I’m posting this for Trev, one of the great commenters on this blog. He posted a comment a few days ago stating that some nutter elsewhere on the web had accused him and Jeremy Corbyn of being pro-Putin. This is absolute nonsense, as this video from Double Down News put up on YouTube on the 28th February shows.
In it, Corbyn makes it very clear that he utterly condemns the Russian invasion and its horrifying loss of human life and has every sympathy with the Ukrainians. He states that all wars end with a political solution, so let’s cut out the fighting and go directly there. He feels that we should go back to the agreements made at the end of the Cold War, particularly that in Minsk. Starmer has denounced the Stop the War Coalition as a Russian stooge, for which there’s no evidence. All governments try to make sure it’s only their line that’s heard during a war, and truth is the first casualty. It’s very easy for political leaders to send other people’s children to die. He states that he has been accused of being pro-Putin, but he has a record of standing up against tyrants and for human rights both in the Soviet Union and in democratic Russia. As Putin, he was helped into power by various world leaders – here the video shows Putin meeting and greeting Blair, the Queen and, I think, George Dubya. This was at the same time Putin invaded Chechnya to persecute and murder its people. He talks about the palpable racism in Moscow towards Chechens, complete with footage of Russian Nazi scum goose stepping about with their wretched right-arm salute. He was part of a parliamentary human rights delegation that met Russian officials complaining about the abuse of human rights, and was part of a demonstration in London with Tony Benn against the violations and the war in Chechnya. And when the terrible events in Salisbury took place, Corbyn said it was a consequence of Russian money in Britain, which needed to be examined. This is followed by a clip of his speech in parliament attacking this dirty money, and noting that the Tories had received £800,000 in donations from Russian oligarchs. We now have the Magnitsky rules and other legislation. But there have been people on the left who have been quite consistent in their support for human rights and the rights of journalists.
He says that when the Iraq war broke out in 2003 he was completely opposed to it, but didn’t want to go to war with the US or anybody else. He wanted peace for the people of Iraq. Similarly an attack on Russia in Ukraine will just produce another war and more bitterness and hatred. It would mean more of the world’s precious resources being used to manufacture weapons rather than dealing with the environmental crisis that threatens everyone. He states that it often seems that the people who have absolute unity are more prescient, so it’s good to stand out sometimes. As for wars being won or lost, he says that after they’re over and the media circus has moved on, the person who has lost a son is forever left with that, wondering on their birthday what they would have done and that goes on for all their life. Nobody ever wins a war, and having a war is a defeat for all of us. The best option is to halt the war as quickly as possible and move on to peace, recognition and understanding. In the case of Ukraine, the country could be occupied with massive destruction,, leading to resistance fighting and a civil war that could go on for a very long time. And worse is the possibility of a conflict between NATO and Russia with their nuclear armaments.
Being anti-war isn’t a weakness. It’s looking at the current conflict and seeing that it needs to be resolved and we need peace. We need more voices for peace and anti-war activists around the world to speak and oppose what their governments are doing. He was inspired to see so many young people on the streets of Moscow protesting against the war and that it was not being done in their name. It was the same language many people used against the Iraq War, and which Americans used against the Vietnam War. It is the voices for peace around the world we should be listening to at the present time.
There you have it from the man himself: he’s made it clear that he condemns the invasion, as he condemns all wars, and has protested against Putin when others in the West embraced the tyrant. He wants the war to stop not just because of the carnage that all wars cause, but of the dangers of this escalating into nuclear war. And he admires, respects and supports anti-war campaigners in Russia and around the world.
Jeremy Corbyn: the prime minister this country should have had.
The Beeb, as has been pointed out by countless left-wing websites and academics, ad nauseam, has a very strong Tory bias. It’s shown in its determination to vilify the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn at every chance it can get, while packing news shows like Question Time with Tory MPs, supporters and members of right-wing think tanks. And this right-wing bias seems to go right down to local news. Points West is the local news programme for the Bristol area, covering not just Bristol, but also Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Yesterday, as part of the coverage of the Brexit debates in parliament and the demonstrations both pro- and anti-, they decided to gauge local attitudes in our part of the West Country. This meant talking to three local MPs, Thangam Debonnaire in Bristol, the Tory MP for Tewkesbury and another Tory from the Forest of Dean. They wanted to talk to the latter because he was one of those who threw their hat into the ring when the party ousted Tweezer and started about deciding her successor. And it was very clear that he was a Brexiteer, who wanted the whole debate to be over and done with and everyone get behind BoJob. He couldn’t, however, say what benefits Brexit would bring his constituents in the Forest, and didn’t answer the question when David Garmston, the interviewer, asked him what he was going to tell them what they would be for his constituents. Instead he just waffled about how he was sure they wanted it over and done with as soon as possible, or were fully informed of the Brexit debate. Or something.
Then it was down to Weston-Super-Mare for a vox pop. The split, their presenter announced, between ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ voters was very narrow, 52% versus 48%. They were down in the north Somerset resort town because attitudes in Weston closely followed those nationally. But this wasn’t evident from the people they showed speaking. Points West put out two deck chairs, labelled ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and invited people to sit in them in answer to the questions ‘Do you want an election?’ and ‘Do you support Brexit’. I think they showed four people, of whom only one was Labour and a Remainer. The rest were Tories and very definitely Brexiteers. And what specimens of humanity they were! One was an elderly lady with a Midlands accent, who ranted about Remainers being ‘Remoaners’ and ‘snowflakes’, all the while making gestures suggesting that she thought they all ought to be thrown into the sea. She then went off giggling like an imbecile at what she thought was her own wit. She was followed by an elderly gent, who declared that he wanted a general election that would return the Tories with a massive majority. And then there was a young man from Salisbury, who was also behind Boris Johnson and Brexit.
These loudmouths reminded me of the Bill Hicks joke about evolution having passed by some pockets of humanity. ‘In some parts of our troubled world, people are shouting ‘Revolution! Revolution! In Kansas they’re shouting ‘Evolution! Evolution! We want our opposable thumbs’. Evolution isn’t supposed to go backwards. But you wonder. All the anxiety about food and medicine shortages – I know people, who are stocking up on their medicines already – as well as the devastation to the economy, manufacturing industry, jobs, all that went unmentioned by the Brexiteers on the sea front. Listening to the old chap declaring that he wanted an overwhelming Tory majority, I wanted to ask him, who he thought would continue paying his pension and if he had private medical insurance if this happened. Because the Tories are determined to cut pensions, one way or another, and they are selling off the NHS. And Nigel Farage has said very openly that we may need to change to an insurance-based system. Which is a not-very-coded way of saying that he’s in favour of it. But obviously these people weren’t concerned about any of that. They just believed everything they read in the papers, like the Heil, the Scum and the Torygraph.
And I doubt very much that these talking heads were representative of the good folks down in Weston-Super-Mare. If attitudes in the city really are like those nationally, then the people sitting on those chairs should be equally split. Instead it looks like the report was very carefully staged to favour the Brexiteers. Just like rather more Tory MPs were interviewed on the programme than Labour.
The programme was on tonight about Sajid Javid and how he grew up in his parents’ fashion shop in Stapleton Road in Bristol. Apparently he still proud of his roots there, despite the fact that it is a run-down area with a reputation. It’s topical, but I still wonder if it was anymore objective than last night’s edition about Brexit. I didn’t watch it, only catching a brief glimpse of it, when one of the interviewers was asking other Asian small businessmen in the area if they shared the national fears about the harm Brexit would do to businesses like theirs. It’s possible that the programme really was more unbiased. But somehow, given the nature of last night’s programme, I doubt it.
Gordon Dimmack is a left-wing vlogger with a particular interest in disability issues. In this piece from the 27th September 2018, he gives his enthusiastic approval, with some reservations, to Corbyn’s speech at the Labour conference. Although he strongly supports all of Corbyn’s speech, in this video he concentrates specifically on the Labour leader’s proposed new foreign policy, as it particularly shows the difference between Labour and the Tories. After making these points briefly at the very beginning, he then moves on to a brief clip of that part of Corbyn’s speech. Corbyn says
Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world, our foreign policy, is no longer sustainable. We’re entering a new, fast-changing and more dangerous world, including the reckless attacks in Salisbury, which the evidence painstakingly assembled by the police points to the Russian state. When president Trump takes the US out of the Paris accord and tries to scrap the Iran nuclear deal, moves the US embassy to Jerusalem and pursues an aggressive nationalism and trade wars, then he’s turning his back on international cooperation and even international law.
We need a government in Britain that not only keeps the country safe, but can also speak out, speak out for democratic values and human rights. Today’s Conservative government continues to collude with the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen, turning a blind eye to the evidence of war crimes on the devastating suffering of millions of civilians. That’s why I was honoured to attend a vigil this week held in Liverpool by the Yemeni community in protest against what is taking place.
Corbyn has received applause before in this speech, but at this point it becomes a standing ovation. He continues
Labour’s foreign policy will be driven by progressive values and international solidarity, led by our international team of Emily Thornberry, Kate Osselmore and Neil Griffith. This means no more reckless wars of intervention after Iraq or Libya, it means putting negotiation before confrontation, diplomacy before tub-thumping threats. And it means championing human rights and democracy everywhere, not just where it’s commercially convenient. And working to resolve the world’s injustices, not standing idly by, or worse, fueling them in the first place.
He’s also applauded during this section, which is the end of the part of his speech included in the video.
Dimmack then goes on to the make the point that Corbyn was absolutely correct when he said that the UK’s foreign policy was unsustainable. It is, That’s why we’re in all these wars in the Middle East. Because it’s all about the oil, the petrodollar and a natural gas pipeline that has to go through Syria to supply Europe. And in answer to those, who deny this, the value of the world’s reserve fund is based upon it. And it isn’t sustainable, because oil and gas, fossil fuels, are the very products leading to the destruction of this planet. He argues that we have to move away from these wars in countries we shouldn’t be involved in and take care of our own country.
He is critical of Corbyn’s comment about the evidence in the Skripal poisoning pointing to the Russian state. This has ruined his speech for Dimmack, but he believes Corbyn has to say it, as if he didn’t, that would be the headlines in the paper the next day.
Dimmack liked the fact that Corbyn called out Trump, and pointed out that you don’t get Tweezer calling out Trump. You get them sycophantically licking his a**e like Boris Johnson does. And people like Jeremy Hunt meeting Kissinger. Dimmack praises Corbyn for calling Trump out on moving away from the Paris accords, scrapping the nuclear deal with Iran and moving the embassy to Jerusalem and states that you won’t find Tweezer doing the same. He predicts that in the Tory conference the following week we’ll get Tweezer offering Trump an olive branch in the hope of a trade deal.
Dimmack also praises him for condemning the war in Yemen, and states that while he’s critical of standing ovations, this one was definitely warranted. Dimmack makes the point that this is a proxy war that the West is allowing. We could stop it at any time. The Saudi planes wouldn’t even be able to take off unless we and the Americans gave our permission.
Dimmack is less impressed by Corbyn’s statement that the foreign policy would be run by Emily Thornberry. Although she’s an ally of Corbyn, she was mentioned in an article by the Electronic Intifada about the decision at the conference to freeze arms sales to Israel and other, similar countries like Saudi Arabia. Despite her closeness to Corbyn, Thornberry’s a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and opposed the decision. The party also condemned the killing of civilians by the Israelis on the ‘March for Freedom’ protest. Dimmack would like to know who the source for the Intifada’s article was, as they are not named.
Dimmack states that Corbyn’s pledge that Britain would no longer engage in interventionist wars is what we all wanted him to say. He makes the point that Libya was ‘liberated’ in 2012, and that now there is a slave trade there. An open air slave trade in the markets. He goes on to say that this is ironic, as Reagan’s chief of staff for the CIA, Bill Casey, was under investigation at the time Reagan held his first meeting with him and the other chiefs, because he was suspected of instigating a coup in Libya to oust Colonel Gaddafy. One of the lies the Agency was spreading to destabilise Gaddafy’s regime was that Gaddafy was involved in a slave trade with Myanmar. And then after they get rid of Gaddafy within a few years there is an open slave trade in Libya.
Dimmack approves of Corbyn substituting negotiation for aggressive action, as you can’t solve anything without lines of communication, and the way he attacked Israel and the Saudis without explicitly singling them out. He goes on to state that the newspapers, especially online, were unanimous in their acclaim of Corbyn’s speech. Even the Torygraph, which said it was his best speech yet. Dimmack says that with this going on, it’s no wonder that within 90 minutes to a couple of hours following it that the government leaked details that one of the two men accused of poisoning the Skripals was commended or given a medal by Putin. He leaves his audience to make up their own minds about it.
Dimmack states that while there are some things he doesn’t like about the speech, it’s what he wanted to hear, and it’s a radical shift in our country’s foreign policy. And when people hear Corbyn speak, he wins votes. Unlike the opposition, who, like the Democrats and Hillary, don’t want Tweezer to campaign as whenever she does, her approval rating goes down. He then predicts that Tweezer at the Tory conference in the next few days would have a more difficult time than Jezze did.
Craig Murray was our ambassador to Uzbekistan, before he fell foul of the government and establishment for standing up and recommending that we shouldn’t do deals with them because it was an oppressive dictatorship. Murray’s been fiercely criticising the official line that the substance used to poison the Skripals was manufactured in Russia. In this short interview with RT, which is just over five minutes long, he further tears apart the government’s accusations of Russian responsibility.
Murray states that he was told by people in the Foreign Office two weeks ago that they couldn’t say that Russia manufactured the poison. He talks about how there was pressure on Porton Down to say it was Russian, but the latest statement by the government slightly amending their stance is nothing more than information management. The government was aware that the International Chemical Weapons Authority were going to issue a statement that there is no evidence the Russians were responsible, and so modified their own statements about it accordingly. The RT interviewer asks him about the poison, and whether it is so complex and difficult to manufacture that it requires the resources of a state. Murray replies that there are at least half a dozen states that could manufacture the Novichoks nerve agent. As for it being too complicated for anyone, he cites Prof. Collum in New York, a chemist, who said that any of his postgraduate students could have made it.
He also talks about a film that has been broadcast stating the government’s opinion on the poisoning. He observes that the end of the film looks like it has been tacked on. It is as though the film makers were also pressured to add a bit more to their film in order for it to support the government’s line.
The RT interviewer then mentions that Murray was an ambassador to Uzbekistan, and asks if the Uzbeks could have manufactured the poison. Murray repeats that half a dozen states could, and says that there was indeed a chemical weapons plant in Uzbekistan. This was dismantled by the Americans, and he attended the party that was held when they had finished the job. The materials were then taken back to America, so the Americans certainly have the ability to manufacture the poison. The facility, however, was soviet, not Russian, and there were people of many nationalities working in it, including Ukrainians. They have now returned to the Ukraine, so that country now possesses the knowledge and ability to manufacture the poison.
He also tears apart the statement of one other country, which denied that they produced the poison. He notes that they didn’t say that they couldn’t make it, only that it wouldn’t have come from them, because their security was too tight.
Murray states that what is needed in Salisbury poisoning is a proper criminal investigation with all the resources these have. But this has not been done. Instead, the government has leapt in, with little thought or evidence, to accuse the Russians in order to increase the Cold War tensions with Russia and create a confrontation with them.
Quite a few people have put up pieces tearing great, raw chunks out of the government’s story that the Russians are responsible for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Salisbury. Last week, Leftwingnobody, one of the great commenters on this blog, posted up a link on his blog to a piece in the Irish Times, which stated that it was unlikely the Russians were responsible. Leftwingnobody’s link is at https://leftwingnobody.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/unlikely-that-vladimir-putin-behind-skripal-poisoning/?wref=tp. Go to it, and follow the link for more information.
Craig Murray, who was formerly our man in Uzbekistan, before being kicked out because he had moral objections to our dealing with a corrupt, repressive tyrant, has also cast doubt on the government’s story. And Mike has also posted up continuing developments, which add more questions. Today he put up a piece quoting the Russians, who said that if they had used military grade nerve agents, then far more people would have been affected than the Skripals and the poor cop, who was poisoned. And they would all be dead, not incapacitated. Which is how it struck me. Furthermore, the Russians couldn’t use their original stocks of the Novichoks poison, because this would have decayed after 27 years. Quite apart from the fact that the international chemical weapons authority confirmed the Russians had destroyed them. But as the scientist, who developed the toxin revealed, the knowledge of how to manufacture it is now out in the public sector, and so any number of countries or individuals could be behind the attack. Porton Down has refused to confirm that the Russians were responsible, and stated only that the nerve agent was of ‘Russian manufacture’.
But as far as May and the Tories, and their lapdogs in the Beeb are concerned, the Russians are responsible, and we’re facing a new threat from Putin. Who, according to BoJo, is now like Hitler. At least in the way he’s going to use next year’s world cup in Moscow, which will be like the Berlin Olympics in 1938.
I caught May pontificating on the Six O’clock News about how the Russians were threatening us and our European allies. The report also said she was trying to persuade the other European leaders to join her. Queue a shot of Angela Merkel going down a corridor, looking grim and serious. Then it moved on to Boris, saying that he wasn’t trying to stoke tensions with his wild comparison with Hitler. And on the local news this evening, they were also talking about the Salisbury poisoning and described the chemical used as ‘the Russian nerve agent’, although this is still open to doubt. Back to the Six O’clock News, the Beeb showed an Estonian diplomat talking about the Russian threat.
This is dangerous talk, whatever nonsense BoJo might try to bluster in order to justify his absurd comments. The Russians lost 20 million people fighting Hitler during the War. Millions of their squaddies were starved and worked to death as slave labourers after being captured as P.O.W.s by the Nazis. It’s therefore highly offensive for BoJo to make this stupid, insulting comparison. Also, as Simon Reeve showed in his documentary series about Russia a few months ago, the Russians are genuinely proud of their armed forces and the way they defended their homeland during the Great Patriotic War. Their equivalent of Remembrance Day/ Veteran’s Day is far more like a party, with food and drink, as well as marches and speeches, than the very solemn and austere ceremonies we go through every November 11.
I don’t doubt that Putin will try to exploit the World Cup to promote his government and his country, but the accusation that he will is more than a little hypocritical. Every government uses international sporting events like the World Cup, or the Olympics, to promote themselves. I can still remember the Americans at the Atlanta Olympics in the 1980s. As for Russia threatening Europe, in many cases it’s the other way. Russia is ringed by NATO bases right along its borders. This was after the original treaty with Gorbachev pledged NATO not to expand up to its borders in return for Gorby withdrawing all their troops from eastern Europe and allowing the former satellites to go their own way. I’m sympathetic to the fears of the Baltic States, who were reincorporated into the USSR after a brief period of independence when Stalin threw the Germans back in World War II. But at the same time, the Estonians are building monuments to Nazi collaborators as national heroes. And the supposedly democratic government of the Ukraine includes real, uniformed Nazis, who are now out on the streets of Kiev to keep order. But you won’t find that mentioned on the news, because obviously, the vast majority of people in this country will not want to support a blatantly Fascist regime.
So once again, we’re being fed lies by the Tories and the media, lies which could take us to war. And who benefits? Well, May and the Tories, obviously. She was seven points behind Labour in the polls, and the Tories are looking at being wiped out in London. Thus, she’s trying to copy Thatcher, and act like a ‘bargain-basement Boadicea’, rattling her sabre furiously. The real reason for this tension is less a military threat from Russia, and far more the fact that the American multinationals, who thought they would get to control the Russian economy under Yeltsin, have found themselves stymied by Putin. It’s like the Iraq invasion all over again: dodgy claims of weapons of mass destruction, and economic motives – western corporate interests – disguised as an attack, or resistance to, an evil tyrant.
Putin is a thug, and a real enemy of democracy. Journalists and opposition politicians in Russia have been arbitrarily arrested, jailed, beaten and murdered by his thugs. And I don’t doubt that at least some of the 14 Russians, who’ve died over here in suspicious circumstances, have been assassinated by him. But Corbyn is right about the Salisbury poisoning. It isn’t clear that he’s behind it, and we need far more proof before stoking up international tensions.
But the Tories are doing it anyway, for their own cynical electoral advantage, and those of their corporate financers. And if there is a war, the people who will pay the price will be ordinary working people. When Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the Republican Neocon leadership were very careful to make sure that none of their sons or daughters were likely to be posted to the conflict zone. As opposed to the poor and working class, whose districts were targeted by the recruiting sergeants.
As for Boris, looking at the way he has conducted himself as foreign secretary, I can only agree with the Russians. It is amazing that he is the spokesman of a nuclear power. Actually, it’s downright terrifying.
For all our sakes, we need the media to hold May and the rest to account, to ask the hard questions that Laura Kuenssberg and the rest of the Beeb’s pro-Tory lackeys aren’t asking. Before the Tories start another war for the benefit of multinational capital.
This alarming idea occurred to me yesterday, when I started wondering just how far the Tories are prepared to push their allegations that Russia is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. So far, there’s precious little evidence that the Russians are responsible. Skripal had many enemies, and the Novichoks nerve agent used was created by the Russians, but the international chemical weapons authorities confirmed that they destroyed their stocks years ago. The poison wasn’t manufactured in Russia, but in Khazakstan, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union the ability to use and produce it spread to any number of other states. Including America and Israel. The government has so far refused to hand over a sample of the toxin over to the UN authority, so they can independently verify whether it is Novichoks, and Porton Down refused to follow the Tory line that the poison was definitely Russian, insisting instead that it was of a type developed by Russia. This last episode is very much like the way Tony Blair and New Labour ‘sexed up’ the MI6 report about Saddam Hussein and his non-existent weapons of mass destruction, so they could have the pretext they needed for the planned invasion of Iraq. Which makes you wonder how far the Tories are prepared to push this.
National security doesn’t seem to come into it. This seems to me to be just part of the new Cold War, started by Killary and the Democrats in America to take attention away from the fact that Clinton and her corporatist friends are horrible candidates that the American public didn’t like, and largely didn’t want in power. Ramping up tensions with Russia is useful to the Tories on this side of the Pond, as so many people have pointed out, because too many people are sick and tired of them, their cuts and their lies. And so it looks like they’re deliberately manipulating the crisis, so they can present themselves as the true, patriotic defenders of Britain, standing up to evil foreign dictators. Just like Maggie during the Falklands War.
And all the while smearing Corbyn as an evil Commie traitor in league with the Czechs and Russians. Cue the BBC and its carefully altered imagery on Newsnight to show Corbyn looking as sinister as possible.
I’m starting to worry how far the Tories are going to be prepared to push this. A couple of years ago there were NATO generals confidently predicting that by May last year, this country would be at war with Russia. Indeed, one of them even published a book about it with that as the very title. The idea was that the Russians would invade one of the Baltic States – I think it was Latvia. Mercifully, that never happened. But I am worried in case the same people on our side of the geopolitical divide nevertheless still think that a genuine, hot war will be a good idea.
Putin is a thug, and I don’t doubt for a single minute that he was behind the Litvinenko poisoning, and probably the murders of the 14 other Russians, who have died over here in suspicious circumstances. But there are very good reasons for remaining sceptical about their responsibility for the attack in Salisbury. And I don’t think ‘national security’ is the prime reason why they are blaming Russia. I read elsewhere that much of the hostility towards Russia comes from American multinationals. These poured hundreds of millions into Russia under Boris Yeltsin, when he was trying to transform it into a western-style democracy, and privatising anything that wasn’t nailed down. The Americans expected that they would be able to dominate the Russian economy. Putin stopped that, and kept Russia firmly out of America’s economic claws. Hence the massive resentment of the Russian president in American business and political circles.
It looks to me very much like the Tories and transatlantic multinationals are trying to force a confrontation with Putin, but not necessarily a war, simply for their own political and economic advantage. National security, and the poisoning and contamination of Salisbury, is just an excuse, a convenient pretext for this. Quite apart from NATO’s determination to prop up an increasingly blatant Nazi government in Ukraine, all the while keeping its true nature hidden from the rest of us. ‘Cause after all, the vast majority of severely normal Brits, Europeans and Americans very definitely would not want to back a bunch of genuine Nazis, goose-stepping around in the very uniforms their predecessors in the SS wore during World War II when they were murdering Jews and anybody else they decided was ‘subhuman’.
There’s a lot of very squalid politics going on here, and I do wonder how far the Tories and their allies are prepared to push this so they can weaken the Russian president.
Mike over at Vox Political has already put up a piece commenting on the Tory and right-wing Labour attacks on Jeremy Corbyn for his response to the government declaring that Putin is responsible for the nerve gas attack in Salisbury on Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Corbyn stated in his speech that he totally condemned the attack, but wants absolute proof that Putin is responsible before blaming Russia and retaliating. This is just too much for the Tories, who when they find themselves confronted by a real statesman, rather than someone who just sabre-rattles and strikes nationalistic poses, immediately start lying. So the Labour leader has been vilified as Putin’s puppet, and for failing to condemn Russia for the attack in Salisbury. Despite the fact that Corbyn has condemned the attack. And the Beeb in their coverage was absolutely delighted when they showed the Tories cheering on the Labour backbenchers, who attacked Corbyn. This must have been music to the ears of their news editor, Laura Kuenssberg, who presented that piece. But Mike’s article shows how Corbyn is absolutely right, along with the support he has amongst thousands of people online sick and tired of Tory and Blairite lies, people who also make extremely good arguments in the Labour leader’s favour.
In this piece from the Jimmy Dore show, the American comedian and his co-hosts, Ron Placone and Steffi Zamorano, also discuss the smears against Corbyn. They make the same points Mike has made, and then apply it to the situation in America, where the Republicans and the Corporate Democrats are doing their level best to smear Bernie Sanders. And so Sanders has been reviled as racist, misogynist, wearing expensive clothes, you name it, they’ve flung it at him. This is, Dore states, how the establishment deals with anti-war progressives. It’s also, as they point out, the way the Democrats are attacking Trump. He’s being attacked as Putin’s puppet by that section of the Democrats that is now even further right than the Republicans.
He goes further, and describes his own vilification and smearing by his right-wing opponents. He has 300,000 subscribers to his channel, which is much smaller than The Young Turks’ 3 million. But he’s been smeared, his videos edited to make it appear that he’s saying things he isn’t and misquoted. He states that mostly he doesn’t respond to the smears, as this would elevate them and bring them to more people’s attention. With the exception of the Washington Post, when he decided he’d have a little fun. He makes the point that when Bernie announces his candidacy for the presidency, the abuse against him is going to make that against Corbyn pale.
Dore also makes the point that all this material from the intelligence community, like MI6, which supposedly points in the direction of Putin, really isn’t convincing either, given the way the intelligence services lied about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And Steffi Zamorano also finds it very strange that the British government is leaping to attack Putin, but has declared that everyone in Salisbury is safe, and has not called the incident a terrorist attack.
Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was sacked and smeared because he was too honest, is also very critical of the identification of the nerve agent used in the attack. This has been identified as Novichoks, a toxin created by the Russians. But he presents evidence that casts considerable doubt on that identification, and the assertion that the Russians must be responsible. He concludes
1) Porton Down has acknowledged in publications it has never seen any Russian “novichoks”. The UK government has absolutely no “fingerprint” information such as impurities that can safely attribute this substance to Russia.
2) Until now, neither Porton Down nor the world’s experts at the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were convinced “Novichoks” even exist.
3) The UK is refusing to provide a sample to the OPCW.
4) “Novichoks” were specifically designed to be able to be manufactured from common ingredients on any scientific bench. The Americans dismantled and studied the facility that allegedly developed them. It is completely untrue only the Russians could make them, if anybody can.
5) The “Novichok” programme was in Uzbekistan not in Russia. Its legacy was inherited by the Americans during their alliance with Karimov, not by the Russians.
Some of the commenters on this blog have also pointed out that with an election coming up, and May seven points behind Corbyn, she definitely needs to start sabre-rattling to get the nationalists on her side. Plus, international tensions are delight to the arms industries, who want to sell more kit to our forces. And Porton Down, our chemical weapons research centre, has now been £50 million to build a new research factory. Which is just amazing, considering the government is pleading that there isn’t enough money to support the NHS, the sick, disabled, unemployed, the poor, schools or provide anything like the funding a really civilised society needs.
And as for supplying money to Porton Down, this comes rather late. As Mike points out, Labour set up a special regiment to deal with chemical weapons attacks. But this was closed down by Cameron in 2011.
And the backbench Labour rebels, who were attacking Corbyn seem mostly seem to be members of the Labour Friends of Israel. So the Israel lobby in the Labour party is seizing its chance to attack Corbyn, and try to get back into power that way. More smears by those, who manufactured the smears that Labour is full of anti-Semites and Nazis. I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised. They’re very strongly connected to the corporatist Blairites, and it was Blair, who put pressure on MI6 to ‘sex up’ the dossier so it would provide a pretext for the Iraq invasion. So more lies from them.
Putin is a thug. In Russia he actively stamps on and persecutes opposition parties and politicians. Journalists and other critics of his regime are regularly beaten, and many have died in very suspicious circumstances. 14 other Russians have also died in similarly suspicious circumstances over here. But we have to be absolutely sure that he is responsible, not jump to conclusions, and make sure our response is proportionate and reasonable.
But May’s hysterical nationalism will play well with the jingoistic hordes of the Scum, Fail, Express and the rest, who will even now be salivating at the thought of making her into another belligerent Thatcher. Even if that means precipitating another, dangerous crisis in international relations.
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