Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

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Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Sep 08, 2020 6:54 pm

Here's a short essay by physicist David Nightingale The text is quoted below and and a 4 minute audio version read by Nightingale can be found on the site linked to.

(If the mods want to move this to a more appropriate location, please do.)

https://www.wamc.org/post/david-nightingale-navalny

This essay is about Alexey Navalny, the 44 year old critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. It appears, at the time of writing, that Navalny was poisoned, and after delay, sent to Germany for treatment.

Navalny is certainly a thorn in the side of Putin. His father is from central Ukraine, and his parents own a basket-weaving factory outside Moscow. Alexey Navalny graduated with a law degree from People’s Friendship university – which is a higher education university in Moscow for mostly 3rd world students. His graduate studies were at what used to be called the Moscow Institute of Economics & Finance, but which has changed its name more than once. In 2010 he received a scholarship to Yale in their ‘World Fellows Program’.

It’s interesting in the history of mankind that if you can’t abide criticism and disagreement there’s always the alternative of murder. It’s happened here too – think JFK, Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln.

Putin has quite a record on these methods. In a parallel way that Trump resorts to insults and claims of ‘lies, fake’ for anyone opposing him, so Putin, under the umbrella of the Kremlin, has been suspected as the driving force in the poisoning of the investigative journalist Anna Polikovskaya in 2004 (she was then actually shot to death 2 years later); the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko fatally poisoned in 2006 after he accused Putin of ordering her death; Russian Intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018 in Salisbury, England (Skripal, highly critical of Putin, has since recovered and is thought to be living in New Zealand under a different identity). There are more victims: the one-time deputy prime minister and physicist Dr Nemtsov was fatally shot from the back on a Moscow bridge while walking with his girlfriend in 2015. Interestingly, Nemtsov was the author of at least 26 publications in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, and had left physics for politics, joining the liberal party Yabloko. Nemtsov was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, soon being appointed (1997) Deputy Prime minister for energy under Yeltsin. When Putin became President in 1999 he quickly found himself being criticized by Nemtsov. It should be added here that 5 Chechens were found guilty of the shooting.

Navalny too was a strong critic of Putin, accusing him and his prime minister Medvedev of corruption and embezzlement, and has referred to Russia’s ruling party as a party of “crooks and thieves”. He uses open-source data to expose corruption and has found government contracts that favor vast amounts of money for Putin cohorts [ref.1]. He is very popular and when he was imprisoned in 2013 Muscovites came out in the streets for mass demonstrations, which got him freed.

In 2018 Navalny tried to run for president, but was barred by Russia’s Electoral Commission. His popularity remains high, and it is well-known that Putin is apprehensive of him.

However, westerners should not be immediately anxious to see Navalny in power, for he is an ultra-nationalist, and has also been accused of expressing antisemitic sentiments. Actually, the far better choice would have been the wide-thinking physicist Nemtsov, but, as mentioned, he’s already dead.

References:

1. “The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny”, Masha Gessen, New Yorker, 8/20/2020.

David Nightingale is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at SUNY, New Paltz, where he taught for 31 years.

https://www.wamc.org/post/david-nightingale-navalny


https://www2.newpaltz.edu/~nightind/
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Re: Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

Postby Grizzly » Tue Sep 08, 2020 8:44 pm

Ahhh, Skripal 2...

I'll skip it.
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Re: Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sun Sep 13, 2020 9:41 am

.
Grizzly » Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:44 pm wrote:Ahhh, Skripal 2...

I'll skip it.


Indeed.


Navalny Novichok Poisoning: The (Very Unlikely) Story So Far

“Maybe the Russians failed on purpose because they want to scare us.”

Kit Knightly


For those of you who haven’t been following the news – Russian politician (or “opposition figure”, as he is universally referred to in the Western press) Alexei Navalny was taken ill two weeks ago. It is now being reported he was “poisoned” with “novichok”.

Here’s a quick rundown of the official story as it currently stands (bearing in mind that, as with most “official stories” it will likely be subject to instant, contradictory and retroactive changes in the coming weeks):

Alexei Navalny has never held any elected office, his political party doesn’t have a single MP in the Duma, and he polls at roughly 2% support with the Russian people.

Despite this, and in the middle of an alleged “pandemic”, Vladimir Putin deems the man a threat and orders him killed.

The State apparatus responsible for unnecessary and seemingly arbitrary acts of political murder decide to use novichok to poison him.

This decision is taken in spite of the facts that a) Novichok totally and utterly failed to work in their alleged murder of the Skripals and b) It has already been widely publicly associated with Russia.

Rather unsurprisingly, the novichok which didn’t kill its alleged target last time, doesn’t kill its alleged target this time either.

Compounding their poor decision making, the Russians perform an emergency landing and take Navalny straight to a hospital for medical care.

Despite Navalny being helpless and comatose in a Russian hospital, the powerful state-backed assassination team make no further attempts on his life.

In fact, seemingly determined to under no circumstances successfully kill their intended victim, the Russian government, allow him to leave the country and get medical help from one of the countries which previously accused them of using novichok.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the Germans claim to have detected novichok in Navalny’s system.
Vladimir Putin and the Russian government are immediately blamed for the attempted murder.


If all this seems unlikely to you, don’t worry Luke Harding is here to explain it all.

He doesn’t have any evidence, of course. Instead we get sentences like this one [our emphasis]:

Over the past decade Moscow has produced and stockpiled small quantities, western intelligence agencies believe.


However, never let it be said that Luke isn’t aware of the contradictions in his story:

One other unresolved question is why Moscow granted permission for Navalny to be treated abroad, knowing that sooner or later the novichok inside his body would be detected.


But he has an answer for this:

The logical conclusion: Moscow wants the world to know.


You see, Putin wants everyone to know he did it, so he’s making it obvious. And the Kremlin’s denials are being done with “a wink and smile”. This must be some new meaning of the word “logical” I wasn’t previously aware of.

One wonders what the Russians would have done if the novichok had worked as intended, and killed Navalny before he could get to a hospital.

They couldn’t send him to Berlin then, so who announces the novichok was there? Do they do it themselves?

Oh well, at least now people will have something to talk about that isn’t the rapidly crumbling Covid narrative.


https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/02/nav ... ry-so-far/
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Re: Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

Postby stickdog99 » Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:48 pm

Putin is definitely responsible for everything bad in the world, including any and all criticism of the US Democratic party.
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Re: Navaly, thorn in Putin's side

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Sep 13, 2020 4:56 pm

.

Okay, to be fair, the short OP is hardly friendly to Navalny, calling him an "ultra-nationalist... accused of expressing antisemitic sentiments" (who is just nailing that 2 percent of the vote). It is certainly naive, at best, in its rush to accept the claim of an attempted state assassination directed by Putin, which makes little sense. Especially since Navalny is still breathing. When did Russian state agencies get so bad at this shit?

So what does a veteran Russia correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor have to say, in this interview with Aaron Maté? I found it illuminating.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWcVOHEQTo
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Sir Alexey Guaidó Juan Navalny of Orpington, the third.

Postby Harvey » Sun Sep 13, 2020 6:32 pm

That feeling when the bullshit is thick enough to be tiptoed around, as water pours over the deck and the engine room is on fire.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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