John Chuckman
COMMENT ON THE GUARDIAN’S EXTRAORDINARY DISPLAY TODAY OF ANTI-RUSSIAN PREJUDICE
“Russian 'dirty money' is damaging UK security, MPs say
“Government must stop money laundering by ‘kleptocrats and rights abusers’, which is helping Putin subvert international rules”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/21/russian-dirty-money-is-damaging-uk-security-mps-say
Today is Hate Russia Day over at The Guardian.
Well, I know, they always hate Russia at The Guardian, but today features an especially loud and ugly outburst from this self-appointed source of “quality journalism” as the ads appealing to subscribers like to put it.
First, at the top of the front page, we have a big story about “dirty money” And “kleptocrats” and “abusers” exploiting the rules of the City of London, a world financial capital. Second, as if all that weren’t enough, The Guardian gives us, nearer the bottom of the front page, a link to an extremely long story called “Russia uncovered: writers on the World Cup host nation.” I dissect this second really gruesome effort below.
According to the first story, which reports uncritically some unsupported comments from a committee of anti-Russian MPS and even adds unrelated material to juice things up, Russians are using the financial facilities of the City of London to finance all kind of unholy deeds and activities and aggression.
Of course, a real newspaper reporting from such politicians would have asked some questions in order to get at some facts. But facts in this top-of-the-page item are strangely missing.
The idiotic story even manages, once again, to regurgitate the Skripal Affair which supposedly took place in Salisbury. That certainly has a lot to do with international finance in the City of London, but just in case you missed all the financial story’s suggested tie-ins to Russian dirt and intrigue and aggression, there it is, right before your eyes, attempted murder at the highest level.
Of course, the Skripal Affair is more an indictment against the workings of the British government and the British press than anything else. Two Russian citizens, held absolutely incommunicado for a long period, are said to have been attacked, with no evidence offered, using a poisonous substance, again with no evidence offered, that supposedly originated in Russia, yet again with no evidence offered. And the very circumstances of the attack and discovery of the “victims” are packed with implausibilities and contradictions.
So, in a sense, bringing up an alleged poisoning in a story about Russia’s unscrupulous use of public financial facilities in Britain does serve a real purpose. It tells us just how low and ridiculous the existing standards in Britain are for statements by government and by the mainline press on certain subjects.
The committee of politicians, of course, represents the same government that started a massive round of international diplomatic expulsions and public accusations against a head of state based solely on the inexplicable mysteries of the Skripal Affair.
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For background on the Skripal Affair, readers might enjoy: https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/john-chuckman-comment-the-scandal-that-never-stops-giving-everything-that-is-but-some-truth-new-disinformation-provided-on-the-british-skripal-poisoning-affair-implausibilities-of-the-affai/
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The finance story also carries the suggestion that Britain needs to employ all her diplomatic, military and financial resources to counter Russian aggression. Sounds like the good old boys in Langley, Virginia wrote some of their talking points. I guess that’s what they mean these days when they speak of the old “special relationship” between Britain and America.
Can you just imagine all the truly filthy money that passes through the City of London week-in, week-out? Saudi money? Money from Bahrain? Money from various juntas and dictatorships? Mafia money? Money from human trafficking? Money from drugs? CIA money? Money from bent politicians of every description? If you were able to cut out all the truly dirty lucre, the City of London would simply close down. But Russian money, there's the real problem according to this propaganda from cheap British politicians supported by press like The Guardian.
Now, remember, this is a supposedly left-wing paper effectively supporting unsupported right-wing government assertions. As I’ve said before, The Guardian is truly an establishment publication which disguises its true identity with a myriad of what Alt-right types in America might call “precious snowflake” filler stories about minorities and women and the unfortunate, but the attitudes of those kind of paste-on poster campaigns are not carried over into the paper’s core business.
As if all that weren’t enough, The Guardian gives us nearer the bottom of the front page a link to a great long story called “Russia uncovered: writers on the World Cup host nation.” I dissect it, section by section, below.
“Observer writers and Russia experts go behind the spin to analyse the host nation’s social and political landscape”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/20/russia-uncovered-world-cup-special-report-racism-pussy-riot
Well, I don’t know what qualifies someone as an expert over at the Observer (a Guardian subsidiary), but this shameful piece of gutter literature is just one long set of attacks on the host nation for the upcoming World Cup, an event of which Russia is very proud about hosting and to which it is very much looking forward. The piece is a kind of Wikipedia article on the sins of Russia that you will be exposed to if you dare attend the World Cup.
Here are the section captions, which you only have to read to grasp the intent of this long, hate-filled piece:
1) Racism
‘Young fans see the dominance of far-right chants. Anyone who challenges it faces a threat of violence’
Absolutely no evidence is offered for this, just a picture of some nasty-looking young men and some assertions. Anyway, if you want to find some extreme right-wing, you’ve come to right place if you go to the United States. Militias, Aryan Churches, the Klan, etc. A huge Nazi Bund organization in Hitler’s day. See this: http://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.ca/2011/03/hitler-youth-american-volksbund-youth.html Or, even more ghastly for open violence, the murderous settler gangs in Israel and the former bar room bouncer who regularly threatens minorities, Avigdor Lieberman, who is today Israel’s Defense Minister.
Of course, good old Britain herself has always offered a home to this element. There was Oswald Mosley’s British Fascists in the 1930s. There was a royal family that deeply admired Hitler, and that is almost certainly the real reason Edward VIII was made to abdicate with war approaching.
You may find pictures of him and Wallis Simpson with stars in their eyes meeting Hitler. You might also enjoy this: http://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.ca/2015/08/john-chuckman-grotesques-royal-family.html And there was arch- imperialist Churchill and the ruthless measures, including machine-gunning peasants, taken on behalf of the integrity of The Empire. You see, this kind of attack is possible against anyone, for such kinds of people live in every society.
The real question about such groups always is whether they have power in the government, as they very much do in Israel and in the United States.
2) Stadiums
‘The fabulous expense of this event has gone to some place other than good architecture’
I don’t mind criticisms of architecture. Indeed, I rather enjoy it when honestly done, and it’s something I indulge in myself, but here the nasty intent is clear by the context. What is architecture criticism, and unrelentingly negative architecture criticism, doing in a piece alongside the Russian Mafia and a voice from Pussy Riot?
3) Protest
“Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina: ‘The state controls all the big media but they cannot cut out the eyes of the people’”
Can you imagine quoting a woman, an authority on absolutely nothing, from an outfit like Pussy Riot, whose only claim to fame is getting themselves into trouble years ago for desecrating a church, on the state of politics in a vast and complex nation like Russia? Were they to do same kind of nasty act in a fundamentalist church in parts of the Southern United States, they might very well have been beaten or shot. It is roughly the equivalent, but even worse, of asking Jane Fonda in 1968 to give an expert opinion of American politics.
4) Media and censorship
‘It’s only going to get worse!’
Media censorship? This from the paper which allows no comments on the first story about Russian abuse of financial institutions and which quickly closed commenting on this list of clap-trap about Russia. This from a paper which ran government story after story about the supposed poisoning in Salisbury, the Skripal affair, without allowing comment and without seeking any expert outside view on the government claims? This from a paper which ran months of Joe McCarthy-style attacks on a very decent British politician, Jeremy Corbyn, over non-existent anti-Semitism in his party? This from a paper which supported Tony Blair’s stream of lies and killing, and which supports him still, every once in a while, trying to give him a new public voice with a feature?
5) Nostalgia
“Whether Soviet simplicity or the strength of the tsars, the best of times are in the past with a poster of Stalin”
Unbelievably, The Guardian sarcastically offers us an image of an old Soviet sentimental poster of Stalin happily with a gang of kids. As though Russians were just fools about the past or indeed longed for it to be repeated. My God, there are people in Britain who still enjoy reading or watching something about Henry VIII, a murderous tyrant, going on five centuries after his reign. And Stalin, like all tyrants, did accomplish some things admired even outside Russia, like building Russia up from a peasant society to an industrial power and leading the nation through the most terrible war in history to victory. You cannot just forget such epoch events, no matter how touched by darkness.
By the way, in the nostalgia section, The Guardian also drags in the Czars. Russia has made an effort to inform people of a long-term national historical institution which was completely vilified by the Communists. It is no different than France having museums about historical characters like Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI or Napoleon. And what is wrong with that? Of course, the suggestion here is that Putin is to be seen as a modern Czar. Ridiculous. Criticism of historical royalty coming from a nation that just spent a fortune on a “royal wedding” between a B-actress and an unbalanced, ne’er-do-well prince, as though it represented the grandeur of Britain, does strike me as a little strange.
7) The mafia
‘The gangsters want the World Cup to go well. They’ve already made money and will make more’
Yes, that is the way the items are numbered, perhaps indicative of the thought going into it.
Well, here’s the good old Russian Mafia. As though Mafia organizations weren’t a major force throughout Europe - in Italy with its Sicilian Mafia, its Camorra around Naples and other parts of Italy like Lombardy, the Corsican Mafia in France, still other mafias across the continent, and, of course, the multiple major crime families of the United States who run literally multi-billion-dollar enterprises. By the way, there is a significant Camorra branch operation in Britain. Israel has several Mafia crime families, some of which are active internationally.
But never mind all those other mafias, the Russian one is especially insidious and evil because it is, after all, Russian.
