MONDAY DECEMBER 1 CONTENTS
(1) Another Original LR Translation: Beslan and the KGB
(2) EDITORIAL: A New Low in the Annals of Russian Stupidity
(3) Vladimir Putin: Hoist with his Own Petard (Translation)
(4) EDITORIAL: A New Low in the Annals of Russian Barbarism
(6) The Horror of Russian Nationalism, Unbound
NOTE: We offer today two translations from the Russian press, most importantly a stunning piece of work by our own Dave Essel from the heroic pages of Novaya Gazeta. The piece makes jaw-dropping claims regarding the involvement of the KGB in the Beslan atrocity, very similar allegations to those made by Alexander Litvinkenko about the Moscow apartment bombings — allegations which ultimately may have got poor Sasha whacked. We can’t help but be reminded of NG’s other epic piece of a similar nature, Spare Organs, which we also translated and made available to the outside world.
NOTE: LR publisher Kim Zigfeld recently had two pieces appear in the wider blogosphere. First on the Jewcy website she analyzed the Kremlin’s outrageous attempt to install offensive ballistic missiles in Kaliningrad, and then on Pajamas Media she exposed the Kremlin’s ridiculous attempt to make propaganda hay out of leaked information from the OSCE investigation on the use of Georgian artillery during the recent war with Russia. As always, Kim’s work is required reading of the first order for those who want to know what is really going on behind the new Iron Curtain. Go boss, go!
NOTE: Other Russia reports on a new documentary film about the Russian opposition movement called In the Holy Fire of Revolution by Masha Novikova. The film was recently screened at an international festival in Amsterdam, and Garry Kasparov, who appears prominently in the film, was on hand and had firey words for the Kremlin during his festival interview. Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov recently came together for a formative meeting of the new “Solidarity” movement and promised they would cease their bickering and focus on the common enemy. We wish them well.
La Russophobe 
As far as Beslan is concerned, Russia has so many “unknown” incidents with KGB/FSB partial fingerprints on them from Litvinenko’s polonium poisoning to Anna Politskaya’s murder to the Moscow apartment bombings. If you scratch every one of these incidents, Putin had the most to gain and the means to execute the plan.
That the Russian sheeple either don’t care or fail connect the dots in a meaningful manner is pathetic enough, but, when you do a deal with the devil ignorance and hubris are your only comforting retreat from morality.
Show me any group influenced by communism or socialism that isn’t comfortable with that kind of denial/complicity?
Russia, whose only offering to civilization now is raw commodities, their historic high culture and zero civilization don’t matter anymore, every idea they ever brought forth was a catastrophic failure, needs to fade away. It’s a big useless land mass like the Congo.
Penny, I think your phrase
“whose only offering to civilization now is raw commodities, their historic high culture and zero civilization don’t matter anymore”
hits the nail neatly right on the head.
There is certainly no sign of high culture (in any sphere – music, writing or painting, or science – or civilisation in Russia any more (viz the way they themselves says “in civilized countries x is done in such and such a way” where x is anything from road construction to constitutional amending.
penny, as Latynina likes to say, not every major crime during Borgia rule was committed by the rulers. But you couldn’t go wrong by assuming that the rulers were involved. Same in today’s Russia.
It is possible that Beslan came as complete surprise to FSB. But it is natural to look for FSB fingerprints; and the burden is certainly on them to convince public opinion that they were not involved in Beslan, or in Litvinenko, or in Poitkovskaya, or in scores of other crimes, large and small, that sure look like their kind of operation.