Last week the New York Times blog The Lede reported on how Russians were being mauled by their national symbol, the brown bear. A wolf pack of 30 bears is running wild in Kamchatka and has already killed and eaten two people. The Lede reported that "people in the region have been forced to cower in their homes waiting for hunters to dispose of the animals, which can stand 10 feet tall and weigh up to 1,500 pounds." Three others have been killed on Sakhalin Island. The reason? "A sharp decline in salmon, their traditional food, due to poaching has forced them to seek out other food sources, as more and more unfortunate people have come to discover." In other words, the utter failure of public policy.

The first commenter on the story spoke in the loud, clear terms of the insane Russophile, a perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with Russia as a country:

The New York Times is always so negative about Russia! So what that the bears eat people? They are beautiful, majestic creatures who inspire Russia and Russians. Do bears not eat people in America!? You also couldn’t help but draw a parallel between killer bears and United Russia…again, negative muckraking! I implore you CIA sponsored “journalists” to stop implying that United Russia gobbles up other parties like a hungry beast. Write about something positive, like Putin’s pecs.

That's right: Russians (and especially Russophile sychopants of Vladimir Putin) want this story ignored. Far from being a cause to criticize the authorities and call for reform to save lives, Russians want the whole thing swept under the carpet. As long as bears eat Americans, it seems, Russians have no problem with being consumed themselves.

And yet, if you were to suggest to a Russian that his nation's lack of contested elections, opposition parties and major media criticism of the regime comes up far short on the democracy scale when compared to the United States, Russians would then say that Russia is "different country" that can't be compared to America.

Meanwhile, do you think this commenter, or any member of the psychopathic Russophile set, ever makes such comments about the things written about America by state-controlled Russian media? Do they ever speak unfairly and inaccurately about America? Does Vladimir Putin ever do so? When, dear reader, was the last time you heard Mr. Putin give America a compliment? Aren't his remarks about America "always so negative," to quote a Russophile?

This kind of childish, impulsive "reasoning" characterizes Russian society from top to bottom. Rather than admit any fault, they would prefer to have all problems ignored. When convenient, they compare themselves to America. When not, they contend only a Russophobe would do so.

Exactly this kind of "thinking" destroyed the USSR root and branch. The Politburo was incapable of accepting any responsibility for any fault, and instead simply blamed all problems on misfortune and foreign intrigue. No reform was undertaken until the nation was in its final throes, and even then the measures were half-hearted and totally unsuccessful. As a result, the USSR collapsed.

And how did Russians respond, seeing that collapse? They merrily and blithely returned the KGB to power, the very same KGB that had shipped off so many souls to the Gulag archipelago, wiping out Russia's best and brightest with relish, squashing all dissent and information at gunpoint. Then they merrily and blithely watched their proud KGB spy return the nation at breakneck speed to the same condition of blind willful ignorance that brought down the USSR.

America is full of people, including powerful elected politicians and major international media outlets, who upon hearing foreign criticism are only too ready to accept it and to call for responsive change. Right now, major party candidate Barack Obama is running on just such a platform, and could well be elected. And America stands astride the world like a colossus, the world's only superpower, with an economy more than ten times larger than Russia's and a growing population twice Russia's size.

Russia, by contrast, pokes its head into the sand like a witless ostrich, has a plummeting population and an economy where a person is lucky to earn $4 per hour as a wage and teachers earn less than half that amount.

Will Russians never learn? Will they go on repeating their barbaric behavior until they have utterly destroyed not just their country but their entire civilization, ceding it to the Chinese to be erased forever from human memory?

We are afraid they will.

Last week the White House website posted a message from President Bush in honor of "Captive Nations" week. Bush stated: "In the 20th century, the evils of Soviet communism and Nazi fascism were defeated and freedom spread around the world as new democracies emerged." (Similarly, Lithuania recently enacted a ban on the display of Soviet and Nazi symbols, treating the two the same.) The Putin regime rushed to defend Soviet communism, attacking Bush for attempting to "feed the efforts of those, who for political and selfish ends are striving to falsify the facts and rewrite history." In other words, the Russian state is repeating the Soviet propaganda lie that Sovietism wasn't just as bad for Russia as Nazism was -- even though it was Sovietism, not Nazism, that actually destroyed the USSR, and Sovietism that killed far more Russians.

Russia can't manage to understand how the people of Eastern Europe see the advance of Soviet troops to defeat Hitler, either. They, too, are hard pressed to see any difference between Nazis and Russians. After all, the Russian troops enslaved them for a far longer period of time than the Nazis did. It can't manage to understand, as Germans have done, the need to confront their dark past and take aggressive measures to make sure it is not repeated. Instead, Russians seek to bury, twist and pervert their past into a mythology of heroism. Russians leave memorials to Stalin's Gulag to foreigners, and elevate Stalin to cult hero status. They are, it should be remembered, still using the melody of the Soviet national anthem, a tune written to glorify Stalin. It will play when Russians are awarded medals at the Bejing Olympiad.

No country can survive this level of extreme barbarism.

EDITORIAL

It's genuinely sad, and downright embarrassing, to see an American newspaper bungle an analysis of Russia as badly as the Boston Globe did with a recent editorial called "Russia's new (and old) plan."

The Globe started out by calling Russia a country "that bears little resemblance to either the vanished Soviet Union or the economic basket case of the immediate post-Soviet years." But in fact, that's idiotically false. Russia continues to be a country where the vast majority of the population suffers dire poverty, shockingly short lifespans and all manner of vice and pestilence. The average Russian man works for $4 an hour and doesn't live to see his 60th year. And Russia, by the Globe's own admission, is "run by a mafia of Kremlin-connected moguls and KGB veterans." If there's any dissimilarity from Soviet times, it's that the KGB has even more influence now.

The Globe then claimed that Russia wants a "strategic partnership" with the United States because it has "has an abiding interest in cooperating with the West." It sees confirmation of this in the fact that "Dmitry Medvedev released a document outlining Russia's new foreign policy strategy" that says so. But search the Globe's text from stem to stern: You will not find one single example of any "interest" that Russia shares with the United States.

Certainly, not a belief system. Russia has obliterated the last vestiges of democracy in a barbaric manner, replete with murders and intimidation. It has crushed the press, wiped out opposition parties, purged the Duma and conducted kangaroo elections that don't even pass the smell test for legitimacy.

Oil? True, Russia needs the West to buy its oil. But so did the USSR -- and it also needed to import lots of basic goods, especially food, that it couldn't produce itself. And none of that stopped the USSR from seeking to destroy us, just as it hasn't stopped Vladimir Putin from buzzing us with nuclear bombers and sending weapons to our enemies, like Iran and Venezuela.

Terrorism? Could the Globe possibly be suggesting that if we don't make nice with Russia, it will foment radical Islamic terrorism against us?

In essence, the Globe is calling upon the United States to abandon the people of Russia and its own core belief system in order to avoid confrontation and secure economic benefits. That's exactly the same approach Neville Chamberlain adopted towards Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain believed that if only we spoke respectfully to Hitler and treated him like an equal, acknowledging and responding to his "interests," then he would have no incentive to attack us and would not do so. Chamberlain was prepared to gamble with the lives of millions of people, both outside and inside Germany, betting that dropping our guard wouldn't leave us exposed and vulnerable.

Chamberlain was wrong, and so is the Boston Globe. The Globe is a failing institution, with a plummeting readership and a sea of red ink.

The Globe stated "Obama and McCain ought to be talking about their plans for the future of US-Russian relations" as if both were equally remiss in offering specifics about Russia. But in fact, that's simply false. McCain has a clear plan of action in regard to Russia which he has discussed on many occasions, Obama has none. Guess which candidate the Globe will endorse in the general election? Absolutely shameless partisanship.

The Globe contends: "President Bush needlessly provoked Russian paranoia by rushing to recognize Kosovo's independence without UN authorization or a negotiated deal between Serbia and the Kosovars." So let's see if we understand: Russia would have supported independence for Kosovo if only the UN had authorized it . . . which it never would have done because Russia has a veto there. This is what passes for "journalism" at an institution like the Globe? Meanwhile, what these bastards are actually saying is that we should sell out Kosovo just like we sold out Poland and Czechoslovakia in World War II, sacrifice them for our own convenience in the hope of appeasing Russia.

Is that sick or what? The word evil comes to mind.

The Globe asserts: "Bush and Bill Clinton both broke promises made to Russia at the end of the Cold War by expanding NATO toward Russia's borders. And Bush insists on deploying a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that is crucially flawed but nevertheless frightens the Kremlin." Is the Globe saying it has a better understanding of the merits of the system than Russia does? Or is it simply saying the Kremlin is insane and/or paranoid, and that we should accommodate that mentality? Whichever is the case, it's clear the Globe is not finished calling for appeasement! First we should submit to Russia on Kosovo, and now on missile defense! And in return what do we get?
The Globe offers only this: "Bush's successors should relieve these Russian grievances. In return, the next president should be able to count on firm Russian support in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, combating terrorism, and managing the transition to a global economy bereft of cheap oil and natural gas. That should be America's game plan." So it appears the Globe believes that if we allow Serbia to persecute Kosovo and leave Eastern Europe to Russia's tender mercies, then Russia will deny the nuclear bomb to Iran rather than help it get one. It will also help us "combat terrorism" in some unspecified manner (yet there has not been one single terror attack on American soil since Bush starting tormenting Russia) and help "manage the global economy" whatever that means. What exactly is Russia going to do to help the American economy? What will it do to halt terrorism? The Globe doesn't seem to have the slightest clue, making it all sound very much like Kremlin propaganda.

Suppose Russia, which incidentally is ruled by a KGB spy as "president for life," doesn't come through after we "count on" it and sell out our allies? What will we have to console us then, an mighty apology from the Globe's editors? "Oops, sorry, our bad."

The notion that Russia would be capable of giving nuclear arms to Iran, of sending financial support to Hamas and Hezbollah, of arming Venezuela and Syria, of dispatching nuclear bombers to menace us with overflights, that Russia could hate us enough to do all that and yet give up its malignant intentions if we agree to buy it off is so ridiculously naive that it must be an embarrassment to every American citizen to see it so cravenly displayed in a major American paper.

And what about the people of Russia? Not a word from the Globe about the Kremlin's obliteration of the the press, opposition parties and elections. Apparently, the Globe would permit Russia any manner of draconian persecution of its own people, just as long as it stops threatening U.S. national security. What about the people of Georgia and Ukraine -- or for that matter, the Baltics, Poland and Czech Republic. Are these all to be consigned to Russia's "sphere of influence" that we mustn't disturb, lest Russia start sending suitcase nukes to Osama bin Laden?

In other words, instead of standing up for the values of democracy, the editors of the Boston Globe are selling it down the river, and at the same time asking us to drop our guard and allow Russia to become an even bigger threat, just as was done in regard to Nazi Germany.

Thankfully, the Globe (and its New York Times parent) is an utterly failed institution on the verge of bankruptcy. Its circulation and stock price have tanked and it is floating in a sea of debt and cutbacks. Flailing helplessly, it's actually rather amusing to watch it drowning in its own craven incompetence.

Since my team of Russia experts recently saw fit to publish an editorial without my input (it was so brilliant I republished -- or perhaps I should say shameless stole -- it on my Instablogs forum, minus the complimentary rhetoric about my "prescience"), I feel it is only fair to return the favor and publish one without their input as we begin our third year of operations.

From time to time, we all should give ourselves a little pat on the back to compensate for many hours of unpaid toil in the service of democracy in Russia. I'd like to take the opportunity to do that now.

If you'd like to get a glimpse of the raw power and influence of this blog, which operates without financial support from anyone through the tireless efforts of a team of pure volunteers, just point your web browser to the Google home page and enter the search term "Peter Lavelle." Then scan the results.

The first hit you will get is Mr. Lavelle's Wikipedia entry, as is so often the case with that powerful web institution's pages. Open that entry, and you'll see it makes prominent note of our repeated and ferocious criticism of Mr. Lavelle, a treacherous sellout to the Russian oligarchs for whom we have only contempt. Here's a screenshot of the entry (click to enlarge):


Now check out the second hit on the Google search return. It's a link to one of our posts attacking Mr. Lavelle's malignant, treacherous deeds in the service of dictatorship. The third hit is a second such post, and the fourth is a third. Only after that do you reach the link to Mr. Lavelle's rancid employer, the Russia Today Kremlin-owned propaganda network. If you hear Mr. Lavelle's name and want to know more about him, and Google him to do so, you find out what we tell you first -- namely, the truth.

That's power, and not even our most crazed foes can deny it. Mr. Lavelle is an active participant in the vile Kremlin propaganda exercise known as Russia Today TV, and is lining his pockets with the proceeds of dictatorship, stolen from the very mouths of Russia's starving and dying population. But Mr. Lavelle's supporters in the Kremlin are helpless against the awesome majesty of the Internet. Truth will out (though, to be sure, in Russia itself because the vast majority of people have no regular Internet access, the Russians themselves may well be the last to know).

I'd love to claim sole personal credit for this, but in truth I can't even claim 10% of it. The lion's share is due to those who labor daily to generate our content, and to the faithful readers who support our efforts and use our content to carry the battle for democracy against the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin's parapets. That resulted in major news stories about heroic dissident leader Oleg Kozlvosky appearing in leading newspapers like the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, and ended up with Oleg getting his own op-ed piece in the Post, which appeared as the lead with a photograph of Oleg in the clutches of the Kremlin's stormtroopers. It's an astounding achievement, but it's fair to say that doing so was the primary goal I had in mind when I created this blog, and equally fair to say that I had relatively little to do with making it a reality. For me it was more or less a dream, but now it is reality. This blog has grown from nothing into a mighty force to be reckoned with and as is always the case, the work that made that happen was done by those who receive little credit but deserve the most -- and if you are reading these words, you may count yourself among them.

You may think Mr. Lavelle has a grievance against this blog, that he wants us to stop being so tough on him. But if you think that, you're very much mistaken. Mr. Lavelle is delighted with our attacks, because they stand him in wonderful stead with his Kremlin overlords, proving his loyalty to their malignant cause of wiping out civil society in Russia once again. He believes, just as the sycophants of Josef Stalin believed, that the cowardly, craven denizens of Russia will never rise up to overthrow the Putin dictatorship, allowing him to profit indefinitely from their corrupt spoils.

And of course, nobody who reads this blog can dispute that he may well be right. The people of Russia allowed the Soviet dictatorship to murder, plunder and terrorize until it destroyed itself, and they may well do the same in regard to Putin. Lenin, Stalin, Putin -- all eerily similar names, aren't they. Why, there was even the malignant RasPUTIN too, come to think of it. They may well allow the likes of Peter Lavelle to drink their blood until they bleed white and drop like zombies, just as they did in Soviet times (Lenin learned his craft abroad, Stalin was a Georgian).

Russian history is a wheel mercilessly grinding the people of Russia into dust. Whether they will do anything to halt that process before they are blown away into the ashcan of history is anyone's guess, but those who support this blog have done what we could, much more than most, to help that occur.

And we should be very proud of that indeed.

-- Kim Zigfeld

Below, we publish a column from last Friday's edition of the Moscow Times by pundit Georgy Bovt, no stranger to regular readers of this blog. In it, Bovt highlights the total lack of morality that pervades Russian government today, and ridicules that Dimitri Medvedev is qualified, much less inclined, to do anything about it. As for Vladimir Putin, he's a proud KGB spy.

The column was buried by the MT editors under its shockingly boring new format, and might easily have been missed by many readers. It stood in stark contrast to the column the MT editors chose to highlight, from one Bruce Bean (pictured, left), identified as a lawyer who lived in Moscow from 1995 to 2003 and now teaches at Michigan State University Law School.

It looks for all the world as if the Moscow Times is slowly selling out to Kremlin pressure. It didn't report on Oleg Kozlovsky's recent two-week stint in prison, a preemptive arrest that was manifestly illegal -- nor did it republish Kozlovsky's op-ed in the Washington Post which came out while he was in prison. Instead, it published a ridiculous screed from Kremlin apologist Edward Lozansky, who in turn was publishing a Kremlin propaganda festival he was hosting in Washington DC. It's still publishing some Kremlin-critical coverage, but it's staying away from the hot button issues and it's trying to minimize the impact of what it does publish. And while we've written its editor three letters challenging these practiced, none of them has been published.

Professor Bean, yet one more person who'd like to get rich selling out Western values to the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin's parapets, trots out the same ridiculous screed of lies and misdirections that we've seen emanating from the USSR and from neo-Soviet Russia for time out of mind, in the most predictable and embarrassingly lame manner possible. It really is as if the stooges in the Kremlin wrote this column themselves as part of a giant do-over of the USSR's collapse, as if it was all due to nothing more than a freak incidence of bad luck. He mocks the idea that Putin's KGB past (and present, he has filled the halls of government with spies) could be remotely relevant to understanding his governance.

In May, Russia experienced the worst uptick in consumer price inflation in more than five years. Prices skyrocketed from a 14.3% annualized rate in April to a shocking 15.1% in May, an increase of 5.6% in just one month. Food prices rose at an annualized 22.1% rate. Vladimir Putin's only response to this nightmare (earning $4/hour on average, ordinary Russians can ill afford any inflation, much less this kind of apocalypse) has been a promise to raise wages -- the same thing as throwing gasoline on a grease fire in your kitchen. What the country needs is more production, not more money, and even a kindergartener should be able to understand that. Russia's KGB leadership, however, doesn't.

All they understand is propaganda, just like their Soviet forbears. Sweep the problem under the carpet, and hope people don't notice the mountain of debris already sitting there. This kind of "thinking" made the the USSR the laughing stock of the world and laid it low. Russia under Medvedev is following exactly the same course.

Bean writes that "after President Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration on May 7, Russia has successfully concluded its first "normal" presidential succession cycle, in which a healthy outgoing president voluntarily turned over power to a new popularly elected one. " He ignores the conclusive evidence that the election results were rigged. If Vladimir Putin were writing this propaganda tract, we dare you to explain how his remarks would have been any different.

Bean writes of Putin that "it was precisely this treacherous spook who abided by the 15-year Constitution and left office -- something he promised to do for many years leading up to the election." He claims that it simply means nothing that Putin sat in the presidential chair, one the nation has grown accustomed to associating with the seat of power, and asks us to ignore it because Russia isn't the USSR and is no longer mysterious. Apparently, he's saying that if Putin really were going to secretly retain the reins of power, he'd simply tell us openly. Only a true Kremlin stooge can make statements as outrageous as that.

And then top it. Bean writes: "Whether he deserved better or not, during his 100 months in office, Putin never had more than a few weeks of fair treatment from the international media. The reforms of the first years of Putin's administration introduced a 13 percent personal income tax, low corporate taxes, new labor and land laws, and, most significant, major reforms of the judiciary. Boris Yeltsin was unable to persuade the State Duma to enact any of these." Apparently, he's suggesting that if only the "international media" had been fairer to Putin, he wouldn't have wiped out the domestic media, local government and opposition political parties. The truth is that the international media weren't nearly tough enough on Putin, allowing him to wipe out civil society and achieve a permanent dictatorship without raising a finger to stop it.

Bean writes: "Many complain about Russia's corruption and lack of judicial independence. The progress the country's judicial system has achieved under Putin is not familiar outside Russia, since it has been consistently ignored in favor of stories that are more sensational." Then he doesn't give one single example to back up this ludicrously false statement, and claims that since Medvedev is law professor like him, the rule of law is safe in Russia. He claims that because recently a corrupt judge was exposed and another complained about lobbying from the Kremlin, this proves Medvedev is committed to the rule of law. But Medvedev hasn't said a single word about these events, much less did he instigate them, and they are meaningless drops in the bucket of corruption that has been documented repeatedly by international surveys. As the Moscow Times states in an editorial:

Prosecutors have shown no interest in looking into the allegations. Three weeks after [the judge's] statements, there have been no reports of an investigation. In answer to written questions, the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office advised The Moscow Times to contact the Prosecutor General's Office itself. Written questions to the Prosecutor General's Office went unanswered. If the rule of law that Medvedev has been talking about is to have a chance at taking root, then allegations like those made in court against Boyev will have to be pursued to the end. As the prosecutor general reports directly to the president, Medvedev should be able to get the investigators moving.

Professor Bean simply chooses to ignore these facts (or else he doesn't even read the paper he's writing in), and doesn't call upon Medvedev to take any specific action. Martin Luther King always said he had much more fear of pseudo-liberals than he did of the KKK. How right he was!

Let's be clear: What Professor Bean is doing now is exactly what many did when Putin came to power, the exact opposite of what he claims occurred. When Yeltsin named Putin, instead of immediately opposing him the world listened to those like Professor Bean who said that Putin was a new kind of leader for Russia, that as soon as he got a grip on Russia's economic problems he would move to protect civil society. Khodorkovsky's arrest was justified on this basis, as were all of Putin's toxic moves towards dictatorship. We were induced by traitors like Professor Bean (whether they are motivated by mere ignorance, cowardliness or complicity makes no difference) to drop our guard and let Putin consolidate his power -- exactly what happened with Stalin and Hitler as well. And how they're doing it all over again, this time in regard to Medvedev. They want us to wait until he's firmly entrenched before we even consider recognizing the threat we face.

It means nothing to Professor Bean that Medvedev participated in an election where (a) all the viable opponents were liquidated and (b) the ballot box was horrifically stuffed, to the point where he won with over 90% of the vote in some regions. In exactly the same way, it meant nothing to the collaborators that Vladimir Putin was a proud KGB spy, and still doesn't. As they would have it, once given power some magical transformation occurs and these individuals suddenly become stalwart defenders of the rule of law. That's neo-Soviet propaganda, pure and simple. It's what destroyed the USSR, preventing it from implementing real reform (or even calling for it) and it will do the same thing to Russia.

To say nothing of the contents of this blog, just read through out current issue today. If you can do that and then read Professor Bean's revolting nonsense with losing your lunch, you may have what it takes to report for duty at Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. It's a well paying position, as long as you don't count the collateral damage to your soul.

There is an easy way of testing whether a nasty little troll like Professor Bean is speaking in good faith or not. He says we needn't fear Putin based on his current record. OK, fine. But what would Putin have to do to make Professor Bean believe that the time had come to fear him. If he tells us, he lays down a benchmark he can be held to later, and we should respect his opinion. If he doesn't, the no matter what Putin ever does Professor Bean can always move the goalposts, just as Chamberlain did with Hitler.

Read his column for yourself, and see whether he offers any benchmarks of any kind. Then treat his views accordingly.

Pity poor Edward Lozansky.

There he was on Monday morning about to open his sick, sordid little confabulation of Russophiles, seeking to dupe unwary Americans into dropping their guard and allowing Vladimir Putin to further consolidate his malignant rule over Russia. He'd lined up financial support for his dastardly enterprise from the Kremlin's propaganda TV network, Russia Today, and he was even given an op-ed column in the Moscow Times to publicize it. All the bedraggled Russophile garbage across the land was converging on Washington DC for his "World Russia Forum" including even the vile Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog.

And what happens? He opens up his morning edition of the Washington Post and what does he find? An op-ed column by none other than leading Russian dissident Oleg Kozlovsky (shown above in the loving embrace of Vladimir Putin's neo-Soviet goons), a column accusing his benefactor of turning Russia into a giant neo-Soviet gulag! We republish the column below, together with a second op-ed from the post on Russia in as many days, this one from Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Center decrying Russia's lack of a free press.

And it wasn't just any op-ed. It ran in the upper left corner of the hard copy of the paper and included the above photograph of Kozlovsky -- not one but two distinct honors for the column, showing the Post's influential editors stood behind Kozlovsky 1,000 percent.

Ouch. Miracle if Lozansky wasn't rushed to the emergency room with a nasty case of acid reflux. Lozansky is well known to regular readers of this blog; we've exposed him repeatedly in prior posts as the fundamental fraud he is. Reading Kozlovsky's terrifying words, its impossible to see Lozansky as anything other than a modern Neville Chamberlain.

Lozansky claims that presidential candidate John McCain is "alone" in his stark opposition to Russia, but in fact it's neo-Soviet collaborators like Lozansky that stand alone, surrounded by their truly ridiculous, detached-from-reality, neo-Soviet lies. In a classic bit of Soviet dishonesty, he claims that the U.S. needs Russian uranium to run its nuclear reactors; in fact, Russia itself just inked a deal to import uranium from Australia, without which it couldn't run its own reactors. Moreover, the idea that the U.S. should ignore Russia's barbaric desecration of the institution of democracy just so that it can get hold of Russian energy resources defiles the very foundations of American civilization. This man is truly beneath pond scum.

Lozansky claims that Russia needn't worry about McCain's threat to oust Russia from the G-8, because the other members wouldn't go along. Apparently, he thinks McCain is crazy and off the reservation. But if that is so, why is Lozansky so worried? The fact is that McCain can, with the stroke of his pen, make the G-8 choose between the U.S. and Russia as members. If he does that, the nations of Europe won't have to think twice before siding with their NATO ally.

The only person Lozansky actually names as disagreeing with McCain is the senile lunatic professor Steven Cohen, whom this blog has, like Lozansky himself, repeatedly discredited for the ridiculous gibberish he spews from the radical Nation magazine published by his own wife. The fact that Lozansky is insane enough to believe that Professor Cohen's opposition means that one of the most powerful figures in America's foreign policy establishment stands alone is proof positive, all by itself, of what a ridiculous fraud Lozansky really is.

And then, in classic bit of Russian insanity, he completely contradicts himself. He states:

To be fair to McCain, the other two presidential front-runners, Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have not offered a positive-thinking agenda for Russia either, pledging to be tougher with Russia than Bush and endorsing further NATO expansion by accepting Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. All three presidential contenders have promised to expand the Bush administration's effort to "spread democracy," a policy that an overwhelming majority of Russians see as a thinly veiled smoke screen to strengthen the U.S. position in the world at the expense of Russia.

Hmm. So then, it seems that McCain isn't really so alone after all, now is he? No wonder Lozansky is getting desperate.

In his MT op-ed, Lozansky complains that he'd invited McCain to attend the Forum and debate his hard line on Russia and was apparently surprised to find that McCain was ignoring him. Of course, Lozansky doesn't say a single word about his failure to extend any Forum invitations to any Russian opposition figures -- such as Garry Kasparov or Kozlovsky himself. Though Mr. Lozansky's forum made a place for pro-Russian propaganda from Russia Today and many other sources, no such place was laid for the United States -- nor did his column say a single word about any changes any Russian leader needs to make to accommodate the U.S.

We can't help but wonder how Americans would have reacted in 1938 to a forum sponsored by a state-owned Nazi TV network and calling for "economic, political and military alliance" with Hitler's Germany. Since the sponsor of Lozansky's conference is Russia Today, Putin's propaganda network (recently condemned by the New York Times), one would hope Americans will be just as suspicious of his effort, kicked off by the Russian ambassador. Does Mr. Lozansky, a card-carrying Kremlin shill, really believe Americans might be foolish enough to believe he's concerned about their national security interests as well as those of Russia?

Simply put, Americans can't trust Kremlin mouthpieces like Mr. Lozansky to look out for their best interests, and won't do so no matter how much Kremlin money greases the skids. Fool me once, Mr. Lozansky, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

It's rare to see the Europeans outfight determined enemies and seize such a one-sided victory as they did last week in Romania at the NATO summit. Not only did Europe admit two new countries from the former Soviet bloc into NATO's protective embrace, not only did it unify behind the American proposal to arm the whole of Eastern Europe with a defensive missile shield that would dramatically undercut the potency of Russia's IBCM strikeforce, not only did it have Ukraine and Georgia jubilant over firm guarantees of future NATO admission that were more than they dared hope for, but Europe managed it all while checkmating Vladimir Putin on the PR front, denying him any justification for his threatened boycott of the event. He came crawling to them despite it all, just like a trusty pooch.

Given all this humiliating failure, it's not at all surprising to see the scurrying cockroaches of russophilia issuing forth at their Master's command like Orcs from Mordor, desperately seeking to rationalize and cloak it. Hence, last week we saw the repugnant Peter Lavelle screeching ludicrously in the Moscow Times, and later in the week there was more mendacity in store on the paper's pages. Truly, the juicy cherry on top of this rich sundae of defeat for Putin is witnessing the pathetically lame character of his defenders. We just can't seem to wipe these silly grins off our faces. It's been a good week to be La Russophobe. Weeks like these, we almost feel we should be paying for the privilege of putting out this blog (you didn't see that, K.Z.!).

Last Thursday's edition of the the paper carried an op-ed piece by one Andrei Tsygankov, identified as associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University. It's always obscure places you've never heard of and can hardly believe exist, like "San Francisco State University," that seem to produce the wackos who will seek to rationalize Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

Let's poke fun at this malignant, evil little moron, shall we?

Professor Tsyganokov's employer, SFSU, has a pretty unimpressive website that looks like it was cobbled together by a troop of drunken apes. It explains that it's one of 23 schools operated by the State of California and boasts moonbat actor Danny Glover as an alumni. It has about 20,000 full-time undergraduate students, 94% of whom come from California.

If you Google him, you can find his professional website and his disturbingly weird photograph, at left (he actually looks carcinogenic, doesn't he? bet you can't stare at him for more than ten seconds without getting the creeps!). You'll learn that he's Russian, with a degree from Moscow State University and a PhD ten years later (eight years ago) from USC. For some reason, he chose to stay in the United States after completing his degree rather than return home to Russia and dispense his illumination in that Putinite Paradise. But really, you can find out all you really need to know about him with a simple Google search that will tell you he's great pals with that loathsome reptile and Russia Today collaborator Lavelle.

He lists prior publication of his "analysis" in such forums as "Asia Times, Johnson Russia List, Korea Herald, Los Angeles Times, and Russia Profile." Not surprising to find a Russophile like this spewing out his dreck on the pages of Kremlin-controlled Russia Profile, we must say, and bragging about getting your stuff on the JRL and in the Korea Herald and Asia Times bespeaks a non-entity. Strangely, when we searched through his list of publications, we didn't find any entry for the Los Angeles Times. So we tooled over to the LAT's website and slugged the good Professor into their search engine. Turns out there was one piece eight years ago. Woo-woo.

The upshot is that he's a garden-variety, drumbeat Russophile, telling us how Vladimir Putin is oh-so reasonable, really he is, and you've just got to give him a chance and get to know him, really you do, and then everything will be just fine.

So let's review his "argument" point by point and help him look even more ridiculous than he already does.

You know he's a real weasel because, while lecturing us "russophobes" about the error of our ways, he never pauses for a single second to ask whether his own russophilia might be in any way negative -- nor does he ever ask what Russians might have done to justify foreign hostility.

You know he's not a scholar because he makes no attempt to define his key term, "russophobia" -- and indeed it's easy to question his scholarship merely because he chooses to use that term rather than a more appropriately scholarly one. It really makes him seem more like a Goebbelsian propagandist, doesn't it?

First he states: "U.S. politicians can hardly claim that they know a lot about Russia. Unable to even pronounce names of Russia's leading politicians, many in the U.S. establishment are nevertheless convinced of Russia's inherent propensity to violate its own citizens' rights and bully other nations." Hillary Clinton flubbed Medvedev's name once. And based on this, this so-called "political scientist" concludes that no American leader can pronounce any Russian bigwig's name. See, this is why this guy is working at a place like SFSU. Basically, he begins his call for the absence of personalized attacks on Russians with a personal attack on Americans. And he finishes with one too: "Winston Churchill once commented that U.S. politicians 'always do the right thing in the end. They just like to exhaust all the alternatives first.' If this indeed is the case, we will not see a framework for meaningful cooperation with Russia any time soon." In other words, we're a nation of morons. Thank goodness we have an enlightened Russian among us to educate us.

Nice, huh? Think he commented on how much Putin and Medvedev really know about the United States? Think again. Think he asked how many American associate professors are on staff at Russian state universities, teaching Russians about politics? Dream on.

Next, he writes:

The attacks on Putin and President-elect Dmitry Medvedev are widely supported in mainstream U.S. media. This demagoguery also extends to scholarly publications, such as "The New Cold War" by Edward Lucas, who claims that "Russia's vengeful, xenophobic and ruthless rulers have turned the sick man of Europe into a menacing bully." Just published, the book is getting a lot of publicity and is treated as a serious treatise by influential organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations.

Gosh. Sounds like he's a bit jealous of Edward's "publicity," doesn't it? The great reviews Edward has received around the world probably don't do much for his ego, either. We put it to you, dear reader, that no reasonable person can seriously question the application of the adjectives "xenophobic" or "ruthless" or "vengeful" to Vladimir Putin, and that this slanderous attack on Edward should disqualify this nasty little troll from employment at any American university. And let us ask you, dear reader: If the Kremlin had written this paragraph, how would it have been different? Should we really be trusting this Russian to tell us how to safeguard our security against Russia? Would that be wise?

Then there's this:

Despite the anti-Russia rhetoric, many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter in the global arena. Instead, they are preoccupied with other international issues, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But Russia should matter, particularly in a world of new security threats and growing energy competition. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia tells us volumes about the U.S. unpreparedness for the central challenges of the 21st century.

The signal hallmark of the Russophile yahoo is that he can't make up his mind. Which is it, "professor"? Is Russia being ignored, or hated? Only very little children try to have it both ways. Scholars are supposed to be able to make up their minds. This guy must be murder in an ice cream shop.

Then he really goes of into the stratosphere:

Russophobia's revival is indicative of the fear shared by some U.S. and European politicians that their grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites may not succeed if Russia's economic and political recovery continues.

So get this: It's crazy "russophobia" to believe that Russia is trying to use energy as a weapon, notwithstanding the fact that that the country is governed by a proud career KGB spy. But it's perfectly scientific to believe that the U.S. and Europe are doing so. Logic of this kind really makes you stop and question your russophobia, doesn't it?

Here's the sine qua non:

One Russophobic group, exemplified by McCain, includes military hawks or advocates of U.S. hegemony who fought the Cold War not to contain the Soviet enemy but to destroy it by all means available. The second group is made up of "liberal hawks" who have gotten comfortable with the weakened and submissive Russia of the 1990s. They have an agenda of promoting U.S.-style democracy and market economy. The fact that the Soviet threat no longer exists has only strengthened their sense of superiority.

He's saying that both liberals and conservatives agree that Russia is a threat to Western security and values -- and both of them are crazy, and we should listen to the KGB spy who runs Russia, because he's right about everything and would never lie to us.

They smoke some pretty impressive wacky weed out there in Frisco, don't they now?

He tells us that if Eastern Europe is worried about Russian aggression, it is insane -- but if Russia is worried about Western European aggression, it is only expressing rational and legitimate concern.

Then, you have to hand it to him, he finishes with a flourish:

Russophobia is not in U.S. national interests and is not supported by the American public. Various polls demonstrate that Americans do not agree with the assessment that Russia is a threat to the United States' values and interests. A recent BBC World Service poll revealed, for example, that 45 percent of Americans have a mainly positive attitude regarding Russia's influence in the world, compared with 36 percent who have a mainly negative attitude.

He seems to have forgotten that he started out by condemning Americans for their ignorance about Russia, so it's hardly possibly now to tout their informed approval of Russia. But this kind of ridiculous, embarrassing duplicity and hypocrisy has never stopped the Soviet propagandist in the past, so no reason to start being reasonable or consistent now.

Citing the poll is a classic example of the type of mendacity that characterizes these neo-Soviet propagandists, it's the mother of all straw-man arguments. If polls showed that 100% of Americans were hostile to Russia, then he would simply say that they must be reeducated. His implication that if a majority of Americans supported a crackdown against Russia then he would to is so dishonest that it's unworthy of any accredited American university to employ such a person.

And his dishonesty doesn't end there. That same poll showed that "views of Russia are predominantly negative in all European countries polled except Britain." The "professor" ignores this. More than a third of Americans had a "mainly negative" view of Russia, a figure that had not changed from the prior poll. The "professor" ignores this too. And most of all, he ignores the fact that the poll showed a majority of Russians had a strongly negative view of the United States, while only a tiny fraction were positive -- yet he's asking the U. S. to make conciliatory gestures towards this nation by which it is despised, asking us to trust him that if we do Russia won't take advantage but will simply stop hating us. That's the strategy Chamberlain urged in dealing with Hitler.

The good "professor" then complains that "thousands of reports in the mainstream U.S. media implicate the Kremlin and Putin personally in murdering opposition journalists and defected spies. Only a handful of reports in less prominent outlets question such interpretations." The only conclusion this "scientist" can reach is that the small group is obviously right and the large group is obviously wrong. He ignores the fact that it's not only the media that has blamed Putin for the Litvinenko killing, but Scotland Yard. Britain has indicted a man who is accused of being a Kremlin operative, and of using a rare radioactive poison made in Russia to commit the murder -- and Russia has not only refused to extradite that killer but has elected him into the Duma.

The "professor" forgets to tell anyone about any of that. Kind of makes you wonder what else he might be forgetting to mention in his classrooms.

Throughout this entire screed, not one single word about any mistake Russia might possibly have made in any of its policies during Putin's term in office. Not a word about Russia buzzing the U.S and Britain with strategic bombers though neither is doing the same to Russia. Not a peep about Russia's barbaric attempts to interfere in the domestic politics of Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia. Not a single syllable about the recent statement by a Russian general that Russia wouldn't hesitate to be the first to use nuclear weapons in battle. Not so much as a phrase about Russia's jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, drafting of Oleg Kozlovsky, exile of Natalya Morar.

This scary little bald weirdo sits in his comfy repose in San Francisco, far from any of Russia's risks, and lectures us on how to conduct our foreign policy with a country whose security is obviously far more important to him than ours. Care to take a guess how many such persons are employed by Russian universities?

Yup, the number is the same as this maniac's IQ.

FOOTNOTE: We did something we almost never do in cases like this, namely we wrote to Professor Tsyganokov and asked him to respond to some of our concerns. We specifically asked him to defend what we view as his straw-man argument regarding the opinion poll, and we asked whether he'd ever written anything in the Russian press calling on his countrymen to be more reasonable towards America. We also asked whether he could refer us to an American with "associate professor" status at Russian state university who was teaching Russians about politics. His response? Total silence. This is what happens when you try to go the extra mile with a russophile.

FOOTNOTE: Scraps of Moscow rips this idiot several new ones as well. Nice work there, Lindy!

On Monday evening, visitors to the Moscow Times newspaper's website got a rather unpleasant shock. Not only did they discover what appeared to be a truly godawful makeover (all the color was gone, and opinion pieces were displayed without the author's name visible, much less a synopsis as used to be the case -- the whole thing was gone by Tuesday morning, thank heavens), but mixed in with the news stories at the top of the page, without being marked as opinion, was a propaganda diatribe from the loathsome little maggot Peter Lavelle, one of the few Westerners with so little morality that he joined the staff of the Kremlin's contemptible propaganda campaign known as Russia Today. Thankfully, that feature too was gone by Tuesday morning, and Lavelle's outrageous screed was by then properly marked as op-ed.

But in what we consider a gross lapse, the Moscow Times failed to identify "Russia Today" as being a state-operated propaganda entity -- leaving lay readers clueless as to his (and its) deep-seated biases. As longtime readers and admirers of the paper, we can't remember having been more disappointed to see something in the paper's pages. It's like coming across a rodent dropping in your nice bowl of Raisin Bran.

The MT routinely gives voice to the psychopathic Russophile set, and often one can make the argument that they are performing a useful service, giving us a window into how these nasty pieces of filth "think" and how they plan to attack us. Letting them embarrass themselves, in some cases, can be said to be a more effective way of defeating their argument than any actual opposition argument could ever be.

But the MT degrades itself by publishing Mr. Lavelle's malignant flatulence (search him out in our pages if you want to know the full scope of the odious outrage he represents), and to do so without a a clear warning of who and what he is most unfortunate. Let's take a little spin through the "points" (numbered and in italics) he claims to be making and you can gape at the carnage for yourself as we refute them (in boldface).


At the outset, we should make note of the reason for Mr. Lavelle's interest in writing at this time. The Kremlin has dispatched its propaganda minions because of the picture above, which shows U.S. President Bush in Kiev on Tuesday warmly greeting Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko, whose face is disfigured after surviving a Kremlin assassination attempt via Dioxin poisoning. The American leader proclaimed unequivocally to his Ukrainian counterpart: "Your nation has made a bold decision and the United States strongly supports your request. In Bucharest this week, I will continue to make America's position clear: we support MAP for Ukraine and Georgia. My stop here should be a clear signal to everybody that I mean what I say: It's in our interest for Ukraine to join."

As the brilliant Anders Aslund notes in a column we publish below, the Kremlin's foreign policy has been a total failure on every front, and Putin is just now waking up from his bender to realize that Russia stands utterly alone (Aslund notes that Putin recently compared the United States of America to Nazi Germany). But Ukraine moving into NATO is surely Putin's lowest moment ever. It's a catastrophic failure for the Putin regime, and not even his greatest fans can deny that. They thought the American president was a patsy, and they thought the world was trembling before Russia's "resurgent" might. Instead, it's clear that Bush has finally been listening closely to the crazy, unhinged rhetoric that has been flying out of Putin's mouth recently, and taken the necessary countermeasures.

Those with weak stomachs, turn away now. Here comes the Kremlin's frenzied, desperate "answer" to Bush.

(1) Bush may want to make a deal with Putin over missile defense, a deal that could be "the single foreign policy success of Bush's presidency." (2) Bush's " neocon handlers" have no desire whatsoever for a deal with Putin, they just want to get rejection so they can push forward regardless of his wishes but with convenient cover.

So, in other words, Mr. Lavelle has no idea why Bush is coming to see Mr. Putin. Don't forget about this, because it's important when you get to point #8 below. How can drivel like this possibly makes its way into the pages of a respectable newspaper?

(3) "Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. Bush has since been ridiculed as naive for making the statement, but maybe his words were a kind gesture of pity to the leader of a country on its knees."

So, in other words, Mr. Lavelle has no idea what Bush's attitude towards Mr. Putin is. You only see this kind of psychotically unhinged inconsistency from those who are not being edited because truth has no significance in their activities (and, of course, from very young and mindless children). Essentially, those who produce Russia Today know that nobody in the West is going to fall for this load of crap, so they just churn out whatever they can to make their taskmasters happy -- just like in Soviet times. What else would explain their hiring a totally uncredentialed and pathetic loser like Lavelle instead of somebody who actually knows something?

(4) "Just eight years ago, Russia was a country that did not matter anymore. The former superpower was broke, in chaos and almost absent on the international scene. It did not take much time for Putin and Russia to show Bush and the world that the Kremlin was not interested in pity, hand-outs or being Washington's junior partner."

Yes, by all means, no need for any handouts to Russia's male population, which lives nearly 20 fewer years than their American counterparts. Russia is in the top 25 world nations for mortality and outside the top 100 for male adult lifespan. Its citizens work for a pathetic average hourly wage of $4 and are facing a massive AIDS crisis. Its per capita purchasing power parity GDP is not in the world's top 50. And yet it doesn't want or need anyone's help. Rather, it feels it has a right to be treated as an equal -- even though it doesn't treat nations like Georgia or Ukraine that way.

(5) Today Russia is back on its feet. Its foreign policy interests are legitimate, and the Kremlin will go to great lengths to defend them. Any other country in the same position would do the same. This is why the West today simply doesn't "get Russia" and is often intensely negative toward Putin.

Back on its feet? The only nations of the world that Russia can count as friends are pariahs like Venzuela, Iran and Syria. Russia will go to great lengths to defend Iran? Yes, we know all about what General Yuri Baluyevsky said about not hesitating to be the first to use nuclear weapons in battle. And apparently, Mr. Lavelle is pleased about that. It's apparently "legitimate" to send money and guns to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, as Russia is doing, in his view.

Is this blathering dolt really the best the Kremlin can come up with? If so, that's probably the most damning evidence imaginable of its total failure.

(a) What annoys most Russians is how the West -- both the politicians and the media -- deny that Russia has it own foreign policy interests. What goes on in Russia's backyard obviously concerns the Kremlin. Former Soviet republics like Georgia and Ukraine wish to move closer to Western institutions. That is fine. But NATO's continued desire to expand is a legitimate Kremlin concern. Any country in Russia's position, watching a military alliance move closer to its borders, would be worried.

Stalin had "foreign policy interests." So did Hitler. Apparently, Mr. Lavelle feels that Russia was obligated to respect and recognize Hitler's "foreign policy interests" just like Neville Chamberlain and Josef Stalin did, apparently he feels Stalin's pact with Hitler was a good idea. Do you notice how he doesn't say one single word of criticism regarding the possibility that Georgia and Ukraine may have "legitimate" security concerns about Russia that Putin is flouting or ignoring, concerns which push them predictably towards NATO? Is he really saying that Russia's concerns about NATO are legitimate but Georgia and Ukraine's concerns about Russia are not? Can he be that fully neo-Soviet? You better believe he can. And that, of course, is why Russia Today hired this vicious freak.

(b) And what about Washington's missile-defense system for Eastern Europe? Once in place, this security gambit will pose a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent. Because of this, the Kremlin has no choice but to respond to the plan with a large dose of skepticism. I sense, however, that the Kremlin is open to a deal that will safeguard its security.

There is only one way a "missile defense system" can be a threat to Russia, and that's if Russia is planning to fire missiles at the countries it protects. Apparently, Mr. Lavelle is confirming Russia has such plans, and demanding the right to proceed with them unimpeded. Those are the words of a true psychopath.

(6) Today, the United States has a long and serious list of complaints about Russia, perhaps topped with its concerns that the Kremlin might use energy as a political weapon. This notion is simply ridiculous. Russia and its energy companies merely want to be paid world prices for energy. Period. Ukraine and Belarus are not victims of Kremlin bullying. It is these two countries, not Russia, that serve as the barriers that must be overcome before Russia and its energy customers can attain energy security. Furthermore, Russia's energy resources are its own. The state alone will decide how foreign companies profit from its natural resource endowment. This applies to companies including Shell and BP and their trials and tribulations in Russia's oil and gas patches.

So let's see if we understand. Russia's concerns about America are "legitimate" but America's concerns about Russia are "ridiculous." Have we got that right? And it's the Americans who fail to treat Russia with respect, correct?

This man is a maniac!

(7) The issue of Russia's democracy also is often used to lecture Russia. The fact is that Russia's democracy is very young. Only now are meaningful political parties coming into being. Campaigns and elections have a very long way to go, but make no mistake: Today's parties and elected officials reflect citizens' preferences like never before. Thoughtful commentary on democracy's progress is needed, but lecturing is not.

Well that sure seems strange. Didn't he say in point #4 that Russia wasn't interested in being a "junior partner"? Didn't he say Russia needed to be treated fully as an equal? So how come now when democracy is the issue, Russia is "young" and can't be expected to meet the West's advanced standards. In addition to that jaw-dropping hypocrisy, he's lying too (of course). Russia has held five presidential elections. By the time of America's fourth presidential election, John Adams and the first party of power had already lost power to rival Thomas Jefferson and his opposition party, and Adams stepped aside to let an entirely new type of ruler have power.

(8) Bush will be going to Sochi with his hat in his hand. Putin will not. Putin has already built a legacy -- that Russia counts in the world. Bush's eagerness to meet in Sochi speaks volumes about the state of Russian-U.S. relations and the myths that need to be dispelled.

Didn't he say in point #2 that Bush might be going as part of a neocon plot to set up Putin for a big fall? If he's so sure he's going with his hat in his hand, why didn't he say that in the first place. Stalin also "built a legacy." Many Russians are proud of it. Is Lavelle also tickled? Apparently so. This is the psychotic, dangerous rambling of an evil lunatic, helping Russia to do all it can to destroy his native land. He's a traitor, and the only thing that saves us from him is his own stupidity and incompetence. Russia attracts such people like a flame attracts moths in the dark of night.

Mr. Lavelle, as a Kremlin sycophant, doesn't face arrest or persecution like Russians such as Oleg Kozlovsky, so he has no idea what real life is like on Russia's mean streets -- nor does he have any idea how it feels to be a Georgian, Ukrainian or Estonian being menaced by Russian energy warfare, or an American or Briton being buzzed by Russian strategic bombers.

He's just plain treacherous and evil -- and that's the long and the short of him.