A Propos De L'assassinat D'anna Politkovskaïa

[Ronnie Hayek]

NB : je ne tenais pas à faire dévier le fil sur la Tchétchénie, donc j'ai préféré ouvrir un nouveau fil.

Je viens d'apprendre l'assassinat d'Anna Politkovskaïa, probablement des mains d'un tueur du pouvoir russe ou tchétchène:

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/08102006/5/anna-p…nie-lorsqu.html

Elle enquêtait sur la torture en Tchétchénie. C'est vraiment triste. Je vous rappelle les coordonnées de son livre:

A ce propos, un article qui s'intéresse aux assassinats de journalistes, parfois camouflés en "suicides à bout portant" : http://prisonplanet.com/articles/October20…6_b_Killing.htm

Politkovskaya “was at least the 43rd journalist killed for her work in Russia since 1993, according to [the Committee to Protect Journalists], which has ranked Russia the third most deadly country for journalists, after Iraq and Algeria,” notes the Associated Press.

In Russia, mobsters may gun down journalists in gangland fashion, but here in America we are a bit more circumspect, as we have a flimsy facade of civilized behavior to uphold. Journalist Gary Webb made the mistake of connecting the CIA and the Nicaraguan Contras to the crack epidemic in the 1980s, a mistake that resulted in his “suicide,” a remarkable event, as Webb managed to shoot himself multiple times. “Original Associated Press reports stated that Webb had died of gunshot wounds (plural) to the face. This was later changed to ’single gunshot wound’ when people began to question how or why a man would shoot himself in the face twice. This represents a concentrated effort to cover up the nature of Webb’s death. There have also been reports that the coroner on the scene had originally reported ‘multiple gunshot wounds’ but later changed his story,” writes Prison Planet.

Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who spent years writing pablum for ESPN, was about to break a story on a White House “call boy” service, according to a friend, when he committed suicide (see story here). Of course, considering the source (a call-in to the Alex Jones radio show), no doubt this will be dismissed out of hand, never mind that the supposedly reputable Associated Press changed its story on the Thompson suicide at least twice (see Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes).

Qu'en pensent les fans du père du reportage "gonzo" ?

[Invité jabial]

Attention à une chose : avec une arme semi-automatique, si le nombre de coups de feu n'est que de deux et qu'ils suivent une certaine organisation, c'est possible que ce soit un suicide. En effet, la crispation réflexe après le premier tir peut en déclencher un deuxième alors même que la vie quitte déjà le suicidé.

[Taisei Yokusankai]

Qu'en pensent les fans du père du reportage "gonzo" ?

Les célébrités mortes par balle / overdose / suicide tombent en général dans deux catégories: celes qui ne sont en fait pas mortes du tout, et celles qui ont été tuées par le gouvernement. C'est systématique.

Ensuite, je me méfierais des gens qui prétendent qu'il travaillait sur le WTC ou sur un service de call-boy à la maison blanche. Le 09/11 ainsi que les parties fines des dirigeants, c'est franchement devenu d'un cliché lorsqu'on évoque des conspirations.

Ceci dit, tout est possible, mais franchement, là comme ça, j'ai du mal à y croire.

[Invité jabial]

SHE was brave beyond belief, Anna Politkovskaya, reporting a gruesome war and a creeping dictatorship with a sharp pen and steel nerves. It may be a chilling coincidence that she was murdered on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, but her friends and supporters are in little doubt that her dogged, gloomy reporting of the sinister turn Russia has taken under what she called his “bloody” leadership was what led to her murder on her way home to her Moscow apartment.

Ms Politkovskaya’s journalism was distinctive. Not for her the waffly, fawning and self-satisfied essays of the Moscow commentariat. Nor the well-paid advertorial now so pervasive as to be barely noticeable. She reported from the wrecked villages and shattered towns of Chechnya, talking to those on all sides and none, with endless patience and gritty determination.

She did not sentimentalise the Chechen rebels, nor did she demonise the Russian conscripts—ill-armed, ill-fed, and ill-led—who have crushed the Chechens’ half-baked independence. She talked to soldiers’ mothers trying to find their sons’ corpses in military morgues where mangled bodies lay unnamed and unclaimed—the result of the Russian army’s unique mixture of callousness and incompetence. And she talked to Chechens whose friends and relatives had disappeared into the notorious “filtration camps” to suffer torture, mutilation, rape and death.

Few journalists, from any country, did that. The second Chechen war, which started in 1999 and still fizzles on now, made that mountainous sliver of territory in the northern Caucasus the most dangerous place on the planet for a journalist. Most Moscow-based reporters went seldom, if at all, and then only in daylight and well-guarded. Ms Politkovskaya was unfazed, making around 50 trips there, often for days at a time.

Chechens, and many Russians, adored her. Piles of post and incessant phone calls came, sometimes from people wanting to give her information, more often from those wanting her help. Could she intercede with a kidnapper? Trace a loved one? She always tried, she said, to do what she could.

She loathed those responsible for the war: the warlords who had misruled Chechnya during its brief spells of semi-independence, the Islamic extremists who exploited the conflict, the Russian goons and generals, and their local collaborators. She particularly despised the Chechen government installed by Russia, for what she termed their massive looting of reconstruction money, backed up by kidnapping.

The worst effect of the Chechen wars, she reckoned, was the corrosion of Russia itself. Her reporting from all over Russia made her see her native country in what many regarded as an unfairly bleak light. Mr Putin’s regime was utterly brutal and corrupt, she would say in her soft, matter-of-fact voice. He represented the worst demons of the Soviet past, revived in modern form. Hundreds had died to bring him to power, and that was just a foretaste of the fascism and war that was to come.

The latest twists in Russia’s vindictive fury towards Georgia for wanting to join Nato make her pessimism seem less extreme. Russians with Georgian surnames are now experiencing the some of the sort of retribution from officialdom that their Chechen counterparts have suffered for the past ten years.

Ms Politkovskaya suffered death threats aplenty. On more than one occasion, Russian special forces threatened to rape and kill her, leaving her body in a ditch. Each time she talked them out of it. In 2001, she fled to Austria after receiving a direct warning to leave Russia or else. In 2004, on her way to the siege of a school in the North Ossetian town of Beslan, where she hoped to mediate between the Chechen hostage-takers and the Russian military, she was poisoned, and nearly died.

But whoever killed her on Saturday October 7th was a professional, intending not to warn her, but to end the problem she presented. She was shot in the body and the head; the pistol was a Makarov, the assassin’s favourite. It was left by her side: in that trade, weapons are used only once.

She was well aware that her murder would be a logical reaction from the authorities. In conversations with your correspondent, she brushed this aside, saying that her sources were in much more danger than she was. Journalists had a duty to report on the subject that mattered, she said no matter what—just as singers had to sing and doctors had to heal.

Ms Politkovskaya’s approachability did not mean that she was easy company. Her fondness for both sweeping statements and for the intricate details of the stories she covered sometimes made conversation heavy-going. She was both disorganised and single-minded; that could be unnerving too.

But she will go down as a martyr, in the beleaguered causes of free speech and public spirit. It would be nice to think that Russians will find her example inspiring. Sadly, they may well conclude that speaking out on unpopular topics is best avoided.

[Sous-Commandant Marco]

J'ai lu environ la moitié d'un troisième livre de Politkovskaïa:

Le message central de ce livre tient en une seule phrase: Poutine a mis l'infrastructure soviétique au service du grand capital. Le prochain crétin qui vous dira que le régime de Poutine est libéral, vous pourrez le frapper sur la tête avec les oeuvres complètes de Politkovskaïa de ma part. Tout cela m'a d'ailleurs fait penser à l'évolution de l'UE.

[Stranger]

http://www.exile.ru/2006-October-20/where_…itkovskaya.html

What exactly was Anna Politkovskaya's bullet-riddled corpse worth to the West? No surprise here: A juicy opportunity to demonize Putin and Russia.

Immediately after her murder, Reuters showed how her death was going to be spun with the headline, "Outspoken Putin Critic Shot Dead In Moscow." The implication was obvious: Putin ordered it.

Articles noted that she was killed on Putin's birthday, implying that it was a gift to himself. On the eve of his visit to Germany to close a big energy contract. Can you imagine Putin actually ordering the hit on his birthday, just before meeting Merkel for a key energy summit? "Okay, here's the plan, Sechin. I want you to kill Politkovskaya. I know, it's true that her articles have almost no effect on our policies in Chechnya and are ignored by all but a small percentage of liberal Russians, but so what. Oo, she makes me so angry! Once she's out of the way, my grip on power will finally be secured. Mwah-hah-hah! But wait, that's not all. Oh no, I'm much more dastardly than that. See, I'm not asking for much for my birthday, Sechin. Forget the Bulgari watches that you guys give me every year. I want her corpse brought to me with a big red birthday bow tied around it. I want to kill her on my birthday, just before my big meeting in Germany. They'll understand. After all, they're Germans. You know--Nazis, just like me! Deal? Yeah? Oh, goodie! I'm so deliciously evil, even Stewie would envy me. Why, this is going to be the best birthday of my life! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me!…"

But that was just the beginning. The notoriously Russophobic Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post published an editorial that more directly implicated Putin: "It is quite possible, without performing any detective work, to say what is ultimately responsible for these deaths: It is the climate of brutality that has flourished under Mr. Putin."

This is a cheap way of saying that Putin is responsible, but like most Russia-haters, they leave out some obvious contradictions. Such as, for example, is Putin also responsible for the hit on Paul Klebnikov, who was profoundly pro-Putin? And what about all the journalists murdered during Yeltsin's tenure? Did Hiatt or any of the others ever blame Yeltsin -- the one who truly introduced the brutality, corruption and lawlessness into Russia? No, of course not, because Yeltsin did The West's bidding. Crimes committed while being pro-American simply do not exist.

[…]

Easily the most absurd Politkovskaya article was by the notorious Brit hack Olga Craig, in her piece in the Sunday Telegraph titled "Cross Putin And Die." It begins with an obviously manufactured story of a terrified small-time journalist supposedly fleeing for his life from Putin's Russia -- the invented journalist is given a pseudonym, "Zakayev," he's apparently so scared… and from there, well, you can fill in the blanks yourself. His alleged crime is that he criticized the disgusting crackdown on ethnic Georgians--and yet, there was vicious open criticism of the crackdown as fascistic all over the Russian print and internet media. But supposedly, this guy had to flee for his life -- "Now 'Zakayev' is convinced that someone, most probably a hired hitman with links to the Kremlin, is already stalking his movements." It's pure cartoon bullshit, one of the worst made-up hack stories you'll read in your life.

But the knockout blow was yet to be delivered. Politkovskaya's corpse could not be buried before the Western press squeezed it for the biggest prize of all: Pure, total demonization. The "F" word. Yes, the Economist declared, "It is an over-used word, and a controversial one, especially in Russia. It is not there yet, but Russia sometimes seems to be heading towards fascism."

[Invité jabial]

S'il y a un pays où le mot fascisme (avec balles dans la tête à la clé) s'applique clairement aujourd'hui, c'est bien la Russie.

[Taranne]

S'il y a un pays où le mot fascisme (avec balles dans la tête à la clé) s'applique clairement aujourd'hui, c'est bien la Russie.

Sonnez hautbois, résonnez trompettes: je suis d'accord avec Jabial.

[Stranger]

S'il y a un pays où le mot fascisme (avec balles dans la tête à la clé) s'applique clairement aujourd'hui, c'est bien la Russie.

Même pas d'amour pour la flat tax?

Putin est-il responsable de tous les assassinats dans le plus large pays du monde?

[Taranne]

Même pas d'amour pour la flat tax?

Putin est-il responsable de tous les assassinats dans le plus large pays du monde?

Economistophobe et poutinophile: on a vraiment tiré le gros lot, dites donc.