EDITORIAL: Squirting Nemtsov

EDITORIAL

Squirting Nemtsov

It’s hard to recall a more pathetic news report issuing from Russia in recent years than last Monday’s, which indicated that former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov had been squirted in the face with ammonium chloride while campaigning for mayor of his native city of Sochi.

Seasoned Russia watchers will remember that Nemtsov’s career in the public eye began with a similar incident, when rogue nationalist maniac Vladimir Zhirinovsky splashed a glass of orange juice over him during a vehement exchange on a TV talk show debate. 

How is it possible, we must ask, that these apes are unable to understand that by lashing out with violence they are merely confirming that they have been defeated in the arena of civilized politics? How can they fail to understand that by lashing out with violence, they are merely confirming — better than their foes ever could — the worst of their foes criticisms?

Well, because they are apes, that’s why.

And a government of apes cannot possibly run a country successfully over the long term.  Hitler’s apes couldn’t, Stalins’ couldn’t and neither will Putin’s.

This incident with Nemtsov bespeaks desperation.  It’s almost as if Putin’s thugs know Nemstov is just too big a fish to handle like Alexander Litvinenko or Anna Politkovskaya (or even Victor Yuschenko), and yet they simply can’t lay off him either.  Pathetic is the only word that can describe such proceedings.

And yet, of course, there is an ominous undertone, and perhaps these apes have done us a favor.  Perhaps they cannot kill Nemtsov now, but he’s not mayor of Sochi yet.  Nemtsov had just released a report harshly critical of the prospects for the preparations to hold the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, asserting that the city was simply unable to accommodate them.  No doubt, this action was the provocation for the attack.  What if Nemstov were to actually take power?  How long would he be allowed to wield it? What if this act was merely intended as a warning of what is to come if he were to dare to pursue such a course?

We issued our own warning that Nemtsov’s life was in danger as soon as we heard about his decision to run for Sochi mayor, a decision we applauded.  The Western world needs to realize the risk Nemtsov is taking and do more, much more, to make it clear to the Kremlin that it will not tolerate his murder.  If Nemtsov does fall, and the West does not take aggressive action, it will be interpreted in the Kremlin as the signal that the final, all-out assault on the last vestiges of pluralism in Russia can begin.

NOTE:  It’s come to our attention that a certain Russia blogger who shall be nameless (because it’s just not worth the trouble) speculated wildly that Nemstov had been squirted with urine by Nashi, Putin’s Hitler youth cult (he declared so in his headline).  This was bizarrely childish and idiotic even by this blockhead’s low standards.  With nothing further to go on, the blogger took Nemtsov’s suspicion that it might be Nashi as fact even though the blogger has excoriated Nemtsov in a ludicrously infantile manner in the past, and decided it was urine (in the blogger’s artful, intellectual language “piss”) because it smelled like ammonia but couldn’t have been since Nemstov wasn’t blinded.  A commenter pointed out the utter foolishness of the latter claim (ammonium cholride smells like ammonia but isn’t that dangerous).  The upshot is that it appears the blogger rushed to print “piss” in a frenzy of scatological delight and got it all hideously wrong, as is par for his excrement-covered course.   Nashi has not only denied responsibility for the attack, it has announced it will sue Nemtsov for 1 million rubles in a libel action. This kind of garbage, coming from a cretin who purports to be above it all as some kind of “intellectual,” represents the worst the blogosphere can be and we feel compelled to apologize on the blogosphere’s behalf.