Vladimir Putin, Party Crasher

Above you see a photograph of seven men and a woman, they are the leaders of the so-called “G-8” nations:  From left to right you have Japan, Germany, Russia, Britain, USA, France, Canada and Italy. One of these eight sticks out like a sore thumb, and it isn’t Germany because it’s represented by the only female. It’s Russia, in the person of Vladimir Putin.

Russia isn’t in the top 8 nations of the world when ranked for GDP.  China, India and Brazil all have more valuable annual economic production than Russia does, yet they are excluded from the G-8 and Russia is included.  If you evaluate GDP not in aggregate but in per capita terms, Russia is just a pathetic joke.   Russia isn’t in the top 45 countries of the world for per capita nominal GDP.

More importantly, Russia doesn’t share the G-8 values.  Not one — not one — of the other seven nations in the G-8 recognized Ossetia and Abkhazia as states after Russia annexed their territories from Georgia. Each and every one of these other nations condemned Russia’s outrageous act of imperialism against Georgia, Germany most vociferously.  Putin recently went on Russia Today, the Kremlin’s state-sponsored propaganda network, to denounce the nations of the West and their values. He was particularly brutal in his attack on the USA, the leader of the G-8 and by far the most powerful country in the world, calling it a nation of racist mass-murderers. He painted Russia as being engaged in a heroic, lonely struggle against the evil of Western values in the modern world.

Which is all well and good. Putin can hate the West all he likes, after all he is a proud KGB spy who spent his entire adult life prior to the collapse of the USSR working hard to destroy the West. But why is his KGB fox in the G-7 chicken coop?  Six of the G-7 nations (all but Russia and Japan) are members of a military alliance, NATO, whose formative purpose was to oppose Russian aggression in Europe.  Isn’t it completely insane for this group to allow an unrepentant KGB spy to participate in their meetings?

As we reported not long ago, Russia doesn’t stack up to the other G-8 countries when viewed in terms of quality of life provided to its citizens. Here, once again, it’s the black sheep.  The OECD has shown conclusively that Russia brings up a miserable and distant rear in every aspect of life that would matter to a G-8 citizen.

There’s only one possible legitimate reason for Russia to be in the G-8, and that would be if the other G-7 nations were going to use Russia’s membership as leverage to publicly press forward a human-rights agenda against Russia.  But at the recent G-8 summit, the craven G-7 countries did not such thing.  They ignored Russia’s barbaric crackdown on homosexuals, they ignored Russia’s barbaric crackdown on political dissidents like Alexei Navalny and Sergei Guriev and Garry Kasparov, and they ignored Russia’s barbaric support for the genocidal dictatorship in Syria.

So now, all the citizens of the G-7 nations must hang their heads in shame as Putin and his KGB minions laugh at us for being the fools we are.

Putinomics Continues to Grind Russia into Pulp

In Putin’s Russia, a dog’s life

The Putin economy continues its slide into oblivion.

Last year Russia set a horrifying new record for capital flight. Well over $80 billion fled Russia for foreign shores. Amazingly, in the first three-quarters of this year Russian capital flight is $1 billion more than it was during the same period last year.

Retail spending is also rapidly declining in Russia, and with it GDP has begun to drop as well.  Poor agricultural performance has led to soaring food prices, so Russians can’t afford as much consumer spending, and brutal new Kremlin taxes have begun to undermine their disposable income as well.  Automobile sales are dropping faster than expected, and polls show that two-thirds of Russians have no personal savings at all, so they are helpless in the face of economic crisis.

Even more bad news comes from Norway, which has begun serious efforts to push Russia’s leading economic engine, Gazrpom, out of the German market.  Germany is only too happy to oblige, as its Chancellor recently traveled to Russia and expressed German revulsion over the neo-Soviet state that Russia’s KGB dictator Vladimir Putin is building.  Putin’s response to the horrific pressure being placed on the central engine of the Russian economy has been the Soviet solution:  nationalization and centralization, a hopelessly doomed scheme from a desperate, incompetent leader.

A flood tide of recent reporting shows how corruption continues to ravage Putin’s Russia, with Vladimir Putin setting the national example by grabbing every asset he can get his hands on and building himself a network of personal palaces that would be the envy of the old Tsars themselves.

Putin himself admits that the Russian economy is headed for dire straits, and he is laying the groundwork to blame it on the country’s WTO admission, apparently hoping the public will forget he was its architect.

Putin is incapable of reform. He’s unqualified to do so, and even if he were qualified he is not motivated to change a system that provides him unchecked power for life.  As in Soviet times, Russia continues its march towards destruction.

Zigfeld Fires on Russia with Both Barrels

Over on the mighty American Thinker blog, La Russophobe founder and publisher Kim Zigfeld lays out the horrifying level of sheer brutality that Russian inflicts on its families, decimating itself from within and hastening the day of its downfall and collapse.

Firing with both barrels, Zigfeld’s latest column simultaneously appeared on Pajamas Media, where she analyzes Russia’s shocking breakdown in relations with Germany owing to its horrifying new crackdown on human rights, and compares it to the craven manner in which the U.S. administration is still coddling Russia with Chamberlainian appeasement.