Not the flight to Rwanda – that was ‘cancelled’ by the ECHR

 

 

One news item only is splashed across all front pages this morning, the Sun and the Star excepted: The ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) stopped the flight to Rwanda (link). Forget the war in the Ukraine – that only takes place on the Reuters site this morning (link). There’s also a delicious scream-of-pain by ‘journalists’. More on that below.

So far, the MSM opinion ‘makers’, i.e. those who pontificate in their ‘editorial comment pieces’ haven’t had time to tell us what and how to think about this  decision, with the exception of a couple of brief paragraphs in the DM, making some interesting points. It’s not paywalled so you can read it here. The DM also raises the question of our withdrawal from the ECHR, writing that “If the European Court of Human Rights continues to meddle, the Prime Minister is right to consider withdrawing from its ambit.” (link).

For some time now there’s been talk about withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which runs the European Court of Human Rights (also: ECHR), with nothing much having been done. So, given this decision, lets ask who are those judges, who appoints them, how are they selected? Here’s the official site with a nice, long list of judges.

This is where it becomes interesting because ‘government sources’  saw fit to throw a little stink bomb, faithfully reported by The Times: (my emphasis)

“Responding to the ECHR’s intervention, a government source said: “Domestic courts including the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, the High Court, the Court of Appeal have repeatedly said we can proceed, yet some foreign court has decided ‘no you can’t’. One out-of-hours European judge has overruled days and days of debate in the UK courts on the papers alone.” Another government source pointed out that a Russian judge was still on the ECHR, although Mikhail Lobov is due to step down in September.” (link, paywalled)

Leaving aside the moan by one of those government ‘sources’ about that one ‘out-of-hours judge’, the insidious remark about the Russian judge is meant to make us wonder if Putin gave the order to that judge to stop the flight. He could have, couldn’t he, and we must blame all and every misfortune on Putin … However,  a proper journalist could easily have found out what I was able to, about the Court and the judges. It wasn’t difficult. First, see this:

“Russia, having been expelled from the Council of Europe as of 16 March 2022, ceases to be a party to the convention with effect from 16 September 2022 in accordance with article 58. Until then, the court has declared it “remains competent to deal with applications directed against the Russian Federation in relation to acts or omissions” occurring until that date.” (link)

I find it somewhat sinister that this Court deems itself ‘competent’ to sit in judgement on cases regarding a country it has just thrown out, even if there’s apparently a time-line. This might mean that we could also be subject to decisions made in that Court should we resign from that Council and Court. 

Next, given that this decision was made by one judge, as the ‘source’ told The Times, and given the insinuation that it could’ve been that Russian judge, I used my browser to find out if that might have been possible. While the name of that judge stopping the Rwanda flight is not made public as far as I can see, the ECHR has published the list of the judges currently appointed to sit as single judges. You can check it out here. Lo and behold, that Russian judge isn’t even on that list. If I can find this, so can any journalist worth their salt. Perhaps though they are scared not to quote yon ‘government source’? 

It seems that Whitehall is happy to continue the ‘fight against Putin’ by all and any means even if the war in the Ukraine is no longer such a hot item. At the very least it takes away some of the attention from Ms Patel and from Whitehall’s own incompetence or reluctance to deal with the issue of illegal immigration. 

Given that these illegals are coming here from other – EU – countries I wonder why Miz Truss seems incapable or unwilling to dirty her little hands by demanding those countries to take said illegals back. That would be a FO issue – but then again, travelling to Kiev and other countries, to fulminate against Russia, is far more interesting and provides much nicer photo ops.

One issue she could take up is the wail from our MSM, that bad Russia has ‘sanctioned’ our lovely, professional hacks from entering. This is too precious, so I’ll quote at length, for the record, from that paywalled article:

“Russia has imposed sanctions on 49 UK citizens, including journalists, defence officials and arms industry executives, in response to western punitive measures against Moscow over President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Those targeted, including Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman, are barred from visiting Russia, which the foreign ministry said was retaliation for “the UK government’s anti-Russian actions” in sanctioning several leading Kremlin propagandists and executives at state-run defence corporations.” (link, paywalled)

How dare Russia retaliate! How dare the Russian Foreing Office say that those sanctioned British journalists were “deliberately disseminating false and one-sided information about Russia and the events in Ukraine and the Donbas” (link, paywalled)! Those hacks weren’t even there, as we all know! They only hang about in Kiev and send back Ukrainian propaganda. And then the Russians dared to say that

“[…] the journalists — who also included BBC director-general Tim Davie, the editors of the Times, Telegraph, and Guardian — were “inciting Russophobia in British society with their biased assessments.” All but a few of the journalists listed appeared not to have visited Russia or covered the country for several years, if ever. Two of those sanctioned as journalists are UK university professors apparently targeted for newspaper columns and media appearances.” (link, paywalled)

As if ‘professors’ would never give biased assessments! As if chief editors or the BBC Director General would have any influence whatsoever on what their papers or the BBC publish! Lower down, after the hurty wails about those poor, sanctioned hacks we’re told that others were also sanctioned (my emphasis):

“The list also included 20 people associated with the UK defence industry, including minister for defence procurement Jeremy Quin, the heads of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, and several executives from BAE Systems and Thales UK. Russia said those people “participate in decision-making about supplying weapons to Ukraine that are used by local death squads and Nazi groups to kill civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure”. Moscow has repeatedly made baseless claims that Ukraine is controlled by Nazis and is terrorising its own civilians to justify its invasion. The UK Ministry of Defence had no immediate comment.” (link, paywalled)

Note that, as per usual, current anti-Russian propaganda is slotted into what should be a factual report. The writer doesn’t even notice that this sentence alone strengthens Russia’s argument  justifying those sanctions. I spare you the list of all others having been sanctioned by Russia, from the PM and cabinet ministers all the way down to MPs, Lords and ‘officials’, i.e. mandarins. Me, I am only astonished it has taken Russia so long to retaliate.  I did enjoy the wail of ‘in’t fair’ though. 

Today’s news show yet again the horrendous mess our Westminster ‘elite’ has created, thanks to institutional incompetence, be it by Whitehall mandarins caving to a ECHR ruling, be it by hacks who believe they have the right to regurgitate government propaganda rather than simply reporting facts, giving both sides of a story.

Smears and innuendos, outright spin and propaganda are all which the MSM nowadays provide. And then they wonder why we no longer believe a word they say or write …


,

Print Friendly, PDF & Email