November 2007 Archives

An Overview of the Russian Parliamentary "Elections"

Filed under: Russia

My latest installment on our Pajamas Media mother blog reviews the horrifying litany of actions taken by Russian "president" Vladimir Putin to create a one-party state in Russia similar to China. Check it out, and feel free to leave your comments as to how the West can best deal with this unprecedented outrage. Stay tuned for more reporting on the election results, coming Monday. And, if you are so inclined, say a little prayer for the people of Russia. They need all the help they can get.

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Chavez and the Avoidable Venezuelan Apocalypse

Filed under: Venezuela

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Roger Cohen says of Venezuelan lunatic Hugo Chavez (shown above arguing with the King of Spain):

The bottom line is this: Latin America's oil-gilded caudillo is getting serious about ruling for life, just like Franco and Castro. I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Chavez has already used gushing oil revenue, a pliant judiciary, subservient institutions and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic anti- Americanism to concoct a 21st-century, gulag-free authoritarianism. But even Putin has not contemplated going as far as Chavez now intends to take his "Bolivarian revolution." Venezuelans will vote Sunday in a referendum that would remove all limits on presidential re-election, grant Chavez direct control over foreign currency reserves, allow him to censor the media under a state of emergency declarable at his discretion, expand his powers to expropriate private property and create the second formally socialist nation in the Americas alongside Fidel's. Unlike other votes during Chavez's nine-year presidency, and unlike the assured victory of Putin's United Russia Party in voting the same day, the referendum is not a foregone conclusion.

Click through to read why, and let's get that message out to the people of Venezuela, before it is too late!

Now, dis iz dee tym ont Pooblius Poondit ven ve dans (hat tip: Reader Gringo):

God only knows what they are saying in the above, but it's pretty darned damning (funny, too).

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Obama, Clinton . . . How Depressing is That?

Filed under: US Elections

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I can't help but be a little depressed by the candidacies for U.S. president of Hillary Rodham (yes, that's right, even after the cigar it's still . . .) Clinton and Barack Hussein (yes, that's right, Hussein) Obama.

Believe it or not, I seriously doubt that there is any human being on the face of this planet who would be better pleased by the election of a woman or an African-America to the office of POTUS than yours truly, and that includes a responsible Democrat. I think it would rock the world's world to see it happen, to say nothing of the good it would do the self esteem of all the women and people of color in the country, perhaps the world. It could give America a whole new gravitas when speaking out for democracy and capitalism.

But, believe it or not, I actually think we'd be worse off if either one of these two got elected. If it's Clinton, people will just say: "That doesn't prove anything. She only got there because of her husband." And every woman who comes after her will have a Barry-Bondslike footnote after her name that says "yeah, but she only got there because of Clinton." If its Obama, people will just say: "His mother was white. Americans would never have elected a 'real' black man."

And that's to say nothing of the fact that neither one of these two individuals is remotely qualified to hold the office of POTUS. Neither one has ever held any kind of significant executive position, much less an elected one like governor or mayor, and you can't name a single noteworthy accomplishment of either one prior to being thrust into the U.S. Senate. We've had African-American and female mayors and governors. There's Carly Fiorina. There's Clarence Otis, Jr. There's a wealth of talent, if you care to look.

They also seem to be horrifyingly devoid of real feeling for their communities. Both claim to be big proponents of their polities, but what have they done to change the Senate to be more pro-Black and pro-Woman? Nothing that I know of. It remains an elite old-white-boy's club and these two seem to be just along for the ride on its coattails.

If they screw up once elected, what will that do to the fortunes of oppressed African-Americans and women? Nothing good, I'll wager.

Well, that's just what I'm thinking. How 'bout you?

FYI: Both Clinton and Obama have been caught red-handed attempting to plant questions at the Republican debate. Dare we imagine how the nutroots would react if, say, Giuliani (now enmeshed in his own nasty scandal) were caught doing the same? If the world hates Republicans so much, why do Democrats feel they need to stoop to such depths? Just wondering.

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Speak Now, Russians, or Forever Hold your Peace

Filed under: Russia

This coming Sunday, December 2nd, is shaping up to be the single most important day in Russian history, perhaps the last chance the people of Russia will ever have to show the world they don't want confrontation and can responsibly manage their nation.

Up to 110 million eligible Russian voters will head to the polls to choose a new lower house of their legislature, called the "Duma," analogous to the U.S. House of Representatives except that Russians can only vote for political parties, not individual candidates, and only those parties receiving more than 7% of the vote get seats (only parties with more than 50,000 registered members are eligible to run).

Vladimir Putin has done all he can to assure that his own party, United Russia, will be the only one left standing when the dust settles after the election. Seven parties have made it onto the ballot, but only two other than Putin's are currently at 7% or greater support in opinion polls -- those being the Communists and the fanatical supporters of radical nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. United Russia is currently polling at 60% or better; it only needs to improve on that marginally, by hook or crook, to seize control of the entire Duma.

Both of the two credible opposition groups to Putin, Grigori Yavlinsky's Yabloko and Boris Nemtsov's Union of Right Forces, are polling below 1% -- and despite that Putin is still so afraid of them that, as we reported yesterday, he publicly called them "jackals" and had them arrested (Kasparov is still cooling his heels). If the people of Russia leave things that way when they vote (or if they allow Putin to rig the elections without lifting a finger to stop it), history will issue them its most weighty sanction, and the world will write Russia off as "Zaire with permafrost." A new cold war will begin in earnest, and Russia -- sooner rather than later -- will go the way of the USSR. It's ominously rumored that Putin will address the nation today or tomorrow and lay out further details of his malignant plan to remain Russia's authoritarian ruler for life.

Speak now, Russians, or forever hold your peace.

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Confronting Russian Barbarism

Filed under: Russia

27designer.1-450.jpg The Moscow Times reports today that "the European Commission, France and Britain added their voices Monday to criticism from Washington of the police crackdown on weekend opposition rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg" which led the arrest of major opposition political leaders Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov. It would be as if George Bush had arrested Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for attending an anti-Bush rally hosted by Moveon.org.

European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso said: "I was very concerned to see reports of police harassment and arrests of politicians and peaceful demonstrators in Russia. The right to peaceful free speech and assembly are basic, fundamental human rights, and I very much regret that the authorities found it necessary to take such heavy-handed action."

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner demanded an "explanation." He said: "I am surprised by this violence. To my knowledge, the world chess champion was not a threat to Russia's security. Russia wants to take its place, a large place, in contemporary history, and for that it has to evolve and not seem menacing." Ouch. "Evolve." That's as rough as it gets in diplomaticspeak.

And George Bush, God bless him, was not behind the curve. He stated emphatically: "I am deeply concerned about the detention of numerous human rights activists and political leaders who participated in peaceful rallies in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Nazran this weekend. I am particularly troubled by the use of force by law enforcement authorities to stop these peaceful activities and to prevent some journalists and human rights activists from covering them. The freedoms of expression, assembly and press, as well as due process, are fundamental to any democratic society. I am hopeful that the government of Russia will honor its international obligations in these areas, investigate allegations of abuses and free those who remain in detention."

These are encouraging signs that the West understands it is being probed by the Putin government and must respond dynamically if it is to prevent people like Kasparov and Nemtsov from meeting the same fate as Mikhail Khodorkovsky. But words are not enough, stern and clear action is required if the KGB clan that rules the Kremlin is to understand it must back off.

Russia is on the cusp of becoming a one-party state:

A survey conducted by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion says President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party will win more than 55 percent of the vote in an upcoming parliamentary election. According to the survey conducted between November 17 and 18, more than 55 percent of those polled say they will vote for President Putin's party, almost 6 percent say they will vote for the Communist Party, almost 5 percent for Fair Russia, and almost 5 percent for the Liberal Democratic Party. Twelve parties are standing in the polls, but none of the other parties are predicted to get more than 3 percent in the election. That's below the 7 percent threshold needed to win seats in parliament's 450-member lower house.

In other words, it's quite clear that after the parliamentary vote scheduled for early December, Putin's own personal party may be the only one left standing. Even if some rival parties pass the 7% threshold, Putin has barred foreign election observers and the Kremlin's lackeys are boldly and openly speaking of committing fraud if necessary. The Moscow Times reports:

Election officials have been ordered to make sure that United Russia collects double the number of votes it is expected to win in State Duma elections on Sunday -- even if they have to falsify the results, a senior election official said. The Central Elections Commission strongly denied the allegation. But accounts from other people familiar with the issue -- including opposition politicians and state-paid workers, who spoke of mounting pressure to round up votes for United Russia -- appeared to confirm the election official's remarks. The official, who heads a key regional election committee, said United Russia was gunning for double the number of votes that the latest opinion polls indicate it will win. :This is a quite a hard task," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The official said the only way out would be fraud. The official spoke of being involved in ballot stuffing in previous Duma elections but said an alternative that is less likely to raise suspicions is to change a polling station's protocol -- the record of how many voters show up and how many votes go to each party. "During past Duma elections this was the most common way to falsify the results. We would do it in front of foreign observers because they didn't understand anything on what was going on," the official said.

I've been calling Russia "neo-Soviet" for years now, and it seems the world is finally starting to catch up with me. That's also encouraging. Writing in the Washington Post, ace columnist Anne Applebaum explains:

In the photographs of his arrest, Garry Kasparov -- former world chess champion, current Russian opposition leader -- is wearing a nondescript gray jacket and a somewhat retro wool cap. He is gloveless. By contrast, the Russian militiamen doing the arresting are kitted out in full regalia: tall fur hats with metal insignia in the center, camouflage coats, walkie-talkies, black leather gloves. Squint hard, and the pictures -- taken at the "Other Russia" protest rally in Moscow on Saturday -- could come from the 1960s or the 1980s, when Soviet police arrested dissidents with some regularity. The similarity is more than merely visual. In its heyday, the Soviet dissident movement was a sometimes odd, often unworkable amalgam of human rights activists, disappointed insiders, bloody-minded outsiders, fervent religious believers and nationalists of a wide range of Soviet nationalities. Some of them would have been right at home at any generic "no nukes" rally; others would have found themselves on the far right of any political spectrum in the world. But it hardly mattered. In 1983, Peter Reddaway, then the leading academic observer of Soviet dissidents, reckoned that they had made "little or no headway among the mass of ordinary people."

The Russian people have always been part of the problem in Russia, not part of the solution, and we shouldn't forget that -- as we were led to do under the Clinton administration, which induced us to drop our guard and fail to finish the job when the Berlin wall collapsed of its own weight. Clinton placed far too much trust in the Russian people and in Boris Yeltsin, and allowed the KGB to rise again and seize power. George Bush then allowed himself to be played for a sap by the new KGB regime, and he still refuses to admit his error, not a hopeful sign for his legacy. Even while properly condemning the recent outrage, when asked to repudiate his former statement about "looking into Putin's soul" his spokesperson said "no, the president believes that what he saw in Putin is what is there" and that building a democracy "just takes time, and it's difficult." Pride goeth before a fall! The clock is ticking on Bush's ability to save himself from the bitter judgment of history as having assisted the rise of the neo-Soviet state just like Clinton did.

And now we all have neo-Soviet egg on our faces. Time to wipe it off and get to work.

NOTE: The photograph at the top of this page is taken from a New York Times story headlined "The USSR is Back" which regales readers with details of how Soviet is "stylish" in today's Russia and neo-Soviet, such as shirts emblazoned with the image of dictator Putin, are more stylish yet.

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In the Land of Blind Ironies, the One-eyed Irony is King

Filed under: Russia

This is high irony even by Russian standards, and Russia dominates the globe in its supply.

Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation reports that Georgian billionaire "Badri Patarkatsishvili, who left Georgia on November 3" has "vowed to spend 'even the last penny' of his billion-dollar assets -- which include Imedi TV -- to overthrow what he terms the 'fascist regime" in Georgia."

Substitute "Boris Berezovsky" for "Badri Patarkatsishvili" and you have exactly the allegations that have led the Kremlin to indict Berezovosky in Moscow and put him on trial in absentia. Yet, Russia does not have a word of criticism for Patarkatsishvili, since his actions only serve to further the Kremlin's interests.

Does that take your breath away, or what?

Meanwhile, Jamestown's Jonas Bernstein reports that the Kremlin has arrested several major opposition political leaders, including Boris Nemtsov and Garry Kasparov, for daring to participate in peaceful public protest demonstrations aimed at the Kremlin's obliteration of democracy in the upcoming parliamentary vote.

This, even as Russia lambastes Georgia for cracking down on protests against its president.

For sheer unmitigated gall, nobody in the world can match the Russians.

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Nashi Unbound

Filed under: Russia

"After 100 years of our country being in total crisis, we at last have a chance to live normally. Thanks to President Putin, we, the young generation, have prospects like never before."

-- Robert Schlegel (pictured below, right), leading member of Nashi, the Kremlin's sycophantic Hitler-youth personality cult, and candidate for the Russian parliament in elections to be held December 2nd

Indeed, Russian youth does have all kinds of new possibilities. Now they get to don gas masks and Soviet-red scarves and go out in the streets and crack skulls and shout down and turn in to the KGB anyone who dares to criticize the Putin regime, especially during an election cycle. Indeed, who dreamed such wonders would be possible ten years ago?

Incidentally, if you said the name "Schlegel" to any Slavic Russian in the context of being someone criticizing Russia, they'd say that person was "not Russian" at all since his name "isn't Russian." This racism doesn't apply, however, to sycophants it seems.

If this little boy thinks like this at his young age, do you dare to imagine how he'll think at age 50? If this is Russia's future, it's already doomed.

Over the weekend, leading Russian opposition politician Garry Kasparov (pictured, left) was arrested and sentenced to five days in prison for daring to lead a peaceful protest march through Moscow ahead of parliamentary elections next week. During the speeches by Kasparov's group, "pro-Kremlin agitators [i.e., Nashi] boomed cackling laughter from loudspeakers behind police, who made no move to stop them. Russian political satirist Viktor Shenderovich noted in an interview at Saturday's rally that a similar stunt by the opposition would not last a minute if directed against President Vladimir Putin or a United Russia rally." The next day, at least 150 people were arrested preemptively in St. Petersburg to stop a similar march.

Attorney Robert Amsterdam says that Kasparov's simultaneous arrest, trial and conviction was a total sham and an obvious violation of international law. He also posts a firsthand account of the arrest and with Kasparov's attorney.

The Kremlin is probing the West. The first time Kasparov was arrested, he was held only a few hours. There was no significant reaction from the West, so now, it's five days. If they get away with five days, maybe next time Kasparov will find himself in a Siberian prison cell next to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the last man to seriously challenge Putin for the presidency, for a term of years.

Some claim Kasparov is just a gadfly, not a serious threat to Putin. If that's so, why arrest him? Either Kasparov is far more formidable than the Kremlin's apologists imagine, or Putin is far more paranoid and unstable. Either way, Russia is on the precipice of total disaster.

The world has just finishing wringing its hands over the actions of Georgia's president to quell unrest fomented by Russian agitators, claiming he has betrayed his democratic trust even though he has called immediate elections to let the people decide. Now the world sees exactly the same behavior displayed by Russia, a G-8 member. Its retribution against Russia must be sure and swift.

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House of Putin, House of Saud

Filed under: Middle East ~ Russia

In certain quarters (blubber blob Michael Moore's, for instance), efforts by U.S. President Bush to cultivate close relations with Saudi Arabia are vilified as corrupt and evil. Yet, Bush was doing nothing more than continuing one of the most stable tenets of U.S. foreign policy since World War II, strategic alliance with the Saudis, and the picture above clearly shows why. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, fresh from a new round of neo-Soviet West bashing, hosted Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz in Moscow last week and is lobbying for a major arms sale to the Kingdom. Putin is obviously seeking to split Saudi Arabia, a major source of crude oil for the U.S. and, as such, a major bulwark against Russian blackmail, away from the American orbit. If we allow him to do so, we will have only ourselves to blame when oil costs $1,000 a barrel.

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Looking Down the Precipice

Filed under: Middle East

Recent events indicate that Lebanon is teetering on the brink of collapse (the president has abdicated to a military junta). Publius Pundit contributor Manuela Paraipan has a new piece about this critical Middle East state running on the World Security Network (where she is an editor) entitled "Looking Down the Precipice." It begins like this:

During the time I spent in Lebanon I had the chance to talk - off and on the record - with individuals from various walks of life and with people who act as mediators between the March 8 bloc (Hizbollah, Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Amal, Marada, Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party and allies) and March 14 bloc (Future Movement, Progressive Socialist Party, Lebanese Forces, Kataeb Party and allies). No one can play a completely neutral role in Lebanon, but some do manage to keep away from the inter- and intra-quarrels and thus become trustworthy actors. Each community, group and individual has its own agenda, objectives and ties within and outside the Arab world. The Lebanese problems ceased to be only theirs decades ago when that time political class, lacking any sense of preservation and wisdom, allowed the Palestinians to enter the country. A few years later, Syria was given the green light to take over the country. Since then the snowball rolled and Lebanon's problems have become regional and international.

Click through to read the extended analysis of this vital Middle East topic.

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Another Bus Explodes in the Backyard of the Sochi Olympics

Filed under: Russia

Another bus has exploded in the region of southern Russia were the country proposes to conduct the 2014 Winter Olympic games, the second one this month. Itar-Tass reports: "The bus was en route from the famous North Caucasus spa resort of Pyatigorsk to North Ossetia's capital Vladikavkaz. At the moment of the blast that went off at 18:00 hours local time [last night] the bus had about 30 passengers aboard." Reuters reports that at least five passengers were killed and more than a dozen others wounded.

Two horrifying questions arise from this news.

First, did the Kremlin do it? It seems extreme to say, but allegations have been made that the Kremlin planted the bombs that exploded in two Moscow apartment buildings in September 1999. The allegation is that the Kremlin did so in order to soften opposition against a major new attack on Chechnya, which occurred immediately thereafter. The Kremlin razed the sites as soon as the dust had settled, preventing a thorough investigation of the cause, and many of those who sought to investigate the possibility later on have been killed or harassed into silence -- including most famously Alexander Litvinenko. Russia is now deep into a key election cycle that will determine how easily dictator Vladimir Putin can cling to power; the Kremlin may want to emphasize for Russians just how "real" their encirclement by "foreign jackals" is, making the popular far more docile than it already is. The Kremlin has reason to be desperate enough to stoop to any depth; public opinion polls show that its "United Russia" political front is losing ground, and a group of its constitutional framers have recently stepped forward to condemn Putin's efforts to remain in power after 2008. Perhaps most devastating criticism one can make of Putin's Russia is that nobody -- not even the most ardent Russophile -- can say "he wouldn't do that" when incidents of this kind arise.

Second, if the Kremlin didn't do it, why can't it stop it? Despite the horrific 9/11 assault on the U.S., a much more open society, America hasn't had another terror incident in more than six years. If the Kremlin had nothing to do with these explosions, then it is obviously to be condemned for failing to prevent them, and indeed for creating conditions that make them likely; the prospects for the proposed Sochi Olympiad are horrifying indeed. Scholar Paul Goble has concluded that, in essence, the Kremlin is only keeping control of its breakaway province of Chechnya by paying the thugs who govern it protection money, and outbreaks of terrorism have been common. The whole point of having a KGB strongman govern the country is to avoid such incidents, yet they are becoming increasingly common.

If indeed the Kremlin did not instigate these attacks, then the reason they are occurring is obvious: the Kremlin has not solved the Chechnya problem, and is spending far too much time seeking to provoke the West and rigging elections so it can stay in power rather than doing so. The litany is revolting in the extreme:

1. First, the Kremlin simply banned outright a number of parties and candidates it most disfavored.
2. Next, it cut the legs out under those that remained, seizing their campaign materials and denying them access to the national airwaves (now dominated by the Kremlin).

3. Then, it refused to allow United Russia to participate in debates, wiping out any chance for the remaining opposition to gain traction.

4. Faced with chronic inflation, it imposed artificial price controls for the duration of the election cycle, to dupe the voters.

5. It denied access to the country by foreign elections observers, giving it a free hand to manipulate the actual ballot as it sees fit.
6. Finally, direct physical attacks designed to intimidate and silence the last vestiges of opposition in the key area of the southern Russia have been launched.On Wednesday, a Kremlin opposition candidate was the victim of an assassination attempt in Dagestan.

Russia has expressed such sheer contempt for the democratic process that it is about to award a seat in its parliament, and immunity from criminal prosecution, to one of the key players in the assassination of Litvinenko -- almost exactly on the one-year anniversary of the killing.

And this all leads us to a third question, the most important of all: Why has the world remained so silent in the face of this outrage? How can it allow a neo-Soviet regime to consolidate power before its eyes, when the memory of the last era is still so fresh in our minds? It's obvious that Putin's actions are designed ultimately to be the basis for renewed imperialism against its neighbors,

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Heroically Blogging Iran

Filed under: Iran

Pajamas Media links to a blog by Arash Kamangir, an Iranian student in Canada, and publishes an essay by him about his native land. Arash writes: "With my homeland falling apart so rapidly, losing one's temper or getting offended by flames and throwing in the towel is the last luxury we can afford. We Iranians need to harness any tool for constructive discussion we can get our hands on, and right now, the Internet and the blogosphere is the best forum available."

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Annals of the Blogosphere: Is This Pathetic or What?

Filed under:

Back in April, a blog called Retrospectacle published a post about antioxidants in food which included a chart taken from a book published by John Wiley & Sons, with full attribution to the source. No sooner had the blogger done so than she was contacted by Wiley's lawyers, who demanded that "their" content be removed.

Last week, Wikipedia announced that Wiley had stolen Wiki's content for one of Wiley's books, making no attribution whatsoever. Yet, while admitting (after being forced to do so) that "a specific passage from Wikipedia was inadvertently added by our author without attribution" all the publisher has agreed to do is correct future reprints.

"Inadvertently"? The author just happened to lift two whole pages out of Wikipedia and "forgot" to mention he got it from there? And the various MSM critiques of Wiki, and the blogosphere generally, as being less-than-credible had nothing to do with it?

MSM is clearly becoming deranged by the power of the blogosphere. Instead of viewing Retrospectacle's action as free advertising, as it should, and instead of realizing the downside ot outraging the powerful blogosphere, MSM once again reacts in the pathetic, arrogant, knee-jerk manner that is causing to lose its place on the information superhighway.

Thoughtful people should boycott Wiley's products until they come to their senses, as message to MSM that it must stop harassing the blogosphere and just let us do our job.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Filed under:

Publius Pundit takes this opportunity to wish all our readers a safe, happy and meaningful Thanksgiving holiday. We're thankful we've got you, and hope you are thankful you've got us! And we can all be thankful we don't live in Venezuela (or Russia, or Iran, or . . . ) and have to live through stuff like this (read more about it here):

Then again, we do have Jerry Springer . . .

See you Friday!

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Hillary Clinton: Bad for Feminism, no Matter How you Spin it

Filed under: US Elections

She hasn't accomplished anything on her own since getting admitted to Yale Law. She isn't Dianne Feinstein, who spent years as mayor of San Francisco before becoming a senator, or Nancy Pelosi, who became Madam Speaker on the strength of her political abilities. All Hillary is, is Mrs. Clinton. She became a partner at the Rose Law Firm because of that, senator of New York because of that, and (heaven help us) she could become president because of that.

-- Joan Di Cola, a Boston lawyer, in a letter to The Wall Street Journal this week, as quoted by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Former sometime ABC news anchorwoman Carol Simposon seems to think it would be good for women if Hillary Clinton were elected president. To put it mildly, she's nuts. It's just this kind of "thinking" that has kept women out of the halls of power for so long. Electing Hillary would only be a confirmation that women can't make it on their own. By running, she's doing far more harm to the feminist cause than all the cookie-bakers who have ever lived put together.

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Putin has Another Khrushchev Moment

Filed under: Russia

Another day, another meltdown for Russia's lunatic dictator Vladimir Putin, who sounds every day more and more like the whack-jobs who govern Venezuela and Iran -- not coincidentally, his nation's closest allies.

The BBC reports that while addressing a political party conference of United Russia, the group Putin has joined as a pathway to becoming prime minister and remaining in power for life, Putin might as well have taken off his shoe and shrieked hysterically "WE WILL BURY YOU!" He stated:

Unfortunately there are still those people in our country who act like jackals at foreign embassies . . . who count on the support of foreign funds and governments but not the support of their own people. They want to go out into the streets, they've learnt from Western specialists. They've trained in neighbouring republics. Those who confront us need a weak and ill state.

The Beeb adds: "Putin said the opposition wanted to create a 'disoriented, divided' Russia that would be vulnerable to 'dirty tricks'."

It's ironic, of course, that Putin accuses his opposition of wanting a weak country -- in fact, that's just what Putin wants and needs. A vital, prosperous population cannot be easily led around by the nose as Putin wishes to do in Russia. It's much easier to rule over a nation of sick and weak people, working for slave wages and perishing at an early age, consumed by fear. Has he strengthened Russia's media, or weakened it? Emboldened its political parties, of enfeebled them? Empowered local government or emaciated it?

The answers are unquestionably clear.

Putin speaks in the frenzied, paranoid language of Josef Stalin, so its appropriate that his "Russia Today" propaganda campaign uses Stalin, as we reported yesterday, as its poster boy.

He's baiting the West into a new cold war out of sheer blind egomania and hatred, heedless of the consequences for his pathetic population -- just as Russian rulers have always done.

So -- Who's the jackal?

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Russia, Hurtling into the Abyss

Filed under: Russia

This is a real advertisement for the really state-owned and operated Russian government television propaganda campaign Russia Today. They really think it will help people "really" understand the "real" Russia.

And you know what? They're really exactly right.

(They've also got a blog, Russia Profile. And an ex-chancellor of Germany.)

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Read All About It: Making Progress in Iraq

Filed under: Middle East

Nearly three weeks ago, we reported the dramatic news on the effectiveness of the "surge" of additional troops deployed by President Bush in Iraq in reducing casualties and preserving order. Now, the nation's so-called "paper of record" has finally gotten around to the story, with a front-page article yesterday on the drop in casualties and one today on individual people's lives returning to normal. Watch them squirm as they try to rationalize and minimize the data! If these were the opposite figures, showing significant increases in casualties and insecurity, you can bet there would be an editorial in today's paper bashing Bush. Can we then expect one praising him? Not a chance. Four editorials today, none about the good news from Iraq. Yesterday four as well, none on Iraq, one bashing Bush on 9/11-related "torture."

The dodo paper just doesn't get it. So it will go the way of.

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Republicans are More Democratic

Filed under: US Elections

An AP-Yahoo! poll shows that Republicans are currently more "democratic" than Democrats. Republicans have five different candidates under active consideration, while Democrats have only three and have nearly made up their mind on one of them (the one who, in Iowa, is currently viewed as least honest and forthright) even though not a single primary has yet been contested. Among the Republicans are two governors and the mayor of the nation's largest city, so three out of five have top-level elected executive experience. Not one of the Democrats is so qualified. A candidate without such experience (including the vice presidency) has not been elected president since JFK in 1960, and JFK won by one of the narrowest margins in history, failed to get a majority of the popular vote and didn't finish his term (see any JFKs in the Democratic field?). Herbert Hoover (1928) is the last civilian man to get a majority of the popular vote and then serve a complete term without having such credentials (there was also Eisenhower, the famous general from World War II). He was a Republican (so was Ike).

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Caution: Blind Spots at Work

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Putin re-lights Stalin's pipe with his "plan" for Russia (Source: Ellustrator)

A young boy and his father are riding in their car on a twisty mountain road late at night. A hare darts across the road, the father swerves and crashes into a telephone pole. An ambulance arrives and transports the pair to the nearest hospital, but the father is DOA. The boy is rushed into the emergency room. The surgeon, upon seeing the patient's face, sadly announces: "I can't operate on this boy! He's my son!"

How is this possible?

If you're not a chauvinist pig (or have heard this one before), then you know it's because the surgeon is the boy's mother. Some people can't conceive the possibility that a surgeon (or a president?) could be a woman. We've got our blind spots, you see. Maybe the same thing would work in reverse, with a nurse.

And we sure seem to have shown them on Russia. Why did we think that Russia simply admitted it was wrong when it "lost" the cold war, and stopped hating and wishing to destroy us? Would we have done that in their place, just given up our values to the victorious Soviets? Wouldn't we have just waited for a chance to start the whole thing all over again, as soon as we got the chance?

We saw some statues of Lenin being pulled down. So what? Khrushchev pulled down some Stalins. You can cut your fingernails and you're not dangerous for a while. But they grow back. Did we forget about that?

Did we let down our guard too soon? Did we make the safe, comfortable assumption that all our problems had been oh-so-conveniently solved, and let Russia back into the game in the fourth quarter with plenty of time still left on the clock?

We're still the hare and they're still the turtle. But you know what happened in that story, right?

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You Say We're Surrounded?

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I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel . . .

You say we have too much on our plate? You say it seems democracy is besieged from every side like Gondor in "Lord of the Rings" and we stand alone to defend it? You say we can't do it all? You say it seems hopeless?

I say: "So it always has been, and so it always shall be."

I say this. (lyrics)

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The Neo-Soviet Malignancy of Russia's Georgia Plot

Filed under: Georgia ~ Russia

The brilliant and courageous Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor reveals that Russia is pouring "Kadyrovtsi" Chechens (sycophants of Russia's puppet regime in Chechnya) into Georgia's breakaway territory of Abkhazia in at an attempt to foment an outbreak of violence that will justify a Russian intervention. Socor writes:

On October 30 an APC-borne Russian "peacekeeping" unit attempted to take control of the Ganmukhuri youth camp, situated within Georgian-controlled territory near the Georgian-Abkhaz demarcation line. Firing warning shots the Russian soldiers disarmed, bound, and beat bloody the three Georgian policemen who guarded the youth camp. The Russians desisted and left after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili flew in by helicopter and personally confronted the "peacekeepers." The Russian solders who staged the October 30 raid claimed to have been insulted verbally by a Georgian patrol they had encountered en route, whereupon the Russians raided the youth camp. If so, their disproportionate reaction reflected the Russian "peacekeepers" are unsuitable for the mission, unless they staged the raid on orders from their command. The incident revealed publicly for the first time the presence of Chechen soldiers among Russian "peacekeepers" in Abkhazia. Intelligence had reported this fact recently, but now a few Chechen "peacekeepers" appeared on television when Saakashvili confronted the Russian unit. Moscow's recent decision to employ Chechens as "peacekeepers" in Abkhazia adds a somewhat sinister note to Russian policies in the region. It is a move to play tribal politics on either side of the Caucasus Range, calculating to set Georgians and Chechens against each other again, and possibly preparing to stage-manage a 1992-93-style "response from the peoples of the North Caucasus" to incidents involving Chechens in Russian service in the Georgian-Abkhaz theater.

Socor has produced a litany of brilliant coverage of the Georgia question recently, including pieces on efforts to undermine the government by a Kremlin-friendly oligarch schooled in Russian organized crime who controls a major Georgian TV station and how his efforts lie behind the recent public unrest, seeking to drive Georgia away from the embrace of NATO and back into a state of neo-Soviet submission. No sooner has Georgia succeeded in ejecting Russia's Soviet-era military bases from its soil than it is faced with invasion by "peacekeepers" seeking to split off hunks of its territory to be subsumed by Russia.

If something like this were happening in Russia itself -- if, say, this oligarch's name were Boris Berezovsky rather than Badri Patarkatsishvili -- then the Kremlin would instantly jail him, all the while screaming to high heaven about the evils of foreign subversion of Russia's sovereignty. But Russia has no problem with such activities when they occur in other countries on Russia's behalf -- and the Georgian president's heroic response is simply to call elections and let the people decide. This fortitude makes Vladimir Putin look like the milquetoast he is.

This is the horror of neo-Soviet hypocrisy and imperialism, laid bare.

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Evil, Incarnate

Filed under: Russia ~ Venezuela

"There is a perverse subversion of our existing Constitution under way. This is not a reform. I categorize it as a coup d'etat."

-- Gen. Raul Isaias Baduel, a retired defense minister and former confidant of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez who broke with him in a stunning defection this month to the political opposition, speaking to the New York Times last week

Chavez is bribing the people of Venezuela to accept him as "president for life" with unlimited dictatorial power by offering them a six-hour work week. This in a country which already can't put basic food staples on the shelves.

This man is evil, incarnate. He must be stopped.

And let's be clear: The people of Venezuela are complicit in this atrocity, just as the people of Russia are complicit in the anointing of dictator Vladimir Putin. As the Times quotes Alberto Barrera Tyszka, co-author of a best-selling biography of Chavez: "We are witnessing a seizure and redirection of power through legitimate means. This is not a dictatorship but something more complex: the tyranny of popularity."

The similarities between Venezuela and Russia today are striking. Both Putin and Chavez are in the final act of a perverse opera leading them to formalizing dictatorship by means of democracy (Russia has just succeeded in totally blocking all foreign elections observers at its upcoming parliamentary poll; looks like they've got plenty to hide). Both preside over economies that could collapse at any moment. The Times reports:

Walking into a grocery store here offers a different view of the changes washing over Venezuela. Combined with price controls that keep farmers from profitably producing some basic foods, climbing incomes of the poorest Venezuelans have stripped supermarket aisles bare of items like milk and eggs. Meanwhile, foreign exchange controls create bottlenecks for importers seeking to meet rising demand for many products.

Both Venezuela and Russia rely entirely on oil revenues from the West to support their regimes, and in neither case is the West holding the peoples of the countries responsible for their outrageous irresponsibility. And indeed, Chavez and Putin are in bed together, with Putin supplying Chavez huge quantities of weapons and Chavez providing Russia with even more extreme anti-American rhetoric than Putin will dare produce and a foothold for imperialism in Latin America just like Cuba used to be for the USSR. Chavez, in turn, is actively seeking to turn OPEC into a weapon with which to bash the United States, working in league with Iranian lunatic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- to whom Russia is supplying nuclear technology, standing like a bulwark behind two rogue leaders, assisting them in wrecking havoc upon the United States. Oh, what a tangled web they weave!

If we won't call the people of Russia and Venezuela to account for their betrayal of the democratic trust, how can we expect those within them who would fight for real freedom to step forward and risk everything to stop the madness? How can we expect any real change to occur?

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