Second Most Biased Source Possible Alleges Putin Involved In Assassination

By Robert Barsocchini

22 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

An inquiry from the second most biased source possible, the UK, (which comes in second to the US), a country completely hostile towards Russia, has speculated that Putin was ‘probably’ involved in the assassination via poisoning of an ex-spy.

There are several key points to bear in mind when considering such allegations.

First, thanks to xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and racism, it is predictable for most Westerners to think that Putin, or any other political leader not under Western hegemony, (the main qualification for being nefarious), is ‘probably’ guilty of any villainous act he could possibly be involved in, and, as leading US propaganda outlet NYT has demonstrated, many acts in which he could not be involved.

Second, if we regard ‘inquiries’ from from hostile parties known to conduct psychological and propaganda warfare as worthwhile, we should be consistent. As I.F. Stone award-winning journalist Robert Parry points out, the Republican right in the US has all kinds of allegations and ‘evidence’ about assassinations carried out by Bill Clinton of members of his own cabinet, opposition members, and a range of other people. Those on what in the US is called the ‘left’ dismiss these as conspiracy theories, or at best dubious and fundamentally biased allegations made by a hostile party with massive conflicts of interest, and which is known to rely heavily on propaganda.

However, when identical conspiracy theories are peddled by the West about countries and people the West wants to conquer, such as Russia and Putin, the theories are given credence in the West generally, just like the conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton are given credence within the US Republican right.

When it comes to foreign countries targeted for conquest, Westerners of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ join together to do exactly what the US ‘right’ does to Bill Clinton (and others).

For example, NYT recently printed:

“In all likelihood no one in the Kremlin actually ordered the killing [of Nemtsov]… The Kremlin has recently created a loose army of avengers who believe they are acting in the country’s best interests, without receiving any explicit instructions.”

Imagine an article in Pravda claiming Obama, without orders, has created a “loose army of avengers” to assassinate journalists like Michael Hastings, and other people around whom assassination theories circulate. The amount of credence a US citizen would give to such allegations from within Russia is the same amount of credence a US citizen attempting to be objective and non-ethnocentric should give to the same conspiratorial allegations when they are made by the US, or its lieutenant countries like the UK, against Russia.

Next, if someone attempting to ‘prove’ that Putin is the new Hitler, worse than all the mass-slaughtering regimes of the West combined, etc., points to the new UK allegations as a reason to further pressure or sanction Russia, ask whether the person supports those measures being applied to the US government and its allies, which constantly assassinate, torture, and kill people en masse.

As Bill Moyers reports, the US government recently sentenced 59-year old US woman Mary Anne Grady Flores to six months in jail for mildly opposing the US global assassination campaign being run by Obama.

Finally, if we are aiming for true consistency, there is another ‘inquiry’ to which we must pay heed.

As Parry reports, ‘Almaz-Antey, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk systems, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location’ of the missile that brought down flight MH-17 in Ukraine. His inquiry placed it ‘in an area under Ukrainian government control.’

So a Russian inquiry finds that it was ‘probably’ the Ukrainian junta government, installed with major backing from the US, and which the US continues to support, that brought down the civilian plane, killing almost three hundred people.

When the MH-17 downing was being blamed on Russia, before this report came out, it was a key argument for Western sanctions against that country and major condemnation of Putin.

But now that we know it was carried out by the US side, desperate US/Western calls for immediate sanctions against the gangster Ukrainian ‘government’ and its dark, nefarious US/Western supporters are surely forthcoming. Any day, now.

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter. Author’s review of the historical background to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement.