Putin Steps Up Crackdown on Opposition Press
In Putin’s Russia, women stand at the vanguard of the fight for freedom and democracy, at least where the news media is concerned. So now that he has liquidated journalist Anna Politkovskaya and erased Natalia Estemirova, two new names are at the top of Vladimir Putin’s hit list: Yevgenia Albats and Yulia Latynina.
Of the two, Albats is likely the more despised by the regime. Currently the publisher of a magazine called New Times, Albats was Politkovskaya’s classmate at Moscow State University (Russia’s version of Harvard) and received a Golden Pen Award (the USSR’s version of the Pulitzer Prize) for her reporting on conditions in Russian maternity wards. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard in 1993, and shortly thereafter published a bombshell book about the KGB and its efforts to infiltrate the Russian government. Later she matriculated at Harvard, and in 2004 received a PhD in political science.
In addition to consulting for American universities and writing for American papers, Albats hosts a talk show on Echo of Moscow Radio, one of the very last bastions of independent journalism in Russia. Along with Novaya Gazeta, her magazine stands virtually alone in print media in criticizing the excesses of the Putin regime.
Given the fact that Putin is a proud alumni of the KGB who has worked hard to fill all levels of Kremlin bureaucracy with his KGB cohorts, Albats is of course a particularly large dot on his radar screen.
In February, the New Times published a story about how Putin’s Praetorian Guard, known as OMON, were using migrant slave labor to support themselves (Russia’s so-called “law enforcement” officers are paid notoriously low wages). The article also revealed details about how OMON is used as a political tool by the Kremlin to crush dissent and intimidate opposition political leaders.
The Kremlin’s response was to attempt to raid the magazine’s offices and seize its records, but Albats boldly beat back this attempt.
Putin, of course, did not give up, and last week he struck again. On September 2, an army of masked Putin goons, including many special forces officers, raided the paper’s offices and demanded the source recordings of interviews for the story about OMON. It’s as if Barack Obama had sent the FBI, including a SWAT team, to collect taped interviews of White House informants over at Fox News.
Once again, Albats told Putin’s stormtroopers to drop dead. How long it will be before — as with Politkovskaya and Estemirova — Putin returns the favor is anyone’s guess.
Reporters without Borders (RWB) has condemned the Kremlin’s effort to uncover the New Times sources. RWB notes that efforts to forcibly uncover the names of news sources is becoming routine in Putin’s Russia, and states: “Russia is ranked 153rd out of 175 countries in the 2009 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.” In other words, 85% of world nations have more press freedom than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Ahhh, the 2nd Amendment. . . it must be defended at all costs. . . its the only thing keeping the Putins and obamas from doing the same thing to us here.
Ha! Barack Shabazz DREAMS about having that kind of power. Far from being critical and defending “American values” he fulminates at the fact that he is CONSTRAINED by them. Maybe when he is forced out in another year, he can become s “special consultant” to the Russian government. That’s if Chavez isn’t interested.
Do not take this as a “racist” observation, but the pot will hardly call the kettle black. That is, Obama will never criticize Putin or any other tyrant or dictator. Call it “power envy.” Putin, Chavez, Castro, King Abdullah are all models of what he would like to be. Excellent article by Zigfeld that exposes not only Putin natural thuggishness, but the encouraging appeasement policy of Obama and that bad penny that keeps turning up, Hillary Clinton. I wonder how many Americans are left who still think Obama “means well.” Their numbers are dwindling faster than a snowball in hell.
Who says “Communism is dead”
And in America…we have a media that is “in the tank” with the Socialist-Democrats…
Remember in November
DUMP ALL DEMS IN NOVEM
“Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.” P.J.O’Rourke
Speaking of press crackdowns, would someone at Pajamas Media please tell me where/why Jamie Glazov’s post on Muslim inbreeding has disappeared? Much appreciated.
Kim,
It’s nice that this time you at least made an effort to make some American parallels which makes you article more accessible to us and more reasonable. So, this time I do not have negative comments for you as I always had in the past ( save for the irrelevance of “Putin openly stated his forces would crack the skulls of any opposition party activists who dared to assemble in public without official police permission.” Even in US one will get in trouble for demonstrating without permit.)
But again, do not you find it puzzling that your first 4 commenter’s are far more focused on Obama, rather than Putin? It is interesting, is not it? Well I think the explanation for it is our self –interest and self-involvement. Speaking personally of myself: nothing in Putin offends me as much as those his deals with Iran. I can’t feel much about internal troubles in Russia because we do not feel entitled to impose on Russian our values. It is just for Russian people to do and all what America can do is to support those who think alike (Do not expect it from Obama, he will envy Putin and Chavez for the power they have). But direct infringement on our interest, like helping Mullahs to make nukes is may be the best way to convince me why Putin sucks. Even though I know that all those nukes will be first used against Russia by Chechens (just to provoke nuclear conflict) and only later against us, I still feel that I have much stakes.
Please tell Putin to stop helping Iran. Thanks.
“Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert with the German Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, said Tuesday that Putin departed from his previously cautious attitude toward U.S. President Barack Obama at the closed session. ‘I was very interested in how warmly Putin spoke about Obama. He even called him a like-minded fellow,’ Rahr said by telephone.”
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/foreign-money-in-khodorkovsky-still-out/415162.html