EDITORIAL: Alexei Pushkov, Neo-Soviet Liar

EDITORIAL

A New Low for Russian “Journalism”

Why is Alexei Pushkov smiling?

We did not imagine we would be called upon to comment on the arrest for sexual assault of former IMF chairman Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but a shockingly unprofessional op-ed about him in the Moscow Times gives us no choice but to do so.

In a profoundly ironic moment, the article accuses the U.S. of arresting Strauss-Kahn based on false charges in order to serve its own “propaganda” interests, yet the article was written by Alexei Pushkov, who hosts a political show on Kremlin-controlled television and earns his living as a professor of diplomacy at a state-controlled university. He is also a regular columnist for state-sponsored propaganda outlet Russia Today.  Not once does he pause to alert readers to his own potential propaganda bias.

And it’s clear why Pushkov wants to make this attack:  In the service of his Kremlin masters, he wants to deflect attention from the Kremlin’s outrageous misconduct in the Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky cases. It would be one thing if he at least told the truth about DSK in attempting to offer his propaganda, but his text is loaded with lies and misinformation that would make Stalin proud.

The basic errors of journalism in Pushkov’s essay are so many and so shocking that they recall the era of Soviet “journalism” when pro-government lies were policy.

EDITORIAL: Russophile Eugene Ivanov Proves Russians are Hopeless

EDITORIAL

Russophile Eugene Ivanov Proves Russians are Hopeless

Scary, no? The scariest thing is that he actually thinks he looks good!

It’s not often that we are called upon to defend the people of Russia from the unwarranted attacks of a Russophile, but when the occasion does arise we are very well pleased.

Such is the case with a recent article for the shameless Russophile propaganda project known as “Russia Beyond the Headlines” by the shameless Russophile shill Eugene Ivanov (who scarily poses on his blog in the same type of black leather coat the NKVD wore during an execution of a dissident, and which just recently came back into fashion in Russia).

Ivanov claims the people of Russia are clueless idiots because the vast majority of them think that their court system is corrupt when in fact it routinely rules in their favor.  We strongly disagree.

A Postcard from a Russophile Stoogette named Nora Fitzgerald

One Nora Fitzgerald recently had a letter to the editor published in the Moscow Times, responding to a recent op-ed piece by Richard Lourie which exposed the naked propaganda fraud that is “Russia Beyond the Headlines,” a paid supplement churned out by the Kremlin and foisted upon financially hapless Western newspapers. What follows is the letter verbatim with our commentary in boldface following each paragraph.

Interestingly, “Russia Beyond the Headlines” doesn’t publish letters to the editor.

INTERVIEW: Kevin Rothrock of “A Good Treaty”

INTERVIEW

Kevin Rothrock of “A Good Treaty”

La Russophobe recently sat down (virtually speaking) with Russia blogger Kevin Rothrock of “A Good Treaty.”  As the name of his blog suggests, Rothrock is lobbying in favor of Barack Obama’s nuclear arms treaty with Russia. As such, he’s eager to paint Putin’s Russia as a more-or-less reasonable country America can trust well enough to keep its word on such a treaty.

Just as we suspected was the case with now defunct Russia blogger Mark Adomanis, Rothrock is far from being the hardcore Russophile fanatic that many of the idiotic Russophile lurkers and scum seem to take him for being.  And, just as we suspected, that doesn’t keep Rothrock from both intentionally and unintentionally undermining American values and helping (in his silly, insignificant little way) to perpetuate the worst and most abusive aspects of dictatorship in Putin’s Russia. Commiting such vile acts doesn’t seem to bother Rothrock one bit.  Indeed, Rothrock seems almost reptilian in his cold-blooded attitude towards the subject, caring not one wit for the fate of the people of Russia but only for his personal intellectual amusement and his Obamanian political agenda, and not acknowledging that the rise of a neo-Soviet state in Russia has any risks for American security. Truly, with “friends” like these Russia needs no enemies.  Americans, the same.

Most importantly, Rothrock is unable to give a satisfactory answer as to how America can possibly place enough faith and trust in the hopelessly corrupt Putin government so as to justify signing a one-sided nuclear arms treaty with Russia, and he refuses to acknowledge anyone as being viable opposition to Putin.  He believes that the only way Putin will not have power for life in Russia is if he doesn’t want it, and he goes on the record saying Putin will not stand for reelection — or if he does, apparently, Dima Medvedev will best him at the polls.  Quite a long neck stretch, no?  Due credit if he is right. If not . . . guess he’ll just shrug and say “oops, my bad” when he learns lots of folks dropped their guard and let Putin sneak in a haymaker because of his prediction.  Meanwhile, Rothrock totally ignores the fact that all the evidence from every source, including the Russian people, indicates that Medvedev is nothing more than Putin’s puppet, a total sham, meaning that it might actually be worse for Putin to pull the strings in secret, where his accountability is even less.

EDITORIAL: Kremlin Stooge, The Very Bottom of the Fetid Russophile Barrel

EDITORIAL

Kremlin Stooge, The Very Bottom of the Fetid Russophile Barrel

He is a stooge, and he is proud of it!

We here at LR have laid quite a number of invidious, smelly little Russophile bloggers in their graves.  Konstantin.  Accidental Russophile. Russia Blog. Even a queer little bird called “La Russophobe Exposed.”  So many others. We’ve seen them come, and we’ve seen them fall. And each time one does, we’ve noticed, the replacement is that much more insipid, clueless and pathetic than the one that came before — which, in context, is saying quite a lot.

Here’s a case in point:  The ever so aptly named “Kremlin Stooge.”  With this one, Russia really is scraping the absolute bottom of a very fetid barrel.

Here’s the executive summary:  Russia is losing billions and billions and billions in capital flight and foreign investment.  The response of the Kremlin Stooge:  It doesn’t matter. Russia already has more money than it knows what to do with.  Besides, America also has financial problems.

You think we’re kidding? Read on.

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.

EDITORIAL: An Idiotic, Lying Jackass is blogging at “A Good Treaty”

EDITORIAL

An Idiotic, Lying Jackass is blogging at “A Good Treaty“

A new Russia blog has appeared by the name of “A Good Treaty.” Its purpose is to offer one-sided propaganda in support of the notion that Barack Obama’s sham treaty on nuclear weapons with Russia is a good idea and should be ratified as the U.S. Senate considers the document.  Is the blogger on the Obama payroll? Or the Kremlin’s? Or both?  You be the judge.  Let us introduce you to it.

First of all, it’s beloved by the Russophile maggots, of course.  Interestingly, not one of them chooses to make the criticism of “A Good Treaty” that they level at us, namely that some of us are anonymous. It’s just fine with the Russophile scum that AGT is anonymous, because it’s only a bad thing to be anonymous if you criticize the Putin regime. If you work hard to justify it, and the Obama administration’s appeasement of it, then nothing else matters. Got that?

Second of all, the blogger who writes AGT is stunningly lazy, dishonest and stupid, even by Russophile standards.  In a post on the vast expansion of the KGB’s power to arrest and harass, the blogger claims the new law is no worse than America’s Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of 9/11.  It appears, based on this pseudo-scholarship, that the blogger got the degree he lauds on his blog (but that nobody, of course, can confirm) from a box of Cracker Jacks.

Needless to say, s/he ignores an avalanche of facts:

EDITORIAL: Putin steps in, Russophiles Exposed

EDITORIAL

Putin steps in, Russophiles Exposed

We must say that our greatest pleasure here on this blog comes in watching the malignant lies of the braying Russophiles and slobbering Russian nationalists exposed and decimated for all to see.

This happened with particular deliciousness last week in regard to one of their central mendacious narratives, namely that Vladimir Putin cannot be blamed for the actions of local government wiping out civil liberties because he is incapable of addressing such concerns.

Oh really?  Well what happened last week when, in yet another display of typically farcical Russian incompetence, a bridge was shut down in Moscow that prevented residents from reaching the international airport, causing hundreds to miss their flights?  What happened was that suddenly Mr. Putin was in the local bridge business.  “If passengers can’t fly out of Sheremetyevo, then this is a problem,” Putin said at a meeting of the presidium.  Then he set about making policy concerning the bridge.

Neo-Soviet Russia and her Western Henchmen

Paul Goble reports:

Western specialists being enlisted in the Kremlin’s effort to legitimate Russia’s “special path to democracy,” a role they are prepared to play not only because of “business interests and weakness before big money but also because of a profound crisis of [their] worldview,” according to Grani.ru commentator Irina Pavlova. And because of their willingness to do so, she writes, the world is watching a situation like that of 30 years ago “when in the army of Western Sovietologists were only a few who spoke about the possible collapse of the Soviet Union and almost no one who was prepared to put the question as Andrey Amalrik did in his essay ‘Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?’”

Today, she notes, “the future participants of the world political forum” scheduled to take place in Yaroslavl in September, like the one that took place a year ago, are meeting in Berlin to discuss what will be discussed. Among those attending, Pavlova says, are Immanuel Wallerstein and Fareed Zakaria.

EDITORIAL: Bloody, Violent, Horrifying Russia

EDITORIAL

Bloody, Violent, Horrifying Russia

Last year, Russia ranked a shocking #136 out of 144 nations in the world on the Global Peace Index. Only eight countries on the planet were viewed as being more horrifyingly prone to violence than Russia.

Amazingly, this year things got even worse. Russia now ranks #143 out of 149 countries, dropping a stunning seven places so that now, even with five countries added to the list, only seven nations on the planet, not eight, are more barbaric than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Sitting in the bottom ten, Russia is keeping company with the likes of Chad, Afganistan, Pakistan and Sudan.  Once again, the people of Russia stand exposed and humiliated before the world.

EDITORIAL: Alexei Pankin, Scum-sucking Russophile Bastard

EDITORIAL

Alexei Pankin, Scum-sucking Russophile Bastard

As we’ve said before (just Google him if you’d like to read our prior thoughts), one of the most pathetic and embarrassing members of the Russophile hoard is Alexei Pankin, the demented freak who pens a column for the Moscow Times.  In his most recent missive for the paper, he outdid himself in ignorance and mendacity, proving conclusively for all the world to see that the forces he represents are spent, fully crazed, and as toxic to Russia as the KGB clan that rules it.

Responding to the recent announcement, about which we’ve already written, by Reporters without Borders that Vladimir Putin is one of the world’s worst predators of the press, instead of acknowledging what is obvious to any thinking person, that proud KGB spy Putin is engaged in a horrific neo-Soviet crackdown on the press that must be halted by any means possible, Pankin chooses to respond to the results exactly the way the Soviet government would have done, with personalized smears, hallucinatory lies and stubborn, childish moronic denial.

He writes:

EDITORIAL: The Russophile Guide to Style

EDITORIAL

The Russophile Guide to Style.

Having spent a good bit of time observing Russophiles feverishly attempting to rationalize and defend the failed Putin dictatorship, we feel we are now in a position to offer some conclusions about their style of work.

It’s really quite simple:  Russia is never wrong because Vladimir Putin is a god.

EDITORIAL: Danila Bochkarev, Neo-Soviet Bagman

EDITORIAL

Danila Bochkarev, Neo-Soviet Bag Man

Danila Bochkarev, neo-Soviet bagman

It’s been some time since we’ve had occasion to write about a scum-sucking Russophile reptile attempting to insinuate his views into mainstream political culture, and that’s a good thing.

As the Putin regime becomes more and more openly and horrifyingly neo-Soviet in character, even the craziest of these cockroaches becomes more and more wary of opening his mouth in public for fear of the humiliation the next day may bring.

But someone named Danila Bochkarev, representing something called the EastWest Institute, remains shameless.

EDITORIAL: Annals of Humiliating Russophile Failure at Russia Blog

EDITORIAL

Annals of Humilating Rusophile Failure at Russia Blog

Here’s an interesting factoid:  Nobody has commented on the insidious Russia Blog propaganda project of the even more nefarious Discovery Institute since December 10, 2009.

That’s right: It’s been more than two months since RB has received a comment.  And it’s not like they haven’t been posting.  Since December 10th, RB has published a dozen posts by seven different authors.  And not a single one of them has received a single comment.

Or, that is, no comment RB has seen fit to publish.  For all the world knows, of course, many comments exposing the fraudulent nature of RB’s content have been received, and each and every one of them has been censored.

What was that comment back on December 10th, you ask?

EDITORIAL: Ross Cameron, Treacherous Russophile Bastard

EDITORIAL

Ross Cameron, Treacherous Russophile Bastard

Aussie MP Ross Cameron, Rat Bastard

Back in 2004, a nasty little Australian rat named Ross Cameron was sitting in his comfy seat in the Aussie parliament when something rather uncomfortable happened.  Cameron, who had “marketed himself in previous election campaigns as a staunch family man with deep Christian convictions,” was caught cheating on his wife.  And not just cheating, but carrying on with a variety of bimbos while his wife was pregnant with twins.  Maybe God told him it was OK?

He was then drummed out of office and divorced. He remarried with his new wife five months pregnant. Yikes. Yuck. And that’s only the beginning, dear reader.  Hold on to your chair, because it gets worse.  Much, much worse. This fellow is truly pond scum.

Right-wing wackos of his ilk, like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, are drawn to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin like flies to a pile of rotting garbage, like swastikas to a neo-Nazi.  Undoubtedly, they see in Putin some kind of kindred soul, who can satisfyingly liquidate anyone who criticizes them, obliterate “undesirables” like homosexuals and Jews and Blacks, and build the kind of world they’d like to live in. They are, quite simply, as un-American as you can get.  That they lay claim to the ideological or political lineage of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower is nothing short of blasphemy.

But even still, the fetid cesspool of utter filth that Herr Cameron spewed out on the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald recently was shocking and disturbing, a clear reminder that there are still plenty of treacherous rat bastards among us who will jump at the chance to help Putin create a neo-Soviet state and a new Iron Curtain, applauding as he wipes out democracy using the most bloody and brutal tactics imaginable.  As one commenter on the article points out:  “The author is either deliberately distorting truth or simply repeating Kremlin lies about Putin’s deeds.”  Whether Cameron, who has of course never lived a day in Putin’s Russia, speaks out of apelike ignorance or malignant complicity with the regime hardly matters.  He’s evil either way, and a threat to not only Russia’s future but the security of the Western democracies.

We condemn him. Pravda, meanwhile, thinks he’s the bee’s knees.

Let’s be clear:  This man has absolutely no credentials where Russia is concerned, yet he purports to lecture the world on what a wonderful fellow this proud KGB spy really is.  What you read next will turn your stomach. You have been warned.

EDITORIAL: Dima “Slimeball” Trenin

EDITORIAL

Dima “Slimeball” Trenin

Dmitri "Just call me Slimeball" Trenin

It’s that time again, dear reader, to catch up with the neo-Soviet misadventures of our little friend Dima “Just call me Slimeball” Trenin.

When last we met Mr. Trenin, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, darling of Kremlin-owned propaganda outlets Russia Today and Russia Profile, he was being spit upon by the heroic Andrei Piotkovsky as Trenin hosted a cocktail party to tout his propaganda tract “Getting Russia Right” whilst Piontkovsky faced criminal charges for criticizing the Kremlin in Moscow.  We blasted Trenin’s blind nationalism in the very earliest days of this blog’s history, but nothing prepared us for what we found in the Moscow Times from this reptilian’s pen last week.

Somewhere, Andrew Carnegie is rolling over in his grave and screaming.

The Traitors among Us

Lilia Shevtsova, senior associate at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing on the Foreign Policy website:

At a recent meeting with Russian liberals in Moscow, a well-known European intellectual started trying to convince them that, as he put it, “Russia is not a dictatorship these days. [President Dmitry] Medvedev is trying to liberalize the system, and with time Russia will become a democracy. You shouldn’t try to hurry things.” Not surprisingly, this advice provoked consternation among an audience that had expected at least some encouragement from Continental liberals.

At a conference last month in Berlin, I witnessed another example of this divide. When I started to raise the question of democratic standards in Western-Russian relations, I was interrupted by another Western attendee. “You irritate us,” he said. “International relations are not about values; they are about power!” If he is right, Russian liberals will have to reconsider their expectations about the Western opinion-leaders they have long counted on for moral support and understanding.

EDITORIAL: Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

EDITORIAL

Gleb Pavlovsky, Raving Neo-Soviet Lunatic

Try to find out what the “Russia Institute” is, we dare you.

The Moscow Times, publishing an op-ed piece by the “head” of the Russia Institute, one Gleb Pavlovsky (pictured, left; scary, huh?), sure doesn’t give you any information.

Google it, and you won’t find out anything more.  You’ll find Pavlovsky, but you’ll find him at something called “Russia House,” not “Russia Institute.”  Russia Institute is nothing more than an obscure entry on his obscure resume, which is loaded with lots of other obscure entries.

EDITORIAL: Russia and the Internet

EDITORIAL

Russia and the Internet

As we’ve said before, we feel that the most pernicious lie being circulated by the Russian Kremlin and its Russophile apologists is that it doesn’t matter if the Kremlin crushes the life out of news reporting on television and in print because Russia’s Internet can pick up any slack there may be.  Of course, such a position is illogical, since if it were true the Kremlin’s frenzied efforts to dominate TV and newspapers would be a laughable waste of time, and not even the Kremlin is that stupid. It isn’t, of course, because  for two simple reasons hardly anybody in Russia can get their news from the Internet.   First, it costs too much. When the average national wage is $3/hour and inflation is double-digit, people have better things to do with their money. Like eating and staying warm.  Second, it’s under seige. Bloggers have been arrested and prosecuted, they’ve been threatened and attacked, and service providers have been shut down outright.

The data, even Russia data, proves this beyond the shadow of any doubt.

EDITORIAL: Another Russophile Worm Turns

EDITORIAL

Another Worm Turns

Census Cancellation is Embarrassment for Russia
Army Corruption Creates “Soldier Slaves”
Why Russians don’t Like Money
Russia’s South Ravaged by Terrorist Attacks
Russian Economy in Steep Drop
FSB Involvement in Lebanon?

If you are a Russophile looking back on that sampling of headlines from posts we’ve published over the past six weeks, your blood probably begins to boil, doesn’t it?  “Those rat bastard Russophobic racists!” you probably exclaim, don’t you?  And we have to admit ourselves, that’s a pretty fierce barrage of Russia-bashing even by our standards, over such a short span of time.

Except of course that we didn’t write a single one of those posts. Every one of them was published in the past six weeks by Russia Blog a/k/a “The Real Russia Project,” which has seemingly been taken over by the head honcho of the Discovery Institute himself, Bruce Chapman — pushing Russian citizen/spy, Putin collaborator, Russia Today flunkie and Russia Blog editor Yuri Mamchur roughly to the periphery (all but one of the above posts were written by Chapman and one was actually written by Mamchur himself, who’s clearly been taken to the woodshed).

Obituary: Have fun in Hell, Mr. Mikhailkov

Have fun in hell, Mr. Mikhaikov!

OBITUARY

One of this planet’s more odious and malignant denizens, shown above in April of last year getting a medal for heroism from the very most odious and malignant one, namely Sergei Mikhailkov, oozed into oblivion on August 27th at the ripe old age of 96.

Another Russophile is Disgusted by Russia

Writing in the New York Times, not even rabid Russophile Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation, can contain his disgust at the barbaric dishonesty and ignorance of the people of Russia where their own history is concerned.  Russia again and again proves itself totally unable to do what other civilized nations can readily and even proudly do, take responsbility for their past mistakes and work to improve.  Instead, Russia wallows in childish denial, always pointing a finger at other and never, never at itself.  This is why Russia lags so far behind the rest of the world in development and why it seems doomed always to do so.  It’s quite true that other nations made deals with Hitler. What they didn’t do, however, is to attempt to share in Hitler’s illicit gains from imperlist aggression, nor did they make heros out of the men who made the deals, as Russia has done.

The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, apologized this month for Poland’s role in Hitler’s partition of Czechoslovakia, stating that, “Poland’s participation in the annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 was not only an error, but above all a sin.” He should have added that this built on an earlier criminal error, that of Poland’s nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1934, which effectively demolished France’s alliance system in Eastern Europe, and made it much harder to prevent Nazi Germany’s expansion in the mid-1930s.

EDITORIAL: The Putin Kremlin is Clinically Paranoid

EDITORIAL

The Putin Kremlin is Clinically Paranoid

We reported last week on the insane ravings of Vladimir Putin,  statements so detached from reality that they could only come from the mouth of a neo-Soviet lunatic.  But no sooner had we done so than Putin’s man in Ingushetia was spewing paranoia so demented it made Putin look like Gandhi.

The indispensible Paul Goble reports that Yunus-Bek Yevkurov believes he had discovered the identity of those who are relentlessly gunning down his cabinet members and police officers.  Islamic radicals? Of course not!  The culprits are America, Britain and Israel.

EDITORIAL: The Further Misadventures of Anna Matveeva

EDITORIAL

The Further Misadventures of Anna Matveeva

Anna Matveeva, Russophile Rat

We’ve written twice before about the scurrying Russophile insect Anna Matveeva, and now it’s time for installment #3.

We love Radio Free Europe, but nobody is perfect.  RFE’s Roman Kupchinsky, for instance, lauded Vladimir Putin’s doctoral dissertation just a few weeks before it was exposed as shameless fraud.  Yet Kupchinsky looks like Walter Cronkite next to Farangis Najibullah, who recently quoted Matveeva as if she were a military expert and without telling RFE’s readers a single thing about her virulent background in pro-Kremlin propaganda (she blogs for the Kremlin’s “Russia Today” propaganda network).

Najibullah can’t claim ignorance:  Just Google Matveeva.  The third hit is one of our editorials.   

Now we’ve Seen it ALL!

Now we’ve seen everything.