1. Featured Story(s)

I don't know what Sean Guillory looks like walking out of a pond in wet clothes, but he's been absolutely on fire lately, with not one, but two must-read articles in blog-o-land.  The first is a response to Human Rights Watch's recent annual report.  HRW takes to task despotic regimes masquerading as democracies mucking up the world and the supposedly more legitimate democracies enabling them.  I take exceptional issue with the idea that the US is one of the "legitimate" democracies, but do indeed savor his conclusion:

From "The Conundrum of Democracy":

While HRW denounces the division between words and deeds, I have to ask at what point does the masquerade become democracy's true face?  It's interesting that after 200 years, what was once the cry of the dispossessed, the fuel of social revolution, and the hallmark of liberation has become the very means to deny all of these.  At the point when democracy has become universal has it begun to serve as its own contradiction (It is also interesting to note that this moment of contradiction has occurred at the same time capitalism has become universal).  If this is the case, then perhaps the solution to HRW's conundrum (democracy in form but not in content) is to abandon it altogether and promote a new ideology of liberation, human rights, and freedom.

You know, I do believe I agree!  

Also, to his credit, he says that the inclusion of Putin in HRW's list of despotic regimes is a bit of "hyperbole" which "lessens their import."  You know, I agree with that too!

What a smart fellow.

But wait, there's more.  In a recent eXile coup, he takes on Michael McFaul, bizarro revisionist history, and capitalism all in one well-aimed punch.  McFaul is notorious for a recent editorial, The myth of Putin's success, about which I moaned here earlier, before I learned to embrace irresponsible journalism as a coping mechanism.  Sean's not had this little revelation (Let's hope no one he knows has to have brain surgery anytime soon; this is valuable work.) and has taken it upon himself to set the record straight.  Oh, and to get all Marxist on McFaul's ass.  Sweet.

From "The Myth of the Democratic Model":

Nice prose, if you're wondering what that should look like:

Interestingly, while McFaul rejects the Putinistas' narrative as "spurious," his rebuff is based on an equally spurious fiction that hackademics like himself have been propagating for years. What fiction would that be? That in the 1990s Russia was a democracy or at least in the process of "transitioning" to it. In this nautical tale, Captain Boris Yeltsin stood at the helm of Steamboat Russia. This great anticommunist democrat thrust his mighty vessel hard to starboard to avoid the ominous hardline Communist reefs. He then swung hard to port to circumvent the ultra-nationalist rocks. Steadfast and true, Cpt. Boris held the helm steady, allowing Russia to transverse the great Seas of Transition to the liberal democratic promise land. The waves of shock therapy, privatization, and neoliberalization that battered Russia's bow were merely the inevitable troubled waters that every great ship has to confront in its historical journey. But then came Putin. He ruined everything. Putin took the helm from a drunken, blurry eyed Yeltsin and steered Steamboat Russia right into the rocky banks of autocracy just as it about to reach the Cape of Freedom. And that is where Russia now lays. Hopelessly shipwrecked on the jagged banks of history. This is basically the narrative that allows McFaul to conclude that while Yeltsin was "far from a perfect democrat," he nonetheless governed a system that was "unquestionably more democratic than the Russian regime today." What a whale of a tale. All that is missing in this comedy is for someone to play Gilligan.

hehehe...

The smackdown:

... this is the dirty little secret that shock-therapy peddlers like McFaul will never admit: post-Soviet Russia proves once again that free-market capitalism thrives in authoritarian regimes. In fact, as Naomi Klein reminds us in her masterful Shock Doctrine, capitalism, and in particular its extreme neoliberal variant, always requires force. That force can come in many forms--the limiting of protest, the use of detention, imprisonment and torture, silencing journalists, biometric surveillance, the unleashing of the military and other security organs on its own or other populations, extremist laws, and the removal of habeas corpus. It is no irony of history that even the most so-called liberal democratic states use many of these mechanisms to strengthen and maintain elite power (see under "Georgia" for the latest example). They are built right into their system of class domination.

I doubt I'm going to hear that recycled on NPR's Morning Edition anytime soon.  Or ever.

Well, you know I'm not quite as harsh on Putin as Mr. Guillory.  I'm a bit of a contradiction, a communist girl with a weakness for Russian capitalists.  Especially the cute ones.  So for a more Putin-friendly smackdown of McFaul (Wow, he's getting it from all sides!  Marxists and Republicans have united against his complete and utter lack of reason!), I turn to some guy named Ivanov with a blog.  For the sake of space, I won't post the whole ongoing debate over there, but will give you a synopsis.  It goes something like this:

"So, if you don't think Putin's authoritarian policies are responsible for Russia's success, what non-authoritarian policies do you think are responsible for it?  Maybe, it's their sovereign democracy."  "There is no democracy there."  "Well something has to be working.  If it's not his non-democratic policies, it's his democratic policies, right, logically?"  "You're cheating, putting words into my mouth!"  "Why can't you just admit they are doing something right?!!!"

It's pretty entertaining stuff.  And he kinda has a point.

2.  Since people apparently come to ET to read about American politics.

From Sovok of the Week:

These are sad and gloomy days at "Sovok of the Week." First of all, our funds are gone thanks to the crashing US stock market; our one remaining share of GAZPROM will not make much difference at this point. Secondly, I personally am dismayed by the recent resurgence of Barak Obama, a demagogue who sounds like a Komsomol leader from 1984. His "Yes We Can" campaign smacks of some Soviet railroad-building hysteria where "hope" would propel us to the new heights of achievements, unity, solidarity, and understanding. As my hero Bill Clinton said, "Give me a break."

I voted for Hillary, but actually, I could get behind some railroad-building hysteria here...  

3.  "Burn baby burn, Disco inferno..."

The uber-elitny Moscow nightclub, The Diaghilev Project, notorious for it's $1000+ cover charges and discriminating "face-control" (a local phenom best described as, like, if the girls in "Heathers" were bouncers...) and recently obsessed over by Time Magazine in the Putin issue, has ... burned down.

From Russia Blog:

The chief "face-controller" named "Pasha-Face-Control" was well-known in Moscow, and several techno songs were devoted to him. The club opened in 2006, and has maintained its elite level on par with two other premium clubs, Opera and Rai (Heaven). Clubs are known to lose their prestige after two years of hype, and as one of the co-owners of the club said in his interview to a Russian news channel "this was a beautiful way to go". Many poems and articles on the Russian web are devoted to the club. Women who used to visit the club have been crying since the night of the fire. Three hundred club employees lost their jobs.

According to the website, English Russia, here's what happened:

The firemen showed up to put out the fire, and ... (drum roll) the "face-control" turned them away!  I guess you can take the people out of 70 years of mindless Soviet bureaucracy, but you can't take 70 years of mindless Soviet bureaucracy out of the people.  Now that he's spiffed up the military garb, perhaps Putin's next Project Runway challenge should be to give the civil servants some more bling.

4. Insane-icheskii!

Greatest living Russian writer at work:

Russians are a depressive tribe because of centuries they were living in shadows of moisty forests. Russians are as unhappy with alcohol as Finns are.

So, forget about Slavs. When you will adopt my vision of Russian history, and of Russians, you will understand who Russians are.

I am the best Russian writer, but I am forced to confess that I hate Russian language. Russian words are painfully long, they remind me of naked slimy worms. You know, those pink awful creatures that you can see on some hot summer night on path you walk. Worms get out of soil to copulate under the moonlight. Russian words are copulating on my table every day and night. I am looking at them with hate and I am screaming. I am gnashing my teeth. Why should put "icheskaya" to the end of "social" in "Social Republic?" Seven letters I am adding for what fuck? Fucking "icheskaya!" Hysterical, hystericheskii laugh goes out of me when I am imaging those fucking Urgo-Finns in their shadowy forests. They move in slow motion, they take their time. Why wasn't I born in a clear lucid language dealing in "Achtung!" and "Shnell?" And when I think that Russians are only a handful of 142 million readers, it's really depressing for a writer.

Eddie.  "Moisty forests?"  You don't stress out about using the English language correctly, so why worry about "icheskaya?"  Look, I know you have some deep loathing for your fellow countrymen, who just don't "get" you and who keep sending you to Siberia and all.  But think of the English speakers, your actual readers.  For us, "icheskaya" is the best thing that ever happened to the Russian language.  Whenever we don't know a word, we just think of the English equivalent and add "icheskaya" to the end, and voila, we're speaking Russian!   It's ochen helpfulicheskaya dlya nas... Of course, if you Russians or Finns or Slavs or whatever you are didn't keep borrowing words from our English language, you wouldn't need to worry so much about "icheskaya."  Just sayin'...

5.  Some things which have come to my attention.

~I like this photo:

I imagine he's thinking, "The Moscow fire department is doing a good job, yes, but they could use some more beautiful women in it.  Must tell Surkov to recruit some firefighter babes, and get them some sexy uniforms.  Also, if those American s.o.b.s build those effing missile shields I am personally going to kick their fatty asses.  Then I'm going to buy the entire American housing market and foreclose on the whole country.  Then I will tell the Russian people to adopt all of the poor little homeless American babies, and solve our demographic problems.  Heh.  When I'm done with them, they'll be wishing I'd only pointed nuclear weapons at them.  Hm. ... Beautiful young women in short skirts putting out fires.  That's brilliant.  I am brilliant."

Yes you are, sir.

~RT: Cracking the Myths: Vodka

Mark Ames, the Cracking the Myths series presenter, accomplishes the most health-threatening investigation ever. He tries to see for himself if the widespread opinion that Russians drink more than any other nation has something to do with reality. Some experiments he'll be conducting on his own person.

Of course.

~Kyle Keeton joins my "Rupert Wingfield-Hayes is a total tool" club.  

Maybe we should set up a Facebook page?

~The secret lives of badgers revealed!  

The BBC is really on a roll here.  First they were mad at Russians for speaking Russian.  (Hey, maybe they should hire Limonov!)  Now they are irked because they put some cameras down a badger hole and the badgers had the poor manners to "slobber" all over them.  Bloody vermin.  Anyway, Badger Cam!

~A 200-kilogram bronze block of cheese is back in its rightful place less than a week after vandals removed it from a statue in the north of Moscow.  

Apparently the thieves couldn't carry it very far.  They should have hired the guys who stole that whole entire bridge for the job.

~Misha's eating again.  Whew.

He actually looks great for someone starving in a Siberian prison camp.  That's just how beautiful hot he is.  He defies the laws of nature.

Ok, mes amis.  Thank you for reading, and have a lovely week.

Ciao!