That so many brainwashed British voters opted for Corbyn may be a harbinger of impending disaster, but it’s not exactly a disaster in itself.
After all, there are enough sensible people in the UK to rally together and explain to the public the evil nature of the ideology Corbyn’s lot are inflicting on Britain.
Or are there? One begins to revise this optimistic outlook when observing the number of supposedly reasonable, conservative people not only blind to the deadly threat presented by Putin’s kleptofascist regime but actually enthusiastic about it.
This shows a vast capacity for “useful idiocy” and moral decrepitude among the very people who should be counted on as a force for good. For only two types of people can admire Putin’s regime: fools and knaves.
Neither can be relied upon to mount serious resistance even to domestic political evil. Suddenly the impending troubles take on calamitous proportions: in the absence of intelligent, moral opposition, evil may well triumph.
The evil of Putin’s regime is evident from its internal practices, placing Russia close to the bottom of every list rating countries for freedom of speech, civil liberties, the rule of law and all other vital categories. A regime that routinely murders political opponents, and whose police torture and kill people in their custody, is an evil regime.
Putin fans who form a political judgement without learning the relevant facts are fools. If they don’t want to know the facts, they’re knaves. And those who know such facts and still support Putin are as evil as he is.
But let’s make allowances for the traditional Anglo-Saxon indifference to what’s going on in less fortunate countries. The widespread feeling is that even a naughty regime is acceptable provided it doesn’t threaten us directly.
So, ignoring both the moral and intellectual paucity of such nonchalance, let’s concentrate on Russia’s crimes committed in our own country.
In 2006 Putin’s government passed a law giving its agents an 007-like licence to kill its enemies abroad. Since then Putin’s hitmen may have “whacked” at least 14 people in Britain alone.
Tellingly, US intelligence services have been passing on information implicating Putin’s FSB in a string of assassinations on British soil. However, Theresa May, as both Home Secretary and Prime Minister, deliberately delayed or sidelined public inquiries into definite or likely hits, citing “national security” grounds and the need to protect “international relations”.
The 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 was the first ever case of nuclear terrorism, and as such couldn’t be hushed up. Many less spectacular murders have been, with the government all too eager to accept suicide or natural causes as the explanations of deaths.
Thus the British toxicologist who diagnosed the polonium poisoning of Litvinenko is supposed to have killed himself by multiple stab wounds – this though suicide by stabbing is rare this side of Japan, and suicide by multiple stabbings rarer still.
HMG displays touching credulity when investigating a spate of almost simultaneous accidents, suicides and heart attacks befalling British subjects and Russian immigrants who find themselves on Putin’s wrong side. To wit:
Alexander Perepelichny, young man blowing the whistle on Russian money laundering, dropped dead while jogging in Surrey. Official ruling: heart attack.
Boris Berezovsky, oligarch who financed political opponents to Putin, found hanged in his bathroom. Official ruling: suicide.
Scot Young, facilitator of Berezovsky’s money laundering, defenestrated in London. Official ruling: suicide.
Young’s partners Paul Castle, Robbie Curtis and Johnny Elichaoff all died violently. Official ruling: suicides.
Badri Patarkatsishvili, Berezovsky’s business partner, dropped dead. Official ruling: heart attack.
Yuri Golubev, co-founder of Yukos, the oil company stolen by Putin, ditto.
Stephen Moss, 46-year-old lawyer working for Putin’s oligarchs, ditto.
Stephen Curtis (no relation to Robbie), British launderer of Russian money, dead in a suspicious helicopter crash. Official ruling: accident.
Putin’s sponsoring organisation teaches its agents to distrust coincidences: when they number more than two, they’re no longer coincidental. And when an enemy of the Russian state suffers an apparent heart attack, one ought to remember that the Russian secret police has been running a poisons lab since 1918.
Some of their best poisons induce heart attacks without leaving any traces. Perepelichny’s heart specifically had been doubtless weakened by his grassing up the players in the newly traditional Russian game of money laundering.
Anticipating the onset of heart trouble, Mr Perepelichny had taken out a multi-million-pound life insurance policy, with the attendant medical examination missing any cardiac defects. At the same time he had reported multiple death threats.
The few released results of the chemical analysis show that the grass died by, well, grass. This may qualify as a natural death in that it was caused by a naturally occurring substance.
The culpable toxic plant is called gelsemium, found only in remote areas of China. In the spirit of burgeoning Sino-Soviet alliance, the Chinese kindly make their native flora available to one of Russia’s few thriving industries, contract killing.
At least, in Britain Putin’s men kill only individuals. In the US they try to kill the whole political system.
In his testimony to Congress, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said: “In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyber attacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election – plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?”
The answer is, pathetically little.
Mr Trump assures Americans that Russian meddling didn’t affect the presidential and state elections in any way. That may be, but it’s the thought that counts. And the thought is tantamount to war.
Cyber attacks are a vital part of modern warfare. They can be used to jam communications, silence command centres, sabotage guidance systems – or, as in this case, to subvert the country’s political system.
If there is a substantive difference between a cyber and a missile attack, it escapes me. Yet even assuming that it exists, surely the Russians provided sufficient grounds at least for the summary severance of diplomatic relations.
Instead the Trump administration merely expanded the existing sanctions, placing 160 individuals and some 400 companies on its sanctions list. However, even this namby-pamby response enraged Putin’s KGB junta.
Its prominent member, foreign minister Lavrov, said: “I can only express my regrets at the Russophobe obsession of our US colleagues.” Consonant with this refreshingly cynical rant is the response of our own pseudo-conservative useful idiots to any criticism of Putin’s Russia, no matter how factual.
All such critics are immediately accused of irrational Russophobia, as no doubt I’ll be following this article. We’re sleepwalking into disaster.
Heart attack. It is called hydrogen cyanide. Mail-order Filipina brides in the USA do the same but they use digitalis.
However, RASputin proved resistant to hydrogen cyanide. Now he was also a very naughty boy but he wasn’t the messiah either. I think his stomach acid blew it off. The assassins should have used potassium cyanide which knocks out the terminal oxidases in very short order.
“RASputin”. Rasputin and Putin. A certain similarity exists?
Raasclat, too Bert. Excuse my pidgin!
Vlad had to buy his own church which is a tradition of Russian tyrants. Naughty boy doesn’t cover it and certainly not messiah.
I have two disagreements.
That Anglo-Saxon indifference you speak of is, in part, the result of wisdom. If we involved ourselves in even half (if that many) of the countries that did bad things internally, we would ruin ourselves. Not just economically and/or materially. Involving ourselves in those matters would, eventually, mean war. A constant state of war is a certain way to lose liberty for ourselves through the growth of government and large corporations. It is folly to think we can save the world, or even save the Russians. The ones primarily responsible for Russia and life within that place are Russians.
Secondly, not all acts of war should be treated the same. The cyber attacks made during our election are not worth American lives. A cyber response is the most that is warranted.
And speaking of morality as it concerns acts of war and illegal acts against and in other countries: before we remove the speck from another’s eye, we should first remove the plank from our own.
Respectfully,
Lane Reeder
I agree with everything you say, but with a couple of provisos. What happens in other countries should interest us not out of altruism but out of concern for our own safety.
This, in my judgement, is being threatened by Russia. Hardly a day goes by that a Russian politician doesn’t make public nuclear threats to the West, which is seen as an implacable enemy. When this atmosphere of belligerent hysteria is accompanied by hostile acts, such as murdering people on our soil or trying to sabotage our politics, surely this calls for a sterner action than sanctioning a few of the more vociferous thugs.
I’m not advocating risking American lives, or Western lives in general, in response, but you seem to advocate no response at all. This smacks of appeasement, which never works, other than emboldening a criminal regime even more.
The main thrust of my piece wasn’t about actions to be taken about the Putin regime, but about our numerous ‘useful idiots’, mainly on the right, who see Putin as a force for good. Once we realise that his regime is evil and dangerous, thinking should stop and action should start. What kind of action is a decision best left to those qualified to make it — provided we still have such people at the helm.
My personal preference would be much tougher sanctions, including blocking Russian accounts in Western banks if the provenance of the money isn’t unequivocally legitimate. At the same time, we should get out military capability to a point of superiority over Russia. Such stern measures are more likely to protect Western lives than playing the game of moral equivalence.