April 15, 2011 — Contents

FRIDAY APRIL 15 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia, Land of Failure

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Russia, Land of Liars and Morons

(3) EDITORIAL: Russia, Land of Bandits

(4)  Russia, Land of Mindless Sheep

(5)  Russia, Land of Hypocrites

(6)  Russia, Land of Extinction, Part I

(7) Russia, Land of Extinction, Part II

NOTE:  57% of Russian white-collar professionals are ready to leave the country. More than 1.25 million Russians have left the country in the last few years.  Our special issue today explains why, revolting chapter and horrifying verse.

EDITORIAL: Russia, Land of Failure

EDITORIAL

Russia, Land of Failure

Today we offer a special issue devoted to an extensive analysis of the myriad of ways in which Vladimir Putin’s Russia is failing and collapsing.

A good jumping-off point for this discussion would be to click the “rating Russia” category in our sidebar. There, a reader will find more than 150 posts dedicated to reporting on international scientific studies of Russian performance, each one revealing more shocking and horrifying failure than the last. Over and over and over again in the studies, conducted by respected international organizations and think-tanks of every hue, Russia ranks in the bottom quartile of the globe or worse when tested for basic criteria of civilized government and progressive business climate.

The drumbeat of failure continued last week, loud and clear.  Inflation was soaring, capital flight was roaring, and the world was reminded once again that those who govern Russia are unqualified, lacking in experience, and totally ill-equipped to manage a complex market economy.

EDITORIAL: Russia, Land of Liars and Morons

EDITORIAL

Russia, Nation of Liars and Morons

In 1803, the United States paid the Emperor of France $15 million and purchased 828,800 square miles of land west of the Mississippi, known as the “Louisiana Territory.”  It was full of viable, fertile farmland and other freely accessible natural resources, directly linked to the existing continental United States, and it cost $0.18 per square mile.

Sixty-four years later, the United States paid the Emperor of Russia $7.2 million and purchased 586,412 square miles of territory in the extreme northwest of the North American continent, which has since become the State of Alaska.  Russia had virtually exhausted the fur trade there and, as far as was then known, the territory was absolutely useless.  The U.S. government was mocked and castigated for the “folly” it had engaged in, which cost $0.12 per square mile to indulge in.  Recently, Americans celebrated the anniversary of this transaction, which turned out OK in the end.

A hoard of idiotic, apelike Russians still complain to this day, though, that they did not get a fair deal in the purchase of Alaska. Pravda for instance recently called the deal “one of the strangest in history.” It was nothing of the kind.

EDITORIAL: Russia, Land of Bandits

EDITORIAL

Russia, Land of Bandits

The image above shows the dictator of Libya and the dictator of Russia flying in attack aircraft to bomb their own populations in to submission, with the Russian using a computer attack rather than an explosive. It is the work of the genius Russian cartoonist Sergei Yelkin, better known as Ellustrator, an refers to a recent massive cyber attack on the Live Journal blogging network in Russia which shut down the entire service for the better part of a day (even the blog of so-called Russian “president” Dima Medvedev was affected — interestingly, Vladimir Putin is not a blogger and was left unscathed). A few days later a massive attack was launched on the website of Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s leading opposition newspaper.  Both Anton Nosik and Alexei Navalny, the two titans of the Russian blogosphere, made it clear that the Putin Kremlin was to blame, in preparation for the rigging of the next presidential “elections.”

Russia, Land of Mindless Sheep

Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writing in the Moscow Times:

The Russian government, with its solid hold on power, has invariably gotten away with poor performance, inefficiency, corruption and widespread violation of political rights and civil liberties. Polls consistently demonstrate that Russians are not deluded. They routinely respond in surveys that government officials are corrupt and self-serving. According to a poll conducted last summer, 80 percent believe that “many civil servants practically defy the law.”

And yet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has enjoyed high and steady approval ratings for years. A mild drop in early 2011 probably reflected frustration over social injustice and a growing sense of insecurity and uncertainty about the future. Even so, about 70 percent of respondents in a February poll said they approved of Putin’s performance. President Dmitry Medvedev’s approval ratings are only slightly lower.

Russia, Land of Hypocrites

Streetwise Professor reports:

It’s amazing the things Russophobes will say.  Like this:

“Right now [Russia’s] investment climate is so bad that it won’t be affected” [by the imminent failure of the BP-Rosneft deal].

What slander.  Must be some retrograde, Cold War fossil.

Check that.  It was Arkady Dvorkovich, Medvedev’s top economic aide.

Russia, Land of Extinction Part I

Paul Goble reports:

Preliminary results from the 2010 Russian census highlight some of that country’s most serious underlying problems and thus appear likely to be the subject of intense discussion and debate not only among commentators but also in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.

The results  show a continuing decline in the total Russian population, a hollowing out of much of the country, an increase in the gender imbalance Russia has suffered since World War II, and, what is especially disturbing to many Russians, a shift in the ethnic balance of the population as a result of differential birthrates and immigration.

And those trends — which some observers are already suggesting may be even worse than the official figures show — help explain why some Russian leaders wanted to put off the census or at least reports of its findings until after the 2012 presidential elections lest the census data call attention to the failures of Moscow’s policies over the last decade.

Russia, Land of Extinction, Part II

Hero journalist Grigori Pasko, writing on Robert Amsterdam’s blog (eсли Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда):

It would seem I had already become accustomed to the notion that there is practically not one single corner of the earth left where you can’t find a Russian person. From Australia to Iceland, from Brazil to Japan, we are everywhere, sometimes taking over like an infestation. In so doing it ought to be taken into account that I’m not speaking about tourists, but about those who have left Russia for abroad for a new “PMZh” – permanent place of residence.

Of course, many of those who have left haven’t yet become citizens of the countries they’ve taken a fancy to. But this is a matter of time and persistence. Of course, many were compelled to leave: the power structure in today’s Russia makes starting businesses and owning property very difficult apart from few rich men with a tenacity that wasn’t inherent even to the “birdlings of Dzerzhinsky’s nest“. For example, look no further than the burgeoning community of wealthy but frightened Russian men in London. But not only the rich leave Russia. To my surprise I have met with many working class Russian people in other countries, who had left to their new adopted homes not even knowing the languages of these countries.

Once in my blog I wrote on this topic. And, it is recalled, an argument ensued with one of the readers. He asserted that Russians began to leave Russia massively still under Yeltsin, while under Putin and his stability, on the contrary, the outflow of of human resources shrank.

Let’s take a look at what the numbers say.