EDITORIAL: Russia’s Barbaric “Internet”

EDITORIAL

Russia’s Barbaric “Internet”

Whenever the subject of the Kremlin’s brutal neo-Soviet crackdown on Russian newspapers and television comes up, as it has just done once again with the barbaric killing of Natalia Estemirova, the bleating refrain from the Russophile apologists is is always the same:  But there’s the Internet! It’s perfectly free, and it’s all Russians need to preserve democracy.

It’s another ridiculous neo-Soviet lie, of course.  In the first place, 80% of Russians have no access to the Internet, so even if it were full of critical information about the Kremlin, theycouldn’t read it.  In the second place, the Kremlin is in the process of cracking down on the Internet too, prosecuting bloggers and even commenters, shutting down websites and deluging others with threats and intimidation.

As to the “Internet” that survives, it’s a wasteland of ignorance that reflects Russia itself, and only the fact that it’s written inRussian prevents certain naive foreigners from understanding that fact.  To the rescue, however, came recently Harvard University’s Internet & Democracy blog, with a post showing how the Russian blogosphere utterly ignored U.S. President Obama’s recent visit to Moscow, just as the Kremlin wanted it to do.

Remembering Estemirova, Immortal Russian Hero

Natalia Estemirova, Immortal Russian Patriot

Memorial, the NGO human rights organization slain Russian hero worked for, has shut down its operations in Chechnya becaue of the danger to its staff.  Exactly what the Kremlin wanted!  Newsweek Russia correspondent Anna Nemtsova, writing on Foreign Policy’s blog, remembers her fallen comrad (watch Estemirova speaking on YouTube with English subtitles here;  watch HRW’s video tribute to her here, listen to the New Yorker‘s interview with her here; read a plethora of reader comments on a eulogy by a New York Times Russia correspondent who also knew her here):

Natalia Estemirova had a dry sense of humor and a giant heart. I remember the first time she showed us around her apartment, in the war-weary city of Grozny, she pointed to a huge shrapnel hole in the wall separating her daughter’s bedroom from the hallway. “Check out the new design of the ventilation,” she said. “I never have time to fix it, so let it stay a part of our interior.”

That was classic Natalia — a single mother and a human rights activist in a place that desperately needed them, she never had time for her own life; there were too many troubles to report on. She was a walking fountain of Chechnya’s sad stories: “I want to tell you a story about this man, a widower who was kidnapped from his house in a mountain village and now is being tortured in jail. His two little children live with his mother, who is almost 100 years old.” That was the first thing she told me when we met in Grozny in 2005.

WaPo Condemns the Kremlin

At last, a major American newspaper has come out with the unvarnished truth about Russia.  Under the headline “Russia, Disgraced” the Washington Post tells it like it is in an editorial on the Estemirova killing:

IN RUSSIA, a surefire way to curtail one’s life expectancy is to tell truths and pose questions that are inconvenient to the Kremlin and its loyalists. That is particularly so for journalists, human rights activists and others who dare to criticize the supremely brutal regime in the southern Russian region of Chechnya, which, with the Kremlin’s full backing, has prosecuted a blood-soaked anti-insurgency campaign.

July 19, 2009 — Contents

SUNDAY JULY 19 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  The Holy Russian Empire

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Now, it’s Russia’s turn for the Chills

(3)  Essel on Russian Heroism

(4)  Goble on the Horror of Russian Bureaucracy

(5)  Russia’s Killing Girls

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the mighty Pajamas Media blog takes Barack Obama to task on the Estemirova killing. His cowardly characterization of Vladimir Putin means he has blood on his hands, and that’s the name of that tune. His shameful response to the killing, not even as strong as Europe’s, hardly washes it off.  Kim also had a blog post on American Thinker covering the topic.

EDITORIAL: The Holy Russian Empire?

Tandem II: Putin & Kirill

EDITORIAL

The Holy Russian Empire?

On July 9th, Russian “prime minister” Vladimir Putin and Russian Patriarch Kirill (the Slavic pope) paid a state visit together to the island of Valaam and its ancient monestary, a famous place of religious pilgrimage for Orthodox Russians.  The two have more than just Russian nationalism and religion in common:  It’s widely believed that Kirill, like Putin, was a member of the KGB.  Russia’s constitution, just like America’s, calls for separation of church in state; as with every other aspect of the document, Putin simply ignores it with impunity.

EDITORIAL: Now, its Russia’s Turn for the Chills

EDITORIAL

Now, its Russia’s Turn for the Chills

Last winter, Russia sent chills down the spines of Europe’s huddled masses by turning off the spigots for the region’s heating gas, using a conflict with Ukraine as pretext.  Though Russia may have felt powerful in the short term, in the long term this may have been the single most costly of Vladimir Putin’s innumerable policy errors.

That’s because the result was the announcement last week of a deal between a group of major European nations, signed in Turkey, to build a brand new gas pipleline called Nabucco (after an opera by Verdi) which will circumvent Russia and allow Europe to draw on the stocks of Central Asia. In a final cruel cut, the Nabucco line will begin pumping gas in 2014, the same year Russia expects to host the winter Olympic games in Sochi.

And that wasn’t the end of Russia’s nightmare.

Essel on Russian “Heroism”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

by Dave Essel

A tradition that neo-Nazi Russia continues from its Soviet predecessor is hypocrisy in its awarding of medals, thus devaluing, and making a mockery of, these strange little bits of metal that states award their most exemplary citizens.

Goble on the Horrors of Neo-Soviet Bureaucracy

Paul Goble reports:

Not only is the Russian bureaucracy now larger than the Soviet one it replaced, but it is more Kafkaesque, with those who must deal with it far less certain about who decides what or even whether there is anyone who can decide anything, according to a leading Moscow social critic.

Russia’s Killing Girls

The New American blog reports:

Sad though it is, man has seldom had much trouble killing his youngest fellows. If the ancient Spartans perceived any imperfection in a child, for instance, they would “expose” him, which amounted to leaving the child somewhere, perhaps a hillside, to die.

Of course, while not all civilizations held their offspring to the strict standards of the Spartans, infanticide was common in the pagan world. Despite this, it’s hard to imagine an ancient society that murdered its young on the magnitude of the modern world with its abortion-on-demand culture. And in this modern world, the culture of death is nowhere more intense than in Russia.

This is one of the facts we learn in the DVD documentary Killing Girls, a work about the lives of Russian women and, something that occurs all too often, the deaths of their unborn children. The documentary presents the stories of Anna Sirota, the narrator of the work, and three girls, Valya, 15; Nastja, 17; and Sasha, 16; all of whom had abortions. It also features the Family and Reproduction Center (such places are always euphemistically named, aren’t they?) in St. Petersburg, Russia, which offers late-term abortions to teenage girls.

SPECIAL EXTRA EDITORIAL: Barack Obama declares war on La Russophobe

SPECIAL EXTRA EDITORIAL

Barack Obama declares war on La Russophobe

Reacting to the murder of Russian hero journalist Natalia Estemirova, the European Union stated:  “We condemn that brutal act and call for the authorities to try to establish who is responsible and take the action that is called for.”

Here’s what Barack Obama’s State Department had to say:  “The United States is deeply saddened by reports of the abduction and murder of respected human rights activist Natalya Estemirova.  We call upon the Russian government to bring those responsible to justice.”  Think that was just State, and Obama’s White House had stronger feelings?  Nope, they were “sad” too.  They were maybe a little sadder than state, to the point of being “disturbed.”  They called the act an “outrageous crime” but did not condemn it as the EU was willing to do.

The EU is outraged and condemns the brutality, the American president is “sad” about the murder and has no further comment.  We are disgusted beyond words. It feels as if Mr. Obama has declared war on La Russophobe.  And let’s be clear:  The EU statement was hardly all it should have been. Rather than “calling” for justice, the EU should have demanded it, and should have specified what steps it would take if Russia, once again, failed to deliver justice.  Europe has always looked to America for leadership on such issues, and now it is America that looks to Europe.  It is a nightmare.

Human rights leaders in Russia were not so cowardly. 

SPECIAL EXTRA: Natalya Estemirova shot and Killed in Chechnya

Natalya Estemirova

No sooner had we published special issue devoted to exposing the extent to which Vladimir Putin has failed and lost control in the Caucasus than an exclamation point was added painted in the blood of yet one more fallen Russian patriot.

 Prize-winning Russian journalist Natalya Estemirova, who may be viewed as a successor to Anna Politkovskaya, has been murdered in Chechnya in order to silence her fearless reporting on human rights abuses by the Kremlin in that tortured region.   In October 2007, she spoke for Politkovskaya on the pages of The Nation magazine.  Today, the magazine is eulogizing her.

Estemirova was kidnapped and then shot in the head in the manner of a mafia contract hit, her body dumped in the gutter like a piece of garbage.

She is the latest in a long line of political murders obviously carried out by the Kremlin to silence its critics (the Kremlin’s puppet in Chechnya had openly threatened her life), a history that dates back to Vladimir Putin’s first months in office with the liquidation of human rights activist Galina Starovoitova.

Once again, the Kremlin will remain silent at this barbaric outrage. Once again, no killers will be brought to justice. Once again, we will ask how many heroic Russians must give their lives before the American administration will stand up for democracy and justice in Russia.  The European Union has spoken out strongly, we await their plan of action. If President Obama remains silent on this killing, his silence will be even more reprehensible than that of her Kremlin killers and history will condemn him.  Mr. Obama has no more time to wait. He must speak now, and then he must act.

July 17, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY JULY 17 CONTENTS

(1)  Essel: Welcome back, Mr. Churchill!

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Ryzhkov on his Knees

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Kudrin makes a Funny

(4)  Nemtsov in Newsweek!

(5)  Essel on Russia’s “Best and Brightest”

Essel: Great Britain is back in Churchill Mode

Our Politicians Can Do Some Things Right!

by Dave Essel

I never thought I’d be saying this but the UK House of Commons Defence Committee has just published a totally exemplary report on Russia, stating what should underlie the UK’s attitude to that country.

It’s a long time since I have been able to react with pleasure and pride to something done by my country. This report is sensible, literate, clear and organised, and calls a spade a spade. The committee questioned all the right sorts of people, applied collective intelligence to the information gathered, and came up with conclusions that I do not think that any of us on LR would disagree with.

EDITORIAL: Ryzhkov on his Knees

EDITORIAL

Ryzhkov on his Knees

It’s not often that we feel pity for Russians.  We didn’t when Anna Politkovskaya got shot, because we figured it was better for her not to have to watch her country come undone before her eyes, and we knew she probably saw it as an honor to give her life for her country.  In fact, the only time we can remember feeling pity was when Oleg Kozlovsky got drafted into the army, something nobody could possibly have forseen occuring, a new low in the history of national government.  The specter of dedovshchina hanging over the head of that brave and brilliant, thoughtful young academic was heart-rending.

But now we feel it again, feel it in spades, for poor ex-parliamentarian Vladimir Ryzhkov, who had the pleasure of meeting U.S. President Barack Obama last week and wrote about it the Moscow Times. We can’t imagine any more compelling proof of just how badly Obama botched his Russia sojourn than the pathetic effort of Mr. Ryzhkov to sing Obama’s praises.  Reading it, Obama shoud be ashamed.  Ryzhkov, of course, should want to crawl under a rock.

EDITORIAL: Kudrin Makes a Funny

EDITORIAL

Kudrin Makes a Funny

Oops! Kudrin makes a funny.

One thing surely nobody can deny about Putin’s Russia is that it’s always good for a laugh (if you can put out of mind momentarily the tortuous suffering of so many innocent children that results from the insane incompetence of the Kremlin these days).

A great example was the statement by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin last week that Russia would increase its energy efficiency by 40% within the next decade.  We can’t remember when we’ve heard something come out of Russia that sounded quite so monumentally ridiculous.

Nemtsov in Newsweek!

Boris Nemtsov is blitzkrieging the American media! First he had a piece in the Wall Street Journal, and now he has one in Newsweek.  If there is one good thing that resulted from Obama’s trip to Moscow, it is raising this brilliant man’s profile.  He was also interviewed recently by CNN’s Fareed Zhaharia.  Go Boris, go!

Barack Obama’s schedule during his visit to Moscow was symbolic: after he dedicated the first day to official talks with President Dmitry Medvedev, he spent much of the second day in meetings with representatives of civil-society organizations, the business community, and leaders of the political opposition. With this gesture, the U.S. president sent a clear message that he does not consider Russia to be limited to the ruling circle around Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and that he intends to “reset” relations not just with the Kremlin, but also with Russian society. This dual-track approach involves discussing urgent practical matters (such as securing a transit route to Afghanistan or agreeing on a joint position on North Korea) with the government of the day, while simultaneously engaging in a broader dialogue on values with the Russian people.

Essel on Russia’s Best and Brightest

Where the Best Minds Gather

Dave Essel

One of our moron troll vistors commented in response to one of my translations recently that “American T.V. is the basic reason why less than 10 per cent of your nation reads books daily” – of course with no source to back up his claim. This, of course, was silly nonsense, but I wondered if something could be done to counter the concept. (Be warned, the text after the jump contains profanity as translated from the Russian web.)

July 15, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY JULY 15 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Stormclouds over the Caucasus

(2)  Russia’s Ski Resort Time Bomb

(3)  Putin’s Failed Policy in the Caucasus

(4)  Teaching Russians about “Citizenship”

(5)  Endless Russian Barbarism in Chechnya

(6)  The Freedom that Russians Deserve

NOTE:  Today we offer a special issue devoted to the total breakdown of Kremlin policy in the Caucasus region.  As Amnesty International has found recently:  “There has been and continues to be a total failure of political will to uphold the rule of law and address impunity for present and past abuses of human rights in the region.”  Likewise, there has been and continues to be a total inability to subdue and pacify the rebelious citizens of the region, whose contempt for Russia rule is plain.

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld trashes Obama’s failed mission to Moscow, calling him a “white moderate,” in the latest installment of her American Thinker column. Ouch.  AT also posts video of a line of Russians refusing to shake Obama’s hand. Double ouch.  Welcome to Russia, Mr. Obama!

EDITORIAL: Stormclouds over the Caucasus

EDITORIAL

Stormclouds over the Caucasus

Today we offer a special issue devoted to documenting the horrific violence spreading throughout Russia’s Causasus region, sure and certain proof of two basic facts:  The people there do not want to live under Russia rule, and the Kremlin does not have control of them.  This means sending Olympic athletes to Russia in 2014, to the Caucaus region itself, is suicidal insanity — as we have said many times before. The world must stop this madness, and President Obama was grossly negligent not to have mentioned it in his recent visit to Moscow.

According to scholar Paul Goble, more than 300 people have been killed in just the first half of this year in Russia’s boiling Caucasus regions, including at least 60 civilians.  We’ve already documented the shocking list of high-profile assassinations that have taken place in Ingushetia in recent weeks, so it should come as no surprise when Goble reports:

Annals of Sochi 2014: Russia’s Ski Resort Time Bombs

Mairbek Vatchagaev, writing on the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor:

Today, the northwestern part of the North Caucasus region (comprised of the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Adygeya) is increasingly becoming one large battlefield. An affluent resort area during the Soviet period, today the region attracts very few Russian visitors, primarily due to its instability. According to the most optimistic estimates, tourist traffic to the world-renowned ski resort of Dombai in Karachaevo-Cherkessia alone declined by 70-90 percent last winter (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, December 31, 2008), and the number of foreign visitors substantially decreased. The summer season is unlikely to bring changes for the better, as the entire region is affected by the large-scale military drills that were conducted along the length of the border it shares with Georgia. Russian First Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Kolmakov described the current maneuvers as the largest in the area since the Soviet Union’s collapse (www.skavkaz.rfn.ru, May 19).

Putin’s Failed Policy in the Caucasus

Valery Dzutsev, writing in the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor:

The June 22 attack on Ingushetia’s president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, which left him badly wounded, has sparked a discussion in Russia over what to do next in the North Caucasus as a whole and in Ingushetia in particular. Moscow’s initial reaction to the attack on president Yevkurov was to give the neighboring Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov a free hand in Ingushetia. The idea was to use Kadyrov’s harsh techniques in Ingushetia in order to quell the resistance forces in the republic (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, June 23).

This move, however, produced a strongly negative reaction in Ingushetia. The Ingush opposition called for an extraordinary meeting of the Ingush People’s Congress with the main question on the agenda being to ask the Kremlin to appoint Ingushetia’s first president, Ruslan Aushev, as head of the republic (www.ingushetia.org, June 25). Aushev confirmed his willingness to serve as the interim head of the republic until the wounded Yevkurov recovers (Echo Moskvy radio, June 24).

Teaching Russians about “Citizenship”

Sergei Markedonov, head of the department of inter-ethnic relations at Russia’s Institute for Political and Military Analysis, and associate professor at RGGU and MGU, writing on Prague Watchdog:

With every day that passes, the socio-political situation in the North Caucasus increasingly gives grounds for alarming conclusions and prognostications. Possibly the only attempt in the past ten years to provide at least some kind of coherent interpretation of the North Caucasus crisis was made by President Dmitry Medvedev, who in June 2009 listed the region’s main problems, which he termed “systemic.” Among them he included unemployment, “a monstrous scale of corruption” and the inefficiency of government. As is often the case, the president’s “systemic” approach quickly became a fashion among Russian officials. Discussing the incident which took place in the Stepnovsky district of Stavropol on June 21 (a large-scale clash between Dargins and Nogays), the governor of Stavropol Kray said that “160 young people cannot have a personal dislike for each other … Specific individuals can have personal grievances, but when nearly two hundred people are involved it means there is a systemic problem.”

Endless Russian Barbarism in Chechnya

Human Rights Watch reports:

Russian federal and Chechen local authorities should immediately put a stop to the punitive house-burning and other human rights violations in Chechnya and bring those responsible to justice, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented two new cases in Chechnya in which the homes of families related to suspected insurgents were torched by local law-enforcement officials as well as a public extrajudicial killing of a man suspected of providing food to insurgents.

On July 2, 2009, Human Rights Watch published a report, “‘What Your Children Do Will Touch Upon You’: Punitive House-Burning in Chechnya“, documenting a pattern of house burnings by security forces to punish families for the alleged involvement by their relatives in the insurgency.

“We have two more houses burned and at least one person killed just in the last couple of weeks,” said Tanya Lokshina, deputy Moscow director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s time for Russia’s leaders to take a clear stand against this kind of brutal collective punishment instead of looking like they endorse it.”

The Freedom that Russians Deserve

A letter to the editor of the Washington Post:

To the Editor:

The July 7 editorial “Moscow’s Fantasies” commented on “vital U.S. interests” involved in relations with Russia, but what about the vital interests of Russian citizens?

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.