March 4, 2011 — Contents

FRIDAY MARCH 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  The Voice of Russia(n Lies)

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Night Falls on Putin’s Russia

(3)  EDITORIAL:  Blood on the White Russian Snows

(4)  EDITORIAL:  Time for the Old Switcheroo!

(5)  Why the Kremlin Can’t fight Terror

(6)  Welcome back to the USSR!

(7)  The Terrific Trio slams the Terrible Tyrant

(8)  CARTOON:  Putin the Fanat

NOTE: Over on the powerful American Thinker blog, LR publisher and founder Kim Zigfeld warns the world once again about the horrific dangers of sending its athletes to Sochi in 2014 for the Olympic games.

NOTE:  More spectacular pain and failure for the Russian ladies on the tennis court. In the desert of Dubai, Russia’s “best” player Vera Zvonareva was booted out of the tournament in the third round in easy straight sets by player not ranked in the top 15 in the world. Then, Svetlana Kuznetsova reached the finals only to be blown off the court in embarrassing, non-competitive fashion by the glamorous world #1. Ouch.

NOTE: Any attractive young ladies looking for that special man, act now. This offer won’t last long. Must be good with a knife in the dark.

EDITORIAL: The Voice of Russia(n Lies)

EDITORIAL

The Voice of Russia(n Lies)

The chart above, prepared by the Committee to Protect Journalists, shows that only two nations on this planet, Iraq and Philippines, have more unsolved murders of journalists than does Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which ranks #3 in the world in nominal and #8 in the world in per capita butchery of members of the press.  Russia’s rate of savagery in this regard is 50% higher than Mexico’s, which comes in just below it at #9, and it has twice as many unsolved murders as does Mexico.  Russia moved from #9 last year to #8 this year.  Amazingly, with little room to do so, it’s getting even worse as time goes by.

But you would never know this from reading or listening to the “Voice of Russia,” the Kremlin’s own paid propaganda network. It is one of the very worst, most unreliable and dishonest sources of information about modern Russia in the world.  Because of outrageously dishonest reporting from the likes of VOR, Russians and Russophiles have a warped, distorted, neo-Soviet view of themselves and, like the infamous Emperor with his “new clothes,” fail to realize that in reality the entire world is appalled by them.

Look, for example, at the shameless lies VOR told about the recent visit to Moscow by human rights delegations from the United Nations and the European Union.

EDITORIAL: Night Falls on Putin’s Russia

EDITORIAL

Night Falls on Putin’s Russia

If you look at a map of the world at night, Europe and the United States and Japan and even India are lit up like Christmas trees. Compare them to the vast northern swaths of Russia and to Africa, which lie in sullen darkness.  In Africa’s case, it’s because the population simply doesn’t have access to electricity.  In Russia’s case, it’s because there are no people present at all.

But the world’s population is exploding.  Experts say that “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000” in order to feed all the new mouths. Russians are doing their part to help:  Their population is expected to shrink drastically, by 15% or more, over the next few decades.  So the question is:  As Russia empties, who’s going to move in? Most likely, it will be the Chinese; but exploding Muslim populations across Russia’s southern border will also have a say.

Russia’s horrifying darkness is both literal and figurative, of course.

EDITORIAL: Blood on the White Russian Snows

EDITORIAL

Blood on the White Russian Snows

Last week Russia suffered what may well be, pound for pound, the most terrifying act of separatist violence in its history.

In a gesture of unmistakable menace towards the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the Caucasian rebels launched an all-out assault on winter sportsmen.  Three skiers from Moscow were shot dead on the road to the slopes in Kabarino-Balkaria (two other members of their party were wounded), and at nearby Mt. Elbrus another force of rebels blew up a ski lift, bringing down dozens of cable cars.  The attacks were timed to coincide with the staging of the first test events for the Sochi games.

The response of the Putin regime was truly terrifying. It openly admitted that it could not control the separatist violence, and helplessly warned Russian sportsmen to simply stay out of the area. Today Kabarino-Balkaria, tomorrow Sochi.

EDITORIAL: Time for the old Switcheroo!

EDITORIAL

Time for the Old Switcheroo

On February 20th, activists from Roman Dobrokhotov’s “We” movement hung a fifty-square-meter banner, shown above, from a bridge directly opposite the Moscow Kremlin.  You can view photos of the unfurling on the blog of “We” activist Ilya Varlamov.

The banner showed photos of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in a presidential gaze, and Vladimir Putin, behind bars, and invited viewers to consider the possibility that it was time, as LR founder Kim Zigfeld said on Siberian Light several years ago, for the two to change places.

We’ve written about Dobrokhotov before.  He’s made many spectacular and direct challenges to the dictatorial rule of Vladimir Putin, but none more awesome  and fearless than this one.  Make no mistake:  Putin shoots people for doing stuff like this, shoots them dead.

Why the Kremlin can’t Fight Terrorism

The New York Review of Books explains why the Putin regime is unable to protect Russian citizens from terrorism:

As the story of the horrific January 24 bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport continues to unfold, the parallels with past major terrorist attacks in Russia are striking. It is not just the high number of casualties (36 dead and 160 wounded) and that the perpetrators appear to have come from the volatile North Caucasus. As with earlier such violence, there were also serious warning signs in advance that were ignored, and the immediate handling of the attack by the authorities was botched. Above all, the confusing and contradictory response of both the security agencies and Russia’s leadership has once again raised troubling questions about the Kremlin’s counter-terrorism policies.

Welcome back to the USSR!

British diplomat Tony Brenton reveals the true horror of life in Vladimir Putin’s neo-Soviet state in the Daily Mail:

Should you get home to find the door to your flat unlocked from the inside, that’s just the FSB (the KGB’s successor) letting you know they called. If you pick up the phone to hear your voice played back, as I have, someone is recording your conversations. Such was my life in Russia during my time as a senior official and then as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008.

Russia’s Terrific Trio Condemn the Medvedev Sham

In a truly thrilling op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Milov, Russia’s terrific trio, lay down withering crossfire against the advancing legions of the Putin dictatorship:

This year started quite symbolically in Russia. In the last days of 2010, government authorities decided to demonstrate their power and their intolerance for being challenged: The verdict issued at the farcical trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev had no relation to jurisprudence; leading opposition figures were detained for as many as 15 days on purely political grounds.

These heavy-handed actions set a peculiar stage for President Dmitry Medvedev’s address at the World Economic Forum. Nevertheless, the intelligent and well-informed audience in Davos enthusiastically applauded his nice words about Russia’s economic modernization and dynamic democratic development. International business leaders seem to accept his complaints that few Russians understand his great plans for the country’s future, which greedy oligarchs and corrupt officials from the 1990s prevent him from undertaking.

CARTOON: Putin the Fanat

Translation:  The TV says “Team Dictator is down by a score of 0-2.”
Putin responds: “Let’s go Muamar!!”

Source:  Ellustrator.