Would you rather distrust the UK secret service and believe whatever the hell Putin is saying?
My Russian parents are so happy to listen to Russian television it makes me sick (given the fact that they are Lithuanian citizens since 1991).
The question is not whether you should trust UK secret service, but rather - which side are you on? Because the fact is that we'll probably never know anyway, and Russia is happy to monetise on the liberal distrust of the government.
After all, Soviets did have a culture of managing the public opinion in their own state.
The UK is _not_ central. So now we instantly distrust the Swiss and Dutch secret services too. Who, we're to believe, framed these fellows yet punished them with nothing more than sending them back to Russia.
If Westerners are now going to consistently favor a conspicuously monstrous dictatorship over their own defense mechanisms then their story is over.
But now that this story is obviously being killed by abusing the controversy penalty algorithm, I hope the admins use it as a honey pot for locating shills.
There are shills on all sides.[0]
Many of the people you are calling shills are actually doubtful of the narrative put forward by a security cabal involved in one of the most pervasive and under-handed spying programmes [1].
Part of the reason for this is because that narrative is actually inconsistent with earlier versions of itself.
Those who disagree with that narrative are most likely not Russian shills, they may just be able to spot an inconsistent narrative based on evidence drip-fed to the media and refuse to believe it.
There are two Russian citizens who are now effectively limited to countries with no extradition treaty with the UK or its allies unless they are willing to face a trial that has no reasonable prospect of being fair. [2]
> If Westerners are now going to consistently favor a conspicuously monstrous dictatorship over their own defense mechanisms then their story is over.
If Westerners are going to support trial by lynch mob and trial by media with carefully-controlled evidence and a strong hint of xenophobic nationalism and a trust-our-state-sanctioned-murderers attitude then we will be the ones to suffer the consequences as the farce of the "superiority" of "western values" is truly exposed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
[2] They have had a trial by media and been found guilty.
Arrests done solely because Switzerland really wants to start the cold war again?
No, actually the pattern generally is to sow such much confusion that people no longer believe anything and end up believing all sides are the same.
The pattern here specifically is to get the story of the front page which was successful.
There is no need to take a side. It is possible to simultaneously distrust the British spies and the Russian spies.
To believe the Russian spies (we didn't do it, somebody in the UK is killing Russians, they are liars!) requires disbelieving the British spies (the Russians did it, they're liars!).
So it has the property of being believe the British government narrative or you're agreeing with the Russian government, which feels a lot like guilt by similarity of argument.
The default position for those who believe in the rule of law is to not believe the British narrative, because they are the accusers and the burden of proof is theirs and they have publicly provided only circumstantial evidence.
It's quite a clever trap that many educated people seem to have left unchallenged.
No it doesn't. It is quite possible that they both lie.
The British narrative is the Russians did it.
The Russian narrative is they had no part in it.
If you disbelieve the Russian narrative, you believe they did have a part in it.
It's possible to not believe the British narrative and not care about the Russian narrative because you don't believe they have anything to answer for, but that is altogether different from disbelieving both.
For what it's worth I don't believe the British narrative on this because of it is inconsistent with previous versions of itself and the evidence I have personally seen is circumstantial.
We have a (EDIT - silly me he's not dead) nearly dead body, so a crime has clearly been committed. We have in the courts a sophisticated process for determining whodunnit and what they done with a high standard of evidence.
Given that the people accused of undertaking the killing are foreign state actors, that process is unlikely to be taken to conclusion. The situation is political, and the people who are publicising the information are closely involved with people who are hired to be _professionally untrustworthy_.
We don't have any evidence, and should judge the situation by what the response is. If it is understated and a censure of the Russians, the UK secret service are probably being truthful. If it ties in to some real action (ie, is used as justification for something that wouldn't otherwise make sense) then the UK secret service were probably lying. It isn't like the Russians would have revealed any new intent or capability with this incident.
This type of analysis is sorely lacking in the "which side are you on" comment. We should not lock in behind a western government doing something bad because they are pointing fingers at Russia. We've regretted doing that in the past - WMD and Saddam is a pretty cut and dried example (I have others, but they aren't as clear cut and a lot of people might not regret them).
I can see one example of what you're talking about and that is how Putin co-opted some prominent western anti-US-imperialists in service of his own agenda and his own imperial ambitions (setting up permanent bases in other countries, exploiting natural resources by means of war, killing innocent people by thousands, pretty much anything anti-imperialists abhor about the US). Enemy of my enemy... I guess. These people then talk about how Russia was invited by Bashar, or whatever and that makes it ok for it to bomb people there for years - but this is usually unstated, you just sense the implied sense of legitimacy and lack of criticism for Russia.
Many of these people have some followers that then repeats their talking points, or defer to their authority.
What sides?
So, the sides where Russia has been surrounded by ever closer NATO bases (post cold-war), and those countries are used to put pressure on it, while the news constantly bombard western audiences with "enemy du jour" coverage?
Where foreign countries constantly meddle with its internal goings-on (with embargoes, sanctions, supporting opposition parties, funding NGOs and "independent" organizations, and good old "Voice of America" style efforts), to establish friendly lackeys in power like Yeltsin, to sell the country's assets wholesale to them?
I downvoted you for this. That isn't suggested anywhere and there are enough unsubstantiated accusations flying around without people starting a few more.
He was drawing parallels to a high-profile previous instance of government officials lying about "enemies" in an effort to create support for wars that further their own ends.
But I think you knew that.
Why would anyone in the west go to such lengths to frame Russia in this? It'd be like kicking a kid that's on the ground. They have nothing to gain from it.
Adding to that, the bluntness and stupidity of these operations fits the style of Russian agencies very well. They don't seem to be very good at covert operations anymore as they failed to adapt to modern technology.
Yeah, because agencies and especially of good old colonial powers like UK and Dutch have historically been very trustable, and not at all working to promote the interests of their states (with lies, covert action, false flag operations, and so on)
>It implies that another actor would have tried to kill former Russian agents and UK citizens with a chemical weapon.
Yeah, nobody does false flags ever.
A more plausible explanation is that Putin waited 12 years to kill the guy, long after he was out of Russia (where they could have gotten to him far more easily), and from 2000 other ways to kill someone they chose something that's the equivalent of living their business card on the murder scene...
This was always about sending a message. For that, it has to be obvious who did it.
That's the poor-man's theory of a blatant murder.
As if, if the same person was murdered with a gun, the message would be lost?
Russians would then had still send their message just fine (those in similar situation as the suspect would know it immediately), but still be able to deny doing anything and avoid all the BS hoopla going on now.
But this was a crude way to set it up so they can point fingers at Russia and have the less than average IQ public see it as "obvious".
Yes, because any criminal organization can easily obtain a gun, whereas novichok is much more difficult to obtain.
>but still be able to deny doing anything and avoid all the BS hoopla going on now.
They don't want to avoid all the "BS hoopla". This is a deliberate provocation.
That's beside the point.
If someone in disfavor was killed, everybody would still know that it wasn't some random "criminal organization" that did it. There just wouldn't be direct "evidence".
If anything, this would have made killing anybody else easier (because those taking the decision wouldn't have to risk sanctions, and embargoes, and diplomatic tension, and so on), so everybody that was in disfavor would have even more reason to fear for their life (as they'd could be killed just like that with little fuss).
>They don't want to avoid all the "BS hoopla". This is a deliberate provocation.
That's the problem with people watching too much movies like "The Dark Knight" where supervillains do anything just to provoke, and then apply this to states which have tons to lose, and don't just provoke for the sake of it (or to scare some third grade targets, as if they couldn't achieve it otherwise).
If Skripal had been shot, it would be difficult to be sure that his death had been ordered by the Russian government. In that scenario, anyone with a grievance against him might have done it.
>There just wouldn't be direct "evidence".
Yes, that's the point!
>That's the problem with people watching too much movies like "The Dark Knight" where supervillains do anything just to provoke, and then apply this to states which have tons to lose, and don't just provoke for the sake of it (or to scare some third grade targets, as if they couldn't achieve it otherwise).
Nonsense. I'm just inferring from Russia's previous actions. In particular, the Litvinenko murder, which could equally well have been carried out using more conventional means.
They don't exist to protect people like me, they exist to preserve the status quo.
But let´s face it, if the Americans realized just how often the British are being conversationally sarcastic at their expense, it wouldn´t be Russian invaders that we´d have to worry about. Fortunately the accent cues don´t seem to get picked up that often.
It's just that Americans miss more of it than most. :)
LOL! Have my upvote!
Perhaps they even had WMDs on them...