May 15, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY MAY 17 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia Lost the “Great Patriotic War”

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia is Surrounded

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Our One-Millionth Visitor!

(4)  Another Failing Mark for Putin’s Russia

(5)  Paranoid Putin Persecutes NGOs

NOTE:  If you are in the Washington DC area you have a chance to hear the brilliant Pavel Felgenhauer and Vladimir Socor speak on the Russian threat to Georgia and the West at a conference on that subject hosted by the Jamestown Foundation on Friday May 15th.  Learn more here.

NOTE: You will notice that our posts now contain a button

in the upper left corner which allows you to easily favorite them using Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon or other such services. Please click the button often and show your opposition to the rise of neo-Soviet dictatorship in Russia. It’s easy, free and a great way to fight back.

NOTE:  We’re ashamed to admit that this is the first we’ve heard of the “Great Russian Water Circus” (and we’re rather bemused that it’s water rather than vodka) but we’re not the least bit surprised that the the only place that would host it is godforsaken Staten Island.  Anybody seen this thing? We’re ever so curious. Is there also a “Minor Russian Water Circus”?  Think we’ll pass on this (we have visions of tremendously fat Russians cavorting on stage in a kiddie pool while being pelted with water ballons by audience members) but when they roll out the Ginormous Russian Vodka Circus, we’ll be on the first ferry!

EDITORIAL: Russia Lost the “Great Patriotic War”

 

 EDITORIAL

Russia Lost the Great Patriotic War

Who won the battle of Ryazan in Russia during World War II, which Russians crazily refer to as “The Great Patriotic War”?  Was it the Germans, who lost 500,000 soldiers, or was it the Russians, who lost a million? 

Who won the battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd)?  Did Russians “win” that battle the same way they “won” the battle of Moscow against Napoleon, by cleverly razing the city to the ground and wiping out its population so the invaders couldn’t make use of them? If so, then “win” a few more battles like that and you don’t really have much country left to defend, do you?

If you, like any normal person who can count, say it was Russia which lost these battles and which, indeed, lost the “GPW” in its entirety, then you’d better be careful where you say it.  Utter those words in Russia and you may be heading for prison if Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu has his way.  So-called “liberal president” Dima Medvedev is fully supportive of the effort.  In other words Russia won because if you say it lost Russia will erase you.  That’s the same technique the wacko Nikita Khruschev used to “bury” the USA!

We’ve addressed this issue before, when Shoigu first made his maniacal statement, but now that Russians are parading nuclear weapons through Red Square to “celebrate” their “victory” in the “GPW,” it’s appropriate to revisit the issue.

EDITORIAL: Russia, Surrounded

 

 EDITORIAL

Russia, Surrounded

It’s a real indication of just how wretched a failure the Putin regime is that even the softest left-wing appeasers aren’t fooled the KGB clan any longer.  Earlier in the week we showed that John Kerry is taking the lead in standing up to Russia in Georgia, and viewing two European policy initiatives towards Russia last week, all we can do is stand up, cheer and shout “BRAVO!”

EDITORIAL: Our One-Millionth Visitor

EDITORIAL

Our One Millionth Visitor

We are pleased to announce that since being founded a little over three years ago by a single determined writer named Kim Zigfeld, this blog has now  — as of 3 pm EST Monday, May 11th —  been visited over one million times.  We warmly thank all the readers who have supported us and the contributors who bring you our content.  This achievement, of course, belongs as much to them as it does to us. 

Web pages we have created have now been opened nearly two million times (each visitor usually opens at least two pages per visit).  Our work has been cited by a wide variety of much larger publications, from the snooty New York Review of Books to the pugnacious Little Green Footballs and everyone in between, from the Associated Press to the Moscow Times.  Kim has gone on to write inspiring regular Russia columns for two gigantic mainstream Internet publications, Pajamas Media and the American Thinker. 

And that, if we may say so, is only the beginning of a long, impressive list of our achievements to date.  Even more to the point,though:  You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!

Another Failing Mark for Putin’s Russia

 

Vladislav Inozemtsev, the director of the Research Center for Postindustrial Society and the publisher and editor-in-chief of Svobodnaya Mysl magazine, writing in Vedomosti and translated the Moscow Times:

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary since President Dmitry Medvedev took the oath of office. He came to power promoting the doctrine of “Four I’s” — that is, to develop the country’s institutions, infrastructure, innovation and investment. But Medvedev was hostage to a system that had been created over the preceding eight years by his mentor, former President Vladimir Putin. What has come of Medvedev’s Four I’s after a year in office?

Paranoid Putin Persecutes NGOs

 

Paul Goble, blogging for the Moscow Times:

President Dmitry Medvedev’s May 2008 decision to transfer responsibility for the registration of non-governmental organizations from the Federal Registration Service (FRS) to the Ministry of Justice has not led to the kind of progress toward a law-based state for which many activists had hoped.

According to a new analysis of the legal situation in which Russian NGOs find themselves by Olga Gnezdilova, the legal affairs advisor to the Voronezh Inter-Regional Legal Defense Group, in many regions exactly the same officials are overseeing the registration process as were before this change was made, and the justice ministry has set quotas for the number of NGOs to be shut down each year.