November 13, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 13 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Uninsurable Russia

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Another Russian Crucified for Patriotism

(3)  Ryzhkov on the Berlin Wall

(4)  Kiselyov on the Berlin Wall

(5)  Russia and its Miraculous Flying Phone

NOTE:  Russia is that special country where every day is Friday the 13th.

EDITORIAL: Uninsurable Russia

EDITORIAL

Uninsurable Russia

Streetwise Professor tips us to a recent report from Reuters which concludes that the Kremlin’s neo-Soviet nationalization of resources has made the country “uninsurable.”  The reports states:

Madagascar, Ecuador, Kyrgystan and others have also seen examples of expropriation or effectively forced renegotiation that have worried insurers. However, in some other countries — such as Brazil or South Africa — a slight rise in leftist rhetoric has had less impact on premiums. The industry is particularly concerned over risks in Russia, where extractive projects have become almost uninsurable.

This is what Vladimir Putin has done to his country. It is uninsurable  (which means that normal business can’t be done there) and it is mentioned over and over again in the same breath as Ecuador.  And in fact, it makes Ecuador look good by comparison.  Putin’s Russia is degenerating by the minute into a banana republic, except that instead of fruit Russia has natural gas.

EDITORIAL: Another Russian crucified for Patriotism

EDITORIAL

Another Russian crucified for Patriotism

Just like the Soviet Union before it, Russia has a barbaric practice of crucifying its patriots.  When Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova tried to expose corruption and torture in Chechnya, they were murdered.  This practice dates far back into Russian history when the likes of Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn were similarly persecuted for trying to keep their country from falling into the abyss.

And now it’s happened again.  

When police officer Alexei Dymovksy (pictured above) found himself unable to resolve massive corruption by working with his superior, he posted a YouTube video and made a  direct appeal to Vladimir Putin.  The result was predictable:  As it’s own little gift to the world in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dymovsky was immediately fired.  This is a man who risks his life on a daily basis for a couple of hundred dollars in monthly wages, perhaps earning $2.50/hour if he is lucky, and who is reaching out in desperation to curtail a practice of corruption which is documented by international surveys, such as those from Transparency International, as being among the very worst on the planet.  Putin ought to pin a medal on this man and make him a cabinet minster. 

Instead, he’s fired.

Ryzhkov on the Berlin Wall

Former Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who ended the Cold War and forever ended the threat of a global nuclear holocaust, has a simple answer for those who continue to blame him for the collapse of the Soviet Union and for “giving away” the former Soviet satellite states to the West. “What did I give away?” Gorbachev asks. “I gave Poland to the Poles and Czechoslovakia to the Czechs and Slavs.” And as it turned out, Russia went to the Russians as well.

Gorbachev never tires of reminding people of his political program at the time that the Berlin Wall fell: “We made an agreement [with Western leaders] to build a free Europe, a unified system of security … that would serve the interests of Germans, Russians, Europe and the whole world.” That is the principle value of perestroika, glasnost and Gorbachev’s “new thinking”: Every individual was given the chance to determine his own path. The only problem is that everyone chose different paths and traveled down differing roads over the past two decades.

Now, 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell Nov. 9, 1989, we see how much Europe and Asia have expanded and become stronger, while Russia has declined and continues to lag behind.

Kiselyov on the Berlin Wall

Former NTV pundit Yevgeny Kiselyov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and this is a good time to look at the lessons we learned from it.

I recall how I walked into work one day about six weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. A co-worker who was always joking around called out to me as I entered the room, “Have you heard the latest news? There was a revolution in Romania.” “Stop trying to play me for a fool,” I snapped back. “I was just in Romania, and there is no way a revolution could take hold there.” My colleague was offended. “I’m serious,” he said. “They really had a revolution. The army switched over to the demonstrators, and Ceausescu fled Bucharest on Dec. 22.”

That left me speechless.

Russia and its Miraculous Flying Phone

Yulia Latyina, writing in the Moscow Times:

In October, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Rusnano head Anatoly Chubais visited the Mikron factory in Zelenograd, located 37 kilometers outside Moscow, where the newest Russian 180-nanometer microchips are being produced. An agreement was signed there stipulating that if the state invests another 16 billion rubles ($556 million), the plant can begin producing cutting-edge 90-nanometer chips.

Over the last decade, microchip circuit spans have halved every two years. On Sept. 15, two weeks before Putin’s visit to the company, Intel Corporation announced a new 32-nanometer chip. Almost all major companies currently use 45-nanometer chips. That means that by the time Mikron begins producing 90-nanometer chips in four years, Intel will probably be working with chip circuits as small as 5 to 10 nanometers.

That would be like if the fellows at high-tech firm Sitronics showed Putin a newly developed fighter bomber with a top speed of only 100 miles per hour and promised that they could double the speed if the state pumped another $200 million into the program.

The guys at Mikron were not fired on the spot.

November 11, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 11 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:   The Fall of Yandex

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putin’s Russia Fails Again

(3)  Narcotics and the Russian Ostrich

(4)  Russia Races Backwards

(5)  Russia cures Swine Flu!

(6)  Oleg Kozlovsky’s Wedding Album

NOTE:  Oleg Kozlovsky reports that leading human rights activists Lev Ponomaryov and Lyudmila Alexeeva are being evicted by the Russian government from their offices in yet another nail in the coffin of democracy in Russia.

EDITORIAL: The Fall of Yandex

EDITORIAL

The Fall of Yandex

We’ve repeatedly exposed the absurd neo-Soviet lie that Russia has a viable Internet society.  In fact, virtually nobody in Russia has the means to access the Internet, and those who manage to get there find only a ravaged wasteland of neo-Soviet terror and repression. But the Kremlin is still not satisfied, and now it has moved against the Yandex search engine, Russia’s Google, forcing it to shut down one of its most powerful features, its blog traffic ranking. 

This wonderful feature gave bloggers the power to generate national attention when they reported important news, and generate it at the grass-roots level through the democracy of simply counting web hits (in the words of one leading Russian blogger “the ranking is created by a robot on the basis of objective parameters”).  It gave bloggers the ability to turn a wave of opposition into a tsunami, and so of course the Kremlin simply could not tolerate it.

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia Fails, and then it Fails some More

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Russia Fails, and then it Fails some More

If you had to name three sports where Russia is supposed to reign supreme, they would be tennis, ice hockey and chess.  Yet the Russia governed by Vladimir Putin has suffered stunning, humiliating defeats in all three areas recently.  In this way, we see sports as being the perfect microcosm of Putin’s larger failure to govern his nation.

Narcotics and the Russian Ostrich

Open Democracy reports:

President Medvedev is so alarmed by Russia’s spiralling drug problem that he recently called it ‘a threat to Russia’s national security’. For the head of state to adopt the language of the defence of the realm in this context, rather than social protection, may seem odd. But the words were chosen carefully. The message Russia’s government is conveying is that the country is up against sinister forces in its fight against drugs.

Russia’s drugs crisis is real enough: between 2000-05 the number of drug users grew by 400%. Between 2000-05 the number of drug users grew by 400%. Even official figures reckon the number of addicts as between 2-2.5 million, some 2% of the population, while independent estimates put the figure at closer to 3-5 million. Unlike the rest of the world, in Russia, the HIV epidemic shows no signs of slowing down.

Russia races Backwards

Thomas S. Axworthy, the chair for the study of democracy at Queen’s University in Canada, writing in the country’s Finanicial Post:

Twenty years ago [last Monday], one of the twentieth century’s most glorious events unfolded to an astonished world — the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989. The holes punched in that wall also punched holes in the Soviet Union’s European Empire, and ultimately in the Communist Party’s empire in the Soviet Union itself.

But, rather than being a time of jubilation, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall inspires instead a feeling of lost opportunity as Russia races backwards toward authoritarianism and the free world does its best to avert its gaze.

Russia has cure for Swine Flu!

The next time you are wondering how Russia can have such a horrifyingly high mortality rate, despite being able to launch a rocket into space, that it does not rank in the top 125 nations of the world for adult lifespan and loses up to 1 million people from its population every year, just reflect on this news report about how a Russian government doctor is advising his citizens to respond to the outbreak of swine flu:

According to Russian doctors, spicy Indian curries could prevent swine flu and common cold just like any prescribed medicine available with the chemists. “You can strengthen immunity by consuming spicy foods like curries, as spices like turmeric, ginger and zeera also posses excellent therapeutic effect,” an unnamed official of Moscow city sanitary and anti-epidemics committee was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

According to PTI, as panic grips Muscovites over the spread of seasonal influenza and swine flue in the eastern parts of the country and neighbouring Ukraine, authorities are focusing on prevention and have ordered the use of masks at work place. Besides the intake of spicy food, people have been advised to consume raw onions and garlic, which also are said to contain good anti-viral properties.

Oleg Kozlovsky’s Wedding Photos

That Oleg Kozlovsky is one cool dude, and he has married a fabulous babe. Some postcards from his wedding album. Chew on these, Mr. Putin:  Jail him illegally as many times as you like, he just goes on.

Going to the chapel and they're gonna get married!

November 9, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY NOVEMBER 9 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Obama teaches Russia a Lesson

(2)  EDITORIAL:  McFaul Speaks?

(3)  Russian Nazis on the Warpath

(4)  Not since the Time of Stalin

(5)  Petulant Putin, Pouting

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the mighty Pajamas Media megablog deals with Russia’s attack on Poland in September with nuclear missiles.  Didn’t hear about it? Barack Obama sure didn’t tell you, did he?

EDITORIAL: Obama Teaches Russia a Lesson

EDITORIAL

Obama Teaches Russia a Lesson

Obama, famous on YouTube for flyswatting says: "This year was a tough one. More and more problems every day." Source: Ellustrator.

Last Tuesday must have been rather disturbing for the denizens of the Russian Kremlin.

American voters helped the Republican Party adminster a “humiliating” beat-down of the Democrats in gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, both states Barack Obama easily carried last year in his presidential bid.  The humiliation for Obama was especially intense in New Jersey, an overwhemlingly “blue” state that hadn’t seen Republicans in the statehouse in ages, a state Obama won in a landslide and where he campaigned actively for the Democratic incumbent.  And the Republicans didn’t just win, they won in absolutely dominating, blowout fashion.  It seems that reports of the GOP’s demise were greatly exaggerated.

These results would have the Kremlin heads spinning for two different reasons.

EDITORIAL: McFaul Speaks?

EDITORIAL

McFaul Speaks?

Michael McFaul

Here’s something you don’t see every day, a classic bit of Internet adventure.  Someone claiming to be Michael McFaul, Barack Obama’s chief Russia advisor, has posted two comments to Oleg Kozlovsky’s Facebook page under a post which Oleg also blogged in which he discussed a report quoting McFaul in the Kommersant newspaper; Kommersant reported that McFaul had said the U.S. would back away from pressuring Russian on human rights.  On Facebook (screenshot after the jump for those without Facebook accounts) “Michael McFaul” wrote:

Kommersant grossly misquoted me. See Interfax transcript if you want to see what I really said. And anyone who knows anything about my thinking would be suspicious of such an assessment of my views.

LR founder and publisher Kim Zigfeld has intiated a little dialogue with “McFaul” using our Facebook account, for those who are Facebook members and wish to follow it, for what it is worth.  We’ve previously discussed McFaul’s alleged appeasing statements to Kommersant .  Obviously, they tended to seriously undermine the impetus to stand up to Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship, and although McFaul claims not to have made them there is scant evidence of either he or Barack Obama saying anything to the contrary, directly challenging Putin on human rights, since Obama came to power.  In other words, perhaps what’s most troubling about the McFaul quote was that it was credible, not whether it was actually true or not.

Russian Nazis on the Warpath

Paul Goble reports:

Those taking part in the Russian March in Moscow yesterday – an officially authorized demonstration which organizers claimed attracted 7,000 people but which observers said included only about 700 – were given written instructions on how to acquire guns so that they would be able to defend what nationalist speakers called “the Russian order.”

Such calls in the increasingly overheated atmosphere of the Russian capital given the availability of guns of all kinds there are inherently provocative and could prompt their opponents among non-Russians to arm themselves in response, provide a justification for the authorities to crack down on the nationalists, or, quite possibly, do both.

And while there is as yet no Russian media reporting that Russian nationalist groups who organized similar marches on the Day of National Unity in dozens of places across the Russian Federation handed out the same advice in the same way, it is very probable that the participants received a similar message in one way or another.

Not since the Time of Stalin

An editorial in the Washington Post:

MURDERS OF human rights activists in Russia have been happening with such frequency that some will be tempted to shrug at the brutal slaying on Sunday of Maksharip Aushev, who campaigned against abuses by the security forces in the Caucasian republic of Ingushetia. Mr. Maksharip was driving on a major highway, in broad daylight, when a car pulled up beside him and delivered a fusillade of bullets. His funeral came two months after that of Zarema Sadulayeva, the head of a children’s charity in neighboring Chechnya, and her husband, who were shot and stuffed in a car trunk. Those murders, in turn, followed the July 15 killing of Natalya Estemirova, Chechnya’s most prominent human rights activist.

Petulant Putin, Pouting

Streetwise Professor rips Mr. Putin a new one:

GM has finally come to its senses and rejected the sale of Opel to Canadian autoparts maker Magna–and its Russian partner (initially Sberbank, but eventually Avtogaz).  GM initially agreed to the deal when faced with an existential crisis in the early part of this year; its “choice” of partner was largely driven by Germany’s conditioning of financial support for the deal on GM selling to the Canadian-Russian tandem.  GM got cold feet in the summer, as its bankruptcy/government takeover and cash-for-clunkers gave it a financial respite.  It was explicitly reluctant to get involved in a deal that could lead to the loss of its technology and intellectual property to a potential Russian competitor; no doubt it was also reluctant (though it did not say so publicly) at the prospect of getting enmeshed (as a minority partner) in the financial and business machinations of Oleg Deripaska, victor in the bloody aluminum wars, unscrupulous businessman, and arguably the world’s largest insolvent.  Moreover, recent statements by the EC called into question Germany’s ability to condition its subsidies to favor factories located in Germany at the expense of others in Belgium, Spain, and the UK.

The decision of GM’s board to maintain control of Opel touched off howls of protest from Germany–and Vladimir Putin.  Putin was outraged that GM would act in such a high-handed way.  A deal is a deal, after all–if it works in Russia’s favor.  Putin made heavy hints that Russia would explore legal options.

Cry. Me. A. River.

November 6, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 6 CONTENTS

(1)  An Open Letter to George Soros

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Lunatic

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s New Iron Curtain

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Flatulent Russia

(5)  Putin Checkmates Obama on Iran

NOTE:  Oleg Kozlovsly blogs about his latest illegal arrest as the neo-Soviet crackdown on civil society continues in Putin’s Russia.

NOTE:  Ariel Cohen has an extensive analysis of the Russian economy and Russian hatred of the United States over at Heritage.

An Open Letter to George Soros

George Soros
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Soros,

It’s no fun, of course, for a writer to get rejected. I’ve been rejected plenty of times by the blogs where I am the Russia columnist, American Thinker and Pajamas Media, and although (most of the time) they were right to do it that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.  But getting rejected by George Soros is a whole different matter.  Probably, it’s about as low as you can get.  This is how it happened to me, as if you didn’t know.

EDITORIAL: Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

EDITORIAL

Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

Try to find out what the “Russia Institute” is, we dare you.

The Moscow Times, publishing an op-ed piece by the “head” of the Russia Institute, one Gleb Pavlovsky (pictured, left; scary, huh?), sure doesn’t give you any information.

Google it, and you won’t find out anything more.  You’ll find Pavlovsky, but you’ll find him at something called “Russia House,” not “Russia Institute.”  Russia Institute is nothing more than an obscure entry on his obscure resume, which is loaded with lots of other obscure entries.

EDITORIAL: Russia’s New Iron Curtain

EDITORIAL

Russia’s New Iron Curtain

Polls appear to illustrate a rise in nationalism in Russia. While only 26 percent of respondents in 1991 said Russia should be for Russians, 54 percent said the same in the recent poll. The two polls also saw a 10 percentage point rise to 47 percent of respondents who said it is natural for Russia to have an empire. Fifty-eight percent of Russians in the new poll agreed that it is a great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists.

– The Moscow Times, November 3, 2009

Last week we carried a report from the New York Times that documented the Putin administration’s efforts to choke off the flow of information from Russian research institutions to the West.  No thinking person could fail to appreciate the disturbing echoes of this pathetic country’s Soviet past, especial when remembering that the nation is ruled by a proud KGB spy.

How long , we cannot help but wonder, will it be before the Putin government slaps the same sort of draconian Iron-Curtain controls on Russian citizens that is is now imposing on information? Not long, we think.

EDITORIAL: Flatulent Russia

EDITORIAL

Flatulent Russia

Hear that hissing sound? It’s Russia. They’ve sprung a leak.

Russian gas production fell a stunning 17% in the first three quarters of this year, and gas exports plunged even further, a whopping 21%.  Naturally, with sales in freefall, the price and the revenue Russia received from sales of natural gas also dropped through the floor (to the sickening tune of 50%).  Oil production and exports were up slightly, but nowhere near enough to even remotely offset the catastrophic collapse of the gas market. The Russian stock market is down over 11% in the past two weeks as these horrifying revelations became known.

None of this was a suprise. 

Putin checkmates Obama on Iran

Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, writing on the History News Network:

President Obama’s decision to abandon the plan to deploy a missile defense system in Europe shocked many analysts in the United States as well as our eastern European allies who were counting on the shield to protect them from the threat of Russian missiles. Perhaps the only one who was not surprised was the political chess grandmaster Vladimir Putin.

I did not understand the game that Putin was playing until a chance meeting two years ago with an Israeli who had just returned from a meeting at the Kremlin. At the time, the United States and its European allies were pushing for stronger sanctions against Iran at the United Nations and the Russians, as they had up to that point, refused to go along and threatened to veto any Security Council resolution that would have any teeth. The Russians were also in the process of completing construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran, which further undermined the campaign to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.