April 6, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY APRIL 6 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Speak up, Mr. McCain!

(2)  Latynina on La Cosa Russia

(3)  Even United Russia is Sickened by Putin’s Fraud

(4)  Kiselyov on Gogol

(5)  Another Russian Bloodbath in America

(6)  Blood Magic

NOTE:  Our last note touted a documentary exposing the barbarity of mass murder in neo-Soviet Russia.  Now, we direct your attention to a website called Gulag Letters where youc an read actual letters from the victims of that barbarism.

EDITORIAL: Speak up, Mr. McCain

EDITORIAL

Speak Up, Mr. McCain

Even as Russian “president” Dima Medvedev was meeting with Barack Obama in London in an effort to “press the reset button” on U.S.-Russian relations, Medvedev’s cruel KGB regime showed by its actions that the effort was nothing more than a sham.  Obama remains silent on the issue of human rights and the new cold war with Russia, giving every indication that he has been suckered by the neo-Soviet regime in Moscow, and it is now time for Republican John McCain to speak up in vehement opposition.

We understand that McCain was honor bound to give Obama the chance to formulate his policy towards the KGB regime of Vladimir Putin without interference, but three months have now passed and Obama has met with his Russian “counterpart,” yet remained totally silent on American values and national security where Russia is concerned. Therefore, McCain must now demand better.  And let’s be clear:  It’s not only the right thing, but in his party’s partisan interests, to do so.  Republicans have lost the intiative on domestic policy but, following the lead of their great leader Ronald Reagan, they can claim the high ground on foreign policy by moving decisively against Putin.

The evidence of Putin’s malignant intentions is damning indeed.

Latynina on La Cosa Russia

Hero journalist Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Last week, Saak Karapetyan, head of the international cooperation department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, gave an interview to Interfax in which he clarified the most important criminal cases in his agency.

It turns out that the most pressing cases are extraditing former Yevroset chairman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, billionaire Boris Berezovsky, Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev, former Russneft owner Mikhail Gutseriyev and former Yukos co-owner Leonid Nevzlin. And then there is the criminal case against State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, who faces murder charges in Britain in connection with the 2006 poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Even United Russia is Repulsed by Putin’s Fraud

Blogger Robert Coalson of The Power Vertical reports on a valiant young member of the United Russia party of power who ran for a local government post on the party’s ticket, won, and then refused the seat after realizing he only “won” because of shameless fraud by the party in rigging the ballots:

Yesterday, The Power Vertical wrote about the amusing story of 23-year-old Anton Chumachenko, a Unified Russia member in St. Petersburg who announced that he is refusing a seat on a local district council because the results of the election were falsified by local election officials.

The naive young man’s eyes were opened when he saw that the officially published polling station protocols were completely different from the ones he and his staffers had seen in person on election night. Today, RFE/RL’s Russian Service was able to ask Chumachenko a few questions about his surprising decision to go public with information that everyone in Russia knows, but about which few insiders are willing to speak. Here is the interview in full [followed by his open letter exposing the fraud]:

The More things Change in Russia, the more they Don’t

Uber-pundit Yevgeny Kiselyov, writing in the Moscow Times on the frightening consistency of Russian history:

Wednesday was the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol’s birth. One hundred fifty-seven years have passed since his death. Yet at times, it seems that there is no author in Russian who is more modern than Gogol. This is not because Gogol’s works are timeless. It is because Russia has not changed. The same foolish customs Gogol poked fun at then are still with us now. As he wrote in the last lines of the first volume of his book “Dead Souls,” Russia is heading somewhere, but nobody knows where, and is “overtaking the whole world, and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give you way!”

Another Russian Bloodbath on U.S. Soil

Two weeks ago we reported on the humiliation suffered by Russia’s female tennis players at a major WTA tour event in California. Amazingly, things got even worse in the next tournament, billed as the “fifth grand slam” — the Sony Ericsson Tier I event in Miami.

Blood Magic

Pravda reports:

The police of Russia’s Irkutsk region have finished the investigation of a series of brutal crimes committed by teenagers from a gang known as Blood Magic. The teen monsters tortured and slaughtered helpless people and kept their body parts as trophies.  Blood Magic became one of the most dangerous and brutal gangs in the entire history of criminalistics of Irkutsk, the local police said.