They are more crazy than his, widely debated, ultra-capitalist, domestic economic policies. His domestic economic policies might be unappealing to common people, and by virtue of that, voicing them is crazy. It does not mean however that they are generally unworkable propositions, only that Prokhorov chose a wrong country to campaign on such a platform. But his foreign policy visions are mad on their own, there is no remedy for them. 

Mikhail Prokhorov is a representative of Russian liberalism, despite the claims of some that he might be Kremlin patsy. There are representatives of liberalism in the highest positions of power. Alexandr Dugin characterises Putinism as a blend between patriotism and liberalism. The patriotic component naturally prevents 'Occidentalism', that is a blind worship of the West, which is so prevalent in the so called non-system liberal opposition. Prokhorov is an Occidentalist (I intend to use this French term from now on instead of the Germanic Westerniser, it sounds better), let's see what his agenda points concerning foreign policy are. There are certainly points I personally find appealing, so I will only list the madness:

To tick to a strict orientation on Russia's primary economic partner, the European Union, aim at maximum integration with countries that are its members.

Europhile wants to integrate deeply with his love. Why? Because he is an Europhile. I personally have nothing against keeping the trade with EU countries busy, but Russia should likewise build relations with the Far East, that's where the real action is. They need to do it because the Asians are far less hostile to Russian interests than the West is, and they are also far more intelligent and pragmatic than the Europeans.

To formulate and take steps towards a realisation of unification of EU with the Russian Federation into one geo-economic centre with common economic and visa space, common currency on the basis of the euro and the rubl', and common legal systems. 

This is some Russian liberal delusion in its finest. A long time back I have said that such thinking is not uncommon among Russian liberals. Maybe I should reformulate what I said back then. Russia is an enormous country, several times that of the whole EU in terms of territory, with many exotic lands such as Chechnya, Kalmykia, and Tuva for instance, who do not resemble Europe, or are not even in Europe. Do you think the EU is willing to accept this Eurasian behemoth into its fold? And do the Russian liberals ever wonder what people who actually are in the EU think about being ruled by Brussels? What EU citizens think about having their laws formulated in Brussels? Or how enthusiastic people in countries, which make much more suitable candidates for the EU membership, are about joining it? 

But Prokhorov, or whoever compiled his agenda, takes things to a next level of insanity, he wants to create a common currency based on rubl' and euro, whatever that is supposed to mean. Europeans meanwhile are at their wits ends on how to save their own common currency.

Unilaterally abolish visa requirements for citizens of OECD countries for visiting Russian Federation and maximally easy obtaining long-term residence permits and work permits for citizens of these countries in Russia.

Which means Russia will abolish visas for OECD citizens, and OECD countries do not have to abolish visa requirements for Russian citizens. What is this? I personally do not mind having it easier to come to Russia as a citizen of an OECD country, but what about Russian citizens who would like to go to OECD countries? I will not vote for Prokhorov, or any other presidential candidate for that matter. And shouldn't there be a bilateral agreement between countries? Or is Prokhorov just pandering to the West? And since we are at it, Russia is not even a member of OECD. And how do OECD countries have it between themselves? US and Mexico are both members of the OECD for instance.

Note: There are other dodgy points like that in Prokhorov's foreign policy agenda. Their problem is that they are very ambiguous, vague, and incoherent. I do not quite get what is meant, and therefore I cannot subject them to critique, and therefore I end the post here.  

The Russian liberal opposition has as one of its slogans: 'Freedom for political prisoners!' They say it loud and proud, as if Russia had a large political prisoner population. But who are these political prisoners really? Khodorkovsky and Lebedev? Yes, these two had been given so much attention by the liberals that they automatically come to mind as figures that we can think of, using liberal logic, as political prisoners, although they were put in prison for economic crimes. But who else might be a political prisoner? I personally could not think of anyone else, and then I found a list of them in this article on Komsomol'skaya Pravda.

It is a list of radical Islamists, terrorists, far right hooligans, and spies. I will not give the whole list here but only those names to which the article provides some detail:

***

6. Vlasov Vladimir Sergeyevich (18 years for sabotage of Moscow-Grozny train)

7. Gayanov Bulat Marsovich (7 years for organising activity of an extremist religious organisation)

9. Gumanov Ravil' Shafievich (9 years for sabotage of a pipeline in Bugul'm, Tatarstan)

12. Ishmuratov Timur Ravilevich (8 years for sabotage of a pipeline in Bugul'm, Tatarstan)

13. Klevachev Mikhail Mikhailovich (18 years for sabotage of Moscow-Grozny train)

15. Murtazalieva Zara Khasanovna (8,5 years for preparing to blow up a staircase in shopping centre on Manezhnaya squere, central Moscow)

16. Sokolov Igor' Leonidovich (13 years for taking part in attack of the band of Basayev on Budennovsk)

18. Shaykhutdinov Fanis Aglyamovich (10,5 years for for sabotage of a pipeline in Bugul'm, Tatarstan)

The devil is in the details

For instance, three vivid personages, Fanis Shaykhutdinov, Timur Ishmuratov, Ravil' Gumanov. All three not only have a common present, but also common past. They were all freed under pressure from Russia from the famous prison Guantanamo, where they ended up after American troops arrested them on the territory of Afghanistan, where they were probably fulfilling their international Islamic obligation. We should note that US does not by far send every arrested person to this corner of the world far from paradise.

After their liberation and return home, these gentlemen did not begin to engage in the organisation of demonstrations, manifestations, or composition of slogans, but they blew up a pipeline in Tatarstan. Thanks God there were no victims.

And here is also another interesting personage, Igor Sokolov (also known as Igor' Idobayev by birth, or Alexey Sokolov). Having finished his studies in L'vov Higher Military-Political Institute, he favoured Basayev's Abkhaz battalion, where he was simultaneously a Mullah and a sniper, over service in the Russian military. He then became one of Basayev's close retainers. He also took part in the latter's raid on Budennovsk, where the bandits 'heroically' took over a hospital, and which ended in the death of 129 people, and 415 wounded. In fact, during the court case, former hostages have recognised in Sokolov-Idobayev as the man who stood next to Basayev, when the latter negotiated with Chernomyrdin. Truly a politician with an optical rear sight.

And Zara Murtazalieva, which was arrested with explosives in her bag in the center of Moscow? What is her political platform for which she is now suffering? And why have the gentlemen from the 'new opposition' only limited themselves to including in the list only the saboteurs of Moscow-Grozny trains, and did not also include those convicted of the Nevskiy express bombing. Maybe they should add Zarema Muzhikhoeva, whose explosive device killed a sapper attempting to disable it.

Or for instance Bulat Gayanov, convicted for organising a Hizb ut-Tahrir cell. The organisation is by the way officially banned in Russia. Truth be told, most European countries do not consider this movement to be terrorist, and it is possible that Europe-oriented opposition have included Gayanov on their list because of that. But in Europe, they do not see terrorists in the Chechen underground either, maybe we should also start considering these people as fighters for human rights?                  

***

I should note that I was rather liberal in my above translation. As for Hizb ut-Tahrir, the organisation itself does not appear to be directly linked to terrorism to my knowledge, but it expounds radical version of Islam, and political ideology based on it. There were attempts to ban it throughout the West, and it actually is banned in some countries already. Outside the West, in countries such as India and Russia, which have large indigenous Muslim population, and Muslim separatist movements, the Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned.   

I don't know about you, but I think that those Kremlin political technologists, whoever those are, must be like really cool. If they could win so many victories for Putin in the information war in such a short time, they must be like gods. Recent behaviour of Walter Litvinenko has obviously caused irritation in the circles of Boris Berezovsky, to whom Walter's son was an old accomplice. It was some time since I translated anything from these circles. The last I remember it was Boris being angry at Yanukovych becoming president. The Orange Revolution was his pet project, and he did not like seeing it fail so miserably. This time we have Alexandr Goldfarb, Berezovsky's right-hand, expressing his opinion:

***

In the last twenty four hours (the article was published on 3 February), the scandal in connection with the interview given by the father of Alexandr Litvinenko to Channel One (Russian TV station), has grown into a global sensation, becoming a propaganda victory for Putin. The candidate for president, whom his enemies call the head of the clan of crooks and thieves, was presented as a victim of a murder accusation, concocted by a global conspiracy.

The way it looks on Channel One, can only provoke shock and compassion: lone old man lives in a foreign land, doesn't know the language, in complete obscurity. His wife has died recently. Add poverty to this, and a man being wronged by enemies of Russia, who have used him and dumped him because he was no longer useful. And behind it all is the sinister Berezovsky, antipode of the serene picture of Kremlin Big Brother. And behind Berezovsky are even more sinister British intelligence services craving for the disintegration of Russia. Hidden message to the viewers: go against Putin on the leash of enemies of the motherland, and you will end up like Walter Litvinenko.

Heart-breaking footage, where a freezing old man curses his son-traitor, and pleads with the autocrat for his most high forgiveness would seem like a sentimental melodrama, if there was not a real human tragedy behind it all. The tragedy is not such as it was shown on TV.

I very much do not want to take conflicts out of the home, because I would have to discuss personal issues of my murdered friend, but what can we do? We stand against a colossal propaganda machine, and we need to fight back.

The story is essentially that three years after the Litvinenko family left Russia, Walter Alexandrovich received thousands of dollars from Berezovsky himself, via Civic Freedoms Fund, and from Sasha's (diminutive of Alexandr, meaning late Litvinenko) widow Marina. In total this was a six-figure number, perfectly suited for a decent life even in Italy, especially when we take into account, that next to him are four, adult, and capable of working, people, that is his second son with his wife, and a daughter with her husband.

The problem is that these sums were going to the account of Maxim Litvinenko, whose business, as it became known, is not doing so well. I don't know the later fate of this money, but it seems that they went where the, not small, sum obtained from the sale of a flat belonging to parents before departure from Russia, went. If Channel One wanted to tell the truth, the report would look like this: Berezovsky's money went to unsuccessful business of Litvinenko's brother, and the old man had his electricity cut off for missing payment. The story is banal, tens of thousands of such old men wander around Russia. And sadly, the story is not that interesting.

What is going on with Walter Litvinenko is of course awful. No less awful than the fact that a president of a large   country is holding to power which is slipping from his hands, who uses this family situation for his pre-election campaign. Doesn't Putin find anything else in his propaganda arsenal?

What concerns the London circle of Sasha's relatives and friends, we are a priori considering our selves responsible for the fate of Walter Litvinenko, and will continue to help him regardless of what he talks about his murdered son, and where he will go to live. But for this now we need the number of his personal account or at least an address where we can send money. However, we are unable to contact him by phone. We do not understand how Channel One was able to do it.

***

Well, what can you say here? It seems that Berezovsky and his circles were utterly clueless as to what is happening with old Litvinenko. I mean, Berezovsky has the resources to dispatch anyone at anytime to go to Italy and check how the old man is living. And what about old man's relatives? Where are they? Don't they know the state of the old man? I don't know how Russian media was able to get to him, RT claims old Litvinenko contacted them. I suspect, and that is only my hypothesis, that old Litvinenko had a change of heart long before this story broke out, and had a falling our with his London friends and relatives.

Notice how obsessed Goldfrab is with Putin's image, he also appears utterly clueless about Putin's power slipping from his hands, not to mention that Putin is not the president, yet. Indeed, this winter has seen more failures in anti-Putin propaganda war than old Litvinenko. What it ultimately boils down to however is not Putin's image, but the image of Berezovsky and his associates. It is their propaganda which seems to have failed. Old Litvinenko's sudden change of heart has in my opinion the same information value as his previous showing with Zakayev, and accusing Putin of murdering his son. There is no evidence that Putin was linked to Alexandr Litvinenko's death, and apparently the cause of Litvinenko's death was never ruled to be a homicide. 

I find the plot of movies such as the Independence Day to be ridiculous, and therefore by default I never really liked all those 'serious' alien invasion movies, but then something happened. Cinematographers have, it seems, come to the same conclusion as I did, alien invasion movies are ridiculous. So they started making them ridiculous. I might as well start liking this genre.

Last year, a British film about aliens invading a council estate in South London and picking a fight with resident chavs came out:

This year's alien invasion flick features Nazis from the moon invading earth in '2018' ;-) 

I think I should make a short catalogue of articles predicting a run-off that I found so far. First there were two posts published by Vladimir Kara-Murza on his blog at World Affairs (see here, and here), I discuss them here and here. Next came Simon Shuster with his dumb rant in Foreign Policy, I discuss that one here. Today I went over to my favourite Russian blog, and via InoPressa, I discovered Nemtsov's rants in the Canadian National Post. I quote from the article written by certain Peter Goodspeed:

“It is difficult to predict what will happen in the next few years in Russia or even in the near future,” he said. “A lot depends on the fraud and falsification that takes place in the elections. If they repeat what they did in December (during controversial parliamentary elections), it will be difficult.

“Obviously Putin can’t win in the first round, but, if he does proclaim that he did win in the first round, I predict that the protest movement will increase. It will increase immediately after and it will be very difficult for us to keep this process peaceful.

“I am a strong advocate of a peaceful and constitutional process but there are those who believe in revolution. I don’t believe in revolution. Russia has had bloody examples of revolution in our history and we don’t want this kind of experience. But if Putin will be so foolish and so aggressive as to repeat the experience of December, I don’t think anyone will be a winner in this situation. We don’t know what will happen.”

I really wonder how Nemtsov knows that Putin can't obviously win in the first round? All opinion polls suggest otherwise. The same thing happened in December, United Russia was poised to win around 50% of the vote, and it did. So tell me, if systematic falsifications really happened as the opposition likes to claim, why did United Russia not win constitutional majority? I mean, if they falsified elections, they could have at least falsified them in a way beneficial to themselves. All this suggest that, even if irregularities happened, and they happen in every election around the globe, the claim that the elections were falsified is unsustainable.

I do not even want to discuss Nemtsov predicting violent protests. Such pronouncements only make Russian liberals look bad. Nemtsov's rants were translated into Russian, and they are now spread around RuNet for the amusement of all. 

Western reporting on Russia is really bad, and Simon Shuster's article in Foreign Policy proves my point well. Four pages of utter liberal hogwash it is. In it, Simon Shuster asks two questions:

Is Putin's Fake Rival the Real Deal?

That fake rival is meant to be Prokhorov. The second question Shuster asks is the following:

Everyone thought billionaire playboy Mikhail Prokhorov was just a patsy for Vladimir Putin to run against and crush. But what if he wins?

So what does he bring forth to explain these these two questions he poses? His article is filled with irrelevant nonsense regarding Prokhorov, that is why it covers four pages, but some passages are actually related to these questions. I quote:

The narrative in the press so far (except in Russia's state-run media) has labeled Prokhorov a Kremlin puppet, an assumption based mostly on experience. Candidates in Russian presidential elections going back to 2000, when Vladimir Putin first became boss, have pretty much all belonged to the so-called "constructive" (read: token) opposition. These are men like the Communist Gennady Zyuganov and the sideshow nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who have run and lost in almost every presidential race since the fall of the Soviet Union, each time with a little less heart. (They both sat out in 2004, when Putin's popularity peaked at well above 70 percent.) Now both in their late 60s, they don't campaign too hard anymore, at least not in the whistle-stop sense of the word, and the running joke about them has been the same among voters for a decade: "Comrade Zyuganov (or Herr Zhirinovsky), you have won the presidency! What is your first decree?"

"Um. Um. I decree that all presidential powers should immediately be transferred to Putin."

Candidates with a more independent pedigree, such as Grigory Yavlinksy, the head of the liberal Yabloko party, are usually kept out of the race. And sure enough, the Central Election Commission denied Yavlinsky registration last month, claiming he had forged a quarter of the 2 million signatures needed to get on the ballot. That left the dynamic duo of Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky running alongside the other leader of the constructive opposition, Sergei Mironov, who gets about as much traction claiming independence as does Putin's black Labrador. When he ran against Putin in 2004, Mironov openly supported the candidacy of his rival, and when Putin's second term in office was running out in 2008, Mironov helpfully proposed changing the constitution to allow his old friend to stay for four more years.

That so called press, which came up with the ridiculous claim that Prokhorov is a patsy of the Kremlin, and that he was fielded as a convenient opponent to Putin, is the liberal commentariat. Ever since the liberal parties, relics of nineties really, started to lose votes and popularity to Putin, and became essentially unelectable, somebody in their circles came up with the notion of two oppositions. One opposition is that which gets enough votes to make it to the parliament, or have a candidate that can run for president, and the other is the rest. They call these two groups: the 'parliamentary opposition', and the 'non-system opposition'. Shuster calls them 'constructive' and 'unconstructive' in his article, it is the first time I see this kind of terminology to be honest. The former is said to be a puppet of the Kremlin, and the rest is, according to the narrative, not making it into the parliament because the vote is rigged. Sadly for them, opinion polls show a very different story.

It is a cleaver device, it allows the Russian liberals to remain at least somewhat relevant, with the Western press mostly that is. And it also allows them to blame all of their own failures on the Kremlin. If only the vote was not rigged, Yabloko would be in the parliament they say. I have hard time believing that Zhirinovsky or Zyuganov are puppets of the Kremlin given the way they attack and criticise United Russia and Putin. Mironov's Just Russia, out of all parliamentary opposition parties, has made the biggest overtures to the 'non-system opposition' in recent months. I find it hard therefore, to believe in the validity of this opposition bifurcation.

The claim that Yavlinskiy is usually not allowed to run is incorrect. In 2004, seeing his party not enter the parliament, Yavlinskiy refused to run with claims that the vote is rigged. In 2008, his own party had the Cambridge resident, and former Soviet dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, run instead of him. Sadly, this bunch of incompetents was not even able to provide Bukovsky with a proper application. This year, the Central Electoral Committee ruled that Yavlinskiy's application had too many invalid signatures. My personal opinion is that the Kremlin has no interest in seeing Yavlinskiy excluded from the race, therefore I am comfortable in thinking that Yavlinskiy really did not meet the requirements of the Central Electoral Committee.

We have seen the same kind of problem earlier, in the registration of the Party of National Liberty where Nemtsov, Kasyanov, and Milov were involved. Simply put, the liberal opposition not only does not have any significant support of the masses, it is also massively incompetent. And suddenly there appears a new hero on the block, Prokhorov, a wealthy businessman, with resources, and good organisational skills. He is able to get his documents right, and run for president. How can that be? It must be because Prokhorov is a Kremlin patsy, it can't be otherwise in the fantasy world of Russian liberals. Shuster brings Nemtsov as an example of such thinking:

...Russia's opposition leaders, both constructive and unconstructive, are convinced that Prokhorov is a stooge. "He is in cahoots with Putin in these elections, there is no doubt about that," says Boris Nemtsov, one of Prokhorov's close personal friends and a leader of the popular opposition movement. "Prokhorov is tied in with the government at every stitch, like any big businessman in Russia. So Putin has every ability to grab him by the horns and twist."

So why does Putin not grab him by the horns and twist? Simple answer for total simpletons, to this perplexing question, probably would be, that Putin does not view Prokhorov as a danger. Later in the article, Shuster brings forth some numbers:

Prokhorov would get a measly 4 percent of the vote if the elections were held this Sunday, putting him neck-and-neck for third place with the veteran politicians Zhirinovsky and Mironov. Considering that polls taken last summer showed that only a few percent of the population even recognized Prokhorov's name, this doesn't seem all that bad. According to the same Levada poll, however, Zyuganov, the Communist, is well ahead of Prokhorov with a projected 8 percent of the vote, while Putin would get 37 percent, sending the two of them into a run-off. 

I see the phony Levada poll is mentioned here, I have already discussed the issues with it here. It also seems that Shuster is spreading the false meme that there will be a run-off. A run-off without Prokhorov that is. So can Prokhorov win? Can he even take part in the run-off? I don't think so. So what else does Shuster have? 

And so the question lingers, as it probably will throughout his campaign. In the end, however, it won't make much of a difference on the outcome. Regardless of whether Prokhorov secretly agreed to stand as Putin's sparring partner, his popularity is on the rise, and many Russians will be content to give their protest vote to him. He is at least a newcomer, unlike the tired trio from Russia's constructive opposition, and that alone might be enough to push Prokhorov into the run-off. "And then all bets are off," says Anton Nosik, a pundit and popular blogger. "If he gets his hand on that scepter, he's untouchable. He'll turn into a different animal as soon as he tastes blood. And then what? You think he'll just hand back the reins? I really wouldn't bet on it."

I am delighted that Shuster went to the super-credible Anton Nosik for commentary. He could as well have asked Novodvorskaya, or visited local mental asylum, and interviewed Napoleon and Jesus. 

So what is the deal here? The BBC aired documentary series entitled 'Putin, Russia, and the West', about Russia's international role in the Putin period apparently. (1) What followed was a chorus of liberal condemnation, The Guardian Moscow plagiarist, Luke Harding, tells us everything, and being a lazy plagiarist, he gets things wrong obviously. He tells us that Russian liberals were claiming that the documentary was 'too pro-Putin' for their taste, but let me first focus on this passage, as I think it is the main reason why they started to search for flaws in the film:

Critics of the series, however, are incensed by an interview with Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff. In it, Powell admits that a spy "rock" found in a Moscow park was used by British intelligence officers – a claim originally made by Putin in 2006, to the embarrassment of Downing Street.

Last month a pro-Kremlin journalist, Arkady Mamontov, used the Powell footage in a 30-minute programme shown on Russian state television. Mamontov claimed that Russians working for non-governmental organisations were agents of British intelligence – a smear, activists say, to discredit opposition groups. The rock was shown next to Big Ben, together with clips of "British spies".

Actually, the story was and is more about Mamontov and Russian liberals here, than it actually was about Kremin and the FSB. The latter two have had credible evidence that the Russian liberal opposition is getting support from foreign governments, and they have enacted laws to curtail this kind of support from abroad, they were doing their job. It of course meant that the Russian government was condemned by Westerners melding in Russian affairs, and their liberal pets in Russia, but it does not make Russian government claims any less true, or Russian government actions any less right. It is hard to claim that Russian government is paranoid and authoritarian when you have the opposition vising the US Embassy in Moscow in droves. It should also be noted that Russia is still rather lenient when it comes agents of foreign governments. The stuff Russian liberals often allow themselves to do in Russia would mean jail time in the US.

In 2006, Mamontov served as a voice for the FSB. He has aired a short film called 'Shpiony' or 'Spies' about members of the British diplomatic staff, who used their positions as a cover for intelligence activity, using a device masked as a rock for exchange of information. The communication system worked in the following way. A device containing a wi-fi and a memory storage was hidden in an object resembling a rock, which was placed in a public place, a park or a boulevard for instance. The workers of the British Embassy would pass along that device and upload encrypted data from their PDAs. Then someone else would pass along and download that data.

The Guardian articles would have you believe that Mamontov was trying to justify Kremlin's tightening of screws on NGOs. In fact, as is explained in the films, the Russian secret service was keeping an eye on British activity for a while, recording it on cameras that it installed around the place the exchange of information was taking place. When they gathered enough material, they approached the British diplomats, and asked them about it. They said that if the British do not admit to their activities, and do not promise to cease this activity, the material the FSB holds is going to the media. When there was no reply from the British side, the FSB went to Mamontov with the material.

What happened then was a chorus of displeasure from the Russian liberals, not at all dissimilar to what we observe now. They even organised a demonstration whereby they would carry rocks to the TV station where Mamontov works. The liberals have all said how it is silly the story is, how it is unbelievable, and FSB's work was put in question by these individuals. Simply put, business as usual. It is understandable, these people are payed for by the West, the evidence for this is overwhelming, and more stringent legislature means less money for them. In the film, certain individual operating with the stone, called Marc Doe, was linked to financing of Russian NGOs, and attempts to influence the legislature, and legal practice in Russia. 

But then came 2012, moment of truth, and Russian liberals were put to shame. Mamontov has aired a sequel to his 2006 film, (I include that film after this post for those that understand Russian) and Russian liberals were busy attempting to clear their names. I again quote from Harding's article:

Writing in Monday's Moscow Times, the columnist Victor Davidoff said the timing of the Powell revelation was "suspiciously good for Putin",following unprecedented protests against his rule and ahead of next month's presidential election.

...

More damaging, perhaps, is the link Davidoff draws between the Kremlin's highly paid US PR firm, Ketchum, and the film. The series consultant, Angus Roxburgh, worked for Ketchum between 2006-2009, advising Peskov on how to improve Russia's dire international image. In his book to accompany the series, The Strongman, Roxburgh writes that the Kremlin invariably ignored his advice.

Percy told the Guardian that her production team had hired Roxburgh "to get a foot in the door", and to persuade the notoriously suspicious Kremlin that the BBC series would be genuinely fair-minded.

He wasn't involved in the editing, she said, adding that the BBC had "treated the Russian government in exactly the same way as the American government".

There are some weak connections made here. You have a man who once worked for a lobbying firm with connections to the Kremlin, and who was used by the producers to gain access to the Russian government, and this is somehow tied to the timing of the broadcast of Jonathan Powell's revelation. The timing was indeed good for Putin, but to think that Russian lobbyists have been able to influence former high-ranking British politicians, and a government owned broadcaster, and even the air-time schedule over at BBC, is little far fetched for my taste. But Davidoff certainly planted a myth here, this is what Anton Nosik wrote on his blog:

It seems the spy stone really existed!

It is frightening to think how much money from the [state] budged they had to run through various Ketchum PR, to in order convince ex-advisior of ex-prime-minister in the prime-time on BBC.  

Back in 2006, Mamontov was run through the mud, it is therefore no wonder that when this revelation was aired on BBC, there was some sense of justice being served on his part. Think about it, Mamontov was called a guilible propagandist, and FSB was called incompetent, and now suddenly the Kremlin can pull off an operation like this to clear its name? Roxburgh reacted to the accusations that he had any influence on the film in a letter sent to The Guardian. I quote:

In his article about the fuss caused among Russian dissidents by the BBC documentary series Putin, Russia and the West (BBC accused of peddling Putin propaganda, 2 February), Luke Harding implies that I was used by the Kremlin, through its American PR firm Ketchum, to influence the film-makers and ensure that it was "pro-Putin". Yet in his review of my book, The Strongman, in the Guardian (14 January) Harding describes my stint as a Kremlin adviser as something positive, making me "especially well placed to tell the story of how the west's early enthusiasm for Putin turned sour". He describes my "lively and absorbing" book entirely favourably, apparently detecting no Ketchum bias whatsoever. Can he make his mind up please? Why would I endeavour to ensure the BBC film was pro-Kremlin, but not my own book?

I have not read a single review of the BBC series that agrees it paints Putin in a favourable light – rather the opposite. The claim made by Vladimir Bukovsky that Kremlin officials interviewed in the films received "guarantees" that the documentary would not be critical of Putin is utter nonsense. All were in fact asked to sign a standard BBC "release form" by which they waived their rights and allowed the film-makers to use their interviews as they saw fit.

What meanwhile occured in Russia was that Mamontov had a momentary ego trip, 'I win, you lose' kind of moment, and the Russian liberals were made to look like idiots in the sequel to his 2006 movie. But in all respect, Mamontov's ego trip was not that much of a big deal.

Using the paranoid, conspiracy theorist logic of Russian liberals, one could claim that McFaul summoned the Russian liberal opposition to the embassy at the behest of Putin, Surkov, FSB, American PR firms with Kremlin connections, or God knows who else the Russian liberals like to blame for their own failures. The whole country has seen that video of Russian liberals going to US embassy, this was much more damaging to their image than Mamontov being proved right, everyone has already forgotten about the latter. The words of Anatol Lieven from 2009, are still true today:

Tragically however, many Russian liberals in the 1990s-through the policies they supported and the arrogant contempt they showed towards the mass of their fellow Russians-made liberals unelectable for a generation or more across most of Russia; and to judge by these and other writings of liberals like the ones under discussion, they have learnt absolutely nothing from this experience. They think that they form some kind of opposition to the present Russian establishment. In fact, they are such an asset to Putin in terms of boosting public hostility to Russian liberalism that if they hadn't already existed, Putin might have been tempted to invent them. 

Indeed, Putin, or whomever else for that matter, does not have to do anything against Russian liberals, simply allow them to speak, and write, and act, and have fun at their expense. Although, liberals can get rather obnoxious at times. 

1) I do not happen to be in the UK at the moment, so I can't really tell what it was about, or how was it. If anyone has more information, please tell me about it. 

That is if you take your information uncritically from Kara-Murza:

All three of Russia’s national polling agencies—the government-owned VTsIOM, the government-friendly FOM, and the independent Levada Center—suggest that Putin will fall below the 50-percent-plus-one threshold required for a first round victory: they predict, respectively, that he would win 49 percent,  44 percent, and 43 percent of votes cast. And with a possibility of a unified anti-Putin protest vote, the outcome of the runoff is far from certain.

A week ago, Kara-Murza claimed that Putin only has 36% support. What he again fails to mention at this instance, is that all of the polls he is citing above, are percentages from among all of the people inquired, which includes around 20% of those that either will not take part in the elections, or happen to be undecided. Likewise, notice that Kara-Murza does not link to the original websites of the poling agencies, but to reports in the liberal-friendly Kommersant, where a tendentious spin is to be expected. Putin's actual rating, as it stands, is around 60% (Levada puts it at 63%), and therefore, the liberal fantasy of there being a second round of elections is not likely to materialise.

Anatoly Karlin wrote this on the presidential elections, in his predictions for 2012:

There is little doubt that Putin will comfortably win the Presidential elections in the first round. The last December VCIOM poll implies he will get about 60%. So assuming there is no major movement in political tectonics in the last three months – and there’s no evidence for thinking that may be the case, as there are tentative signs that Putin’s popularity has began to recover in the last few weeks from its post-elections nadir. Due to the energized political situation, turnout will probably be higher than than in the 2008 elections – which will benefit Putin because of his greater support among passive voters. I do think efforts will be made to crack down on fraud so as to avoid a PR and legitimacy crisis, so that its extent will fall from perhaps 5%-7% in the 2011 Duma elections to maybe 2%-3% (fraud in places like the ethnic republics are more endemic than in, say, Moscow, and will be difficult to expunge); this will counterbalance the advantage Putin will get from a higher turnout. So that’s my prediction for March:Putin wins in the first round with 60%, followed by perennially second-place Zyuganov at 15%-20%, Zhirinovsky with 10%, and Sergey Mironov, Mikhail Prokhorov and Grigory Yavlinsky with a combined 10% or so. If Prokhorov and Yavlinsky aren’t registered to participate, then Putin’s first round victory will probably be more like 65%. 

I personally do not think that taking out Yavlinskiy is of any benefit to Putin, but otherwise I agree with the basic thesis above. There will not be a second round of presidential elections! But what if there actually was? What if Putin really got those, say 45%? In that case, you can prepare for a contest between Putin and Zyuganov. Imagine that! Half of Bolotnaya will vote for Putin, and some hamsters from the internet will vote for Putin in secret. Welcome to a brave new world where liberal opinion does not matter! 

I recently discovered that some Russian liberals just happen to hate the Kremlin funded TV Channel, Russia Today. And they hate it because it is Kremlin funded. Remember that for later! First I will demonstrate some liberal hate. Here is Yevgeniya Albats from The New Times expressing shock on facebook at Julian Assange getting a gig on Russia Today:

I cannot believe this... Is he an idiot or just a greedy son of a beach?

And later in the comments:

Fred, he is to take a very , very dirty money, if not to say - bloody money. You do understand that, do you not?

Oh dear...

My new found favourite liberal monkey, Anton Nosik, in an article dedicated to crocodile tears on Western NGO's being kicked out of Russia, suddenly drops this line out of nowhere:

[The government] has appointed Russia Today, where every day Americans are told that they have brought down the skyscrapers on 9/11 themselves, as the main channel of communication with the West.  

Where does all this come from? It just can't be cocaine, ketamin, and cannabis. These people might sound demented but it is not exactly the case here. What you witness are Russian liberals kneeling and sucking their masters dry. Allow me to demonstrate, does anybody remember 'Out-Communicated!'? In that Russia Today report, Peter Lavelle in reaction to Walter Isaacson's rant said the following:

...he is making it sound like it's just a media war...

However Lavelle likes to spin it though, it is an information war. I understand that they have an in house culture in Russia Today, but I am an independent blogger, and I do not have that problem. Russia Today was created to wage this information war on an enemy territory. You might ask now, what does this have to do with Russian liberals? The Russian liberals are agents in this war, on Russian territory, and in the Russian language, and I dare say, they also happen to be agents of the West. But do I have a proof? I have that coved as well!

In my first post mentioning Nosik, I have linked to an article posted on the website of Ekho Moskvy. Therefore it must mean that Nosik happens to have some patrons in Ekho Moskvy who are willing to publish his rants. Alexey Venediktov has been the chief editor of Ekho Moskvy for some time now, here is his story:

In 2002, Venediktov became the chief editor of a new talk radio 'Arsenal'. Journalists from 'Ekho Moskvy' became its owners. When it was created, it was reported that American endowments and some structures [controlled] by George Soros, invested in the project. (http://www.infogrant.ru/doc/9341.html)

...

In 2008, Alexey Venediktov received a prize form the Overseas Press Club of America (http://fondartema.com/index/0-28). This prize is sponsored by American TV station, CBS, and by the daily US News and World Report.

...

We should say couple of words on the information policy of 'Ekho'. In 2008, reporting on Russian-Georgian war, the radio station has operated only with Georgian testimonies, and called Russian soldiers: 'enemies'. In 2011, it defended US interests in connection with the European AMD (that is the radio conducted a policy harmful to the national defence of Russia). Considering that he received money from George Soros  (who said the 'Russia should be put in her place'), this is not at all surprising.  

And something on Albats:

Yevgeniya Albats is perhaps the most odious figure of Russian journalism. Her 'objectivity' and 'lack of bias' have led to a situation, where there appeared an article about her on lurk in which she is called 'Valeria Novodvorskaya without the lulz.' However that did not prevent her from suddenly getting a a scholarship of Alfred Friendly (in the US), and then Nieman's in Harvard, in the nineties (http://lenta.ru/lib/14203188/). It would be interesting to know for what achievements [was she given these scholarships]. Are you being often summoned to Harvard, or given scholarships?

In 2007, she became the deputy chief editor in 'The New Times', and from January 2009 its chief editor. The new publication made the corner stone of its information policy: 'complete trust in the West in all of of its expressions.'

...

Is it therefore any surprise that Albats and 'The New Times' have openly supported Georgia in the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict?  

It is rather interesting that both Lavelle, and the author of the article, fragments of which I have translated above, bring the 2008 Russia-Georgia war as an example. The disparity between Western and Russian coverage of the conflict was so huge, it undermined all belief in the objectivity of Western media.

However, besides defending West's geopolitical interests, the major object of criticism for Russian liberals is the Russian government. Russia Today therefore is viewed as an agent of their primary enemy, thus they have no love lost for it, and attempt to tarnish it at every opportunity. Perhaps there is also an element of envy on their part. While Russian liberals are almost universally hated in Russia, Russia Today happens to rather popular in the West.

In my recent post on a guy from Just Russia, who was busted with three kilos of hash, I said that the kind of people that went out to protest in Moscow, especially the wealthier liberal sort, are just the kind of people that might consume vast quantities of drugs.

I know this type of urban class better than anyone. They are the same everywhere, be it in Prague, Paris, or London, and Moscow would not be different. Unfortunately last time, I could only find one bloke I know of that is a consumer of alternative fun. But there seems to be another connoisseur among them.

My new-found favourite liberal creature, Anton Nosik, has the word Ketamin written next to his name rather often in the Russian blogosphere. So I decided to investigate this.

It turns out Nosik knows quite a lot about buying this horse anesthetic in Southern India. I guess this might be the original source of that connection Nosik-Ketamin. I am telling you, the liberal mob must be like totally crawling with junkies. I will look out for other possible news to report.