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Russia and UK

“So, Russian "actors" (why actors?) sought to influence the outcome of the UK general election by amplifying (not leaking, but amplifying) a dossier about US - UK trade talks which showed that the NHS was being put on the table by the Tory government. 
I mean, only someone really stupid would think that the serious thing here was the Russian actors amplifying, and not the actual report showing the Tories were selling off the NHS to Trump!
Did the British public not have the right to know? I would say that, if anything, these Russian "actors" should be thanked for having acted in the interest of democracy in revealing these scandalous secret deals being hatched behind the backs of the British electorate.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why this report on Russian meddling has not seen the light of day while the Tories had control of the intelligence and security committee. 
This is also likely to be the reason why on the same day that the report is about to be made public, as a result of the Tories lost control of the committee, we are served with a smokescreen report about ‘Russia-linked hackers’ stealing the Covid-19 vaccine (which doesn't exist yet). 
You see, if ‘the Russians’ are trying to ‘steal’ the Covid-19 vaccine (shouldn't any research into a potential vaccine for Covid-19 be in the public domain and shared across research teams from all over the world?), then we are less likely to look into the actual details of the other story about "the Russians meddling with the election", because, after all, ‘isn't that Corbyn guy a Putin agent’? How do we know? I mean, even BBC Newsnight published an image of him in the Kremlin! 
Meanwhile, we DO know that Boris Johnson was given 160.000 pounds for playing a tennis match with the wife of a former Russian minister ... wait, move on, nothing to see here.
And this, my friend, is the sum total of the right to objective and factual information our democracy grants us.

—Jorge Martin, 16 July 2020
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