May 25, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY MAY 25 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Dima Medvedev, Psychopath

(2)   Who’s More Dangerous – A Russian Criminal or Cop?

(3)  Putin’s Ossetian Frankenstein

(4)  Latynina on Medvedev’s History Fascism

(5)  Bonner on Putin and Medvedev

(6)  Annals of Shamapova

NOTE:  All of us here at La Russophobe ask you to pause a moment on Memorial Day and give thanks for all the thousands upon thousands of men and woman who have laid down their lives fighting for liberty, fighting to keep the nations of the West from turning into what Russia is now.  Thank you heroes, one and all!

EDITORIAL: Dima Medvedev, Psychopath

EDITORIAL

 Dima Medvedev, Psychopath

In 1957, a 16-year-old boy went off to Jewish summer camp in the wilds of Wisconsin. While there, he published a poem about the cruel slaying of a faithful doggy in the summer camp newspaper.  It was a real tear-jerker, a work of art, and indeed nearly flawless except for the fact that it was a shameless plagiarism of a country music ditty written several years before.

The young man’s name was Bob Dylan.

Never you mind though, dear reader, because the Christie’s auction house, which didn’t deign to notice the forgery until alerted by customers, still thinks it can get a cool 15 g’s for the childish scribbling.  How many of “his” songs Dylan actually wrote now becomes, well, anyone’s guess.

Things, you may say, are not always what they seem. And so it is with our good friend Dima Medvedev, neo-soviet psychopath.

Who is More Dangerous, a Russian Criminal or a Russian Cop?

Other Russia reports:

The surveillance video is chilling.  A uniformed police officer, drunk and swaying, staggers through the aisles of a Moscow supermarket.  Gun in hand, he calmly shoots, reloads and keeps shooting as terrified shoppers run for their lives.  The late April rampage, which left three dead and seven injured, has shaken up the Moscow police force.  The fact that its 32-year-old perpetrator, Major Denis Yevsyukov, was a high-ranking district police chief, has added to the public outrage.

Putin’s Ossetian Frankenstein

Paul Goble, blogging for the Moscow Times:

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity’s efforts to make himself president for life has turned the territory into one “free from law,” discrediting his regime in the eyes of the people there, providing excuses for Belarus and other countries not to recognize him, and compromising Moscow’s ability to control the spending of Russian assistance there.

All these problems were highlighted last week when a group of Kokoity’s political opponents came to Moscow to lobby for Russian intervention to guarantee the legality of the May 31 elections and specifically calling on the Kremlin to oppose Kokoity’s plans to change the republic’s constitution so as to allow him to run for additional terms.

Latynina on Medvedev’s History Fascism

Recently, Russia became the second country in the world (after fascist Germany) to imprison someone for fighting against fascism

Take a moment to soak that one in.  It’s the money quote from Yulia Latynina latest acid-soaked dart at the Putin regime, written for Radio Free Europe.  Here’s the rest:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree titled “On the Presidential Commission against Efforts to Falsify History to Harm Russian Interests.” Assigned to counteract the above-mentioned efforts are agencies that are professionally involved in the study of history, including the presidential administration, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Bonner on Putin and Medvedev

The fearless Yelena Bonner, widow of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, reading our minds and speaking recently at the Oslo Freedom Forum:

Read Sakharov’s Memoirs. It’s a pity his Diaries haven’t been translated; they were published in Russia in 2006. Apparently, the West isn’t interested in Sakharov right now. The West isn’t very interested in Russia either, a country that no longer has real elections, independent courts, or freedom of the press. Russia is a country where journalists, human rights activists, and migrants are killed regularly, almost daily. And extreme corruption flourishes of a kind and extent that never existed earlier in Russia or anywhere else. So what do the Western mass media discuss mainly? Gas and oil — of which Russia has a lot. Energy is its only political trump card, and Russia uses it as an instrument of pressure and blackmail. And there’s another topic that never disappears from the newspapers — who rules Russia? Putin or Medvedev? But what difference does it make, if Russia has completely lost the impulse for democratic development that we thought we saw in the early 1990s? Russia will remain the way it is now for decades, unless there is some violent upheaval.

It’s worth reprinting the original Russian, for the record.

Annals of Shamapova

Yummy!

*THWACK*

That was the sound of world #39 Ukrainian Alona Bondarenko smacking the cute, round little backside of world #126 “Russian” Maria Sharapova (126?? how the “mighty” have fallen!)  at the WTA tour event in Warsaw, Poland last week.  Able to win only four of sixteen games played in her third match of the first tournament she has played after months claiming injury, Sharapova was blown off the court in humiliating fashion by a player who has only one career singles title and, worst of all, who — unlike Shamapova — actually lives in the country of her citizenship.