Given an alarming intensifying of Russia bashing on virtually every front, however ridiculous, I recommend Kit’s piece today in OffGuardian:
The alleged poisoning of ex-MI6 agent Sergei Skripal has caused the Russophobic MSM to go into overdrive. Nowhere is the desperation with which the Skripal case has been seized more obvious than the Guardian. Luke Harding is spluttering incoherently about a weapons lab that might not even exist anymore. Simon Jenkins gamely takes up his position as the only rational person left at the Guardian, before being heckled in the comments and dismissed as a contrarian by Michael White on twitter. More and more the media are becoming a home for dangerous, aggressive, confrontational rhetoric that has no place in sensible, adult newspapers.
For example, Mark Rice-Oxley’s column in today’s Guardian:
Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury, one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.
Read this. It’s from a respected “unbiased”, liberal news outlet. It is the worst, most partisan political language I have ever heard, more heated and emotionally charged than even the most fraught moments of the Cold War. It is dangerous to the whole planet, and has no place in our media.
If everything he said in the following article were true, if he had nothing but noble intentions and right on his side, this would still be needlessly polarizing and war-like language.
To make it worse, everything he proceeds to say is a complete lie.
Usually we would entitle these pieces “fact checks”, but this goes beyond that. This? This is a reality check.
Its agents pop over for murder and shopping…
FALSE: There’s no proof any of this ever happened. There has been no trial in the Litvinenko case. The “public inquiry” was a farce, with no cross-examination of witnesses, evidence given in secret and anonymous witnesses. All of which contravene British law regarding a fair trial.
…even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots.
TRUE…sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here…is that WE let them. Oligarchs have been fleeing Russia for over a decade. Why? Because, in Russia, Putin’s government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That’s why you have wanted criminals like Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he’s down to his “last 270 million”.
Read this in full at OffGuardian …
The Salisbury incident is so full of holes which cannot fit the scientific facts that continuation of this BS in what passes for news media in this country clearly demonstrates this is crude propaganda.
British Army training told us that exposure to a nerve agent gave you seven seconds to live. Told same thing as a test subject in seventies. Unless someone has developed a nerve agent with time delayed and limited toxicity then a minimum of scores of people should be dead in Salisbury.
It’s called the scientific method. Not a single bit of reporting on this is not contradictory or at variances with scientific and physical reality. As with the so called Syrian nerve gas attack last year a miracle has occurred in which people with no adequate NBC protection can work in so called contaminated areas and ignore international scientifically produced safety protocols and live.
The narratives is straight from the script of The Keystone cops meet The Three Stooges.