{"id":32487,"date":"2018-03-17T09:47:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T14:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32487"},"modified":"2018-03-17T09:48:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T14:48:27","slug":"the-uk-blames-russia-for-the-spy-poisoning-its-time-to-set-our-emotions-aside-and-look-at-the-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32487","title":{"rendered":"The UK Blames Russia for the Spy Poisoning: It\u2019s Time to Set Our Emotions Aside and Look at the Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/p>\n

The UK Blames Russia for the Spy Poisoning: It\u2019s Time to Set Our Emotions Aside and Look at the Facts<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

The world held its breath watching the British government\u00a0rant and rave<\/a>. The threats were truly scary and the ultimatum was grim enough to give one goosebumps. Finally it all boiled down to the expulsion of 23 diplomats, threats to freeze suspicious bank accounts, the suspension of some bilateral contacts, a revoked invitation for the Russian FM to visit the UK, and the cancellation of plans by senior officials and members of the royal family to travel to see the World Cup games.<\/p>\n

Diplomatic relations will not be severed. Russia was not added to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as the PM had threatened to do. Instead, the British government announced some rather symbolic retaliation measures, some of which are nothing more than compliance with the Criminal Finances Act that has been in effect since 2017.<\/p>\n

All in all, it\u2019s much ado about nothing. No trade wars. RT can continue broadcasting. The relationship has taken a hit, but far less than what had been anticipated. The question is \u2014 why did London stop short of full-blown row with Moscow?<\/p>\n

Voices were heard calling for a detailed investigation before any final conclusions were reached. Labor Leader Jeremy Corbyn\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the UK needed \u201ca robust dialogue with Russia on all the issues\u201d <\/em>and warned against cutting off ties. He came under harsh criticism in Parliament, although the only thing Mr. Corbyn wanted was some evidence to go on before pointing the finger at Moscow. He just\u00a0wondered<\/a>\u00a0why the government had not made a formal request for information in accordance with Article 9, clause 2 of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)? He got an emotional response, but nobody explained why the procedures described in the convention had not been invoked.<\/p>\n

And what if Mr. Skripal pulls through and offers quite a different story? What if new witnesses appear whose testimony moves the investigation in a different direction?<\/p>\n

The UK evidently does not want to go the whole nine yards to uncover the truth. It prefers to make accusations first and launch a halfhearted investigation second.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK Blames Russia for the Spy Poisoning: It\u2019s Time to Set Our Emotions Aside and Look at the Facts The world held its breath watching the British government\u00a0rant and rave. The threats were truly scary and the ultimatum was grim enough to give one goosebumps. Finally it all boiled down to the expulsion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15296,19268,694,8203,820,2080],"class_list":["post-32487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-alex-gorka","tag-poisoning","tag-russia","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32488,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32487\/revisions\/32488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}