North East Stop The War Coalition Discussion Forum

General Category => For Your Information => Topic started by: nestopwar on January 26, 2016, 01:25:51 PM

Title: Media More Outraged by Possible Murder by Putin Than Definite Murder by Obama
Post by: nestopwar on January 26, 2016, 01:25:51 PM
Media More Outraged by Possible Murder by Putin Than Definite Murder by Obama
 By Matt Peppe, Information Clearing House
 January 25, 2016

 The British government, whose foreign policy is overtly hostile to their Russian counterpart, declared last week that their investigation into the killing of a former Russian intelligence agent in London nearly a decade ago concluded there is a "strong probability" the Russian FSB security agency was responsible for poisoning Alexander Litivenko with plutonium. They further declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably approved" of the act. The British investigation, which was likely politically motivated, seemingly raised more questions than it answered. But American corporate media were quick to use the accusations against Putin to demonize him, casting him as a pariah brazenly flaunting his disregard for international conventions.

The Washington Post (1/23/16) editorial board wrote that "Robert Owen, a retired British judge, has carefully and comprehensively documented what can only be called an assassination... Mr. Owen found (Andrei) Lugovoi was acting 'under the direction' of the FSB in an operation to kill Mr. Litivenko - one that was 'probably approved' by the director of the FSB and by Mr. Putin."

Actually, Owen did not find that former KGB operative Lugovoi was acting under the direction of the FSB to kill Litivenko. He found there was a "strong probability" this was the case. This means that even in Owens's view, there is not near certainty, which would meet the legal standard of reasonable doubt that would preclude a guilty judgement. There is even more doubt that even if it were the case the FSB ordered the murder, they did so on Putin's orders.

The New York Times editorial board (1/21/16) finds the investigation's results "shocking." For the Times, this confirms a pattern of Putin's rogue behavior. They claim Putin's "deserved reputation as an autocrat willing to flirt with lawlessness in his global ventures has taken on a startling new aspect."

Both of the prestigious and influential American newspapers argue that the British findings impugn Putin's respectability in international affairs. The Times says:

 Mr. Putin has built a sordid record on justice and human rights, which naturally reinforces suspicion that he could easily have been involved in the murder. At the very least, the London inquiry, however much it is denied at the Kremlin, should serve as a caution to the Russian leader to repair his reputation for notorious intrigues abroad.

The more hawkish Post says: "This raises a serious question for President Obama and other world leaders whose governments do not traffic in contract murder. Should they continue to meet with Mr. Putin as if he is just another head of state?"

Putin's alleged "sordid record on justice and human rights," which is taken for granted without providing any examples, is seen as bolstering the case for his guilt in the case of the poisoning death of Litivenko. This, in turn, adds to his "notorious" reputation as a violator of human rights.

The Post draws a line between the lawless Putin and the respectable Western heads of state, such as Obama. Though they frame their call to treat Putin as an outcast as a question, it is clearly intended as a rhetorical question.

It is curious that The Post draws a contrast between Putin and Obama, whose government is supposedly above such criminality. The newspaper does not mention the U.S. government's drone assassination program, which as of last year had killed nearly 2,500 people in at least three countries outside of declared military battlefields. Estimates have shown that at least 90 percent of those killed were not intended targets. None of those killed have been charged with any crimes. And at least two - Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdul Rahman - were Americans.

Obama himself is personally responsible for those killed by missiles launched from unmanned aircraft over the skies of sovereign countries. Several news reports have indicated that Obama is presented in meetings each week by military and national security officials with a list of potential targets for assassination. Obama must personally approve each target, at which point they are added to the state-sanctioned "kill list."

The British government has also assumed for itself the power to assassinate its own citizens outside a declared battlefield. Last fall, Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the deaths of two British citizens in Syria, who were subsequently disposed of in a lethal drone strike.

The Washington Post editorial board (3/24/12) claimed that Obama was justified in carrying out lethal drone strokes that kill American citizens "to protect the country against attack." Their lone criticism was that "an extra level of review of some sort is warranted."

After it was revealed that an American hostage was inadvertently killed in a drone strike in Pakistan, The Post (5/1/15) said that the issue of whether the American government continues to conduct drone strikes should not be up for debate. "(T)here is little question that drones are the least costly means of eliminating militants whose first aim is to kill Americans," they wrote.

While they tacitly accept the legal rationale for Obama's assassination program, the New York Times editorial board at least demonstrated some skepticism. In "A Thin Rationale for Drone Killings" (6/23/14), they called the memo "a slapdash pastiche of legal theories - some based on obscure interpretations of British and Israeli law - that was clearly tailored to the desired result." They say that "the rationale provides little confidence that the lethal action was taken with real care."

Yet they do not chastise Obama for his "intrigues abroad" nor do they condemn this as an example of his "sordid record on justice and human rights," language they used for Putin. The idea that relying on what are transparently inadequate legal justifications for killing an American citizen without due process would merit prosecution is clearly beyond the limits of discussion for the Times.

 Recently Faheem Qureshi, a victim of the first drone strike ordered by Obama in 2009 (three days after his induction as President), who lost multiple family members and his own eye, told The Guardian that Obama's actions in his native lands are "an act of tyranny. If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me, Obama will be put on that list by his drone program."

Surely both The New York Times and Washington Post disagree with Qureshi, because they believe the U.S. government is inherently benevolent and its motives are beyond reproach. But based on their editorials about the British investigation of the Litivenko poisoning, if Putin was responsible and was described by Qureshi in the same way, they would wholeheartedly agree.

The U.S. government and its allies in NATO, like Great Britain, have a clear agenda in vilifying Russia and its President. The US-NATO alliance supported the government that came to power in Ukraine in 2014 through a coup. After provinces in Eastern Ukraine - the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking - refused to recognize the NATO-backed coup government in Kiev, the Russian government supported them.

It should be easy to see how, from Russia's perspective, the Ukranian conflict can be understood as an extension of NATO encroachment towards Russia's borders that has continued unabated since James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 NATO would move "not an inch east."

"We're in a new Cold War," Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies and politics, told Salon. "The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia's borders, within its own civilization: That's dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules."

Additionally, Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011 throughout that country's civil war, and more recently its direct military intervention in the conflict that has turned the tide against US-backed rebels, has strongly rankled Washington.

The language used by top government officials to describe Russia has been astoundingly combative. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, the man in charge of the entire US military, claimed Russia is responsible for aggression and is "endangering world order."

The U.S. government's hyping of the Russian "threat" has been used to justify massive spending on the U.S. space program and other military expenditures, such as $1 trillion to upgrade nuclear weapons.

One could even argue that the narrative of an aggressive and belligerent Russia is the principal justification for the continued existence of the NATO itself, two and a half decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The alliance allows the US military to be stationed in hundreds of bases throughout Europe under the guise of a purely defensive organization.

The U.S.'s most prominent media organizations should demonstrate the strongest skepticism towards the policies and actions of their own government. At the very least, they should hold their own country's leaders to the same standards as they do others. But time and again, the media choose to act as a mouthpiece to echo and amplify Washington's propaganda. They do the government's bidding, creating an enemy and rallying the public towards a confrontation they would otherwise have no interest in, while allowing the government to avoid accountability for its own misdeeds.

Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter
Title: Re: Media More Outraged by Possible Murder by Putin Than Definite Murder by Obama
Post by: nestopwar on January 26, 2016, 01:29:21 PM
I Assumed Putin's Russia Had Litvinenko Killed Then I Looked for Myself
  By Washington's Blog 
Jan 22


 I've always assumed that Putin's KGB (now called the FSB) killed Alexander Litvinenko.

But today's announcement by the British that Putin "probably" approved Litvinenko's murder made me curious enough to take a look for myself.

Initially, Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium as he sipped tea in an upscale London hotel. The report makes it sound like only Russia had access to polonium, but it's actually available online to anyone.

Antiwar notes:

 If the Russians wanted to off Litvinenko, why would they poison him with a substance that left a radioactive trail traceable from Germany to Heathrow airport – and, in the process, contaminating scores of hotel rooms, offices, planes, restaurants, and homes? Why not just put a bullet through his head? It makes no sense.

 But then conspiracy theories don't have to make sense: they just have to take certain assumptions all the way to their implausible conclusions. If one starts with the premise that Putin and the Russians are a Satanic force capable of anything, and incompetent to boot, then it's all perfectly "logical" – in the Bizarro World, at any rate.

 The idea that Litvinenko was a dangerous opponent of the Russian government who had to be killed because he posed a credible threat to the existence of the regime is laughable: practically no one inside Russia knew anything about him, and as for his crackpot "truther" theories about how Putin was behind every terrorist attack ever carried out within Russia's borders – to assert that they had any credence outside of the Western media echo chamber is a joke.

 ***

 The meat of the matter – the real "evidence" – is hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Lord Owen's inquiry was for the most part conducted in secret closed hearings, with testimony given by anonymous witnesses, and this is central to the "evidence" that is supposed to convict Kovtun, Lugovoy, and the Russian government. Lord Owen, explains it this way:

 "Put very shortly, the closed evidence consists of evidence that is relevant to the Inquiry, but which has been assessed as being too sensitive to put into the public domain. The assessment that the material is sufficiently sensitive to warrant being treated as closed evidence in these proceedings has been made not by me, but by the Home Secretary. She has given effect to this decision by issuing a number of Restriction Notices, which is a procedure specified in section 19 of the Inquiries Act 2005. The Restriction Notices themselves, although not, of course, the sensitive documents appended to them, are public documents. They have been published on the Inquiry website and are also to be found at Appendix 7 to this Report."

 In other words, the "evidence" is not for us ordinary mortals to see. We just have to take His Lordship's word for it that the Russian government embarked on an improbable assassination mission against a marginal figure that reads like something Ian Fleming might have written under a pseudonym.

So who killed Litvinenko ?

Well, Mario Scaramella met with Litvinenko during the meal when Litvinenko was poisoned. Scaramella didn't eat or drink a thing during the lunch, and then himself came down with a mild case of polonium poisoning.

La Republica (one of Italy's largest newspapers) wrote in 2006 (English translation) that Scaramella was a bad guy who may have worked with the CIA:

 Mario Scaramella is suspected of arms trafficking. Earlier this year, the public prosecutor of Naples has written for this offense to the docket and, soon after, had to stop the investigation. [He was convicted in Italy for selling arms (original Italian).]

 ***

 Sources found to be very credible by the prosecutor recalled that investigators suspected that Scaramella was actually in close relationship, if not actually working for, the CIA and that his ECPP could be a front company of the agency's Langley.

Antiwar notes:

 As I pointed out here:

 "Litvinenko was an employee of exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky – whose ill-gotten empire included a Russian syndicate of car-dealerships that had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Chechen Mafia – but was being slowly cut out of the money pipeline. Big-hearted Boris, who had initially put him on the payroll as anti-Putin propagandist, was evidently getting sick of him, and the out-of-work "dissident" was reportedly desperate for money. Litvinenko had several " business meetings " with Lugovoi in the months prior to his death, and, according to this report , he hatched a blackmail scheme targeting several well-known Russian tycoons and government officials."

 Indeed, Litvinenko, in the months before his death, had targeted several well-known members of the Russian Mafia with his blackmail scheme. That they would take umbrage at this is hardly shocking.

Alternatively, Litvinenko may actually have accidentally poisoned himself. Antiwar again:

 Furthermore, there are indications that Litvinenko was engaged in the smuggling of nuclear materials. That he wound up being contaminated by the goods he was peddling on the black market seems far more credible than the cock-and-bull story about a vast Russian plot originating in the Kremlin,. Apparently Lord Owen has never heard of Occam's Razor.

See also - Litvinenko - Jewish Mafia's Nuclear Smuggling: News analysis - Litvinenko, reportedly had links to the Israel-based Russian mafia and the smuggling of radioactive materials.