MONDAY OCTOBER 4 CONTENTS
(1) EDITORIAL: Russian Aggression against Georgia Confirmed Again
(2) EDITORIAL: Russia’s “Internet”
(3) More Attacks on Russian Journalists for Speaking the Truth
(4) Annals of Russian Insanity
(5) Annals of Russian Tennis Humiliation
NOTE: LR publisher and founder Kim Zigfeld’s next installment of her Russia column on the mighty Pajamas Media mega blog will address the topic covered in #3 above and mentioned in our last issue as well, the appalling threats being made to heroic Russian journalist Alexander Podrabinek, whose work has often been translated on this blog. We ask that all our readers do all they can to make shows of support for Mr. Podrabinek as he struggles to stay alive in neo-Soviet Russia, where telling the truth is a capital offense.
Anyone want to guess the WHY of this, I have recently been receiving this message on Russian LJ sites I have visited for ages and hardly on a daily basis:
You’ve been temporarily banned from accessing LiveJournal, perhaps because you were hitting the site too quickly. Please make sure that you’re following our Bot Policy. If you have questions, contact us at webmaster@livejournal.com with the following information: zGpAdIf7N4CLlBj @ 64.233.173.19 blogs
Some sites on LJ give me the message, some don’t. They are all anti-Putin. I think the common thread with the ban is my use of Google translator which seems to create the message next time around.
Shooting victim says Russian KGB links should be probed
Today, 10:34 | Associated Press
ADELPHI, Md. (AP) — That night, he was returning home from the International Spy Museum, of all places. He had been meeting with, of all people, an old friend who once was a top officer in the KGB.
It was raining when Paul Joyal pulled into his driveway in this suburb 10 miles from the White House. As he stepped out of his car, nothing seemed amiss. He did not see two men lurking in the darkness.
“Only in today’s Russia can you be an intelligence officer, a businessman and a member of organized crime all at the same time,” Joyal said.
In February, he noted, Polish authorities arrested a suspect in the shooting death of 27-year-old Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard to Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov. The bodyguard, who last year had accused Kadyrov, the Chechen president, of torture and human rights abuses, was gunned down while returning home from a grocery store in Vienna under circumstances that have some resemblance to the Joyal shooting.
Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a national-security think tank with expertise on Russian issues, said the Russians seem to be acting with impunity on the international stage. He noted that the Obama administration has moved to push the “reset button” in its relations with Russia.
Howard said it is certainly plausible that Joyal was targeted, given the breadth and depth of Russia’s campaign against its critics.
“It’s almost like we’re bending over backward to court Russia” at a time when it is indifferent to Western demands to respect human rights and political dissent, Howard said.
http://www.kyivpost.com/world/50002
Hey LES, I just wanted to write about this.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ijdxLxHTRGpL4ld-wtwGLKgiqBoAD9B335D00
“My husband’s just been shot. Please,” she said.
“Who was he shot by?” the dispatcher asked after confirming the address.
“I don’t know.”
And that’s still true today. Some 2 1/2 years after the shooting, the motive still remains uncertain.
Police assumed that Joyal was the victim of a random street crime. He assumed the same, at first.
But he soon confronted another possibility. For years, he had warned that the Russian government was taking extreme steps, including assassinations, to silence its critics.
Perhaps he too had become a target.
“A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you — in the most horrible way possible.”
Those were Joyal’s words — not recently, but on the NBC television program “Dateline,” one month before his shooting.
He went on the February 2007 show to discuss the murder in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who was poisoned with radioactive polonium. British authorities later named a chief suspect: Andrei Lugovoi, a flashy millionaire businessman and former KGB officer. Russia refused to extradite him, and Luguvoi denies involvement.
Also interviewed for the “Dateline” program was Times of London reporter Daniel McGrory, who also criticized the Russians. McGrory was found dead in his home just a few days before the segment aired. The 54-year-old had appeared to be healthy but died of a heart attack.