What Is With the Russians?

TW: I have never been to Russia and unfortunately unlike many other nationalities have never even met one. But from afar they appear to have a really bad chip on their shoulder. To me they should be embracing the West and making sure their eastern and southern borders are not compromised. Instead they repress and try to poke us in the eye whenever possible. I understand the "they are a proud people" thing but still.

And the way they treat journalists is just abominable. If a society cannot brook dissent, then it is weak, the lower the tolerance for dissent, the weaker it is. And to be clear we have our own issues on this front but we are light years ahead of most.

From Mike Shearer at Time:
"A week after visiting Russia, I am still haunted by the sort of subdermal creepiness of the place. I'm not sure what it was exactly--the Russian security man who rode in our press van to spy on our conversations, the total disinterest people on the street showed for the [Obama] Presidential motorcade...the abundant signs of the seediness of power (prostitutes in the hotel bar, the extravagant wealth, the averted gazes).

Then there was also the central lie of the state--the mob-like corruption that is never dealt with, the spoon-fed national press, and the (mostly) unstated threats to journalists or activists who demand a different fidelity to the truth. (It was a great disappointment to U.S. officials that the major Russian television networks declined to broadcast Barack Obama's speech last week.) And then there were Russia's American public relations flaks, who hovered around the traveling press like some sort of Orwellian brainwash guard, bright, smiling and familiar, arguing that the election of Dmitry Medvedev was free and fair, or delivering lines like "It's a great day for Russia" with earnest affection.

...I open the newspaper to...the abduction and murder of Natalya Estemirova, who worked in Chechnya exposing the kidnappings and abuses of the government of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin's puppet president and a documented thug, who has a reputation that rivals the worst comic book bad guys.

As the New York Times reported earlier this year, Kadyrov's former bodyguard, Umar S. Israilov, accused the Chechen president of personally engaging in the torture of the state's victims. Kadyrov, said the bodyguard, amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet, among other offenses...Shortly after the Kremlin was notified that Israilov had talked to the Times, he was gunned down by at least two men on the street in Vienna..."