August 14, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 14 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia is a Nation of Murdering Bastards

(2)  Another Original LR Translation: Stalin vs. Novaya Gazeta

(3)  Obama on Russia: Igornant or Simply Cowardly?

(4)  Translation:  Russia, Bringing up the Rear

(5)  Russia is Hopelessly Corrupt

EDITORIAL: Russia is a Nation of Murdering Bastards

EDITORIAL

Russia is a Nation of Murdering Bastards

“We don’t want this country to turn into Russia.”

— Pennsylvania resident Katy Abram to turncoat Senator Arlen Spector at a public forum on Tuesday

Zarema Sadulayeva in 2006. Murdered by the Kremlin last Tuesday. RIP

Blood is flowing in rivers in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. As a New York Times op-ed writer we publish below states: “Russia is getting away with murder.”

Stalin, through his malignant spawn, as we reiterate in an original translation today, is suing Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper which published Anna Politkovskaya, who was yet another entry in a seemingly endless string of obviously political murders that dates back to Vladimir Putin’s first days in the Moscow Kremlin, with the slaying of Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova.

Stalin is alive and well in Putin’s Russia, in more ways than one.  Stalin had Beria, and Putin has Kadyrov, his homicidal henchman in Chechnya, who is striking down the Kremlin’s critics with total impunity, so fast it is hard to keep up.  And he openly boast of his deeds and his hatred for the women who dare to challenge him.  He recently stated that Natalia Estemirova, Politkovskaya’s successor and struck down just like her, was “misleading people and writing lies.”  Before that, he publicly declared she had “no honor or conscience.”  He admits that he has “blood up to his elbows,” and the blood marks rose a little higher earlier this week when he brutally abducted and murdered children’s rights activist Zarema Sadulayeva and her newly married husband, stuffing their corpses into the truck of their own car.  His police, copying Stalin jot for jot, had rounded them up.

And why shouldn’t they?

Another Original LR Translation: Stalin vs. Novaya Gazeta

Yuck!!! Joseph Stalin's grand-son Eugeny Dzhugashvili kisses the death-mask of his grand-father. The picture was taken in the native house of Joseph Stalin.

Pots and kettles

Alexander Skobov

Grani.ru

6 August 2009

Translated from the Russian by Dave Essel

The news that Stalin’s grandson is suing Novaya Gazeta for defamation of his grandfather is not something that can or should be just laughed off as a joke. The thick mud of moral deafness and the sadomasochistic inclinations that infect both the state élite and the population as a whole have created an absurdly Kafkaesque situation in which it is quite possible that the court will find for the plaintiff. The episode, furthermore, fits in fine with a whole chain of steps that government and public bodies have been taking recently to achieve a creeping rehabilitation of the Stalinism though the application of administrative and legal levers to deny dissenters of a voice.

First and foremost, we should recall the notorious Shoigu Law. If one strips it of the verbal dross about prevention of justifications of Nazism and of belittlement of the role of the USSR in the victory over it, it is evident that the main purpose of the law is to make it possible to prosecute anyone for any condemnation of anything about how the Stalin régime ran the war or for saying anything remotely justificatory about the the actions of the régime’s enemies.

Next we have the establishment of the commission to counter the falsification of history and protect the perceived interests of the Kremlin. Its aim is of course not actually to verify any sort of facts or truth (for example, the genuineness or not of the Politburo resolution ordering the murder of imprisoned Polish officers) but solely to inveigh against evaluations of historical events that the ruling cliques consider inimical.

Following on this, we have the hysterical reaction to the resolution of the parliamentary assembly of the OSCE by our parliament which is stubbornly determined not to know that the Stalin régime brought the same evils to people as Hitler’s and that in 1939 it allied itself with Hitler’s to start the world war.

Obama on Russia: Ignorant, or simply Cowardly?

Celestine Bohlen of Bloomberg News, writing in the New York Times:

Russia is still getting away with murder.

On Tuesday, two more bodies of human rights workers were found in the southern republic of Chechnya, this time in the trunk of a car.

This comes less than a month after the shocking death of Natalya Estemirova, a 50-year-old human-rights campaigner whose body was dumped by the side of a road. She had been shot several times — at least once in the head, which is the signature for the killers who have been methodically eliminating critics and rivals of Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya.

Once again, Mr. Kadyrov, who is just 32, has mocked both his accusers and the victims. “Why should Kadyrov kill a woman who was useful to no one?” he scoffed when asked by Radio Free Europe about allegations that he was responsible for Ms. Estemirova’s death. “She was devoid of honor, merit and conscience.”

Russia, Bringing up the Rear

In the rearguard of the former USSR

Mikhail Sergeyev

Nezavisimaya Gazeta

August 6, 2009

Translated from the Russian by The Other Russia

Russia has shown some of the worst results in economic decline, inflation rate, and income decline among the CIS countries

The statistical data of the country’s socioeconomic development for the first half of the year looks gloomy. The domestic economy is experiencing shocks much worse than those of developing countries, i.e. members of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and neighboring CIS countries.

Russia is Hopelessly Corrupt

Jonas Bernstein, writing for Voice of America:

President Dmitri Medvedev has made fighting a corruption a top priority and has vowed to remove the bribe-taking officials and bureaucratic barriers that make life so difficult for Russia’s small and medium-sized businesses. But independent observers point to the entrenched, systemic nature of Russian corruption and are skeptical Mr. Medvedev’s anti-corruption drive will succeed where others have failed.

President Medvedev assembled top officials, Wednesday, to discuss the red tape and corruption plaguing Russia’s small and medium-sized business sector.