<http://www.exile.ru/2006-December-15/putins_poison.html>
Putin's Poison
Is it just a coincidence that another truth-seeking journalist has fallen ill in Vladimir Putin's increasingly-authoritarian Russia? The evidence says that it's not a coincidence at all.
This past weekend, eXile editor Yasha Levine embarked on a daring investigative-journalism piece to expose the horrors of platzkart, the infamous 3rd class Russian train compartments, which his bold piece compares to "The horrors of the GULAG."
Apparently, someone in the Kremlin did not want the truth about platzkart to get out. On Mr. Levine's ride out to Izhevsk, a "friendly" platzkart passenger just happened to offer a piece of his vobly, or dried fish. Naturally, Mr. Levine took the fish and ate it, because that's what anyone in his situation would do. Within 12 hours, Mr. Levine suffered symptoms of food poisoning, including stomach cramps and diarrhea. Preliminary reports suggest that the vobly was infected with a highly-secret Russian poison called "Gavno-211." But despite their evil designs, Mr. Levine could not be silenced, as this issue's cover story clearly shows.
How very clever and devious of the Kremlin to take advantage of Mr. Levine's Westernized gullibility; how savage to mercilessly poison him with a "Gavno-211" isotope, which FSB agents likely injected into an irresistibly appetizing vobly, a vobly which no man in his right mind could possibly pass up when offered. Mmm, imagine the dried yellowish scales, the brittle fins, the hollowed-out eye sockets...imagine it, and imagine trying to say, "No thank you, I'm not hungry now." Impossible.
It's time now for even the worst Putin apologist to own up to the truth: the Kremlin is full of bad people who do bad things. And they're not even shy about it. For the "mysterious" food poisoning of Mr. Levine comes just as the world is gripped by the suspicious poisoning death of Kremlin critic and ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who accused the Kremlin of poisoning him and others, including Ukraine's pro-American president Viktor Yuschenko.
True, there is no concrete evidence yet that the FSB or Mr. Putin is behind the poison attacks--but there is plenty of reason for us to accuse him nonetheless. That's because when we accuse him, it makes us sound like a serious newspaper on a moral crusade. Besides, just consider the evidence: Mr. Putin is Russian, and he has shifty Russian facial features. He is not very pro-American, which already makes him a suspect. Litvinenko, Politkovskaya and Yuschenko are all pro-American. And they were all poisoned. Do we really need to provide any more evidence than that? Duh! Of course Putin did it.
Besides, many of Putin's critics, especially those who live in America or our lapdogs in England, say Putin is guilty. It's not just us Americans, you know! Our lapdogs--they're woofing the same thing. It's like, who you gonna believe, guys like us, or the guy in the Kremlin who probably doesn't even have a DVD set of Arrested Development? I mean, what kind of human being is he?!
It is time to face the obvious and unpleasant truth. The Kremlin is hatching an evil plot to control and destroy its critics, and this plot has now hatched its evil chickenness in our newspaper. Mr. Levine set out to write the truth about platzkart, a truth that the Kremlin did not want the world to know. By the time he got off the train in Izhevsk, he was so ill that he couldn't even go to the local disco to meet Izhevsk's dyevushki.
No one is safe. Today, Yasha Levine has diarrhea; tomorrow, you, reader, may die in a nuclear inferno. Let's stop this madness before it stops us.
-- Andy