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UK Politics: The Beast From The East


Hereward

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6 minutes ago, Hereward said:

No, it wasn't. VX was invented in the UK. North Korea makes its own.

Fair enough.

ETA: Though, on further investigation, it appears that nobody actually knows where Kim's poison was manufactured. Couldn't the same be said for the Salisbury poison?

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1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, right. So unhappy that a Google news search for 'Seamus Milne' returns just one story

It does help if one searches for Seumas Milne.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=seumas+milne&rlz=1C1GGRV_enGB771GB771&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjrst3Zvu7ZAhXMe8AKHdLnDVsQ_AUICigB&biw=1904&bih=930

(That's a mistake I've made myself.)

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11 minutes ago, mormont said:

Ah, thanks for that.

So, reading what they guy actually said, not the subtext applied by the Mail, Sun, Express et al, does anyone here actually disagree with what he said?

Or are we to just blindly accept that our government, a government that basically lies its bollocks off every single day, is telling the truth about this? 

Where's the actual evidence?

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9 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Ah, thanks for that.

So, reading what they guy actually said, not the subtext applied by the Mail, Sun, Express et al, does anyone here actually disagree with what he said?

Or are we to just blindly accept that our government, a government that basically lies its bollocks off every single day, is telling the truth about this? 

Where's the actual evidence?

You can't actually ask for evidence don't be ridiculous. That's not how politics work.

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Spocky: I'd say there's simply no reason I can see to doubt that Russia did this. Nobody else in the world has the motive, means and opportunity.

I'd also observe that your own position is quite hard to engage with, because frankly it seems to start from an assumption that Corbyn is automatically right. 

It's perfectly possible to be right and wrong at the same time. Context matters. Nothing a party leader says is capable of only one interpretation, or of bearing only one, literal, explicit message. And it's not just what you say that matters, it's how you say it. So asking us to ignore 'subtext' is naive, because it assumes that no subtext was intended. Seumas Milne and Jeremy Corbyn aren't such helpless naifs that they do not understand that their public statements have subtext (and if they are, they should immediately resign). 

So, no, I'm not going to ignore subtext and context here. I'm not blindly accepting spin by the Mail et al because I haven't even read their spin. But even without that, I think Corbyn and Milne are making a mess of this. I think that for whatever reason, they don't want to believe that Russia did it, and are allowing that to influence their public statements. 

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2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

You know, thinking about it, if the Russians actually did this, it has to go down as the dumbest act of criminality since Tyrion Lannister handed his incredibly rare Valyrian steel dagger to a stinky, low-level assassin and sent him off to murder Brandon Stark.

Actually, it was Joffrey. Tyrion merely got accused.

This can be read two ways. Either it was meant to go undetected and they botched the job. Or they are deliberately doing it such that everybody knows it was the Russian state to send a message. And since the typ of chemical used doesn't really prove that it was Russia they can even deny it (maybe with a little smirk).

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40 minutes ago, mormont said:

Spocky: I'd say there's simply no reason I can see to doubt that Russia did this. Nobody else in the world has the motive, means and opportunity.

I'd also observe that your own position is quite hard to engage with, because frankly it seems to start from an assumption that Corbyn is automatically right. 

It's perfectly possible to be right and wrong at the same time. Context matters. Nothing a party leader says is capable of only one interpretation, or of bearing only one, literal, explicit message. And it's not just what you say that matters, it's how you say it. So asking us to ignore 'subtext' is naive, because it assumes that no subtext was intended. Seumas Milne and Jeremy Corbyn aren't such helpless naifs that they do not understand that their public statements have subtext (and if they are, they should immediately resign). 

So, no, I'm not going to ignore subtext and context here. I'm not blindly accepting spin by the Mail et al because I haven't even read their spin. But even without that, I think Corbyn and Milne are making a mess of this. I think that for whatever reason, they don't want to believe that Russia did it, and are allowing that to influence their public statements. 

Nobody else in the world had the motive, means and opportunity? Come on, man. Now who's being naive? 

And as far as I'm concerned, Corbyn isn't automatically right. About anything. His position on Brexit makes me want to shake him like a rag doll. But on this, he just might have a point.

As far as I'm concerned, yeah, it looks like Russia did it. But this being presented as absolute truth by a bunch of lying liars makes me want to puke.

34 minutes ago, Loge said:

Actually, it was Joffrey. Tyrion merely got accused.

My point exactly.

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17 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Nobody else in the world had the motive, means and opportunity? Come on, man. Now who's being naive? 

Present me with a plausible alternative, and then you might be able to ask that question. But I'm afraid it's not naive to rule out entirely hypothetical alternatives or conspiracy theories with nothing to back them up. 

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3 hours ago, Spockydog said:

You know, thinking about it, if the Russians actually did this, it has to go down as the dumbest act of criminality since Tyrion Lannister handed his incredibly rare Valyrian steel dagger to a stinky, low-level assassin and sent him off to murder Brandon Stark.

There's nothing stupid about it.  The Russian security services like using poison, in order to frighten other would-be defectors.  Sometimes it's useful to make a death look like an accident.  At other times, it's useful to send a message that you will never be safe if you cross Putin.

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14 minutes ago, mormont said:

Present me with a plausible alternative, and then you might be able to ask that question. But I'm afraid it's not naive to rule out entirely hypothetical alternatives or conspiracy theories with nothing to back them up. 

Could have been any one of MI5, MI6, Mossad, the Chinese, or the CIA. Or just a non-governmental Russian looking to fuck with Putin. As for motive, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of geo-political affairs knows there are a bazillion reasons why this plot might have been hatched.

And before you go claiming I'm just some conspiracy theory nutter, bear in mind that, at this stage, the UK's entire case is nothing but a conspiracy theory.

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20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

 

As far as I'm concerned, yeah, it looks like Russia did it. But this being presented as absolute truth by a bunch of lying liars makes me want to puke.

 

So if the Tories are pathological liars and never ever to be trusted in any statements in the House of Commons, who would you implicitly trust if they stated that Russia carried out this act? Just interested, as you seem to be approaching this as 'yes Russia in all probability did this but I don't trust it 'cos one of those nasty Tories said they did it'. An interesting approach to say the least.

 

Meanwhile, the appalling Telford grooming/rape case is being somewhat ignored. Jess Phillips has a piece about it on the Guardian website today. It is heart breaking to read about such abuse on an industrial scale, yet again. I remember Jack Straw raising this about a decade ago with his 'white meat' comment and being howled down, especially by those in his own party.  And we haven't even got our heads around women being trafficked into this country for sex purposes. Probably young boys as well. 

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13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

There's nothing stupid about it.  The Russian security services like using poison, in order to frighten other would-be defectors.  Sometimes it's useful to make a death look like an accident.  At other times, it's useful to send a message that you will never be safe if you cross Putin.

Yes, that all makes sense. But if you wanted a 'message killing' why not just throw someone from the Eifell Tower, or deploy some less exotic poisons such as arsenic or cyanide?  Why risk Everything Thats Happening Now by perpetrating the first nerve agent attack in Europe since WW2? Putin gains nothing from this. 

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Russia is not exactly afraid of being obvious with its state sponsored murders.  Or do you also believe that Alexander Litvinenko, was not Murdered on behalf of the Russians?  but was also some kind of frame job?

 

For the record, Russia denied any part of that Murder too.

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12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Could have been any one of MI5, MI6, Mossad, the Chinese, or the CIA.

Or the lizard people.

Come on, man, I asked for a credible alternative, not a list of organisations that regularly feature in paranoid fantasies. 

12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

As for motive, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of geo-political affairs knows there are a bazillion reasons why this plot might have been hatched.

Name one (a credible one, please). 

12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

And before you go claiming I'm just some conspiracy theory nutter, bear in mind that, at this stage, the UK's entire case is nothing but a conspiracy theory.

It really isn't, you know. 

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19 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yes, that all makes sense. But if you wanted a 'message killing' why not just throw someone from the Eifell Tower, or deploy some less exotic poisons such as arsenic or cyanide?  Why risk Everything Thats Happening Now by perpetrating the first nerve agent attack in Europe since WW2? Putin gains nothing from this. 

You do what you're good at.  The Russians poisoned Litvinenko with an exceptional lack of mercy, by using polonium, so that his insides would have felt like they were on fire.  The Bulgarians poisoned Markov with ricin.  Both were very unpleasant and lingering deaths (especially the former).      

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6 minutes ago, mormont said:

Or the lizard people.

Come on, man, I asked for a credible alternative, not a list of organisations that regularly feature in paranoid fantasies. 

So we're just going to pretend that intelligence agencies do not have people murdered in order to advance foreign policy objectives. 

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

Name one (a credible one, please). 

Okay, let's choose one close to home. The British Establishment decides that all this Brexit nonsense has gone far enough. But because that idiot Cameron gave in to his party and ballsed everything up, the British public now needs to be frightened back into the strong and protective arms of Europe. And what better way to do this than take us to the brink of war with that damn madman, Putin. Chance of mission success is admittedly low, but with a malfunctioning  Maybot in charge, you never know. Wot wot. 

7 minutes ago, mormont said:

It really isn't, you know. 

They've got no suspect, no idea how the stuff was deployed. The poison could have been manufactured anywhere. Everything is conjecture. 

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2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

So we're just going to pretend that intelligence agencies do not have people murdered in order to advance foreign policy objectives. 

Since I'm asserting that the Russian intelligence agency did exactly that, that would be a peculiar way of interpreting what I'm saying.

The problem is not that I'm saying intelligence agencies don't have people murdered to advance foreign policy objectives. The problem is that there's zero evidence pointing to any other intelligence agency, and no believable reason for any of them to be behind this (sorry, your stuff about forcing us back into the arms of the EU is pure nonsense). Meanwhile, as noted, Russian intelligence has motive, means and opportunity.

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

They've got no suspect, no idea how the stuff was deployed. The poison could have been manufactured anywhere. Everything is conjecture. 

To begin with, the poison could not have been manufactured anywhere. That's just incorrect.

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