NOTE: Our post about Russian humiliation in Serbia has been picked up by uber-blogger Michelle Malkin. Too cool!

It's necessary now to put both the word "former" and the word "president" in quotation marks when referring to Vladimir Putin. He stands accused of rigging his elections (both by purging the ballot form and stuffing the ballot box) and therefore can't be considered a properly chosen "president," and rather than leaving government after his term as "president" ended he chose to assume the position of prime minister, vastly expanding the powers of that office. Thus, he's still ruling Russia, and by no means as a freely chosen president but rather as a conspiratorial dictator.

The New York Times reports that in announcing the appointment of the members of his new government, Putin "sat at the same place at a table that he used as president for these performances. Dmitri Medvedev, officially the president, sat in a chair that viewers have come to regard as for subordinates." The ministers were all Putin's former flunkies; Medvedev will not be allowed to bring in any new faces. As the Times states: "The announcements reinforced the image that Mr. Putin will retain a grip on power and the direction of policy in Russia."

The Associated Press reports: "When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him."

The Wall Street Journal reports: "If, as is widely expected here, article 32 of the law on government is amended to transfer authority over the military and security services and the foreign ministry to the prime minister, Mr. Putin will have the authority to continue to rule Russia regardless of the president. Postcommunist Russia can thus be ruled in reality (as opposed to appearance) by someone not elected as president, even in flawed elections."

Since being sworn in a week ago, Medvedev has spoken in public for a total of less than 20 minutes. Putin surrounded himself with cabinet ministers who are hard-line former KGB spies, taking them away from the presidential administration and leaving Medvedev "adrift" and powerless. The Telegraph reports that Dmitry Oreshkin, a Russian political analyst said: "The centre of power has been unquestionably transferred to the White House."

Blogger Robert Amsterdam reports that even funnyman David Letterman understands the apocalyptic outrage taking place in Russia:

On the May 12th Late Show with David Letterman, they did a short funny bit replaying clips of all these different news anchors (and of course Hillary Clinton) caught mispronouncing Medvedev's name. Then, right when the bit ended, Letterman looked into the camera and ad-libbed -- "You know it doesn't even matter because he's just one of Putin's cronies . . .," while shaking his head in cynical disapproval. The surprising comment was greeted with silence from the crowd, while his hype man in the band Paul Shaffer quipped, "Is that you speaking here? Because you usually don't go political . . . " And from there the show continued on without further comment.

Ouch. Way to go, Dave, that's telling it like it is! We are getting more leadership on Russia from a stand-up comic than we are from our president, it seems.

Anyone who uses the term "former" or "president" in regard to Putin is betraying not only democracy but the meaning and purpose of human language itself.

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Dear Publius Pundit:

You might highlight this line:

"...Naturally, we rehearse our counteractions."

He implies the Western response is an attack, notes that his crews are playing war and are on a hair trigger, then delivers the above line ensuring that no one can misunderstand that he is threatening our fighters.

You are right to hammer these provocative monsters. Keep at it.

Best,

Brian

RE: Myanmar's Russia Connection

Dear Publius Pundit,

Here's something else to keep in mind when exploring Russia's relationships with energy-rich states: Russia has huge reserve of oil and natural gas, and any jump in the price of these commodities will first and foremost raise energy revenue that the Russian government receives. Since the resource-driven economic boom is the primary reason why Putin's support is so high (another being those oh-so-convenient Chechens), maintaining high energy prices are key to Putin's ambitions for the Russian state.

This preoccupation with energy, though, leads the Russians to do some pretty treacherous things. For example, in the late 1990s they allegedly trained Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's sidekick -- or perhaps the true leader of al-Qaeda). Just a few months later, al-Zawahiri's terrorist group was incredibly interested and well-informed of plans by Americans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan and ease the Russian's quasi-monopoly in the region. Later, al-Qaeda attacks American embassies in East Africa, which was believed by many to be a provocation of the US, trying to get them to enter Afghanistan. Though there was no invasion, the oil pipeline was shelved shortly after the attacks. Interestingly enough, all of this is right about the time when the price of oil starts skyrocketing -- in early 1999 the price of oil had fallen to about $12 per barrel, but has increased fairly regularly ever since, to the point where it is now 1000% of the price that it was less than a decade ago. Much of this increase in prices was no doubt due to the ramifications of US policy in the Middle East in response to periodic attacks by al-Qaeda.

And Burma is not the only place where we see Russia abetting regimes that have been drawing the ire of the United States: Iran, too, has been helped by Russia in developing something (at minimum nuclear power, and at most nuclear weapons) that doesn't seem to benefit Russia much at all. Iran (like Burma) is a relatively poor country that wouldn't seem to be in the position to pay lots of money for expensive nuclear reactors, especially given its own enormous energy reserves. Security interests don't seem too great, since both Russia and the US have enough weapons to inflict more damage than they'd ever want, and an attack on Russia by any country is pretty unthinkable. And Russia, by supporting the regimes, is putting itself at risk of being criticized. So what's in it for Russia? An American invasion of Iran -- with the world's second-largest reserves of natural gas, and third-largest reserves of oil -- would surely send the price of oil skyrocketing past $200 a barrel, and that couldn't be bad for Putin. Just something to think about.

Sincerely,

Stephen Smith

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The pro-West party of Boris Tadic (shown above) has delivered a stunning, brutal defeat to the reactionary, pro-Russia forces of the radical Serbian nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, outpolling them by a 25% margin in the weekend's parliamentary elections. Spurning Russia despite the recent tumult and polarizing, paranoid rhetoric from Russia over Kosovo, Tadic boldly declared: "The citizens of Serbia have confirmed Serbia's European path. Serbia will be in the European Union. We have promised that, and we will fulfill that."

It's one breathtaking defeat after another for the failed KGB regime of Vladimir Putin. First NATO moves decisively towards missile defense and admission of Ukraine and Georgia (both countries have recently repudiated ties with Russia in national elections), and now Russia can't even hold on to its "little brother" Serbia. At home and abroad, Putin's policies bring only misery and humiliation to the people of Russia, the same neo-Soviet bitterness with which they are already well acquainted. They should have expected nothing else from the "election" of a proud KGB spy. They reap what they have sown.

NATO isn't uncivilized enough to actually buzz Russian targets with nuclear bombers. Russia has initiated that process unilaterally, and NATO is wise to retain the moral high ground, making Russia look like the barbarian it is.

Russia's air force chief on Saturday accused NATO fighters escorting Russian bombers on patrol flights over neutral waters of violating safety rules. Air Force chief Col.-Gen. Alexander Zelin said NATO aircraft were approaching Russian bombers too closely and too often, creating risky situations. "They approach our strategic bombers at unacceptable distances and at unacceptable intervals, conduct various maneuvers around them and violate flight safety rules in every way. It is not a misuse of the word 'attack' because our partners are training for combat actions, reaching the point of an attack. I must confess that this is quite unpleasant and even dangerous. Naturally, we rehearse our counteractions." Zelin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as telling reporters Saturday.

What an amazing crybaby! Russia has relentlessly and unilaterally provoked and probed the West with dangerous nuclear weapons, and now when the West defends itself aggressively Russia is "shocked, shocked" by our actions. This is neo-Soviet hypocrisy laid bare, exactly the kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too craziness that brought down the USSR.

Go NATO! Give 'em hell!

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Is this the beginning of the end for Hizballah? It may very well be so if the army splits and the clashes go beyond Beirut. While Hizballah threatens the government, a group of Lebanese lobbyists are in the United States asking the UN to put Lebanon under Chapter VII. If and when that happens, Hizballah will be buried, but it may take Lebanon with it too.

Check out the rest over at FPA. Required reading for those concerned about the tinderbox in the Middle East.

It's possible this is the most repugnant and ridiculous falsehood Putin has ever told, and that's really saying something. A statement so misleading, on so many levels, could only come from a proudly ignorant and fundamentally dishonest KGB spy like Mr. Putin.

Second, the use of "purchasing power parity" to artificially inflate the value of Russian GDP is fundamentally fraudulent. It assumes, for instance, that if you visit a doctor in the UK or Russia you will get the same quality treatment. Since a Russian doctor is paid only a few hundred dollars per month as a salary while in Briton he earns thousands, it's assumed that a Russian doesn't have to be as rich as a Briton to afford a doctor's care and get the same quality of life. That's pure nonsense, and anyone who's ever seen a Russian doctor or simply knows something about the law of supply and demand as influenced by wages knows that. You get what you pay for, and system that doesn't understand that isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

Third, and by far worst of all, Putin chooses to focus on nominal GDP, the total value for Russia as a country, while completely ignoring the per capita data. Even if we assume that Russia's annual national income is roughly the same as Britain's, Russia has three times more people dividing that income than Britain has. This means that Russians are three times poorer. Even including purchasing power parity numbers, Russia only ranks #52 in the world when judged for per capita GDP. The UK ranks #22. To put it mildly, the people of Russia won't be catching up to the people of the UK any time soon, and these figures don't reflect the obscene extent to which corrupt Russian society hoards and misdirects the nation's wealth, creating a tiny class of super-rich oligarchs and a vast population of desperately poor minions. In reality on the ground, in other words, the average Russian's situation is even more bleak.

And even if Putin's statement was accurate, in any sense, is it really what Russia needs as a nation? Is a parade of rusty useless missiles through Red Square, and more self-delusion? On average, a Russian man doesn't live to see his 60th year, and all Russia's "leader" can do is look for ways to provoke a new Cold War? Is that what passes for statesmanship in Russia these days?

All through the Soviet era, ignorant nasty little men in the Kremlin repeatedly humiliated the people of Russia by broadcasting exactly this kind of ridiculous nonsense before the world, making Russia look every bit as ludicrous as the infamous Emperor with his New Clothes. Totally isolated from criticism and real-world information, the Soviet leaders lived in world of their own illusions where lies became true. Then, one day, their world imploded.

Russia is barreling once again down exactly the same course. All through the Soviet era, the regime was prepared to deny the people of the country the basic standard of living to which they were entitled. Things that were routine in other countries, like blue jeans and chewing gum, became fantastic, unimaginable luxuries in Soviet Russia as the regime spent the nation's paltry income on outrageous levels of military confrontation with the West. Now, with the disgusting parade of military hardware through Red Square just as in Soviet times, Russia's government is going to do it all over again.

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It's obviously sexist, because only seven of its members are women, nearly twice as many are male -- even though women are a majority in the population of the nation where this organization operates.

It's also obviously racist. Only 1 member is black, 19 are white -- even though dark-skinned people make up more than 15% of the population in the nation where this organization operates. So minorities are under-represented by a factor of three, even more oppressed within its confines than women. Zero Hispanics. Zero Asians.

What organization is it? Answer after the jump.

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First, the North Carolina primary. A red state that went for George Bush in a massive landslide in 2004 (56-43) was allowed to play the pivotal role of destroying Hillary Clinton's hopes for the White House, history will say, and in determining who the Democrats would use to challenge the Republicans in the general election. Obama's victory came because although he was crushed by Clinton among white voters 50% of the state's registered Democrat voters are black, they turned out in droves on election day, and over 90% voted for Obama, a disturbingly Soviet-like majority, to say the least. North Carolina got this position of authority, of course, by sheer happenstance, luck of the draw.

Second, the Florida and Michigan primaries that weren't. Clinton has totally dominated Obama in all the top-ten electoral states except Georgia and Obama's home state of Illinois, sweeping him in all the top three states. There's no reason whatsoever to think that domination wouldn't have continued in both Florida and Michigan, but these two top-ten states chose to violate their party's rules and hold their primaries out of sequence, nullifying their votes. Had they not done so, Clinton might already have sewn up the nomination. Again, sheer random fortune controlled the outcome.

It doesn't quite add up, does it? The candidate who claims to be a racial unifier divides to conquer, articulating his campaign in stark black-and-white terms. Republicans choose for Democrats and Democrats, who screamed to high heaven in 2000 about counting every vote, totally ignore 20% of the ten most significant states in the land, treating places like Detroit and Miami as if they didn't even exist.

Is this how Obama proposes to govern our nation for four years? Dumb luck, mixed with racial polarization? Hmmm . . .

Now think about how every single one of the recent Democrat presidencies have crashed and burned. Clinton, impeached. Carter, one term. LBJ, not even nominated for second term. JFK, blown away, what else do I hafta say?

Does anyone else see a pattern here?

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So it hardly comes as a surprise that on May 6th he was arrested by plainclothes police, processed by a kangaroo court and sentenced to 13 day in jail -- meaning he'll be released the day after the Assembly proceedings conclude.

Read all about it on Oleg's new English language blog.

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The New York Times reports that casualties in the Myanmar typhoon, originally reported as being in the hundreds by the psychopathic military junta that rules the country, will likely top a ghastly 100,000. The horrifying scene on the ground is shown in the photograph above.

And that's not the worst of it. The junta, unwilling to allow large numbers of foreigners into the country as a key vote on an important referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the military is days away, is obstructing relief efforts. It has dispatched an outrageously small number of helicopters to deliver food supplies and prevented shipments of emergency supplies from entering the country. This means that tens of thousands more may perish from disease and starvation while the regime fiddles away. Thousands of bodies have been observed floating in the flooded delta of the Irrawaddy River.

The Times reports that "the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that the United Nations should invoke its 'responsibility to protect' civilians as the basis for a resolution to force delivery of aid to Myanmar, even if over the objections of the military government there." But the regime continues to thumb its nose at the West, laughing at such threats, just as it did when the West protested its barbaric crackdown on protesting monks several months ago (their Facebook page has more than 300,000 members).

Where does the government of a tiny, relatively powerless country get the bravado necessary to flout the authority of the Western world? Well, from the same place that other such entities, from the terrorist rogue regime in Palestine led by Hamas to the lunatic Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the bloodthirsty fanatics who govern Iran.

They all get it from Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Did you know that in May of last year Putin's Russia agreed to build a nuclear reactor for Myanmar's junta? A reactor just like the one they also agreed to build for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran (a man who says his country has no gays)? Just as was the case in Iran, Russia ignored the pleas of the outside world to refrain from subsidizing the malignant junta in Myanmar and giving it reason to flout international authority.

And did you know that in return Myanmar favored Russia with rights to exploit its mineral resources? Given these ties, it's hardly surprising at all to see Russia turn a blind eye to the atrocities unfolding in Myanmar every day in terms of human rights.

All around the world, Russia is forming relationship with rogue states that abuse their citizens and abrogate the basic values of democracy. It's behaving, in other words, exactly as if it were a reincarnation of the USSR -- and that's not surprising, given that Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy.

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It seems that the risk of Democrat voters coming to their senses has passed. As shown above via CNN, in last night's North Carolina Democratic primary, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by more than 13 to 1 among black voters, and Clinton beat Obama by nearly 2 to 1 among white voters. In other words, instead of unifying the races in North Carolina, Obama is polarizing and alienating them, and trading on that division to win the nomination. Black turnout surged and carried Obama to victory by a wide margin. In North Carolina's Forsyth County, for instance, ten times more absentee ballots were received than in a normal election and more than half of them were from black voters. The Winston-Salem Journal reports: "Nearly 500,000 people statewide voted early or cast an absentee ballot before the primary -- more than half the overall number who voted during the 2004 primary."

Six primaries are yet to be contested, with 217 delegates available. Then there are roughly 750 "super delegates" who are two-thirds decided and split evenly between the two candidates, with one-third undecided. So that means about 475 votes are in play. Obama must win 226 of those to clinch the nomination, or just under half. If Clinton can win about 55% of the remaining votes in play, she'll deny Obama the nomination and they'll proceed to a brokered convention.

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Dear Publius Pundit,

As someone with a postgraduate university degree in political and economic subjects, who works in risk analysis advising major companies on investments in Russia, I absolutely had to go against my better judgment and comment on this article. it is woefully ignorant and shows a lack of intellectual rigour to attempt to attribute inflation to Putin -- you might as well blame the leader of almost every East European (and the occasional Western) country where inflation is rampant. The reality is that inflation is hitting everyone hard due to global economic issues I won't bother to detail here (you must be aware of them yourself), not to mention oil money etc. Secondly, to suggest that Putin is incapable of any social or economic reforms because he isn't an economist is a blatant misunderstanding of the political system. How many heads of state are trained economists? I guarantee that you can count them on one hand. in any case, you seem to have conveniently forgotten the significant reforms Putin introduced during his first term, and the flat tax (only a distant dream in America) which continues to be praised in the Western media. in fact, contrary to your insinuations, the obvious explanation for inflation is that it is taking place because the economy is doing well, not poorly: as Reuters reported, in 2006 "GDP reached $1 trillion in nominal terms, propelling Russia into the world's top 10 economies". Finally, to compare Putin and Mugabe is simply untenable, and typical of US commentators' inclination to portray Russia in an unjustifiably negative light -- whereas most of the country's problems stem from the various impractical recommendations made by Western institutions and the rapacious gangster capitalism that inevitably took hold after the total destruction of the previous system. Putin is not an ideal leader, but he has not done exclusively bad things as somany so-called 'pundits' would like to believe. I hope that in future you will think twice about misinforming the public with your clearly biased and strident opinions.

Very truly yours,

Anna Marron (vervana@googlemail.com)

Publius Pundit responds after the jump.

We feel your pain. There you are working hard to collect a bunch of suckers to invest in Russia so you can line your pockets, and here we come blowing your cover. How dare we!

But seriously. When a person starts out an argument by talking about their educational credentials without actually naming the institution that issued them -- much less citing any blog where they stand behind any particular position -- we can only conclude that the person is basically a fraud, fully aware that the substance of their argument is lacking and therefore in need of a smokescreen to distract attention from that fact.

And when that same person blithely admits that they earn their living by convincing "major companies" to invest in Russia, only the most guileless reader would fail to recognize the hypocrisy that is obvious when such a person complains about the "bias" in others. The idea that you might be some kind of "objective" source of information about Russia, when in fact you're nothing but a salesperson who will say and do anything to make the sale, is an insult to our intelligence -- and that of our readers. It's classically neo-Soviet of you to think you could get away with such a charade. You're trying to line your pockets by telling outrageous lies about Russia, and we think that's despicable.

You then merrily attempt to change the subject, bringing in the other nations of Eastern Europe as if their failure would excuse Russia. Ms. Marron, the last time we checked only one Eastern European nation sat on the G-8 or the U.N. Security Council, and that nation was Russia. Last time we checked, moreover, none of the other nations of Eastern Europe were governed by proud KGB spies who were obliterating federalism and freedom of speech, imposing dictatorship at a breathtaking rate. Had you bothered to actually read and think about our post, you would have realized our point was that if Putin is going to take those steps then he'd better have some pretty impressive economic progress to brag about, and he doesn't. Instead, his nation is suffering from double-digit consumer price inflation of a type that would be viewed as an apocalypse in any Western country.

Though you claim to be a scholar, your letter is totally devoid of even data, much less links to source material, regarding the progress of other East European countries. Though the topic of the the post is inflation, you attempt to discuss GDP, which has nothing to do with the topic. To us, that seems like naked propaganda of the classic Soviet type. In a most unscholarly fashion, you ignore the fact that the per capita purchasing-power-parity GDP figure for Russia is not only not in the top 10, it's not in the top 50 in the world. It matters little to the starving, oppressed people of Russia that their nation's government presides over a large economy compared to other nations when they suffer from such miserable poverty.

It's always possible to claim that any given leader -- even Hitler or Stalin -- didn't "do exclusively bad things." The fact that Hitler made the trains run on time does not excuse or justify his concentration camps, and only a true fanatic would argue other wise. The fact that you can so blithely ignore Russia's recent past while claiming that Putin's barbaric crackdown on democracy doesn't matter is an expression of pure contempt for the people of Russian and their fate, and it's contemptible in the extreme.

Finally, you seem oblivious of the scholarly analysis that has clearly shown Russia would be far better of economically if it weren't ruled by Vladimir Putin, chiefly led by Michael McFaul. Simply put, you don't -- because you can't -- point to one single shred of evidence that any specific policy enacted by Putin has resulted in economic progress for the people of Russia. You grossly mischaracterize our post as attacking Putin for not being an economist. That's not what we wrote. We said he "does not have one single shred of legitimate economics or business credentials" meaning not only isn't he an economist but he's never run a business or met a payroll. Many leaders of other countries have done that, and other countries aren't the issue. Russia is. If you can't even fairly read our post, how dare you question our fairness towards Russia?

In short, your one-sided and hypocritical, self-serving screed, which doesn't admit any specific failure on Putin's part, is hardly likely to convince us -- or anyone -- to change our tune of criticism where Russia's malignant dictator is concerned.

Very truly yours,

Kim Zigfeld

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