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Memory-Holing the “novichok” lie – we need to make sure that doesn’t happen

With the announcement by Porton Down they they can’t – as most of us already guessed – identify the alleged “novichok” type poison that allegedly harmed the Skripals as being of Russian origin, certain things will inevitably follow.
1. The stunned silence while the mainstream media awaits guidelines on how to handle this unexpected intrusion of reality into the narrative
2. A subsequent massive retrenchment, in which recent history is re-shaped, language tortured, tweets deleted and an entire narrative is Memory-Holed before our eyes.
The second part is already happening, and will develop over the next few days. Today’s EU statement to the OPCW shows the way. The UK’s flagrant hysteria of the last weeks, the war cries and spittle-flecked abuse is all being airbrushed away and being replaced with the idea the UK simply requested Russian co-operation and Russia refused – preferring to make nasty insinuations instead.
The BBC is taking a similar approach too:

While over at Orwell HQ (better known as the Guardian), Patrick Wintour weasels his way to the conclusion that it’s Russia’s fault for “exploiting” the UK’s lies and misinformation.
They will be making a concerted effort over the next days and week to make this latest lie – in which the UK government merely and politely “suggested” Russian involvement – the new revised reality.
We must all do our best to make sure this doesn’t succeed.
The truth, we now know beyond doubt, is the UK government and its state-controlled and corporate media provenly put the country on a war footing with a nuclear-armed country based on lies.
Even more than the WMD shame of fifteen years ago, this lie – and the names of all those who were prepared to support it – must not be forgotten


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Old Pepper
Old Pepper
Apr 8, 2018 6:30 PM

Theresa may could force Russia any confession if would threatened in case of failure of the ultimatum personally to rape Putin. If I were him and I was under the threat of such super horror-horror I’d confess to anything, right down to personal involvement in the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

Estaugh
Estaugh
Apr 7, 2018 2:26 AM

Nobody seems to have heard of the notion of ‘Constitutional Assembly; The Inherent and inalienable right of the Peoples of a Nation to come together and discuss, with the aim to resolve, the issues facing the nations, when the parliament is bankrupt, both of ideas and morality. All you need is twelve good men.
;

ron
ron
Apr 5, 2018 8:51 PM

at 20.45 tonight Craig Murray’s blog has ‘disappeared’

jazza
jazza
Apr 5, 2018 7:51 PM

so who’s for continually paying the bbc tv tax then?
so who’s for continuing the conlablib farce of democracy then?
who’s for supportng the british media then?
I really don’t want to miss the new series of ‘made in Chesea’
FFS

John Gilberts
John Gilberts
Apr 5, 2018 6:49 PM

Here in Canada, the response to the rapid deterioration of the Skripal narrative has been to double down on the rampant Russophrenia, as the latest media blitz shows.
Trudeau Links Russians Expelled Over Spy Attack To Nazi Smear Campaign Against Freeland
https://globalnews.ca/4123399/russian-spy-attack-justin-trudeau-2/

John Gilberts
John Gilberts
Apr 5, 2018 9:34 PM
Reply to  John Gilberts

The corrected url for the above wrong one:
Trudeau Links Russians Expelled Over Spy Attack to Nazi Smear Campaign Against Freeland
https://globalnews.ca/news/4123399/russian-spy-attack-justin-trudeau-2/
“At a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Justin Trudeau linked the expulsion of 4 Russian diplomats from Canada with a smear campaign against Chrystia Freeland. Russia has underestimated NATO’s soul and unity,’ Stoltenberg said…”

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 5:50 AM
Reply to  John Gilberts

Little Fidelito is 100% controlled by Freedland, the other Ukrainian fascists in Canada linked to the OUN war criminals, and the Zionist Lobby, a real witches’ brew of swine. He’s just a puppet, a sort of Canadian Obama, and probably the chosen putz for coming Anschluss of Canada into the USA.

alaffcreator
alaffcreator
Apr 5, 2018 3:32 PM

For about a month now I can not get rid of the feeling that I’ve already seen all this somewhere…
And then I realized what it reminds to me.
The famous work of Kafka.
I think now is the best time to reread Kafka’s “The Trial”, or, at least, to watch the great Orson Welles’ movie again.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057427/
You will find there much similar to what is happening now with/against Russia…
Сonsidering what Heather Nauert said (“they should be adult and just(!) admit(!) that they did it. There’s nothing shameful in admitting wrong-doing“), considering what B.Johnson, blaming Russia, stated that “their very behavior(!) says they are guilty“, taking into account fair and logical observations of the user JudyJ…
Those who did not read the book, or did not watch the film – highly recommend.

Johnny Hacket
Johnny Hacket
Apr 5, 2018 6:45 AM

When do we get in the UK a news outlet like Media Point in France ? Reading the Graun and trying to correct it’s propaganda is a tiresome task .It’s journalism free dross is often not open to comment and even when it is my comment s are not now moderated as they were usually but I am suddenly “suspended. Using another ID works for a while but they usually catch up with the iP eventually and suspend the ability to comment .
I recently got into an exchange regarding the right of nazis to free speech which I oppose and was subject to bizarre abuse of a perverse nature .The offending comment was removed but I was “suspended ” not even pre moderated .I do not troll or use abuse when I comment but the instant expulsion tactic is new .

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 5:53 AM
Reply to  Johnny Hacket

I expect all non-swine have bailed out from the ‘Fraudian’ sewer by now. All I see in print are execrable hypocrites and disinformers.

Richard Wicks
Richard Wicks
Apr 5, 2018 3:28 AM

We have to make certain that lie that there was a weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq doesn’t happen again.
We have to make certain that the lie that Russia attacked Georgia doesn’t happen again.
We have to make certain that the lie that Russia forcibly annexed Crimea doesn’t happen again.
We have to make certain that the lie that Qadaffi was causing a humanitarian crisis doesn’t happen again.
We have to make certain that the lie that Assad is gassing his civilian population doesn’t happen again.
Yeah…. good luck with that.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 4, 2018 10:28 PM

Just watched the BBC’s 10 o’clock News report on the latest events and it did strike me that they were starting to give a slightly less biased – and even more cynical – overview of events. However Ben Wallace, Security Minister, does need to be taken to one side and educated that whilst it may be convenient to say that ‘only Russia designed [sic], made and stockpiled Novichok’ it’s actually not true, thereby shooting holes in his contentions. I was also puzzled that Huw Edwards introduced the item with the statement that President Putin “hopes that everyone can draw a line under the affair”, to my mind implying that Putin is admitting guilt but suggesting that we all just move on. Naturally I was doubtful about this and awaited the crucial segment with interest. But what Putin actually said was that he “would hope that common sense would prevail”. Not what Huw Edwards suggested at all.

Andrew Nichols
Andrew Nichols
Apr 4, 2018 11:32 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Sadly the ABC here in Aus wasnt any different with the interviewer just saying it didnt matter and that despite the PD finding, it was only moot and that it was probably still Russia. A seamless transition akin to the 2003 missing Iraqi WMD which were apparently just spirited away to Syria/Iran…(latest designated enemy)

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 5:55 AM
Reply to  JudyJ

Wallace sounds well trained, combining Hitler’s preference for the ‘Big Lie’ with Goebbels’ insistence that a lie, repeated often enough, will become accepted as the truth.

Kathy
Kathy
Apr 4, 2018 10:07 PM

The glamoury fell away from their eyes and all became clear. The tasty foods they had been enjoying turned back into nasty unmentionable things that crawled away.The wonderful kings and queens they had been so enthralled by became grotesques and hob goblins. They scuttled into the darkness from where they had once come from when they realized they were being seen in their real skin. The music stopped and the people caught up in the dance could at last stop. In this the realm of the mesmerized and the enchanted the population suddenly realized it was all illusion and lies, smoke and mirrors and they were once again set free.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 4, 2018 9:48 PM

Please can someone wake me up? I’m having the weirdest of delusional dreams.
I dreamt, in no particular order:
1) That the Russians immediate offer to help with the Skripal case is unceremoniously rejected and then three weeks later the UK accuse the Russians of not being prepared to ‘assist’.
2) The media come up with all sorts of outlandish and, frankly, inconceivable explanations for how the incident occurred, but as soon as anyone raises questions about the lack of evidence and offers less imaginative suggestions as to whom else might have been involved and why, they are deemed to be treacherous conspiracy theorists.
3) The UK Govt lies about the origin of the nerve agent, which is the primary springboard for their accusations against Russia, and when asked to apologise for getting it wrong the request is tagged ‘perverse’.
4) Heather Nauert, when reminded by a US journalist that the Russians deny culpability, declares, patronisingly, that “they should be adult and just admit that they did it. There’s nothing shameful in admitting wrong-doing”.
5) When Porton Down confirms they can’t identify the geographical source of the nerve agent, the Foreign Office, without batting an eyelid, claims that they weren’t asked to identify the source; disregarding the fact that Boris Johnson’s lies were based on PD “categorically telling him” the source, and reports that PD were being pressurised to confirm the source.
6) The UK Govt makes shameless, preposterous statements directed at Russia and when the Russians subsequently refute those statements with denials and suggest, reasonably, that there are other possible explanations, the UK Govt accuse them of making “shameless, preposterous statements”.
7) The Foreign Office issues a Tweet stating that the nerve agent had been identified as originating in Russia and then deletes it as if that will convince us that it never existed.
8) Russia is denied access to any scientific ‘evidence’ purportedly proving their guilt so when they ask to be involved via the OPCW, and are refused, the UK Rep to the OPCW declares that their wish to be involved “suggests they are nervous about what the results will show”.
10) UK Govt was reluctant to involve the OPCW – in fact waited two and a half weeks, and then begrudgingly – in spite of an obligation under the Convention, but the UK Rep to the OPCW accuses Russia of “demonstrating a wilful ignorance of the Convention’s provisions” for asking to be involved in the OPCW element of the investigation.
11) The Foreign Office accuses Russia of “putting forward multiple versions [of events] AND OBFUSCATING THE TRUTH”.
12) The UK Govt claims that “every nation supports us”. Really? 20 out of 195? And some of them under duress and some now, seemingly, having doubts about their wisdom in trusting the UK.
I ask rhetorically how any of these people sleep at night. But they do because they are immoral, corrupt and ignorant beings and regard us all with complete disdain and as unpatriotic if we dare to question their narrative.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Apr 4, 2018 10:06 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Judy, you need more fluoridated water. Try to get some more glucose fructose corn syrup down you and up your intake of palm oil. Get some of those statin things from the docs; they do wonders for ‘altering’ your system – oh, and get some prozac at the same time – really whacky stuff. Get a couple of aluminium based vaccines and finally, drink and eat as much diet food as you can to drastically increase your aspartame levels – it’s a TRUE neuro toxin made from mixing two chemicals together.
You should then be able to understand and believe our government, happily read the Guardian and live in quiet contentment – until the world blows up that is.

Betrayed planet.
Betrayed planet.
Apr 5, 2018 3:29 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

Love it, thanks. And you couldn’t be more correct.
We live in a matrix, no doubt.

Ross Hendry
Ross Hendry
Apr 4, 2018 10:49 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Stay snoozing. The dream ain’t over yet. We can only hope that come the clear light of day the monsters will be defeated.

Kaiama
Kaiama
Apr 4, 2018 11:27 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Just take the red pill… NOW!

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 6:07 AM
Reply to  JudyJ

Judy, here in Austfailure, I can barely think of a handful of public figures in politics, the fakestream media and business who are NOT raving psychopaths, (many diabolically Evil), imbeciles, ignoramuses, opportunists or some combination of those ‘Western Moral Values’. Over the last forty years, from the time when the Right, our US ‘allies’ and the Murdoch cancer set out to destroy our greatest ever Government, that of Whitlam, all decent people have been driven from public life, or sold out, as our Labor Party did under Hawke and Keating (who were well rewarded in retirement for their services rendered). The fakestream media has been oligopolised, mostly by the Murdoch infestation, the Government run ABC Murdochised and driven to the Right and a ‘Free Trade Treaty’ with the USA, ludicrously loaded to the USA’s benefit, has seen them take over much of our business. Our ‘intelligence’ agencies are totally controlled by the USA through the ‘Five Eyes’ arrangement and our military, after decades of serving the Empire in every aggression, now produces outright fascists, many of a ‘religious’ type, who are beginning to infest our Federal Parliament, while enjoying total Murdochite support and promotion. It’s a process familiar to all in the West, and really doesn’t do anything to produce governing regimes or societies fit to face, or resolve, the two great existential crises facing humanity-those of the ecological collapse Holocaust, and the thermo-nuclear war Holocaust.

MichaelK
MichaelK
Apr 4, 2018 9:10 PM

There are a lot of people writing stuff in the Guardian that labour under the illusion that they are bursting with wit, flair and imagination. How very droll. In reality they smother the English language and suck all the life out of it, even at their most pretentious. There’s no blood, muscle or bone in their lifeless prose, because, fundamentally, they are preaching lifeless sermons about ‘moral values’ and ‘right-think’ that have next to no connection to the real world around us. It’s this detachment that makes the prose so mind-numbingly tiresome, and, what’s worse, so irrelevant; and in times like these when we’ve never needed the power of the plain truth more desperately.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Apr 4, 2018 9:24 PM
Reply to  MichaelK

Except for those readers who have been drinking the cool aid and are on board with the programming – for them, these newspeak pieces re-enforce their perceptions of reality and bring comfort. as they join in with the “wit, flair and imagination”. This level of discourse is what is now taught and accepted in our education system – doesn’t disturb the surface, to quote Pilger.

milosevic
milosevic
Apr 5, 2018 11:04 AM
Reply to  MichaelK

they smother the English language and suck all the life out of it, even at their most pretentious. There’s no blood, muscle or bone in their lifeless prose, because, fundamentally, they are preaching lifeless sermons about ‘moral values’ and ‘right-think’ that have next to no connection to the real world around us. It’s this detachment that makes the prose so mind-numbingly tiresome, and, what’s worse, so irrelevant; and in times like these when we’ve never needed the power of the plain truth more desperately.
as usual, George Orwell explains everything:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Politics and the English Language, April 1946

MichaelK
MichaelK
Apr 4, 2018 8:59 PM

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to take these events even remotely seriously. It’s all too much. All too grotesque. All too much like fiction, bad fiction. A bad spy thriller written by Luke Hardon Harding, a guy who is hardly able to breathe he’s so excited about his latest revelations regarding the dastardly devils roosting in the Kremlin’s dark rafters.
But despite it all, it is serious stuff. Destroying what little remains of our civilized relationship to Russia. A tawdry government determined to prepare the ground for a coming catastrophe with a casualness that’s chilling in its implications.
That such a ridiculous and absurd story is taken as solid truth by our mass media, so soon after the Iraq War and the groundless attack on poor Libya, followed by the pages of complete nonsense written about Syria… is extraordinary and frightening. And don’t get me started on the ‘old country’… Ukraine. British journalists who couldn’t find Lvov on the map and have shown zero interest in Ukraine and even less factual knowledge, lecturing me on the situation there, repeatedly.
I don’t believe our mass-media can be ‘reformed’ any longer. It needs to be replaced by a completely different model. The Guardian is, if anything, worse than the rest, because it pretends to be something it obviously isn’t. It’s so dishonest and it’s coverage of the events in Salisbury has been a scandalous disgrace, absolutely shameful.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Apr 4, 2018 9:32 PM
Reply to  MichaelK

I’ve been reading up on the latest in artificial intelligence. My interest was peaked when I heard Stephen Hawkin say that AI would rule us all one day. I thought, oh, get a grip, man. But from what I have read and understood, it really will.
Last year, when suffering from shingles, I watched Battlestar Galactica and Caprica on loop. Sometimes, I think that somehow I may have entered into one of the realities shown, and I’m still there……….

intergenerationaltrauma
intergenerationaltrauma
Apr 4, 2018 11:39 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

Mikalina – love your posts – humor almost makes the global insanity bearable!

milosevic
milosevic
Apr 5, 2018 11:12 AM
Reply to  Mikalina

My interest was peaked
pique (verb)
to excite (interest, curiosity, etc.): Her curiosity was piqued by the gossip.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pique

Mikalina
Mikalina
Apr 5, 2018 10:13 PM
Reply to  milosevic

I am slightly dyslexic when I’m tired – something I didn’t know until my students would point to something on the board and say, “is that how you spell …..?” My answer, of course, would be, “ha, just testing.”

Susan Cora
Susan Cora
Apr 6, 2018 5:14 PM
Reply to  MichaelK

The duplicity of the Guardian recently has been quite shocking and disgusting. I see even today they are still peddling the Corbyn/Labour ‘anti-semitism’ angle.

Tom Welsh
Tom Welsh
Apr 4, 2018 8:54 PM

“Are we here in the U.K. expected to tolerate such appalling abuses of power and such divisive and dangerous behaviour toward another sovereign nation doing their utmost to prevent an escalation of a war no one can win? Are we as citizens expected to watch the country our children live in, where we work, pay taxes, give birth, grow old, become a travesty and a world leader in vicious manipulation, war mongering and what is looking now like an authoritarian state that even Orwell would be astounded at?”
I think, among other things, that is what the Skripal episode was meant to ascertain. So far, it looks as though the answers are “yes” and “Yes”.

Jerry Alatalo
Jerry Alatalo
Apr 4, 2018 7:09 PM

If humanity is fortunate enough, the Skripal affair will go down in history and remembered by future generations as the “Final False Flag On Earth”.

Schlüter
Schlüter
Apr 4, 2018 8:03 PM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

Dear Jerry, that sounds very optimistic! If any false flag had the potential to end the false flag nonsense it would have been Nine Eleven, but the majority doesn´t want to take notice yet!
Cordial regards

flamingo
flamingo
Apr 4, 2018 10:23 PM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

Wait a minute, that could be a hasty conclusion. After all Micron has just sent the French Foreign Legion to Manbij to save the natives from unreasonable aggression. They do know about false flags those French. What’s the bet they invent another just like Dien Bien Phu to show the Brits what real men are made of.

milosevic
milosevic
Apr 5, 2018 11:20 AM
Reply to  flamingo

They do know about false flags those French. What’s the bet they invent another just like Dien Bien Phu
In what sense was that a “false flag” event? They weren’t actually defeated by the Vietnamese? Somebody else did it? They faked their own surrender?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 6:09 AM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

Final as in the ‘Final Curtain’, I suppose.

Brutally Remastered
Brutally Remastered
Apr 4, 2018 6:37 PM

Well, clearly something will have to be done. Can we assume a London Eye attack, or another London Underground event?

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Apr 4, 2018 9:47 PM

”Can we assume a London Eye attack, or another London Underground event?”
Almost certainly. A war dynamic has been unleashed and the Anglo-zionist lunatics, egged on by the media warmongering scum, will keep pushing until they get their war. I really cannot see any way that normal relations can be restored with Russia in light of the continuing escalation and demonization of Russia in general and Putin in particular. What I can see is as an increasingly unstoppable momentum towards the apocalypse. This is because, like Blair once said of himself, the neo-con schizos have no reverse gear. Of course such a conflict will in all probability be terminal and even if not outrightly so, there is the certain prospect of a nuclear winter and an acceleration of global warming which will finally finish off the remnants of humanity, but hey that is not relevant, because we’re going to win. Hooray!! Yeah right, of course we are.
Our rulers are basically narcissistic spoilt brats who somehow got to the pinnacles of power and have been able to call the shots. I suppose the one consolation is that they will also be consumed by their own stupidity and power lust. As Orwell commented with regard to total war in which civilians were also combatants. ”It would be gratifying this time around to actually see a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.”

Ross Hendry
Ross Hendry
Apr 4, 2018 5:43 PM

Very well said. I love “The stunned silence while the mainstream media awaits guidelines on how to handle this unexpected intrusion of reality into the narrative”.
The dog is clearly awaiting guidance from the farmer:
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/im-telling-you-the-man-and-the-dog-are-working-together.jpg

summitflyer
summitflyer
Apr 5, 2018 12:59 AM
Reply to  Ross Hendry

When I read that sentence I was immediately struck also,what a brilliant way to put it .
Love the pic also .Never had any sheep but did have a border .Smartest of them all .
Cheers.

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 5:42 PM

Hold on: this was all the Government? Are we to memory-hole Labour’s lies too? This has been at least as much Labour’s baby: with their partisan Magnitsky agenda and “From Russia with Blood” insinuations. The very same Dianne Abbott that is now backsliding to praise Jeremy’s “thoughtful” approach is the very same Abbott that was bandwagoning to push the other 14 deaths BuzzFeed dossier …warning London and the Home Counties must not ‘become killing fields’; and ingratiate a “striking similarity” to the death of Litvinenko. As did Cooper. Thornberry used her platform to push Labour’s baby – the Magnitsky ammendment. Both of these are now Government policy: so the damage was done by Labour. The sanctions and muckraking over deaths related to oligarchs ‘funneling dirty money into London’ will continue: thanks to Labour. And I don’t think anyone can exonerate Corbyn: he did the best he could to inculpate Russia…
“Based on the analysis conducted by Government scientists, there can be little doubt that the nerve agent used in this attack was military-grade Novichok of a type manufactured by Russia. Since that analysis was revealed by the Prime Minister two weeks ago, the Russian ​state has had every opportunity to offer a plausible explanation as to how a nerve agent stock of this type came to be used in this attack. It has offered nothing concrete in response except denials and diversion. Indeed, the only solid assertion that it has offered so far in its defence was that all stocks of nerve agents were destroyed many years ago—an assertion that has been contradicted by intelligence reports. That suggests that just over a decade ago Russia invested in the use of nerve agents and developed new stockpiles of Novichok to that end. There is clear evidence that the Russian state has a case to answer, and it has failed to do so. We can therefore draw no other conclusion than that Russia has a direct or indirect responsibility for this.”
So there can be no partisan political point scoring: Labour was on point in our national idiotocracy. And then some.

Admin
Admin
Apr 4, 2018 6:19 PM
Reply to  BigB

Puzzled by why you would think this needs to be said. Since when do we indulge in partisan party-political point-scoring?

bevin
bevin
Apr 4, 2018 6:34 PM
Reply to  Admin

It is a matter of faith with the poster above that there is no difference between the culture of the current neo-liberal Establishment, including Blairites and Tories inter alia, and the alternatives which appear to be offered by Corbyn and his supporters.
It is an old theme in English history that there was no difference between Wat Tyler and the Lord Mayor of London, no difference between Wilkes and his fellow MPs, no difference between Cobbett and the Duke of Wellington.
Now there is no difference between the Labour Party and the government, a conclusion reached by trivialising obvious differences and exaggerrating apparent agreement.
As an intellectual exercise this is not an unalloyed loss, there is much to be said for being on one’s guard. The problems really arise when, as is likely to happen next, Corbyn and Labour attack the government for warmongering, abuse of public trust, politicisation of the scientific civil service and the dangerous escalation of international tension.
The Tories will reply “we did nothing that you would not do, that all governments do not do”. And our critics, in their faded ‘Neither Washington or Moscow tee shirts’, will be bound to agree. Where there is no hope all men may conscientiously apply for jobs in the concentration Camps.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Apr 5, 2018 8:15 AM
Reply to  bevin

”As an intellectual exercise this is not an unalloyed loss, there is much to be said for being on one’s guard. The problems really arise when, as is likely to happen next, Corbyn and Labour attack the government for warmongering, abuse of public trust, politicisation of the scientific civil service and the dangerous escalation of international tension.”
Hmmm, I remain sceptical about this possible outcome. Labour has always been a loyal and core supporter of the NATO alliance. The UK is an imperialist country, always has been, and the fact that there is a Labour administration in office (please note that I say in office rather than in power, there is a significant difference) doesn’t change that. Harking back to the Greek civil war 1944-49 where communist partisans – ELAS – after having fought the German invader to a standstill found themselves confronted by wartime collaborators in the Greek establishment. Labour had been elected to office in 1945, but I can’t remember whose side the UK supported in the Greek civil war, maybe someone can remind me?
Of course I am being perhaps a little sarcastic but I have to call it how I see it.

milosevic
milosevic
Apr 5, 2018 11:33 AM
Reply to  bevin

It is a matter of faith with the poster above that there is no difference between the culture of the current neo-liberal Establishment, including Blairites and Tories inter alia, and the alternatives which appear to be offered by Corbyn and his supporters.
Perhaps you would care to offer an alternative explanation, besides the obvious one, for the Corbyn quote reproduced by the poster above:

There is clear evidence that the Russian state has a case to answer, and it has failed to do so. We can therefore draw no other conclusion than that Russia has a direct or indirect responsibility for this.

Susan Cora
Susan Cora
Apr 6, 2018 5:24 PM
Reply to  bevin

Corbyn did cave but his initial instincts were right. Can’t say the same about May or Boris.

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 8:21 PM
Reply to  Admin

Admin: the statement you made …
“The truth we now know beyond doubt is the UK government and its state-controlled and corporate media provenly put the country on a war footing with a nuclear-armed country based on lies.”
…no mention of Her Majesty’s Opposition: who went out of their way to create political capital and push a partisan agenda for the upper one percent. That is a seachange in British party politics: if anyone put us on a war footing it was the quislings in the Labour party. Now they have been shown up up for the warmongers they are: for what? To push Browder and Steele’s fantasies for the billionaires? The SIS and Mossad are using the Labour party as cover: pushing economic and diplomatic warfare …or so it would seem to me. Do we just forget this episode, scapegoat Bojo, and conveniently go back to Tory bashing local politics? I can’t. The Magnitsky ammendment and re-investigation of “suspicious” deaths of Russians is still in motion. The agenda Labour has set will not be memory-holed just because one case fell apart. How will that help our diplomacy with Russia: insinuations that Russia is a criminal oligarchy and Putin crony kleptocracy that very publicly murders it’s political opponents: mainly in the Home Counties “killing fields”. That is the very mythology you have consistently tried to debunk ingratiated into our foreign policy by Labour. How can we relate honestly with Russia by accusing them of state sanctioned mass murder? The Skripal case has unwound: but there are 14 other accusations plus a sanctions regime still in play that need unraveling. Maybe then we can apologize to Russia instead of poisoning our future relationship with Browder’s lies? Sorry, but I felt that needed saying.

Admin
Admin
Apr 4, 2018 8:49 PM
Reply to  BigB

We absolutely agree. The Labour Party is full of Blairites and neoliberals. Those who aren’t of that persuasion in the party failed to act appropriately. Corbyn’s demurral was noteworthy but not strong enough.

rogerglewis
rogerglewis
Apr 5, 2018 10:22 AM
Reply to  Admin

Mc Donnels Do not go on RT was for me the worse of the betrayals of examining all sides to get at the truth.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2016/09/democracy-unfolded-emergent-reality-of.html

“In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a “quick return to power,” forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible “dialogue” with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls in an elitist game, which it calls “realism.”
Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution…One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The story is told that after his escape from the Warsaw ghetto a famous rabbi was invited to see Winston Churchill and advise him on how to bring about Germany’s defeat. The rabbi (the story goes) replied as follows: ‘There are two possible ways, one involving natural means, the other supernatural. The natural means would be if a million angels with flaming swords were to descend on Germany and destroy it. The supernatural would be if a million Englishmen parachuted down on Germany and destroyed it.’ Churchill, being a realist, chose the natural method, angels with flaming swords.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2018/04/wwiii-is-nothing-but-another-colonial.html
There is a crisis in Neo-Liberal State Monopoly Capitalism Did I also mention that Boris Johnson is a CUNT.
http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/05/theresa-may-is-cuntconservative-under.html

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 9:25 PM
Reply to  Admin

Admin: what else needs saying is that between Porton Down and Parliament, probably in the Cabinet Office, the intelligence was doctored …yet Corbyn parroted it nonetheless. This time it was obvious from day one it was lies: uncritically regurgitated lies. What is now exposed that Corbyn is a channel for whatever the intelligence services brief him with. That can’t be memory-holed: he will say what he is told to say as a Privy Councillor. What people think is an independent liberal ‘alternative’ is in fact a puppet of the SIS and Cabinet Office. His consience is no longer his own but hostage to whichever dark actors have infiltrated the briefing process to set their xenophobic policy. Whoever doctored the intelligence is still in play for the moment: and likely to stay in play. The Deep State Russophobia will likely persist with Corbyn as a channel. Unless you think MI6 will start working for the many; not the few? If that is not a gamechanger: I don’t know what is?

Mikalina
Mikalina
Apr 4, 2018 9:40 PM
Reply to  BigB

You get shown the secrets that no-one else knows about – you become one of the ‘special ones’. It’s a technique that never fails – straight out of Scientology. I don’t think he really believes he has sold out – just real politik.
To be fair, the alternative would probably be a heart attack such as the ones which tend to hit union men.

mog
mog
Apr 5, 2018 2:16 PM
Reply to  BigB

Let us not forget Caroline Lucas and the Greens, and many of the ‘New Left’ online media pundits who jumped on board the madness train.
This is not about Left/Right politics, it’s about epistemological schools.

Big B
Big B
Apr 5, 2018 4:40 PM
Reply to  mog

Mog: do you mean the Canary: which is doing its own backsliding by labeling this affair “Corbyn’s finest hour”? LOL! The important thing for me is not the mouthpiece monkeys …it is that the SIS organ grinder has been revealed. Whoever is in the House can be controlled with faulty intel: particularly if they are on the front benches, on committees, or if they are Privy Councillors. If the system breaks down, the politicians blame “rogue elements” for the faulty intel …or the intel JIC can blame the politicians – especially if they “misremember” like Boris did. It is an Iraq War redux: because nothing changed. In fact, two of the “rogue elements” for Iraq – Dearlove and Scarlett – are still two of the rogue elements “advising” Steele over his Trump Kompromat dossier. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! This is an ongoing very British coup d’etat.

mog
mog
Apr 4, 2018 6:23 PM
Reply to  BigB

Well said BigB.
Why isn’t Corbyn demanding Bojo’s resignation? Oh yeah, because he (and McDonnell) were as bad if not worse in their presenting speculation as fact and needlessly escalating global tensions.
The Tories had zero credibility at the beginning of this affair.
For me, Labour has lost what cred it had over the past month.

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 7:29 PM
Reply to  mog

He hasn’t called for his resignation: but he has been trying to shift blame.
“Where does that leave the Foreign Secretary? Egg on his face for the statement he made on German television.”
He’s not the only one with egg on his face?
“Boris Johnson seems to have completely exceeded the information that he had been given and told the world in categorical terms what he believed had happened and its not backed up by the evidence he claimed to have got from Porton Down in the first place. Boris Johnson needs to answer some questions”
On Sky tv: Corbyn trying to memory-hole Corbyn?
https://www.rt.com/uk/423189-labour-johnson-russia-novichok/

Kenneth G Coutts
Kenneth G Coutts
Apr 4, 2018 8:37 PM
Reply to  BigB

Between the lot of them in the cess pit.
All they say is, he’s a very naughty boy.
Jeez
This was and is an international calamity on the grandest of scales.
The English state or proxies did this to
Bring the little Englanders together.
Create a fear that isn’t there, a false fear of an old enemy.
So called.
All engineered by the yanks.
🐼🐼

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 9:38 PM

Actually, I think MI6 are at the heart of this, and America’s Russiagate …spun round Steele’s dossier and Bill Browser’s lies. And trust me, there is no sense of national pride in saying that …quite the opposite!

flamingo
flamingo
Apr 4, 2018 10:33 PM
Reply to  BigB

Absolutely BigB it is entirely home grown as May is still pandering to the US election loser and her coterie of cretins. It might curry favour with Trump but I think it is too late.
Trump does not really need Russia phobia at all let alone May or even trust her after having the UK state apparatus vilify him, cripple his presidency for its first year and likely cause immense tension in his private life for the past two years.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 6:17 AM
Reply to  BigB

BigB, the so-called ‘Labor’ Party here in Austfailure is just as cynically ‘on board’ with the Russophobia hate frenzy. We, in addition, have been in the throes of a deranged, and increasingly openly racist hate campaign against China, too, for about two years. Led by the Murdoch cancer, of course, ‘think-tank’ pachyderms in the pay of Raytheon, Lockheed et al,and politicians who know how to obey Thanatopolis DC with alacrity. China’s crime? To pay us a 50 billion surplus EVERY year for our rocks? To send 1.3 million polite, high-spending tourists last year? To send us tens of thousands of trouble-free students? To assist us in scientific research? No, the crime is that they, unlike this servile boot-lickers’ realm, do not bow and scrape before Thanatopia and its best buddy-Israel.

bevin
bevin
Apr 4, 2018 5:38 PM

“..It is time that May, Johnson, the rest of this failing flailing cabinet and their light weight untalented superficial media were tossed to the four bloody winds..”
Rarely talked about but of immense significance throughout this long campaign around the Salisbury matter is the fact that this is a last throw by a media which has been told that its days of unaccountability, its ability to lie without fear of consequence and, above all, its semi-official role as state propagandist are over.
So far the C21st has been the century of lies in which deliberate misrepresentation by the state has been used to fuel a succession of imperial/commercial wars of adventure in which millions have died with complete impunity.
The first action, in this matter, of the next Parliament must be the re-convening of an enquiry, undertaken by honest and trustworthy citizens, to follow up and expand on the Leveson enquiry which was, quite clearly, closed down to enable lies such as these to be concocted and decanted to order by a government which sees itself as the household staff of criminal oligarchs.

BigB
BigB
Apr 4, 2018 6:02 PM
Reply to  bevin

Sorry Bevin, I’m not on your case: but the Leveson enquiry was a set up by David Bell, Brian Leveson, and the pernicious stalking horse Common Purpose, a political “charity”, to destroy any last vestige of media independence and make them a fully dependent 4th Estate arm of government propaganda. As such, it was not closed down to enable such lies: it was convened to enable such lies.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/series/leveson-inquiry

Tommy Hallem
Tommy Hallem
Apr 4, 2018 4:45 PM

I agree 100% sadly the people don’t, if the polls are to believed this imbecile has jumped four points, the people can’t get enough of her apparently , what can be done when we have a crowd of idiotic psychopaths, and ultra right wing zealots being supported by the government controlled press.

Harry Law
Harry Law
Apr 4, 2018 4:36 PM

I thought for a moment I was reading an article from Off Guardian, then I realised it was an unusually good piece in the Guardian by Ellie Mae O’Hagan, a freelancer, ‘Once again, Boris Johnson is a liability to Britain, why is he still in the job’. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/boris-johnson-liability-porton-down-russia “Surely one of the most basic requirements of being foreign secretary is not lying on the international stage and deteriorating relations with other countries?”

Betrayed planet.
Betrayed planet.
Apr 4, 2018 4:26 PM

This is truly plunging the depths of the criminal and the ridiculous. Are we here in the U.K. expected to tolerate such appalling abuses of power and such divisive and dangerous behaviour toward another sovereign nation doing their utmost to prevent an escalation of a war no one can win? Are we as citizens expected to watch the country our children live in, where we work, pay taxes, give birth, grow old, become a travesty and a world leader in vicious manipulation, war mongering and what is looking now like an authoritarian state that even Orwell would be astounded at?
I am incandescent with fury at these charlatans, thieves and fools now running this country right into the ground. Lies, deceit, idiocy, stupidity is their only trademark, whilst the country and it’s people suffer under an austerity that seems to know no bounds. Thousands of vulnerable people have died under their nasty watch, homelessness increasing to ridiculous levels whilst the psychopaths in power play dangerous games with a nuclear power who has done nothing to provoke this.
It is time that May, Johnson, the rest of this failing flailing cabinet and their light weight untalented superficial media were tossed to the four bloody winds so we can begin to pick up the pieces after what has been an extremely traumatic 8 years under these fools.

FS
FS
Apr 4, 2018 6:55 PM

Fantastic. Every bloody word. Thank you.

Kev
Kev
Apr 4, 2018 9:44 PM

“It is time that May, Johnson, the rest ”
Its not them its the deep state that put them in power, the deep state that controls the media, the same deep state that created and controls Al Qaeda. The leaders are hand picked but the mob of MP’s read the Guardian or Times and believe any lie there told. Probably because it suits them and deep down they don’t care.
The leaders are clearly evil but changing them changes nothing, your just replaceing one puppet with another.
Only a free press can change this and the UK have never really had a free press.
Have a look at “hidden history, the secret origins of the first world war”. Nothing has changed, its the same deep state.

Stephen Sivonda
Stephen Sivonda
Apr 5, 2018 4:17 AM

I love a verbose comment , one such as yours that says what everyone must realize. Where oh where, has the sanity gone? Lost in the pursuit of filthy lucre and the power that goes with it.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 8, 2018 6:27 AM

Betrayed, EVERY successive hard Right regime here in Austfailure has been more Evil, despicable and incompetent than those that came before. And each soft Right, so-called ‘Labor’ regime more incoherent, accomodative and also incompetent than those that preceded them. The march Right is understandable as the real rulers of society, the rich capitalist parasites, demand it, but the incompetence is troubling. The current Federal regime seems to have some able swine, but policy is dominated by far Right knuckle-draggers, climate destabilisation deniers, renewable energy haters, coal-worshippers, and, many of them, fundamentalist God-botherers, in the face of whom the more ‘liberal’ members cower and tremble. It is a richly rewarding experience to live in a kakistocracy, where the worst of us are in control, but even more exhilarating is to live in a kakastocracy, and be ruled by total shits.