One American is Worth Five Russians

As the chart above shows, the American share of world GDP has remained virtually unchanged over the course of the past three decades.  Asia’s share has increased markedly, but it has not impacted the U.S. share in any way.   Asia’s gains have come at the expense of Europe. And “Asia” of course is many countries with a vastly greater total population than the USA, yet together all its nations only manage to match U.S. output.  The U.S. share of world output in scientific research is even higher, nearly a third of all human production. 

Putin to Russia: “Don’t hold your breath!”

Vladmir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

“Don’t hold your breath!”

That is how Prime Minister Vladimir Putin answered the question asked during Thursday’s televised call-in show, “Do you ever want to quit politics with all its problems and to live for yourself, for your family and relax?” This pithy quip not only answers the specific question posed, but it also answers the broader question of whether there will be any changes to the autocracy that he has built up over the past nine years. In one single phrase, Putin set the record straight for Russia and the world.

One Photo is Worth a thousand Screams

The toll of fire fatalities at the “Khromaya Loshad” night club in Perm (pictured, left) has risen to 125, with 100 more currently hospitalized, many of them in critical condition.

At least 15 children lost both their parents in the conflagration.

Many of the victims were killed not by fire or smoke but by being stampeded by fellow Russians fighting to get out the only exit.

After the jump, shocking pictures from the scene reveal bodies stacked like cord wood in the streets, shirtless burned men standing without medical attention in the freezing cold, clueless party goers moments before hell broke loose, and the horrifically bleak burial conditions met by those who did not survive. They also show the special plane that was needed to carry burn victims from Siberia to Moscow because Perm, a major Russian city, lacks sufficient medical facilities to care for them.  You can also watch video from inside the club here and read a Russian blogger’s first-hand account of the events in English here.

We would like to ask:  Mr. Putin, why do you have money to buzz the USA with nuclear bombers and send weapons of war to the crazed Islamists in Iran but not to provide burn treatment in Perm?

December 9, 2009 — Contents

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 9 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Will Russia double Dip?

(2)  EDITORIAL: Russia and the Madman in Iran

(3)  Putin continues rewriting Russian History

(4)  The Kremlin’s Dog and Pony Show

(5)  Putin’s Foot-in-Mouth Disease

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the mighty Pajamas Media megablog deals with the shocking way in which French conservatives, including their mouthpiece newspaper Le Figaro, are playing footsie with the Putin dictatorship.  All true Reaganite conservatives, to say nothing of all liberals, should be appalled.

EDITORIAL: A Double-Dip Recession for Putin’s Russia?

EDITORIAL

A Double-Dip Recession for Putin’s Russia?

“The economy has grown by an average of 0.5 percent per month over the last five months.  I’m counting on these positive trends in economic development becoming more significant in the middle of next year.”

–Vladimir Putin, answering citizen phone-in questions last week in Moscow

Is Russia heading for a double dip?

Not so fast, Mr. Putin. Not so fast. 

The brilliant Russia economist Edward Hugh, blogging at Eastern European Economy Watch, offers a wealth of data indicating that Russia is heading for a double-dip recession which may well send the Russian economy into another massive tailspin. Should the price of oil fall again, this time it could easily be fatal.

Russia’s Capital Total Activity Index and GDP Indicator both saw turnarounds in their growth patterns of previous months, and began heading back for negative territory while the Russian Manufacturing PMI index remained in negative territory for a second straight month, and was worsening.  Hugh writes that “the quarter-on-quarter [GDP indicator] rate [shown in the chart above] slipped back to a bare 0.2%, treacherously close to the dividing line between contraction and expansion.”

EDITORIAL: Russia and the Madman in Iran

EDITORIAL

Russia and the Madman in Iran

Now, even Russia is getting scared of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Frankenstein monster it has constructed in Iran.

Last week, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would push forward to build 10 additional uranium enrichment plants it can use to make fissile materials for nuclear weapons.  The international community has been pressuring Iran to allow inspections of its facilities and to send its low-enriched waste materials out of the country for disposal, threatening sanctions if Iran does not comply.  Russia has been obstructing this pressure for years by selling Iran the technology it needs to use nuclear power, the military weapons it needs to protect it from Israeli strikes, and by voting to block sanctions int he UN security council, telling the world Iran is a peaceful nation which will use Russian technology only for social purposes.

Now, the world can see that Russia was lying and, at last, the Russians are beginning to see the peril of their lies as well. When the latest secret enrichment facility was discovered in Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency moved to censure the rogue state for lying to the world, and this time Russia joined the vote and so did China.

Putin continues feverishly rewriting Russian history

The Times of London reports:

Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage again.

The Kremlin’s neo-Soviet Dog and Pony Show

The Moscow Times reports:

The prime minister broke his call-in show records, discussing gold teeth and his love for animals and granting a birthday wish.

Rostov resident Tatyana Romanenko probably had a dream birthday Thursday, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bestowed his congratulations on her in a nationally televised show.

Romanenko, who turned 55, asked Putin for his best wishes in one of the more than 2 million e-mails, phone calls and text messages received by his aides in the run-up to his call-in show. Putin, known to send birthday wishes only to his peers, like Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko or prominent arts and political figures, read out the request from a blue folder where he kept a few messages that he had personally chosen.

Putin sticks his Foot in his Mouth, Again

Streetwise Professor reports:

No doubt the recent decision of Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague intensified Putin’s Pavlovian response to a question about Khodorkovsky.  The court ruled that Yukos shareholders could sue Russia for violating the Energy Charter by seizing Yukos assets.

SPECIAL EXTRA: Russians killing Russians

In neo-Soviet Russia, they give themselves the flaming finger.

It’s ironic indeed that Russia is so inflamed by hatred of foreigners, because it is Russians, not foreigners, who are the real danger to Russian people. 

Just days ago, we reported on a the terrorist bombing of a luxury (by Russian standards) high-speed train halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. At least two dozen Russians were killed by these home-grown terrorists. 

But they were small thinkers.  Late Friday evening on the other end of the country, in the city of Perm in Siberia, a massive explosion rocked a nightclub and killed at least 100, perhaps four times or more as many as the terrorists had claimed.  Half again as many were injured.  And these killers were not terrorists in the traditional sense; they were simply ordinary, reckless Russian citizens literally playing with fire.

The Russophile rats will try to rationalize this atrocity by saying that nightclub disasters have occurred in other supposedly more advanced countries like those in Europe or North America.  True enough.  But it’s Russia that does not rank in the top 130 nations of the world when ranked for adult lifespan, not them.  Russian is one of the most dangerous places on the planet for a human being to be, especially if he’s unlucky enough to be a Russian.  Russia has one of the world’s highest murder rates and Russians are far more likely to be killed by vehicle or fire than the people of any other nation on the planet.  For this reason, Russia’s birthrate is unable to keep pace with its mortality rate, and the country is quite literally going extinct. 

Nice work there, Mr. Putin!

December 7, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY DECEMBER 7 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Putin’s Axe Falls Again

(2)  EDITORIAL:  The End of Freedom of Religion in Russia

(3)  EDITORIAL:  The Putin Plunge

(4)  Russian GPS:  SNAFU

(5)  Putin, Bugged

NOTE:  Do you find you just can’t get enough of the Soviet TV Russians were watching whilst executing their writers, informing on their neighbors and terrorizing their tiny neighbors. Then LONG LIVE CCCP! This is for you. Free of charge! Na zdoroviye!

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Barbaric Axe Falls Again, and Again

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Barbaric Axe Falls Again, and Again

Vladimir Putin continues his barbaric, Stalin-like purge of opposition figures high and low. From the most powerful judicial official to the lowliest student in Siberia, no one is safe from his murderous axe.  If you merely lose you job or your place at univerisity, consider yourself lucky you are not simply shot dead.

Last Wednesday, not one but two judges of Russia’s Constitutional Court were forced to resign. Oleg Kozlovsky reports that Vladimir Yaroslavtsev and Anatoly Kononov were forced off the bench for expressing worries about the quality of Russian democracy and the independence of the courts.  Yaroslavtsev gave an interview to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, while Kononov gave one to the Russian paper Sobesednik defending Yaroslavtsev and even daring to raise the subject of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.   Yaroslavtsev told the Spanish daily:  “Nobody knows what [the FSB] will decide tomorrow. There is no consultation or discussion.”

So much for the separation of powers and the concept of judicial review in Russia. Looks like the only opinion that matters where the Russian constitution is concerned is Putin’s.

EDITORIAL: The End of Freedom of Religion in Russia

EDITORIAL

The End of Freedom of Religion in Russia

The latest act of barbarism against Russian democracy being committed by the nation’s so-called “parliament” is a statute called The Law on Religious Activity proposed by the prosecutor’s office and soon to be enacted into law.  It’s just one more heartbreaking step down the road towards establishing a Holy Russian Empire, a road Putin has been following since his first days in office.

EDITORIAL: Another Russian Journalist takes the Putin Plunge

EDITORIAL 

Another Russian Journalist takes the Putin Plunge 

Ivan Safronov

 Call it “the Putin Plunge.” 

Russian journalists have a habit of taking it. 

In 2007, Kommersant‘s Ivan Safronov went out a fifth floor window in Moscow while working on a story about the sale of weapons by the Kremlin to Iran and Syria. 

Then just last week, Olga Kotovskaya fell 14 floors in Kaliningrad, just one day after winning a court case to seize back her TV station from the Kremlin after the government moved in to silence her reporting on political corruption.  The Guardian quoted Solomon Ginzburg, a deputy in Kaliningrad’s regional parliament:

Russian GPS: SNAFU

CNN reports:

Late last month Moscow celebrated the birthday of Father Frost, the Russian iteration of Santa Claus, with a new-fangled announcement: Father Frost’s retinue would move through the holiday skies aided by Glonass, the Russian answer to GPS.

Eagerly waiting children could track his movement online, while he could simultaneously improve his gift-giving efficiency. “Now Father Frost can be sure,” his press release said. “He can monitor his helpers through the Internet, even when he himself leaves for another city.”

Putin, Bugged

 

Courtsey of Amnesty International.

December 4, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY DECEMBER 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Same old Russia

(2)  Russia’s Barbaric torture of Magnitsky

(3)  Will the Russian Reichstag burn Forever?

(4)  Russia has alienated Almost all its Neighbors

(5)  CARTOON:  Who are Russia’s Real Criminals?

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russian column on the powerful American Thinker blog deals with the shocking issue of murders by Russian police officers.

NOTE:  #2 and #5 are required reading for those who want to understand the true nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

NOTE: Is this the lamest sports website you’ve ever seen or what?

EDITORIAL: Same Old Russia

EDITORIAL

Same Old Russia

On Friday, as more than 650 people —including a significant number of government officials — were traveling to St. Petersburg from Moscow, the Nevsky Express luxury train was bombed, killing 26 people and wounding more than 100.  One of the most striking features of this incident is how Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made no public comments for two days after it happened. Putin — who likes to display his strength by posing shirtless while on vacation — shows a conspicuous lack of strength after terrorist attacks occur in Russia. Usually, he remains silent. Remember how he kept silent during the Dubrovka theater siege and the terrorist attack on Beslan School No. 1.

–Yulia Latynina, The Moscow Times, December 2, 2009

Putin may have been too busy arresting bloggers to worry about terrorists and their bombs.

In our last issue, we wrote about how the Kremlin continues to lay siege to the Russian blogosphere, persecuting and prosecuting bloggers who dare to criticize power with legal process that could leave them bankrupt and in prison just like dissident oligarch Mikhail Khdorkovsky.

And earlier this week we saw an example of just why the Kremlin is still so worried about the power of the Internet, even though only a tiny fraction of Russian citizens can access it.

Russia’s Barbaric Torture of Patriot Magnitsky

Magnitsky's mother with a photo of her departed beloved

The Associated Press reports:

The letters are neatly folded and written on soft white paper in a confident, elegant hand. They tell a story of horror in the bowels of the Russian prison system, a saga set against the backdrop of the world of multibillion-dollar investment funds in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for a London-based fund that was once the biggest in Russia, wrote to his mother of wasting away from an agonizing illness without proper medical care in a crowded Moscow prison cell that reeked of sewage.

Just 11 days after the last letter reached her, Magnitsky died while awaiting trial on tax-evasion charges. He was 37.

Magnitsky’s story hit a nerve in Russia, where memories linger of the millions who died of cold, starvation and neglect in the harsh Soviet gulag. Two of Russia’s biggest independent business dailies ran a front-page story when he died, and President Dmitry Medvedev has called for an investigation. One prison official has accepted some responsibility for the squalid conditions.

In an exclusive interview, Magnitsky’s mother showed The Associated Press a series of letters from her son detailing his ordeal in Butyrskaya prison, notorious for its harsh conditions.

Will the Russian Reichstag burn forever?

Paul Goble reports:

December 1st was the 75th anniversary of the murder of Sergey Kirov, an action that Russian commentators continue to refer to as “the Stalinist version of [Hitler’s] Reichstag fire” because it opened the way to the purges and the great terror of the following years. But what is even more disturbing now three-quarters of a century later is that, as one Moscow observer put it today, in Russia “the Reichstags burn and burn” because neither in the case of Kirov nor in that of so many other tragedies in that country has there been a full and honest reporting by the government or by authoritative people about what happened.

And because of the lack of such an honest accounting of events, Aleksandr Ryklin writes in Yezhednevny Zhurnal, thoughtful Russians would need to be presented with “convincing evidence” that the special services did not blow up the “Nevsky Express” this week in the service of the powers that be.
“For me personally,” Ryklin says, “the most terrible result of the tragedy with the ‘Nevsky Express’ (after the death of people, of course) is the absence of any hope in the foreseeable future to find out the TRUTH about what happened. Because I will never believe THEM. And not one sober and thoughtful person in Russia will ever believe them.”

Russia has alienated almost all its neighbors

Paul Goble reports on the extent to which Russians have alienated their closest neighbors. If you think Russians will now ask themselves how they’ve offended, think again.

With the exception of only one country and the partial exception of a second, ten post-Soviet states are now using textbooks that present Russia in all its historical forms as the enemy of the peoples of these countries, a pattern that is likely to make it more rather than less difficult for these countries to cooperate in the future.

That is the conclusion of a 391-page report released in Moscow on “The Treatment of the General History of Russia and the Peoples of the Post-Soviet Countries in the History Textbooks of the New Independent States” (a summary is also available .

Who are Russia’s real Criminals?

Source: Ellustrator. This drawing, without any caption, has drawn nearly 200 comments already on author Sergei Yelkin’s blog. The first commenter states:  “I think this is the best work you’ve ever done.” These are Russia’s true patriots, who dare speak out against the atrocities of the Putin regime regardless of the consequences.  How we admire them!