PJ Media

If he is a real person and not a sock puppet, Essel’s behavior is certainly par for the course for La Russophobe – ad hominem attacks on others credentials and character are fine, but any discussion of LR’s credentials on Russia is a completely irrelevant, “neo-Soviet” attempt to change the subject. As far as Kim Zigfeld is concerned – heads you win, tails you lose, and have you stopped beating your wife lately? Over here at Pajamas Media, where Kim cannot cut out all critical comments in her nice little blog cocoon, the comments run at least 2 to 1 critical of La Russophobe, excluding my own words.

Kirk, if there truly are Kremlin operatives who have so much free time on their hands to check on Ms. Zigfeld, then they could not ask for a better parody of an opponent – someone who not only trashes Putin but the Russian people as a whole. It’s kind of like the Republicans nominating Palin to unleash the predictable deranged reactions from the Daily Kossack Democrat Left, and then turning to soccer Moms across America and saying, “See, this is what THEY think of you”. In the case of the Kremlin/Vyachaslav Surkov (the Karl Rove of Russia) types, it’s “see, these people had no problem with Russia when we were weak, begging them the West for money, when our women and most talented people were fleeing in droves and our President was mocked around the world as a drunk. But suddenly when Russia’s economy is booming, women are having babies again, talent is coming back to Russia, and our military has demonstrated that it is capable of beating a third rate opponent, thye start screaming about democracy and the revival of the Soviet Union. The West is hypocritical and lying.” And of course, on the latter score, they INDEED have a point, even Condi Rice said so although she was oblivious to the implications of her own words about Russian humiliation during the 90s. We are hypocrites when it comes to Kosovo vs. Abkhazia/South Ossetia, as the Serbs weren’t even doing their nasty deeds on our borders against American passport holders, but we still bombed them with no UN authorization whatsoever. But the sainted Bill Clinton did that and not George W. Bush, so naturally he gets pass from Democrats who rant about Bush’s “illegal war” in Iraq, which had far more legitimacy after 16 UN resolutions against Saddam.

Of course there are more credible critics of Putin that live in Russia and don’t feel the need to hide behind fake names or engage in petty BS attacks on individuals. Many of them are “working within the system”, either at Russian investment banks, or perhaps, Medvedev himself, who said after the attack on Mechel that “terrorizing of business must end”. The pointless street theater of Garry Kasparov, the oligarchic intrigues of exile Boris Berezovsky (who according to the late Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov, was perfectly capable of killing his business rivals when he ruled the Kremlin, and probably poisoned Litvinenko to keep the extradition attorneys from Moscow at bay) and others are worse than useless. A real Russian opposition will only emerge when it can work with the Russian Orthodox Church, push for real reforms in the corrupt and backward Army draft, and promote a pro-life position in a country with more abortions than live births. But as long as Kim Zigfeld views the Russians as basically sub-human who deserve their fate, why should anyone listen to her?