Writing in the Guardian, Russophile nutjob Neil Clark has this to say about the Litvinenko killing, with La Russophobe's running commentary:

"In Bed with the Russophobes"

As yesterday's editorial from the Telegraph stated: "But now, even those who have struggled most fervently to cling to the idea that President Putin is a modern leader with whom the west can do business, rather than an old-fashioned Kremlin commissar who cannot be trusted, must be feeling queasy." They might as well have been talking about Clark himself, and his need to bring in prurient metaphores about the bedroom confirms how desperate even this wacko must now be feeling. The cockroaches are scurrying from the Atomic Blast called Putin: scurry little insects, scurry!

Three weeks on, we are still no closer to knowing who was responsible for the death of the former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko. The use of polonium 210 as a murder weapon could point in entirely opposite directions. It might suggest that the killing was carried out on behalf of the Russian security service as a public warning to others who might think of betraying it. But it could also be read as an attempt by President Putin's rich and powerful enemies to discredit the Russian government internationally. Whatever the truth, it has been seized upon across Europe and the US to fuel a growing anti-Russian campaign.

Clark reminds us that, unfortunately, while Great Britain is the land of Winston Churchill and warned us about the "Iron Curtain" descending "across the continent" when there was still time to stop it, it's also the land of Neville Chamberlain, who enabled World War II. Clark is so maniacal that he actually tried to defend lunatic mass-murderer Slobodon Milosovic. Thankfully, Clark is now speaking for a tiny minority of maniacs and opposed by an army of titans, many of whom (writing for the Guardian) have already been documented in the pages of La Russophobe. One must wonder how many valiant Britons will have to give their lives before Clark will be fully discredited, as in the film "Remains of the Day." Still, if this pathetic excuse for a human being is the best that the russophiles can come up with, that's actually rather heartening.

There are certainly grounds for criticising the Russian government from a progressive perspective. Putin has introduced a flat-rate income tax, which greatly benefits the wealthy, and plans the partial marketisation of Russia's education and health systems. He has pursued a bloody campaign of repression in Chechnya. And while some of Russia's oligarchs have been bought to justice, others remain free to flaunt their dubiously acquired wealth, in a country where the gap between rich and poor has become chasmic.

"Grounds for criticizing from a progressive perspective"??? Russia maintains one of the most ghastly disparities of wealth of any nation on the planet, with an uncountable number of illnesses and diseases, a $300 per month average salary and a declining population. That's "grounds for criticism"? What would merit condemnation, only a gulag archipelago? This same nutjob thinks that "far from being backward, eastern Europe, thanks to the residual effects of 40 years of socialism, still puts much of western Europe (particularly Britain) to shame when it comes to the quality of its education, public transport and healthcare."

Even so, those on the centre-left who have joined the current wave of Putin-bashing ought to consider whose cause they are serving. Long before the deaths of Litvinenko and the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Russophobes in the US and their allies in Britain were doing all they could to discredit Putin's administration. These rightwing hawks are gunning for Putin not because of concern for human rights but because an independent Russia stands in the way of their plans for global hegemony. The neoconservative grand strategy was recorded in the leaked Wolfowitz memorandum, a secret 1990s Pentagon document that targeted Russia as the biggest future threat to US geostrategic ambitions and projected a US-Russian confrontation over Nato expansion.

Thank god for that! We have been doing all we can to discredit the administration of a proud KGB spy who has abolished local elections, obliterated independent television, crushed opposition political parties and presides over a nation with an average salary of $300 per month and a declining population. Three cheers for the Putin-bashers. Three cheers for the Hitler bashers, and the Stalin bashers too! Long may they bash (note that Mr. Clark doesn't have any plans to move to Russia any time soon, now does he?). And whilst he's bashing the neo-cons in exactly the same manner he claims they bash Russia (what a hypocrite!) does Clark pause even for a second to note the fact that it was uber-neo-con George Bush who "looked into the eyes of Putin" and saw a friend? He does not.

Even though Putin has acquiesced in the expansion of American influence in former Soviet republics, the limited steps the Russian president has taken to defend his country's interests have proved too much for Washington's empire builders.

It seems this fellow hates America far more than Russia. Hmmm . . . but didn't he just loose a breathless diatribe against such hatred? Hmmm . . .

In 2003, Bruce P Jackson, the director of the Project for a New American Century, wrote that Putin's partial renationalisation of energy companies threatened the west's "democratic objectives" - and claimed Putin had established a "de facto cold war administration". Jackson's prognosis was simple: a new "soft war" against the Kremlin, a call to arms that has been enthusiastically followed in both the US and Britain. Every measure Putin has taken has been portrayed by the Russophobes as the work of a sinister totalitarian. Gazprom's decision to start charging Ukraine the going rate for its gas last winter was presented as a threat to the future of western Europe. And while western interference in elections in Ukraine, Georgia and other ex-Soviet republics has been justified on grounds of spreading democracy, any Russian involvement in the affairs of its neighbours has been spun as an attempt to recreate the "evil empire". As part of their strategy, Washington's hawks have been busy promoting Chechen separatism in furtherance of their anti-Putin campaign, as well as championing some of Russia's most notorious oligarchs.

Let's see now: When the U.S. opposes Russian involvement in Ukraine and Georgia, that's "empire building." But when Russia gets involved in those countries, which it formerly enslaved, it's merely the "affairs of its neighbors" and perfectly undestandable. Correct La Russophobe if she's wrong, but isn't that exactly what Chamberlian said about Hitler? If Clark is wrong and Russia recreates a chain of neo-Soviet slave states while we sit idly by at his urging, what will he say then? "Oops, sorry about that?"

In the absence of genuine evidence of Russian state involvement in the killings of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, we should be wary about jumping on a bandwagon orchestrated by the people who bought death and destruction to the streets of Baghdad, and whose aim is to neuter any counterweight to the most powerful empire ever seen.

Notice how he makes no attempt to define "genuine evidence"? The Russophile serpent never does, so that no matter what evidence is brought forward he's always free to shift the sands and ask for something else instead. He doesn't even deign to commit to the identify of the fact-finder (probably only he himself would suffice), much less explain how we could ever possibly hope to get "evidence" of the actions of the secret police. Even more revolting, he doestn't commit to a single specific action that should be taken if such evidence were produced.