EDITORIAL: Long Live Luke Harding!

EDITORIAL

Long Live Luke Harding

Luke Harding

On December 1, 2010, Luke Harding, Russia correspondent for the Guardian newspaper, published a story based on leaked confidential government documents which concluded that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin approved the murder of dissident KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko.

Six weeks later, the very next time Harding tried to enter Russia, his visa was revoked and he was sent back home.  More than three dozen foreign journalists have been refused entry to Russia since Vladimir Putin came to power and many others, like Paul Klebnikov of Forbes, have been murdered outright.

But it’s pretty hard to think of a single pro-Kremlin journalist who has been arrested or exiled or murdered by the Putin Kremlin, isn’t it?

EDITORIAL: Russia Eliminates

EDITORIAL

Russia Eliminates

Daylight savings time.

Valentine’s Day.

Luke Harding.

What do these three things have in common? They were all banned last week in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.  Illegal. No more. That’s it. That’s right, banned. In so-called “democratic” Russia.

What’s next?  Only God knows the answer to that question, dear reader.  Just try to make sure it’s not you.

EDITORIAL: Hypocrisy, thy Name is Russia

EDITORIAL

Hypocrisy, thy Name is Russia

Cynics on Russia though we may be, we were absolutely floored by the shocking, nauseating hypocrisy flowing out of Russia last week.  First, the Putin regime accused Egypt of mistreating journalists and demanded that it stop.  Then, it accused the Chechen separatists of acting with “senseless cruelty” at the Domodedovo airport.

We don’t think any rational person can deny it:  Russia is one of the world’s worst abusers of journalists, and the senseless cruelty Russia has applied against Chechnya is unprecedented in modern world history.

In fact, Russia has been formally convicted of senseless cruelty over and over and over again by the European Court for Human Rights, and its brutal murder of journalists requires an entire online database just to  keep up with.

And in fact, days after making this breathtaking announcement, as we report in our lead editorial, the Kremlin banned one of the world’s leading Russia correspondents, , Luke Harding from  even entering the country to stop him from reporting on corruption in the Kremlin.

How dare the Russians? How dare they even consider opening their mouths to criticize anyone on this planet where cruelty and mistreatment of journalists are concerned?  Are they really so totally oblivious of reality that they cannot understand the world will simply burst into hysterical laughter and hearing such pronouncements from Russia, just as it always did when they came from the USSR, as if from a lunatic asylum?

And that’s not the end of Russia’s breathtaking hypocrisy.