Russia is a fascinating country in that, no matter how extreme or bizarre you might find a given bit of breaking news to be today, there's always something that will happen tomorrow that will make today's events seem perfectly tepid by comparison.
So we might have learned yesterday that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is seeking to justify his insidious crackdown on human rights by comparing himself to Franklin Roosevelt, and been shocked by the news. After all, while it's true that FDR was a rat bastard who created race-based concentration camps, tried to subvert the Supreme Court, lied about his medical status and broke George Washington's time-honored tradition of a two-term presidency, it's equally true that each and every time FDR stood for election he did so in a hotly contested campaign against an organized party that had previously held power. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, has never done that. Moreover, FDR has been the target of scathing criticism from day one to the present time, and this is hardly the case in Russia (nor could it be, since the Kremlin has bought or killed every journalist who might write such criticism in mass circulation). And that's to say nothing of the seething contempt Russia shows for all things American -- that is, until Russia wants to justify something bad. Then, suddenly, America is a hallowed model.
But that was yesterday! What is all that amazing garbage compared to today's bulletin, as reported byReuters:
Russia plans to turn the tables on Western critics of its human rights record by setting up an organisation to monitor rights abuses in Europe and the United States, the man behind the project said on Friday. Anatoly Kucherena, a prominent lawyer and presidential appointee to an official council on human rights and civil society, said the organisation would have its headquarters either in Brussels or Germany. 'In recent years there has been a lot of criticism linked to human rights violations in Russia. But believe me, these things happen in other countries too,' Kucherena told reporters. "Imagine if Russia, or Russian human rights activists, were to prepare a corresponding report about, for example, the state of human rights in France? What would happen?" Kucherena has made a name for himself championing ordinary citizens against incompetent or corrupt bureaucrats. He is often shown on state-controlled television -- a sign he has a degree of Kremlin approval. He did not say how the organisation would be funded. "Of course there are problems with human rights in Russia," Kucherena said. "But for me personally, as Anatoly Kucherena, I really do not like it when information contained in these reports (by Western organisations on rights in Russia) ... has some kind of ideological subtext. To be honest, it is unpleasant when our country is ranked in 145th place in some index (of human rights) and it is not clear what methodology was used."
Can you imagine what New Yorkers would say if the manager of the New York Yankees, having just suffered a humiliating defeat, announced that his response was to appoint a commission that would investigate and publicize the failings of the Boston Red Sox, and further to explore whether inaccurate umpiring were not the real cause of the disaster? Can you imagine what would happen to the Yankees' fortunes if they were actually managed on that basis? Can you imagine what a judge would say to a murderer who claimed he couldn't be prosecuted because he wasn't the only one who committed murders or because not every murdered had been apprehended?
Note that Mr. Kucherena doesn't indicate he has any reason to believe Russia can do a better job monitoring human rights abuses in the U.S. than, say, Amnesty International, nor does he indicate any genuine concern for saving American human rights victims (that would be hard to believe, given Russian support for terrorist maniacs like those in Venezuela, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas). His reason for taking this action is that data keeps humiliating Russia and he wants to distract people's attention from it. Cut off from anything vaguely like real information about the West (that same West he says he's going to judge) by a Kremlin that has seized control of all Russia's wide-circulation media outlets and propagandized them, he (like most Russians) simply doesn't know how aggressively the West already polices and criticizes itself (take for instance the recent reports that British authorities are investigating a four-year-old child for racism).
Wouldn't it be appropriate, at the very least, to sponsor both an effort to accurately monitor the status of human rights in Russia as well as exposing the alleged failings of other countries? Or perhaps to voice some opposition to the ongoing efforts of the Kremlin to wipe out all such existing efforts?
Not, amazing as it seems, if you are a Russian it wouldn't.
All through the Soviet era we saw exactly this kind of "thinking." Everyone in the world knows Russia has serious problems with human rights, just as the USSR did, but instead of working to remove those problems Russia's response is to create as smokescreen, to claim that other countries have problems so Russia can ignore its own and to claim that data on Russian problems isn't perfect (the next thing you know they'll be inventing their own Nobel prize rather than learning how to do what it takes to win the real ones). The result of such an attitude can only be the absence of reform, the exacerbation of existing problems and the creation of new ones until, just as happened with the USSR, the country collapses.
To put it bluntly, Mr. Kucherena and his ilk are far more dangerous to Russia than any foreign "critic" could hope to be. Yet, he's lionized as a Russian hero while those who struggle for reform, like Anna Politkovskaya and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are either jailed or killed outright. Which leaves us with a country whose population is dwindling, whose male adult life span is less than 60 years, and whose average wage is less than $5 per hour.
source - http://publiuspundit.com/articles/2007/10/annals_of_neosoviet_selfdestru.php
So we might have learned yesterday that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is seeking to justify his insidious crackdown on human rights by comparing himself to Franklin Roosevelt, and been shocked by the news. After all, while it's true that FDR was a rat bastard who created race-based concentration camps, tried to subvert the Supreme Court, lied about his medical status and broke George Washington's time-honored tradition of a two-term presidency, it's equally true that each and every time FDR stood for election he did so in a hotly contested campaign against an organized party that had previously held power. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, has never done that. Moreover, FDR has been the target of scathing criticism from day one to the present time, and this is hardly the case in Russia (nor could it be, since the Kremlin has bought or killed every journalist who might write such criticism in mass circulation). And that's to say nothing of the seething contempt Russia shows for all things American -- that is, until Russia wants to justify something bad. Then, suddenly, America is a hallowed model.
But that was yesterday! What is all that amazing garbage compared to today's bulletin, as reported byReuters:
Russia plans to turn the tables on Western critics of its human rights record by setting up an organisation to monitor rights abuses in Europe and the United States, the man behind the project said on Friday. Anatoly Kucherena, a prominent lawyer and presidential appointee to an official council on human rights and civil society, said the organisation would have its headquarters either in Brussels or Germany. 'In recent years there has been a lot of criticism linked to human rights violations in Russia. But believe me, these things happen in other countries too,' Kucherena told reporters. "Imagine if Russia, or Russian human rights activists, were to prepare a corresponding report about, for example, the state of human rights in France? What would happen?" Kucherena has made a name for himself championing ordinary citizens against incompetent or corrupt bureaucrats. He is often shown on state-controlled television -- a sign he has a degree of Kremlin approval. He did not say how the organisation would be funded. "Of course there are problems with human rights in Russia," Kucherena said. "But for me personally, as Anatoly Kucherena, I really do not like it when information contained in these reports (by Western organisations on rights in Russia) ... has some kind of ideological subtext. To be honest, it is unpleasant when our country is ranked in 145th place in some index (of human rights) and it is not clear what methodology was used."
Can you imagine what New Yorkers would say if the manager of the New York Yankees, having just suffered a humiliating defeat, announced that his response was to appoint a commission that would investigate and publicize the failings of the Boston Red Sox, and further to explore whether inaccurate umpiring were not the real cause of the disaster? Can you imagine what would happen to the Yankees' fortunes if they were actually managed on that basis? Can you imagine what a judge would say to a murderer who claimed he couldn't be prosecuted because he wasn't the only one who committed murders or because not every murdered had been apprehended?
Note that Mr. Kucherena doesn't indicate he has any reason to believe Russia can do a better job monitoring human rights abuses in the U.S. than, say, Amnesty International, nor does he indicate any genuine concern for saving American human rights victims (that would be hard to believe, given Russian support for terrorist maniacs like those in Venezuela, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas). His reason for taking this action is that data keeps humiliating Russia and he wants to distract people's attention from it. Cut off from anything vaguely like real information about the West (that same West he says he's going to judge) by a Kremlin that has seized control of all Russia's wide-circulation media outlets and propagandized them, he (like most Russians) simply doesn't know how aggressively the West already polices and criticizes itself (take for instance the recent reports that British authorities are investigating a four-year-old child for racism).
Wouldn't it be appropriate, at the very least, to sponsor both an effort to accurately monitor the status of human rights in Russia as well as exposing the alleged failings of other countries? Or perhaps to voice some opposition to the ongoing efforts of the Kremlin to wipe out all such existing efforts?
Not, amazing as it seems, if you are a Russian it wouldn't.
All through the Soviet era we saw exactly this kind of "thinking." Everyone in the world knows Russia has serious problems with human rights, just as the USSR did, but instead of working to remove those problems Russia's response is to create as smokescreen, to claim that other countries have problems so Russia can ignore its own and to claim that data on Russian problems isn't perfect (the next thing you know they'll be inventing their own Nobel prize rather than learning how to do what it takes to win the real ones). The result of such an attitude can only be the absence of reform, the exacerbation of existing problems and the creation of new ones until, just as happened with the USSR, the country collapses.
To put it bluntly, Mr. Kucherena and his ilk are far more dangerous to Russia than any foreign "critic" could hope to be. Yet, he's lionized as a Russian hero while those who struggle for reform, like Anna Politkovskaya and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are either jailed or killed outright. Which leaves us with a country whose population is dwindling, whose male adult life span is less than 60 years, and whose average wage is less than $5 per hour.
source - http://publiuspundit.com/articles/2007/10/annals_of_neosoviet_selfdestru.php
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