Saint Sasha, The Toenail Puller
Tributes to Sasha Litvinenko, the sob story spy, are on all the tearstained pages of the UK tabloids today.
Probably the Daily Mail drivels it best. ‘He was honest, courageous, loving husband . . . etc.’
Blimey. You would never know he was a devious little toe-nail puller from the KGB. Or that his patron, Boris Berezovsky - not mentioned by the Daily Mail - is a gangland legend, veteran of countless contract hits. Or that his closest associate is an even scarier Chechen terrorist, Ahmed Zakayev.
Probably the nicest thing you can say about Alexander Litvinenko is that he was a raving loony, as his (hitherto unread) ravings in the Chechen press testify.
As Justin Raimondo writes, ‘the propaganda spewed out in the last couple of days is pure bunk and quite bizarre’. It’s what Justin describes as a ‘public relations tsunami, in which Litvinenko’s absurd conspiracy theory is being touted as unimpeachable fact.’ Putin did it, no doubt about that.
Berezovsky’s UK PR agency, of course, knows full well that it doesn’t take much to get xenophobic British tabloids going. You can’t pick up a Sun these days without a chiller diller scare about Romanian rippers, or Polish pimps, or Eastern European gypsies flooding in from everywhere. So the unscrupulous Pottinger fed them a large dose of Russophobia and they swallowed it whole.
Who would benefit from such a hate campaign at this time? Hmmm. It might just be the sleazy band of mobsters currently sheltering in London from corruption and murder charges in Russia. You see, on Nov 16, Russia and the UK signed a new memorandum on extradition. And Russian prosecutors interpret that as facilitating their ability to extradite Russia’s most-wanted: Berezovsky and Zakayev.
Why would the UK sign something like that? Take a tip from Yuri Mamchur. Access to Russia’s energy resources, either for foreign consumption or investment, comes at a price. He observes:
It is ironic that the oligarchs who used to buy influence abroad with oil money are now having their freedom sold for the same coin. An Old Russian proverb says, ‘The one who pays orders the music’. These days the Kremlin has enough money to make even top U.S. allies Britain and Israel offers they can’t refuse and can order up any music it likes.
But, if the timely murder of Litvinenko now makes Britain think twice about extraditing Berezovsky and Zakayev, Saint Sasha will have died for a good cause. Won’t he?
i haven’t been around to follow the litvinenko case but even without knowing the full story i don’t believe he was a “saint” as daily mail reports. an ex kgb is still an ex kgb. yei, maybe he played chess with putin before this one became known
the one who pays orders the music … similar to croatian … how much money, that much music (koliko para, toliko muzike)
Hello Katjusha
Thanks for your comment. Yes, this whole story is possibly difficult to follow from abroad. The way the reporting has been conducted is ‘peculiar’ to the British tabloid press. Good article by Juan Raimondo here:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10049
He’s sharp about PR and xenophonia, but misses the organised crime element.
You write:
the one who pays orders the music … similar to croatian … how much money, that much music (koliko para, toliko muzike)
Yes of course. There is a lot of pressure/mindset to write up all these stories as political, when of course they are principally about conflicts of ‘business’ interest. I think the phrase is, ‘follow the money’.
[...] Copydude [...]
Copydude,
Brilliant post.
Thanks for the comment.
Other readers will find it well worth a click through to Martin Kelly’s blog, where he meticulously documents some of the minor characters in the plot that the media studiously avoids naming.
Here also is the revelation that Litvinenko was in Moscow recently, perhaps negotiating his own freedom from extradition, with information about Anna Politovskaya. Hmmm. Wouldn’t that be tantamount to doublecrossing his Chechen associates?
The Dude is up at Atlantic Free Press too.
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/272/
ßрøòõт - Ѡüýþóþ рð÷ ÿøÑÂðû тðúþõ üýõýøõ ýõôðòýþ! Here is one of them:
http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/2006/12/litvinenko-one-or-two-developments.html
Cheers.
Whatever Litvinenko was or was not, why are we not permitted to see the documentary evidence of his allegations, and the film he and Scaramella produced which ran for many hours in which Litvinenko told his story. The real story is being suppressed, and much effort being put into discrediting Litvinenko. I don’t care what he’s done in the past. I want to know what he’s trying to tell us which gets him murdered, and Scaramella too possibly. There is not even a mention of the eixtsence of the film in the British media. There is a total news clamp on Litvinenko’s allegations about KGB penetration into European capitals. I wonder why that might be, don’t EU?
For links click my URL.
I can only agree that the reporting has been narrow. To be fair, Litvinenko wrote two books of allegations that were a little short of substantiation and, from what I have read, the Berlusconi ‘commission’ set up to dig dirt was not so productive either. All the same, there are very many inconsistencies in the UK reporting of Scaramella - notably that he’s ‘feeling fine’ when talking to the British Press and ‘feeling unwell’ when talking to European news sources.
[...] The effect of Julia Svetlichnaya’s piece is devastating - similar to Andrew Gilligan’s debunking of David Kelly and the Government’s infamous 45 minute claim. All the saintly Sasha spiel is dispelled in an instant. The word goes out to shoot the messenger and the Murdoch media mafia poops all over the scoop. Julia is blackballed. [...]
It’s back up today with a new front-page setting the record straight about Polonium. The copy contains this wonderful line: ‘Although it obviously works, Polonium-210 is a poor choice for a poison.
I could think of many other contestants that deserved the title more, but my favorite was Miss Mexico. The only title that fits Miss Puerto Rico is MISS COUNT DRACULA with her big-gigantic mouth, her ugly hair-do and her slizzy dress. The judges must of had way to many drinks, it’s acceptable for a few judges to have no taste but all of them. This is a laugh and a half. Shame on all the judges for being so unfair and also shame on all the Puerto Ricans that think she deserves the title just because she’s one of them (how unfair and shameful). Miss Japan deserved the title 100% -She was beautiful, feminine, classy and cultured.