Brutal Humilation for Russia In Iraq

After siding with Sadaam Hussein against America in the Iraq war, attempting to play off Iraqi nationalism, the Iraqis have now brutally bitten the Russian hand that tried to feed them, seizing Russian hostages and cruelly spurning the Kremlin’s frantic attempt at diplomacy and showing how utterly insane Russia’s policy has been in Iraq all along. As the Moscow Times reports (relying on the AP wire):

CAIRO, Egypt — An al-Qaida-linked group posted a web video Sunday showing the graphic killings of three Russian Embassy workers abducted earlier this month in Iraq.

An accompanying statement by the Mujahedin Shura Council, an umbrella organization linking seven insurgent groups including al-Qaida in Iraq, said all four Russians were killed.

The 1 1/2 minute video, posted on an Islamic web site that frequently airs militant messages, showed two blindfolded men beheaded and the shooting of a third man.

In the footage, two men clad in black and wearing black ski masks shout “God is great!” before beheading the first man. Then one militant appears standing over the decapitated body of a second victim in a pool of blood, with the head placed on top of the body.

Both beheadings appear in a closed room with white walls. The shooting appears outdoors in what looked like an alley between buildings.

The footage was stamped with the logo of al-Qaida.

“God’s verdict has been carried out on the Russian diplomats … in revenge for the torture, killing and expulsion of our brothers and sisters by the infidel Russian government,” the Mujahedin Shura Council said in an accompanying statement.

The council last week gave Moscow 48 hours to withdraw troops from Chechnya
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it was trying to confirm the authenticity of the video, Interfax reported.

The video begins with a verse from the Quran appearing in white letters on a black screen, and a voice reading “Those who aggress on you, you aggress on them.”

One at a time, the four men appear on camera, staring ahead and speaking in Russian. Then the camera cuts to the killings.

Footage of the men speaking into the camera is dated June 13, but the footage of the killings is undated.

Four Russian Embassy workers were abducted on June 3 after an attack on their car in Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood. A fifth Russian was killed in the incident.

The captives included the embassy’s third secretary, Fyodor Zaitsev, and three other staffers: Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev.

Last Wednesday, the Mujahedin Shura Council posted a statement on the Internet saying it had decided to kill the four Russians, prompting one hostage’s sister, a Muslim, to make an impassioned plea for the men to be freed.

“I beg you to pardon them and release them. You are Muslims, and Islam before anything else is a religion of peace and justice,” Aliya Agliulin, wearing an Islamic headscarf, said on Al-Jazeera television on June 21, according to an Arabic voiceover of her statement.

“I, as a Muslim like all other Muslims in Russia, feel pain for what is happening in Iraq,” Agliulin said. “Please act wisely and think of the feeling of the families of the hostages and their children who are waiting for their return. … My brother is the lone provider for our family.”

Videos of beheadings were an early signature of the insurgency, as well as a grisly trademark of tapes produced by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But such graphic images have become rare in the past year.

The exception was a June 10 video showing militants beheading three Iraqis accused of belonging to a Shiite “death squad.” Its posting three days after Zarqawi’s death in a U.S. airstrike suggested an attempt to show his killing had not weakened militants’ resolve.
The targeting of Russians in the kidnapping was unusual, since Moscow opposed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, winning it favor in the eyes of some Sunni Arabs, who now form the backbone of the insurgency.

But memories of that stance may be fading three years on — and many Islamic militants despise Russia for its military campaigns in Chechnya, seen by radicals as a battleground for jihad, or holy war.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Did Kim Jong-Ill [sic] Secretly Visit Russia?

Kommersant, among others, is reporting that while on the brink of a nuclear confrontation with the United States North Korean maniac Kim Jong-Ill [sic] is the process of a secret visit to Russia for a meeting with his pal Vlad “the Impaler” Putin, claiming this is a photograph of the tin-pot in Vladivostok en route. According to Kommersant:

South Korean newspaper Choson ilbo yesterday reported that Kim Jong-il’s special armored train crossed the border of Russia. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and frontier and railway administration said they don’t know anything about Kim Jong-il’s arrival. Experts believe the visit is quite likely, especially because North Korean leader has urgent problems to discuss with the Kremlin. Choson ilbo informed that several witnesses saw Kim Jong-il’s special armored train cross Russian border. The date was not specified. Foreign Affairs Ministries of Russia and South Korea said they have no information concerning Kim Jong-il’s visit to Russia.Foreign Affairs Ministry of China and US Department of State refrained from giving comments. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said that Japanese government is now clearing up the situation. Press Secretary of Far East Railroad’s Vladivostok branch Alexander Artamonov stated that his “department does not have any information on North Korean leader’s trips to Russia.”However, when Kim Jong-il first visited Russia in summer 2001, his visit was officially announced later—two days after he crossed the border of Russia. This visit is surrounded by even a greater secrecy. Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-il will probably discuss North Korea’s refusal to return to six-sided talks until the U.S. lifts economic sanctions, and its preparation to launch a multi-stage rocket.Pyongyang confirmed it plans to launch a rocket, although not a ballistic one, but a satellite carrier. It will allegedly take satellite Kvanmenson-2 to low earth orbit. The U.S. threatened it will shoot the rocket down, and began to pull in ships equipped with air defense facilities. Moreover, Washington and Tokyo threatened to demand the UN Security Council to impose even stricter sanctions on North Korea.Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited North Korean ambassador to warn his government not to take any steps which would aggravate Pyongyang’s position. However, Moscow took the news about launch preparation in Korea much calmer than Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul. Russia is ready to wait and see. If Kim Jong-il is really coming to Moscow, Russia will receive the explanation for North Korea’s strange behavior from its leader.

Gee, La Russophobe dares to wonder how Russians would react if they found out that Chechen warlords were making secret rendez-vous at the White House. Probably they’d just say: “You have a right to pursue your national interests, it’s none of our business.” NOT!

The sad thing is that it’s not the actual truth of such stories as this, and the FSB blowing up apartment buildings in Moscow to whip up support for the war in Chechnya, that is most damaging to Russia, but rather the simple fact that such stories have instant credibility.

And so it goes in Russia.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

British Blast Russia as the G-8 Fraud it Obviously Is

God save the Queen’s think tanks! As the Moscow News reports, relying on Reuters, on the very eve of Russia’s pompous hosting of the G-8 convocation in St. Petersburg, a British think tank has released an insightful, thoughtful and courageous report concluding that Russia does not even deserve to be a member:

Russia does not meet democratic standards for membership of the Group of Eight and its leadership of the rich nations’ club risks destroying the G8’s credibility, a British think-tank said on Sunday. Russia has gone backwards in its respect for democracy and civil liberties since it took over the presidency of the G8 in January, the Foreign Policy Centre said in a report published before a Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg on July 15-17 and quoted by Reuters.The Foreign Policy Center is an independent think-tank whose patron is British Prime Minister Tony Blair.“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s record is no longer in doubt,” the report’s author, Hugh Barnes, told Reuters.“He has systematically dismantled Russian democracy and that very fact in some ways makes a mockery of the G8,” said Barnes, director of the center’s “Future of Russia Program.”The report said the Russian economy — expected to move up to 10th in the world this year from 12th — was not big enough for the G8, intended to group the world’s largest economies, and that Russia was neither politically nor economically free.“Moscow’s leadership of the G8 is in danger of reducing the group’s credibility and relevance to zero,” the report said, urging other G8 nations to develop a concerted policy “to force Putin to live up to his international obligations.”Putin has rejected similar criticisms of Russia’s record on democracy in the past.The report noted, however, that Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves and its oil reserves may equal those of Iraq. “As world energy demand grows … Russia’s wealth and potential power are certain to grow as well,” it said.The Group of Seven leading industrial democracies — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — have gradually integrated Russia since the early 1990s into their club to foster democracy and economic reform there. But the report said things had not worked out that way.It rated Moscow against the G8’s founding principles of democracy and economic stability, finding that Russia had failed to comply with G8 norms on open society and rule of law.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

More Humiliation for Russian Sport (and more proof of LR’s acumen)

The road to Wimbeldon is littered with Russian casualties. In the three run-up tournaments toThe Championships, Russians have gone down to (largely inglorious) defeat, and it all comes as Russians jealously watch Ukraine make fantastic progress at the FIFA World Cup in Germany.

Once again, a Russian woman has lost a tennis tournament in straight sets to a much lower-ranked adversary. As Forbes magazine reports: “Michaella Krajicek [world #39] beat Dinara Safina [world #17] of Russia 6-3, 6-4 to win the Ordina Open on Saturday, the first Dutch woman to capture her country’s only grass-court tournament. In a final between younger sisters of Grand Slam winners, Krajicek won her third career title and second this year, the others coming in Hobart in January and last year in Tashkent. The 17-year-old player has won all three times she has been to a final. ” Krajicek also defeated the top seed in the tournament, Russian Elena Dementieva.

Meanwhile, another Russian, Anastasia Myskina, was vanquished at the Eastbourne tournament, though Myskina did push the higher-ranked Henin-Hardenne who ultimately took the title to three sets. In fact, Myskina defeated the higher-ranked Kuznetsova to reach the finals, thus vastly out-performing Maria Sharapova’s result at the Birmingham event where no top-ten player was even entered, yet Myskina continues to dwell in Sharapova’s shadow of illusions and lies.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russian Movies? Yes, They Too Shall Suck

The Exile’s Roving Russophobe discusses the many non-pleasures of going to the cinema in resurgent, Neo-Soviet Russia:

There are few better ways to relax than a nice trip to the cinema. On the face of it, Moscow should be heaven for film lovers. There’s a rash of new Western-style multiplexes, which come with the distinctly un-Western advantages of being open 24 hours and selling beer in the foyer rather than selling watered-down coke. There’s also a thriving “intellectual” movie scene, which should mean plenty of action for those of us who prefer our Solondz to our Schwarzenegger. But as anyone who has ever ventured into a Russian movie theater, or turned on Russian TV, will know, it’s only heaven if you don’t mind the fact that there’s some Russian fuck droning over the top of all the dialogue.

Now, when it comes to the multiplexes, perhaps we can allow some leeway. Despite those suspicious statistics stating that post-Soviet countries have almost universal literacy, the average Russian bydlo teenager can hardly manage to speak coherently, let alone read. After a hard day drinking vodka, eating dill, and kicking the shit out of Tadjik girls, the last thing they want is to go to the effort of reading a load of subtitles. Or reading, period. And admittedly, it’s not like the viewer of X-ÌåïÇ is going to miss too much in the way of acting subtleties by having the dialogue in Russian.

But what’s disturbing is that the voice-over phenomenon is not limited to the multiplex cinemas showing trash films for idiots. I thought that heading to an arty cinema would solve my problem. At Novoslobodskaya there’s a little cinema showing the most cliched array of “alternative” movies imaginable. The Three Colors trilogy, Kusturica movies, Jim Jarmusch, and so on. Students go for half price, and even the full price tickets are only about 100r. The signs were even more encouraging when I arrived to find plenty of serious looking bearded students who looked like they hadn’t washed in a while. Even the females had facial hair (above the lip) surely this was as a good a sign as any that these were serious intellectuals; the sort of people who would insist on watching films in the original language.

I bought my ticket for Kusturica’s Underground, feeling fairly certain that here, at least, I was in high-brow subtitle territory, and could enjoy the full madcap craziness of Kusturica’s Yugoslav characters. Even without much knowledge of Serbian, part of the joy of the film is the sheer insanity of the characters, evident from body language, facial expressions and tone of voice. But, of course, I was wrong.

It turns out that independent cinema just means less money for dubbing; thus instead of a reasonably competent multi-voice dubbing, you get just one guy voicing-over the entire movie in a monotone, let’s-get-this-over-with voice: “That’s it I can’t take these Germans any longer I’m going to defend my city no you’re not you’re going to see that tart no I’m not yes you are I know you are no I’m not I’m going to fight please don’t go I love you I love you too but I have to go…” etc etc etc.

If the idiots are going to dub the thing, and if they are going to dub the whole thing with one voice, could they not at least find someone who doesn’t sound like Rain Man. Find someone who could inject just a touch of emotion into his voice and maybe differentiate in tone between telling someone he loves them and telling someone he wants to blow their fucking head off? I was left wondering who this guy is Does he pop a whole packet of diazepam before the recording? Does he speak to his family in the same monotone? Does someone tell him to cut out any tiny hint of emotion?

The fact is that Russians simply can’t bear to see a subtitle, and will employ bad dubbing whatever the cost. Anything to avoid having to read. In the Russian film Voina, where a pathetic ginger Brit snitches the Russian hero to the cops just because said hero slapped around a few Chechens in the course of his patriotic duty, the filmmakers actually went to the trouble of hiring a lame ginger Brit to play the role of lame ginger Brit, only to dub his English lines back into Russian! The same happened in the atrocious Milkhalkov epic The Barber of Siberia. And it’s not just the way that Russians fear subtitles that makes them far less cultured than they like to think they are it’s the kinds of films they want to watch. That’s right, the country that produced Tarkovsky just can’t get enough of shit Hollywood films. And chem shittIer, tem luchshIer. Recently, I was on a media tour to a Siberian oilfield. Twenty Russian journalists, by all accounts educated, cultured, interesting people, were on a long coach journey from the airport to the oilfield. To pass the time as the monotonous taiga passed by, the company had kindly provided a selection of videos. None of them were particularly inspiring, but the final choice was simply mindboggling. Home Alone 2. A coachload of adults. Real adults. Not down’s syndrome patients, but Russian journalists. Home Alone 2. Not one voice of dissent. Nobody pointed out that even most ten year olds would think that it’s crap.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, however, because I was thrilled recently to take home a pirate DVD and find that it came with a soundtrack in Ukrainian, and Russian subtitles. Clearly, this director was not about to allow his artistic vision to be ruined by dubbing. The film was Yulia, the work of LDPR Duma Deputy Alexei Mitrofanov, featuring filthy Ukrainian-language cavorting between a double of Ukraine’s slut-PM, a midget, and a hirsute Saakashvili lookalike. It’s the best thing the LDPR have done since Zhirinovsky suggested dumping nuclear waste on Latvia. Let’s hope it’s the start of a subtitle revolution.

But given that those countries where everything is subtitled tend to produce generations of English-speaking people and who are economically competitive in the global market, it’s probably too much to expect that the Russians could follow suit, and manage to do something that doesn’t cut off their nose to spite their own vodka-jaundiced faces. In thirty years’ time, when all the oil dries up, the rest of Central and Eastern Europe will be thriving knowledge-based economies hooked into the West’s success, while the defiantly monolingual Russian Neanderthals will be stuck in their shit country, the shelves of Azbuka bare, their Hummers rusting outside their rotting faux-European kottedzhi. All because they couldn’t be civilized enough to put subtitles on movies. Eto sudba? Nyet. Eto idiotizm!

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !