Larisa Alexandrovna (born December 7, 1971 in Odessa, Ukraine) is a feminist journalist, poet, and essayist. She is particularly known for her reporting, with John Byrne, for The Raw Story. Part of the Neo-Modernist movement, Alexandrovna uses her patronymic as her pen name instead of her surname. She currently works as Managing News Editor of Raw Story, and contributes opinion and columns to blogs such as the Huffington Post, online publications such as Alternet, and has had her work references in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Newsweek among others.

Larisa Alexandrovna was born to Aleksandr Yurovich and Klavdia Borisovna, both Ukrainian Jews, in the Ukraine while it was part of the Soviet regime. During the early 1970s, Alexandrovna and family moved around various European cities until an entry visa could be acquired into the US. She has lived in New York City since 1999.

Her influences include Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Maureen Dowd, and Naomi Klein.

Selected works

Articlese of Note

See also Election 2004
Immediately after the contentious 2004 Presidential election came to a close, issues of voter disenfranchisement, dirty tricks, ballot tampering, and outright fraud were being reported across the country. The US media and the public, however quickly moved into debating values voters.

Few journalists continued to explore legitimate questions surrounding the election results. Alexandrovna, along with Bob Fitrakis, Greg Palast, Brad Friedman, and Mark Crispin Miller, among a handful of others, however, kept digging anomalies and complaints in Ohio and Florida.

Alexandrovna uncovered a case of ballot tampering, intimidation, and recount fraud in Clermont County, Ohio. In an article titled Ohio recount volunteers allege electoral tampering, legal violations and possible fraud, published on January 26, 2005, volunteers provided documented testimony and video footage of stickers on ballots as well as other issues during the 2004 recount:

"These volunteers, observing the recount on behalf of the Greens, Libertarians and Democrats, assert that during the Dec. 14, 2004 hand recount they noticed stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards oval, whereas the Bush/Cheney oval seemed to be "colored in." Some witnesses state that beneath the stickers, the Kerry/Edwards oval was selected. The opti-scan ballots were then fed into the machines after the hand recount."

The article prompted Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) to request an FBI investigation.. Although never fully investigated by the FBI, Alexandrovna's three month investigation was cited two years later in an article by Robert F. Kenney Jr. in the June 01 2006 Rolling Stone entitled "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?", he stated his categorical belief that the Republican party stole the 2004 American presidential election.

In another investigative piece on election issues, Alexandrovna followed up on a research done by Bradblog into an election commission set up to review issues and address reforms. Alexandrovna detailed that the Baker-Carter Commission on Federal Election Reform, named after its two co-chairs – James A. Baker III and Jimmy Carter – was comprised of phony election advocacy groups, corporate interests, and skewed discussions away from important issues.

"Serious questions of conservative partisanship have surfaced surrounding an electoral reform commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and erstwhile Secretary of State James Baker… The Carter Center denies any involvement with the Baker-Carter Commission on Federal Election Reform even though they are on much of its literature. Carter stepped down from the center in March… As revealed earlier by Brad Friedman of Bradblog.com, The American Center for Voting Rights appeared on the election reform scene less than a month ago. It is led by GOP operative and election attorney Mark F. ("Thor") Hearne who also managed to appear as the only voting rights group to Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) recent House Administrative Committee hearings on Ohio voting issues during the 2004 election. ACVR is not, however, the only controversial entity to appear as either a witness or a panelist before the Baker-Carter Commission."

Election 2004

• Ohio volunteers allege electoral tampering, 1/26/2005
• Director of Florida voting contractor chaired companies linked to apartheid, 12/13/2004
  

Domestic Politics

See also Real ID Act

• Immigration bill sparks furor among some House Republicans, 2/25/2005
  
• Dems locked out of debate on sweeping and controversial REAL ID Act, 5/28/2005
  
• Immigration memo intended for Rove ends up on a Democrats fax, 9/19/2005
  

See also: Resolution of Inquiry, Iraq War, Downing Street Memos, Yellowcake Forgeries, and Plame Affair

• Resolution of Inquiry: Coalition of citizen groups, 5/25/3005
• The Unofficial War: US and British Air Strikes in Iraq, 6/26/2005
  
• Timeline - Senaor Pat Roberts (R - Kansas), 8/11/2005
  
• Judge rules in favor of holding public hearings on detainee abuse, 8/16/2005

Iraq War

See also: Iraq War, Yellowcake Forgeries, and Plame Affair

Series of articles re pre-war intelligence, Ledeen meetings, Plame

• "Senate Intelligence chairman quietly 'fixed' intelligence, and diverted blame from White House over Iraq"
• "Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats"
• "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
• "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq..."
• "Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels"
• "American (Ledeen) who advised Pentagon says he wrote for magazine that found forged Niger documents"
• "Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk (Feith) stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence"

Articles on Iran

• "Outed CIA officer (Plame) was working on Iran..."
• "On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group"

Plamegate

• "Cheney aide cooperating with CIA outing probe, sources say"
• "Second Cheney aide cooperating in leak probe, those close to case say"
• "Bolton's chief of staff gave information on outed agent to Libby, lawyers involved in leak case say"
• "National Security Adviser was Woodward's source, attorneys say"
• "Senate Intelligence Committee stalling pre-war intelligence report"
• "Rove said cooperating in CIA leak inquiry"
• Associated Press plagiarizes Larisa's work
• Social Security "fright mail" targeting seniors helped fund GOP leader's trips to UK, Asia, shared byline John Byrne,2/28/05

Interviews of note

• The Battle Goes On
• Dictatorial Flavor

Nuking the Spin: Scott Ritter series

• First Installment
• Second Installment
• Third Installment

Conversations with Machiavelli's Ghost: Michael Ledeen series

• First Installment
• Second Installment
• Third Installment

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, see also: Plame Affair

Note: it is in the Wilson interview that Alexandrovna suggests the involvement of John Bolton in the Plame leak:

"Bolton’s senior advisor and sometimes chief of staff, Frederick Fleitz, was on loan from the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center. During a Senate Foreign Relations round table discussion, Fleitz described one of his duties to the Bolton office as '...liaison function for the Agency and Mr. Bolton.' This puts Fleitz or might put Fleitz inside Valerie’s circle."

In talk show appearances, Alexandrovna has described the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame as operating in two parts: the front-end sell and the back-end leak. The sell, she argues, is from WHIG to Judith Miller to media and press. The back-end leak is from Michael Ledeen, John Bolton, Fredrick Fleitz to State Department.

• U. S. Army Colonel Michael Pheneger

Articles about Alexandrovna

Notable quotes

• "We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience."^*

• "I think the Internet is to MSM what TV was to yellow journalism"^*

• "Do you believe this is simply trickle-down Machiavellianism in much the same way that Communism trickled down as an aberration of its original intent?"^*

• "Perhaps Condi would have made a more timely cameo in New Orleans had a Chevron tanker caught fire. Jane Crow seems to be just as willing as old Jim was."^*

• "I say we pardon the turkeys, but not our elected officials." ^*

• " If you consider, for example, that democracy is much like a religion then 9/11 is akin to finding the body of God." ^*

• "Watching our entire country implode under the self-serving ideologies of those so eager to claim everything but the Constitution as their guide leaves at least half of us without a home. We may live on the same land, but our nation and the citizens of that nation have been exiled into a national wilderness."^*

• "If you are going to read my mind, can you do it accurately?"

• "Fair and balanced is doublespeak for bite-out-chunks-of-truth until only irrelevancy is left, byte-sized, entertaining irrelevancy." ^*

• "If man was devolving into a psychotic pit of rotted plasma, Rove would be the Alpha of such grime." ^*

Notes

External links

• The Raw Story: Larisa Alexandrova staff profile
• Larisa Alexandrovna's Blog, Huffington Post
• Alexandrovna on The Weekend Interview Show, December 10, 2005.
• Alexandrovna on Voices of Our World, April, 2006.
• Alexandrovna on Ian Masters, April, 2006.

1971 births | Feminist writers | Modernism | Ukrainian journalists | Ukrainian writers | American bloggers | Living people