Writes Anton Troianovski, in "Inside Aleksei Navalny’s Final Months, in His Own Words/Trump. Indian food. Matthew Perry. And books, books, books. Excerpts from letters obtained by The Times show Mr. Navalny’s active mind, even amid brutal prison conditions" (NYT)(free access at that link).
Why is Matthew Perry in the headline? We're told that Navalny had never watched "Friends" — a show with plenty of food, gossip, and scandalous topics — but he'd read the actor's obituary in The Economist, "Matthew Perry changed the way America spoke" ("[I]n the audition it was he who had nailed it, reading the words in that unexpected way, 'hitting emphases that no one else had hit'; making everyone laugh. It was less that he, Matthew Perry, could play Chandler than that he was Chandler. He changed the part—and then the part changed him").
The NYT piece tells us that that Navalny's prison library had the classics — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov — and “Who could’ve told me that Chekhov is the most depressing Russian writer?”
There's also some material here about Trump, but it's a little hard to understand. Perhaps it was enigmatic in the original. There's "Mr. Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump looked 'really scary.'" Not the man, the "electoral agenda"? And then he went on to say "Please name one current politician you admire."
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44 comments:
I never considered that Cyrillic could be written in cursive.
Navalny was unjustly imprisoned by the ruling regime for working against it, and yet he had no sympathy for Trump. When the Left locks up Trump, I doubt he'll want to read 10 books. He may have interesting thoughts about a cultural icon like Perry, though, so perhaps the NYT will cover his jail time.
"ethnicity issues."
Yeah, our hero was a, well, we must "not see" what he was. Just a nice guy whose political party the US funded, according to Wikileaks, who thought that Muslims should have their citizenship revoked. An act that would very conveniently for the CIA, split the Russian Federation and lead to civil war, or collapse. But he was an intelligent and well spoken Yale graduate, and very possibly he never really believed the things he said. If you watch video of him at his rallies leading his followers in a certain stiff-armed salute while shouting "slava Rossii)" in unison, he reminds you of no-one so much as Ray Epps.
I guess I don't have a problem with the CIA sending operatives into rival countries to mess with their politics, but the more you think about it, the more you are forced to consider the possibility that the initial suspicion of outsider Trump may well have been because they just issued that the Russians would try to do the same thing to us that we routinely do to them. Once politics seized on it, well...
Every accusation is a confession of sorts, "it takes one to know one," or "he who smelt it, dealt it," even kids know this.
Amnesty International rescinded his "prisoner of conscience" status for a while, due to his well-documented advocacy of violence, perhaps, even genocide, against Muslim "flies and cockroaches," but eventually they succumbed to pressure and reinstated it.
NYT never missing an opportunity to display their Trump derangement. Look! The dead guy in a Russian prison camp hated Trump, too!!
In a forum that masturbates over words and language in a manipulative way it would be interesting in an Emerson professorial/critical thinking sort of way to hear the details of how Trump’s ‘electoral agenda’ was ‘really scary’ to a Russian political prisoner. I won’t hold my breath but good job by NYT to quote a dead guy that will be unavailable for further comment…
I wrote my Master's Degree about Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel In the First Circle. There he described his own life in a special prison that was populated primarily by intellectuals who were assigned to develop technology to intercept and record phone conversations of the Soviet regime's opponents. Those particular prison were relatively good, and the prisoners especially enjoyed their intellectual and witty conversations with each other.
The novel's readers enjoy those conversations vicariously.
In contrast, Solzhenitsy's novel One Day in the Life of Iven Denisovich describes a monotonous prison life occupied by laying bricks, with little intellectual stimulation. This one day is the same as every other day.
A third novel, Cancer Ward describes Solzhenitys's own experiences of almost dying of cancer. He had planned to devote his life to writing novels, but that life almost was cut short before he had managed to publish anything.
Ivan Denisovich was a short novel, but the other two were quite long. Even after he completed those two novels, he had to keep them secret for years.
Read about the Soviets ... understand the corruption behind Joe Biden - Husk-puppet.
Correction to my post at 7:01
Those particular prison conditions were relatively good, and the prisoners especially enjoyed their intellectual and witty conversations with each other.
“Please name one current politician you admire."
Vivek.
This is the life Trump awaits in the new American Gulag. Except instead of reading 10 classical novels at a time, Donald will be forced to watch an endless parade of PRC ChiCom propaganda TikToks until he recants.
It will be interesting to see how the Putin squad — Musk, Carlson, Gaetz, Taylor-Greene and Trump spin this. What their rhetoric means is surrender to Putin. They should be honest enough to say so.
Fun fact for those that believe the CIA always wanted USSR/Russia to break up: Bush Sr, the former head of the CIA, went in front of the Ukrainian assembly during the last days of the USSR and begged them not to break up, warning them that they outcomes will be ethnic hatred, wars, etc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hgEB1GB8qAM
“Who could’ve told me that Chekhov is the most depressing Russian writer?”
Just about anyone who saw a couple of his plays.
A little free verse for your delectation.
"The Totalitarian Bootstrap, or The Guarantee of Safety"
If we can think of it, we must do it
because they can think of it too,
and being evil, they must have thought of it already,
and must be doing it right now,
and even if they aren't doing it yet,
there is no guarantee that they won't,
so we must spy on our own citizens,
spy on our own politicians,
must sacrifice the liberties of our own citizens
in order to guarantee their safety.
You can see how totalitarianism bootstraps itself, it's almost an ontological certainty that given the power to come into being, it will come into being.
"Bush Sr, the former head of the CIA, went in front of the Ukrainian assembly during the last days of the USSR and begged them not to break up, warning them that they outcomes will be ethnic hatred, wars,"
And he was right, as we can all see, and nobody listened to him, and he lost the next election. He was acting in his role as president at the time, not as head of the CIA. The USSR had been defeated, which was his goal in the Cold War. This idea that the Cold War must continue, but this time against the Russian Federation, after having whet our appetite breaking up the Soviet Empire, was just metastasizing.
"Musk, Carlson, Gaetz, Taylor-Greene and Trump spin this"
Why won't they mourn the demise of this ... well, we must "not see" what Navalny was.
Let's all join Navalny in one last cheer: Slava Russii!
The prison where awlaki was locked up for eighteen months had all sorts of reading material from melville and dickens to forbidden texts from qutb
The idea that Navalny was anything other than another Eastern European corruptothug is just precious.
Please name one current politician you admire."
alexie navalny
Rich assumes that if one is not all in on Joe Biden’s Ukrainian policy — and its attendant graft and corruption — then one necessarily supports Vlad Putin. Rich’s naive — one might even call it childish — view leaves no room for people to despise both Putin and Biden in equal measure, the former because initiating wars of aggression should not be rewarded, the latter because at a certain point you’ve made enough money from your kickbacks.
Perhaps there was something both Putin and Navalny agreed on- that a Biden presidency was better for Russia.
The LLR-demoraticals like Rich and Faux internet tough boys Howizer Howard cannot deal with the fact that Trump was singularly responsible, as President, in crushing Putin's oil and gas revenues while simultaneously Elon Musk single handledly destroyed the russki's entire commercial space launch business.
Did you know that prior to SpaceX the US was having to buy space on russki rockets for launch capacity as well as use russki rockets for transport of personnel and equipment to the space station?
The pathetic lies of pathetic leftists, now fully aligned with Hamas and the islamic supremacists, now mst be accelerated to satisfy the political bloodlust of the New Soviet Democratical Party.
I've seen Putin-hating lefties performing outrage at the death of Navalny who turn right around and wish for Trump to be raped and murdered in prison because that would be justice and he deserves it.
Hillary has a hive mind, apparently.
"Please name one current politician you admire."
alexie navalny"
You should look at the video of one of his rallies I linked above. What exactly did you admire? His comparison of Muslims to "cockroaches and flies" or his revival of the semiotics, at least, of a certain mustachioed German politician who was of some note in the first half of the 20th century.
Do you share his views on the "ethnicity issues" that we are told he kept abreast of while in prison?
Without knowing the date of the supposed Trump statements it's impossible to interpret them--even assuming that any of what is quoted is authentic.
Many peoples' opinions about Trump changed over time. Mine certainly did.
Navalny may turn out to be more dangerous as a martyr than a prisoner. Or not.
I feel a sense of relief when I hear about other readers who have ten or so books going simultaneously which they switch between. I didn't do this before blogging. Now I value short bursts of intense attention on a couple of pages in one book, then onto the next.
There's "Mr. Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump looked 'really scary.'" Not the man, the "electoral agenda"?
Could Navalny’s analysis BE any more pathetic??!
what a strange article. He's dead isn't he? Why wasn't the NYT's writing this article a year ago? Frankly, nothing about this guy is impressive or deserving of this nonstop propaganda barrage by the MSM. I predict in 3 months everyone will be going "Navalny who?"
Even odder is our stupid dumbfuck Senators are using his death as a reason to pass $60 billion in war aid to Ukraine. "Lets win one for Navalny" is their cry. Crazy. If Navalny wanted the USA To send $billions in weapons to Ukraine to kill Russians, then he deserved to be in Prison.
what a strange article. He's dead isn't he? Why wasn't the NYT's writing this article a year ago? Frankly, nothing about this guy is impressive or deserving of this nonstop propaganda barrage by the MSM. I predict in 3 months everyone will be going "Navalny who?"
Even odder is our stupid dumbfuck Senators are using his death as a reason to pass $60 billion in war aid to Ukraine. "Lets win one for Navalny" is their cry. Crazy. If Navalny wanted the USA To send $billions in weapons to Ukraine to kill Russians, then he deserved to be in Prison.
what a strange article. He's dead isn't he? Why wasn't the NYT's writing this article a year ago? Frankly, nothing about this guy is impressive or deserving of this nonstop propaganda barrage by the MSM. I predict in 3 months everyone will be going "Navalny who?"
Even odder is our stupid dumbfuck Senators are using his death as a reason to pass $60 billion in war aid to Ukraine. "Lets win one for Navalny" is their cry. Crazy. If Navalny wanted the USA To send $billions in weapons to Ukraine to kill Russians, then he deserved to be in Prison.
Too bad Ashli Babbitt didn't get that same chance.
Cause of death?
"Better they give everything back before it’s too late. Or we will take it back ourselves with maximum casualties for the enemy. Like Avdiivka.” ~ Dmitry Medvedev
Would you believe this? Refers to territories located in foreign countries (Ukraine and more). At least now they are pretty straightforward. This is no special military operation. This is a war of conquest. This is now confirmed by high officials. Suddenly, we don't get the usual propaganda about "Nazi" in Ukraine. Now it's something else.
Biden is correct — every package the Republicans are blocking in Congress is undermining our national security and allowing Russia to continue its massacre. This is Charles Lindberg and the American Firsters happy to let Britain go under in the Battle of Britain. But the Republicans don’t care.
"Navalny may turn out to be more dangerous as a martyr than a prisoner. Or not."
That's why most people outside of the US and West European propaganda bubble think that the CIA may well have killed him, but the Russian mob couldn't kill anybody in any prison in Russia and the CIA cannot possibly have any connections to an outfit as amoral as the Russian Mafia. The cui bono is so perfect for the CIA, right when this bill is stuck in Congress, but I don't really believe that cui bono proves anything, but it does raise worthwhile questions.
If you are wondering why I am so fixated on Navalny, it's because the CIA, from the end of WWII, nurtured the same kinds of ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine that Navalny tried to get started in Russia to little avail, as a thorn in the side of the USSR. That's all well and good, the USSR was a genuine threat, but what should have been done with these groups at the fall of the USSR is that they should have been put down, instead we nurtured them, now against Russia, feeding their sense of grievance, until they took control of Ukraine through a coup, well, most of Ukraine, a civil war still rages over the rest, and we used them to provoke war with Russia, which war, Lindsay Graham will happily tell you, is heavily in the interests of the United States. Or was thought to be before NATO's military prestige got destroyed.
Whaddya complaining about??? She got the full Michael Brown treatment.
Blogger wendybar said...
Too bad Ashli Babbitt didn't get that same chance.
Liberals are crying their eyes out over this guy but don't care about an American journalist killed by Zelensky.
Telling...
'This is the life Trump awaits in the new American Gulag. Except instead of reading 10 classical novels at a time, Donald will be forced to watch an endless parade of PRC ChiCom propaganda TikToks until he recants.'
Or reading your drivel. Enough to make a grown man weep for the stupidity of the country and how far we have fallen under liberals and their quest for the holy grail of communism.
Rich, the US started the civil war in Ukraine, almost exactly one decade ago today, and the US has been participating in that civil war ever since by providing one side with arms while Russia armed the other side. It's a pretty good feat to imagine that Kiev won the civil war and had control of all of the 1992 borders just because the US immediately recognized the leaders of a violent coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine, almost immediately.
Notice that there does not seem to be any insurgency against Russia in Crimea, for example, which simply defected to Russian control, even keeping most of their then current leaders. Apparently, when Ukraine annexed The Republic of Crimea by force in 1995, after Crimea had voted for independence after the collapse of the USSR, it didn't take.
Alexey Navalny
@navalny
9. If you replace "Trump" with "Navalny" in today's discussion, you will get an 80% accurate Kremlin's answer as to why my name can't be mentioned on Russian TV and I shouldn't be allowed to participate in any elections.
1:15 PM · Jan 9, 2021
https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347970317302591490
@Timofei in Vermont:
It must have taken synapses of steel for Tucker to endure Putin droning on and on about Ukraine being rightly Russian, while Vlad ignored the entire 20th century---when the USSR took over the Asian "Stans", Armenia and the Caucasus, the Baltics, and then sent tanks into Eastern Europe after WWII to take over what came to be known as "the East Bloc.
Not a whole lotta "history" involved in that unparalled bit of empire building!
What their rhetoric means is surrender to Putin.
Surrender to Putin? I wasn't aware we were at war with him. Or anything else that would require surrendering.
Surrender to Putin? I wasn't aware we were at war with him. Or anything else that would require surrendering.
Yeah, its weird the way the Establishment and the Neo-cons hate Putin and somehow think we're in a cold war with Russia. Putin hasn't done anything to the USA, all the tension has arisen from the USA actions.
We're the ones who pushed NATO's boundries to Russia's doorstep. We're the ones who meedled in the Ukraine and supported the Coup. We're the ones who are sactioning Russia and funneling massive amounts of arms to Ukraine prior to 2022. And we're the ones keeping the war going because we want to "weaken Russia" and "Kill Russkies".
Putin has done almost nothing to us. Which is why he's not my Enemy or Americas. Go challenge him to duel, and leave the rest of the USA out of it.
"There's "Mr. Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump looked 'really scary.'" Not the man, the "electoral agenda"?
One of Althouse's better space cadet comments. Bet Peggy Noonan is green with envy.
Mention Navalny and you'll get about 20 posts from Tim in Vermont. How much you think Putin pays him per post?
Navalny is a three-letter-agency-made hologram of bullshit.
Meanwhile, don't anyone dare mention the name Gonzalo Lira.
FJB.
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