won’t it?
Despite the lack of conclusive proof, I have to accept that the Russian state quite deliberately killed Alexander Litvinenko in the most public and memorable way possible. I think this was a message to anyone who might choose to act in the same way.
But it was also a warning to the Government and people of this country.
If the attack on Sergei Skripal was also a Kremlin operation, then it was done to tell us this: If we want to play tough guys with Moscow, we had better be prepared for the worst.
If this wasn’t its purpose, then it was remarkably stupid to harm the courageous and selfless police officer, DS Nick Bailey, and also to harm Mr Skripal’s innocent daughter, Yulia.
But what if it was the idea? What if this is a deliberate and conscious escalation of menace? Why are we even in this violent, expensive and dangerous game against people far more ruthless than we would dare to be?
We are not morally perfect ourselves, with our head-chopping aggressive Saudi friends, our bloodstained Iraq and Libyan adventures, and our targeted drone-strike killings of British citizens who joined IS.
But we also have no real quarrel with Russia. We have made it up out of nothing, and now we are losing control of it.
Since aggressive war was outlawed in 1945, European nations have tended to use devious methods to destroy, weaken, undermine, deter or attack their enemies, rather than openly send their tanks across borders.
The old Soviet Union financed communist movements and their front organisations in Western countries.
And both sides also ran a secret war – submarines sneaking into each other’s territorial waters, secret support for dissidents by us, and for strikers and ‘peace campaigners’ by them, and of course spying.
Spying is a hostile, dangerous and cruel activity which infuriates its targets, including us. Remember the 42-year prison sentence for George Blake, one of the few Soviet agents we managed to catch and prosecute?
You don’t spy on friends and you don’t spy on people you’re afraid of, or people you owe money to. I doubt very much that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) tries to recruit agents, or to finance opponents of the government, in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, or Peking. I expect its main activity in these places is lunch.
But what the Skripal case tells us is that, long after the Cold War ended, we still choose to treat Russia as the sort of country where we should continue active, aggressive spying and efforts to bring down the government.
Not only did we pay Colonel Skripal a lot of money for the names of Russian agents in the West, we financed opponents of the Russian government (and we complain that they mess around in our politics!).Why do we do this?
Now that communism, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact are on the scrapheap, I am at a loss to see what reason we have to be Russia’s enemy, or what reason they have to be ours. We have no common border, we have no colonial rivalries, we barely even trade any more since our oil deals collapsed. We cheerfully get on with equally nasty despotisms elsewhere, especially China.
Yet the Cold War had been over for nearly five years, and we were on good terms with Boris Yeltsin, when the SIS hired Colonel Skripal of the Russian GRU (Main Military Intelligence Directorate).
It took the Russians nine years to catch him, and a year of presumably pretty savage interrogation before they hit back by exposing MI6’s comical ‘fake-rock’ operation in Moscow.
The Kremlin could easily have had Skripal killed during his years in Russia’s disease-ridden, violent prison system. But they didn’t. They are much angrier with us now than they were then.
Yes, what they apparently did in Salisbury is a filthy, inexcusable thing. But it is the face of modern combat, in a war our government chose to fight. What answer do we have to it that will not make it worse? "
I was reluctant to believe without proof that this was a Russian state operation. I still think some people have jumped too readily to conclusions without facts.
But the more I look at it, the more I think that the message from this outrage is as follows. If Britain really wants a war with Russia, as our Government seems to, then Russia will provide that war.
But it will not be fought according to the Geneva Conventions. It will be fought according to the law of the jungle.
Before we embark on this, could someone explain why we actually want such a war? We are a minor power on the edge of Europe. What national interest does it serve? What do we gain from it? And will we win it?
What will we do? Withdraw from the World Cup? Break off diplomatic relations? That will make them cringe, in the SVR’s Yasenevo headquarters in the birchwoods on the south-western edge of Moscow, won’t it?
Despite the lack of conclusive proof, I have to accept that the Russian state quite deliberately killed Alexander Litvinenko in the most public and memorable way possible. I think this was a message to anyone who might choose to act in the same way.
But it was also a warning to the Government and people of this country.
If the attack on Sergei Skripal was also a Kremlin operation, then it was done to tell us this: If we want to play tough guys with Moscow, we had better be prepared for the worst.
If this wasn’t its purpose, then it was remarkably stupid to harm the courageous and selfless police officer, DS Nick Bailey, and also to harm Mr Skripal’s innocent daughter, Yulia.
But what if it was the idea? What if this is a deliberate and conscious escalation of menace? Why are we even in this violent, expensive and dangerous game against people far more ruthless than we would dare to be?
We are not morally perfect ourselves, with our head-chopping aggressive Saudi friends, our bloodstained Iraq and Libyan adventures, and our targeted drone-strike killings of British citizens who joined IS.
But we also have no real quarrel with Russia. We have made it up out of nothing, and now we are losing control of it.
Since aggressive war was outlawed in 1945, European nations have tended to use devious methods to destroy, weaken, undermine, deter or attack their enemies, rather than openly send their tanks across borders.
The old Soviet Union financed communist movements and their front organisations in Western countries.
And both sides also ran a secret war – submarines sneaking into each other’s territorial waters, secret support for dissidents by us, and for strikers and ‘peace campaigners’ by them, and of course spying.
Spying is a hostile, dangerous and cruel activity which infuriates its targets, including us. Remember the 42-year prison sentence for George Blake, one of the few Soviet agents we managed to catch and prosecute?
You don’t spy on friends and you don’t spy on people you’re afraid of, or people you owe money to. I doubt very much that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) tries to recruit agents, or to finance opponents of the government, in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, or Peking. I expect its main activity in these places is lunch.
But what the Skripal case tells us is that, long after the Cold War ended, we still choose to treat Russia as the sort of country where we should continue active, aggressive spying and efforts to bring down the government.
Not only did we pay Colonel Skripal a lot of money for the names of Russian agents in the West, we financed opponents of the Russian government (and we complain that they mess around in our politics!).Why do we do this?
Now that communism, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact are on the scrapheap, I am at a loss to see what reason we have to be Russia’s enemy, or what reason they have to be ours. We have no common border, we have no colonial rivalries, we barely even trade any more since our oil deals collapsed. We cheerfully get on with equally nasty despotisms elsewhere, especially China.
Yet the Cold War had been over for nearly five years, and we were on good terms with Boris Yeltsin, when the SIS hired Colonel Skripal of the Russian GRU (Main Military Intelligence Directorate).
It took the Russians nine years to catch him, and a year of presumably pretty savage interrogation before they hit back by exposing MI6’s comical ‘fake-rock’ operation in Moscow.
The Kremlin could easily have had Skripal killed during his years in Russia’s disease-ridden, violent prison system. But they didn’t. They are much angrier with us now than they were then.
Yes, what they apparently did in Salisbury is a filthy, inexcusable thing. But it is the face of modern combat, in a war our government chose to fight. What answer do we have to it that will not make it worse? "
Hence this Monty Pythonesque over reaction to what seems a little peripheral household cleaning, albeit in an inappropriate public space on the territory of one of a wannabe enemy.
A tisket a tasket.
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