UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 417

On March 13 2018 13:47 KwarK wrote:
The racism excuse was nothing more than a cheap attempt at to deflect blame onto a group the Daily Mail crowd were already eager to blame. The same police repeatedly failed when it was rich white men, politicians, well connected BBC personalities and so forth. But suddenly when it’s Asians they insist it’s not their fault for being complicit and not giving a shit, it’s really that they were too afraid of appearing racist. As if that would make any fucking difference to any moral human being in the face of child abuse. And as if they’re not perfectly happy to deal with any other crime committed by minorities without worrying about appearances.

There is absolutely no question of whether the police failed these children. The PC excuse is an insult to the intelligence of anyone they tell it to.

May’s toothless tough talk on Russia
What looks like perpetual conflict is actually cozy symbiosis, with each side feeding off the other.

Never mind the talk of a new Cold War between Moscow and the West. A year from now, when the poisoning on British soil of a former Russian spy is yesterday’s news, it’s likely to be business as usual between Russia and the U.K.

Look at the last time a similar attack was carried out: in 2006, when fugitive Russian intelligence agent Aleksandr Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poison in London.

Less than a year later, the British oil giant BP was in talks with President Vladimir Putin’s government to buy a chunk of assets it had confiscated from the Russian oil company Yukos. That despite the fact that the firm’s former owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was serving a 10-year jail sentence — as a political prisoner.

BP failed to buy those assets at the time, but it was eventually rewarded with a share in Rosneft, a company largely made up of what used to be Yukos’ oil empire and led by Putin’s crony Igor Sechin, currently on the U.S. sanctions list for his alleged role in Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine. President of BP Group Bob Dudley now sits on the Rosneft board, together with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Response to the recent assassination attempt, in which the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent, is likely to follow a similar pattern.

Indeed, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s “measured and conventional” response to the attack — which largely consisted of expelling two dozen Russian diplomats and refusing to attend the World Cup in Russia — felt like nothing more than a careful reenactment of classic Cold War scenography.

(...)

What Moscow would find far less desirable would be any kind of threat to the assets of its oligarchic class. But it can feel pretty safe on that front: It is highly unlikely that May’s Brexit government will precipitate a multi-billion cash outflow for the sake of something it lacks anyway: principles.

London is the de-facto capital of the post-Soviet mafia state. It accumulates a lion’s share of oligarchic assets from everywhere in the ex-USSR. It is the hometown of the billionaires and former state officials who played key roles in consolidating kleptocratic regimes in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the rest of the post-Soviet region.

The U.K. is where they build their luxury homes and moor their yachts; it’s where their wives go on shopping sprees, their children attend elite schools, and their football clubs spar in Premier League matches. It’s also where a horde of British bankers, lawyers, security experts, political consultants and other professionals enjoy a luxurious life thanks to money siphoned away from troubled post-communist nations.

From the post-Soviet perspective, the Kremlin and the Western political elite often look like a pair of con artists, one of whom plays a villain and the other a good Samaritan. The staged conflict is convincing, and you might even find yourself captivated by its twists and turns. But the ultimate goal is to rob you of your hard-earned cash. Much of the post-Soviet cynicism toward the West stems from this perception.

Putin’s regime is highly enthusiastic about its role as a dark alien force in the Western political theater, one that is perpetually trying to sow discord into the sweet and comfortable Hobbit Shire.

It puts up an inspiring performance, to the undisguised enthusiasm of conspiracy theorists and professional Russophobes, who return the favor, feeding Kremlin propaganda outlets with priceless material and helping to maintain a siege mentality among brainwashed Russians.

(...)

But don’t expect anything different. Why harm a lucrative joint venture when you can simply fake outrage at your mischievous business partners?

On March 19 2018 12:59 Sermokala wrote:
I can't imagine that in a country the size of America where a senate seat would simply not be contended nor be given a vote. Is this not that big of a deal that I'm making it out to be?

On March 19 2018 20:33 Schmobutzen wrote:
Doesn't anybody here think, that the foregone conclusion, that Russia is guilty of the poison attack, and (!) playing on that with sanctions, is so preposterous, that one just can't take the foreign office of the UK any seriously?

On March 19 2018 20:57 Gorsameth wrote:

Declared war on Russia isn't really an option.
So what other response can the UK make?

On March 19 2018 21:10 Schmobutzen wrote:
None! The whole Russia was it-thing is stupid, without evidence! It looks like WMD in Iraq all over!

On March 19 2018 21:16 Acrofales wrote:

So... you, with all your internet wisdom, know that Schotland Yard is wrong, because... ???

On March 19 2018 21:10 Schmobutzen wrote:
None! The whole Russia was it-thing is stupid, without evidence! It looks like WMD in Iraq all over!

On March 19 2018 21:51 farvacola wrote:
It's also incoherent to decry inferences drawn in favor of Russian culpability while drawing equally if not less supported inferences in favor of the attacks figuring as fabricated pretextual casus belli.