Dec 27 2006
Agreeing With An Anti-War Liberal On Litvinenko
It has become a very strange time indeed when I find myself in complete agreement with an anti-war liberal. In this case it is on the Litvinenko incident, and the argument laid out is an excellent synopsis of my posts on this matter. My impression of liberals has been inching upward recently, as I see clear examples of independent thinking and not accepting the PR that issues out of the mainstream media. This is a good sign to me that everyone is breaking their mental shackles that tie them to the error prone media giants.
PHEH
Time will tell if liberals can break the bars on the PC cages.
PHEH?
AJ–
Are you kidding? That guy Justin Raimondo writes for Pravda.
I don’t follow him too much, but I suspect he gives the Putin line on current events.
Off-topic:
“The FBI is missing nearly a quarter of its files relating to investigations of recent leaks of classified information, according to a court filing the bureau made last week…”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1758945/posts
Here’s more-or-less breaking news at Reuters – Russian prosecutor pointing the finger at ex-Yukos manager Nevzlin:
MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Russia’s prosecutor-general said on Wednesday Leonid Nevzlin, former manager of the bankrupt YUKOS oil firm, could have ordered the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.
Nevzlin’s spokesman dismissed the suggestion as “ridiculous”.
“A version is being looked at that those who ordered these crimes could be the same people who are on an international wanted list for serious and very serious crimes, one of whom is … Leonid Nevzlin,” the prosecutor-general’s office said in a statement.
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Nevzlin, one of the most senior men in the business empire of jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now lives in Israel. He says charges against him by the Russian authorities are fabricated.
“Everyone knows the KGB’s methods. These statements are ridiculous and do not warrant a response,” Nevzlin’s spokesman Amir Dan said in Israel of the latest allegations.
Dan said in late November that Litvinenko had been investigating alleged wrongdoing by the Russian authorities in connection with YUKOS before his death.
Before his eventual death from poisoning by radioactive polonium in London on Nov. 23, Litvinenko made a statement accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of his murder. The Kremlin has dismissed Litvinenko’s allegations as “nonsense”.
A spokeswoman for London police, who are investigating Litvinenko’s killing, declined to comment on the Russian prosecutor-general’s statement.
Nevzlin gained a controlling stake in YUKOS when Khodorkovsky handed him a 60 percent share in the holding company that controlled the firm.
YUKOS has been driven into bankruptcy by massive back tax claims.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But having said that, I too am noticing a slight change in the culture of many sites. Where they had all pretty much been “bandwagon” sites toeing the party line on issues, I am seeing some thought and logic in some quarters. I believe this is an effort to distance themselves from the main media outlets who these days look more like propaganda mills than ever before. The main media outlets are now trying to convince us that they aren’t lying, they are mearly making up facts.
At some point logic will out but in the extreme left and extreme right, logic never trumps dogma. On the far right logic didn’t get in the way of emotion in the Dubai ports thing, for example. It’s the same on the left with Iraq. It reminds me of a modern day version of the Batfink cartoon with a twist: “Your logic cannot harm me! My skull is like a shield of steel!”
I see it on both the far right and the far left.
That is what I ment when I said several days ago (maybe several weeks, don’t remember now) that maybe the “message” being sent was: “Greetings from Krasnokamensk” which is the prison where Khodorkovsky is being held. It is also the site of the world’s largest uranium mine and produces most (if not all) of Russia’s uranium ore.
Strata
You need a basic primer in political ideology. Justin Raimondo is a
hard-core LIBERTARIAN not a liberal. Libertarians overwhelmingly
oppose the war and are placed on the hard right of the political graph, much to your dismay and For Enforcement’s .
One thing National right and National left agree on, here and in Russia
as the release from the Bear shows: bad things subversive to national interests come out of and escape to Israel via Israeli loyalists strewn throughout the world.
Does anyone remember what day Litvinenko flew to Israel to meet with Nevzlin? I can find several reports but none with a date. I seem to remember seeing one at some point in the past but now I can’t seem to find it.
Libertarians might oppose the war but they do not favor defeat. Even if you disagree for the premise of going in there (President Clinton establishing “regime change” as the official US policy on Iraq coupled with Saddam’s failure to allow WMD inspections) we are there now. You can’t undo having gone in by leaving now. We are there so whatever happend in getting us in there is water under the bridge and we have to look forward at the best way to resolve the situation both for the US, the Iraqi people, and the world. Simply leaving would harm all three and isn’t a viable option.
Intelligent libertarians including Raimondo are on record as demanding the US leave Iraq and on record that the war is unwinnable, has already been lost and that US presence makes things worse there, Raimondo agreeing with all these.
No doubt. I can find opinions that cover the entire spectrum. They are all valid opinions but that doesn’t make them correct.
There are currently two separate things going on in Iraq. One is an international force that is waging war on the notion of laws passed by elected legislatures who would have power wielded by appointed clerics according to religious law. That battle is currently underway in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Somalia, Sudan (Darfur), Lebanon, France, Spain, the US, and other locations.
There is a second battle going on with regard to Iranian backed Shiites to gain Iranian control of the most holy sites in Shiism.
It is the second battle that is currently accounting for the majority of Iraqi casualties through death squads engaged in “ethnic cleansing”. The first battle accounts for the majority of US casualties due to boobytraps placed mainly on roadsides.
We can extract ourselves from the second battle and allow the Iraqis to handle it themselves but that is not the current source of US casualties. The first battle is one we must not walk away from because it will simply follow us home. We can not decide to end it. They started it, they have vowed to continue it until the US submits to Islamic law. It just isn’t up to us to end it. If we walked away, it wouldn’t stop.
Our first major battle with al Qaida was in Somalia. After the “Blackhawk Down” incident, the commanders on the ground asked for armor. Clinton chose instead to withdraw our forces. Our withdrawal didn’t stop 9/11. Or the embassy bombings. Or the USS Cole bombing. We can’t walk away from that battle. It is physically impossible. We can choose not to fight back, if we are prepared to continue taking casualties until they have killed us all.
You don’t have children, do you Ken?
The “right” is also locked up in its own cage. One, where they spewed out RINO to their heart’s content. Counted GOP wins as “conservative bargaining chips, to take over 1/3 of our government; the Supreme-O’s.
And, then the bevy of crooks and sheisters that make lots of money on K-Street.
Today? Israel is pointing the finger at James Baker, for illegal money making deals with Saddam.
So, if ONE ingredient is greed. And, the other is “access,” you see only a few who get to profit.
You need to schmear putin to know he plays on the dark side? Really?
While, going unnoticed is what’s obvious. Poor and backward nations don’t need multi-billion dollar contractors to “fix them up.” They need the cheap stuff. And, cell phones. (A technology not unknown in our world, today. Given how many satelites are up there, flying in the sky. (And, how rich this has made Murdoch. Beyond just the reach of most media moguls, ya know?)
Since the polonium could have killed litvenenko, UNTIL HE HIMSELF THREW IN CLUES; you can probably identify this item in the “basket” of stuff the smuggling ring handled.
And, the story fell out? The way lots of stuff unravels. Where you first have “stonewalling.” Before there’s even altitude for the PR geniuses to press after.
Anyway, I hope in the movie, they have the imam going nuts. Since it took one really mad imam to keep litvenenko’s casket, out of the mosque.
Was there anything IN the casket besides the body?
Now, that would have been an improvement on how you smuggle things past the noses of the cops. And, the graspy fingers of the “baggage handlers.”
I guess nobody here has ever bought groceries containing a leaking container of milk. But I have. It sure looks “normal” in the store. But it does soak through your stuff by the time you’ve driven home.
Who “sealed” the items?
And, just to make sure they got these “almost invisable alpha-particles, did the thieves use any tests?
Ah. And, where’s the money?
That’s the other thing you don’t see. If this was a bank robbery, and the money exploded, everyone nearby would be painted “blue.” Or is it “pink” these days?
And, in the beginning? Was this just a mistake? Like Chernobyl? Where idiots who didn’t know science, thought this would be a piece of cake?
Did this become an attack against putin only in Goldfarb’s hands? In divert attention from Berekaka-ovsky?
Odd, how easy it is to spot the bad guys.
ken,
It doesn’t matter whether is Liberal or Libertarian. Is anti-war stance is a classic liberal stance so whatever lable he cooks up, on the Iraq war he is a liberal.
As if a lable makes his positions any better? Ken, you need to think about issues and not lables of people talking about the issues. That way you might have your own original thoughts on something rather than just be an echo of other’s original thoughts. As an echo you have nothing to offer.
“We can extract ourselves from the second battle and allow the Iraqis to handle it themselves but that is not the current source of US casualties. The first battle is one we must not walk away from because it will simply follow us home.”
Crosspatch regurgitates Bush/ neoconservative falsehood.
again, read yesterdays http://www.juancole.com ” Ten Myths about the Iraq War.” same shallow lies as LBJ’s “if we don’t win in Vietnam,
we’ll be fighting them in North America,” bull.
AJ you have a cold, yet you must be driving the stickler FE bonkers with “lable” instead of “label.” None of the other commentator’s
like me are taskmasters on spelling on impromptu posts but when FE isn’t Humpty Dumptying (“words mean exactly what I say they do, no more and no less”)he is lecturing his opponents only on this matter.
Now to the issue– if you read, for example, Chronicles Magazine, at chroniclesmagazine. org you would be cognizant of the very important fact that nationalist conservatives and “paleoconservatives” are very sensitive about the fact sinister
internationalists have usurped the term “conservative.”
Currently they are passing off “neoconservative” as the real thing,
when it is Wilsonian liberal to the core. Before “neoconservatives”
existed, the internationalists during the World War Two era
took us into that war under in large part another false usage of the term conservative.
You do nothing but “echo” the interventionists and internationalists
who have made America a world pariah. I am trying to recapture the
true America First conservatism which keeps us out of wars which are none of our concerns.
Carol Herman
“Today? Israel is pointing the finger at James Baker, for illegal money making deals with Saddam.”
Israel. The same nation which through dual loyalists featuring Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz helped convince Bush an invasion would
be greeted by a host of westernized, secular, (pro-Israel) Iraqis
putting flowers into US machine guns while begging us to teach them
how to install an America-friendly democracy to replace Saddam.
Ken, I “regurgitated” nothing. It is a product of my own analysis based on my own research. If another shares the same opinion, then they have come to the same conclusion independently. I tend not to be the type to jump on bandwagons and often come to conclusions based on logic rather than ideology. This often puts me at odds with the left, and often with the right.
Have you read the news concerning attacks by fundamentalist muslims in Thailand and Indonesia recently? What I stated wasn’t so much an opinion as it was intended to be a reflection of what is actually happening. You should also actually read the words of people such as Zawahiri and bin Laden. They have said in very plain terms what they intend to do. Thier current goal is to isolate the US from the rest of the “muslim world”. We can avoid attacks for the moment by completely breaking all contact … military, industrial, and cultural … with “muslim” countries. Once they have overthrown the governments of those countries, they will come after us. They have said so directly, I am not making it up and neither is it a matter of opinion. It is their clearly stated doctrine. They have declared war on us. It isn’t up to us to decide if we are in a war or not. They decided. So it is up to us to fight or eventually see our government overthrown and replaced with a mullocracy.
That battle already underway in France.