
More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead - juanplusjuan
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/world/europe/moscow-kremlin-silence-critics-poison.html
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SixSigma
It's getting more like the DNC every week !

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zigzigzag
The NYT publishes a steady stream of articles like this one and it's difficult
to take them seriously because they are always such blatantly biased
propaganda efforts.

A representative sample:

 _Other countries, notably Israel and the United States, pursue targeted
killings, but in a strict counterterrorism context. No other major power
employs murder as systematically and ruthlessly as Russia does against those
seen as betraying its interests abroad_

So America's totally admitted and open drone strike program is "targeted
killing in a strict counter-terrorism context" and not "systematic and
ruthless murder against those betraying its interests". You say potato, I say
potato.

Even the headline is open propaganda: "More of the Kremlin's opponents are
ending up dead". So I expected to read news about someone who has newly turned
up dead. But no: it's about someone who got sick with the symptoms of food
poisoning and then recovered. Although he claims he was poisoned, there was no
actual trace of any such poison so all we have is his word for it. The article
then quotes an "authority" who says "If it’s a skilled job, that means it’s a
state asset". But we already know this guy wasn't the target of a skilled job,
otherwise he actually would be dead and not fully recovered from something
that could easily have been ordinary food poisoning. Surely the mark of a
skilled state assassination is that it works, or at least, the target is left
in no doubt as to the source of the sickness?

The rest of the article is re-hashes of previous suspicious deaths, but almost
always (with the exception of Litvinenko) without any evidence. An anti-doping
official dies of a heart attack. Murder, or something that does sometimes
happen to aging men who have just spent the day engaging in strenuous physical
exercise? No answers are provided, just assumptions and implications.

On Magnitsky: "To date, five people who either handed over such information or
were potential witnesses have died under mysterious circumstances that, in
their sophistication, suggest state-sponsored killings. One of the victims was
Mr. Magnitsky, whose death was hardly the stuff of cloak-and-dagger security
operations."

So it says people involved in the Magnitsky affair suffered "sophisticated"
deaths that "suggest" state-sponsored killings. It then immediately admits
that one of those five didn't die in mysterious ways at all, but neglects to
mention the very much obvious state involvement in his death: he was held in a
Russian prison where he developed gall stones due to inadequate medical
attention.

I'm completely sure the Russians do occasionally kill off people who get in
the way of Russia's agenda. But when I read things like the above I know I'm
reading something that's intended to influence my political views, not a
neutral re-telling of events.

And before any idiots start up about paid trolls: no, I'm not Russian nor
connected to Russia in any way. I'm a westerner who lives in Europe. I just
despise western "holier than thou" propaganda. They think people can't see
through it.

