EDITORIAL
There’s Sick, and then there’s Russian Sick
Russia’s ability to surpass itself, week after appalling week, with ever lower levels of vile, nauseating, subhuman conduct is truly breathtaking.
Last week, Echo of Moscow Radio broke the story of how the annual Nashi orgy of xenophobia and aggressive nationalism known as Camp Selinger, a government-funded festival of barbaric outrage, plumbed inconceivable new depths by putting the virtual heads of opposition political leaders on pikes and decorating them as Nazis.
The Kremlin’s youthful thugs did not hesitate to include octogenarian Lyudmila Alexeeva among those so assaulted.
You read that right: They put an eighty year old woman’s head on a pike and stuck a Nazi hat on her head. She’s a human rights activist. She’s utterly defenseless and frail. And she’s a Nazi.
In so doing, they besmirched Russia’s honor as a nation in a way that can never, ever be repaired. Even we, who have thus far faced down all the ravages of Russia, cannot bring ourselves to publish these photos on our blog. To do so would demean us beyond toleration.
When Ella Pamfilova, the highest-ranking human rights official in Russia, recently attempted to criticize Nashi’s outrageous misconduct, she was smacked down by the Kremlin and publicly complained about the lack of support. Now, she’s resigned in protest. That says all you need to know about how the Kremlin views Nashi’s behavior.
What words can we find to condemn this animalistic behavior? What words could make the people of Russia see that a government capable of this kind of heinous outrage will surely bring them only ruin, suffering and pain — only bring them cruelty which they, for having remained silent as such events transpire, will richly deserve?
We cannot help but recall Russian silence when Alexeeva was physically assaulted in broad public whilst celebrating Christmas dressed as Snegurochka. In light of that, one shouldn’t be surprised by this latest show of naked Russian barbarism.
Yet still one is sickened. A country this craven, this depraved, cannot long endure. We’d pity the Russians, if they did not so richly deserve the cruel fate that awaits them on the ash heap of failed, fallen nations.
La Russophobe 
Come on, don’t be shocked.
We’re talking about a country where defenseless babushkas were shot at point-blank range and then their golden teeth were knocked out before they were set on fire by “soldiers”. In their own homes.
We’re talking about a country where the “police” actually beheads people and then hangs the heads into public display.
This kind of a country.
This stuff, this is nothing.
Anyway, more summer camp fun:
The initial account of the incident was circulated on July 26 by Chechen human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhadjiyev, who is a close associate of Kadyrov. Nukhadjiyev claimed that the “Don” camp’s deputy director, a Russian who had served in the Russian army in Chechnya, spontaneously attacked three of the approximately 300 Chechen children at the camp late on July 24. An older Chechen sportsman accompanying the children intervened and halted the fight. The camp director (the deputy director’s father) and the Chechen supervisor agreed to regard the incident closed. But later the same evening the camp director returned with a group of 300-400 local men armed with iron bars and began systematically to hunt down and attack the Chechen children, who used their mobile phones to call their parents and appeal for help. Local police simply stood by and failed to intervene.
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19545&Itemid=132
But make no mistake about “human rights ombudsman” Nukhadjiyev:
Also on July 27, Nukhadjiyev issued a separate statement in which he rejected as unfounded a recent appeal to President Medvedev by the presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society to take measures to protect human rights activists in Chechnya in light of Kadyrov’s denunciation of the human rights watchdog Memorial on July 3 as “enemies of the people, of the law, and of the state.” Kadyrov subsequently implicitly retracted that threat, affirming that “no one has threatened human rights organizations in Chechnya.” Nukhadjiyev on July 27 said Kadyrov’s comments did not constitute either a threat or an attempt at intimidation, but were simply “his personal opinion.”
Meanwhile in Moscow, Luzhkov wants the children to learn in their schools how to “survive in difficult times” (when the oil money runs out, presumably):
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/07/window-on-eurasia-soviet-style-pre.html
In today’s “Argumenty nedeli,” Valery Buldakov describes the courses on “how to throw a wooden grenade, assemble an automatic weapon, and at the same time to love the Motherland and survive in difficult times,” courses that young Muscovites have no experience with but ones that their parents will well remember (www.argumenti.ru/education/n248/70176/).
Top 10 Reasons Not to Trust Russia
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Factsheets/Top-10-Reasons-Not-to-Trust-Russia
So, I’m Russian.
Why should I deserve what you said “cruel fate”?
Why am I not to be pitied?
Whoever you are, Comerado, why should I raise my hand against you and you against me?
“The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.”
Ну вот так, Ваня, I would say that fate has played pretty cruelly with you already in not blessing you with the discrimination to understand that the stuff you say and the stuff you quote is complete and utter tripe.
“Why am I not to be pitied?”
If you are a Russian like Boris Nemtsov or Garry Kasparov or Oleg Kozlovsky, you are! And we do pity, and greatly admire, your plight!
But if you are like the vast majority of Russians, then you are either actively or passively contributing to the horror. And we hate you.
The majority of russians are sheep; afraid and frightened sheep..
Dave,
It’s stylistically incorrect to write “Ну вот так” in this particular case.
You should wright “Ну так вот,” Note the difference.
Vanja, dorogoi! Please tell me, was it stylistically correct to write: “afraid and frightened sheep” or is the expression “terrified sheep” better?
We do agree about the species (sheep) and nationality (russians), do we?
Vsevo choroshevo!
…and the sheep keep running off the cliff…