EDITORIAL: A New Low for Vladimir Putin

EDITORIAL

A New Low for Vladimir Putin

Beauty and the Beast

There’s a reason this editorial appears, unlike any of its predecessors, last in our lineup of posts in today’s issue.  In it, we’re going to report on behavior so vile and obscene that it demeans our blog to have to do so.  Its position indicates our shame, on behalf of Russia.

We thought Vladimir Putin’s repeated interviews by the doddering imbecile of CNN Larry King, whose unwatched show is now defunct, represented the pit of shameless propaganda to which Putin could sink, but we were very wrong.  There was still Naomi Campbell.

That’s right, supermodel Naomi Campbell, one of the great airheads of the modern age.  With King no more, Putin decided — in the wake of one of Russia’s greatest national tragedies, the Domodedovo airport bombing — to favor Campbell with an interview for publication in GQ magazine.

Yet, ironically, it may be that Campbell coaxed out of Putin the most revealing information the world has yet learned about this malignant troll who is laying waste to Russia as surely as if he were Stalin.

Shenderovich on Putin-King

A Few Words About Methods
By Viktor Shenderovich
December 7, 2010
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
Translated from the Russian by The Other Russia

I intentionally waited a few days – would anybody speak out?

Nope. All is quiet…

Impudence is bliss.

“The methods of our security services differ in a good way from the methods used by United States security services,” Putin told Larry King. “Thank God… the officers of our intelligence services and other security services are not noted as having been involved in the organization of secret prisons, kidnappings, or the use of torture.”

They were noticed, naturally, and more than once.

The difference between Russia and the US is that the people who used torture in Guantanamo are in prison, having been convicted by American courts, and the Russian citizens, kidnapped and tortured by FSB officers, won’t get justice from anywhere closer than Strasbourg.

The second difference is that the American journalists who investigated Guantanamo won the Pulitzer Prize and are all alive, and Politkovskaya and Estemirova, who investigated the filtration camp in Chernokozovo, have been murdered, and their murderers have not been found, and Putin still managed to publicly spit on Politkovskaya’s grave.

So that’s it about the methods. And not those of the security service, but of Putin and his propaganda. They are simple, like a stick: lie through the teeth, nobody will notice!

EDITORIAL: Putin the Rat Bastard

EDITORIAL

Putin the Rat Bastard

Vladimir Putin appeared on American TV last week, specifically on CNN’s Larry King show, and openly threatened the people of the United States.  If they dare to try to protect the people of Europe with defensive missile technology, Putin said, then Russia “will be simply obliged to protect its own safety by different means.”