Analysis comment

UK has sanctioned almost no Russian entities since invasion – see how other countries compare

SKWAWKBOX (SW)By
92 Comments on UK has sanctioned almost no Russian entities since invasion – see how other countries compare

Bloomberg summary is damning

A summary published by news organisation Bloomberg portrays in damning detail the UK government’s actions against Russia compared to its rhetoric.

While Boris Johnson, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and others have talked up the supposed toughness of their stance, the reality is embarrassingly different – the UK, a global centre of finance, has sanctioned far fewer Russian entities and their finances than many nations with smaller populations and only four more than the tiny United Arab Emirates:

While the EU’s population is of course larger than the UK’s, Canada has barely more than half the number of people, Australia has not much more than a third and the UAE about a seventh. Even given relative differences in financial services and location of company offices per head of population it’s still an embarrassment.

And the so-called ‘opposition’ is not in a position to throw stones with any integrity, with extensive links to Russian businessmen and even Putin himself among Starmer’s top team and donors that neither Starmer nor they have repudiated.

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92 comments

    1. RT is ‘sanctioned’ and taken off-air for offering different/more balanced news reporting than BBC/C4 NEWS/ITN/SKY, ETC.. – and so is their website.

      An attempted visit gets this response on firefox product
      “403 – Forbidden . That’s an error.

      Client does not have access rights to the content so server is rejecting to give proper response. That’s all we know.”

      Establishment Censorship?

      _____
      Don’t forget, keep your mask on, keep socially distanced and take your ‘vaccine’ booster daily. (The Queen does, doesn’t she, Labour MP David Lammy?).

      Reply

      1. Your life must be terrifying to be these scared of Covid to have to daily pretend it doesn’t exist and twist facts to whole new dimensions of BS to defend your tin foil hat wearing wonkery.

        I honestly believe you and another couple of people who regular post similar drivel need urgent check up from the neck up. You are either a conspiracy theorist, a liar or this pandemic has broken your limited sanity old chap.

        Heh, this will set you off foaming at the mouth just had my 4th booster thanks last week. Feel great thanks enjoy being tracked thanks it’s a great help when GPS won’t locate me correctly simply amazing isn’t it! Being sterol well not a great concern as i am disabled over 50 and impudent thanks so that’s no great concern did I miss any of the other usual BS your kind likes to lie about?

        Maybe we can talk about that huge pile of bodies that you will deny actually died from Covid-19 and only you and the other true believers know the ‘Truth’ not you whould recognise said truth if it bit you in the ass despite having no medical background, training and the only knowledge you have come from certain American bullshit zones.

        So keep up the old covid denier routine and I will keep on poking fun of your quite frankly hilarious denier routines it’s a great fun pointing out all the BS and truth twisting you get up to here so regularly.

  2. On the contrary, Labour is doing what it can within the limitations imposed by the Tories having an 80 seat majority
    eg: Below is the amendment that Labour are putting forwards to The Economic Crime Bill.

    Commitment to bring forward reform of Companies House
    New clause
    [38A] Further reforms to Companies House
    (1) Not later than 28 days from when Part 1 of this Act comes into force, the Secretary of State must publish draft legislation for the purpose of making further reforms to Companies House, including to support the effective functioning of the register of overseas entities.
    (2) The draft legislation must include –
    New powers for the registrar to aid the verification of foreign entities applying for registration as set out in section 4 of this Act;
    New powers for the registrar to better share data with enforcement agencies;
    Reforms that will improve the quality and veracity of the information on the register.

    Explanatory note:
    This new clause would compel the Secretary of State to publish draft legislation on reforms to Companies House, including reforms that would support the operation of the Act.
    Reducing the transition period
    Labour will amend the Bill to change the grace period in which foreign entities must apply to the register from 18 months to 28 days except for property bought before 1999, which are currently out of the scope of the Bill, to give the Government time to find a way of making sure pre 1999 purchases are also included in the final Bill to ensure all foreign owned entities are included on the register

    Reply

    1. Starmer can posture all he wants because he knows it’ll never come to anything.but the reality is he and his cronies are as tight with the Russian establishment as the Tories

      Reply

      1. SW – On the contrary he is putting forward real practical steps that will make a difference.
        A substantial part of the problem is that currently Companies House is not a regulator at all: it is merely a registrar of whatever nonsense is sent to it.

      2. SteveH
        Temporary Embarrassment is calling for ownership of Russian assets to be clarified within 28 days
        How long did it take him to clarify who was funding his leadership campaign and explain why it didn’t happen till after the election
        He’s on the telly box now telling us all it’s ‘a matter of trust’
        Bent as a nine Bob note

      4. The real desperation here is your own steveH. The desperation of avoiding any question, contextual or otherwise, by deflection, reframing and projection.

        You are a sad little troll for a lot of reasons. Not least of which is that you are so incredibly inept and useless at it. Everyone sees through you for what you are.

      1. That’s easy. The same thing the loyal opposition is trying to hide – a total lack of competence.

      2. Allan – . 🥱. Perhaps you should listen to the full debate before commenting further.

    3. https://labourlist.org/2022/03/what-are-they-trying-to-hide-labour-asks-after-axed-dirty-money-meeting/
      Labour has asked what the government could be “trying to hide” after a meeting between the opposition party and Companies House was cancelled at short notice – apparently on the advice of the Department for Business.
      The shadow Treasury team had been expecting to discuss reforms to Companies House, including its plans to hand new powers to the government agency amid concerns over Russian dirty money in the UK.

      Reply

  3. Looks like buying the Tory party for a couple of million was money well spent.

    Reply

  4. Russia was forced to go to war.
    The object being to justify the imposition of sanctions in order to wreck the economy (already deliberately smashed up in the 1990s) and to starve the ordinary Russian people (their life expectancy fell from 70 to 57 years of age while the Harvard boys and their oligarch mates were bringing Thatcherism/Shock Therapy to the country.)
    Starve them to force them to change their government and do as Washington wants. Starving working people to death, again, that’s the point of sanctions.
    No socialist, no decent human being can support them- still less demand that they be tightened.
    The Labour Party was right to call for the end of NATO in 1960. It should be calling for it now. Instead it is actually supporting the rotten Nazis dominating the government in Kiev.

    Reply

      1. “Bevin – Which conspiracy site did you get these little gems from?”

        Every time someone analyses an issue differently than you and forms reasoned opinion that you (or Sir Keir and Klaus Schwab) dislike, it is ‘conspiracy site’ material?

      2. qwertboi – Bevin is more than welcome to provide a link to his source material.

      3. A link makes it legitimate, stevieh?

        Sad thing is, you’re probably not sure what I’m getting at…

      4. qwertboi – No but it would allow us to examine the credibility of his assertions.

        If you are unable to express your thoughts clearly then that is your problem.

      5. I’ll help you that today steveH:

        Firstly there;s a guy called William Burns who produced an analysis in 2007 which stated;

        ““Nyet means nyet: Russia’s Nato enlargement red lines.” Russia, Burns noted, viewed “farther eastward expansion as a potential military threat,” giving rise to Russian fears across the whole spectrum of Russian society that “the issue of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine could potentially split the country [Ukraine] in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”

        Then theirs a chap by the name of Paul Craig Roberts who has recently urged for the two draft treaties on reciprocal security arrangements in Europe sent to the US and NATO by the Russian Federation are sensible and should be agreed.

        Oh. Sorry. I forgot to mention steveH.

        William Burns is at present the director of the CIA. He wrote the above assessment to his Government in Washington in 2007 when he was US Ambassador to Moscow.

        Paul Craig Roberts was a member of the Reagan Administration and sat on the ant-Soviet ‘Committee for the Present Danger.’

        The readers of this site will no doubt look forward to reading your disposition on why these two, among others

        see here:

        https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/26/the-first-casualty-of-war-is-the-truth-the-current-western-propaganda-for-ukraine-is-epic-in-scale/

        are “conspiricy theorists” or ‘Putin Apologists’ or any other of the thousand and one reductive and simplistic labels you are wont to use in order to divert attention from the reality of the collapsing narrative you are acting as a shill for.

        An Official Narrative that selectively ignores inconvenient facts and evidence by using these silly childish attacks on anyone raising these practical realities. Which applies principles selectively to suit the convenience of the fairy tale Official Narrative you support.

        Like the fanatics of Azov battalions attached to the Ukraine Military which have been shelling some 40% of the populace of the Ukraine for the past eight years – something you have nothing to say on, nor concern for – such is your selective application of principles (you only support Nazi Ukrainians) – you and your obsolete fantasy world view is about to meet reality.

        Once upon a time I might have felt sorry for you. But the brutal truth is, you will be reaping what you have sown and getting what you deserve as it increasingly dawns on you that your position is untenable. As your psyche slowly collapses along with the Official Narrative comfort blanket with which it wraps itself in becomes more and more exposed for the empty sophistry it is, no one will miss you.

      6. Dave – The idea that NATO would invade Russia is ludicrous.

      7. What they would do is to undermine, destabilise and organise a coup.

    2. Jeremy has called for NATO to be disbanded on a few occasions since the wall came down – ie since the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

      AND been fraudulently accused of calling for Gt Britain to leave NATO!

      Reply

      1. Allan – It is hardly a wild assumption to presume that Corbyn doesn’t want to be a member of an organisation that he wants to disband,

      2. Games with language are good fun, aren’t they.
        If NATO were to be disbanded, there would be no organisation that anyone could be a part of.
        Oh, and are you still a fan of the Fascists who took part in the 2014 coup and the Nazis who burned people to death in Odessa?

      3. God, do we REALLY have to put up with you polluting this site….. every day in practically every thread!

        Why do you bother. What is it you’re hoping to achieve, when just about EVERYBODY that follows skwawkbox knows you’re a paid full-time Establishment shill.

      1. Really? Then why are more nations looking to seek the protection of NATO

    4. “If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine”.

      John Mearsheimer

      (From wikipedia entry: John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation).

      Yet ANOTHER conspiracy theorist eh Stevio (I think he must be sleeping now……. I wonder if he writes and posts comments in his dreams contradicting anything anyone says!)

      Reply

      1. You had me at “If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine”.

        Thanks Allan H.

    5. Really?

      The evidence says otherwise:

      The long litany of the following process/playbook is irrefutable.

      You start off by declaring someone an ‘Official Enemy.’

      You move on to painting them in a negative way at every opportunity. Vilifying them individually, collectively or both to suit.

      You impose sanctions. You increase those sanctions. Punishing whole populations if need be.

      You surround them with armaments. You threaten them to get you way.

      If the threat works you move in, install a puppet Government and move on to the next target.

      If you have to make good on the threat you bomb them back to the stone age or maybe some other time period:

      ‘Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation… and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is another decade we will set your country back by pulverising you. You want 1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too.’

      Thomas Friedman: New York Times

      And we’ve seen this in the tragic vivisection of Yugoslavia, including the NATO’s barbaric 78-day bombing of the capital city Belgrade without a mandate from the UN.

      Subsequently,the elites controlling the West/NATO have moved from devouring the carcass of Yugoslavia into Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Libya, Syria, Somalia, et al, and arrived in Ukraine in 2014.

      All the while expanding Eastwards towards Russia’s border in contravention of not just verbal but documentary promises and commitments given to end the Cold War.

      A Russia which has seen a minimum of three invasions from the West in three hundred years. The Swedes around 1710; Napoleons alliance in 1812; The Nazis in the 1940’s. Arguably, the foreign Western provided boosting of the white army with troops and munitions after the Bolsheviks took over is a fourth.

      The West, using a NATO which should have disbanded after the end of the Cold War, is still playing the Great Game and intent on controlling Makinder’s ‘Heartland’ of Eurasia.

      The vast luscious Eurasian landmass eastward where there are many multiethnic, plural societies like Yugoslavia, big and small, with internal contradictions that make them vulnerable to dismemberment.

      Like everyone else who did not cry ‘Uncle.’ Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia et al.

      Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but is locked in an existential struggle to avoid the fate of Yugoslavia. Period. The spectre that is haunting Russia is NATO membership for Ukraine, which the Americans have been orchestrating.

      Supporting a regime stuffed with neo-nazis who, following the illegal US backed Regime Change of 2014 with $5 billion which saw scores of Russians murdered in the Odessa Trade Union building in May 2014 by Ukrainians, have been shelling some 40% of the Ukrainian population who happen to be ethnic Russians who have had the temerity to not lie down and see their language made illegal, culture destroyed, or be subject of stated genocide by those you now falsely claim are the victims.

      The Russians have been trying to reach a sensible diplomatic grown up security arrangement with the children who make up the Western elites for over a quarter of a century.

      Instead of recognising the Donbass Republics in 2014 they – not Putin but the Russian government with full parliamentary support – have been negotiating for a further eight years whilst thousands of Russians are slaughtered. Hardly the actions of a party intent on expansionism.

      Right now, in defensive rather than projective, military terms the Russian military have the upper hand over NATO by possession of maneuverable hypersonic weapons. The maneuverability combined with the speed, along with the advantage in electronic warfare, means NATO/US has no way to defend against them.

      So the question arises: With that advantage why is it that the weapons stationed close to the Russian border in Eastern Europe have not been taken out by the Russians? Why are they allowing NATO planes to conduct nuclear bombing exercises within 20 miles of their border?

      Why are those planes conducting such exercises in the first place? The US military, or at least those with a working brain cell, know the advantage the Russians have. Hell, their war game scenarios consistently see them being beaten

      Instead, the Russian’s continued to negotiate to the extent of producing two reciprocal draft security treaties which even Reagan era Cold War warriors are saying are sensible.

      In the light of the evidence of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia etc there can be no serious argument that if that advantage in military capability were the other way around right now the US would be threatening the RF with those weapons to break it up into smaller parts to plunder its resources.

      And if it refuses to cry ‘Uncle’ like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and so on then those weapons will be used. Because the evidence is already there from those previous recent years examples, along with the stated policy goal of breaking up the RF into client states to access the resources.

      And at some point in maybe four or five years the US/NATO are likely to have the same technology. At which point its game over for Eurasia and any independent policy not dictated by the US corporate elites of DAVOS and the WEF.

      And in the meantime our Government’s have no problem with a neo-nazi dominated society having its own nuclear weapons following the clown Zelensky’s puppet act at the Munich security Conference.

      They WILL do to the RF and China what Rome did to Carthage.

      Over twenty five years of trying to negotiate have led nowhere.

      So I’ll ask again steveH: What else are they supposed to do in the face of the very real and plausible existential threat which faces them, once again from a Slavicphobic rabid dog of a Western Elite and their cheerleaders like yourself.

      Go away and die? Line up for slaughter? Wave a magic wand? Pick up a rainbow flag? phone a friend? What?

      Its called self defence. You would not put up with it. Why condemn others for not doing so? That’s as stark a double standard and act of sheer hypocrisy as one could imagine.

      The notion they have nothing to be concerned about does not stand up to the record of evidence from people who, for five hundred years have never ever been agreement capable with anyone. Ask the indigenous peoples of the North and South American continents; Australasia; Africa; and Asia.

      Its over kid. As the American Alfred W. McCoy observes in his recent tome “To Govern the Globe” the half a millennium Western dominated World Order is over. What will finish it off is the blowback from its own sanctions. If i were you I’d start planting staple foods and stocking up on bog paper, medicines etc rather than pontificating here about stuff you know absolutely nothing about.

      Reply

    6. Wolfgang Streekt is brilliant on the latest New Left
      Review blog Sidecar.
      Critical thinkers keep us sane.

      Reply

  5. When the communist government collapsed in the USSR,the Russian leaders embraced capitalism including our mr putin
    .Now we continue with the many headed monster consuming itself.under the leadership of the USA.IF I wasn’t already out of the UK I would pack my bags and go to were the capitalist is still controlled within specific limits.and severe if not draconian measures on the system of capital in action
    .A system that can work and used to work for the USA is now running on oil and gas fumes…..The End.

    Reply

    1. AND it was business – more-or-less – as usual! Billions worth of business!!

      But then the whole Skripal thing was staged!

      PS Wait for it folks……(unless he’s sleeping at the moment of course!)!!

      Reply

      1. UK trade with Russia

        In the first three quarters of 2021, the UK had a trade deficit with Russia. This means the value of  UK imports from Russia exceeded the value of its exports to Russia. The total value of exports to Russia was £3.3 billion. The total value of imports was £8.3 billion.

        https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-trade-with-russia/

        NB I found something a few days ago in respect of trade between UK and Russia in 2019, and it was much the same, but I can’t find it now. Anyway, we can no doubt add a further 25% to the above figures for the whole year. And if you scroll down the page a bit you’ll see that ‘Salisbury’ is mentioned!

      2. Allan – That will change when Putin has control of half the world’s neon gas reserves and 20% of the worlds grain supply.

      3. Moreover, it wasn’t only staged, the biochemical ‘agents’ used for the poisoning were probably on special offer at Tesco/Wilko at that time (also, not mentioned by the BBC Panorama or associated mini-series)

        Monsanto/Bayer Roundup, general-use fertilizers – Russian ‘nerve agents’ and they are often confused.

      4. qwertboi – Why would I want to stop you showing off your superior intellect.

      5. And yet what contracts exist for Eurasian gas are still being, to use an old fashioned phrase, honoured by Gazprom/the RF.

        https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-gas-flows-via-yamal-pipeline-germany-decline-sharply-data-2022-03-03/

        “Gazprom on Thursday resumed westbound natural gas supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline to Germany from Poland, data from Gascade pipeline operator showed, with flows expected to continue until at least Friday morning.

        Early on Thursday, Gascade’s data showed the flow had stopped on the pipeline, which usually accounts for about 15% of Russia’s westbound supply of gas to Europe and Turkey.

        Gazprom has intermittingly sent gas westward via the link in recent days amid high demand in Europe. It has also increased supplies to Europe via Ukraine, another key route. read more

        Gazprom said on Thursday it was shipping gas to Europe via Ukraine in line with customers’ requests.

        The German-Polish section of the pipeline switched into reverse, eastbound, mode on Dec. 21 as buyers in Poland drew on stored supplies from Germany rather than buying more Russian gas at high spot prices.”

        Nordstream 1, the Ukraine pipline, and others are still not switched off and any contracts entered into – like the recent Hungarian one which delivers a longer term supply well below speculative spot market prices which the whole of the rest of Europe, including the UK, is paying as a result of their own self inflicted intransigence.

        Stuff the proles/plebs. Let us pay the increased prices because our elites want to play whose the biggest, baddest and bestest.

        Which rather begs the question as to WTF are the RF waiting for?

        steveH’s anticipation here is revealing. He is expecting the RF to do what the West/NATOstan would do. Projecting our own well documented behavour and way of doing things onto others.

        Its noticeable that the shock and awe bombing which NATO/The West inflicted on Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and the present proxy war in Yemen – you know the one which wrecked civilian infrastructure and resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths (how many was it in Fallujah from White Phosphorus? 70,000? 75,000? I’m sure steveH will not be shy in coming forward with an answer) – has not been the case in Ukraine.

        That the RF is focusing on military rather than civilian targets.

        How do I know?

        Easy, Switch on the TV. The schedules remain. If anything like the Western damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, etc had occurred in Ukraine right now the schedules across every channel would have been cancelled and we would all be watching 24/7 coverage of it across every single channel.

        Could it be that those simplistically caricatured as ‘Gangsters’ across Western media to shore up an Official Narrative with no congruence with reality are not turning off the gas so as not to to hurt Western civilians in the same way?

        Cue hackneyed and predictable accusations of crafty Russians supplying gas to score propaganda points.

        It really is sad and pathetic to see the desperation of a collapsing Narrative approaching negative numbers in credibility.

        One does wonder why we waste taxpayers money on amateurs like the Integrity Initiative and 77 Brigade who are clearly not up to the task.

      7. Oh No they don’t.

        http://johnhelmer.net/black-box-defence-for-the-russian-economy-dollar-debt-repayments-blocked-gas-and-oil-deliveries-to-germany-stopped-oligarch-assets-nationalized/

        Gazprom has already recouped their part of the investment in NS2 and the German Government will in the coming period see Western Companies which were part of that consortium, along with their investors seek to recover their investment from that Germen Government. Investment could well be in tens of billions of whatever currency is left when the dollar and the pound have collapsed.

        Some of that investment might well be from your pension fund steveH. If I were you I’d get onto my Broker pronto. Its conceivable that the one who needs the money is you.

        Funny old world ain’t it.

      8. Dave – Thanks for your concern but you don’t need to worry on my behalf.

  7. Holby I have noticed that a few people on here are out and about in the sleeping hours,
    Although I enjoy the sound of my own voice its nice to hear others who actually live in Britain.and are in the front line of cutbacks and price increases
    The few that keep me company through the night are often caring for relatives to avoid the state stealing the family legacy home.or cannot afford the care that the welfare state used to provide under the Social security system that the labour party led the world in after the war that was supposed to end all wars…..this one might just do that by accident.

    Reply

  8. Joseph – I am up and about because my body clock
    is out of sync. I think it is the terrible loss of life
    that we see every night on our TVs. It has a
    resonance for me – because I am old enough to
    remember WW2 and the Blitz. My partner too –
    who is older than me – remembers a neighbouring
    family being lost to a bomb. My in-laws had to flee
    from the town to the country to escape.

    I disagree though with Bevin who says Putin had no
    choice. Yes he did have a choice and he made an
    irrational one in that he seems to have proved to
    everyone that – given the current international
    system – it is better to be a member of NATO than
    not. For someone who claims to be “rescuing”
    the country from Nazis he is doing an awful lot
    of killing of children and their families. I say “he”
    because it seems as if he is not backed up by
    anyone in the Govt – for all are too frightened of
    him to object. Someone once said to me that
    the situation is worse now than it was during
    the Soviet era when a straightforward vote
    would get a leader out and that is no longer
    the case.

    This is very similar to the bombing of
    Vietnam by the US and yes – the bombing of Yemen
    now and shooting up of mothers with children in their
    arms. An incident shown by the BBC showed a child still
    with the scar of a bullet which killed his mother. A brave
    woman reporter scrambled up into the mountains to report
    on killings in several such villages.

    Reply

    1. Yes, HFM, everyone makes choices. Russia could have chosen not to invade Ukraine. NATO could have chosen not to place nuclear missiles in Poland and Romania. The US could have chosen not to suggest Ukraine should join NATO, or not to call for “regime change” in Russia, or not to organise a coup in Kyiv in 2014.
      Some historians like to view events through the prism of great men (yes, it’s always men, isn’t it?) and madmen. In reality things are more complex.
      The question is, as always, “What is the best way out of all this?”
      Let’s hope that the talks between Ukraine and Russia can build on the humanitarian corridors / temporary ceasefire agreement and bring about a full ceasefire, and eventually an accommodation that re-establishes Ukraine’s integrity and removes the threats which Russia feels from NATO (read the US).
      Ultimately we need a comprehensive European security system the like of which was being proposed by Gorbachev, and later by Yeltsin, and later by Putin, and which was squashed by the US.
      It really is time that the US kept their part of the Monroe Doctrine and stopped interfering in European affairs.

      Reply

      1. Talking of madmen, Jonathan Cook posted the following article a few days ago:

        ‘Russia-Ukraine: A different invasion, the West’s same ‘madman’ script’

        Simple-minded media propaganda – like the claim Russia’s Putin is deranged – is precisely what brought us to the crisis over Ukraine

        How convenient for western leaders that every time another country defies the West’s projection of power, the western media can agree on one thing: that the foreign government in question is led by a madman, a psychopath or a megalomaniac.

        At a drop of a hat, western leaders are absolved of guilt or even responsibility for the terrible events that unfold. The West remains virtuous, simply a victim of the world’s madmen. Nothing the West did was a provocation. Nothing they could have done would have averted the disaster.

        https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2022-02-28/russia-ukraine-war-invasion-madman/

        Yep, we all know who the REAL madmen are! WHO but deranged, evil psychopaths would induce the invasion to happen when they could have prevented it!

      2. Amazing. I’ve just discovered that the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra has been sacked.
        Not for anything he did or said. He has been sacked because he hasn’t made a public statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

      3. Continuous War
        MIC
        Kleptocracy
        Our only hope for a clean slate is the collapse of the Financial System and the dollars position as the default global currency
        It actually happened in 2008 but the Yanks are ignoring it, policy of NAH NAH NA NANAH

      5. goldbach
        An EU defence force makes perfect sense and would act as a brake and counterweight to the NATO and the never-ending warmongers in America
        Unfortunately that’s not what the EU is set up for, just another gang of kleptocrats protecting their own self interests
        I voted Labour Leave to protect Standards and Jobs and to implement our manifesto commitments
        There’s the dream EU and the real EU, the deluded and the mafia

    2. HFMw – We cannot know whether Putin is isolated and imposing his personal power through measures Jo Stalin would be proud of, or whether he is incisively on top of,and offering leadership to, a national angst tthat the US is ruthlessly exploiting) that touches on Russian identity, its survival and their national (self) defence, but please be aware that this is exactly the area that the (usually US) black arts work in. Have you not been living through the ver same covid “emergency” as me, can you not see that your television, radio and newspapers are synchronising all this? Don’t trust them!

      and – if I may – circadian ‘confusion’ often happens at end-winter. I’ve been experiencing it too. Take special care of your nutrtion. Me? I find beef/lamb liver at least once a week around the spring and autumn equinoxes help me tremendously. If you can, give it a try. You’ll be amazed!

      Reply

  9. Support an autocratic , despotic gangster while fleecing your home state and it’s people of its natural resources & revenue, and laundering money = NO sanction…OR, sanction deferred for eighteen months to give you time to organise the transfer of your ill-gotten £billions elsewhere.

    BUT…

    Make a simple and genuine mistake on a form designed to confuse, discourage and dishearten…

    …Or, be unable to make an appointment for a disability claim, because you’re laid up on a hospital bed, struggling for dear life…

    …Or be a minute late for signing…

    …Or just even question the JCP capo’s authority…

    RESULT = Immediate benefit sanction. In some cases with an added and arbitrary £50 civil penalty; despite not having the proverbial pot to piss in.

    Welcome to toerag Britain.😒

    Reply

    1. Toffee
      They kill people every day, mainly single men
      They starve children
      They make you homeless
      They have just awarded themselves another pay rise
      They want shot with shit
      Regards

      Reply

  10. With the City of London being the centre of one of the largest offshore banking organisations in the world, the UK financial system is reliant on enabling tax evasion and money laundering. Why would Johnson want to disrupt this cash cow for the rich by imposing any major controls? And why would the LP want to antagonise potential (and it certainly is potential) donors by advocating any real control of this scam?

    Reply

  12. Sanctions against whom? Pinching a few yachts may provide billionaire press journalists with good copy but admitting that you seek to destroy the Russian economy will hurt innocent Russian people. Sanctions against Iran & Iraq killed many tens of thousands of innocents & going back to sanctions against the Japanese people in the late 1930s/early 1940s led to ‘Pearl Harbour’.

    Sanctions against the Tory friendly oligarchs are exactly what they are not. Many have been given 18 months to move their wealth to a less hostile haven. These are not sanctions, these are the actions of a government that will not clean up its own financial dealings & the dark dealings of the ‘City of London’. Premier League Football is but a symptom of the corruption rife in financial sectors & the price of housing in select ares of London akin to Monaco.

    It is the poor working classes throughout the world who will suffer from this double edged sword. Not just food such as grain & corn will escalate in price but all food, as well as oil; gas & electricity prices will hit hard this winter. What a coincidence that PM Johnson announced a 40% increase in Britain’s nuclear arsenal (to threaten whom?) last budget, while making nuclear energy his chosen ‘Green’ energy source. The ground is already being prepared for the Covid pandemic & the Invasion of Ukraine to be used as an excuse for ‘the hard times to come’. MacMillan told us ‘we never had it so good’in the 1950s, when in fact most of us never had it at all. Now is the time to beat the drum & prepare for war as MSM adopt the mantra of ‘we must dramatically increase our armed forces to combat this menace’. Austerity? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet..Time we had an effective opposition to this dangerous Tory Party.

    Reply

  13. Probably the last time I post here. More important things to focus on.

    1) warned you all about food. Oil gone up $20 per barrel in a week. Wheat prices at 14 year high and we ain’t seen nothing yet. Nothing!

    2) sanctions, or lack thereof are an indicator of perfidious Albion. Let the Europeans take the fall. Even the Swiss have abandoned neutrality. There will be blowback. Our government is trying to play all sides.

    3)@Joseph

    My friend, you have lucked out beyond your wildest dreams. Ditch the dollar and get as much if your cash local to you asap. I’m genuinely jealous of your location (was slightly envious prior to this week). Funny how things pan out.

    4) for those who wish to use RT and other Russian sites, use Yandex DNS
    77.88.8.8
    77.88.8.1

    5) may I suggest that many of you “lefties” here consult the history books etc. Long story short, Russia=collective West=individual. You’re witnessing the battle between these two groups and the masks are off.

    Which group appeals most? Which group do you identify with? The propaganda being pushed currently is on a scale never seen before. Identifying with a group doesn’t mean you support them.

    Narrative does not match reality.

    Stay safe all. The politicians have already abandoned you. Watch for flight, this is the biggest indicator of incoming big trouble.

    Reply

  14. There’s an even better headline story than “UK has sanctioned almost no Russian Entities since invasion”

    So I’ll fix it for you skwawky:

    “UK and West have sanctioned absolutely no Ukrainians in eight years of shelling almost 40% of its populace and murdering Russian civilians with weapons we have supplied.”

    Try applying principles with at least some degree of consistency.

    Reply

    1. Thanks Dave Hansell.

      14,000 Ukrainian Russians killed in Donbass in eight years. The MSM never mention them. Zelenskii has a multi million dollar mansion ready and waiting in Florida, and a billion dollars in the bank there. MSM never mentions that either. The Nordstream 2 pipeline cancelled from Russia to the EU and the US now has a ready made market for it’s liquified gas which it didn’t have before.

      All the lemmings want to go and help the Ukrainian refugees, which is to be commended, but they couldn’t be arsed with the Syrians, Palestinians, Afghanis, Libyans or Iraqis. Because yes, that was the murder and mayhem we in the UK and US made. Fucking racist hypocrites the lot of them.

      The lemmings are being played once more, when will they ever learn to be any different?

      Reply

      1. “14,000 Ukrainian Russians killed in Donbass in eight years.”

        Your presentation of this figure is disingenuous. Here is a more accurate representation of the distribution of the casualties

        Total deaths
        Breakdown Fatalities Time period Source
        TOTAL 13,100–13,300 killed 6 April 2014 – 31 January 2021 United Nations
        TOTAL 14,000 killed 6 April 2014 – 13 May 2021 Ukrainian government
        Civilians 3,393 killed (312 foreign) 6 April 2014 – 30 September 2021 United Nations
        UAF, NGU and volunteer forces 4,641 killed 6 April 2014 – 23 February 2022 Museum of Military History
        DPR and LPR forces 5,772 killed 6 April 2014 – 11 February 2022 United Nations & DPR
        Russian Armed Forces 400–500 killed[note 2] 6 April 2014 – 10 March 2015 US State Department
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

      2. A more accurate assessment is to be found on the data supplied by the OSCE rather than compromised sources like wikipedia.

        Do try and keep up at the back there.

      3. Dave – Do their figures differ from the ones I quoted from multiple sources?

      4. Missing the point again. One wonders why? (Well not really, everyone here knows the score with you Uriah- selectively and inconsistently applying principles and evidence to suit, something you don’t deny))

        The key issue is that of the ***VALUE**** of those figures.

        One side of that ledger like approach are valued more than that of those on the other side of the ledger by the Official Narrative.

        The one suffering the most has no value whatsoever in that Official Narrative.

        That’s why my email account, along with that of millions of others in the West has suddenly been deluged with petitions and requests for donations (somehow I don’t think anyone donating in this instance will be having their bank accounts permanently frozen and made into an outlaw unable to live – as occurred in Canada recently) whilst for the past eight years when it was Russian speaking people in Ukraine getting killed by neo-Nazis its been tumbleweed.

        The medialens article posted elsewhere here

        https://www.medialens.org/2022/doubling-down-on-double-standards-the-ukraine-propaganda-blitz/

        misses only one salient and stark comparative fact in this regard.

        Only a few weeks ago thousands of people across Canada who made small donations to the Truckers protest had their bank accounts permanently frozen on the grounds that they were supporting an illegal protest by people Officially designated ‘Far Right Racist terrorists’ in a protest involving Sikhs, Indigenous Peoples, and Black Canadians alongside White Caucasians in which not a single person lost their lives and the only violence (apart from a few pronouns) came from the police and security services.

        At the same time those who defined that Official Narrative were, and continue to do so, supplying material and political support for a client regime they installed in an illegal coup to wage war and ethnic slaughter of 40% of their populace by genuine died in the wool neo-nazis.

        That same elite , which went after ordinary Canadians and made them Outlaws,is now encouraging its populace to make donations to nazis.

        And we are being asked to support the side of that ledger that is doing the majority of the killing and the damage who have openly stated their intentions of wiping out any Russian they can get their hands on.

        But those figures on that side of the ledger don’t have a value in this scenario.

        The evidence and the so called principles is being used selectively and for convenience. When steveH says he “supports Ukrainians” he only supports the nazi controlled regime run from Washington and London. If he genuinely supported the principles he espouses he would have been kicking up a fuss about the ethnic Russians in the Donbass and those in Crimea who had their Water Supple cut off by that Ukranian Regime over the past eight years.

        Instead he comes on here to virtue signal his fealty to the Official Narrative.

      6. Don’t you just love the playground level of intellectual discourse on display here!

        “You’re an idiot.”

        Wow! Just wow!

        Like all children steveH goes full Tom Churley (the Darts player Jim in the 1987 film Roxanne). Unable to come up with anything better to informed analysis which goes over his head and way above his pay grade then:

        “You’re an idiot.”

        That’s his best folks. As stark an example of the level of wit and intellectual capacity that passes for the Western cognitive abilities he represents as you can get.

        Lets throw a dart at the dart board like the Jim character in Roxanne did and see if we can help you out with something better than you can manage son;

        – Britain’s answer to the birth pill.

        – “That’s bollocks.”
        “I don’t want to know what keeps your ears apart.”

        – You need to get yourself down to’t chemists for a tube of gorm as you are clearly lacking in it.

        – In terms of analytical ability lets just say Father Christmas comes to work more then he does.

        – Nerve to brain cell, come in!

        – If shit were brains you wouldn’t need any bog paper.

        – He makes Benny (from Crossroads) look intellectual.

        – It says Daz on the side of buses but they don’t sell soap powder.

        – “Whats the definition of a sentence?”
        ” Having to listen to you.”

        – “When are you going on TFI Friday?” (as the regular ‘Ugly Bloke’ feature)
        “Same week you are going on the Girlie Show.” (As their ‘Wanker of the Week’)

        That latter title in the last example now won outright by little stevieH here.

  16. “Allan – That will change when Putin has control of half the world’s neon gas reserves and 20% of the worlds grain supply.”
    Chemistry is obviously not your strong point. The world’s neon gas “reserves” are all around us. Neon is a component of the air that we breathe. Anyone can produce it anywhere in the world if they build an air separation plant. Currently, about 90% of such plants are in either Russia or Ukraine. We could build one in Sunderland. It would bring jobs.
    Quote – “Neon is produced from air in cryogenic air-separation plants. A gas-phase mixture mainly of nitrogen, neon, and helium is withdrawn from the main condenser at the top of the high-pressure air-separation column and fed to the bottom of a side column for rectification of the neon. It can then be further purified from helium.”

    Reply

    1. goldbach – You are right I made a mistake. Actually I had already realised this when I did some further reading after my post. I did think about correcting my post but decided against it because I didn’t think it materially made much difference to the point that I was making about Putin seizing economic resources. I actually made another mistake, one plant in Odessa actually produces 65% of neon gas on the world market.
      I take your point that it is a manufacturing process but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as simple as you imply. Replicating a plant elsewhere in the west wouldn’t be an easy process. Plus neon is essential in the manufacture of micro-processors and whist there is no immediate panic as most chipmakers keep enough stock for 2mths Putin being in control of this plant would be a problem for the future.
      I’m also very concerned about Putin controlling roughly 20% of the grain market, aren’t you?

      Reply

      1. Russia, the US, Ukraine, wherever – it’s big agri-business that controls “the market” in grains. If they can make a quick buck they will.
        Now come on. Be brave. Take a position on the coup of 2014 and the immolation of human beings in Odessa 2 days later. Right or wrong?

  17. Capital Shelters Capital.
    ‘The World needs a Mandela.
    Self determination for every country too.
    We don’t need the Peskie Americans and Russians.
    Telling countries what to do!’
    Peace, International Solidarity and Love.
    Diverse Working People of the World Unite!

    Reply

    1. Yes, the Ukrainians have made it clear that they don’t want FA to do with Putin.

      Reply

      1. Only the Nazis and their supporters want nothing to do with the Russians
        China and Russia will stick together like shit to a woolly blanket

      2. Doug – “China and Russia will stick together like shit to a woolly blanket”

        Well they will just as long as it furthers China’s interests.
        I thought that you likening China and Russia to ‘shit’ was very apt.

      4. Doug – Really, nothing to do with the insecure little Napoleon wannabe in the Kremlin then?

      5. Apart from the 40% of the population under attack form Nazis.

    2. Is beautiful that, only a political moron could criticise that.
      The World needs to kick the USA and Russia in the butt peacefully.
      I move we should have self determination for every country as equals.
      It’s time for the class to fight back against the TWO Global USA and Russia class Bullies!

      Reply

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