Posted on 01/28/2011 7:15:13 AM PST by struwwelpeter
The leader of the United Civil Front, Garry Kasparov, held a meeting at the U.S. Congress on introducing visa sanctions against senior Russian officials responsible for violations of civil rights and freedoms, and complicity in corruption. According to the Vladimir Bukovsky press center, the topic of personal sanctions was discussed in a meeting of Kasparov with U.S. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman and Congressman James McGovern. The negotiations also involved a member of the Federal Political Council from the Solidarity party, Vladimir Kara-Murza.
In November 2010, a proposal to ban entry into the U.S. of officials involved in violations of Russia’s international obligations on democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, was made by Solidarity bureau member Boris Nemtsov. He urged Michael McFaul, National Security Council secretary for Russian affairs, to leave a joint Russian-American commission on the issues of civic organizations. Speaking before Congress, Nemtsov suggested that Vladislav Surkov, first deputy chief of the Russian presidential administration and co-chairman on of the commission on the Russian side, be named in the bill concerning a ban on entry into the U.S. by Russian officials and law enforcement officials on the so-called ‘Magnitsky list’. According to Nemtsov, McFaul supports this idea.
“I think that Surkov should be the first to be denied entry into the West,” said Nemtsov. “He is responsible for establishing censorship in the country, he is responsible for turning Russian elections into an absolute farce, he created and funds extremist pro-Kremlin youth organizations that hold hate marches about downtown Moscow, while representing our human rights activists and opposition members as Nazi criminals.”
Nemtsov also proposed a pact in support of democracy in Russia, the essence of which would be to impose sanctions not against the country, but against certain individuals. “America is used to putting sanctions against countries, but a regime of sanctions against certain officials has not yet been done,” he said.
In early January, Senators McCain and Lieberman issued a joint statement calling the December 31st arrest of Nemtsov at an opposition rally: “shameful and outrageous.” Congressman McGovern is the co-chairman of the House of Representatives Human Rights Commission, and co-author of a bill of visa sanctions against Russian officials involved in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
A Galaxy without Putin
Boris Nemtsov is the most creative member of the Russian opposition. Even while climbing Mt. Elbrus, he never forgot his civic duty, and hung up there the orange Solidarity flag with the current slogan: ‘Russia without Putin’. The Demon and Queen Tamara received the necessary information, and at her first meeting with V.V.P. (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin - ed), as in the Lermontov play, Tamara will toss her dear guest in the river Terek and the demon will rise from the abyss, point at Putin and say: “He’s mine!” Here the Creator will not object, and the angels will certainly not say: “He was not created for the world, and the world was not created for him!” Putin, in contrast to Tamara, is neither a queen nor a princess, and he will drop into the abyss as he should. He will walk around down there with his ‘Stasi’ and KGBull friends, jumping from one frying pan into another. Boris Nemtsov is planning a new mountain-climbing expedition, this one to Kilimanjaro. I hope that he will plant a flag there with the text: ‘Africa without Putin’, and at his next windsurfing tournament raise a sail with the logo: ‘Atlantic without Putin’. And so, gradually, following Boris Nemtsov’s example, lovers of democracy will leave their tracks on the dusty paths of our planet: ‘Asia without Putin’, ‘Australia without Putin’, ‘Arctic without Putin’, ‘Caucasus without Putin’, ‘Antarctic without Putin’, ‘Europe without Putin’, ‘Atlantis without Putin’, ‘Shangri-La without Putin’. I will be in Israel in February, and so somewhere in Jerusalem I will glue up this sign: ‘Holy Land without Putin’.
Even without the help of high-tech, we can rid ourselves of Putin as a class. Unable to set foot anywhere, he will have to set up on Mars his next ‘vertical’ (the term for Putin’s top-down system of a presidential appointments of governors and other normally elected officials - ed). The benefit for him is that there is less gravity, unless, of course, the Martians are the same dummies as Russians. But for now, after providing a well-deserved ending to Luzhkov, Boris Nemtsov is now engaged in a screen adaptation of his latest best seller: ‘Putin, 2000-2010, the end result’. By the way, the depressing finale to these results needs to be shared between Putin and Medvedev. In being put in Nemtsov’s book, Medvedev will finally have gotten into big literature without any chance of getting a Booker prize.
In Washington, the tribune of our people, Nemtsov, has been cooperating with Reagan’s heir, an honest anti-Soviet and anti-communist who fought in Vietnam and is the leading Republican: Senator John McCain. McCain would have become President of the United States, had not Obama been younger, more energetic, more athletic, and more interesting, and had not Obama not been an African-American who could give America the opportunity to forever wash away the stigma of apartheid. Valiant McCain, in contrast to the indifference Barack Obama shows towards our dissidents’ problems, is ready to help Nemtsov, and us, by changing the Jackson-Vanik amendment (there were such people in those days!) into a new ‘Protection of Democracy in Russia Act’. There already is a ‘Protection of Freedom Act’, under which the US cannot allow in Zyuganov, Anpilov, Limonov, Udaltsov, Kim Jong Il, the Chinese ‘comrades’, and Fidel and Raul Castro, but it discriminates in that it really only to punishes communist regimes. Our spy gangsters (by this I mean the power elite of the Russian Federation), alas, are not covered by the Act.
But Nemtsov has a brilliant and simple plan: to not allow our little piggies to come to the western table. Let them champ from the swill trough alongside their pets: Hugo Chavez, Lukashenko, Ahmadinejad, and the like. A list has been compiled, headed by Putin and Surkov and as opposed to the ‘Pierre Cardin list’ it will be the ‘Nemtsov list’. Perhaps the little piggies, when not admitted to the European table, will act less like pigs in their homeland? Perhaps they will release Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, release other political prisoners, withdraw their troops from Transdnistria, Abkhazia, and the Tskhinvali region (of South Ossetia), and agree to turn their back on Iran, Cuba, and China, and quit bothering the Ukraine and the Baltic states? The wonderful Nemtsov-McCain project, however, needs to be improved and supplemented in its amendments.
Added to the list should by Robin, or whoever he is, or his younger brother. If he is not responsible for anything, then let him resign, but if he is Putin’s ‘roof’ (protection - ed), then he needs to assume responsibility for his ‘roofing’ (protection racket - ed). Do not allow ruling elites #1, #2, #3, on up to #500 into Europe. If the U.S. adopts Nemtsov’s Act, then maybe the EU will follow America’s example. There is, however, a better option: do not repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment, but adopt the Protection of Democracy in Russia Act. Think about it, Jackson and Vanik were good fellows - they wanted to punish the USSR for its sins. Its refusal to let the Jews leave was just one of many crimes. They did not let anybody leave - neither Russians nor Tartars nor Bashkirs. There were many reasons to punish the USSR: Afghanistan... Czechoslovakia... the Evil Empire... the Gulag... the occupation of Eastern Europe... Punitive psychiatry... Political prisoners... Sakharov’s exile... the South Korean airliner... not even the Internet is big enough to enumerate it all.
But today’s Russia, the Russia of bandits in uniform from the Lubyanka, is it really innocent? To repeal the amendment would be a sign of encouragement. Now Jews and any other Russian citizens are free to leave the country, but this all was done by Yeltsin, and Putin and Medvedev should not be rewarded for it. Add to the list all the governors (including Nikita Beliy, so that his betrayal of his liberal comrades and the surrender of the Right Wing Union to the authorities does not go unpunished). The governors support the regime. Add all the generals, prosecutors and judges who convicted Yukos and demonstrators. Add all members of United Russia party, the LDPR, and the Communist Party of Russia. Add all members of the Russian Duma and the Federation Council, and all top officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As far as the people who remained silent and voted for Putin, Medvedev, and United Russia, I would punish them by exile to a prison Gulag (i.e.: Russia). One must answer for cowardice, meanness, and slavery.
It was not for no reason that Andrei Sakharov called on the United States and Canada not to sell wheat to the USSR. It was in order to kill a totalitarian regime “with the gaunt hand of famine” (which is what one clever British lord said early in the Bolshevik era, but no one would listen). Soviets have no business in Spanish resorts. Let them bathe in Sochi. Cancel entry visas and do not give these to anyone without a permission slip from the democratic opposition. This permission slip should state that the applicant has participated in rallies and signed petitions with the statement: “Putin resign!” and donated money to the People’s Freedom Party, the Helsinki Group, or to Solidarity projects. Make them bring their receipts to the consulate.
And this, to you, is my mid-winter fairy tale.
By Valeria Novodvorskaya, in ‘Grani.ru’
December 14th, 2010
http://www.grani.ru/opinion/novodvorskaya/m.184426.html
ping
How ‘Steel’ exposed itself
This unappetizing story was hotly discussed for a short while during the first days of the New Year, but it has since been forgotten, especially amid the infernal events of these last few days. Yes, and I would not have thought about it myself had I not come across this alleged piece of news on the Internet only yesterday: “Unknown entities are trying to bribe former cellmates of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov to say on camera that he was raped behind bars. Nemtsov himself wrote earlier that activists of the pro-Kremlin youth movement were pasting posters around Moscow, stating that the opposition leader was subjected to sexual violence while under arrest after a protest rally on January (sic) 31st.” (He was arrested on December 31st – ed.)
And so, the story goes on.
On the one hand, I did not really want to believe this. You must agree that this is already too much, but on the other hand my civic experiences have convinced me that there is no calumny that the people responsible for this calumny are not capable of, and all the more so by the fact that they do not even try to hide it, but make it almost a declaration, the main point and direction of their social behavior.
This story, and others, as well as jokes and rhymes in a similar vein, are known to be the creation of a group of young hooligans who proudly refer to themselves as ‘The Steel Movement’. This group of late, and many similar fungi, has sprouted due to our poor ecology, which, though favorable to their growth, is nonetheless hazardous to public health.
So, tell me: what can be funnier and more damning than to ‘finger’ a man sent to jail for no reason whatsoever as a jail cell ‘rooster’? (Russian underworld slang for the target of homosexual rape, supposedly from the screams of the victim - ed.) Nothing could be funnier. You just laugh yourself silly.
Psychologically this is understandable. Every petty schmuck secretly dreams, or at least virtually, or at least in their own words, or at least in their fevered pubescent imaginations, or at least through their clumsy slander, of ‘roostering’ some old guy to whose belly button they cannot even reach, physically or intellectually. So, guys, how was it?
Libel is a vile thing in and of itself. Defamation of a person in jail is a double abomination, and it does not even deserve discussion, in my opinion. But what is really interesting is what this slander signifies.
What sort of society do they live in? It is, perhaps, a society much different from the one in which you and I live. It is a society of terminally immature adolescents, where rank and unquestionable authority is afforded to a baseball cap to one side of the head and a gold tooth, a penknife in the pocket, and a trip to jail for holding up a vegetable stand. It is a society, saturated, like a well-worn doormat, with the morality of a prison thug.
Can one imagine a villain in any normal, adult society who wished to slander someone like this? Could one even dream of something like this? Not even in a nightmare, because a person being subjected to violence cannot but summon anything but public sympathy, while a rapist cannot cause anything but anger and disgust. In a healthy society such a bastard would not even be able to dream up something like this, and even if he were not recognized for valor, he would certainly not be viewed with understanding. In a different society he would, for example, attribute racist remarks to his enemy, or, if his enemy were a professor at a university, he would accuse him of touching some co-ed’s knee. Or he would claim that his enemy secretly takes a strap to his infant stepson, or, at the very worst, the villain would inform the public that he saw his enemy taunting a kangaroo at the zoo.
I cannot say, however, that in this situation “opposition leader Boris Nemtsov” stayed above the fray, because to do so he would not have responded with the popular genre of “you’re a ‘rooster’ yourself.” He should not have done that, in my opinion. One should never stoop to their level.
By the way, in the same article that I quoted at the beginning, they also report that Nemtsov’s cellmates refused the tempting offer. So you see, even in the ‘clink’ you can find decent people. You waste your time by ‘crowing’ (pardon my unintended pun), so remember: no matter how tough a ‘roof’ (underworld jargon for protection) Yakemenko (founder of the pro-Kremlin ‘Nashi’ youth movement – ed) provides for you, your only place is under a prison cot.
By Lev Rubinstein, in ‘Grani.ru’, 26.01.2011
http://www.grani.ru/Culture/essay/rubinstein/m.185650.html
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