December 21, 2009 — Contents

MONDAY DECEMBER 21 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia and Rape

(2)  EDITORIAL:  A Bun in Putin’s Oven?

(3)  The Malignancy that is Nord Stream

(4)  Russia and Zynga, Birds of a Corrupt Feather

(5)  Miraculous Russian Churches obliterated by Dictatorship

EDITORIAL: Russia and Rape

On December 2, 2009, in the seaside Indian state of Goa, speedboat manufacturer and failed candidate for the Indian parliament John Fernandes (pictured above right) allegedly offered a ride to a Russian woman (above left, face concealed) and her friend, both of whom he had been acquainted with for more than a year.  At some point after that, after first dropping off the friend at home, Fernandes then allegedly attacked and raped the Russian woman.  He’s now in prison awaiting trial.  The Russian woman, whose identity is being withheld, worked as a tour operator for a major hotel; apparently Russians are flocking to Goa these days.

A few days later the ruling Congress Party’s Shantaram Naik, Goa’s representative in the upper house of India’s parliament, stated: “An alleged rape of a lady who moves with strangers for days together even beyond middle of the night is to be treated on different footing.” Fernandes’s supporters began claiming the charges could be politically motivated retaliation following his unsuccessful bid for office, which he only narrowly lost.

The Russian consulate in Goa reacted rather strangely — or it would seem so, if you were not well acquainted with the Russian mindset on rape.  Study the matter a bit, and you see the true horror of Russia’s blind hypocrisy fully revealed.

EDITORIAL: A Bun in Putin’s Oven?

Mummy & Daddy? Notice the gleam in his eye?

EDITORIAL

A Bun in Putin’s Oven?

“The most puzzling part of this story is that at press time, not a single major Russian media [outlet] has reported that Kabaeva had a son.”

Alina Kabaeva

That was the Russian website ReadRussia.com, discussing the delivery of a male child by unmarried 26-year-old rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva.

And yet, not a single major Russian media outlet had the least bit of interest in the story.

This woman is a major celebrity in Russia.  She’s posed in the Russian Playboy (chickening out and hiding herself behind furs).  The fact that she was pregnant and then gave birth is major entertainment news, and there is only one reason that the mainstream press would have ignored it:  Namely, that the Kremlin doesn’t want it reported. And what reason could the Kremlin possibly have for being interested in the pregnancy of a gymnast?

Well, for nearly a year now, rumors have been circulating that Vladmir Putin was having an affair with Kabaeva, and now she turns up with a bun coming out of the oven and no father in sight.  Where was the coverage during the pregnancy?  Where is the coverage of the birth?  If Putin isn’t the father, who is?

The Malignancy that is Nord Stream

The real reason that Russia wants to build Nord Stream, which is more expensive than the existing gas pipeline network, is that it will enable Russia to interrupt gas supplies to EU member countries like Poland, the Baltic states and Ukraine, while keeping its German and other West European customers snug and warm.

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, a former foreign minister of Denmark, writing in the Moscow Times:

As winter approaches, many people in Central and Eastern Europe remember the chill caused last winter by Russia’s deliberate cutoff of gas supplies. That shutdown was a harsh reminder that gas is now the Kremlin’s primary political instrument as it seeks to re-establish its privileged sphere of interest in what it thinks of as Russia’s “near-abroad.” If Russia is allowed to continue imposing Moscow’s rules on Europe’s energy supplies, the result will be costly — not only for Europe, but for Russia as well.

So it is past time that the European Union stop treating energy as a bilateral issue, with some of the larger member states trying to protect their own narrow interests at the expense of the common European good. The EU urgently needs to build a common energy policy and a single market for natural gas. Until both are established, there is a grave risk that Russia will use new blockades to continue the kind of divide-and-rule policy that the world has witnessed since Vladimir Putin came to power.

Russia and Zynga, Birds of a Corrupt Feather

GAWKER reports:

Alisher Usmanov is nicknamed “the hard man of Russia,” but he’s good at seducing the softies in California’s tech community: An investment firm he backs lead a $180 million investment in Zynga, the gaming company that trafficked in scammy ads.

The investment firm, Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, led a broader group of investors in putting money into San Francisco-based Zynga,according to the New York Times. It’s DST’s second Silicon Valley conquest, following two investments in Facebook earlier this year that totaled $300 million and that allowed the social network to cash out employee equity.

Usmanov (pictured), who reportedly owns 32 percent of DST, comes with the sort of unsavory press clippings worthy of a long-survivng oligarch in anarchic, organized-crime-ridden Russia: He’s been accused by a former British ambassador of being a “gangster and racketeer” and of close ties to mafia drug trafficking and, as we’ve reported previously, controversially tried to censor bloggers who linked to news of the accusations.

Miraculous Russian Churches Obliterated by Russian Dictatorship

After the jump, photos of miraculously beautiful turn-of-the-century Russian Orthodox churches (and, yes, even a Roman Catholic one!) as photographed by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.  These and hundreds more like them were eradicated by the same KGB whose proud servant now rules the country, and many of their resident priests were murdered.  How ironic that now these same priests are selling their souls to the devil and cooperating with Vladimir Putin to build a new ne0-Soviet state where religion is used as an element of power.