The One Question We Should All Be Asking About Establishment Russia Hysteria

in #russia7 years ago

Babchenko was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. News reports had been aired, mournful obituaries published, outraged tweets cursing Moscow flew hither and thither. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman condemned "the Russian totalitarian machine" for assassinating a journalist simply because of his "honesty and principled stance". UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson proclaimed that he was "Appalled to see another vocal Russian journalist, Arkady Babchenko, murdered."

Not a soul questioned it: old Babchenko was as dead as a door-nail.

And then, like the ghost of an old business partner announcing three Christmas visitations, there he was. Everyone knew that Babchenko was dead. They didn't suspect it, they weren't relatively confident about it. They knew it.

And it was all fake.

The main purpose of this article is to draw attention to an important op-ed by an Off-Guardian editor which asks us to consider a hugely significant hypothetical question: what if Babchenko had, for whatever reason, remained "dead"? What if, instead of appearing at a press conference the day after his faked assassination publicly apologizing to his poor traumatized wife, the controversial Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko had put on a wig, obtained some fake papers, and started a new life in Hawaii? What would have happened then?

Anyone who has ever publicly expressed doubt about any part of the establishment Russia narrative already knows the answer to that question. Any skepticism toward the CIA/CNN-authorized official story about the Skripals, Douma, the Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks or what have you is immediately attacked as deranged, bat shit crazy conspiratorial lunacy suitable only for helping Alex Jones sell fluoride-resistant testicle supplements. Anyone disputing the claim that Putin had personally ordered the assassination of Arkady Babchenko would have been publicly smeared as a Kremlin shill by #Resistance pundits and senior Atlantic Council fellows, and anyone questioning whether he was dead at all would have been laughed out of the room.

But he wasn't assassinated, he isn't dead, and pretty much the whole thing appears to have been fake from top to bottom. As explained here by Moon of Alabama (who is a great source of information and frankly far more skillful than I am at picking apart these anti-Russia narratives as they emerge), "The killing, the killer and the operator who hired the killer were all fakes."

Let me break that down a bit:

  1. The "victim" of the assassination, Babchenko, was plainly faking.
  2. Borys Herman, the suspect now in custody alleged to be the middle man responsible for hiring an assassin at the behest of the Russian government, says he was working with Ukrainian security services to help fake Babchenko's death.
  3. Alexey Tsymbalyuk, the Ukrainian citizen Herman "hired" to "kill" Babchenko, was also reportedly working with authorities to fake the assassination.
In short, as far as the information we have access to right now is concerned, there is no body, no victim, no middle man, and no assassin. All there is is the Ukrainian government saying in an authoritative tone of voice that the Kremlin probably wanted to kill a journalist who has been critical of Moscow. Which, of course, they'd have every motive in the world to say about a major geopolitical rival of the western empire that Kiev is currently aligned with.

Moon of Alabama lays out a solid case that this particular incident had a lot more to do with a corporate power grab by corrupt plutocrats than journalists or geopolitics; Russia just makes a convenient thing to blame in the current unquestioning environment where western power structures are all too eager to concoct a narrative against Russia, in much the same way a black man could be easily framed for the crimes of a white man in the Jim Crow American south. The western news media was told to report something, and they unquestioningly did as they were told.

Just sit with the implications of what this means for a minute. Really let it sink in nice and deep. How hard was it for the Ukrainian government to do that? How much resistance did they encounter in lying to the world about an assassination, instantly blaming Moscow with no evidence whatsoever, and transforming a complete falsehood into established fact? Any whatsoever? At all?

The establishment spin machine is churning its gears trying to re-frame this into something less incriminating, but the facts are already out there: any government in the western empire can, at any time, concoct a lie about Russia, and there are exactly zero safeguards in place preventing that lie from being promulgated as established, unquestionable fact by western mass media and politicians.

The US-centralized empire has been plotting the destruction of Russia for many years. There is far too much power and money invested in the unipolar world for anyone at the top to willingly risk the re-emergence of another rival superpower, be it Russia, China, or an unsympathetic alliance in the Middle East. Any analyses of the accusations America or its allies make against any of these governments which do not factor in their clear and obvious motives to manipulate the narrative are inherently flawed, but no one ever includes that obvious factor in their analysis. There is a built-in assumption that only governments like Russia or Iran ever lie, and that western governments have safeguards in place to prevent that. Plainly, they do not.

Every single disputed accusation against the Russian government is fair game for loud, aggressive, thorough, unrelenting skepticism. Every single one, without exception. Anyone who wants you to believe otherwise is brain poison.


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The stories are becoming more and more bizarre. And the lies more blatant. Turns out the nut-job, conspiracy kooks of the past are correct on just about everything. Maybe, this will open a few more eyes to what is happening in the world. We are in a contest for the minds of our fellow earthlings.

I'm not sure about the aliens, but who knows....

Keep on speaking your truth. I appreciate it.

I like Babchenko's crass. I wonder if he is actually critical of ol' Vlads' gov't? Seems to be doing him a favor right now doesn't he? Keep up the good writes! I like the Russia stuff ;). My favorite boogey-man that never was.

Excellent work - we really appreciate your research and your courage to stay with the truth. Momz

Your power of words!

Funny how you took all of that and by the end of it all spun it into some plot by the US just because media did what it does all the time: jumps on the bandwagon of breaking news without regard to established facts in most cases, regardless of their status as national or international, sad but a reality that leaves the public sorting it all out days later.

The corporate media are the mouthpiece of the neocon, neoliberal, oligarchic Deep State, and the Babchenko death/resurrection incident demonstrates how thoroughly they have unhinged the Western Mind.

There's no such thing as facts/truth anymore. Memes rule.

Obviously we were fed complete lies with who knows with what ends, but why blame the media in this case? I see no way they could have known it was a lie. They were just as tricked as anyone else.

WSWS has a nice analysis of the NYT's handling of the Babchenko lie: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/01/pers-j01.html

Quotes:

"In their coverage, the Times and other major newspapers relied on a script they have used repeatedly: A prominent critic of the Kremlin dies or is injured abroad, and Moscow is immediately blamed. Any effort by Russia to deny these claims, or even to challenge the accusations, are treated as more evidence of a malevolent Kremlin plot."

and

"... the Times sought to shift the story to the Kremlin’s “denial machine,” instead of what the incident has exposed about the lies peddled by the Times. What really stands exposed is the propaganda machine operated by James Bennet, the editorial page editor of the Times, who manipulates the news in the service of the intelligence agencies to promote war abroad and political repression at home. For Bennet, when one lie is exposed, the time has come to reply with an even bigger lie."

Good article, worth reading.

And it was all fake.

Most certainly it was not all fake — yes, he is alive, but Putin still killed him! :)))))

I wonder how those clowns, Boris Johnson and Gary Kasparov must feel now?

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