Is Stefanie MArsh retarded, or does she really believe this stuff?
The cost of keeping Berezovsky, and his big mouth may be getting high. Too high for the British taxpayers and business.
Let me point out a couple of details in the pro-Putin article by Stefanie Marsh (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2156186.ece):
1) Marsh writes of "a Russian man known to M15...", but notice the number 1 instead of the letter I. A typing error? Perhaps, but it may betray more. Any Briton or friend of 007 movies would know how to pronounce the name of their intelligence service. Only someone (f. ex. a Russian) who knows the abbreviation from writing rather than from speech, might have thought of it as M 15 instead of MI 5;
2) Marsh writes: "We rang the Home Office...", but who were the "we"? The writer hardly addresses herself in a royal plural. Was it a group work?
3) Marsh writes of "Gary Kasparov" with one r, although all chess players know him as "Garry" (or, except for Anglosaxons, as "Garri" with an i instead of y) with two r's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov). Yet another spelling error in what is otherwise written in excellent English? This misspelling can, however, be found on many web sites - by a Greek (http://www.chess.gr/portraits/kasparov/kasparov.html), by a Russian (http://www.volokh.com/posts/1176577283.shtml and http://www.volokh.com/posts/1185689979.shtml), as well as by an Australian who worked four years in Russia (http://www.abc.net.au/sundayprofile/stories/s1335618.htm)... It appears to be Russian-influenced. Thanks to Google, we should be able to compare the ratio of similar misspellings in various languages: 1:50 in Russian (Гари: Гарри), 1:58 in German (Gari:Garri), but only 1:170 in Finnish. To count the ratio in English, however, seems to cause particular problems - the hits with "Gary" actually include many Garry's and Gari's. So I leave for others to test this method further.
But who is Stefanie Marsh? She has written at least ten articles (http://www.byliner.com/writer/?id=15183), which reveal her as an atheist and feminist, who spent his youth in the 1980s, became a fashion writer by the 1990s, understands German and spent some time as a stipendiate in a Berlin magazine... There is nothing very political in her biography, and she is certainly no investigative journalist, although she has written a couple of articles on British Muslims. Where did she now get this sudden interest in Russian affairs? In the readers' comments, one reader from Moscow recalls knowing Marsh from the past ("So this is what you're doing these days."). That reader was Chloe Arnold, a Moscow correspondent of RFE/RL, and a former BBC reporter, who also used to write to The Times (http://www.rferl.org/features/authors/arnold.asp). It may be no surprise, that she is one of those careless reporters who have spread the ridiculous myth of Chechens fighting in Afghanistan (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5605-7.cfm).
We do not know how Marsh and her assistants (those mysterious "we" in her article) got the idea of becoming suddenly experts on Russia, but last year she visited Moscow to report on the plight of women whose relatives had died in the Theatre Siege four years ealier. And just two weeks ago, on July 17th, The Times did publish another article by Marsh on Russian women, indicating that she may have revisited Moscow. Otherwise, her references to Russia seem to be based on discussions with Russian models and customers at London fur exhibitions and dinners, in one of which she even mentioned Boris Berezovsky among many other guests. Most probably, her interest in Russia arose from apolitical acquintances - until she ended up presented in one of Russia's main news programmes as the voice of The Times, and being quoted in hundreds of Russian, Serbian (http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1185818207/last-1185818207/Berezovsky+is+playing+us+(britfags),+and+it%92s+embarrassing), and other easily misled web sites, even in Britain (http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/2007/07/berezovsky-whos-playing-who.html) and America (http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=195486) - it remains to be seen, if the whole story gets as much publicity.
The good news is, that one of the last relatively free newspapers in Russia - the English-language Moscow Times, run the true story yesterday:
'Vesti' Designs Own Version of Front Page for Times of London
Moscow Times (02-08-2007)
State-run television channel Rossia displayed a fake version of Monday's issue of The Times of London on its news show "Vesti," featuring exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky on Monday.
Two pictures flanked the front page of the fake issue, one apparently showing Berezovsky and the other Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with the headline, "Berezovsky is playing us, and it's embarrassing."
The newspaper did run the article, by Stefanie Marsh, and under that very headline, but in the comment and opinion six-page pullout section rather than the paper's front page.
"In no way did the piece suggest that the shown image -- which was a collage -- was the actual issue of The Times newspaper that came out on Monday," Yulia Polipova, a "Vesti" spokeswoman, said Wednesday.
In response, The Times highlighted the fact that a personal opinion piece had been presented as news reporting.
"The image shown by 'Vesti' gives a completely incorrect representation of The Times front page," said Anoushka Healy, editorial communications director for the newspaper, in e-mailed comments.
Polipova flatly dismissed speculation in the Russian media that the image may have been ordered by the Kremlin. The article referred to Berezovsky's recently announced allegations that Scotland Yard police foiled a plot to kill him. Berezovsky said police had told him to leave Britain because his life was in danger.
During the week he was gone, police apprehended a man suspected of the plot at a Hilton hotel in central London, Berezovsky said.
In the article, Marsh criticizes Britain's decision to grant Berezovsky asylum status and suggests that he abuses the status by using his British base as a platform for an anti-Kremlin campaign to "destabilize Russia."
Moscow shares that view. Boris Timoshenko, a media analyst at the Glasnost Foundation, called the program's actions "idiotism," but stopped short of blaming the program's editors. "In current conditions, people understand what is expected of them," Timoshenko said, alluding to pressure from the Kremlin. The front page of Monday's bona fide Times led with an article about a shortage of court judges in Britain.