{"id":74,"date":"2006-11-24T08:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-24T14:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=74"},"modified":"2006-11-24T08:49:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-24T14:49:00","slug":"hello-darkness-my-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2006\/11\/hello-darkness-my-old-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello darkness, my old friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>“You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”<\/i><\/b> <\/p>\n

Alexander Litvinenko<\/a>‘s posthumous curse is unlikely to have Vladimir Putin<\/b> reaching for the earbuds just yet. And no one in the Kremlin<\/b> is listening out for the silent scream emanating from Downing Street<\/b>.<\/p>\n

The facts underlying Britain’s diplomatic whisper over Litvinenko’s agonizing end aren’t exactly hard to figure out. Here’s a paragraph from today’s political pages: <\/p>\n

Labour is concerned that the depletion of North Sea fields will make the UK increasingly dependent on Russia for its gas; by 2020 the proportion of gas demand met domestically will fall from 90% to 10%.<\/p>\n

The prime minister and the chancellor are in favour of the replacement of Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations … as a way of … reducing the UK’s energy dependency.<\/b> [Guardian<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a shame Messrs Blair<\/b> and Brown<\/b> feel unable to share their reservations with the electorate. Let’s hope when Parliament<\/b> sits on Monday, somebody sees fit to make a fuss.<\/p>\n

Now I’m not a police officer, but as far as I can see there are four possible reasons<\/b> for Mr Litvinenko’s unexplained death. In descending order of unlikeliness:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1) He committed suicide in a very public and painful way to embarrass the Russian government
2) He was killed by opponents of the Russian government to embarrass in order to embarrass them
3) He was killed by persons unknown as the result of some private or personal dispute
4) He was killed by agents or proxies of the Russian government<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/b>If I were a Russian dissident, I wouldn’t spend an enormous deal of time on the first three. Litvinenko’s death casts a long shadow over anyone tempted to criticize Vladimir Putin<\/b>‘s Russia. It was lingering, public and (no disrespect to Scotland Yard) it will likely go unpunished and unsolved. As the trial of Saddam Hussein has illustrated<\/a>, dictators and their sidekicks don’t tend to sign a lot of memos – and even when they do, bringing them to justice requires…well, shall we just say ‘a lot of effort.’<\/p>\n

In case you want a comparison, think of how many British political exiles<\/b> there are living in fear of their lives. With apologies to paranoia sufferers on the Algarve<\/b>, I can’t think of any. Do former security service personnel like David Shayler<\/b> spend sleepless nights speculating on the manner of their murder at the hands of the British government? Probably not. Northern Ireland<\/b>‘s reformed terrorists can walk Britain’s streets with greater peace of mind than Russia’s exiles.<\/p>\n

If what Litvinenko claimed<\/a> is true, Vladimir Putin<\/b> enjoys power today thanks to murdering his own people at home and assassinating his critics abroad.<\/p>\n

This morning, Russia’s President was in Helsinki<\/b> meeting Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen<\/b>, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso<\/b> and Javier Solana<\/b>, EU Council secretary general and high representative for foreign and security policy.<\/p>\n

Russian officials say the name Litvinenko<\/b> didn’t come up. No howl though, not even an echo in the well of silence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You may succeed in silencing one man. But a howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.” Alexander Litvinenko‘s posthumous curse is unlikely to have Vladimir Putin reaching for the earbuds just yet. And no one in the Kremlin is listening out for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50,81],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-journalists","category-media","tag-uk-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}