re: #261 Barefoot Grin

Just as I hit post it an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza came on NPR. He claims to have been poisoned twice in Russia (a close friend of Nemtsov and critic of Putin regime). He admits he has no proof of who poisoned him, but claims it’s just a bit beyond coincidence. So, back to my CT mindset. Sigh.

bbc.com

It is entirely possible that he was poisoned (despite no labs having found the poison the first time), even though it would seem that if someone wanted to get rid of him there are simpler methods. It is also possible that if he was poisoned, it was by someone from the secret services (there are, of course, other options). This still wouldn’t tell us whether it was done on an order from above or by someone on their own initiative.

But even supposing that he was poisoned, that it was done by the secret services, and that it was done on an order from above, at least we would have a motive for the killing (a notable opposition gadfly). Same would have been in the case of Nemtsov (albeit knowing who killed him - the people close to Kadyrov - it is very unlikely that FSB had anything to do with it; Kadyrov had a personal grudge against Nemtsov, so that would explain the killing).

So even if one accepts these premises, there is still a very specific murderous logic here. One can’t go from this case to, say, the dead diplomats and say “hey, same assumptions apply here”. Because they don’t. There is neither a motive, nor a connection to the Trump situation. At least not publicly. It’s just a string of deaths somebody summed up in a list. That’s basically the “connection” between them.

Nor is it even slightly likely that if someone on the Russian side wanted to get rid of these diplomats (for wholly mysterious and unknown reasons), it would have been done in this way, with the bodies accessible for full investigations by foreign police forces.

So, as before, the CT mindset is not warranted by the evidence at hand.