October 27, 2010 — Contents

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 27 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia is a Bandit Nation

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Moscow’s Crypto-Fascist Scumbag

(3)  Khodorkovsky’s Challenge to Putin

(4)  Beware of Smiling Russian Bears

(5)  The Final Push against Novaya Gazeta

EDITORIAL: Russia is a Bandit Nation

 

Paddycake, paddycake, psychopathic man, bake me some nukes as fast as you can!!

 EDITORIAL

Russia is a Bandit Nation

We can’t help but wonder how Russians would have reacted to an American president being photographed with, say, Shamil Basayev in the same way Russia’s Dima Medevedev recently was with lunatic Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  And what if, during the meeting, the American president had declared his intention to supply Basayev with nuclear technology?

The New York Times reported:  “Russia first offered Venezuela nuclear power in 2008, during an intense spell of anti-Western sentiment in Moscow after the war with Georgia. The agreement on Friday fleshed out that offer.”

Chavez certainly hates America just as much as Basayev hated Russia, and would like to do America just as much harm, or more.  And America certainly could have justified such a move as Medvedev does, pointing to the need to counterbalance increasing Russian imperialist ambition.

EDITORIAL: Moscow’s New Crypto-Fascist Scumbag

EDITORIAL

Moscow’s New Crypto-Fascist Scumbag

Sergei Sobyanin

Deutsche-Welle, one of the best sources of reporting on Russia, has published a brilliant exposure piece on Sergei Sobyanin, the handpicked, unelected new mayor of the city of Moscow.

Here is what Sobyanin said after he was “elected” governor of Tyumen provience in 2000:  “There is opposition, look! Only 24 out of 25 deputies have voted for me.” Such a remark could easily have been made by a stooge of the Soviet empire, and indeed quite often was.  Now, Sobyanin has been placed in charge of one of the world’s largest cities by exectutive fiat of the Kremlin, and he will be its slave.  Democratic politics at the local level has been absolutely and finally extinguished, and it has been carried out by the so-called “liberal” reformer Dima Medvedev.

Khodorkovsky’s Challenge to Putin

Once again defying Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky appears boldly in the Western press calling for insurrection against the Kremlin, this time in The Los Angeles Times:

I am a member of the last generation of Soviet people — those who were born and came of age in the USSR. In 1990, the final year of the Soviet Union’s existence, I was 27 years old. The next generation — of which the first of my sons, born in 1985, is part — only knows about “those times” from our stories.

Growing up, an ordinary young man from the outskirts of Moscow from a family of engineers who worked at a Soviet factory, I believed the things that were said on television, written in the newspapers and taught in school. I wanted, like my parents, to work at a factory and serve my country. I wanted to go further than my father, to become a factory director. Like a third of my peers, I studied at a technical institute, and like 90% of them, I was a member of the Young Communist League.

Beware of Smiling Russian Bears!

Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a former Polish defense minister and chairman of the Council of Euro-Atlantic Association, writing in the Moscow Times:

Remember the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, aimed at enshrining “commonly shared values” between Russia and the European Community? Signed in 1994, during the hopeful early days of Russia’s first-ever democracy, the agreement was bolstered in 1999 by the creation of the European Union’s Common Security Defense Policy.

Both sides often refer to this desire to forge closer relations as a “strategic partnership.” But as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet President Dmitry Medvedev in Deauville, France, on Tuesday, it would be wise to recognize that the Kremlin seems to be changing the terms of this nascent relationship.

The Final Push against Novaya Gazeta

Other Russia reports:

Editors at Novaya Gazeta, one of Russia’s most well-renowned opposition newspapers, fear that the publication may be shut down in the coming year.

Following months of legal battles, a Russian court declared in September that a decision by Roskomnadzor (Russia’s federal media supervision agency) to issue an official warning against the newspaper for “propagandizing nationalistic views” was valid. Since a publication can be shut down after two such warnings, Novaya Gazeta editors say that the court’s decision spells the beginning of the possible end of the newspaper.