Turns out that SUP’s head, Andrew Paulson, is also the head of Russia! magazine, where “Kim Zigfeld” now writes and peddles her personalized coffee mugs. Yes, Kim Zigfeld works for the same Kremlin firm that she says is shutting down Russia’s internet.

Talk about corruption and hypocrisy. Sad, really.

Not sure if this post will make it up. I posted this once and somehow it didn’t go up.

KZ is running her(?) own blog La Russophobe and is active on the Publius Pundit blog website, where she posts the same articles signed La Russophobe.
She is graphomaniacly proud to be published on PM too, and always gives links to her articles here.

She thinks she is an expert on Russia. Well, than I, a 54 y.o. man, am Maya Plisetskaya, the balerina.
Her writings are 500% of bias and unobjectivity, absolutly ignorant, and a foul play. Digging the Internet russophobic garbage places and adding her own wild fantasies and stretched conclusions-this is the way how she cooks her articles.
It is a little bit mysterious what keeps her running the blogs and how she got her graphomaniac russophobic obcession. Looks like a team is working, that has managed to get a grant from some russophobic NGO or so. But in such a case KZ has been overly zealous and thus not beneficial for the task. Everything she writes is predictable and reading the headlight is quite enough to know what follows next.

One can juge about her qualification as “an expert” by the facts that she likens Venesuela president Hugo Chavez to bloody Chechen terrorist Shamil Bassayev; air defence missiles TOR-4 (with range 4 mi) that Russia sold to Iran, to the ABM system the USA are going to deploy in Poland and the Czheck Republic. She writes a lot about todays Russian patriotic antifascist youth movement NASHI (means OURS, the ones who are with us). [The movement is open to all ethnic groups and individuals in Russia sharing patriotic vews; is strongly antinazist, promotes interethnic friendship and cultural ties in the Russian Federation. It has branches in many of the regions in Russia including non-slavic, like Tartarstan, Dagestan, ets.]
But KZ shows the movement as the fascist, Hitlerugend type, and stubbornly keeps translating it as us, SLAVIC Russians
The masterpiece of her writings is her special column on the La Russophobe blog dedicated to Russian tennis player Mariya Sharapova-all the publications are kind of gossips about what “a slut” Mariya is.
When asked why so, KZ explains: Sharapova is Russian.

Excuse me, I realize you indeed are not the real KZ, who is probably (we hope) looking for a real live day job.

And Josh, are you really sure Berezovsky didn’t kill Litvinenko? – because I’m not. Britain is the leading source of foreign investment capital in Russia, and just when they start making noises about entertaining Russian prosecutors that want Berezosvky (and the Israelis the same with Nevzlin) extradited, suddenly people start dying. The same people who praise Kklebnikov call Putin a murderer, but Klebnikov said Berezovsky was perfectly capable of that sort of thing, and besides, Klebnikov’s last article was titled, “Millionaire Mullahs”. Iranians outsourcing a hit to Chechen mafia? Not so extreme.

When Stalin died there was a power struggle within his entourage. Beria, the head of his secret police and almost as murderous as Stalin himself, lost. The other comrades invited him to a meeting and gunned him down– I think that’s how it went.

Now from the point of view of Beria’s colleagues whom he certainly would have liquidated, his death was a good thing, probably too for the Russian people, who didn’t need another mass murderer in charge.

But monster that Beria was, he favored (so I’ve read anyway) reaching a live and let live accommodation with the West. So we might have avoided 50 years of the Cold War. I’d have been tempted to shake hands on that deal.

You guys?

I only suggested to cut Putin ‘a little slack’ and you interpreted it as ‘looking the other way’.

There is a big difference.

Tom: Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not “Kim Zigfeld” and don’t really care who she “really” is. I am a fan of her articles on Russia and Venezuela and Iran, but I have to say I’m disappointed that she will not take a position vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia. I tried to engage her about the mysogyofascism regime that whips women for the crime of being gang-raped, and she ignored me over and over, and finally responded by posting a photo of Putin, the inimical skimpy midget, shaking hands with the Saudi sheik, the greatest misogynist on earth. Ms Zigfeld’s point implicit was “we have to support the misogyofascist Saudis because otherwise they’ll become Putin’s friends.” While this may be true, it undermines the moral purity of our democratic mission. I truly hope that this is not her real view on matters. We must all be driven by the knowledge that If one person is not free, then none of us are free.

As for “Josh”, this may be Kim Zigfeld in another guise – to join the ranks of “Lenard”, “Oliver Bronson” and numerous other sock puppets used at other Russia forums and blogs.

What I do blame KZ for is making a name for her (or more likely, himself) through vicious attacks on honest people who are NOT being paid by the Kremlin to say that, democracy or no democracy, we should maybe try to get along better with Russia. After all, there’s only one country (China) that has the potential to become a genuine military competitor with the U.S., and it’s the same one that is also the most likely to covet Russian territory. And did I mention that Russia has had a real jihad problem of its own, and more natural resources than any other country in the world? Three very good reasons not to write it off just because Russia isn’t ready for liberal democracy yet, anymore than we should cut off our Iraqi allies at the knees just because they cannot institute a liberal democracy, though Kurdistan is probably the closest thing to it outside of Israel in the Middle East…

At the end of the day, what angers me the most is that there’s no substance, no real compassion on La Russophobe’s part for the Russian people. Just damn em’ all and curse the majority that supports Putin, that can’t see any better alternative out there, and declare that Russians are getting what they deserve. She even savagely attacks the Russian Orthodox Church, as if you can blame the doctor for the disease. Very Phariseeical, in my view.

Do you realize how authoritarian you sound?

C’mon, cut Putin a little slack. Just compare him with Chavez, for starters.

Chavez can’t open his mouth without trashing the US. Putin never trashes the US outright and sometimes offers praise.

Chavez is trying to rewrite the Venezualan Constitution in his favor and Putin is abiding by Russian Constitution.

Aren’t those positive signs?

Last winter I stopped at London on the way to Moscow. I was amazed at the anti-US sentiments everywhere in London. So when I was in Russia and Russians would start complaining how unfairly they are portrayed abroad, I would just laugh and say, “You have no idea how unfairly America is portrayed in the world! Get used to it, in the free world everybody trashes everybody all the time.” Generally, Russians were surprised by this. Their thinking is still parochial, based on Russian proverb that friends “Don’t take trash out of the House”, meaning don’t denounce each other before strangers.

That was just another example how Russians are not quite ready for Democracy yet. They simply can’t withstand the pitch of political passions we are used to. The slightest hint of political in-fighting sends them over the edge. May be that’s why they join ranks around Putin. Russians still can’t fathom the level of political hatred and slander that Presidents Clinton and Bush had to go through, for example. They have a lot to learn.