Being Taken In

I have to admit being duped by the scheme to make it appear that Arkady Babchenko was dead.  I didn’t like it very much, whatever the reasons.  The Ukrainians said it was to foil a plot against his life by somebody Russian.  OK, that was a good cause.  But they have been watching too much television if they believe that would work for very long, especially after the press conference yesterday.

I will never understand the Russians for killing their dissidents.  The Chinese just isolate them and put them in jail for periods of time, tamper down their rhetoric, and make their lives miserable.  That seems slightly more humane, though just barely, because they include family members in this harassment.  But killing dissidents usually makes more dissidents