La Russophobe continues to be quite impressed with the ability of her new chatbox to generate content for the blog, which it has already done twice in its short period of existence. It seems it was quite a good idea to bring non-blogger members into the loop!

First, a reader clued us in on photographs of Vladimir Putin's version of Air Force One, and then a reader alerted us to the fact that Mark Ames, publisher of the eXile, is an employee of the Kremlin. No wonder he and the eXile hate us so much! Here's a post from March 2006 on the Big Soccer blog:

I freaking can't believe it... The new Russian government produced English language channel, Russia Today, is now running their streaming video feed...for those of you interested (works best with Real Player) paste this into your media player of choice:

http://www.webtelek.com/media/russiatoday.asx

Pretty professionally done, happened to watch "Vremya" & "Segodya" this evening , interesting how the news lineup in order of importance/emphasis was quite different. Anyway, the channel is mainly news, but they do run a documentary or two in between newscasts...so I'm watching tonight, they're running some documentary about the Siberian oil town of Khatimansisk, and who would you guess who is narrating the documentary??!! I about fell over....

None other than Mr. Counter-Culture & Whore-sampler par excellence, taking a break from his job as chief muckety-muck as editor of the eXile, Mr. Mark Ames. That's right, he's working for the Russian government!!! What a total sell-out! BTW, the web address for the new channel :http://www.rttv.ru

Apparently, Ames laid the groundwork for his approach to Russia Today state-owned TV with a post in July 2005 accusing American media of being similarly controlled by the state. Sturmovik! blog has also commented, saying: "The funniest & most ironic exable of this is RT employing Mark Ames, the Hunter S. Thompson wanna-be and chief editor of the notorious Moscow counter-culture ex-pat publication "The eXile" as their tour guide through the hinterlands of Russia; not surprisingly, the eXile makes no mention of this apparent 180 degree turn by Mr. Ames, who has make a career of castigating just about everything establishment." Sturmovik agrees that, as La Russophobe has previously reported, it appears the Kremlin has got its hooks deep into David-Johnson-affiliated Russia Profile as well.

By the way, if you Google Mark Ames you will find that LR's post about him back in September, which the eXile chose not to mention in its recent article about LR, is in the top 20 hits. So, that's probably another reason why he and his rag are a bit irked with us.

Here's what dear Mark had to say about America to a Russian reporter from the ROL website in March 2002, a few months after the Twin Towers fell:

ROL: Why are Americans so fat? Is it a question of diet or lack of exercise?

AMES: That's actually a serious question. The answer is to be found in their brains. A wave of advertising washes over them, saying: You will eat this! You will eat that! We have the very best hamburgers and hotdogs in the world -- completely full of sh*t. The people have sold themselves, and then when they see in movies the images of people with slender figures and look at themselves in the mirror, they are plagued by self doubt, feeling they are deformed, and to forget this doubt they AGAIN BEGIN TO GORGE THEMSELVES. Americans are also terrified of serial killers and maniacs, and the result is that nobody talks to anybody at work, and they even eat all alone. And it's so dull for them that they just keep stuffing themselves like pigs. It's simply amazing, I find, how much garbage can be stuffed inside one American at a single sitting.

Mark was apparently not aware that Americans live far longer, healthier lives than Russians, who are governed of their own choice by a proud KGB spy and whose diets, bereft of vegetables, consist largely of fried fat and vodka (hence short life span). He was also apparently not aware that just because nobody liked HIM at work in America, and so ignored him, that's not necessarily the case for everybody. Poor dear. He must have been so lonely!

So to sum up: It's just fine for Mark and the eXile to hate America, the world' s most successful country, as much as they like. But it's a high crime for LR to hate Russia, the world's least successful country, and she must be condemned for it. It's just fine for Mark and the eXile to publish anonymously written and sourced stories about LR, but it's highly suspicious if LR is anonymous. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with purporting to criticize the establishment while being employed by it, and nothing at all suspicious about attacking the enemies of your employer.