More Evidence of Shocking and Entrenched Russian Racism

Check out the Moderate Voice blog’s item exposing the outrages of racism in the Russian media, some shocking revelations are made. Hat tip!

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Bad News Pouring in like a Deluge for Putin’s Russia

Cutting-edge bomber crashes.

Disastrous oil spill at major pipeline.

WTO admission won’t happen in 2006 at all.

Another spectacular tennis flameout by a Russian against a lower-ranked player.

Massive art theft at the Hermitage.

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Gessen Remembers Itogi and Ruminates on the Neo-Soviet Union, Land of Thugs

In her column in the Moscow Times last week, Masha Gessen remembers the beginning of the end for Russian media (the Kremlin’s obliteraton of Itogi magazine, something that may well be remembered as the first sign of the Neo-Soviet apocalypse) and ruminates on the end of the beginning of the creation of the the Neo-Soviet state:

Be Careful What You Say

By Masha Gessen

Russia’s chief health inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, the man who has left us wine-less, brandy-less and Borzhomi-less, has shut down the cafeteria at the Moscow Regional Arbitration Court. He said it was the “height of disregard for the most elementary of health standards,” adding that he could “say with certainty that it was the worst dining establishment in Moscow.” Onishchenko concluded that it was “pure luck” that none of the judges who eat there had gotten food poisoning.

That almost sounded like a threat.You might wonder how a man as busy and as powerful as Onishchenko came to micromanage the closure of a single cafeteria in Moscow, one that is not even open to the general public. Does he take such pains to protect the health of all Russians, especially public servants? Guess again. The Moscow Regional Arbitration Court had taken up a complaint against Onishchenko’s ban on Moldovan and Georgian wines filed by the importers of these wines. Remarkably, Kommersant seems to be the only paper to have reported on the case, so inconsequential have such court proceedings apparently become.

And yes, what Onishchenko said was indeed a threat. He mentioned that the leadership of the court was not “taking measures to normalize” the feeding of judges and that it had refused to allow Onishchenko’s staff to inspect labor conditions at the court. Want to know what that was about?

A half dozen years ago I worked at Itogi, a weekly magazine that, together with NTV television, became one of the first two victims of Putin’s attack on independent media. The tax people came first, and had to admit that the magazine’s payroll and other financial records were in good order. Then the fire inspectors came, and the magazine banned smoking on the premises, posted inane evacuation instructions on every wall, and appointed the managing editor emergency fire chief. Finally the health inspectors came and claimed that one of the typefaces used in the magazine lacked a requisite sanitation certificate and might therefore be harmful to readers’ eyes.

I think that was when we knew that we had lost.Onishchenko will clearly not be able to shut down the arbitration court as easily as he put the wine importers out of business, but his agency may be able to declare the entire court building a health hazard, forcing it to suspend operations until the Health Code violations have been addressed. If you were a judge, you might think twice about offending a man who had just shut down your cafeteria and was threatening you with indefinite leave. Just imagine the enormous backlog of cases you would face when you came back to work.So Onishchenko is threatening a court the way bureaucrats usually threaten private businesses.

This is a curious fact but, to my mind, not the moral of the story. The moral of the story is that we should never forget how spiteful and small-minded these people are. It seems extremely unlikely any decision of the arbitration court could reverse Onishchenko’s actions, but the all-powerful doctor punished the court for thinking it could butt in at all.This is a useful lesson to keep in mind whenever you wonder why things happen the way they do in Russia. Why was businessman Bill Browder, one of the most shameless promoters of investment in this country, denied an entry visa? He has been making inquiries through official channels, and recently received an answer that said, in essence: Yes, you were denied entry. It must have been something he said.

Why was Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested and sent to rot in a colony near the Chinese border? I had a chance to ask his wife about this recently. “Politics,” she answered, “and personal ambitions.” Whose personal ambitions? “The opposite side’s.” Is this country really ruled by people who are prepared to take away someone’s property and freedom just because they feel somehow slighted? I’m afraid so.

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The Facts on Russian and U.S. Economic Growth

In the second quarter of 2006, each American contributed on average $250* to economic growth. This growth rate caused the New York Times lead story on Saturday (July 29th) to proclaim American economic growth to be “modest” and related to a “big toll” on the economy.

During the second quarter of 2006, each Russian contributed on average $175 to Russian economic growth. In other words, each American produced 43% more economic growth for his country than each Russian did for his. Despite this fact, this growth rate caused an op-ed writer in the LA Times to call Russia’s economic growth “surging” so that “urban Russians in particular are enjoying higher living standards — and not just because of oil wealth.”

This isn’t just your typical media ineptness and inaccuracy where Russia is concerned. Clearly, we’re through the looking glass here. And it gets worse.

Because this figure of $175 per person is wildly liberal and inflated. It assumes that the Russian GDP is $1.5 trillion (so that 7.1% growth amounts to $105 billion per year or about $25 billion for the quarter, which works out to about $175 per person). But in fact, Russian GDP is only $1.5 trillion under the “purchasing power parity” formulation, which assumes among other things that the quality of medical care received from a doctor earning $4,000 per year is the same as that received from one earning $400,000 per year – in other words, it’s a totally bogus notion. What’s more, it asumes that the economic production data produced by the Kremlin, controlled by a clan of KGB spies who spent their lives learning how to lie, is trustworthy. To say the least, Russia’s actual per capita growth figure is far less than $175 per person. To say the most, when you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME.

And that is to say nothing of the fact that economic growth is distributed among the population far more evenly in the U.S. than in Russia, where the Kremlin is hoarding a vast amount of Russia’s “economic growth” (which is really just increased income from rising oil prices, not increased productivity among Russian workers) as reserves rather than investing it in the country. In other words,the $175 is pure smoke and mirrors.

*This number is calculated based on 2.5% of America’s $12 trillion economy or $300 billion annual growth, which translates into $75 billion in second quarter growth divided by America’s population of 300 million, which works out to about $250 per person.

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In Helsinki, Freedom House Condemns Russian Autocracy

The director of Freedom House gave lengthy testimony before the Helsinki Commission on July 27th concerning the rise of totalitarianism in Russia. The link will survive so La Russopobe will simply direct readers to it, and urge them to support the heroic work of Freedom House to defend civil liberties. The overview is:

While there, we released our most recent report on Russia, from our survey called Nations in Transit, at a well attended press conference on June 14, and so these findings were conveyed to at least some Russians through the dwindling array of still independent newspapers and radio stations in Moscow. That report documents the continuing erosion of freedom in Russia during the past year, and I have brought copies today for your reference. The report, by one of America’s most eminent Russia-watchers, Robert W. Orttung of American University, focuses on several specific developments that have been prominent in the last year – the resurgence of corruption in the growing state-owned economy; the development of the NGO law that would further curtail civic activity, and obstruct international efforts to assist civil society; the adoption of election laws that will make it even more difficult for opposition parties to win seats in the Duma and virtually impossible for independent monitors to observe the electoral process. But the larger, even moreimportant story to be told is found in the accumulated series of reports on Russia that track the steady, continuing restriction of political space in Russia. In the annual assessments contained in Nations in Transit, one notes that the scores for Russia’s democratic performance have been declining in every year since 1997.

Freedom House reports that it is regularly harassed and attacked by Neo-Soviet Russian authorities for its work in trying to speak to Russians about the rise of authoritarianism and its attempts to educate them and document their findings, and concludes that Russia remains in the dark third of the world that is “unfree.”

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More Tax Atrocities in Neo-Soviet Russia

Sharp & Sound reports that Russia is using bogus tax claims to take over the last remaining oil pipeline in Russia that state-controlled TRANSNEFT does not already have.

Russia has totally abandoned any notion that it has the rule of law, meaning that foreign investment is out of the question and corruption is the status quo in the domestic economy. Even a diverse and vibrant developed economy like the U.S. could not survive this kind of environment, so what chance does Russia have?

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !