Paul Goble reports:
The failure of a Moscow District military court jury last month to convict those charged with involvement in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya may have had less to do with the skill of defense attorneys than with materials the government offered that appear designed to discredit her, according to a Moscow commentator.
International lawyer Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, writing in the National Review:
President Obama’s secret letter to Russian president Dmitri Medvedev has, as promised, “pressed the reset button” on U.S.–Russian relations. The president has offered to abandon America’s planned deployment of an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia’s help against Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. This is an enormous diplomatic blunder that will encourage the very worst sort of conduct from Russia — and Iran.
The president’s proposal has superficial appeal. If, as the United States has repeatedly assured Russia, the shield is directed at Iranian, not Russian, missiles, the deal might seem to make sense: better to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands in the first place than to erect a shield against them. Yet this is to ignore both Russia’s backing of Iran’s nuclear program and the missile shield’s place in the strategic relationship between the U.S., Russia, and the still-newly-free states of Eastern Europe.
FRIDAY MARCH 13 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Dark Stormclouds over Putin’s Russia
(2) EDITORIAL: Craven Europe, Appeasing Russia once Again
(3) EDITORIAL: Further Misadventures of Charles Ganske
(4) Heroin Nation
(5) Annals of Russian “Healthcare”
NOTE: Regarding #2 above, you can sign a petition protesting the cowardly Eurovision decision to censor Georgia’s anti-Putin song entry by clicking here.
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EDITORIAL
Stormclouds over the Moscow Kremlin
In a trio of posts over at The Power Vertical, Radio Free Europe’s Russia correspndent Brian Whitmore points out how very badly things are going just now for Russia’s closeted dictator Vladimir Putin.
First, Whitmore points to a recent poll from the Levada Center which startled the Kremlin by revealing that a whopping 60% of Russians polled expressed sympathy with the anti-government protests that have exploded in Russia’s Far East in recent months as the Kremlin’s economic policy has run aground. Even more disturbing for the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin’s parapets, one quarter of respondents indicated a willingness to join the protests. Revolutions are made from such quarters. Whitmore says that the Solidarity opposition group is planning to attempt to cash in on this discontent by instigating a new wave of protest actions in the Far East next month. As Whitmore points out, given this poll it will simply be impossible for the Kremlin to argue that the protesters are nothing but a band of freaks and outcasts it can properly ignore.
Then, Whitmore shows how the Kremlin’s economic failure is causing it problems much closer to home. He notes that close Medvedev advisor Arkady Dvorkovich has gone public calling in effect for a Stalin-like purge of the Kremlin’s ranks. He couches his rhetoric in terms of getting rid of “bureaucrats” and replacing them with more capable economic experts, but even a Russian child would understand this is nothing but code for loyalty. Cracks, to be sure, are becoming ever more apparent in Putin’s foundations. Whitmore notes that Igor Yurgens, director of the Institute of Contemporary Development and an advisor to Medvedev, has called publicly for an expansion of civil liberties as the Kremlin has broken its contract with the public which had called for less freedom in exchange for more economic stability. Kremlin powerbroker and ideologist Vladislav Surkov immediately and harshly fired back at Yurgens.
And then things starting getting really dark in the skies above the Moscow Kremlin.
EDITORIAL
Craven Europe, Appeasing Russia
We condemn the craven act of the European scoundrels who administer the Eurovision song contest for blocking Georgia’s entry from being performed in the contest because it might offend Russia’s “prime minister” Vladimir Putin. One must wonder whether Europe would have been as quick to censor a song that teased George Bush. You can sign a petition to protest this action here.
EDITORIAL
That Neo-Soviet Ape Charles Ganske, at it Again
We don’t know of anyone in the Russia blogosphere who makes any claim of significance without having some form of deep and direct ties to Russia itself, either in terms of living in the country, mastering the language or both. Nobody, that is, except that moronic pretender over at Kremlin shil Russia Blog named Charles Ganske, whom we have repeatedly exposed for gross incompetence here on this blog (plug his name into our search engine if you’d like to view the carnage). Ganske’s only real connection to Russia is that he works for a Russian citizen educated by the Russian state who acts as a shameless Kremlin agent, working closely with the state-sponsored Russia Today propaganda network to undermine American national security by inducing us to drop our guard on neo-Soviet Russia.
And now, he’s at it again.
The BBC reports:
Russia says it has become the world’s biggest consumer of heroin.
The head of Russia’s anti-narcotics service, Victor Ivanov, said that seizures of Afghan heroin were up 70%. Speaking ahead of a meeting in Vienna of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, he called on the UN to do more to fight the problem. Mr Ivanov, a former KGB officer and senior Kremlin official, said the flood of the drug from Afghanistan posed a threat to Russia’s national security. He painted a grim picture, says the BBC’s James Rodgers in Moscow. He said the drug was partly to blame for rising crime and a fall in Russia’s population. Afghanistan is thought to be the source of 93% of the world’s heroin
Global Voices translates a post, styled as an “unsent letter to the president” which recently caused a sensation in the Russian blogosphere:
There is a town called Yelets in Lipetsk region. And there is the City Hospital #1 in the town of Yelets. There is a department of hemodialysis and gravitational blood surgery in this hospital. The only one in the whole town, by the way. Up until recently the department had its own room for its patients and was open 24 hours a day. Because of this, doctors and nurses were paid some extra money, in addition to their primary salaries: for working night shifts, holidays and weekends. Imagine how much the total bill ended up being. Too much money, horrible. […]
And so in summer (before any official news of the crisis, by the way), Lipetsk Regional Health Care Department found a way to save the Motherland some money. First, they took away the hemodialysis department’s room, then canceled night shifts as well as Sunday and holiday shifts.
Of course, those irresponsible sick people started complaining right away. Like, they are having attacks of acute kidney failure not only on workdays from 8 AM to 5 PM, but at night, too, and even on holidays. And they started screaming that a person with kidney problems, who is having an attack on a Saturday evening, is unlikely to survive until Monday morning without hemodialysis. And they cited the recent death of a 20-year-old woman as an example. To make everyone feel sorry for them, of course…
WEDNESDAY MARCH 11 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia is an Evil Empire
(2) EDITORIAL: Putin’s Russia stands Naked before the World
(3) Russia Admits to (Brags About) Cyber Attack on Estonia
(4) Russians Still Stealing and Worshipping American TV
(5) EDITORIAL: Salt in Russia’s Wounds
NOTE: We would just like to remind readers that nested commenting in now enabled, which means that you can click the “reply” button next to a commenter’s name and respond directly to her/his remarks; your post will then appear directly below that one and can easily be viewed by readers in sequence.
Posted in contents
EDITORIAL
Putin’s Russia is an Evil Empire
Blogger David McDuff over at A Step at a Time ought to be required reading for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she tries to guide American policy towards the Evil Empire that is Vladimir Putin’s Russia under a hapless neophyte president.
McDuff points out that Hillary might be seen to have gotten off to a rocky start. Leaving out a crucial “za” from the word “perezagruzka” in a “reset” button she tried to give her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov as a joke, Hillary was made to appear clueless, reminding the world that during the presidential campaign that she had been unable to correctly prounce the Russian President’s last name.
But in fact, however, Hillary’s “mistakes” are leading her down exactly the right path.
EDITORIAL
Putin’s Russia, Naked Before the World
Last year, foreigners increased their holdings of U.S. government debt by nearly half a trillion dollars, and as a result the value of the U.S. dollar has soared by almost 15%. This fundamental confidence in the strength of the United States as a “safe haven” in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis is providing the Obama administration with a valuable source of investment capital it can use to address America’s own downturn.
Meanwhile, of course, Russia’s own currency has plummeted in value by more than 30% as foreigners have expressed fundamental distrust in the Russian government’s ability to keep its word. Investment capital in Russia has virtually disappeared, leading to a massive uptick in unemployment that the governement is totally powerless to address except by frittering away the last vestiges of the nation’s emergency savings funds.
Russia has been spurned once again, just as it was spurned when it asked the world to recognize South Ossetia as an independent state. And the reason is simple.
The always brilliant Robert Coalson of Radio Free Europe reports:
In the spring of 2007, a cyberattack on Estonia blocked websites and paralyzed the country’s entire Internet infrastructure. At the peak of the crisis, bank cards and mobile-phone networks were temporarily frozen, setting off alarm bells in the tech-dependent country — and in NATO as well.
The cyberattacks came at a time when Estonia was embroiled in a dispute with Russia over the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial from the center of Tallinn. Moscow denied any involvement in the attacks, but Estonian officials were convinced of Russia’s involvement in the plot.
Those who have not visited Russia but have heard Russians arrogantly condemning American popular culture must find it surprising to learn the extent to which Russians shamelessly steal and copy such culture for their own TV. The always excellent Alex Rodriguez of the Chicago Tribune reports:
The suspicious girlfriend watches as her love life unravels on the screen. A hidden camera has caught her boyfriend in the throes of passion with an easy-on-the-eyes brunette. “That’s enough. I don’t want to see anymore,” says the girlfriend, her bright-blue eyes welling up, then narrowing with rage. “I’m going home. I need some time to think about what I’m going to tell him.”
The series resembles the U.S. cult hit Cheaters, a syndicated peep show involving infidelity. The difference: The men with hidden cameras stalk their philandering prey not in suburban America but in the flats and storefronts of Moscow, which has just as ravenous an appetite for voyeuristic television.
EDITORIAL
Salt in Russia’s Wounds
From our earliest days here on this blog, it has been our policy to pour salt in the wounds of Vladimir Putin’s Russia at any opportunity. Our purpose in doing so has been quite simple: To dispel the notion that Putin is running a successful state and deserves the 75%+ approval ratings he routinely gets in polls. It was yeoman’s work, of course, when Putin had the convenient cover of oil prices at $150/barrel. A monkey could have ruled Russia during that period and looked somewhat effective. Now, it’s more like child’s play.
Which brings us, grinning from ear to ear, to young Miss Anastasia Prikhodko, winner of Russia’s national round of the Eurovision song contest. Not only isn’t Ms. Prikhodko Russian, but — of all things — Ukrainian, her song “Mamo” is not sung in Russian either, but also in Ukrainian.
Ouch.
MONDAY MARCH 9 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Putin = Russophobia
(2) EDITORIAL: Inflation Ravages Putin’s Russia
(3) Gorby Blasts Neo-Soviet United Russia
EDITORIAL
Putin = Russophobia
To know Vladmir Putin, public opinion surveys clearly show, is to hate him (and all the simple-minded or just-plain-evil Russians who support him, of course).
2002 – 66%
2003 – 63%
2004 – 59%
2005 – 61%
2006 – 58%
2007 – 53%
2008 – 48%
2009 — 40%
Those are the the percentages from annual opinion polls of Americans who viewed Russia in a favorable light during Putin’s years in power since the 9/11 tragedy when America’s attention was distracted. They decline every year (except a brief anomaly in 2005) and have plummeted a breathtaking 40% while Putin has held power. A majority of Americans now have an unfavorable opinion of Russia. Both Egypt and China have higher favorability ratings among Americans than does Putin’s Russia.
EDITORIAL
Inflation Ravages Putin’s Russia
One of the most important signals of the fundamental failure that has characterized the Putin regime has been Russia’s horrifying consumer price inflation rate. Last week, it was announced that Russia’s overall consumer price inflation had risen to a four-month high as the increasingly weak Russian ruble forced Russians to pay ever higher prices for the vast array of basic consumer products the country cannot produce itself and therefore must import from abroad, paying in foreign currency.
Consumer prices soared 1.7% in February, 4.1% in the first two months of the year. If that rate continues, Russia’s basic inflation rate would exceed 20% for 2009. In fact, the annualized rate as of now is projected at ”only” 14%. Even at that, Russia is facing a rate of inflation what would instill panic in any other industrialized country — and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. A number of factors lurking below the surface give Russian inflation the flavor of a true apocalypse.
The BBC reports:
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has given some of his strongest criticism yet of the politics of modern Russia. He says the United Russia party of the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, behaves like the old-style Communists. “I criticise United Russia a lot,” said Mr Gorbachev, “I do it directly.” He also said Russia’s judicial system was not properly constitutional and dismissed members of its parliament as not truly independent. “United Russia is a party of bureaucrats,” he said, in an interview with the American news organisation, Associated Press. “It is the worst version of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Mr Gorbachev was speaking as the countries of Eastern and Central Europe look towards the 20th anniversary this year of the fall of Communism in Europe, as symbolised by the smashing of the Berlin wall.
The BBC correspondent in Moscow, James Rodgers, says that although Mr Gorbachev is respected throughout the world for his role in ending the Cold War, many Russians more readily associate him with the economic hardship that accompanied the end of Communism. Mr Gorbachev himself now says he did not foresee that his policies of openness and reform – “glasnost” and “perestroika” – would lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “I was a resolute opponent of the break-up,” he said, expressing the hope that one day Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus might again re-join Russia in a political union.
The South African Dispatch Online reports:
AN East London woman has written a book detailing her adventures and frustrations of living and working in the Russian capital for three years. The book, titled 23 Months of Extreme, is a diary account of Lisa Hirschbeck and her husband Robert McIntyre’s life in Moscow from 2004 to 2007. Hirschbeck, a born and bred East Londoner who matriculated from Hudson Park High School in 1991, studied accounting after leaving school. She and McIntyre were married in 1999 and, after a number of years living in East London, decided to pursue work opportunities abroad. “A lot of our friends had gone overseas to work so we decided to do the same,” she said. We had a choice of going to the US or Moscow and decided on the latter because we believed it would be more interesting.”
They initially spent a week in Moscow before moving to the city permanently. But three weeks into their new life, the couple were stopped by four militsia, or police.Even though their papers were in order, they were forced to pay a bribe to avoid being detained.Hirschbeck said the experience had been shocking, but it also gave her a new-found understanding of what foreigners in South Africa were subjected to.“The police there are very corrupt and it has definitely given me a better understanding of what foreigners here go through, especially if they don’t have the correct papers,” she said.
The couple faced numerous challenges in adapting to life in Moscow, like overcoming language and cultural barriers. “They don’t have the same retail system that we do here,” she said. “Most of the bigger shopping malls are on the outskirts of Moscow and were far from where we lived. There are a lot of corner cafés where you can buy groceries, but things are not packaged the same as in South Africa and it’s in a different language.“We spent about two weeks looking for salt before we found it.”
Hirschbeck said they had also battled to adapt to the five-month long Russian winter. “It was quite hectic, we’re not used to that kind of weather. The snow would sometimes be piled 12 centimetres thick on the sidewalks.” Hirschbeck said it had taken her six months to write the book and another six months to find a publisher. She now lectures in accounting and taxation to second-year students at the University of Fort Hare in East London. “It was an incredible experience, one I’m glad I did but one I would not do again,” she said.
RTT News reports:
At least six policemen were killed in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia when a bomb they were trying to defuse went off, said officials on Thursday. Local police authorities said that the incident happened near a cemetery on the edge of the village of Surkhakhi. They said the dead included local law enforcement chiefs and added that two of those injured in the blast were “in a serious condition”.
Ingushetia has seen frequent clashes between insurgents and Russian security forces ever since Chechnya’s post-Soviet independence movement was launched in 1994. Though the active phase of the Russian operations against Chechnya’s rebels are over, sporadic militant attacks occur in Chechnya and neighboring republics. Various human rights organizations claim that the violence in the Muslim-dominated Ingushetia has increased after the war in Chechnya ended, and say that at least 90 people have been killed there since August.
The Pet News Examiner reports:
A disturbing new trend has surfaced in Russia: cat owners getting their felines tattooed with elaborate, colorful designs. A young Russian woman, Oksana Popova, had her rare Canadian Hairless cat Mickey put under general anesthesia for three hours while an image of King Tut was etched onto the cat’s chest. The tattoo artist Anatoly Keksel performed the work at his TattoonHamon Tattoo Parlor in Russia. “I wanted something new and different for the times we live in,” Popova explains. “I have the same tattoo,” boasts Keksel, lifting up his shirt. The practice has infuriated animal rights activists in Russia, such as Irina Novozhilova. “The ethical thinking about animals in Russia lacks behind that of the West,” says Nozozhilova. “People in Russia mostly buy animals for selfish reasons and anything that happens to them afterwards is a consequence of that.”
Dogs fare little better in Putin’s Russia.
SUNDAY MARCH 8 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Jail Khodorkovsky!
(2) Another Original LR Translation: Jobless in Russia
(4) EDITORIAL: Hillary Clinton, Wonder Woman?
(5) Putin’s Russia Flouts International Law
NOTE: According to the website of the Russian Embassy in Washington DC:
The New Year is first on the calendar and in popularity. Many celebrate it twice, on January 1 and 14 (which conesponds to January 1 in the Julian calendar, used in Russia before 1918. Next is February 23, Day, known until recently as Soviet Army Day, popularly viewed as holiday for all men and closely followed by its female counter-part, Women’s Day, March 8, when women receive flowers, presents and are toasted by men.
That’s a verbatim copy of the text, full of hideous linguistic errors. So today Russians are celebrating a Soviet communist holiday, akin to worshiping the Red Army, by favoring their women with gifts, as their KGB spy “prime minister” looks on. Enough said.
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EDITORIAL
Jail Khodorkovsky!
In another typically excellent piece of analysis, Russia’s leading liberal pundit, Yevgeny Kiselyov, in his Moscow Times column, explains why Russia and the world would be much better off if jailed oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky stayed in prison. We think Khodorkovsky would be better off too, and staying in prison would be appropriate pennance for his outrageous recent attempt at collaboration with the Kremlin, leaving Khodorkovsky himself better off as well.
Thousands of AvtoVAZ (Lada) workers may lose their jobs
4 March 2009
Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel
Twelve and a half thousand AvtoVAZ workers have been temporarily laid off and there are plans to make 3200 of them redundant, announced Minister of Public Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova at a session of the Federation Council. AvtoVAZ ‘s press office advised that the assembly line is currently at a complete standstill because of a shortage of components and that no date had been set for re-starting it.
Golikova went on to say that the government has allocated 12 billion roubles for government departments to purchase Russian-made automobiles. Her ministry said that most of these purchase would be made from AvtoVAZ. However, she herself went on to say that in her view this step would be “clearly unequal” to the task of ensuring employment at the plant.
AvtoVAZ employed 104,000 people as of Qtr4 2008. 6.1 million people are considered unemployed in Russia today – that’s the number of people that government statistics agency Rosstat counts as actively seeking work. At the same meeting, Golikova also mentioned that 1.97 million people are registered as unemployed at labour exchanges.
EDITORIAL
Morons, Incorporated
Last week the Moscow Times reported that when on February 9th Vladimir Putin “ordered the Industry and Trade Ministry on Feb. 9 to develop within a month legislation setting aside 2 billion rubles ($55 million) to make car loans more affordable” and the ministry responded by claiming ”that the program could affect 150,000 sales this year for approved models costing less than 350,000 rubles ($9,700).”‘
There turns out to be just one little problem with this line of “thinking” from the Kremlin. It’s nonsense. As the MT states: “Subsidizing 150,000 loans by the proposed amount would require about 6 billion rubles, while the planned expenditure of 2 billion rubles would only cover about 47,000 cars.”
Only an “emperor’s-new-clothes” regime like that of Vladimir Putin could possibly imagine it could get away with this kind of nonsense, utterly typical of the garbage Russians were fed in Soviet times. With no critical mainstream media and no credible opposition forces in the Duma, Putin’s KGB minions are left free to do and say whatever they like, oblivious of any consequences, just as their Politburo predecessors always used to do.
A Russia governed this way will not even last as long as the USSR did.
According to the MT, only 11% of Russians have any intention of buying a new car in the next three years, and nearly half of that group has no idea how it will pay for the planned purchase. In other words, right now only about 7% of the Russian population plans to buy a new car and knows how the bill will be paid.
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