The mendacious propaganda campaign called "Russia Blog" and "The Real Russia Project" -- being in league with the state-sponsored "Russia Today" television network (whose videos Russia Blog routinely posts in the manner of shameless shill without the slightest word of warning to readers as to the highly questionable nature of the source) -- continues its revolting neo-Soviet attempt to undermine the West's security by trying to induce it to drop its guard long enough for Russia to get in a sucker punch.

A post entitled "What Leading CEOs Think about Russia" by Kremlin lackey Charles Ganske lays bare the childish manner in which the Kremlin has deluded itself into thinking, once again, that it can fool the West with any ridiculous lie it chooses to dream up. It didn't work for the USSR, and it won't work now, not with the ever-watchful La Russophobe on the job.

Ganske claims to be offering the views of a variety of "leading CEOs" yet in fact only one such person is quoted, namely E. Neville Isdell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company. Sitting on a stage next to several Russian government officials and Russian business leaders, Isdell calls Russia's "progress" under Vladmir Putin "absolutely magnificent" because the average wage has risen from $2/hour to $3/hour even though the average man doesn't reach age 60 and up to 1 million are lost from the population each year, and calls it "fundamentally changed" even though it is still run by a proud KGB spy who has destroyed the media, opposition political parties and local government. He says that Russia's only problem is one of public relations. The statements made by Isdell came at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Interestingly, Russia Blog doesn't care to mention that the Swiss Supreme Court has just ruled that Russia's attack on Mikhail Khodorkovsky was fundamentally corrupt and illegitimate. You can be sure that Isdell spends the same amount of time in "absolutely magnificent" Russia as does Ganske himself -- that is, absolutely none.

Isdell's statements are so bizarre, so extreme, so completely detached from reality that they actually undermine Russia's credibility rather than supporting it -- as was so often the case with the Soviet apologists during the first Cold War. If his statements truly represent the views of the Coca-Cola corporation, it's time to boycott their products. It's quite interesting how Russophiles are so ready to dismiss Americans as ignorant fools, and American corporations as evil expressions of imperialism, right up until the time they start defending Russia. Then they're glad to sing their praises from the rooftops, unquestioningly.

It's quite telling, too, that Russia Blog could not find a single leader of any other real Western manufacturing business to make favorable statements about the Kremlin, and instead was forced to turn to a bunch of accountants at Ernst & Young. Doing Russian taxes hardly constitutes a major expression of economic viability, and the firm has a vested financial interest in encouraging more clueless Westerners to invest money in Russia so that it can do their taxes, too. Ernst & Young says that is is concerned about corruption in Russia but comforted by the fact that "the government is in fact taking the results of work yet to be done and sharing it publicly."

Uh . . . "the results of work yet to be done"? Perhaps they've spent a bit too much time in Russia, and think that sentence makes some kind of sense. Ernst & Young may well heartily approve of the Kremlin since it has launched a vicious attack on their chief rival, PriceWaterhouse -- something neither their spokesman nor Russia Blog chooses to mention. Meanwhile, study after international study, published right here on this blog, has shown that Russia is mired in corruption and doing nothing whatsoever about it except to deny and fuel it. Russia Blog ignores all of them.

Perhaps even more telling, though, is that Russia Blog intentionally ignores the one business that would be delighted to praise the Kremlin most -- the cigarette makers. In Russia they don't face the threat of lawsuits or any serious public-health bashing from regulators, so they are delighted to do business in Russia. Yet, Mr. Ganske makes no any mention of them. Gee, wonder why. The neo-Soviet propagandist, though still ham-handed to an embarrassing extent and doomed to failure like his predecessors, has at least that much sophistication.

And then it really gets ugly. The only other leader of a significant Western business who is quoted in Russia Blog's impressive, objective survey of CEO views is Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine. Not exactly a manufacturing giant, to say the least, so Ganske needs to provide some cover in order to keep up appearances for his manufactured "story." In typically blatant dishonesty, as shown in the screenshot below, Ganske refers to Forbes as "former Republican presidential candidate."


In fact, Forbes was NEVER the candidate of the Republican party for president. He entered the Republican primaries in 1996 and 2000, seeking to BECOME the candidate of the Republican Party, and he was utterly REPUDIATED both times. He dropped out of the 2000 primary race before it hardly had begun, in total disgrace. This brazen lie by Ganske is quite similar to his absurdly false claim, which we previously reported, that the Russian film "Ninth Company" had been nominated for an Oscar (in fact, it had only been nominated for a nomination, and then been rejected). If Russia Blog weren't engaged in such a frenzied propaganda campaign, one might be able to pass statements of this kind off as mere childish ignorance. But it is, so one can't.

It's just this simple: Russia Blog is fanatically, pathologically unable to tell the truth. As such, it's the perfect microcosm of the evil of neo-Soviet Russia.