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Radley Balko | December 5, 2006

Cathy Young examines whether Vladimir Putin's "good heart" is capable of murdering political opponents.

Comments

D.A. Ridgely|12.5.06 @ 7:56AM|#

So, on the one hand, them Ruskies are still sneaky but, on the other hand, at least the next few James Bond movies won't all have to deal with drug dealers and terrorists.

|12.5.06 @ 9:21AM|#

I haven't read the article yet, but I'm putting money on the ol' standard: give us an equal view of both sides, but in the end, talk about how stupid all of them really are, whilst never coming to any sort of conclusion or positing any argument. Garsh, I love Cathy Young! Now, I'm off to read the article and see how I fared...

|12.5.06 @ 9:36AM|#

Well, you don't want Cathy to be too outspoken in directly blaming Putin for killing his opponents, she might be next.

|12.5.06 @ 9:50AM|#

Actually, Cathy's getting better at taking a position. Her problem now is that her articles are much shorter than they should be for the subjects she's tackling.

And I wouldn't use the word "nefarious" unless I was making fun of somebody

|12.5.06 @ 10:31AM|#

I don't understand all the anti-Cathy Young animus. Her writing seems fine to me, and this article was an enyojable read.

|12.5.06 @ 10:34AM|#

By the way, "enyojable" means related to the Greek god Enyo ;)

|12.5.06 @ 10:37AM|#

Actually, I don't get all the anti-Young complaints, either. I spend most of my time not liking either side (or the idea that there are only two sides) of various debates myself. And holding back on the polemics is a nice change of pace from the usual absolute certainty that people seem to have about every topic.

thoreau|12.5.06 @ 10:46AM|#

Well, sometimes I do have a problem with her columns, but this isn't one of them so there's no point in hashing that out here.

All I'll say is that this is one topic where I wouldn't blame her if she had decided to be wishy-washy. I mean, look what's happened to the last two people to be outspoken on these matters?

|12.5.06 @ 11:54AM|#

Polonium is not all that unavailable. It's found in antistatic brushes that are commonly sold. Granted, you'd need to be careful to extract the Polonium, as well as a whole lot of those brushes, but it's doable even without the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal.

|12.5.06 @ 12:13PM|#

She lays out and weighs the evidence, which is not conclusive, but seems to lean towards the likelihood the Russian government was involved, concluding that it's "not that far fetched." Show me where she says something like, "on the one hand, Putin is really a swell fellow, an ally in the war on terror the U.S. shouldn't dare to rub the wrong way."

Good article, Ms. Young.

|12.5.06 @ 12:20PM|#

CIS (russia) doesn't make polonium 210 anymore if the IAEA is to be believed which regularly inspects russias nuclear facilities. So the source becomes a question as well. There are only 4 known NPT nuclear powers. North Korea, Pakistan, India and some country called Israel. Presumably you could rule out Pakistan and North Korea giving polonium to the russians but russia has good relations with India and the russian mob recently took over a key position in the Israeli cabinet in the defense ministry and Israel is a "western" power that has zero problem with assasination of its opponents though generally not through poison. Its also possible he poisoned himself. And Cathy Young sucks.

Deus ex Machina|12.5.06 @ 2:21PM|#

Interesting view on the actual effectiveness of Polonium as a poison: http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm.

|12.5.06 @ 2:25PM|#

I'm one of the folks who often chuckles at Ms Young's "on this hand, there's this, on the other, there's that" schtick, but I thought this article was pretty good.

|12.5.06 @ 2:26PM|#

I don't understand all the anti-Cathy Young animus.

Actually, I don't get all the anti-Young complaints, either.

I like - and have mentioned so in previous posts - Cathy's penchant for even-handedness and deference. She writes well and is usually an easy read. She's very informative and focused. But her approach is also a bit predictable and formulaic.

But where many writers who try to show both sides will come down to a firm position, Cathy often doesn't. Thus her conlusions (sans solid position come) can come across as weak.

Remember, this is a site devoted to an ideology whose adherents often pride themselves on iconoclasm. Many of the most vocal Cathy-critics are a bit on the agressive side already. For the most part, I don't mind her approach. And some of the criticism has been downright unfair.

Still, writers with an easy-to-spot style are often ripe for ridicule.

|12.5.06 @ 3:06PM|#

madpad - too even-handed, too easy of a read, too formulaic.

I can tell she's an intelligent woman, and could probably destroy me in just about any debate (not that that's very hard for most people), but I just don't get a lot of substance from many of her articles. From the facts, yes, but she could write a pure research paper and present facts which I could then make up my own mind about.

It just seems that she's writing so as to not offend anyone, which is most likely a virtue in polite conversation, but is a little vapid when I'm reading an article which I would normally assume to have some argument embedded within.

And I know I probably can't be considered a vocal Cathy-critic, but for the record, I am not aggressive in my postings, for the most part.

Actually, I find it funny that thoreau seems to be such a Cathy-phobe when he, himself, comes across as rather wishy-washy at times. But then yet, thoreau (since I'm talking about you, I may as well address you :P) also chastises Mr Bailey for being, at times, opinionated in his writings.

But I will agree with thoreau (if I'm not misrepresenting your position, kind sir) that Mr Sullum is an excellent writer - I'll even go so far as to say he's my favourite of the fine Reason bunch!

thoreau|12.5.06 @ 4:18PM|#

OK, since the issue is being discussed:

The problem is not that she's even-handed. That's fine. It's that she has a habit of digging up yet another "culture war" story and then talking about how dumb both sides are. Yeah, we get it, the culture wars are dumb and neither side looks much better than the other. I don't disagree, but I don't see the point in constantly striving to find some idiot to balance out some other idiot. It seems kind of repetitive.

Also, it can be rather dangerous. If you make a habit of finding some idiot to point to, you could wind up arguing with strawmen.

thoreau|12.5.06 @ 4:43PM|#

In other words, even-handedness is much more interesting when the issue is complicated. When the issue is yet another culture wars slapfight, it gets tedious to be reminded yet again that for every idiot there is an equal and opposite idiot rooting for the other team.

And, as I said before, if your writing focuses on idiots then you could easily make use of strawmen.

|12.5.06 @ 6:02PM|#

Ha, didn't I say I wasn't aggressive right before I made some personal observations about thoreau?

That's funny.

But it wasn't a dis, just an observation, bueno? ;)

|12.6.06 @ 10:04AM|#

Does this mean there will now be an international War on Antistatic Brushes?

|12.6.06 @ 9:40PM|#

Thoreau's comments on Cathy Young are so predictably balanced.