May 27, 2011 — Contents

FRIDAY MAY 27 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Vampire Moscow

(2) EDITORIAL:  Red Russian Blood on the White Sochi Snows

(3)  Goodbye JV, Hello JV II!

(4)  Holy Putin, Batman!

(5)  INTERVIEW:  Anatoly Karlin 

NOTE:  Now, Putin is planting narcotics on the family members of opposition leaders in order to silence them. What will he think of next?

NOTE:  Now, Putin is teaching his Georgian allies to hit and run just like the thugs in his own employ.

EDITORIAL: Vampire Moscow

EDITORIAL

Vampire Moscow

Recently revealed facts about life in the city of Moscow are truly shocking.

A report by Cushman & Wakefield reveals that retail spending by residents of Moscow is more than twice as high as for the rest of the country and fifty percent higher than the national average for Germany or Great Britain.

The reason is simple:  Like a vampire, Moscow is slurping the nation’s blood at an alarming rate.  Moscow has a stunning concentration of billionaires who spend their wealth at an obscene rate because they know it can be taken away at a moment’s notice by the neo-Soviet regime.

EDITORIAL: Red Russian Blood on the White Sochi Snows

EDITORIAL

Red Russian Blood on the White Sochi Snows

If the Russian speed-skating team wins a medal at the Sochi Olympiad in 2014, Italy will bend its neck and be decorated, because the coach of the Russian team is Italian.  Russia’s curling medal, if any, will go the team’s Canadian coach, its short-track medal, should there be one, will go to the Korean coach, and any biathalon medal will go to a German.

So even before Russian athletes step into the cold in 2014, they’ll already have admitted they at they can’t win without massive foreign assistance.  But the chances that Russia will win in Sochi — or even make the top 10 — are remote indeed.

Not all Russian teams will be led by non-Russians.  For instance the men’s hockey team is not — and at the recent world championships that squad was denied any medal and was crushed in two games in the medal rounds by tiny countries whose resources are not remotely comparable to those of Russia.

So it’s clear why Russia has so many foreign coaches.

Goodbye Jackson-Vanik, Hello Jackson-Vanik II

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Relations between Cold War-era foes Moscow and Washington have long been distrustful, hypocritical, peppered with mutual insinuations and patched together with the most tenuous of threads. But now, on the eve of State Duma and presidential elections, an inevitable crisis in relations is nearing that threatens to tear them apart at the seams.

Last week, a group of 15 U.S. senators formally introduced a bill targeting Russians for human rights violations and corruption, including 60 officials connected to the jail death of Hermitage lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The bill would ban them from entering the United States and freeze any U.S.-based assets.

Holy Putin, Batman!

Reuters reports:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cultivates the image of a bare-chested macho man, but a nun-like sect in central Russia thinks actually he’s the reincarnation of St. Paul, the apostle.

Or, if not that, he may in a past life have been the founder of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“I say what the Lord has revealed to me,” the sect’s leader, former convict Svetlana Frolova, said.

Putin’s advisers disclaim any link with the sect led by the former railway manager, who was jailed for fraud in 1996.

“He (Putin) does not approve of that kind of admiration,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said by telephone.

INTERVIEW: Anatoly Karlin

One of the ways you can tell that La Russophobe is the most significant Russia blog on this planet is the number of blogs LR has inspired.  Case in point:  Anatoly Karlin.  He’s one of several LR readers who were motivated to create a blog specifically to respond to the powerful arguments we offer here against the failed neo-Soviet regime of Vladimir Putin.  He only exists because of us.  No other Russia blog can say the same.  Certainly, he can’t.

Why did we interview him? We have to confess it was just because doing so would show Kevin Rothrock of “A Good Treaty” for a fool.  After our interview with him, Rothrock said nobody else would want to be interviewed by us.  Take this, Kevin!