Wimbledon Wrapup: Yet Another Russian Bloodbath

Once again, Russian women humiliated themselves at a grand-slam tennis tournament.  Russia’s so-called “number one” player was by far the worst offender, so unspeakably wretched that she made the whole national tennis program look entirely fraudulent – the second time she’d done so in as many months.

Russian #1 Dinara Safina has now appeared in the finals of two grand slam events this year and the semifinals of the third, and embarrassed herself all three times. She won three of 15 games played at the Australian Open final, six of 18 games played at the French Open final, and an utterly pathetic one of 13 games played at the Wimbledon semifinal.  46 total games played against three different opponents, and so-called “world #1″ Safina was only able to win ten of them, less than a quarter of the total.  And six of those ten games came from a woeful, awful fellow Russian.  In 28 games against non-Russians, Safina won only four, an utterly humiliating one-seventh share.

The performance of the other Russians at Wimbledon, though, was hardly much better.

SPECIAL EXTRA: Obama Speaks to Novaya Gazeta

“I agree with President Medvedev when he said that ‘freedom is better than the absence of freedom’. I see no reason why strengthening democracy, human rights and the rule of law cannot be included as part of our ‘reset’ in relations. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

– U.S. President Barack Obama to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in an interview (Russian version) the paper has published just as he opens talks with the Kremlin

Other Russia is reporting that Obama intends to meet with opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov and Garry Kasparov (who is crowing with in-your-face jubiliation).  The combination of the interview and the meeting make one very bitter pill for Vladimir Putin to swallow.  For the first time since we started blogging about Russia, we are excited about the country’s future in a positive way. Go, Obama, go!

June 6, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY JUNE 6 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Is Putin the Worst Ever?

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putin the Puritan

(3)  Essel on Threadbare Putin

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Putin’s Murderous Rampage

(5)  EDITORIAL:  Putin’s Corrupt, Incompetent Minions

(6)  EDITORIAL:  Obama vs. Putin, Round 1

NOTE:  This week Barack Obama travels to Moscow for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin.  With this 100% original special issue, we offer him our bon voyage.  We document chapter and verse the evil that is Putin, and we indicate our hope, based on his recent direct assault on Putin, that Obama will restore American moral leadership where neo-Soviet Russia is concerned, and though we endorsed John McCain in the last election we’ll be only too thrilled to become Obama’s biggest fans if he does so.  We will not be publishing a Sunday issue to give this special its due.

EDITORIAL: Is Putin the Worst Russian Leader Ever?

EDITORIAL

Is Putin the Worst Russian Leader Ever?

We think so, and today we offer a wealth of evidence to support our position in form of a special issue devoted to answering this question.  Barack Obama will soon be winging his way to Russia and will sit down with Putin to discuss all manner of things.  Hopefully, the new American president has some vague clue about how how Putin is sticking it to the people of his country, and the world, in a fully neo-Soviet manner.  Just a glance through today’s content would give him a major eye-opener. 

Let’s begin with economics, which as Putin’s second term as “president” came to a conclusion was allegedly his long suit.   Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov warned long ago that in fact Putin was nothing but yet another Potemkin village, doomed to collapse as surely as the USSR did.  But the pro-Kremlin propaganda kept on rolling forth. 

But the numbers are catching up with Mr. Putin, catching up fast.  Just two months ago, the World Bank predicted Russia would have a 4% economic contraction this year.  Now, it has doubled that estimate, in a report suggesting the contraction will be 8%, and the Russian Finance Ministry itself believes the WB is still being conservative.  It’s quite possible that Putin’s Russia will end the year with a double-digit recession.

It would, in that event, match Russia’s projected unemployment and inflation rates for 2009, which the WB estimates will both top out at a horrifying 13%.  And it would also match Russia’s projected loan default rate, which the WB believes will stand at 10% by year’s end. 

EDITORIAL: Putin the Puritan

EDITORIAL

Putin the Puritan

Perhaps for the first time since Vladimir Putin took power, the people of Russia last week got a crystal clear image of what their lives would be like a decade from now if Putin is allowed to become “president for life” like Sadaam Hussein of Iraq.  It is not a pretty picture.

At one stroke, just as if he were Stalin, Putin shut down every formerly legal gambling casino in the country and threw hundreds of thousands of Russian workers onto the unemployment lines.  Just as many contended Russia could “never go back” to a Soviet style of living, many believed Putin would never carry through on his Puritan threat to close the casinos, at least not while unemployment was in double digits and the economy was foundering badly. 

But he has done it.  And that’s not all he has done.

Essel on Threadbare Putin

Has Pooty Lost the Thread? 

by Dave Essel

June is a bit early for the silly season, at least for Brits, where schools and  Parliament take their summer break a bit later. Schools break up earlier in Russia and whether the Duma takes a summer break or not makes not a jot of difference.

So it’s always time for the silly season in Russia and our Pooty got it off to a good start by a run of acts of wanton silliness that were jumped on by commentators, to the extent that the Eurasia Daily Monitor remarked in passing in an article about Gazprom “some commentators started to worry about Putin’s connection with reality.”

This seemed worth a second glance and I took a wander around this and related articles. It would appear that Pooty has indeed being buzzing busily around all sorts of pies and making one commentator after another reel at his revelatory inanities.

EDITORIAL: The Murderous Rampage of Vladimir Putin

EDITORIAL

The Murderous Rampage of Vladimir Putin

Vyacheslav Yaroshenko.

Rim Shaigalimov.

Do you know these names?  Vladimir Putin hopes you don’t or if you do you’ll soon forget.  You see, he killed both of them.

EDITORIAL: Behind Putin, Incompetence and Corruption

EDITORIAL

Behind Putin, Incompetence and Corruption

A stunning fact recently revealed by scholar Paul Goble is that no Russian ambassador earns more than $36,000 per year, less than the average yearly salary in the United States.  And scholar Andrei Illarionov shows us that the men pulling the strings for these “diplomats,” (who in fact have no real freedom of action and act like puppets of the Kremlin) are nothing but a barbaric hoard of KGB thugs.

EDITORIAL: Obama vs. Putin, Round 1

EDITORIAL

Obama vs. Putin, Round 1

We were heartened when U.S. President Barack Obama appeared to signal, in an interview with the Associated Press just before leaving for Moscow, an intention to seek to divide the Kremlin and thereby conquer it. If Obama follows through on this strategy, it will be a master stroke.

July 3, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY JULY 3 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Our Shortest Editorial Ever!

(2)  Welcome to Russia!  When will you be leaving?

(3)  Desperate Russia begins Drafting Invalids

(4)  Russia still just Doesn’t get it: The problem is Russians

(5)  OPEN THREAD

EDITORIAL: A New Low in Obscene Russian Barbarism

EDITORIAL

A New Low in Obscene Russian Barbarism

This is going to be our shortest editorial ever, just one sentence with no need for further comment from us, yet perhaps it is our most horrifying ever:  59% of Russians surveyed have no idea what happened in Pikalyovo, and only 16% of them are fully familiar with the cutting of a major national transportation artery by workers unpaid and starving, causing “prime minister” Putin to rush to the scene on an emergency basis.

NOTE: In our Monday issue, we’ll have four editorials and an original essay by Dave Essel focussing on Vladimir Putin, the man, the failure, the international paraiah.  The issue will go live on the web on Friday, we will not publish on Sunday but will allow the Monday issue to run two cycles. It’s that important. Don’t miss it.

Welcome to Russia!

The foreigner-in-Russia blogging at News of the Eastern reports on a typical encounter with Russian “law enforcement” authorities.  (NOTE:  An average Russian is paid less than 90 rubles for each hour of work.  Thus, the “little bit of money” asked for by the police as a bribe in this story amounts to more than three hours of labor, nearly half a day’s pay, for an average Russian and as such is roughly equivalent to a bribe of $60 being demanded from an average American. Imagine being asked that for, say, walking on grass with a sign to the contrary.)

Yesterday I had my first run-in with the Russian police. Unlike many of my other foreign friends, I am not routinely stopped and hassled for my documents so this was my first direct experience of the renowned MVD, although of course I’d heard thousands of stories about how corrupt the Russian police are. This time around, however, I was definitely in the wrong, although I’m not entirely sure to what extent the police were in the right either.

Desperate Russia begins Drafting Invalids

Paul Goble reports:

Caught in a bind between the largest draft quota in years – 305,000 — and the smallest cohort of draft age men from which to fill it – those born in the difficult year of 1991 — the Russian military, in violation of the law and its own regulations, is taking in “anyone that moves,” according to two activists who work on military manpower issues.

Even Russians can see it: Russia’s problem is not bad PR, but gross misconduct and denial

Paul Goble reports:

The explanation for Russia’s negative image in the West, one that a Moscow journalist argues currently makes the country appear “100 times worse than we are,” is to be found “not in its public relations specialists” or in a conspiracy by foreign governments but rather in Russians themselves.

In an article in Moskovsky Komsomolets, Mikhail Rostovsky says that most members of the Russian elite are “pessimistic” about the possibility of “a radical improvement in the image of Russia in the eyes of the ruling class of the Western powers,” having convinced themselves that their country “by definition cannot be popular” with democratic countries. But such a view is doubly wrong, Rostovsky continues. On the one hand, Russia has been popular in the West in the past even when it had far more authoritarian rulers than it does at present. And on the other, it distracts attention from Russia’s own responsibility for the current negative image the country has.

OPEN THREAD

We have never done this before, and have no idea if our readers are interested in such a thing or not, but some blogs offer readers “open threads” where they can post whatever they like, so we thought we would try it. If readers take advantage we will repeat, if not then not.  With U.S. President Barack Obama due in Moscow next week, a multitude of issues may be worthy of discussion.  We won’t be responding to any comments on this thread and will offer maximum liberalism in allowing publications in order let the readers have their say.