‘US is cheerleader of East-West tension’



Beginning his working life in the aviation industry and trained by the BBC, Tony Gosling is a British land rights activist, historian investigative radio journalist.

Reuters / Hannibal Hanschke

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Maintaining tension and making boldfaced accusations for decades has suited the US’ purpose to try to divide and rule in Europe and to put a split between Eastern and Western Europe, investigative journalist Tony Gosling, told RT.

The murder of Russian opposition activist Boris Nemtsov provoked
a vast amount of comment in the West, some of which according to
the Russian envoy to the EU Vladimir Chizhov was “politically
motivated.”

RT: There was a special meeting in the
German Parliament devoted to the Nemtsov murder where some
scathing comments were made, and some accusations leveled at
Russia and Vladimir Putin. What do you make of them?

Tony Gosling: I think what you have taken is a
little sample there but I don’t think that’s the general feeling
in Europe at all about this. This war of words, it seems, is
completely inappropriate for something like this, I think
everybody wants to make sure, and everyone wants to see that
there is a proper investigation.

I noticed Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on Fox News talking to (host)
Tucker Carlson. In fact both of them seem to be agreed, Peters
was saying that Putin personally ordered the assassination while
quite where the evidence comes from for this I think is anybody’s
guess, and he’s saying at some point you’ve got to stop the hit
list. These sorts of comments are not helpful in order to ease
tensions between East and West.

And I noticed that the cheerleaders for these tensions and
accusations are right from the other side of the Atlantic. I
think actually for decades it suited the US purpose to try to
divide and rule in Europe, to actually put a split between
Eastern and Western Europe and that’s not in Europe’s interest at
all. I noticed for example in Ukraine over the last few months
there have been all sorts of austerity measures. Ukraine has now
joined the fold with the disastrous economic policies of the EU
and the European Central Bank, with millions of loans got from
the IMF. But as a response to that, as a quid pro quo there have
been massive cuts to the pensions of people in Ukraine and also
big cuts to public spending. So the Ukrainians are not doing too
well out of this. I think actually ultimately we need to have a
rapprochement between Russia and Europe not the other way round
which is what the Pentagon and the military industrial complex
and Lt. Col. Ralph Peters who speaks for them seem to want.

READ MORE: Western media reaction to Nemtsov’s
murder is ‘absolutely outrageous’

RT: It’s been a massive story for the media
although some are taking it to new lengths. So while the murder
investigation is underway, Putin has been directly accused. Have
they gone too far?

TG: We’ve had a big problem here in Britain of
course with the Murdoch press – which Fox News is a part of – and
this kind of propaganda is really inappropriate, and it’s
completely biased when you’ve got presenters also weighing in on
the side of what others call “fundamentalist extremists” like
Ralph Peters. Actually, are they fit for purpose as broadcasters?
I think, there is evidence that [they are] not. The key thing
here is nobody minds if people are going to present some
evidence. They are not presenting any evidence at all, these are
just boldfaced accusations.

What worries me more than anything else is that we’ve seen this
kind of things before with so-called weapons of mass destruction
with no evidence and we’ve also seen the demonization of leaders.
This is what’s now seems happening to Putin with some of these
media organizations. I don’t think they at all reflect the actual
view of ordinary people across the Western world nowadays. And we
saw back in the days of the invasion of Iraq… the same kind of
thing happening with Saddam Hussein, we saw the same thing
happening with Gaddafi also President Assad. And I think this
demonization by the media is really no good and I’m glad to say
that’s not the sort of thing we have been seeing for example on
the BBC anywhere near as much. The BBC’s motto by the way is
“nation shall speak peace unto nation,” and of course the
broadcastershave got an incredibly important role in keeping that
peace and resisting pressure from the US to divide and rule
across the European continent between East and West. I think we
need to be calm, sensible, let’s have a proper investigation. I
noticed for example that Nemtsov was tailed from the airport. If
Putin was behind this he wouldn’t need to do that, he could use
his authorities for example across Russia simply to follow mobile
phones and to do it from a very high-tech angle, he wouldn’t need
to tail him. So that evidence certainly points way from what Lt.
Col. Ralph Peters was saying there.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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