La Russophobe Interviews the Idiotic, Lying Jackass Blogging at ‘A Good Treaty’
28 Jan 2011
Yours truly recently answered some questions from Kim Zigfeld, the hivemind behind “the best Russia politics bloggers in the world,” otherwise known as La Russophobe. For those who don’t remember, Zigfeld’s blog called me an “idiotic, lying jackass” in August 2010. While Zigfeld gives every indication that she still thinks I deserve this honorific, it was fun all the same to receive her interview questions (despite their outraged, accusatory tone).
Lots of stuff going on here.
Here’s a taste of what I was asked:
- Is it just a coincidence that your report about Navalny appeared online at almost the same time as a massive DDOS attack on his website? Did you report on that attack (and the simultaneous attacks on Live Journal and Novaya Gazeta)?
- Oleg Kashin recently received a brutal head trauma and nearly died as a result, in an attack many believe was made by Kremlin operatives to silence his opposition journalism. Russia also has a long history of misusing psychiatric hospitals for political purposes. In light of that, do you think your attack on Kashin might have been inappropriate, or at least in bad taste?
- Do you ever communicate with any Russian government officials or operatives? Do you receive any funding (including such things as free trips, meals, etc.) from any source connected in any way with the Russian state?
Self-portrait.
Aside from this amusing conspiracy stuff, Zigfeld’s questions focused mainly on past AGT posts about New START, Oleg Kashin, and Aleksei Navalny. She added a very unflattering introduction before the text of the actual interview, where I’m accused of being a “cold-blooded” reptile, guilty of “vile acts” such as “undermining American values.”
For my responses and the full text of the interview, please visit this link.
Short epilogue update (May 5, 2011):
The LaRu interview has been up for about a week now, which has given me some time to reflect on the decision to grant the site an interview in the first place. In retrospect, it was a really lousy idea.
Roughly two weeks ago, Kim Zigfeld wrote me a very polite, civil request for an interview. I’d hoped that the tone would carry over to the public exchange on her site. It didn’t. Sorry, folks. This is the last time you’ll ever read about Ms. Zigfeld or her blog on AGT.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 22:25:22
Mildly entertaining but more disturbing. Russia used psychiatric hospitals for political purposes, but seems dear old US isn’t using them even when there’s a clear medical need. Though I suppose psychiatric patients (without a contraindication) should be allowed monitored internet access, so perhaps Kim isn’t a failing of the American medical system after all.
AGT, may I humbly suggest that you spend your time and intellectual prowess on something more valuable to the rest of us than such nonsense?
Apr 29, 2011 @ 02:48:40
I warned you, Agent Nugget. This is what happens when you miss a drop-off. Don’t let it happen again.
Apr 28, 2011 @ 22:48:50
Everyone needs a comic break, right?
Though, like Adomanis, I think AGT took his LR interview just a bit too seriously.
Apr 29, 2011 @ 02:54:30
Excessive seriousness. That’s quite an accusation, coming from the guy who lists his own blog in his ‘top Russia bloggers’ rankings…
Apr 29, 2011 @ 13:10:31
That would be some combination of narcissism and/or justified self-respect (depending on one’s view of my blog), not seriousness.
Apr 29, 2011 @ 08:18:16
I think taking the interview serious was a good tactic. Maybe a sudden injection of brain cells on to that site might spread. Unlikely, but you never know.
I would love to know how LR approached you and how you came to the decision to play along in good faith. I’m always a sucker for Russia blogger gossip.
Apr 29, 2011 @ 09:58:33
It wasn’t too complicated. I received this email last Saturday:
After the initial questions and my response, there was a single follow-up email asking some follow-up questions. As it turns out, Zigfeld’s “good faith” only applies to your answers, as she will tweak the wording of her questions, giving the appearance that you ignored some of her comments. For instance, she inserted a long aside about the gloriousness of Ronald Reagan into the final text of my interview, though it was never a part of her questions to me. I only saw it when she posted the interview publicly.
I suppose I could have reciprocated her insults and launched a good ole shouting match, but I honestly didn’t want to ‘feed the trolls.’ Basically, I did the interview because I hoped it might promote AGT a little more, and I’m always interested in expanding my readership. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to cooperate on something with someone who so clearly doesn’t put in any serious work, when it comes to Russia analysis. I’m not even convinced that Zigfeld really read my Navalny and Kashin posts very extensively, since many of the questions were clearly uninformed (especially the one asking if I’d ever highlighted Navalny’s bravery). Oh well.
Apr 29, 2011 @ 11:40:49
Well, LaRussophobe is a liar as was observed by me many times over the past. The way she reacts to her comments in a mental rage only adds to my verdict of an unstable, challenged mind as she struggles to keep up with being the top Russia blogger with her literacy level.
Take this example from the post she published yesterday about internet freedom ranks according to Freedom House.
Georgia 35
Russia 52
I did a quick check on the website today and to my surprise Georgia gained 5 points in one day, at an apocalyptic rate, let’s say. So let’s carry on guessing, is it that suddenly the internet has become censored, is LR just so damn illiterate or is she a liar, maybe it’s all at the same time!
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=383&report=79
Apr 29, 2011 @ 13:58:08
Kevin,
When I read the interview I had a question, regarding your answer to a question whether the 2012 election will be democratic.
For personal reasons, I’m much more interested in the 2011 parliamentary election.
As you probably know, the 2007 legislative election was dubbed by the PACE as “free but not fair”.
Don’t trust me on a word, though:
“VII. Conclusions and recommendations
40. While the 2007 Duma elections were to a great extent free in terms of a variety of voting options, they were definitely not fair. The cumulative effect of the amended electoral legislation has hindered political pluralism in that this legislation makes it more difficult for new and smaller parties to compete effectively.”
http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/EDOC11473.htm
What’s your prognosis regarding the 2011 election: will they be free by European standards? Will they be fair?
Thanks in advance.
May 05, 2011 @ 22:59:48
I hope to blog about this issue in the future, but probably after the elections have occurred. I’m no prognosticator — just a boring analyst. That said, “free but not fair” sounds like a reasonably good guess, this time around, too.
May 06, 2011 @ 14:26:05
Thanks.
May 01, 2011 @ 14:08:16
I think what is more likely behind it is an imperative to boost readership and generate a bit of excitement on LR itself, by way of drawing commentary to LR threads. That’s fallen off to almost nothing lately, and he/she/it places an inordinate value on numbers of comments as a measure of greatness. He/she/it frequently goes after blogs that don’t excite much comment as losers, lame or ridiculous.
I suggest readership is down simply because her article excoriating me as the bottom of the fetid russophile barrel bought me a grand total of 7 referrals, over the space of 2 days. I normally get twice that from AGT or Sublime Oblivion, regularly (my top referrals except when something gets picked up by inoSMI). I think LR is hoping to rejuvenate her blog by drawing your readers to her comment boards.
May 02, 2011 @ 00:33:15
LR’s identity is about one of the worst kept secrets on the web. The syntax, context, attitude, New York City location, and obsessive amount of online time (Second Life and accusing a kid dying of AIDS of faking it, anyone?) matches perfectly with one Catherine A. Fitzpatrick of New York City.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlD3ZNrPsOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vlBFxxN9gQ
Second Life convention Chicago 2007
According to her Wikipedia bio, she used to work for the Open Society Institute and RFE/RL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_A._Fitzpatrick
Those connections might have been useful in getting a letter under the pseudonym ‘Kim Zigfeld’ published in the Washington Post a few years back smearing some normal college-age Russian girl. However one of the Post’s ombudsman said he took claims that someone violated their letters to the editor policies very seriously (just in case Eugene Ivanov of Pravda on the Potomac is reading this), so perhaps no one at the Post was in on it.
In any case, there is no eXile anymore to give anyone a prize for unmasking Phobie, only one very sad late middle aged woman with a lot of mental problems who’s going to receive nothing in return for her years of smearing/Google bombing us Russophile scumbags on behalf of the anti-Russia lobby (The Jamestown Foundation being the leading suspect for Kim’s paymaster). In a few years given the price of groceries in Manhattan things are gonna be tough — I don’t envy the poor woman.
I would have forgotten her insane rants years ago if Google didn’t do such a damn good job of maintaining them forever, though Bing is far better in this respect as are Yandex and Baidu which don’t a have a creepy Orwellian ex-CEO in Schmidt who practically flaunted the notion that Google’s always watching everyone and had Uncle Sam as his ‘kryshe’ (very glad Sergey and Larry ran him off for that reason).
What fascinates me about Kim’s Goolge bombing campaign is that nobody in the U.S. who actually PAID to get the Reset moving (Boeing, steel company and oil and even nuclear/space industry execs) got Google bombed. Looking for denunciations of the U.S. Russia Chamber of Commerce at LR? Or NASA for being totally dependent on the Russian space launch industry and enriching it with our taxpayer dollars? Zippo, zero, nada, crickets. Funny how the rich get richer and the poor stay poor online in terms of their reputations. And of course, Kim has never written a darn thing about ex-boss George Soros, to my knowledge.
Bravo, Kevin, bravo. As in “Return of the Jedi”, Darth Vader has been unmasked to reveal a pitiful, sickly old man. Whatever usefulness she once had to the anti-Russia lobby is long since over, if it ever was useful.
May 02, 2011 @ 15:27:07
A lot of gossip over a fairly long period has trended toward Catherine Fitzpatrick and La Russophobe being one and the same. It’s certainly possible, but if that’s the case I’d have to doff my hat to Ms. Fitzpatrick for “staying in character”. It’s true she does admit on her self-titled blog to maintaining several blogs, but her conversational style as Catherine Fitzpatrick and – theoretically – La Russophobe share little in common that I’ve ever noticed beyond an obbsessive hatred of Putin and the Russian government as well as a reverence for Russian liberals and American values. Outside that, La Russophobe comes across as an ignorant, poorly educated boob who keeps hammering on the same old theme long after everyone has stopped listening. Perhaps you’ve followed them both closely enough to observe common patterns, but I’ve never seen Catherine Fitzpatrick refer to anyone as an “ass-scratching ape’ or various other primate metaphors that are a staple at La Russophobe. Ms. Fitzpatrick occasionally overdoes the flowery prose and seems to add multi-syllabic words for no other reason than making the sentence sound more portentuous and complicated, but on the whole I’d suggest she sounds very well-educated. LR comes across as an all-caps screeching nutbag, and material offered via her Kim Zigfeld persona at Pajamas Media fits like they both came from the same cookie-cutter; brassy, loud, poorly-researched spin calculated to outrage the armchair russophobes alternating with weepy pro-American sentimentality whose seams leak saccharine.
If you review Catherine Fitzpatrick’s recent quarrel with Kevin in the comments section of “Oleg Kashin’s Manic Depression”, the tone and grammar sound quite a bit above what passes for discourse at La Russophobe. It could be deliberate, but keeping that up over a period of time is harder than you might think. I agree it’s certainly possible, but New York’s a big town. If they’re both the same person, I reiterate that it’s quite an achievement.
May 03, 2011 @ 14:28:10
I agree with Mark.
I’ve never found cause to believe catfitz = LR. The writing styles are too different and four years present innumerable opportunities to slip up.
May 05, 2011 @ 22:32:25
Agreed, though I do appreciate the conspiracy theory.
May 05, 2011 @ 21:44:45
Phobie, Phobie, Phobie,
So getting called on making stuff up is lying, apparently, and journalistic ethics are also for people not righteously crusading to free Russia, apparently from its own corrupt people, not merely its leadership. And you wonder why your favorites in Russia attract pathetic levels of support.
Phobie, I’ve posted here for the simple reason that SWP is taken seriously at least in his chosen profession, which is academic (and paid consulting) analysis of commodities markets.
Why he should be taken a bit less seriously on Russia is clear, because he attracts deranged fan ‘girls’ such as yourself and quasi-fascists like vorobey and adopted country ultra-nationalists like Andrew who insist on distorting history for their own ends (i.e. Stalin and Beria were proud Russians who had nothing to do with Georgia).
You have never operated with the slightest bit of transparency (Jamestown Foundation? Soros? Who funds you?) or ethics but demand this from everyone else, even as you make up controversies from the word go.
You also would probably annoy the hell out of SWP if he were being ‘Google-bombed’ all the time by a harassing, anonymous cyber-thug, as Guillory and other ’scum-sucking Russophiles’ are.
My question still stands: where is your cyber bullying directed against the heavy hitters who actually greased the skids for ‘Reset’, as opposed to ‘pathetic Russophiles’? Could it be that Gov-oogle would scrub your stuff so fast it wouldn’t even be detectable if it were directed against top executives at…BP, Boeing, NASA, you name em’? Why so easy to bash a bunch of guys in their twenties in thirties while hard to take on the real powers that be who seem bent on appeasing Putvedev, if only to keep someone buying 10-15% of U.S. Treasuries that get sold to some fool other than The Fed, U.S. shale gas plays, and U.S. steel mills?
Comment by pahoben lite — May 5, 2011 @ 7:42 pm
May 05, 2011 @ 22:57:54
Not sure what’s going on in this comment, but there sure is some high-energy up in here.
Jun 21, 2011 @ 10:44:08
Kevin, my deepest sympathies with you. I only marveled at your composure within the interview and the comment section(I knew from the start that the clowns on LR were just waiting to go on a mudslinging campaign against you the moment your viewpoints are 1% non aligned with theirs). The “interview” page by LR has only smeared the entire LR website, and i do hope they interview more unsuspecting victims as they did you so that everyone will know what they really are, but doesnt really matter because their blog is getting deader and deader while the majority of “their traffic” comes from people searching for porn and accidentally stumbling upon it =D
Jun 21, 2011 @ 10:51:35
Again i insist on giving you my deepest sympathies, as once is not enough. But as the Bible states, in the end all lies will be exposed, and the false teachers and prophets will call upon the mountains to fall upon them to hide their shame….
I guess to them you dont even have to be LR’s enemy, you just have to be an outside observer who disagrees with them by 1% to automatically become subject to their “scum sucking russophile” analysis.
Such behavior only shows that LR isn’t worth 2 minutes of our time and perfectly explains why most of the comments on their posts are by LR =D
Jun 23, 2011 @ 19:02:04
Ronald Reagan confronted the Putin regime, and saw it into its grave? Quite an accomplishment for a man who was 88 years old and no longer president when Putin came to power. He was so surprised to see Putin still in power in 2004 that he died, while Putin was president for another 4 years.