Like any Russophile propagandist, the Accidental Russophile's Wally Shedd repeatedly lies to his readers about basic facts in his shameless attempt to support dictatorship in Russia while attacking the United States. Oddly, he chooses to live in the U.S. rather than Russia. Go figure.

In a recent post, he claims "that it isn't significantly more dangerous for ethnic peoples in Russia than it is in the US. " This is a boldfaced lie. Russia has the fifth highest murder rate in the world, 0.201534 per 1,000 people, while the rate in America is 0.042802 per 1,000 people. In other words, you are more than twice as likely to be the victim of murder if you are in Russia than if you are in the U.S., no matter who you are. The U.S. homicide rate is currrently at its lowest level since 1967. Now, it is certainly true that black people in the U.S. are disproportionately victimized by murder. From 1976 t0 2004, 46.9% of all U.S. murder victims were black while 51% were white; the black share of murders is triple their share of the population. But 94% of black murder victims in the U.S. were killed by other blacks, only 6% by whites, so there was no "racist" component to 94% of these killings.

What about the other 6%? According to Sova Center, in 2005 there were 35 race murders in Russia, and September of this year there had already been 33. In the same year, there were only 6 hate-crime murders in the United States. This means that nominally it is five times more likely that a race murder will happen in Russia than in the U.S., and since U.S. population is twice the size of Russia the effective risk is ten times greater in Russia (and that's assuming the populations of black people in the U.S. and Russia represent the same shares of the population; in fact the U.S. share is much larger, meaning that the risk is still lower in the U.S. than it superficially appears). That's one reason why there isn't much reporting on race murder in the U.S., because it doesn't happen much. But anyone who reads newspapers or watches TV knows that when it does, it's reported that way, quite sensationally. There have been several sensational incidents in New York City over the past few years, for example. What's more, the situation is not stable in Russia. Russian data shows that incidents of race violence are increasing annually at the horrifying rate of 20-30% per year.

Instead of relying on facts to deal with this issue, Wally chooses to rely on his own form of "reasoning" which is based on nothing but smoke and mirrors. Wally complains that American white-on-black killing isn't reported as "race violence" in America, whereas such killings are so reported where Russia is concerned, and he claims this is an example of Western "bias" against Russia. This is an absurd lie. The only evidence he claims to support this allegation is the fact that a story from the Boston Globe about several murders of Cape Verdean immigrants in the city over the past year. But there is absolutely no evidence of any kind mentioned in the article that the killers of these Cape Verdeans were white, because nobody has any idea who the killers were. Based on the data, the odds are 9.6:1 that the killer was black. In the incidents involving the killing of black people in Russia, many of which are documented in La Russophobe's sidebar, there has always been evidence that the killers were white, Slavic Russians. Sometimes the victim is stabbed with a knife that has a swastika on it, and other times the perpetators are seen as the commit their brazen acts. Often, they brag about them on the internet.

Wally chooses to ignore all these facts and lie to his readers, inventing facts and accusations about the U.S. just the way they used to do in the good old USSR. This is a classic example of how Russophile propagandists have been lying to and deceiving Russians for decades, reducing the nation to a shadow of its former self. If you care about truth in the blogosphere, drop by Wally's blog and leave a comment asking him to stop lying. Lies are bad enough under any circumstances, but when they are told to prop up dictatorship in Russia and undermine democracy in Amreica, they are particularly venal.