Westminstenders: From Russia with Love

[RedToothBrush]

Things just got scary.

The colony of US puppet state or a vassel state of the EU?

Why not just let market forces take their course and let Russia buy the UK?

How did we get to stories of spies and mafia who buy politicians?

Just who are our enemies and allies?

Won't someone think of the effect on house prices in Salisbury?

Try not to don your foil hat, brace yourself and resist shouting 'money laundering too loud'.

More turbulence ahead.

Brexit still seems like such a cracking idea doesn't it?

Thanks for the new thread red.

Thanks Hester. It took a long time for that petition to reach the threshold though.

So sad about Stephen Hawking. A great mind and person.

Yes that petition did take a long time lonely.
A big boost in numbers in the last few weeks makes me wonder if anti-Brexit feeling is finally growing.

Sad about Stephen Hawking. A virtuoso scientific intellect saved by the NHS.

how women need to get involved in AI
As the past and present is being constructed on digital platforms the line between fiction and fact has been deliberately blurred. For decades, digital content has been written by those with sharpest elbows; the obvious. The Posie Parker case is showing how women's voices are being policed (literally) off the internet.
If white men write the algorithms, and profit from the SM, porn, films and games. They get the fruits of victory.
Except, praise Justine, for this one.

‏*@CarolineLucas*
To the the far-right attacking me/stirring up hate this week:

I won't be cowed by your abuse & I won't be told that raising one issue in parliament means I don't care about another.

I'm demanding urgent action on child abuse & hope for a debate in Parl on Telford tomorrow

‏*@ThePosieParker*
Interviewed under caution: Does free speech exist?

Much more on this on feminist thread.^

The short man violent man from the EDL, Robinson, had what looked like a formal visit to HOC yesterday.

Another for Red

Young people will be paying for Brexit till they're old:

New official data indicates that Britain will be paying its Brexit divorce bill for 45 years after leaving the EU – until 2064.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-brexit-divorce-bill-taxpayers-deadline-treasury-obr-office-budget-responsibility-a8253751.html%3famp

I wonder what may’s response will be today. The deadline has been and gone - was a reasonable explanation provided re:Skripal and if not, what’ll happen then?

And whilst we've been distracted with Russia, MPs have voted through cuts to free school meals in England. Not for NI though, that was the deal to buy the DUP votes. No divergence eh? Or no divergence when it doesn't suit. Bunch of arseholes.

Spy poisoning: why Putin may have engineered gruesome calling card

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/13/spy-poisoning-why-putin-may-have-engineered-gruesome-calling-card
…
All of which means Vladimir Putin and his FSB spy agency have probably sought to engineer a confrontation with the UK
Why now?
…
Sunday’s presidential election.
state TV channels will pump out this message:
Moscow is again the victim of a western conspiracy.
Russia under siege is a favourite Kremlin theme.

So a row with London can do Putin no harm,
especially among voters who share his uncompromising nationalist worldview and his smouldering sense of victimhood.
…
“It was a geo-political intervention

“Moscow’s goal is to demonstrate the UK’s weakness and isolation and to drive a wedge between us and other countries.

The Kremlin understands how to make these sorts of interventions at just below the level that will trigger a serious collective reaction against them.”

If May fails to react adequately, she would appear weak. If she tries to fight back against Russia, she would discover the limits of collective solidarity, the adviser suggested.
…
It sends a chilling message to anyone from inside Russia’s spy agencies and bureaucracy thinking of cooperating with western intelligence.

The message:
that the state can mete out punishment at its own pleasure and in the most barbaric way.
Oh, and your family might suffer too.

Free school dinners aren't enough for the unionists. Dobby
www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2018/03/13/news/court-victory-over-united-ireland-border-poll-1277425/

Presuming that we will be trapped on this island post March2019, and looking at how labour and extreme right are apparently calm about it.

The Iron Curtain been deliberately erased from living memory or part of any cultural narrative around now, but it was a real wall; splitting real families forcing many to make dangerous escapes.

Brexit is a digital, FOM and economic iron curtain.

dobby what vote for cuts to fsm? Can you post a source?

...

Moscow’s goal is to demonstrate the UK’s weakness and isolation and to drive a wedge between us and other countries.

And it’s succeeded.

*New official data indicates that Britain will be paying its Brexit divorce bill for 45 years after leaving the EU – until 2064.
*
A gift to all future governments- the EU can continue to be used as a scapegoat for domestic policy for the next five decades.

and

Yup we know how are friends are.

In pretty much his last act as secretary of state, the hapless Rex Tillerson had told reporters the attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal “clearly came from Russia” and would have consequences. He was duly sacked by Trump. By tweet.
http://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/spy-poisoning-brexit-britain-1-5433058

• Who our

I can’t imagine May will trigger article 5 but if she did and trump didn’t honour it, that would be an effective death knell for nato. On the Eu front:

katya adler
@BBCkatyaadler
UK hopes the post #brexit transition arrangement will be agreed at next week’s EU summit. Interesting that Brussels seems to be softening stance eg on consulting UK gov when drafting new laws that will affect UK, allowing UK diplomats access to some EU foreign policy meetings

wife first one that came up
www.theweek.co.uk/92272/children-to-go-hungry-after-free-school-meals-cuts

I've not noticed it covered by BBC but they could have it hurried somewhere.

May can't do anything especially after that threat yesterday about remembering Russia is a nuclear power.

Which? calls for more warnings about the risk of travel disruption post-Brexit.

McDonnell called for the Tory backbenchers to come and help them fight to keep free school meals that was being voted on in the afternoon. Obviously the Tories didn't as it went through.

And Carole Cadwalladr has won an award for her work investigating Cambridge Analytica

Moscow’s goal is to demonstrate the UK’s weakness and isolation

Isn't that a risky strategy before we're actually out of the EU and Brexit is finalised, though?
Putin would be mightily pissed if his attack on Britain actually led us to reconsider.

just a hopeful place mat king

We are a little island Russia is huge especially its military power. The whole EU would struggle against Russia let alone little old us. That is why Putin can do exactly as he wants and if anyone p**s him off he's absolutely ready to push that red button. Putin wants to expand, its Nazi Germany all over again.