January 22, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY JANUARY 22 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Double, Double Russian toil and Trouble

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russians facing Extinction

(3)  EDITORIAL:   Getting Played by Vladimir Putin

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Obama in Decline

(5)  Every Third Russian Cop a Drunk or Psycho

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EDITORIAL: Double, Double, Russian toil and Trouble

EDITORIAL

Double, Double, Russian toil and Trouble

Back in 2004, as he began his second term as so-called “president” of Russia, the dictator Vladimir Putin made a bold claim:  He would double Russia’s GDP by no later than the end of this year.

Russia didn’t, of course, come remotely close to achieving that goal.  Even if it had done so, moreover, it would not have been because of any policy implemented by Putin or indeed any achievement by the Russian people of any kind. It would simply have been because the price of crude oil on world markets went up.  Russia achieves “growth” only when the price soars; when it tumbles, Russia plunges into recession.  Today, Russia’s GDP is the same as that of Spain — a nation with just one third the number of workers creating GDP that Russia has (meaning that an average Spaniard is three times more productive than the average Russian).

So now Putin is singing a different tune:  He’s warbling about vodka and chickens.

EDITORIAL: Russians, Facing Extinction

EDITORIAL

Russians, Facing Extinction

According to the Russian government’s own propaganda network, RIA Novosti, in 2009 200,00 more people perished in Russia than were born.  If that’s what the Kremlin is willing to admit, just imagine the true horror of the real facts.

EDITORIAL: Getting Played by Vladimir Putin

EDITORIAL

Getting Played by Vladimir Putin

It was rather hilarious, and also a little scary, watching the world get played by Vladimir Putin over the Мульт Личности (“Cartoon of Personality” — wordplay on культ личности, personality cult) short about him and Dima Medvedev over the New Year’s holiday in Russia.

Any number of hapless morons began pontificating about the possibility that the short was an indication of some new form of glasnost on the part of the neo-Soviet Kremlin.  It was, of course, the exact opposite, and only an idiot or a person utterly unfamiliar with the Putin regime and the content of the short could think otherwise.

EDITORIAL: Obama in Decline

EDITORIAL

Obama in Decline

In a truly stunning bit of humiliation on Tuesday night, the Barack Obama’s Democratic Party lost Teddy Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in the U.S. Senate to a Republican.  Kennedy and the Democrats had held the seat for 46 years through nine elections, and his brother JFK had held the seat before him. Sometimes referred to as “The People’s Republic of Massachusetts,” the state is as blue and left-wing as they come in the USA.

And now it has a Republican senator, a senator who hands to the Republican party it’s 41st vote, the crucial one necessary to block a cloture vote on a filibuster, meaning that the Republicans can now cause any piece of legislation, including national healthcare, to grind to a screeching halt.

This is a cataclysmic, seismic, humiliating failure for Barack Obama, and shows that after only one year in office the country has already grown weary of his so-called leadership.  And we here at La Russophobe can only sigh and say to Obama’s supporters:  We told you so.

Every Third Russian Cop a Drunk or a Psycho

Paul Goble reports:

Nearly one in every three militiamen in Russia is likely a psychopath or an alcoholic, the result, a leading specialist says, of the attraction militia service has for such people, the end of psychological screening of applicants, and the sense among many in the service that, as militiamen, they are beyond the reach of the law.

In an interview published in Novyye Izvestiya Mikhail Vinogradov, the director of the Moscow Center for Legal and Psychological Assistance in Extreme Situations, says that as a result of this combination, many unhealthy and even dangerous people are to be found in militia ranks.