New York Times Worried About Moscow’s Machinations

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        As the neo-Catholic establishment continues to promote the delusion of Russia’s "miraculous transformation" since the "consecration" of 1984, in the real world even secular news outlets are now admitting the truth about what is going on in Russia.

        On August 13, 2003 the New York Times ran an editorial entitled "Moscow Machinations" expressing its concern about the "sudden crackdown on the giant oil company YUKOS" and "the Kremlin’s strong-arm tactics" in the matter. The crackdown on YUKOS is part of a pattern long noted in this column: Vladimir Putin is systematically dispensing with all potential rivals — i.e., Russian figures with money and influence acquired through the bogus "privatization" of Russian industry — by having criminal charges trumped up against them and their assets seized.

        In the case of YUKOS, the rival to be disposed of is Mikhal Khodorkovsky, one of the small number of Russian business executives who, the Times notes, "are being harassed because they had begun using their bottomless treasury too actively to back opposition parties, left and right, that are competing with the government’s forces in the Duma elections set for December." Khodorkovsky has, conveniently enough, been "summoned for questioning" and accused of a "fraudulent privatization scheme." Funny, but precisely the same pattern was repeated with Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, both of whom are now in exile, as the Times notes.

        The crackdown on YUKOS as the elections approach follows shortly after what the Times itself describes as "the closing of the last major independent television station in Russia." Putin has also overseen legislation which makes it virtually impossible to establish a new opposition political party.

        So, as the December elections approach in "miraculously transformed" Russia, we find that virtually all of Mr. Putin’s political rivals are in exile or under government investigation, the major media have been seized by the Kremlin, and the formation of opposition parties at the grassroots level has been rendered legally impossible. One would have to be comatose to not see the pattern here: yet another phony "democratization" of Russia is being revealed as yet another mask for dictatorship. Even the New York Times, which infamously excused the genocide of Stalin in a series of articles by the lying Walter Duranty, now frets that "all he [Putin] is doing is undermining democracy by limiting the flow of information and by misusing the law to intimidate political opponents."

        Don’t hold your breath waiting for Fr. Fox and the rest of the purblind neo-Catholic establishment to admit that they are wrong — utterly and disastrously wrong — about the consecration of Russia. The have invested heavily in their delusion and are not about to face reality. And that is to their everlasting shame.