Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/960495
Opinion 25 maltatoday SUNDAY 1 APRIL 2018 pressure on EU member states to maintain a united front... and Oz only knows what sort of levers and buttons are currently being pulled and pushed behind the (ahem) curtains. There has, in a word, been a call for all good European comrades to dutifully put on their national 'We hate Russia' specs... and most countries have hastily complied, and are already looking at this issue from the perspective that is demanded of them from their own 'Great and Terrible' governments. What actually took place before their eyes was an attempted murder, by poisoning, of a former Russian spy in Salisbury, UK - which, for all we know, could have been perpetrated by anyone with an interest in destabilising Russia-EU relations right now, for any of dozens of possible motives... yet what they think they're seeing through the filters on their glasses is... 'The Russians did it.' Yes, indeed; no doubt about it whatsoever. Russia ' looks' guilt y; it ' feels' guilt y'; it 'smells' guilt y... much more beside, it behoves us to think that it is guilt y... so, hey presto! Guilt y as hell... Huh? How did we even end up at a point where such extreme diplomatic measures could be taken, on so f limsy a pretext? Yes, sure, Russia might have been behind the attack... but that is only one possible interpretation. I have no doubt the Russians are also wearing filtered spectacles of their own. Who knows how they're seeing matters right now? My guess is: 'It was a false-f lag operation to turn public sentiment against Russia, while simultaneously engender sympathy for Britain in the wake of the Brexit fiasco'. I imagine the 'Wicked Propagandists of the East' are already mass-producing and distributing the necessary optic filters to that effect... Meanwhile, other people might look at the same case, and put on their 'It was Aliens' specs. Or 'It was the CIA'. Or forge some kind of link with Atlantis... And why not, any way? One hypothesis is just as worthless as the next, when none of them is rooted in any hard evidence. I don't know... I'm beginning to think it's some kind of contagious disease, and we're living in the middle of an unprecedented global epidemic. Symptoms include a willingness to believe any form of allegation, so long as it conforms to a pre-ordained prejudice; and from there, it is a small step to stage two... the wholesale abandonment of millennia's worth of jurisprudence, all aimed precisely at distinguishing between 'suspicion' and 'guilt'. All those legal principles we were all brought up to believe in? 'Innocent until proven guilty', etc.? All gone, just like that. It is no longer important to establish guilt before administering ' justice'... mere suspicion will do just as nicely, thank you very much. Sadly, this is also where 'The Wizard of Oz' has no real answers to provide (beyond dispelling the illusion, which is perhaps achievement enough). There is, after all, a point in that book when Toto (and please note: it had to be the dog, not the human, to suss it out) finally rips the curtain down, and lays the humbug's devices bare for all to see. I don't see any corresponding reality to match that metaphor. But then again, maybe I'm just wearing the wrong glasses... It is no longer important to establish guilt before administering 'justice'... mere suspicion will do just as nicely, thank you very much