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?

I remember a Russian jet being examined after a high profile defection in the cold war and there being initial mirth at some valve powered electronics, before it was realised that these would survive the EMP associated with a nuclear blast - don't underestimate their capability.

There's a TLA I've not read for a while.

I first read it in the monthly "Electronics Today International", which highlighted the same.

Modern silly-scale silicon assemblies are even more vulnerable.

A well placed upper atmospheric nuclear detonation could zap our entire infrastructure, while leaving buildings (and us) intact.

It might be Russias answer to the neutron bomb Reagan initiated.

(goes off to remember how to build a cats whisker set).

Olivia

Have you got any idea - any at all - the state of UK armed forces atm??

A decade and more of cuts/base closures whilst providing billions for trident (which is dated and ineffective)

Add to that the decimation of the police force and nhs and how - exactly - do we cope with further attacks on our soil?

Your vainglorious rhetoric is exactly what Putin and his allies want.

Grow up.

For anything else, we would need incontrovertible evidence that the Russian govt was behind it and we don't have that.

Not really. Even if we had such a beast, some people will just deny it. Post truth again.

Have you got any idea - any at all - the state of UK armed forces atm??

Still buying their own boots ?

I don't agree he won't be troubled by a cyber attack.

I don't understand the relevance of armed forces to attack computers.

Finally if our GCHQ capabilities are weak -
my impression is that GCHQ is actually cutting edge - we could ask for help from some allies.

Sanctions would be great too but the Orange Dotard in the WH doesn't seem inclined to want to see Kompromat on the internet. Without the US sanctions won't work.

This is not a guy you have a dance with. He needs a bloody nose.

That there is not more outrage with respect to what he's done is amazing.

May's response - what we've seen of it there may be more - feels weak. The Guardian thinks so too.

I'm just disappointed the England football team are still going....
Now, this I can get behind. Anyway, I'd question the safety of the British team as well as British fans. Anyone remember the brutal clashes between Russian and European football fans in Spain in 2016? I's embarrassing to send your national team to Russia whilst accusing Russia of cutting off diplomatic ties. How is this even possible? It's money talking here, no doubt.

*Sorry that should be
It's embarrassing to send your national team to Russia whilst cutting off diplomatic ties.

Street2 The Guardian has never been in love with Corbyn, not sure why you think they were ?

Crazy times indeed. And thanks as ever to Red and all the regulars. Delurking.

Re rogue elements and the potential wmd factories in former soviet states, there is one decommissioned in the early 90s in Uzbekistan according to one right wing blog. However reading the comments, there was a reply from someone sounding plausible, who made the point that the type of nerve agent used in Salisbury did not have a hugely long shelf life so soviet era stock wasn't possible as a source.

I did notice though that the BBC today post debate commentary persistently referred to ' soviet era' nerve agents, despite the fact that I have read in various sources that they were very likely of recent manufacture, designed to disperse rapidly. Delivery method was thought to be to transport two precursor chemicals separately which although inert themselves become lethallytoxic when mixed together.

But what do I know? Could all be bollocks and I have NO expertise in this field.

Corbyn was appalling today. I found myself agreeing with May in all she said ( faints away clutching eu flag to bosom)

If only the extreme right and extreme left would split away, leaving enough MPs of a sensible persuasion to join together and stop Brexit. And pigs might fly.

Well. I posted my little comment on Zoe Gardner, went off for a read and a catch-up and ... I'm late to the party but ...

You're going to have to excuse me while I go through the cycle of reaction that you lot are probably well ahead of me on.

I'm agreeing with Teresa may

Excuse me I need a quick shower...

Sam Coates Times @ samcoatestimes
The Press Association has named Seumas Milne as the Jeremy Corbyn spokesman who said that the history of the UK intelligence agencies is "problematic"

Brace brace! Incoming tin foil hat attack.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seumas_Milne

I like this part best:
Kate Godfrey, who has worked as an aid worker in conflict zones such as Libya and Syria, wrote in The Daily Telegraph in October 2015: "I think Milne is an apologist for terror, and will always be an apologist for terror. I think that he never met a truth he didn’t dismiss as an orthodoxy and that nowhere in his far-Left polemic are actual people represented"

Don't ever worry about finding yourself in agreement with the government (May et al). Unless you are a complete political nihilist or a purist political ideologue and zealot, common sense tells you that you will agree with things, and those things will be shared across political parties.

I think it's a sign that you take politics seriously, and are actually engaged, and aren't actually disengaged and/or traveling high and bright above actual politics.

It's OK.

I wondered who the 'spokesman' was. Seumas Milne. Well, well.

I'm still wondering about that shadow Cabinet meeting, where they all heard the outline of Corbyn's position and kept quiet.

That, I think, is a problem.

I'm just disappointed the England football team are still going
not sure that HMG has the power to stop them.

Thanks for the reassurance cat !

One of the BBC pundits pointed out that percentage wise, May has expelled more Russian diplomats that Heath did of USSR diplomats back in 1971: 39% versus (iirc) c.20%.

Heaven help me, I am both defending the BBC -of whom I am no longer a fan, with a few exceptions, like Jon Sopel-- , who for once did some factual analysis and May

I only heard some of Corbyn's response but it didn't sound strong: like a 6th former reverting to tried and tested insults during a debate because the topic was too complex, rather than strong and confident. Is it being unfair to say it sounded whining?

Re cyber attacks: who was hurt most by the probably North Korean cyber attack on the NHS? It certainly wasn't the "leaders" in Westminster (who were able to use it to further justify why the NHS was bad): it was the poor sods who missed appointments

Warning. This is a trans related post.

I'm putting it here because its important. Its about how the working class have been cut out of the equation and the politics surrounding it - including #nodebate - are led by students who have a disdain for the working class.

twitter.com/LucyLoveslife1/status/973852316787933184

This is where phrases like the 'Westminster bubble' and 'liberal elite' gain traction.

I do not think we have moved on at all since the referendum. May said she would do more for the working class. Corbyn was supposed to get back to the working classes.

Nope. Still in the same position, if not worse. And we still don't have a plan for Brexit.

Total paralysis and lack of self awareness.

Two immediate issues that strike me:

Corbyn is in place because he has a very committed following. This will appeal to them. He's not going anywhere vis a vis his position as leader of Labour.

He spelt out his position to the Shadow Cabinet, and a spokesman - Seumus Milne - then further elaborated that position after PMQ. To be explicit - this is how he leads, and what he leads with. This is, to all effect and purpose, the Labour position. Yes, yes, we know there are lots of Labour moderates, and lots of Labour progressives who do not share this view. But so what? It actually doesn't matter, when it comes down to it.

This is a problem.

Red

I came across that and have been trying to find it again to post here!!!

It's amazing - and it says things that are really important, have needed saying for ages, and is an absolutely briliiant voice.

Anyone who hasn't read it, please do. The trans issue may not be something you particularly wish to engage in but this thread is SO SO important in terms of current progressive thinking.

Macron's response seems similar to Corbyn's. Not sure how all of this is going to play out for either of the main parties. If May is implying she has proof it was Russia, expelling 23 diplomats may not go far enough for some. Corbyn on same page as Macron, is Macron now going to get the same criticism ?

... I'll add that I read it after having sat down and done an analysis of the Crenshaw essay that has been turned into a kind of foundational text for intersectional politics.

Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I'm going to because it helps in reading that thread.

The Crenshaw essay was written, I think, in order to be an intervention, not a 'foundational text' and so it has a slightly hurried quality, which is fine as an intervention. It's very good but

• It misses out a whole history of texts and discussions from which it draws its base - fine for what it is (an intervention), less good once it became a 'foundational text', and positively dangerous once it's put to work by people who perhaps aren;t great at nuance.
• It tells you, right at the start, that it's going to concentrate on sex and race, and ignore class. Again, fine for what it is, but actually deeply alarming for what has ensued.
• Despite saying it's not going to focus on class, as you read the essay, it becomes clear that class, is, in fact, something that keeps on entering every story about discrimination you need to tell. So it becomes something that is, and isn't, actually discussed. Again, not a problem for an intervention in an ongoing debate,but a huge problem for what ensued.
• Oddly enough, there are two stories going on in the Crenshaw essay: There is the story - important - about how systems set up to answer one kind of discrimination/oppression can actually operate to exclude and reinforce oppression if other axes of oppression are not taken into account (the race and sex of its main aim). But there is also another story - about how women in organisations - eg. women's refuges - actually, right there, in the time of Crenshaw's writing, are acting to stop, circumvent and off-set that interaction of systems of oppression from stopping help getting to people (in this case, women of colour). So, weirdly, something very strange happens in the essay: a group of women actually get silenced. What they are actually doing, their awareness of the problem, and their articulation of the issues - which is obvioulsy pretty deep and fine-tuned through experience - gets silenced. It's both there and not there in the essay.

This is OK in what was meant to be an intervention, a step on the path to producing a more nuanced, more pragmatic approcah to practical politics.

But that silencing has been replicated in subsequent deployments of that essay, and what passes for 'intersectional politics' (which, actually, seems to me to be something almost, completely and utterly unlike what is gestured towards in Crenshaw's actual essay).

And that thread kind of touches on it. Ironically - or maybe not ironically, maybe completely inevitably - in the same setting in which Crenshaw's essay was first set.

There's so much more going on in that thread. I really do think it's quite important.

MotherofDragons Peston's three final paragraphs are very good. I think we were all worrying yesterday about the rather lukewarm response to May's call-out for alliances, with regard to a concerted response to Russia.

It was always going to be a tough ask, what with Brexit, Trump, and the clear desire by a lot of European governments to thaw relations with Putin, not re-freeze them.

But Corbyn's response has not made that situation - already not good - any better.