Posted by calvin on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 03:45 | #

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klebnikov

http://en.for-ua.com/news/2005/10/28/140702.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2470810,00.html

The Jewish oligarch Boris Beresofsky had Litvinenko murdered as part of a propagamnda coup against arch-rival Putin.

Livinenko stayed in a house owned by Beresovsky and his book was being financed by Beresovsky. The man the media describes as Litvinenko’s friend, Alex Goldfarb,  is a close associate of Berezovsky. The man that a mortally ill and stricken Livinenko “chose” to dictate his long eloquent and specific farewell statement, accusing Putin of his murder was Goldfarb, who seemed to have almost exclusive access to Litvinenko; the photographs of Litvinenko released to the press are copyrighted to Bell Pottinger Communications, a media corporation patronized by Boris Berekovsky. Beresovsky is an unscrupulous villan who is know to have had his nemesis Paul Klebnikov murdered. Litvinenko was poisoned by Berezofsky and placed in the charge of his lieutenant Golfarb.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 09:45 | #

Calvin,

Did the arch-wily Beresofsky also have Anna Politkovskaya, the anti-Chechnan war journalist, shot to incriminate Putin?

Posted by Amalek on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:54 | #

Remember that America’s Jewish neocons were embarrassingly keen to support the Chechen Muslim terrorists. In a fight beween them and a patriotic Russian nationalist leader, Jews with race memories of Tsarist and cossack pogroms will always back fellow semitic rebels.

Similarly in the Balkans: support the Muslim brigands against the Christian Serbs, traditional allies of Mother Russia in that region.

These manoeuvres have the additional advantage of making neocons look broad-minded and secular: ‘See, we help poor persecuted Muslims… when they’re not targetting Israel!’

Berezovsky is the leading kleptocrat at large, a neighbour of Roman Abramovich in Chelsea. Whatever its intrinsic merits Politkovskaya’s reportage assisted BB’s propaganda campaign against the austere and purposeful Putin: the most popular Russian leader since Stalin, partly because he fought the oligarchs who looted Russia’s publicly owned assets under the corrupt alcoholic, Boris Yeltsin. Putin has increasingly identified with Orthodox Christianity: another red rag to the secular Jacobins of the USA.

Litvinenko was a flaky ex-KGB man who fell out with Putin and spun any number of tall tales, like the clownish Oleg Gordievsky, to keep himself in the western media limelight. He claimed that the Russians staged the terrorist outrages in Moscow, attributed to the Chechens, as a casus belli. He said that the Kremlin trained al-Qaeda’s Number Two man to commit 9/11.

None of this excludes the possibility that Litvinenko was indeed silenced on Putin’s orders, or by eager acolytes without his knowledge. We may never know the truth. But why is London a Tom Tiddler’s Ground for these shenanigans, as it is for Middle East squabbles? Because a nation whose people long since gave up killing each other for political reasons still allows foreigners to conduct their squalid feuds on its shores.

For a Briton, that is the real scandal: that our police should be wasting their time on such a tawdry affair when our poor and elderly kith and kin go in terror of crime.

Posted by Election Summary on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 11:25 | #

Jewish neocons supported Chechnyan independence as a means of containing Russia and cutting it off from the Caucasuses Republics and Middle East. In the case of Serbia, the nation under Milosevic was racial-nationalist and an independent regional power,  a no-no in a global U.S. imperium.

In the Balkans, the neocons apparently followed a systematic program of destroying Serbian power, including:

—stablizing the Bosnian Muslims in the early-90s civil war, which they were losing
—helping the Croats drive the Serbs from Krajina and Slavonia
—promoting Kosovo’s independence (Montenegro’s too), which included the NATO military campaign, followed by UN occupation , which ensured eventual Kosovar independence
—this was followed by the coup de grace, the CIA-organized “Bulldozer Revolution” that installed a government subservient to Washington
—... and then the finale: the physical seizure of, prosecution, and possible murder death of Milosevic

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:27 | #

Why, exactly, is it that we’re supposed to care about the Litvinenko affair, other than the usual “Good/ bad for the Jews.”?

Could someone tell me that please?

Russian-born businessman: I met poisoned ex-spy Litvinenko in Israel
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent, and Agencies

Russian-born businessman Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the Yukos oil company and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, said Friday that he had met in Israel with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died Thursday in London from poisoning.

During the meeting, Litvinenko allegedly passed Nevzlin documents containing classified information possibly damaging to the current leadership in Russia.

In Nevzlin’s estimation, Litvinenko’s murder was tied to the information relating to Yukos contained in the documents. Nevzlin has turned the documents over to the London Metropolitan Police, who are investigating the murder.

British police announced Friday that traces of a radioactive substance, Polonium 210, were found in Litvinenko’s urine. Polonium 210 is known to be highly lethal and very difficult to detect.

Litvinenko served until 1998 as a colonel in the Federal Security Services of Russia as part of a special unit that carried out investigations and special operations against businessmen. A few months before his murder, Litvinenko arrived in Israel in order to pass the documents to Nevzelin.

The Government of Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Nevzlin, arguing that he is wanted for tax evasion, budget irregularities, and for connection to the murder of the mayor a Siberian town where Yukos was operating.

It appears at this time that Litvinenko was murdered because of his association with Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was shot to death in her apartment on October 7. Politkovskaya had also been a harsh critic of Putin’s

Nevzlin and his business partner Michael Hodrokovsky, who is incarcerated in a Russian prison, were formerly large shareholders in Yukos, once one of the largest holding companies in Russia, as well as one of the largest oil companies in the world.

After the struggle of the company’s owners against Putin’s administration, and their support of opposition parties hostile to the Russian president, the government opened a series of investigations against the company, eventually resulting in the company’s bankruptcy, and the imprisonment of Hodrokovsky and Platon Levedev, an additional business partner in Yukos.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:38 | #

For what it reveals of governmental motive and method, of course.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:48 | #

“Remember that America’s Jewish neocons were embarrassingly keen to support the Chechen Muslim terrorists. In a fight beween them and a patriotic Russian nationalist leader, Jews with race memories of Tsarist and cossack pogroms will always back fellow semitic rebels.  Similarly in the Balkans:  support the Muslim brigands against the Christian Serbs, traditional allies of Mother Russia in that region.  These manoeuvres have the additional advantage of making neocons look broad-minded and secular: ‘See, we help poor persecuted Muslims… when they’re not targetting Israel!’ [...] Putin has increasingly identified with Orthodox Christianity: another red rag to the secular Jacobins of the USA.”  (—Amalek)

“Jewish neocons supported Chechnyan independence as a means of containing Russia and cutting it off from the Caucasus Republics and Middle East [the middle east being viewed by them as properly Israel’s sphere of influence; they wanted no future Russian meddling there].  In the case of Serbia the nation under Milosevic was racial-nationalist and an independent regional power, a no-no in a global U.S. imperium[ * ].  In the Balkans, the neocons apparently followed a systematic program of destroying Serbian power, including: [etc.]”  (—Election Summary)

Both the above are right.
______

( *  - “General Wesley Clark on why the aggressive war against Serbia was undertaken by NATO:  ‘There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th-century idea, and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.’  That is quite simply the most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my life.  I feel rather ill.”—Steve Edwards)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:57 | #

General Wesley Clark on why the aggressive war against Serbia was undertaken by NATO:  “There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th-century idea, and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.”

I suppose that means Israel is next on NATO’s list of places to be bombed back to the stone age?  Or don’t the Jewish neocons who more than anybody else spout what Gen. Clark says there see the contraction?  Or are they counting on the limitless stupidity of the goys not to be “called” on their criminality and hypocrisy?

Posted by Retew on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 20:42 | #

James Bowery said

Quote;

Why, exactly, is it that we’re supposed to care about the Litvinenko affair, other than the usual “Good/ bad for the Jews.”?

Could someone tell me that please?

====================================

Because it happened in my country, for a start. One murder on British soil is one too many, and the police should be permitted to do their job thoroughly and the results (if any) acted upon fairly. There’s a precedent for this; we kicked the Bulgarian embassy out of the country when Georgi Markov was murdered in 1978.

Older readers of MR with an interest in British politics will know that a British Leader of the Opposition (for non-Brits, a Prime Minister in waiting) died in mysterious circumstances in the early 1960s, and there was suspicion that the KGB were involved in the death. So, I’m naturally suspicious of this one.

If we say we’re going to turn a blind eye to this poisoning, then any country who we want something from will know they can conduct their dirty business on our soil with impunity. Do we really want that to happen?

It’s of course possible that Putin didn’t know anything about this, in which case he’s got nothing to worry about from a full investigation. But polonium isn’t the sort of material anyone can just get their hands on; it’s no mean feat to produce even a milligram of it, and that points in my view to some sort of government or high level involvement.

Frankly, screw diplomacy. Whoever did this should be brought to trial and if Putin is embarrassed, then he’s embarrassed.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 21:22 | #

Retew: If “one murder” is so important then why do you suppose this murder gets 100 times the attention of the murders of Brits on their home turf by immigrants?

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:07 | #

Retew: If “one murder” is so important then why do you suppose this murder gets 100 times the attention of the murders of Brits on their home turf by immigrants?  (—James Bowery)

Anti-gun-rights groups sue gun manufacturers for murders committed with guns.  You’d think groups on our side would start suing groups that push open borders for murders committed by racial incompatibles irresponsibly let into the country.  Obviously such suits wouldn’t get anywhere at first.  But with persistence, who knows?  The other side didn’t use to get anywhere either.  But they persisted and now they run things.

Posted by Al Ross on Sun, 26 Nov 2006 00:28 | #

The ‘Russian’ oligarchs, like the ‘Russian’ Mafia, are about as Russian as cricket.

Posted by Amalek on Sun, 26 Nov 2006 15:03 | #

Older readers of MR with an interest in British politics will know that a British Leader of the Opposition (for non-Brits, a Prime Minister in waiting) died in mysterious circumstances in the early 1960s, and there was suspicion that the KGB were involved in the death. So, I’m naturally suspicious of this one.

A very good comparison, no doubt unintentionally: the sole source of the claim that Hugh Gaitskell’s death was caused by the KGB was the Litvinenko of the Sixties, Anatoly Golitsyn, who also assured a breathless western media that Harold Wilson was a KGB sleeper, the Manchurian Prime Minister. These claims came a few years after his skedaddle, when the hacks were growing bored by him. He later asserted that the end of communism and dismantling of the Iron Curtain would be a cunning plan to make the West lower its defences before the USSR steamrollered us. ETA not stated.

The prescient Mr Golitsyn, unlike Litvinenko, is still with us. Aged 80.

Assume that 99.44pc of everything defectors tell you is self-interested horse manure and you won’t go far wrong. Their trade is largely staffed by overgrown schoolboys. ‘Intelligence’ is the biggest zero-sum game and waste of public money the middle classes of all nations have yet invented to spare them from doing an honest day’s work. Forget ideology or allegiance; all spooks are in the same racket, and they are much more like each other than the rest of us.

Posted by Retew on Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:25 | #

Svyatoslav_Igorevich said;

Quote

Okaaay, let’s try that again:

Raimondo’s piece on the Litster:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10049

===================================

Just one problem with that Svy; unusually large qualities of polonium 210 were found in Litvinenko’s body, and it’s not a substance that’s easily come by, to put it mildly; even a milligram of it takes some manufacturing. So whoever administered the poison to Mr. Litvinenko had access either to a nuclear lab or to someone else with such access; it has a halflife of just 138 days, so it’s not likely to have been stored for long. There may have been doubt about his having been poisoned when Raimondo wrote his article, but there can’t be much now.

JB, the media loves stories about media people. There was a brouhaha when a popular British newsreader on BBC TV was murdered in 1999, and Litvinenko was investigating the death of
a Russian journalist when he was poisoned. Perhaps this is somewhat out of proportion as you say, but it would be sad if such a death were ever to be regarded as being of no consequence.

As for Hugh Gaitskell, who died in 1963 in mysterious circumstances, the cause of death was said to be lupus but the *person in whose book I read the story suggests that the diagnosis wasn’t a firm one. He appeared to have reached the conclusion that the death was suspicious independently of any intelligence service.

* Lord Woodrow Wyatt, in Confessions of an Optimist.

Posted by Amalek on Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:12 | #

Follow-up by Justin Raimondo on why the theory that Putin had Litvinenko iced needs not a pinch but a whole cellar of salt:

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10066

Posted by Election Summary on Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:15 | #

A pure speculation, but was the late Dr. Pierce ever examined for radialogical poisoning to explain the sudden onset and demise from terminal cancer? Michael Chertoff in that period sheared off the White Nationalist leadership cream (Duke - EURO, Matt Hale - WCC, Chester Doles -NA) on specious legal charges, damaging or destroying its three top organizations. As the legally irreproachable chief of the NA, the most effective group, Pierce’s elimination would seem to require assasination.

It’s not a mystery why effective WN leadership does not presently exist.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Nov 2006 08:53 | #

Look’s like calvin’s horse is pulling ahead

Not quite yet, Svi.  Yegor Gaidar, the Jewish Russian who piloted Yeltsin’s privatisation progamme, has been poisoned while in Ireland and is close to death.

Meanwhile, traces of polonium 210 have been discovered in two BA aircraft.

I am impressed at the flow of information on this business.  The Foreign Office must be on the brink of launching total war against the Home Office.  I wonder if Reid sees openness as a winner with Labour MPs, and an aid to his leadership bid.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:31 | #

Put the two things together, Svi.  Why low-lifes?  Why no attempt at secrecy?  Maybe its the delivery of a message: “Come home, Boris, or you and yours will never be safe.”

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:42 | #

They took Khordakovsky’s fortune.  Abramovic has “done a deal” for his freedom.  It’s about stolen assets, not whether Berezovsky lives or dies.  They don’t give a damn for his skin.  And sending a fish wrapped up in newspaper to him sends the same message to all the “oligarchs”.

... maybe.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:50 | #

Another one.  Pressure’s a-building.

If this and Gaidar are polonium 210 poisonings - or just poisonings - it surely kills off speculation about Berezovsky’s culpability.

I see also that FSB “rogue” elements - the ideal foil for deniability - are being publicly touted now.

Posted by Steven Palese on Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:23 | #

Litvinenko: Case closed

On a day in which the Alexander Litvinenko scandal hit Ireland with the convenient - but likely unrelated - “poisoning” of former Russian Prime Minister, Yegor Gaider on these shores, authoritative sources close, and exclusive, to this blog have learned of the definitive solution to the Litvinenko “mystery”.

It seems that days before the poisoning of the former KGB agent hit the headlines, Russia and the government of the United Kingdom (I stress the government, not any particular person within that structure) were preparing to sign an extradition treaty, guaranteeing mutual co-operation in transferring criminal elements from one country to the other, as the need arises.

Of course, top of that extradition list would be one Mr. Boris Berezovsky (left), who is wanted by the Russian authorities for a variety of crimes.

Continued at The Irish Bulletin

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:06 | #

Rusty,

Here’s the take of renegade Russian journalist, Edward Limonov in eXile, a “controversial newspaper”.  He limits responsibility to the FSB - not rogue elements in it.  Even that limit, however, depends for its credibility on the Litvinenko affair being exactly that: an attack on one man.

Anyway, Limonov knows as much as anyone who is talking, and a darned sight more than we will probably ever know.

Alexander Litvinenko was executed. In demonstrating way. His executioners have chosen for him intentionally slow death. Was Litvinenko really traitor to his motherland? No. He wasn’t a spy. He never worked outside Russian territory, he didn’t know the names and whereabouts of Russian agents in the West, so he couldn’t betray anybody. He was internal security officer. He was executed not for betrayal of Motherland, he was executed for betrayal of his corporation: FSB.

On November 18, 1998 Litvinenko, with a handful of officers, organized televised press-conference in which FSB officers revealed that inside FSB is functioning a murder squad. Officers named the names of commanders of this murder squad. Litvinenko was one of the agents at this press conference. He said that he have received the order to kill the head of Russia’s National Security Council, which in 1998 was Boris Beresovski. Litvinenko was arrested in 1999, was held at Lefortovo prison, released, arrested again, held at Butirski prison… Finally he escaped first to Turkey, then to Great Britain. There he wrote two books: “FSB blowing up Russia,” about the 1999 apartment bombings, accusing the FSB. He also wrote a book: “Lubianka’s criminal organization.” For all that he was finally punished in November 2006 in London. Another participant of that press conference was Michael Trepashkin, now serving four years sentence. Few times Trepashkin warned that he might be killed.

Entire world is watching sinister story. Few names were named of those who had meetings with Litvinenko on tragical day of November, 1, when he was poisoned. One of the names: Andrei Lugovoi, a typical shadowy figure of contemporary Russia, a figure on the margins between normal world and underworld. Lugovoi and I were held in same time in 2001-2002 at Lefortovo prison. Of course we never met inside prison, but we walked, with hands behind, guarded, along the same corridors, we have stayed under same rusty tubes of the prison bath. In 2001-2002 Lefortovo prison was full of a famous people. Salman Raduev, Lecho Ismailov, former minister of security of Chechnya Artgeriev, Anatoli Bikov, and a few people accused at the “Aeroflot Affair,” most well-known among them was Nikolai Glushkov.

In my book “Limonov Versus Putin” I wrote that Gluskov was arrested for one purpose: that in exchange for closing the “Aeroflot Affair” Putin’s people obtained the shares for the television corporation ORT.

The Russian state, like a crude gangster, took a hostage, namely Glushkov, and bargained with Beresovski, who was main shareholder of ORT. Glushkov refused to testify against Beresovski. The “Aeroflot Affair” almost collapsed. The Chief Investigations Department of FSB is located building to building with Lefortovo prison. One of the doors of Lefortovo prison’s 3rd floor opened up to the Chief Investigations Department, when investigators, “Chekists,” understood that Glushkov was not scared and he will not give up Beresovski. So they organized a provocation. They organized an “escape” of Glushkov. They permitted Glushkov to spend one night at his apartment in Moscow, making him believe that anyway he will be released soon.

on the following night when Glushkov supposed to go again to his apartment, accompanied by few Lefortovo officers and his own bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi, Glushkov was accused of attempting to “escape.” Lefortovo officers as well as Lugovoi were arrested. They spent less than a year at Lefortovo prison, and then they relocated. As you see, Lugovoi was already involved in very dubious, suspicious provocation. One of my co-accused comrades from among National-Bolshewiks, Sergei Aksionov, have been held in same cell with Glushkov, so I know the story.

Chechens who were held at Lefortovo in those years all died by unnatural deaths. Like Salman Raduev. And ex-Minster of Security of Chechen Republic, young healthy man of 34, Atgeriev also died in camp a few months after his arrival. Chechen General Lecho Ismailov in the end of 2002 was calling from his cell to Movsar Baraev at the theater of Dubrovka. Ismailov gave a favor to the FSB-officers, who asked him to call Baraev in order to distract his attention from upcoming storming of theater building by FSB troops using poisoned gaz. Later, after eating sandwiches and drinking farewell tea with “Chekists” Ismailov died on his way to camp: in prison compartment of railroad train. Chekists probably miscalculated: Ismailov supposed to die in camp. Interesting detail: Ismailov have lost all his hair before dying.

I have carefully read few interviews with Andrei Lugovoi. The weakest point of interviews: his statement that he met Litvinenko in order to have some mutual business. It seems ridiculous to me that Russian man with such biography as has Lugovoi suddenly decided to have a mutual business affair with such man as Litvinenko. Even with me, some people afraid to be photographed together, while real businessmen are afraid to be seen next to me! But Litvinenko, Jesus Christ! I refuse to believe that Lugovoi have ignored fact that Litvinenko is under constant surveillance of security services, they are at least two of them: His majesty Intelligence Service and FSB of Russia. Lugovoi could not have ignored situation around Litvinenko. Heavy punishment could be imposed on a man friendly with Litvinenko. In Russia his business would be crushed as kitten under heavy truck.

In the morning, following death of Litvinenko, President Putin, in sharp contradiction with his tradition of silence, murmured that he “is sorry that such tragical event as a death of a man is used for a political provocation.” Who is political provocateur, President didn’t say. He didn’t say either that political provocations now are committed with a scary regularity ever month. October—killing of Anna Politkovskaya, November—killing of Litvinenko. What kind of secret organization is capable to kill in professional way in Moscow buildings, as well as in London restaurant using radioactive material, you can guess yourself. It’s easy. Isn’t it?

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:31 | #

Gaidar is as sprightly as a new-born lamb, it seems.  Perhaps he’s a hypochondriac.  Scaramella and his health prospects, and everything else about him, remains shrouded in mystery.  Brother Occam, then, is our wisest guide.

Returning to my original point, this shows how the Foreign Office reacted to the Borat film, under the lash of criticism from the government of a very minor country of no real importance to Britain.  Imagine, then, the schizoid governmental struggle for news control - and control of the investigation - that must be going on in Whitehall now.

Whatever message we the public are told at this end of this WILL accord with the political interests of the British state.  The political interests of the state machinery trump everything, and that is the vastly important meaning of this story.

With regard to majority interests, or rather the state’s active disinterest in majority interests, it is just as telling.  Why are we facing dispossession, deracination, marginalisation in our own homeland?  Because it accords with the interests of those who have power over it.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:46 | #

A little lifting of the veil on the FO’s reaction.  Thursday’s cabinet meeting is reported by the Sunday Times thus:-

Amid signs that his death could cause a diplomatic row, Tony Blair concluded the cabinet meeting by saying “the most important issue” was likely to be Britain’s long-term relationship with Moscow.

Another minister present said: “It caused some alarm that this case is obviously causing tension with the Russians. They are too important for us to fall out with them over this.”

At Samizdata, meanwhile, a mysterious commenter named Stephan has gently chided Miss Perry, whose blood was apparently made to boil - boil I tell you - by this passage.  To Perry’s post “Exactly the sort of person who should not have political power” this mysterious Stephan repled:-

This is a very childish and poor post, just a kneejerk reaction from a liberal democratic perspective and lacking in any understanding of the genuine political context of the Litvinenko execution. Your underlying assumptions are positively drowning in liberal mores which will never, never apply in Russia, and which don’t actually apply anywhere in international power politics. Of course, the state is not your friend. There is no friendship among really serious people in politics. There is only the confluence or divergence of interests.

I guess the unnamed minister is from the Foreign Office. He will have to live with the long-term consequences of John Reid’s self-serving appeal to the feel-good instincts of Labour MPs. OK, it is nice and comfortable to be horrified like the poster because the FO is obligated to look beyond the moral question and keep its eyes fixed on this country’s greater interests. But moral posturing is not a luxury available to everyone.

I am sure Stephan will be banned soon.

Posted by Bo Sears on Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:19 | #

It isn’t hard to discern the identity of the regime behind this rash of radioactive poisonings. First, ask Occam which regime benefits from this rash of killings. It isn’t Russia, unfairly accused without evidence.

Second, ask Occam which regime has the most guarded, most protected access to its own radioactive materials.

Third, ask Occam which regime most definitely wishes to smear and weaken Putin for his actions against the so-called oligarchs.

Fourth, ask Occam which regime would carry out such a rash of murders to coerce Putin to support sanctions against Iran.

Let’s see, Russia gains nothing but a undeserved reputation on the world stage. A kind of Lavon affair?

Let’s not be fooled again.

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:51 | #

Quite an interesting left-of-centre take on Russia’s real geopolitical enemy by Neil Clark at the Guardian:-

... 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.

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. 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.

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.

I think Clark almost certainly goes too far in forgiving Putin his sins.  But then we do not have enough untainted sources of information of said sins, and it is possible that a Putin “the Saviour of Russia” lurks somewhere behind the Neocon smokescreen.

We do know what the PNAC is for, of course, and we know what American hegemony really means for the rest of the world.  That alone is sufficient reason to give Putin the benefit of the doubt, as Clark suggests.

Posted by Matra on Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:15 | #

Did someone mention Chechnya?

From The Times:

Litvinenko’s father, Walter, said in an interview published today that his son - who was born an Orthodox Christian but had close links to Islamist rebels in Chechnya - had requested to be buried according to Muslim tradition after converting to Islam on his deathbed.

“He said ’I want to be buried according to Muslim tradition’,” Mr Litvinenko told Moscow’s Kommersant daily.

“I said, ’Well son, as you wish. We already have one Muslim in our family - my daughter is married to a Muslim. The important thing is to believe in the Almighty. God is one.’”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2486268_2,00.html

Posted by Bo Sears on Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:29 | #

A TimesOnLine article from 12/4/06 that sheds some more light on the anti-Putin campaign and seeks a broader view:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1070-2485210,00.html

Posted by Steven Palese on Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:25 | #

“Only a very young, innocent and sincere person may believe that media owners and editors, the Masters of Discourse care about minor Russian political figures like Politkovskaya and Litvinenko. They put Putin on the hot seat so he’ll surrender Iran to the US bombers and Sakhalin-2 to the Western oil companies, sell gas and other national assets at cheap price, forget about his independent political course. They show him and us the impressive might of the mass media machine, this unique device built to zombify millions. They can establish the world agenda and present Putin as a killer, Clinton as a sex offender, Chavez as an antisemite, Ahmadinejad as a new Hitler, Palestinians as the offenders and Israelis as victims. Not even the popes had such power in their best days: whatever they say, goes.”

Source: Israel Shamir - Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Posted by view from england on Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:23 | #

Amalek said, “the sole source of the claim that Hugh Gaitskell’s death was caused by the KGB was the Litvinenko of the Sixties, Anatoly Golitsyn…” This is simply untrue and readers should be very suspicious of the motives of anyone who makes such a claim.

Gaitskell’s death was being investigated by both the SIS and CIA before Golitsyn was questioned about it.

Lets keep to known facts: A month before the onslaught of his final illness, he had been admitted to hospital suffering from viral pneumonia, but he recovered and was declared fit to travel. Then, Gaitskell became ill again and died two weeks later from a rare condition, systemis lupus erythematosus. He had no previous history of this condtion.  It is extremely unlikely for a male of his age to suddenly manifest this condition and then succumb to it so quickly.  Though the pneumonia may have weakened him, it is again extremely unlikely that doctors would have pronounced him fit for international travel if they had any doubts as to his general state of health.

In all suspicious deaths, investigating authorities look for three things: motive, means, and opportunity.
1. The Soviets certainly had motive - the prime minister in waiting had shown himself to be a very effective leader of the Labour Party and quite independant of mind; he was no ally of Moscow and had come out in favour of a British nuclear deterent
2. Means - the CIA later found evidence that Soviet scientists had developed and experimented on substances that produced this condition
3. Opportunity - he became unwell with the first symptons of his fatal condition a few hours after being given coffee at the Soviet embassy in London - while being kept waiting for a delayed appointment - at the invitation of the Soviets

It is a shame that back in the sixties forensic science was not what it has become today!

Gaitskell’s ashes are interred in the churchyard of Hampstead Parish Church (Saint John’s-at-Hampstead), London.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:45 | #

Five months after the deed we have the first official indication that the FSB was the culprit:-

Scotland Yard detectives are to issue arrest warrants against three former KGB officers suspected of poisoning ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Police have told sources close to Mr Litvinenko’s widow Marina that they intend to lay charges of murder and poisoning against the men, who met the victim three weeks before his death in London.

The move will damage the already strained relationship between Downing Street and the Kremlin, which is almost certain to block any request for the men’s arrest and extradition.