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Another One Bites the Dust
November 24, 2006 01:58 PM
KGB defector Sasha Litvinenko is dead, just days after being poisoned in a London restaurant.
“The bastards got me,” he whispered. “But they won’t get everybody.”
Mr Litvinenko, 43, uttered his last defiant words to Andrei Nekrasov, a friend and film-maker, who had visited him in University College Hospital in London every day this week. Last night Mr Nekrasov described the extraordinary scenes in hospital, where one ward looks like a scene from The Godfather.
“Sasha was a good-looking, physically strong and courageous man,” Mr Nekrasov told The Times. “But the figure who greeted me looked like a survivor from the Nazi concentration camps.”
Moments after he saw his friend pass away, Mr Nekrasov said: “I have been through a few things in Russia and Chechnya, but this is one of the most horrible crimes I have witnessed in my my life.”
“It was sadistic, slow murder. It was perpetrated by somebody incredibly cruel, incredibly heartless. It had no meaning whatsover.” ...
Doctors remained baffled about what Mr Litvinenko ingested on November 1, at one of two meetings with Russian contacts. Geoff Bellingan, director of critical care at University College Hospital, said that doctors were now convinced that the cause was not a heavy metal such as thallium, as originally suspected. Nor had he swallowed any mystery objects. “Radiation poisoning is also unlikely,” he said.
Andrea Sella, a chemistry expert at University College, said that it had become increasingly difficult to identify the poison. “They have to find some unspecified poison. They don’t know whether it is a single substance or a mixture.”
Mr Nekrasov revealed that Mr Litvinenko’s British citizenship had come through on the day of a service at Westminster Abbey for Anna Politkovskaya, a friend and critic of the Kremlin murdered in Moscow.
“We discussed the likelihood of another killing. Sasha warned me not to go back to Russia because it was too dangerous,” Mr Nekrasov said. “Very sadly he turned out to be the next victim, attacked in the perceived safety of Central London.” ...
And let's not leave out the non-denial denial from the Kremlin:
An aide to Mr Putin said: “Of course it’s a human tragedy. A person was poisoned. But the accusations against the Kremiln are so incredible, so silly, that the President cannot comment.”
Yes, too silly even to disavow. I hope this guy has protection.
Russia
A middle-aged Ukrainian woman told me last night about her experiences as a member of the Komsomol, the Communist Youth organization during the Soviet era. On Christmas and Easter, she and other members of the group were ordered to the local churches, where they were instructed to form two concentric rings around the buildings by locking arms. These rings were intended as a defense perimeter that would keep people from going to church on religious occasions. This peculiar Soviet abhorrence of religion is one reason that in Ukraine gifts are not exchanged on Christmas, but rather (last night) on New Year's Eve. In 2007, let's all of us, and especially us Americans, make a little more effort to keep in perspective our astonishing good fortune, and be grateful for what some sacrifice to preserve it. America may not be perfect, but it's the closest thing we've got.
January 1, 2007 06:51 AM · 
Kofi Annan has stepped down at the U.N. - at least a decade too late. I predict future historians will find it difficult to judge whether this ineffectual dupe was the puppet of genocidal regimes and autocrats or just their indispensable enabler. It is tough to fully enumerate the sins and consequences of this repugnant figure, but this WSJ editorial begins the grim task.
December 17, 2006 05:59 AM ·
I am often asked what it's like living in Ukraine. Well, yesterday afternoon I heard some hammering, and it sounded pretty close, so I went to se what was up. Looking out from a living room window I found two men in a cherry-picker, and they were hacking away at the rim of my balcony with sledge mallets, breaking away the concrete and tearing up the tiles. I figured the owner of my apartment must have forgotten to tell me she was having work done. Today I found out this wasn't the case. Alarmed, she phoned the Zhek - the state agency responsible for, but rarely inclined to undertake, the upkeep of public property. Their response was basically, News to us. We are now facing the prospect that we may never learn who these men were and why they were attacking my balcony, which now needs extensive repairs. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that I have been victimized in an act of serial vandalism by two men with sledges and a cherry-picker. That, my friends, is what it's like to live in Ukraine.
November 15, 2006 04:23 PM ·
Help, I'm on crack!
Oops - I mean, Help, I've been hacked! Not sure how long it was there, but someone managed to place an unauthorized link in Ethanistan. If anyone clicked on it, I apologize for not catching it sooner. Unless it linked to something cool. In which case, I'm glad I could open your mind to new exotic experiences, man.
August 23, 2006 12:05 PM ·
REVEALER, REVEAL THYSELF
Hmmmm. You can read through the entirety of Tony Judt's defense of the Mearsheimer/Walt paper without ever learning that Judt has called for the dissolution of Israel. Yet it's a not-unreasonable assumption that this argument, which was (of course) very controversial when it was aired, was what led the Times to Judt's doorstep in the first place. Bad copy editing?
April 19, 2006 08:29 AM ·
Blair: Contra the "Doctrine of Benign Inactivity"
Britain being home to some of earth's most cynical and repugnant twits -- George Galloway and Harold Pinter, to name just two -- it is easy sometimes to forget the heroic moral fortitude its leaders have demonstrated at critical moments across history. Tony Blair reminds us why he deserves mention alongside Churchill and Thatcher.
March 22, 2006 10:08 AM ·
Greg Gutfeld answers one of the blogosphere's great quandaries: How do you even begin to satirize a Web site that presents Alec Baldwin, Deepak Chopra and other B-list dinner guests as deep thinkers? It's the funniest thing in cyberspace at the moment. Don't miss Greg's "bio" -- and definitely do not miss the comments left below his entries by HuffPosters, confused and angry, who came for the wisdom of Cindy Sheehan and got rabbit-punched by this smartass.
March 1, 2006 10:58 AM ·
A true gentleman of the Blogosphere has learned he must battle more than just Moonbats in the months and years to come. Stop by GM's Corner and give George a shout -- and maybe leave some change in the bowl on the way out.
February 16, 2006 05:29 AM ·
Fight Fascism - Eat a Butter Cookie. Wikipedia provides a handy list of Danish companies here. Hey, if all of us here band together and buy Danish that would be like ... four or five bucks. But it's the principle that counts!
February 9, 2006 08:13 PM ·
