{"id":169435,"date":"2020-09-28T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=169435"},"modified":"2020-09-26T06:46:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T05:46:25","slug":"new-york-times-releases-sequel-of-putin-the-poisoner-the-incredulous-case-of-mr-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/09\/new-york-times-releases-sequel-of-putin-the-poisoner-the-incredulous-case-of-mr-n\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times Releases Sequel of Putin-the-Poisoner: The Incredulous Case of Mr. N"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 Sep 2020 – <\/em>The New York Times<\/em> released sequel<\/a> six in the best-selling Putin-the-Poisoner<\/em> series on September 22. The incredibly gifted junior G-men and women in the Times Tower have sleuthed yet another episode of boundless evildoing by the arch-villain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe editorial board,\u201d we are informed, \u201cis a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added). In this blue state special, they spin the tale of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny poisoned with \u201ca nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union.\u201d Jacobin<\/em> calls Navalny, who is a right-wing<\/a> anti-immigrant blogger and YouTube<\/a> celebrity, \u201cRussia\u2019s Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the \u201cestablished fact\u201d that a poisoning occurred, the rest of the Times<\/em> editorial is pure conjecture. After the poisoning and spending two days<\/a> in a Russian hospital, the victim flew off to Germany. The people described by the Times<\/em> as \u201cMr. Navalny\u2019s colleagues\u201d<\/em> returned to the crime scene, a hotel in that most ominous of places, Siberia. The perpetrators of the crime were sloppy in covering up because \u201ctraces of [the poison] Novichok were found on a water bottle\u201d<\/em> at the hotel, according to the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This clearly demonstrates not only malevolent intent by the culprits but also the abject failure of Russian hotels to achieve room service to international standards of cleanliness. Likewise, the Russian police were too incompetent to seal off the crime scene for investigation.<\/p>\n

In a chain of custody not revealed, the \u201ccolleagues<\/em>\u201d sent the \u201cevidence<\/em>\u201d out of Russia to Germany then also to France and Sweden, where it was subsequently \u201cconfirmed by laboratories<\/em>.\u201d \u201cThe powerful poison,\u201d we are told is used \u201cagainst foes of the Russian regime.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Only in the cartoonish mindset of the NYT do the perpetually bungling villains leave such blatant clues to their crimes.<\/p>\n

The editorial board declares, \u201cMany questions remain unanswered and are likely to remain so. Chief among them is whether President Vladimir Putin ordered or approved the attempted assassination.\u201d<\/em> Later in the editorial, this chief question is answered: \u201cMr. Putin knows what happened, or he can find out,\u201d but \u201c\u2026 he continues to hide behind glaringly phony denials.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The NYT gumshoes have discovered a pattern: \u201cThen there is the fact that once again, the victim survived the attack.\u201d <\/em>In fact, this is the sixth such incident<\/a> of survival in a row. Not only have the wrongdoers used a chemical agent that can be traced back to them and they allowed both the victim and the damning evidence to leave Russia, but they repeatedly administered the poison in precisely the correct sub-lethal dose to induce a near death experience to their victims.<\/p>\n

How can this be? The NYT detectives rhetorically state: \u201cOr was it their intention to convey a brutal warning of what happens to those who challenge the Kremlin?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

As in any crime mystery, the motive must be established. For the Times<\/em>, it is clear: \u201cthe attack could be seen only as an attempt to silence a strong and effective political voice.\u201d<\/em> The Times<\/em> then calls for increased sanctions against Russia. They argue that Putin must not be allowed to get away with bad behavior.<\/p>\n

Harkening back to the Russiagate playbook of Trump being Putin\u2019s puppet, the Times<\/em> ingenuously asserts, \u201cPresident Trump, for reasons that remain one of the top mysteries of his administration, has largely closed his eyes to Mr. Putin\u2019s serial transgressions.\u201d<\/em> The Times<\/em> admonishes: \u201cit is incumbent on the West to hold him accountable for murdering or trying to murder anyone he finds troublesome.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Note, the Times<\/em> goes from conjecturing that Putin is the perpetrator to \u2013 based on no evidence \u2013 that he has in fact attempted murder.<\/p>\n

Outside the comic book world<\/a> that the editorial paints, there are questions not addressed by the Times<\/em>. Why, after five previous incidents, has the Russian security state not learned to administer fatal doses of poison and cover up their tracks? Why would Putin repeatedly order hits on dissidents that every time boomerang on him by publicizing their grievances and inviting punishing sanctions?<\/p>\n

An alternative explanation for this poisoning story is that this is a setup to discredit and weaken an official enemy of the US imperial state. The nation\u2019s newspaper of record has a long history as a faithful mouthpiece of empire<\/a>. On spinning the Putin-the-Poisoner<\/em> tale, the Times<\/em> has been but one voice in the Russo-phobic chorus<\/a> of western media.<\/p>\n

The truth<\/a> of the Navalny case is hard to ascertain. What is clear is that the \u201cevidence<\/em>\u201d that the Times<\/em> touts has not been made public but has been used to bludgeon Russia.<\/p>\n

Putin is not up for election. But there is something else at stake and that is, as the Times<\/em> editorial mentions, the possible \u201ccancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a gas conduit from Russia to Germany,\u201d<\/em> which is of vital economic interest to Russia. The US, now the world\u2019s leading producer of fossil fuels, opposes the project. In a bipartisan effort, the US even threatens<\/a> \u201ccrushing legal and economic [secondary] sanctions\u201d<\/em> on the German seaport of Sassnitz for supplying the project.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> laments, \u201cAngela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, is reluctant to take a step\u201d<\/em> to cancel this \u201cnearly completed\u201d<\/em> project despite the US having \u201cdemanded cancellation of the pipeline.\u201d <\/em>It is not inconceivable that the Navalny scandal was manufactured to tip the scales and sabotage the Russian project.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roger Harris<\/em> is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network, <\/a>associate editor at <\/em>Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), and the immediate past president of the Task Force on the Americas<\/a>, a 33-year-old human rights organization in solidarity with the social justice movements of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is active with the Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela<\/a> and is on the state central committee of the <\/em>Peace and Freedom Party<\/em><\/a>, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California. He recently visited Syria for an international conference on the impacts of economic sanctions by the US and its allies on over 30 countries in the world. <\/em>roger.harris@comcast.net<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Sep 2020 – The editorial board declares, \u201cMany questions remain unanswered and are likely to remain so. Chief among them is whether President Vladimir Putin ordered or approved the attempted assassination.\u201d Later in the editorial, this chief question is answered: \u201cMr. Putin knows what happened, or he can find out,\u201d but \u201c\u2026 he continues to hide behind glaringly phony denials.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2051,1385,1232,253,278],"class_list":["post-169435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-cold-war-iii","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-new-york-times","tag-putin","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}