Saturday, April 14, 2007

[samizdata] sorry, they got it wrong this time

Summer scene on the Volga

Perry de Havilland is a top blogger, as is Johnathan Pearce and Samizdata rightly takes its place as one of the original and one of the best blogs.

However, occasionally they mess up and I was goaded to respond to Perry's post and to his comment at the Tin Drummer. He originally wrote:

Yet the Kremlin seems to think it can murder its political opponents in London and at home and that is just fine and dandy. Who says Russian politicians do not have a sense of humour, eh?

I replied:

Perry, I have the greatest respect for you and your writing and for Johnathan. However, you're talking through your backside on this thing and jumping on the UK pundits' bandwagon without examining the other side of it.

Berezovsky is a toad who held the country to ransom in the 90s and looked after just himself. Now he's trying to protect his butt. That's all. And which country does not try to hit its traitors? Britain? Give me a break, Perry.

You made a comment over at Tin Drummer which I've just answered. A lady has just left who made the comment that she hopes they get him [Berezovsky]. I do too.

Sorry but that's the general opinion over here, not what the vocal minority and demonstrators purport to be the case.

Come over here and see for yourself.

What I forgot to add was that the people understand what Putin is doing for the country and recent polls seem to support that.

As for the charge that the ballots were rigged, that also is garbage. I walked to the polling station last time and saw people casting ballots in booths the same way we do and then putting them into the ballot boxes with no one showing the least interest in the process.

Of course there are digruntled people over every imaginable issue [are we all enamoured of Tony Blair?] but that's a far cry from wanting a legally elected Putin out and Berezovsky and his criminal mates back in.

And yet Britain harbours and abets this criminal and his cronies. Why?

Inflicted on you by on

6 comments:

  1. Perry de HavillandSaturday 14 April 2007 at 12:26:00 GMT+1

    I did not say Putin was not popular at home, just as Hitler was clearly popular in 1938. So what? The fact a plurality of people in Russia voted this ex-KGB thug into office just reflects the dire state of civil society in Russia and it does not mean it is ok for the state to murder its political opponents or do the various other things it does (such as expropriate foreign investments when they start to look profitable).

    If some of Putin's opponents want to see him hanging from a lamp post, I am not going to lose any sleep over that.

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  2. Perry de HavillandSaturday 14 April 2007 at 12:59:00 GMT+1

    "As for going around 'murdering', the stuff which went down in London wouldn't have happened if Britain hadn't been harbouring known criminals and traitors."

    Since when is being a 'traitor' to Russia a crime in the UK? And why is Berezovsky more of a criminal that Putin?

    It is not in British interests to allow a foreign state to assassinate its enemies in London with impunity. Putin is an enemy and needs to be treated like one, make no mistake about it.

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  3. James HighamSaturday 14 April 2007 at 13:02:00 GMT+1

    Yes and that dire state began in 1917 and was exacerbated during Stalin's reign of terror but that's the raw material Putin has left to work with.

    He understands the only way to stay alive over here is to operate that way. Russia is an unusual society because the godless humanists got to it for their social experimentation and left it bereft of belief or an intelligentsia.

    Of course it's a far from ideal situation over here but as for going around 'murdering', the stuff which went down in London wouldn't have happened if Britain hadn't been harbouring known criminals and traitors. Berezovsky would have been extradited to face the music over here.

    You mention appropriating their own assets, such as the oil fields but you don't mention the ExxonMobil Japanese consortium and how they acted in this matter. They were in for the kill for themselves and acted without respect. I know this because I'm obliquely involved in this in my day job.

    Perry, you might look closer to home, to Europe, the British government and its cavalier politics first. There's a reason for everything.

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  4. James HighamSaturday 14 April 2007 at 13:08:00 GMT+1

    Perry, I think our comments crossed here but it's still possible to reply.

    I take your point that it's not right for foreign governments to come over to our backyard and murder their traitors.

    But as I said in the just posted comment, this would have not happen if the British government had not been acting as it had.

    Again and again, they are harbouring known traitors and for what? Blair brought this on himself.

    Why couldn't he just extradite the rattlesnake Berezovsky and be done, the whole mob, as one of your own commenters suggested?

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  5. MartinSaturday 14 April 2007 at 18:28:00 GMT+1

    Perry,

    There is some corner of a foreign field whuch it's forever Munich...

    Och, give it a rest.

    Absolutely no information has been placed into the public domain linking Putin or any agency of the Russian state to the murder (or so we are told) of Alexander Litvinenko; are you aware that Berezovsky was alleged to have bunged Litvinenko $1m + to hold the Pythonesque 1998 press conference in which FSB guys popped up in hoods?

    What really scares me, Perry, is that your language seems to have all the certainty of Jacobinism, making you sound like some sort of digital Robespierre.

    "Why is Berezovsky more of a criminal that Putin?"

    Precisely what are you alleging against Putin? What? Complicity in the 1999 apartment bombings? Nobody, not even Nekrasov, has ever put any information into the public domain linking Putin to it.

    Chechnya? Like, he iced Shamil Basayev, the organiser of Beslan who was later euologised by Akhmad Zakayev, one of Berezovsky's London circle and anoher recipient of our asylum? Was icing Basayev so bad?

    Politkovskaya, the New York born daughter of apparatchiks in respect of whose death not a shred of evidence linking Putin to the case has ever been published? Pity nobody ever mentions poor old Paul Klebnikov, the almost fanatically pro-Putin editor of Forbes Russia (and unauthorised - and really quite unfriendly - biographer of Berezovsky's) who was, ahem, murdered three years ago?

    Didn't you know it's not just anti-Putin journalists who get murdered? In fact, over 100 have been murdered since 1986 and the reign of former General Secretary Gorbachev, whose last public words seem to have been the eulogy for a deceased employee.

    Named Anna Politkovskaya.

    Didn't you know Gorby and a partner own 49% of 'Novaya Gazeta', Politkovskaya's newspaper? It's ironic - the murder of one of its journalists makes world headlines when its co-owner once headed a regime in which the murder of journalists was a matter of routine.

    I think all British internationalistsshould be taking a long die down. They grow as shrill as the Committee for Public Safety with every hours

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  6. The Daily PunditSaturday 14 April 2007 at 22:26:00 GMT+1

    Take no notice James. Perry de Havilland/Roger de Courcey, it's all showbusiness at the end of the day.

    Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bear, New Faces Grand Final winners 1976

    ReplyDelete

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