July 12, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY JULY 12 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Obaby Makes a Mess in Moscow

(2)  Another Original LR Translation:  Into the Russian Cesspit

(3)  Medvedev’s “Ludicrous” Nuke Deal with Obama

(4)  Obama’s Historical Ignorance Exposed

(5)  Russia has already been Defeated by NATO

NOTE:  The Georgian Daily newspaper has republished our latest editorial about the failure of the Russian economy.  We’re delighted to offer any support we can to the besieged people of Georgia as they struggle against Russian aggression.

NOTE: In yet another bitter humiliation for Putin’s Russia, its male tennis team has been eliminated 0-3 from the Davis Cup competition by — of all countries — lowly Israel.  Ouch.

EDITORIAL: Obaby makes a Mess in Moscow

EDITORIAL

Obaby Makes a Mess in Moscow

No sooner had we come out in support of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Russia policy last week, based on his pronouncments setting the foundation for his first state visit to Russia, than he stabbed us in the back.  When we called upon him to carry his diplomacy into real policy initiatives, we never dreamed what we should have done is call upon him to carry his diplomatic rhetoric through to the end of his visit rather than suddenly reversing course and babbling like a goose.  A cowardly, benighted goose.

We hate when that happens.

Another Original LR Translation: Into the Russian Cesspit

A Note from the Translator:  Russia today is a country so preposterous that it does not deserve to be taken seriously, and Russia has been that way for long swathes of its history. The only time it showed some promise was the period between the 1905 revolution and the Bolshevik coup; it could have become a constitutional monarchy and was developing on lines more or less normal for the times. Lenin put a stop to that. I simply do not understand why any of our leaders in the West can allow themselves to be besmirched by contacts with this country other than the minimum necessary to control arms and purchase raw materials, Russia’s only exportable commodity. In fact, I don’t see why it would not be possible to review and re-plan our commodity needs in such as way as to stop purchasing oil-and-gas from Russia. See how the country manages then. In particular since Russia could not very well threaten to bomb us unless we continued buying – after being bombed, we’d certainly not need that much oil and gas! Here is yet another example of cesspit thinking and nastiness. And we should pretend they are part of the community of nations?!

Investigator Bastrykin’s Expensive Toys

Alexander Podrabinek,

Yezhedevny Zhurnal

 8 July 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

It’s frequently said that the only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys. Our country’s top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, is a perfect example of this. At a recent press conference, he announced that the Criminal Investigation Department of the RF Prosecutor’s Office, of which he is head, has practically completed its preliminary investigation and has “proved the fact of genocide in relation to the inhabitants of South Ossetia during the events of August 2008”.

Medvedev’s “Ludicrous” Nuclear Deal with Obama

Alexander Golts, writing in the Moscow Times:

Wishing to indulge its tough negotiating partner, Washington picked a heavily militarized agenda for the Moscow summit — nuclear arms reduction, missile defense and control over nuclear materials. These are areas in which Russia believes it can negotiate with the United States on equal grounds — that is, as equal superpowers.

Obama’s Historical Ignorance Exposed

Our much-esteemed reader “Penny” directs your attention to the following critique of Obama’s sojourn in Moscow, from the pages of Forbes:

Watching President Obama hit the “reset” button in Moscow this week, I was reminded of one of my own New Age encounters in Russia, about 14 years ago. Then, working as bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow, I was on the receiving end of a shipment of new computers for the office. After much wrangling, delay and expense, they finally arrived. But the first one we unpacked would not boot up. The Russian customs service, in its own version of “reset,” had stripped out the hard drive before turning over to us the hollow shell.

Russia has Already been Defeated by NATO

Ekaterina Kuznetsova, director of European programs at the Center for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow, writing in the Moscow Times:

In June 2008 — less than a month after his inauguration — President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled  a proposal for creating a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture with the implied hope that it would someday replace NATO. After years of spewing belligerent anti-Western rhetoric, the Russian leadership had finally decided to put its own security proposal on the table. Medvedev had also hoped that the initiative would become the centerpiece of his foreign policy. But the project received a lukewarm welcome in European capitals.