by John Weaver

Tributes to Sasha Litvinenko, the sob story spy, are on all the tear-stained pages of the UK tabloids today.

Probably the Daily Mail drivels it best.

‘He was honest, courageous, loving husband . . . etc.’

Blimey. You would never know he was a devious little toe-nail puller from the KGB. Or that his patron, Boris Berezovsky - not mentioned by the Daily Mail - is a gangland legend, veteran of countless contract hits. Or that his closest associate is an even scarier Chechen terrorist, Ahmed Zakayev.

Probably the nicest thing you can say about Alexander Litvinenko is that he was a raving loony, as his (hitherto unread) ravings in the Chechen press testify.

As Justin Raimondo writes, ‘the propaganda spewed out in the last couple of days is pure bunk and quite bizarre’. It’s what Justin describes as a ‘public relations tsunami, in which Litvinenko’s absurd conspiracy theory is being touted as unimpeachable fact.’ Putin did it, no doubt about that.

Berezovsky’s UK PR agency, of course, knows full well that it doesn’t take much to get xenophobic British tabloids going. You can’t pick up a Sun these days without a chiller diller scare about Romanian rippers, or Polish pimps, or Eastern European gypsies flooding in from everywhere. So the unscrupulous Pottinger fed them a large dose of Russophobia and they swallowed it whole.

Who would benefit from such a hate campaign at this time? Hmmm. It might just be the sleazy band of mobsters currently sheltering in London from corruption and murder charges in Russia. You see, on Nov 16, Russia and the UK signed a new memorandum on extradition. And Russian prosecutors interpret that as facilitating their ability to extradite Russia’s most-wanted: Berezovsky and Zakayev.

Why would the UK sign something like that? Take a tip from Yuri Mamchur. Access to Russia’s energy resources, either for foreign consumption or investment, comes at a price. He observes:

It is ironic that the oligarchs who used to buy influence abroad with oil money are now having their freedom sold for the same coin. An Old Russian proverb says, ‘The one who pays orders the music’. These days the Kremlin has enough money to make even top U.S. allies Britain and Israel “offers they can’t refuse” and can order up any music it likes.

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