{"id":32858,"date":"2018-03-28T06:01:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T11:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32858"},"modified":"2018-03-28T06:02:02","modified_gmt":"2018-03-28T11:02:02","slug":"global-anti-russia-campaign-is-taking-us-dangerously-close-to-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32858","title":{"rendered":"Global anti-Russia campaign is taking us dangerously close to disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global anti-Russia campaign is taking us dangerously close to disaster<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"Global<\/div>\n
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A no entry sign hangs at the entrance to a private road in front of the Russian embassy in central London \u00a9 Justin Tallis \/ AFP<\/div>\n
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The expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the US, along with dozens of others from various other countries, should be a sobering moment for all of mankind. It\u2019s a sign of how close to the brink of a major war the world is coming.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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To start with, this current episode is not comparable to the 55 Soviets expelled by Ronald Reagan in 1986 or the 50 or so thrown out by George W. Bush in 2001. Those actions were directly related to spying activities \u2013 which all governments engage in, directed against their friends as well as enemies. The Russians do it, the Americans do it, everybody does it. There\u2019s nothing remarkable about cutting the numbers down now and then, particularly after a major embarrassment like the 2001 Robert Hanssen scandal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But these latest expulsions have nothing to do with how many of the Russians might be actual spies. Nor with the nonsensical accusations of Russian election interference to\u00a0\u201csow discord<\/a>\u201d<\/em> and \u201cdiscredit democracy<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, they have almost nothing to do with the US State Department\u2019s unsupported claim<\/a> that \u201cRussia used a military-grade nerve agent to attempt to murder a British citizen and his daughter in Salisbury.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 The absence of evidence that the Russians were behind the attack is no more relevant than repeated, equally evidence-free accusations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government. Whatever happened to the Skripals and whoever is behind it<\/a>, Salisbury is a mere pretext.<\/p>\n

No, the real purpose is much simpler. Decrying the American action, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov stated<\/a> that he had told his US interlocutors that \u201cthe United States took a very bad step by cutting what very little still remains in terms of Russian-American relations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Global anti-Russia campaign is taking us dangerously close to disaster A no entry sign hangs at the entrance to a private road in front of the Russian embassy in central London \u00a9 Justin Tallis \/ AFP The expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the US, along with dozens of others from various other countries, should […]<\/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":[19499,19306,19498,8114,694,827],"class_list":["post-32858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-anti-russia-campaign","tag-diplomats","tag-jim-jatras","tag-rt-news","tag-russia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32858","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=32858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32859,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32858\/revisions\/32859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}