EDITORIAL: Ross Cameron, Treacherous Russophile Bastard

EDITORIAL

Ross Cameron, Treacherous Russophile Bastard

Aussie MP Ross Cameron, Rat Bastard

Back in 2004, a nasty little Australian rat named Ross Cameron was sitting in his comfy seat in the Aussie parliament when something rather uncomfortable happened.  Cameron, who had “marketed himself in previous election campaigns as a staunch family man with deep Christian convictions,” was caught cheating on his wife.  And not just cheating, but carrying on with a variety of bimbos while his wife was pregnant with twins.  Maybe God told him it was OK?

He was then drummed out of office and divorced. He remarried with his new wife five months pregnant. Yikes. Yuck. And that’s only the beginning, dear reader.  Hold on to your chair, because it gets worse.  Much, much worse. This fellow is truly pond scum.

Right-wing wackos of his ilk, like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, are drawn to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin like flies to a pile of rotting garbage, like swastikas to a neo-Nazi.  Undoubtedly, they see in Putin some kind of kindred soul, who can satisfyingly liquidate anyone who criticizes them, obliterate “undesirables” like homosexuals and Jews and Blacks, and build the kind of world they’d like to live in. They are, quite simply, as un-American as you can get.  That they lay claim to the ideological or political lineage of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower is nothing short of blasphemy.

But even still, the fetid cesspool of utter filth that Herr Cameron spewed out on the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald recently was shocking and disturbing, a clear reminder that there are still plenty of treacherous rat bastards among us who will jump at the chance to help Putin create a neo-Soviet state and a new Iron Curtain, applauding as he wipes out democracy using the most bloody and brutal tactics imaginable.  As one commenter on the article points out:  “The author is either deliberately distorting truth or simply repeating Kremlin lies about Putin’s deeds.”  Whether Cameron, who has of course never lived a day in Putin’s Russia, speaks out of apelike ignorance or malignant complicity with the regime hardly matters.  He’s evil either way, and a threat to not only Russia’s future but the security of the Western democracies.

We condemn him. Pravda, meanwhile, thinks he’s the bee’s knees.

Let’s be clear:  This man has absolutely no credentials where Russia is concerned, yet he purports to lecture the world on what a wonderful fellow this proud KGB spy really is.  What you read next will turn your stomach. You have been warned.

Upon leaving office, Cameron went into the banking business.  It seems he has a fervent desire to insinuate himself into the good graces of the Putin regime in order to drum up business for his new employer, because there is no other way to explain the repulsive love letter he published to the proud KGB spy who is throttling the democratic life out of Russia.

He begins like this:  “Putin is Russia’s finest leader since Peter the Great.”    Would that be the same Peter the Great who worked tens of thousands of slaves to cruel extinction struggling to build his network of palaces in the swamps that became St. Petersburg?

He states:  “Western profiles of Putin usually begin with ”ex-KGB agent” but that is misleading. As a spy in West Germany in the 1980s, Putin witnessed the superiority of the free markets.”   Those profiles are certainly wrong if they refer to Putin as “ex-KGB.”  He’s never renounced or resigned from the KGB, and proudly declares himself a “chekist” to this very day.  He’s filled the halls of power in Moscow with KGB cohorts, not exactly a free-market homily.  This is only the beginning of the torrent, the tsunami of shameless lies.

The comes this:  “After the 1989 revolutions, Putin moved to St Petersburg to join his friend and former university lecturer, the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak – the Milton Friedman of Russia – and was appointed to attract foreign investment to Russia’s second largest city.”  Milton Friedman?  Sobchak fled Russia to avoid indictment on corruption charges and left Piter a pathetic basket case, an utter mess.  He was a law professor, not an economist.  Oops. Another avalanche of lies.  Herr Cameron is also apparently unaware of Putin’s shameless plagiarism of his PhD thesis, a neat trick he undoubtedly learned from his mentor Mr. Sobchak.

Next he claims Putin “ended the Chechen revolt.”  Readers of our blog over the past few issues know only too well just how very much un-ended that conflict really is.  The violence is spreading unchecked through the entire Caucasus region and Russia has actually gone to war against Georgia.

He states that after Yeltsin resigned Putin “called an election, further entrenching the rule of law.”  No, that election was already scheduled as Yeltsin’s fixed term as president was ending.  Putin liquidated every political opponent and ran without a serious rival other than the Communist Party or any debates.

He claims:  “Four years later he was re-elected with a thumping 71 per cent mandate and has since enjoyed the highest approval rating of any political leader in the democratic world.”  In fact, Putin has seized control of all the major TV stations and most of the leading newspapers, which now publish nothing but praise for the Kremlin.

He moves on to economics:  “Putin inherited an economic catastrophe. In 1998, Russia defaulted on its foreign debt and the rouble collapsed. His first public commitment – to double the productive capacity of the Russian economy in 10 years – was met with derision, but has been fulfilled.”  In fact, Putin has done nothing to improve the Russian economy, he has simply been the beneficiary of rising world oil prices, a windfall which all credible experts agree he did not maximize to the benefit of his countrymen, but rather squandered on a new cold war.  All this became quite clear when Putin’s country suffered far more than any major economy from the global economic downturn, its stock market losing three-quarters of its value.

He asserts: “In 2001, Putin achieved the holy grail of progressive reform – a flat income tax of 13 per cent, creating a wave of incentive to work while reducing the appeal of the black market.”  Oops. Transparency International has repeatedly found Russia to have one of the most pernicious black markets on the entire planet.

Then he goes for broke with a barrage of maniacal lies that would put even Herr Goebbels to shame:

Putin’s Russia has floated its currency and liberalised its current and capital accounts, completing the troika required for full integration into international capital markets. In 2000, Russia’s economy was ranked 22nd in the world – now it is seventh. The power of oligarchs diminished under Putin, with the growing counterweight of parliament, the rule of law and a middle class that has exploded from 8 million to 55 million. Those living in poverty fell from 30 per cent to 14 per cent under his watch.Western critics predicted Putin would use the global financial crisis as a pretext to increase state control, but the reverse has been the case. Russia has embarked on a new round of privatisation, with 5500 state-owned enterprises earmarked for sale.

Well.  Notice how this creep blindly regurgitates facts and figures issued by the regime of a proud KGB spy without questioning them or even telling his readers his source.   Russia hasn’t been integrated into world capital markets, and there is no reason to think a proud KGB spy would ever want such a thing, which would dramatically undercut his power, to occur.  Russia’s economy is only larger because the price of oil has risen. What happens when it falls, or Russia runs out of oil?  Oops, he forgot to think about that.  The power of some oligarchs diminished, the power of Putin-friendly ones dramatically increased, as did their wealth.  Middle class?  The average wage in Russia is $3/hour. By Western standards, Russia has no middle class, only a vast sea of desperately poor with a tiny ship of ultra-rich bobbing on top, the same situation as in Tsarist Russia, which led to revolution.  Poverty?  Again, this word has no relationship to the Western context in which the author speaks.  Earmarked?  Putin has earmarked and that’s the same as divesting?  Please don’t insult our intelligence sir.  And anyone who would claim that state control hasn’t dramatically increased during the Putin years is hysterically insane.  A weeks worth of reading on this blog would conclusively establish that.

His take on Georgia:

John McCain wrongly attempted to characterise the Georgia skirmish as a “resurgence of the Soviet bear”. South Ossetia was historically part of Georgia but during the Soviet era its population became dominated by ethnic Russians. Today the vast majority of South Osettians want to be part of Russia. Georgians launched an offensive to retake South Ossetia during the Beijing Olympics and Russia resisted. South Ossetia may be a complex story but comparisons with Budapest in 1956 are wrong.

The vast majority of Southerners wanted to be separate from the North in 1865. Does that mean Abraham Lincoln was evil for denying them that right? The vast majority of Chechens wanted to be free from Russia; does that mean Vladimir Putin was evil for denying them that right?   Russia didn’t “resist” Georgia, it invaded Georgia and killed many civilians in so doing. It has been condemned for egregious violations of law by the European Union, and not one single major nation has recognized the annexation of Ossetia.  It’s impossible to separate the lies from the stupidity where this ignorant, illiterate moron is concerned. He’s just plain scary.

He turns to the law:

It seems likely that Putin will stand again for president in 2012, as the constitution permits. In view of his extraordinary record of achievement in office, its hard for me to see how anyone of good faith could regret his continued influence in Russia and the world.

You read that right:  This so-called “democrat” from Australia is endorsing Putin’s return to office for another twelve years.  He approves of Putin becoming the new Brezhnev. Rhetoric this unhinged makes us suspect that Herr Cameron may already be directly on Putin’s payroll.

Then comes religion, of course:  “While the Soviets repressed all religious faith, Putin happily wears a cross, admits to studying the Bible and has largely restored the prestige of the Russian Orthodox Church.”  No mention of the fact that Putin has inserted a KGB spy as primate of the Orthodox Church and aggressively sought to liquidate and exclude all other faiths from the country entirely.  As long as Putin intends to fuse church and state, he’s on the right track.

Worst of all, Herr Cameron totally ignores the terrifying litany of murders of political rivals that has shadowed Putin from his first days in the Kremlin, and the stunning crackdown on civil society that has gone right along with it.

He does admit that journalists have been murdered by the dozen, but he’s prepared to take the word of a proud KGB spy that the Kremlin is not involved:  “It is distressing and disturbing that several Russian journalists have been murdered during Putin’s administration. In the absence of persuasive evidence to the contrary, I can only accept Putin’s own logic that their deaths have caused him more damage than anything they could have written or spoken.”

This is a truly frightening madman, who is thankfully far from the corridors of power because of his own demented and depraved hypocrisy.  But he is very characteristic of a swarm of amoral insects buzzing around Russia’s oil money in the hopes of getting a taste, and as such is actively contributing to the demise of democracy in Russia. He is a traitor to our basic values, selling his soul the Kremlin devil, and according to his own beliefs he will pay the ultimate price.

It’s too good for him.