Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[blandy]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

I would like to see evidence that is not circumstantial.  There are very good reasons not to take Russia's word on this or other matters, but it doesn't follow that we must therefore accept what May and Johnson tell us, especially when they are shown to have concealed information from Corbyn while giving a confidential briefing in order to give the impression of full disclosure, and when they choose not to take a course of action which might be able to provide actual evidence.

So, I remain sceptical, but open to persuasion on the basis of evidence, rather than assertion.

The OPCW is on its way. May, Johnson, Corbyn McDonnell have all said it was the Russians, having seen whatever they've seen. As AWOL's pointed out, so have the French, US, Germany etc.

It is not true that "they are shown to have concealed information from Corbyn", it is only known that a unattributed Newspaper "source" says they have. Nor is it true that the boss of DSTL Porton Down has said there's scant evidence, again that's a unattributed "source" on a blog or wherever it was. It's possible, but as you say, scepticism rather than assertion ought to be the mode.

1 hour ago, peterms said:

yes, I'd like him now to press further, pointing out that May is seeking to use what is an issue of national security for party political advantage in a way which conflicts with what we think of as the usual conventions.

As I said the other day, he should have done that from the off (if it was withheld).

[blandy]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

or indeed BBC 2 Newsnight

 

Credit to them for showing restraint and not putting a little star on his hat.

They used the same backdrop for Tory defence twit Gavin Williamson 2 weeks ago. In both instances, it seems a bit daft.

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, blandy said:

They used the same backdrop for Tory defence twit Gavin Williamson 2 weeks ago. In both instances, it seems a bit daft.

Yes....but....on the Williamson one they had him offset to the side, so he wasn't in most shots. it was also just a straight photo of him in a suit, clearly one image crudely pasted over another, no colour wash, no manipulation, not in the centre of every shot.

Poor in both cases. In the Corbyn one, somebody had a little too much 'fun' which lead to Newsnight being called out, denying any photoshopping of the image, then backtracking and saying a junior staffer might have, but only because the original wasn't working well on camera. 

I believe the technical term for that, is 'caught out'. But of course, it's done now, it's out there. 

My worry for this whole story is again, the government is telling us they have facts they can't share. We should just trust them and join them in actions that will have unknown consequences. I dunno, somewhere deep in the back of my mind it's like we've experienced something like this before. Can't quite put my charred Iraqi child's finger on it.

 

 

[peterms]

30 minutes ago, blandy said:

The OPCW is on its way. May, Johnson, Corbyn McDonnell have all said it was the Russians, having seen whatever they've seen. As AWOL's pointed out, so have the French, US, Germany etc.

Well I can't find whole version of the France-Germany statement, just lots of reports quoting parts of it, but what I can find seems a little less unambiguous than you suggest, with references to "any such use by a state party", saying there is no plausible alternative explanation, and calling on Russia to give full details of the novichok programme.  I assume the reason it doesn't say something like "it has been conclusively proven" is that they don't wish to go beyond the form of words chosen.  However, I see Macron is refusing to patronise the Russian stand at a Paris book fair, so clearly things are escalating.

30 minutes ago, blandy said:

It is not true that "they are shown to have concealed information from Corbyn", it is only known that a unattributed Newspaper "source" says they have. Nor is it true that the boss of DSTL Porton Down has said there's scant evidence, again that's a unattributed "source" on a blog or wherever it was.

On concealing information, Downing St specifically refused to comment when asked to do so, and I take this to indicate that the story is true, since they issue denials of lots of other stories and could easily do so on this one without going into details of what he was told.

On the Porton Down thing, no it's not an unattributed source, it is attributed as "Robin Black. (2016) Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents. Royal Society of Chemistry".

[peterms]

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

They used the same backdrop for Tory defence twit Gavin Williamson 2 weeks ago. In both instances, it seems a bit daft.

There's plenty of discussion on twitter about all the work they did to the image, making the hat bigger and darker, changing the colour to give Corbyn a redder hue (subtle, eh?).  The producer admits changes were made to the image, though doesn't accept the hat was resized.

I was interested to see this tweet, from someone who is in no respect a defender of Corbyn:

 

[OutByEaster?]

55 minutes ago, blandy said:

They used the same backdrop for Tory defence twit Gavin Williamson 2 weeks ago. In both instances, it seems a bit daft.

There's also a fair bit of discussion on whether newsnight went as far as altering his hat to make it look more Russian. 

It's a peculiar world we live in.

 

[blandy]

23 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

the government is telling us they have facts they can't share.....Can't quite put my charred Iraqi child's finger on it.

Are they?

Is it like Iraq?

I get the scepticism, I share it. What I don't get is the equivalence argument.

As I've read it, there was an undisputed attack on two people, a British (Russian) Spy, in the UK, using a Chemical Weapon. A spy who Putin had implied would "Kick the bucket" for treachery.

Porton Down have analysed the chemical weapon and identified the type as being of a type developed by Russia.

Those are all, I think, undisputed facts.

There's people in the media and on Blogs, some more expert than others in various fields, saying either it's definitely traceable directly to Russia, or essentially, it's Russian... but might have been half-inched by some un-named bad guys and then used on the British Russian Spy and his daughter.

There are various crazies saying it was the Jews or it was Porton Down, or the Americans, but mostly people acknowledge links to Russia.

I don't see the parallel to politicians making up claims about CWs for which there was no evidence. Like millions of others I was completely against the Iraq war and didn't believe the grounds for it. Even in the build up to it, you could see it was a "fix". This is different. Sure publicly we don't have the same info as the Security services, for entirely valid reasons. The OPCW have been called in - neutral verification if you like.

The Russians have been trolling us in their media, their embassy twitter feeds and so on - not just denying, or responding with [whatever] but actual trolling.

It's very different to me.

 

[Risso]

12 minutes ago, peterms said:

There's plenty of discussion on twitter about all the work they did to the image, making the hat bigger and darker, changing the colour to give Corbyn a redder hue (subtle, eh?).  The producer admits changes were made to the image, though doesn't accept the hat was resized.

I was interested to see this tweet, from someone who is in no respect a defender of Corbyn:

 

I think it’s fair to say that the general response to that is “chinny reckon”.

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

There's also a fair bit of discussion on whether newsnight went as far as altering his hat to make it look more Russian. 

It's a peculiar world we live in.

There is and it is. Some of it is just mental. A digitally slightly altered hat is clear proof the BBC is Tory, but people dying from a CW attack was done by the UK or the Jews...with not the slightest evidence at all.

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, Risso said:

“chinny reckon”

Jimmy Hill chin stroke indeed.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

There is and it is. Some of it is just mental. A digitally slightly altered hat is clear proof the BBC is Tory, but people dying from a CW attack was done by the UK or the Jews...with not the slightest evidence at all.

Just for clarity, can you please point out the people saying this? I haven't seen it said in this thread, so I don't know whether I haven't been reading closely enough or where you're getting this from. It looks like a straw man to me, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. 

[blandy]

3 hours ago, peterms said:

OPCW has not confirmed that Russia has the stuff, and the former head of the detection lab at Porton Down has said there is scant evidence of that.

27 minutes ago, peterms said:

On the Porton Down thing, no it's not an unattributed source, it is attributed as "Robin Black. (2016) Development, Historical Use and Properties of Chemical Warfare Agents. Royal Society of Chemistry".

Ok, sorry. Yet, what he said was with regard to publicly available evidence.... apart from the publicly evidence of the bloke who made it.

Quote

... Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published.

 

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just for clarity, can you please point out the people saying this? I haven't seen it said in this thread, so I don't know whether I haven't been reading closely enough or where you're getting this from. It looks like a straw man to me, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. 

Twitter, not here. On here, it's just been "Israel" in some of the stuff Peter's quoted.

[peterms]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Ok, sorry. Yet, what he said was with regard to publicly available evidence.... apart from the publicly evidence of the bloke who made it.

 

What he says in the sentence you quote is there is no independent confirmation (ie independent of Mirzayanov).

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, peterms said:

What he says in the sentence you quote is there is no independent confirmation (ie independent of Mirzayanov).

Publicly available.

[peterms]

17 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Just for clarity, can you please point out the people saying this? I haven't seen it said in this thread, so I don't know whether I haven't been reading closely enough or where you're getting this from. It looks like a straw man to me, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. 

This is about Craig Murray being misrepresented as having claimed that Israel did it.  What he actually says is

Quote

The “novochok” group of nerve agents – a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago – will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents. And one country which has always manufactured very similar persistent nerve agents is Israel. This Foreign Policy magazine (a very establishment US publication) article on Israel‘s chemical and biological weapon capability is very interesting indeed. I will return to Israel later in this article...

To return to Israel. Israel has the nerve agents. Israel has Mossad which is extremely skilled at foreign assassinations. Theresa May claimed Russian propensity to assassinate abroad as a specific reason to believe Russia did it. Well Mossad has an even greater propensity to assassinate abroad. And while I am struggling to see a Russian motive for damaging its own international reputation so grieviously, Israel has a clear motivation for damaging the Russian reputation so grieviously. Russian action in Syria has undermined the Israeli position in Syria and Lebanon in a fundamental way, and Israel has every motive for damaging Russia’s international position by an attack aiming to leave the blame on Russia.

Both the Orbis and Israeli theories are speculations. But they are no more a speculation, and no more a conspiracy theory, than the idea that Vladimir Putin secretly sent agents to Salisbury to attack Skripal with a secret nerve agent. I can see absolutely no reason to believe that is a more valid speculation than the others at this point.

(Here).

 

[OutByEaster?]

23 minutes ago, blandy said:

There is and it is. Some of it is just mental. A digitally slightly altered hat is clear proof the BBC is Tory, but people dying from a CW attack was done by the UK or the Jews...with not the slightest evidence at all.

I think we should tackle crime with police, not media outlets. I think that's probably where the peculiarity starts.

 

[peterms]

36 minutes ago, blandy said:

A digitally slightly altered hat is clear proof the BBC is Tory

The story was about Russia, so a backdrop of something that is recognisably Russian is understandable.

What is not understandable is the differences, deliberately created, between the one used for Williamson and that used for Corbyn.  Choice of a pic in suit and tie for Willamson, but with Corbyn, choose one of him in a hat that looks a bit Russian, make the hat a bit bigger (they say they didn't, but people have shown it is bigger than in the source photo), make the hat darker, give a red tint to the picture and also to Corbyn, place him closer to the Russian-looking building.

I suppose, to channel Mrs May, there can only be two possibilities.  One is that they went to this degree of effort because they just thought it looked nicer, and the people responsible for directing, creating and approving the image really had no awareness or understanding whatever of the part images play in creating connotations, mood, perceptions.  The other is that they do have this awareness, and did it anyway.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, peterms said:

The story was about Russia, so a backdrop of something that is recognisably Russian is understandable.

I suppose, to channel Mrs May, there can only be two possibilities.  One is that they went to this degree of effort because they just thought it looked nicer, and the people responsible for directing, creating and approving the image really had no awareness or understanding whatever of the part images play in creating connotations, mood, perceptions.  The other is that they do have this awareness, and did it anyway.

I agree there is an institutional bias in the BBC - whoever is Gov't gets a more favourable, slightly, coverage than the opposition. I think its been this way for a good while.

[peterms]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

I agree there is an institutional bias in the BBC - whoever is Gov't gets a more favourable, slightly, coverage than the opposition. I think its been this way for a good while.

I think it's getting worse.

But normally it's things like accepting without question the framing of the economy being just like a household, stuff like that.

Getting into manipulating images in order to create a political impression is a significant step towards becoming a propaganda tool, and this is why people have been getting so exercised about it.  What they were doing there was not journalism, nor was it politically neutral, and they should be held to account for it.