EDITORIAL: The Slobbering Russian Beast Eyes Georgia

EDITORIAL

The Slobbering Russian Beast Eyes Georgia

With no disrespect intended, we think the “analysis” of our blogging colleagues over at Robert Amsterdam and The Power Vertical, seeming to engage in some weird form of numerology regarding the signficance of the month of August in Russian history, is rather bizarre.  We see no reason for rational western commentators to dabble in the same sort of silly and barbaric astrological gibberish as do the Russian people themselves.

But just as even paranoids have enemies, that doesn’t mean Russia won’t invade Georgia this month, again.

EDITORIAL: Russia in the Crosshairs of Europe

EDITORIAL

Russia in the Crosshairs

Back in January of 2008, LR founder Kim Zigfeld wrote on Pajamas Media about Russia’s increasing exposure to outright condemnation in the courts of Europe.  Two more recent developments show Russia sliding fast down a perilously slippery slope that leads to being cast out of Europe and classified by the world as a barbarous, third-world failed state.

EDITORIAL: Once again, Putin sticks the knife into Medvedev and Twists

EDITORIAL

Once again, Putin sticks the knife into Medvedev and Twists

We’ve previously documented the ongoing efforts of Vladimir Putin’s henchman (and namesake) Vladmir Frolov to undermine the authority of Dima Medvedev at every opportunity with vicious attacks on his comptetence.  And now he’s done it yet again, reaching for a new low in poisonous treachery.  Mr. Medvedev should be afraid. Very afraid.  His days are numbered.

EDITORIAL: Crazy Bruce Chapman, Talking to Himself

EDITORIAL

Crazy Bruce Chapman, Talking to Himself

Bruce Chapman, Talking to Himself

It has been more than three weeks now since anyone has published a comment on the Discovery Institute’s “Russia Blog” (for those unfamilar, a pro-Kremlin propaganda exercise run by a Russian citizen in close cooperation with Russia Today, the Kremlin’s TV station).

That’s right:  Three weeks.

During those three weeks, Russia Blog has published eight posts, and half of them have been written by the head honcho of the Discovery Institute himself, Bruce Chapman. Not a single one of his posts have received a single comment.  Ouch.  That’s a tough one to swallow, even by the cruel standards of the blogosphere.  It seems that justice has finally prevailed and Russia Blog is going the way of dodo.

As an epitaph, Let’s take a look at the insane gibberish he’s been babbling, shall we? Not for nothing has it been totally ignored by the entire universe.

In Putin’s Russia, Wanton Savagery

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Valery Kazakov was almost to the prosecutor’s office when the killers caught him. He was shot as he cut through an alleyway, and when he stumbled bleeding into the street, a man bent down to stab the final breaths out of him.

It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon, in the heart of the sleepy town of Pushkino. As far as the townspeople were concerned, it was a public execution. Kazakov, a former police officer, was believed to have been on his way to testify in the corruption case against the former mayor.

It has been a year now, and Kazakov’s widow holds out little hope of justice, shrugging off the idea with weary skepticism. Police recently arrested the alleged killer, but that’s just a “technical detail,” Maria Kazakova says. She wants to know who put the hit on her husband, who ordered and paid for it.

August 3, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY AUGUST 3 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:   Dobrokhotov, Defiant

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia is a Mafia State

(3)  More Bloodshed in “Pacified” Chechnya

(4)  A Call to Arms in Europe on Georgia

(5)  Photo Essay:  Remembering Estemirova

NOTE:  At around 2 pm EST last Friday our counter rolled past the 1,000,000-visit milestone.  This actualy represents 1.3 million total vists to our blog since our founding, 300,000 of them on our prior server over at Google.  However, this is the first time our counter has shown more than one million visits, and as far as we know it’s the first time any Russian politics blog has ever displayed this many visits on a public counter. 

NOTE:  A major WTA tour event was held last week in Stanford, California.  American Venus Williams met Russian opponents in both her quarterfinal and semifinal match.  It got ugly.

EDITORIAL: Dobrokhotov, Defiant!

EDITORIAL

Dobrokhotov, Defiant!

Roman Dobrokhotov

In December of last year, LR founder Kim Zigfeld devoted an installment of her Russia column on the Pajamas Media blog to Roman Dobrokhotov, leader of the opposition movement known as “We.” 

At that time, Dobrokhotov was rattling Dima Medvedev’s cage during a speech, accusing him of talking about democratic values while his polices eradicated them, and being dragged out of the hall.  One would think it rather hard to top a performance like that, but only if one didn’t know Dobrokhotov very well.

A few days ago, Dobrokhotov and his democracy stormtroopers did something really breathtaking, clearly risking their lives for their cause and country.

EDITORIAL: Russia is a Mafia State

EDITORIAL

Russia is a Mafia State

In the past, we’ve castigated the Moscow Times for carrying the propaganda spewed out by the Renaissance Capital brokerage house in Russia, which routinely publishes its advertising material in the guise of “op-ed” pieces and may be giving undisclosed financial support to the paper.  It’s surely the MT’s worst feature that it doesn’t warn readers about the inherent conflict of interest Renaissance staff have in “analyzing” the Russian market when they earn their living by convincing foreigners to invest in it.

So it hardly came as much suprise to us to read in the New York Times last week that William Browder of Hermitage Capital, a leading Russian investor booted out of the country for daring to demand transparancy (Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sent to Siberia for the same reason), had filed a lawsuit in New York City alleging that there are “the ties between those who took over the Hermitage companies after Mr. Browder was forced out in 2005; officers of the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the K.G.B. known as the F.S.B.; and executives at a Renaissance group company, Renaissance Capital.”

More Bloodshed in “Pacified” Chechnya

Bloomberg reports:

A suicide bomber killed four policemen and two builders after being stopped outside a theater in Grozny, capital of Russia’s Chechnya region.

The bomber blew himself up yesterday after police barred entry to a hall where 800 people were watching a play, Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov said on the ministry’s Web site today. Four other police officers and another bystander were injured, the ministry said.

A Call to Arms in Europe on Georgia

French philosopher André Glucksmann, writing on City Journal:

Is there such a thing as the European Union? In Washington, the State Department has been seeking the phone number for such an entity since the days of Henry Kissinger. In Moscow, the EU is nothing but a television prop. Since the days of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, regimes have come and gone, but the conviction endures that only classical powers matter: the United Kingdom, France, and above all Germany, long a political dwarf but always an economic giant. As for the historians, they’re uncertain: the De Gaulle–Adenauer and Mitterrand-Kohl relationships did not work for long, and London’s tiffs with Paris and Bonn (and then Berlin) were all the talk for decades. In the face of a global crisis, European disunity is evident.

Remembering Estemirova: Images from her Moscow Memorial Service