EDITORIAL: Clinton and Saakashvili

Clinton and Saakashvili in Tbilisi last week

EDITORIAL

Clinton and Saakashvili

Russians were appalled and terrified last week to see U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Tbilisi drinking a toast with the Kremlin’s public enemy #1, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

They denied it, of course.  Just the same way that, a few days earlier, they had denied the spies arrested in the United States were Russian.  Soon, however, they were forced to admit their denials were pathetic lies, and that the spies were in fact Russian citizens. Soon, they were bartering for the release of those spies they said did not exist.

We can imagine the thoughts racing through the rodent-like “minds” of the KGB spies who rule the Kremlin, the same spies whose pathetic plans were exposed in the United States, when viewing the photograph at the head of this column.

COLUMNIST: Lavrov on Russia, Britain and World War II

Sergei Lavrov: Britain Caused WWII, Russia saved Europe

by “George X”

Original to La Russophobe

Many people will be aware from its coverage in the Western media of the statements by Medvedev earlier this year from an article in Izvestia repudiating the “totalitarian” Soviet Union. He said that Stalin had committed unforgivable crimes regardless of any progress made by the Soviet Union under his rule. He refused to allow Stalin’s portraits to be displayed in the Victory Day parade. He even said, “We ourselves allowed history to be falsified”. (Although that last sentence is pretty ambiguous when you think about it.)

Why then has there been no coverage of a contrasting point of view expressed by Medvedev’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov before the Victory Day parade? In fact, by searching for this article which I read quotations from, I came across a website which is really best ignored…except that it speaks volumes about what the largely ex-KGB/FSB members of the current Russian government really think, or at least want others to think.

The Putin Kremlin, Bribing Bloggers

Global Voices reports on the only way Vladimir Putin can win friends and influence people (other than crude violence).  Note the false analogy to the U.S. — there is no evidence of the American police forces paying bloggers to paper over their human-rights abuses for cash, and if there were it would be a gigantic international scandal.  Procter & Gamble paying a consumer blogger to say he likes Head & Shoulders is hardly the same as the Russian state paying a political blogger to say the police don’t crack skulls.

Recently, Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian blogger and political activist (who was interviewed by GV [EN] last year), has conducted an investigation [RUS] on how paid blogger networks function in the Russian blogosphere. He wrote that different representatives of the paid blogger network had contacted him three times, offering from $23 to $50 per post. Every blogger who agrees to provide content for a fee is supposed to choose a unique angle when writing about a certain topic. The latest offer that Dobrokhotov received was quite unusual: to write positive comments about the Russian police:

A manager of the company Garin-studio offered me to post a whole series of posts with some positive content about the police. For the first post – 2,000 rubles ($63), all others – 1,000 rubles each ($31). I’ve managed to unearth more detailed information. It turned out that the client of the company is the federal Ministry of the Interior, not the Moscow Police Department; what is even more interesting, the order was from the Department of Internal Security [which is supposed to control and monitor the police itself] (aha, so that’s what they do!). There are 50 bloggers involved in this project, though with some of them, with the most popular (for example, with Radulova), the client is in direct contact. Garin-studio, as far as I understood, isn’t the only contractor used by [the Ministry of the Interior].

Other bloggers spotted [RUS] some nearly simultaneous posts with positive comments about the police at Natalia Radulova’s blog [RUS] and at another popular blog by Maxim Aleksandrov [RUS].

Russians, fighting back Against Putin

In another excellent piece of reporting on Russia, the New York Times documents how Russians are fighting back against the Putin Kremlin, and how it is cracking down on them with barbaric neo-Soviet force.  The piece includes several protest Youtubes by Russians translated into English.

LISTVYANKA, Russia — On the edge of this Siberian village is a resort with a veiled guest list and armed guards at the front gate. When local officials have expressed unease about what goes on inside, the reply has always been the same: do not interfere.

Two and half years ago, the village’s mayor, Tatyana Kazakova, had enough. A major construction project at the resort had exposed a hot water main, threatening the heating supply for the entire village as temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero.

Ms. Kazakova was not a typical bureaucrat. She was one of the most successful businesswomen in this vast region, a real-estate magnate with a blond ponytail who represented a new breed of Russian entrepreneur.

She filed a lawsuit against the resort, and asked the regional prosecutor to open a criminal inquiry.

A criminal inquiry was indeed opened — against Ms. Kazakova.

Why Putin’s Schemes must Fail and Collapse

Vladimir Voinovich

Novelist Vladimir Voinovich, writing in the Moscow Times:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin insists that “without normal democratic development, Russia will have no future.” We Russians are pleased to hear these enlightened words, yet Putin adds a “but” to his argument that renders his points senseless.

We have hated this “but,” this coordinating conjunction, ever since the dawn of the Soviet era. Then we were told that freedom is good, but that one can’t live in an individualist society without common concern for the communist state. Democracy is great, but only in the interests of the working class.

Now Russia’s prime minister tells us that democracy is indeed great, but that public protests cannot take place around hospitals and such. Never mind that the Russian Constitution does not list hospitals among places forbidden for public assembly.

July 12, 2010 — Contents

MONDAY JULY 12 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  The Russians and their Spies

(2)  TRANSLATION:  Latynina on Skolkovo

(3)  EDITORIAL:  The Bold New Caucasus Rebels

(4)  Essel on the Russian Road

(5)   Russians, Spying on Americans

EDITORIAL: The Russians and their Spies

EDITORIAL

The Russians and their Spies

Not even the most crazed of Russosphile or Russian nationalist fanatics can deny it:  If a giant sleeper cell of American spies were discovered in Russia, seeking to secretly infiltrate every aspect of Russian society at its most intimate and basic levels, Russians would be livid with rage.  Nashi would march on the American embassy with furious anger, screaming epithets of hatred and bile, and America would be vilified as the Great Satan just as it often is in places like Iran.  We wouldn’t be surprised if the Russian Orthodox Church weighed in.

So what are Americans to make of the fact that Russians are doing it to them? How should they react? What should their response be when they learn that Russian nuclear bombers are patrolling their coastline, causing their fighter defenses to scramble?  How should they understand the fact that Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy who is liquidating every American value at breakneck speed?

Another Original LR Translation: Latynina on Skolkovo, via Essel

Made in Skolkovo*

Yuliya Latynina

Yezhednevny Zhurnal

29 June 2010

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

Hero journalist Yulia Latynina

President Medvedev was visiting Silicon Valley. Our Comrade President was told of the achievements of our American colleagues and in turn invited them to take part in the modernisation of Russia. President Medvedev’s visit had two components – one of them was political.

President Medvedev does not in fact have any authority. He can’t fire and replace anyone in the “power” ministries [TN: Interior, Defence, Justice etc...], can’t get into moneymaking deals, can’t push his pals into important posts. In short, he can’t do anything of what it means to be in power in Russia today. What he can do, though, is tweet on Twitter and lunch with foreign presidents so that they can believe that there are some liberal trends in the Kremlin. That is the job that he was given to do by Vladimir Putin and Medvedev puts his all into it, hoping against hope that the West will one day back him instead of Putin.

What the White House really thought about Medvedev’s to California is easily deduced from its pre-visit briefing given to journalists and its press release following the visit.

EDITORIAL: Caucasus Rebels, getting Bolder by the Minute

EDITORIAL

Caucasus Rebels, getting Bolder by the Minute

They are getting bolder by the minute.  Why, it’s almost like Shamil Basayev were still calling the shots.

Last week a bomb ripped through a security cordon outside a theater in Grozny, Chechnya.  Inside was the regional dictator and homicidal lunatic Ramzan Kadyrov himself, watching a show.  Next time, the local rebels were obviously saying, the bomb will be inside the theater and Kadyrov (and his cadres) will be dead.

So much for Kadyrov having pacified the Caucasus rebels.

Essel on the Russian Road

Russian Roads – An Oxymoron

by Dave Essel

My translation of Yulia Latynina’s piece from Yezhedevny Zhurnal in today’s issue shows what has come of Russia’s efforts to build a competitor to Silicon Valley.  Meanwhile, one cannot help but be reminded of other pressing Russian issues that may be getting left behind.

No Westerner who has not been to Russia, for instance, can truly grasp what a Russian means by bad roads (or, by the same token – a “good” Russian road). In fact, some of the infrastructure labelled road or highway in Russia would be deemed impassable by loggers in Oregon.

As I translated the road section of  Milov/Nemtsov’s latest report, I could not help googling for things about roads in Russia. Laughing just to keep from crying should be the supreme Russian phrase and not a line from the Delta.

I collected a few pictures for fun.

Russians, Spying on Americans

James Kirchick of Radio Free Eurpe and the New Republic, writing in the New York Daily News:

The FBI arrest last week of 10 alleged Russian spies has produced a shrug of the shoulders on both sides of the Atlantic. On Wednesday, a senior Russian government official told the state-run Interfax news agency that the incident “will not negatively affect Russian-U.S. relations.”

Such soothing tones have been echoed in Washington, where The New York Times reported that the White House “expressed no indignation that its putative partner was spying on it.”

Many analysts are echoing this official nonchalance. Writing in the Financial Times, King’s College London Prof. Anatol Lieven concluded that the brouhaha is but a “temporary rift” in Russo-American relations, and should do nothing to forestall the fruitful development of the “west scaling back its ambitions in the former Soviet Union with Russia‘s growing realization that it needs a new partnership with its former U.S. and European rivals.”

July 9, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY JULY 9 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Mr. Putin and his “Extremists”

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putin steps in, Russophiles Exposed

(3)  EDITORIAL:  In Putin’s Russia, Welcome back to the USSR

(4)  TRANSLATION: Nemtsov Volume III, Part 4

(5)  TRANSLATION:  A column that got the author prosecuted

(6)  Wimbledon Wrapup

NOTE:  Oleg Kozlovsky is interviewed by Dutch journalist Olaf Koens.

NOTE:  Say what you like about them, nobody teaches a dachshund to scuba like a Russian!

EDITORIAL: Mr. Putin and his “Extremists”

"Chimera, mystery of the Russian Soul" by Lena Hades

EDITORIAL

Mr. Putin and his “Extremists”

We’re guilty, and we admit it.  If Vladimir Putin has any guts at all, he’ll indict us.  We’ll be happy to pay our own way to Moscow to face his charges of “extremism.”  In fact, in just today’s issue, we’re guilty of at least two different acts of extremism.  Take us away!

Today in this issue we publish our own original translation of an article that appeared in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, the Russian equivalent of the Wall Street Journal, this past April, authored by Maya Kucherskaya.  Two months later, the Putin regime declared it to be “extremism” and forced the paper to remove the article from its website.  One more such designation and Vedemosti is subject to being shut down by the Kremlin.

Kucherskaya is a highly trained scholar and writer and the recipient of two of Russia’s most prestigious awards for writing.  But not in the eyes of the Kremlin, she’s not. Because she dared to analyze the recent spate of terrorist acts against Russia critically, in the Kremlin’s eyes she’s no different than Shamil Basayev and one of Russia’s most respected newspapers is on the verge of closure.

She’s not alone.

EDITORIAL: Putin steps in, Russophiles Exposed

EDITORIAL

Putin steps in, Russophiles Exposed

We must say that our greatest pleasure here on this blog comes in watching the malignant lies of the braying Russophiles and slobbering Russian nationalists exposed and decimated for all to see.

This happened with particular deliciousness last week in regard to one of their central mendacious narratives, namely that Vladimir Putin cannot be blamed for the actions of local government wiping out civil liberties because he is incapable of addressing such concerns.

Oh really?  Well what happened last week when, in yet another display of typically farcical Russian incompetence, a bridge was shut down in Moscow that prevented residents from reaching the international airport, causing hundreds to miss their flights?  What happened was that suddenly Mr. Putin was in the local bridge business.  “If passengers can’t fly out of Sheremetyevo, then this is a problem,” Putin said at a meeting of the presidium.  Then he set about making policy concerning the bridge.

EDITORIAL: In Putin’s Russia, Welcome back to the USSR

EDITORIAL

In Putin’s Russia, Welcome back to the USSR

We can’t help but wonder how the world in general and Russia in particular would have reacted if, during his presidency, George Bush had circulated a list of 25,000 young people who the White House identified as America’s “most talented youth,” young people who would receive overt favoritism in education and employment from the very highest levels of the U.S. government — and every one of the names was drawn from extreme right-wing political organizations like the John Birch Society and the KKK.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of list that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin officially received last week from his NASHI political cult as they held their annual retreat of indoctrination and scheming, funded by millions of dollars desperately needed federal funds.  Just as in Soviet times, the Putin regime is creating an elite society like the Communist Party and making membership a prerequisite to advancement in the halls of business, politics and industry, the better to control the actions of the mass population.  With every day that passes, Russia is more and more fully neo-Soviet.

Heroic Russian human rights activist Marina Litvinenko expressed the horror of the civilized world towards these proceedings:

Another Original LR Translation: Nemtsov Volume III, Part 4

EDITOR’S NOTE:  This is the fourth installment of our series from Dave Essel translating the latest issue of the Nemtsov White Paper condemning the Putin years.  The first installment is here, the second is here, the third is here, and the prior issues are here. Video of Nemtsov and Milov at the press release is here.

PUTIN: What 10 Years of Putin Have Brought

An independent expert report by
Vladimir Milov and Boris Nemtsov

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

CHAPTER FIVE: Oh Dear, the Roads!

We all know that the bad state of our roads roads is one of Russia’s major headaches.

In our first report on the results of Putin, we described in detail the degradation of the road infrastructure under his presidency. The very fact that the rate of road-building dropped during the “fat” years is a disgrace. China in just 20 years has built itself a modern highway network: in 1989 the Chinese had just 147 kilometres of motorway, today they have 60,000.

Meanwhile, in Russia the road-building industry is going down the drain.

Another Original LR Translation: Eternal Values in Putin’s Russia

Eternal Values:  A Breakdown in Communiciation

Vedemosti

April 9, 2010

by Maya Kucherskaya

Translated from the Russian by LR Staff

As always, corrections to the English text are Welcome

Maya Kucherskaya

The investigation into the terrorist attacks in the Moscow metro is in full swing. Already well known are the names and ages of the suicide bombers, their resumes, and whose wives they were.

One was a girl 17 years old.  At 16  she’d left home to be with her beloved, a famous  rebel fighter, who she first met on the Internet. Then she married him and shared his life, waiting for him at home after his military operations, greeted and fed him.  That is, she did so until he was killed in battle.  Along with that man, who was her reason for being, all meaning went out of her life.  She had nothing left except her love for him, and en empty soul.  She had no family, no education, no life experience, so what was she to do?  As she saw it, her only alternative was to meet him again in the afterlife.  It was not difficult for her to meet her end with enthusiasm, knowing that she was doing the will of Allah and avenging her beloved. The sooner the better!  The warlords unflinchingly took advantage of the young girl’s desperation.

The second female bomber, 28-year-old Maryam Sharipova, was in no way similar to the first.

Wimbledon Wrapup

At Wimbledon this year, Svetlana Kuznetsova proved herself a real Russian, in every way

Once again, Russia’s so-called “dominant” women tennis players humiliated themselves and their country spectacularly at a major championship, this time at the world-famous All-England Club at Wimbledon.

First, Russia started out the tournament without one single player among the top 10 seeds, and a mere three in the top 20, just seven overall — less than a quarter of the total.  How the mighty have fallen!

Then, not only was Russia’s  #3 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova booted out of the tournament in the third round by an unseeded opponent, but she disgraced herself and her country even further by refusing to shake her opponent’s hand at the end of the match out of sheer, petty, childish spite at having been bested and ejected by a nobody – and for the final indignity her opponent was a Russian defector now living in Australia.  It was one of the lowest moments in Russian tennis history, indeed in the history of Russian sport itself.

And then it got worse. Oh, so much worse.

July 7, 2010 — Contents

WEDENSDAY JULY 7 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  In Putin’s Russia, a Perfect Zero out of Ten

(2)  Putvedev and its Core Instability

(3)  It’s Army useless, Russia must rely on Nukes

(4)  The end of Democracy in Putin’s Russia

(5)  Backwards, Oppressive, Horrifying Russia

(6)  CARTOON

NOTE:  In honor of Independence Day in the USA, no issue was published on July 5, 2010.  We warmly congratulate the citizens of the USA on 234 years since the publishing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and 221 years since the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, by far the oldest on the face of this or any other planet.  The stability and prosperity that American democracy have brought to American shores since then is surely the envy of the civilized world, and rightfully the pride of every American.  Meanwhile, Russia has been a basket case of upheaval, violence, repression and squalor.  If only Russians could take a lesson from this brilliant day of human celebration!

EDITORIAL: In Putin’s Russia, a Perfect Zero out of Ten

EDITORIAL

In Putin’s Russia, a Perfect Zero out of Ten

With the grave situation for defenders of human rights and democracy growing worse in 2009, Nations in Transit findings show that over the past decade, Russia has undergone the largest decline of any country in the study of 29 countries in the former Communist states of Europe and Eurasia.

– Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2010

The latest report from Freedom House on the progress of “post-Soviet” nations has once again determined that Russia is by far the most backwards and oppressive nation in that benighted region.  Nobody vaguely familiar with this blog can be surprised, of course, since we’ve often documented (see the “rating Russia” category in our sidebar) how Russia lags behind the entire world no matter what criteria are used to judge it.

After the jump, we review Russia’s most recent scores from ten separate international ratings agencies across a wide range of social, economic and political criteria.  In every single one of them, the Putin regime is deemed an absolute failure.  Not only does Russia fail to score as high as the top 50% in any category ranging from life expectancy to societal violence, Russia does not even break into the top 35% on one single occasion.

When only one study is at issue, a Russian propagandist can easily claim “Russophobia” and dismiss the results.  That becomes more difficult when two or three different studies from different parts of the world with different staffs of experts reach the same conclusion.

But, we believe, when ten different studies are presented, no thinking reasonable person can escape the conclusion that the government of Vladimir Putin is an abject disaster.  It’s not our opinion, it’s documented scientific fact.

Here are the results ranked by Russia’s performance starting with the best, showing the category, Russia’s precise score, it’s relative location in the group and the source of the study (a study of at least 100 other countries was required to be included):

Putvedev and its Core Instability

Brian Whitmore, writing on the Power Vertical and translating from Novaya Gazeta:

The turbulence currently rattling Russia’s body politic resembles that which existed in the early perestroika period. There is a consensus that there is a need for change, the elite has split into two opposing camps unable to agree over what needs to be done, and neither side can garner a critical mass of support for their agenda.

That is the central argument of political analyst Kirill Rogov in an interesting piece in “Novaya gazeta.” Rogov argues that the agendas of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “are fully formed and divergent” but neither of them is making a compelling case.

Here’s the money quote:

Its Army Useless, Russia must rely on Nukes

Exposing yet another of U.S. President Barack Obama’s absurd propagandistic lies, Stephen G. Rademaker, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control from 2002 to 2006, writing in the Moscow Times shows how Russia will never, ever seriously cut its tactical nuclear arsenal because its conventional forces are too much of a pathetic joke to be taken seriously:

A recurring theme in the U.S. Senate’s hearings on the New START treaty has been the disappointment expressed by many senators over the treaty’s failure to limit Russia’s tactical nuclear warheads. Supporters of New START respond that the treaty’s exclusive focus on strategic nuclear warheads follows the pattern of all previous U.S.-Russian arms control agreements. But the critics are rightly concerned that the number of strategic warheads has fallen so low that the United States can no longer ignore Russia’s overwhelming advantage in tactical warheads.

Strategic nuclear weapons are intended to win wars by targeting major cities, military bases and other “strategic” targets. Tactical weapons, by contrast, are designed for use on the battlefield. In practical terms, strategic nuclear weapons target the Russian and U.S. heartlands, while tactical nuclear weapons were designed for use in combat in Central Europe.

The end of Democracy in Putin’s Russia

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

In December 2007, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, suffered a crushing defeat in the State Duma elections. Each received less than 3 percent of the vote, short of the 7 percent threshold to gain seats in Duma. Yabloko led a poor campaign for those elections, and SPS, under Kremlin pressure, was afraid to run a number of well-known figures on its party list who were critical of the policies of then-President Vladimir Putin and United Russia.

Since then, the position of two of the remaining democratic parties has worsened. According to recent surveys, Yabloko’s ratings hover at about 1 percent. SPS was dissolved in 2008, and in its place the Kremlin created a new party, Right Cause, that is torn by internal divisions and is still unable to articulate a clear political platform. Yabloko and Right Cause have little chance of winning seats in the 2011 Duma elections.

Deputies elected to the next Duma will be the first to serve the new five-year term, which in December 2008 was increased from four years. That means that if liberal parties fail once again to gain seats in the parliament, they will have to wait until 2016 to give it another shot.

Backwards, Oppressive, Horrifying Russia

Our lead editorial touts the latest “Nations in Transit” report from Freedom House, which finds that Russia  “has undergone the largest decline of any country in the study” of 29 countries in post-Soviet space where human rights and democracy are concerned.  Here is the executive summary from the Russia report.

Over the past decade, Russia’s government has become increasingly authoritarian. Boris Yeltsin’s presidential tenure from 1991 to 1999 saw competitive, but tainted, elections, relatively free television discussions, an incipient civil society, and somewhat decentralized political power. However, it laid the groundwork for increasingly authoritarian rule with the 1993 tank assault on the Parliament, a super-presidential constitution, the first Chechen war, and extensive corruption.

CARTOON

The caption reads: ". . . who's the fairest of them all?"

Source:  Ellustrator.