January 4, 2010 — Contents

MONDAY JANUARY 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Putin shows Snegurochka who’s Boss

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia butchers its Women

(3)  Russia in the Red

(4)  Mr. Putin and his Sense of “Humor”

(5)  Cartoon

NOTE:  Kim Zigfeld’s latest installment of her Russia column on the mighty Pajamas Media blog is up and running.  It takes the cowardly Obama administration task for what she calls “obamappeasment” in failing to stand up to the imperialistic advances of the Putin regime, thereby encouraging even more aggression just as Chamberlain did to Hitler in World War II. Required reading.

EDITORIAL: He-Man Putin shows Snegurochka Who’s Boss

EDITORIAL

He-Man Putin shows Snegurochka Who’s Boss

Well, it’s another horrifying new low in the annals of Russian barbarism.

Dressed as Snegurochka, the Russian version of Mrs. Claus, 82-year-old human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva appeared on New Year’s Eve (which Russians celebrate in lieu of Christmas) on Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s Fifth Avenue.  She waved happily to the assembled crowd. She posed for pictures and signed autographs.  A throng of her supporters and admirers gathered to congratulate her on her recent major award from the EU.

Care to guess what happened next?

EDITORIAL: Barbaric Russia butchers its Women

EDITORIAL

Barbaric Russia butchers its Women

Domestic violence kills 14,000 women in Russia each year, which amounts to almost one woman every hour, or about the same number of Soviet soldiers who died fighting in the 10-year Afghan war. And at the moment there is no law to protect them.

There are 365 days in ayear, and each one has 24 hours, for a total of 8,760 hours per year.  Each hour has 60 minutes, which means each year has 525,600 minutes.  Divide that number of minutes by 14,000 murders of women by their husbands, and you get one such killing every 37.5 minutes, not every hour.  It’s more accurate to say one Russian woman is murdered by her husband every half an hour.

Knowing that such a stupid error was made, it probably will not surprise you to learn that the speaker was not some wild-eyed Russophobe but the Kremlin’s own propaganda project Russia Today, back in February of 2008 — some six months before the worst financial crisis of the past decade smashed into Russia like a tsunami.  If the Kremlin itself admits that 14,000 Russian women are murdered every year by their husbands, do you dare to imagine what the real figure is? Do you dare?

In 2003, “only” 9,000 women were killed by their husbands in Putin’s Russia according to government statistics. That means that over the course of the next five years, while Putin governed, the murder rate increased by a shocking 55%.  This figure is ten times the number of women murdered by their husbands in the United States, a country with twice Russia’s population.  In other words, the per capita murder rate of women by their husbands is twenty times lower in the USA than it is in Russia. Yet, Russian government officials claim the problem of domestic violence is no worse in Russia than anywhere else, and the city of Moscow does not have one single shelter to house women fleeing domestic violence.

Not one shelter.  Our lead editorial today, regarding the barbaric arrest of 82-year-old human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva, shows in perfect microcosm Russia’s attitude towards women:  It simply doesn’t care.  The picture of this frail old woman in the clutches of a hoard of Kremlin thugs is truly worth a thousand screams.

Compared to many an ordinary Russian housewife, however, it was a walk in the park for Alekseyeva.  Just listen to the horror.

Russia in the Red

Seeking Alpha reports:

Purveyors of booming “BRIC economy” hoopla should take the “R” out of their favorite acronym. Russia is struggling no less than the developed economies, and the implications could affect your own investments.  Interfax reported Monday that in a meeting with President Medvedev, Finance Minister Kudrin claimed that the Reserve Fund of the Russian Federation—one of the two components of the Stabilization Fund set up in 2004 to serve as a rainy-day repository for oil superprofits—will be fully liquidated in 2010 in order to support government deficit spending.

The fund’s prognosis seems to be growing bleaker by the hour. In an interview earlier in the day with the news channel Vesti, Kudrin had said that total liquidation would only occur in the event that oil falls below $70 dollars per barrel for any substantial length of time, thereby depressing tax revenues and forcing Moscow to dip further into its reserves.

In that interview, the minister had also stated that Russia would start rebuilding the Reserve Fund no earlier than 2013.

Mr. Putin and his Sense of Humor

The New York Times reports:

It is not, from a purely technical standpoint, impossible to make fun of Vladimir V. Putin. His head is shaped a bit like a light bulb, with eyes that are heavy-lidded, as if to convey that he has just been reading your dossier. He has a needle nose, a prizefighter’s swagger and a fondness for posing shirtless. If all else fails, there is always the matter of height.

But caricatures of the Russian prime minister long ago vanished from state-controlled television. Ten years ago, the creators of the show “Kukly” came under such pressure from the Kremlin to retire their grotesque puppet of Mr. Putin that they responded, rather sardonically, by depicting him as a burning bush. The show was eventually canceled, and caution has prevailed since then. A talk show, “Real Politics,” included Mr. Putin in cartoons, but he was seen only from the neck down.

Cartoon

Source:  Ellustrator.