November 6, 2009 — Contents

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 6 CONTENTS

(1)  An Open Letter to George Soros

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Lunatic

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s New Iron Curtain

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Flatulent Russia

(5)  Putin Checkmates Obama on Iran

NOTE:  Oleg Kozlovsly blogs about his latest illegal arrest as the neo-Soviet crackdown on civil society continues in Putin’s Russia.

NOTE:  Ariel Cohen has an extensive analysis of the Russian economy and Russian hatred of the United States over at Heritage.

An Open Letter to George Soros

George Soros
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019

Dear Mr. Soros,

It’s no fun, of course, for a writer to get rejected. I’ve been rejected plenty of times by the blogs where I am the Russia columnist, American Thinker and Pajamas Media, and although (most of the time) they were right to do it that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.  But getting rejected by George Soros is a whole different matter.  Probably, it’s about as low as you can get.  This is how it happened to me, as if you didn’t know.

EDITORIAL: Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

EDITORIAL

Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

Try to find out what the “Russia Institute” is, we dare you.

The Moscow Times, publishing an op-ed piece by the “head” of the Russia Institute, one Gleb Pavlovsky (pictured, left; scary, huh?), sure doesn’t give you any information.

Google it, and you won’t find out anything more.  You’ll find Pavlovsky, but you’ll find him at something called “Russia House,” not “Russia Institute.”  Russia Institute is nothing more than an obscure entry on his obscure resume, which is loaded with lots of other obscure entries.

EDITORIAL: Russia’s New Iron Curtain

EDITORIAL

Russia’s New Iron Curtain

Polls appear to illustrate a rise in nationalism in Russia. While only 26 percent of respondents in 1991 said Russia should be for Russians, 54 percent said the same in the recent poll. The two polls also saw a 10 percentage point rise to 47 percent of respondents who said it is natural for Russia to have an empire. Fifty-eight percent of Russians in the new poll agreed that it is a great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists.

— The Moscow Times, November 3, 2009

Last week we carried a report from the New York Times that documented the Putin administration’s efforts to choke off the flow of information from Russian research institutions to the West.  No thinking person could fail to appreciate the disturbing echoes of this pathetic country’s Soviet past, especial when remembering that the nation is ruled by a proud KGB spy.

How long , we cannot help but wonder, will it be before the Putin government slaps the same sort of draconian Iron-Curtain controls on Russian citizens that is is now imposing on information? Not long, we think.

EDITORIAL: Flatulent Russia

EDITORIAL

Flatulent Russia

Hear that hissing sound? It’s Russia. They’ve sprung a leak.

Russian gas production fell a stunning 17% in the first three quarters of this year, and gas exports plunged even further, a whopping 21%.  Naturally, with sales in freefall, the price and the revenue Russia received from sales of natural gas also dropped through the floor (to the sickening tune of 50%).  Oil production and exports were up slightly, but nowhere near enough to even remotely offset the catastrophic collapse of the gas market. The Russian stock market is down over 11% in the past two weeks as these horrifying revelations became known.

None of this was a suprise. 

Putin checkmates Obama on Iran

Mitchell Bard, Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, writing on the History News Network:

President Obama’s decision to abandon the plan to deploy a missile defense system in Europe shocked many analysts in the United States as well as our eastern European allies who were counting on the shield to protect them from the threat of Russian missiles. Perhaps the only one who was not surprised was the political chess grandmaster Vladimir Putin.

I did not understand the game that Putin was playing until a chance meeting two years ago with an Israeli who had just returned from a meeting at the Kremlin. At the time, the United States and its European allies were pushing for stronger sanctions against Iran at the United Nations and the Russians, as they had up to that point, refused to go along and threatened to veto any Security Council resolution that would have any teeth. The Russians were also in the process of completing construction of a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran, which further undermined the campaign to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.