January 1, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY JANUARY 1 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Dima “Dumbass” Medvedev

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Hands up, Officer Dymovsky!

(3)  The Final Solution for Russia’s Internet

(4)  Happy New Year, Russia!

(5)  Third-World Russia

NOTE: Despite Vladimir Putin’s claims that all is bliss in neo-Soviet Russia, the nation’s young women are still fleeing in droves to take up prostitution in places like Thailand, where the government just arrested and is deporting nearly a dozen such maidens.  Photos and video await.

EDITORIAL: Dima “Dumbass” Medvedev

EDITORIAL

Dima “Dumbass” Medvedev

“This is not a remark of mine but a verdict. Remarks are what you say. Everything I say is cast in granite.”

—  Russian “president” Dima Medvedev, speaking to Russian industrial leaders at Gazprom’s headquarters last week.

“Cast in granite”? Something can’t be cast in granite.  Casting is for liquid metals like iron or bronze.  And, um, Dima? Verdicts come from judges and juries, not elected administrators.  

The so-called “president” of Russia is, in other words, an idiot.  And he was just getting started showing it.

Indeed, Medvedev ended 2009 the way he began it:  Looking like a goofy dumbass who makes George Bush seem like Winston Churchill by comparison.

EDITORIAL: Hands Up, Officer Dymovsky!

Police Major Alexei Dymovsky

EDITORIAL

Hands Up, Officer Dymovsky!

Kremlin prosecutors announced on Monday that they would file criminal charges against Russian Police Major Alexei Dymovsky for “abuse of office” in connection with his YouTube plea for Kremlin assistance in dealing with widespread corruption in the ranks of the Russian police.

Once again, in other words, the Russian government is going to massacre a legitimate Russian hero and the people of Russia will not lift a finger to stop it.

The Final Solution for Russia’s Internet

“This idea is absurd, awkward and useless. Cyrillic domains are just the first step toward fundamentally creating a separate and fully controlled ‘territory’ in the global network. All these measures will significantly weaken, if not eliminate, the possibility of foreign information influencing the population of Russia, especially the younger generation. It will ensure that their vision of the world better corresponds to the ideology of Russia’s rulers.”

–A Russian commenter on the New York Times Russian language website, responding to the idea that Russia will have Internet domain names in the Cyrillic alphabet

The New York Times reports:

The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly rendered in English. The Russian government, as a result, is taking the lead in a landmark shift occurring around the world to allow domain names in languages with non-Latin alphabets.

Russians themselves, though, do not seem at all eager to follow.

Happy New Year, Russia!

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Russia will finish out 2009 sadder and a slightly more sober than usual but hardly any wiser. Russia’s economy fared worse than all other Group of 20 countries during the crisis, and the excessive number of catastrophes it suffered underscored how woefully ineffective, incompetent and corrupt the government is. Nonetheless, the government hasn’t budged one centimeter from the status quo course that has driven the country into a political and economic dead end.

The State Duma’s reaction to Yegor Gaidar’s death is highly symbolic and is a fitting way for President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to conclude their disastrous year as leaders of the nation. Led by Oleg Morozov, first deputy speaker of the Duma and a United Russia member, the lower house of parliament refused the motion to observe a moment of silence for Gaidar, a Duma deputy of six years, an acting prime minister and one of the most influential economists and reformers in Russian history. Not a single high-ranking member of United Russia or the presidential administration came to pay their last respects at Gaidar’s funeral.

Third-World Russia

Paul Goble reports:

Russians who think Barak Obama is a “more suitable” partner for Moscow than George W. Bush was are deceiving themselves, according to a Moscow analyst, because unlike Bush who always took Moscow seriously even if he opposed it, Obama views Russia as a third world country that Washington can largely ignore.

“This was not our year,” Russian commentator Vladimir Pastukhov writes in an essay posted online. “And it was not our president who was featured on the cover of magazines.” Instead, “Obamamania has seized the world,” and one of the places where this has happened is in Moscow. For many in the Russian capital, he continues, “Obama seemed a more suitable partner,” but Pastukhov insists, this is “a deceptive impression” because in fact “Obama relates to Russia not better than Bush but more realistically.” And “in the long term perspective, this does not bode well for [Russia].”

“As a result of inertia, Bush conceived Russia as an equal, even as a competitor, and did so even though the ‘de-industrialization of the 1990s meant that Russia could not in any way pretend” to that status. But Russia linked its greatness to the past, and Washington willingly or not played up to it.”