More shit and more antisemitism from John Helmer

The more shit? The claims that Boris Yeltsin's replacement by Vladimir Putin was "another US operation through the oligarchs." 

Really, dude? Anybody who knows anything knows that Yeltsin, after kicking Anatoly Chubais to the curb on his own, made the deal to not only name Putin as the next prime minister but to get ready to retire in exchange for Putin not prosecuting his family for their part in the Yeltsin-era grifting. Mary Elise Sarotte discusses this in her great book, "Not One Inch," but I suspect that the Yob from Down Under dismisses her thought purely because she's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. More on that book and its background in my Mikhail Gorbachev obituary.

Although Putin hadn't been that high on the KGB ascendancy in the old USSR, he nonetheless would have been high enough that, Russian oligarchs or not, American leaders would not have wanted him to be the next president.

In this sense, Helmer is also like Consortium News was starting to become before Bob Parry died, like Mark Ames occasionally has been in the past, or like Counterpunch on occasion: adopting a reflexive anti-Americanism on anything of US foreign policy.

Next on the stupidity? His claim that depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction. He undercuts himself in his own post, when he actually notes that DU has been, at least in the past, part of the armor of American tanks, and between this and munitions dust, injures American troops. It is not to excuse the use of DU as a weapon on my part, but simply to call Helmer out on this.

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The antisemitism? It's subtle, but from this person who knows that anti-Zionism is not antiesemitism, but who has also called out Helmer before for conspiracy theorizing tangential to this, it's there.

In the new material? First, referencing Oleg Deripaska first among the oligarchs in that top link. Then, on a piece on the death of Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger's long-standing sucking-up to Putin, just throwing in Mikhail Khodorkovsky. (Of course, by modern Jewish reckoning of descent, Khodorkovsky isn't actually Jewish, but Helmer surely wouldn't let something trivial like that stand in the way of a good story.) Then, we have a piece about the US, EU and G7 trying to boot Russia from the Kimberly Process consortium of diamond mining countries. Naturally, in Helmer's world view, this was driven by a Jewish diamond cabal, another antisemitic stereotype. The effort to boot Russia from Kimberly? Real. The claim that it's driven by a Jewish diamond cabal, not just another step in US sanctions against Russia? Loathsome.

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On both these issues, per old friend Idries Shah:

The flip side of that is a tangent on Ockham's Razor. Unnecessarily multiplying sides beyond two, or, beyond three, more so, to a conspiracy theory and racism tangential fourth or fifth side, adds again to the difficulty of properly addressing the issue.

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Finally, on the antisemitism? Lest on Twitter (again, as he's tried before) Helmer tries to strawman or gaslight me with handwaving over the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, or lest one of his fanbois (not sure how many he has) tries that?

I've got Mondoweiss on my blogroll here. I follow it and Norman Finkelstein on Twitter. I follow Norman on Substack.

Don't even try that.