Sean's Russia Blog highlights some scholarship from the Jamestown Foundation that devastates Russia's outrageous hypocrisy in claiming that Hamas and Hezbollah are "not terrorist" because they don't threaten Russia. Not only do they threaten Russia, and not only does Russia fail to label as terrorist many other groups which threaten Russian security, but Russia names as terrorist some groups which may not even exist. In other words, Russia's terror list is either proof of total Neo-Soviet incompetence or total Neo-Soviet duplicity, and for the life of her La Russophobe cannot decide which has worse implications for Russia and the world.

Sean also highlights a story about how Russians are trying to convert a gulag camp into a tourist destination, where visitors can "feel the pain." Only in Russia could such a thing be conceived, much less exectuted. Can you imagine what would happen if Germany tried to do this with Nazis or America with slaveholders? Not only have Russians totally failed to grasp the horrors of their own past, so that they are doomed to repeat them, but this action could well have the Kremlin's imprimateur. The fact is that, as the post on Sean's blog notes, a tourist operation cannot possibly hope to recreate the true horror of the gulag, meaning that vistors will inevitably come away thinking "that's not so bad" and saying so. This will be a great aid to Putin's efforts to rehabilitate Stalin and in fact to become Stalin, new and improved.