As a result of Obama’s pig-headed determination to invade Syria, even Putin started to look more reasonable and mentally stable. Given that Putin is neither of these things, we can accept that our president has really managed to bungle his image and turn the international community that worshiped him into Obama-haters. Remember how we all consoled ourselves that at least Obama was good for our international image? Yes, I feel embarrassed about that, too.
The New York Times, the Pravda of the American government, rushed to the President’s rescue in its typically clumsy manner and published a long and completely shameless piece that justifies the murderers who killed a 2-year-old Russian boy three months after purchasing him in Russia. In response to this latest in what has been a long string of murders, rapes, and instances of horrifying abuse of kidnapped and purchased children, the Russian government outlawed all international adoptions of Russian children. The NYTimes offers a string of outlandish lies to vilify Russia and justify the child killers.
I have profound post-colonial reasons to dislike Russia, and everybody who has been reading this blog for a while knows how much I hate Putin. However, when the only remaining newspaper with some readership in this country justifies a kidnapping and a murder of a tiny little boy to make our failure of a president to look like less than a disappointment than he is, this is really too much. Let’s look at what exactly this lying article is trying to sell to us.
This is how the freakazoids who murdered the two-year-old boy justify his death:
It seemed like a terrible accident — a severe allergy attack or perhaps a seizure — until the doctors saw the multicolored collage of bruises on Max’s body. . . The police, prosecutors and medical examiners in Texas eventually concluded that Max’s death on Jan. 21 was an accident, resulting from internal injuries probably caused by a fall from the swing set. Max’s bruises were self-inflicted, they said, by a deeply troubled child who clawed his skin raw, banged his head against walls and hurled his body on the floor.
Oh, he beat himself to a bloody pulp, they claim. He was damaged goods, a bad faulty purchase, so who cares that he broke down eventually? OK, let’s assume that a boy who never had this kind of issues back home really grew as disturbed as the killers say. What better argument against international adoptions can anybody find? If a happy, healthy toddler begins to self-mutilate in the space of just 3 months in a way that leads to his death, surely this must mean that something is deeply wrong with the practice that tore him away from his family and handed him over to complete strangers.
The NYTimes is not interested in analyzing its own version of the story, however. All it wants to do is muster compassion for people who buy babies and then slaughter them:
The Shattos have become pariahs in their own community, indelibly stained by the tragedy. Anonymous callers have left death threats on their answering machine. Shoppers have accosted Mrs. Shatto and shouted “Murderer!” as she stood in line at the supermarket. Some friends no longer visit or return phone calls.
What the stupid rag forgets to mention is that if there were actual justice and the killers were placed in jail for their crime, people in the community would not have to be traumatized by seeing them walk around all day long.
The story of Maksim’s kidnapping by the Shattos is told in an outrageously dishonest manner:
The short, sad life of the boy who was born Maksim Nikolaevich Kuzmin has become more than the story of one child, a boy who was neglected by his biological mother, consigned to an institution and finally chosen by a family here in Texas.
The child was not “consigned” to any institution. He was simply stolen from his home while his mother Yulia was at work. She is a young working-class woman who is not very educated and who had no means at her disposal to find out where the kidnappers had taken her child. There was not a shred of legality to the process. The mother’s and the child’s legal rights were violated at every stage of the process. Yulia was not allowed to say good-buy to her son or even see him for the last time. She was not told that he was being moved away to another continent. The facts I’m listing now are absolutely not in dispute. They have been publicly recognized by everybody, including the Russian officials who stole the boy and sold him to the Shattos.
The really horrifying part of the article comes when it easily acknowledges why the Shattos were so dead-set on stealing this particular boy, a boy who was not up for adoption and was being raised by his own biological mother:
The Shattos, who grew up in Ruston, La., and married in 2006, had been trying for years to have a baby, struggling through multiple fertility treatments and three miscarriages. Heartbroken, they decided to adopt from Russia, where they hoped to find two dark-haired, blue-eyed children who would look just like family.
Have you ever seen anything more cynical and disgusting? These people who are in their late forties are so obsessed with their diseased need to prove to the world that they are efficient baby-making machines that they roam the world looking to steal children they can use to prove they gave birth to them on their own. That’s the only reason Maksim was kidnapped: he had the grave misfortune of looking like he could have been the Shattos’ biological son. And now imagine somebody stealing your kid for this kind of reason. Even if you are financially comfortable, I’m sure there are many people in the world who are richer than you are and could afford to have your baby kidnapped from you.
The Shattos freely admit that they broke the Russian laws and purchased children:
The Shattos spent most of their savings, in addition to money they inherited from a parent, to cover the costs: roughly $31,000 for one child, an additional $12,000 for a sibling, and the cost of the three required trips to Russia, according to Gladney’s estimates.
Russia imposes no fees on adoptions. The money these murderers paid went to bribes that motivated the corrupt officials in Russia to kidnap the children.
What the killers forget to mention is that money alone is not enough to adopt a child in Russia. One more requirement you need to meet is proving that the kid you are adopting is suffering from a disease that can better be treated overseas. When rich foreigners want to buy healthy kids, the corrupt bureaucrats attach a diagnosis of mental deficiency to the children because it is impossible to prove or disprove. This is precisely what was done to Maksim and Kirill:
Both boys had developmental delays, common to children who have been institutionalized or have endured neglect. At the age of 2 years and 3 months, Max was more equivalent to a child of 1 year and 9 months, according to information provided to Gladney by the Russian orphanage.
The kids had no developmental delays, of course. The diagnosis was only needed to make the sale possible. The killers, however, took measures to ensure that they’d get high-quality merchandise:
Right away, Dr. Johnson said, he saw a problem: Max’s head seemed a bit small. “Brain size is one of the few measures of cognitive ability that we have early in life,” he said.
But he was not sure of the accuracy of the measurements described in the profile. So in June, when the Shattos arrived at the orphanage in Pskov near the Estonian border, they were armed with a tape measure. . . The couple spent about four hours with the boys that day. They also measured the boys’ heads and took photos from myriad angles.
Got it? The freaks were measuring the kids’ heads to make sure all of their body parts were up to their high expectations. I’ve never heard of anybody doing this when buying dogs, let alone adopting children. And then we are wondering how come the boys didn’t thrive in the loving environment provided by the animals who bring a tape measure to the first encounter with the children?
Of course, victim-blaming is rife in the article. The irresponsible, corrupt journalists who wrote this disgusting piece of libel have the gall of making the boys’ mother sound like she deserved having her children stolen from her:
But the Shattos said the orphanage officials did offer some disturbing information: Max and Kris’s biological mother might have been drinking while she was pregnant, the couple remembers them saying, though the officials offered few details.
I have seen the boys’ mother on television and, believe me, she looks a lot healthier physically and mentally than the ugly diseased freaks who stole the boys and murdered one of them. She, at least, did not put a tape around Maksim’s head. And she didn’t kill him either.
Once the kids were brought to Texas, the abuse intensified:
Still, the couple worried. Max was waking up almost every night screaming. He hoarded food in his toy cars, in his Big Wheel — and in his cheeks. At dinnertime, the family tried to make a game out of getting him to chew.
The abusers thought it was a GAME to force a child to eat. They applied one of the gravest forms of child abuse – forced feeding – to a toddler who had recently been torn away from his home, his mother, and the only environment he ever knew. And they thought it was funny.
We are asked to feel compassion for the abuser:
“She would call and say, ‘Mama, he’s hurting himself, he’s hurting himself, why is he hurting himself?’ ” recalled Mrs. Shatto’s mother, Peggy Worley, 73. “She’d be crying on the phone. She had never seen anything like it, and neither had I.”
Because you stole him from his mother, you sociopath. He is two years old and suddenly his Mommy is not there. There are things that can’t be bought, and 3 months is too short of a time for a small child to forget his own mother and accept that he will now be owned by strangers who only want him if his head is the right size and his eyes are the right color.
And then the really horrifying thing happened:
Convinced that Max had serious psychological problems, the report said, Dr. Eckel prescribed risperidone, an antipsychotic medicine sometimes prescribed to children and teenagers who have autism and engage in self-injurious behaviors. It is not typically prescribed to children under 5, experts say.
To ensure that the costly little toy was quiet and pleasing to his new owners, he was fed a dangerous counter-indicated antipsychotic drug. The Shattos refused to follow the doctor’s advice and seek therapy for the traumatized boy. Who needs all that trouble and expense when you can just zombify him with pills?
Immediately after this horrifying revelation, the article plunges into a narrative of vicious slut-shaming and vilification against Maksim’s real mother.
The boy’s killers show absolutely no remorse and are only worried about how the crime they committed might prevent them from harming any more children:
Sometimes she talks angrily about the orphanage officials in Russia, whom she accuses of hiding Max’s condition. Sometimes she speaks bitterly of the child welfare officials who split up her family during the investigation. She fears that their inconclusive finding, which left open the possibility that she and her husband had physically abused Max, may have effectively ended her teaching career.
Everybody is to blame but for the criminals who destroyed a small boy in just 3 months. The same criminals who retain the ownership of Maksim’s brother.
Clarissa's Blog 
Disgusting.
Remember, this is the same newspaper who did a long feature story on the steubenville gang rape case and took the angle of ‘the town is being torn apart by these revelations. The lives of the rapists and their families would never be the same again. What a pity, that these rapists would have to bear this cross throughout their lives.’
Nothing about the victim, of course. It was unreal.
LikeLike
They did a similar thing for the gangrape of an 11 year old girl in Texas. They focused on the pain of the community and of the rapists’ parents (the rapists were teenagers – some of them athletes – and young adults), and they mentioned that the victim liked to wear lipstick and short skirts (something like that). This was also a case when the rape was filmed, and where the girl and her family received threats for ‘stirring up trouble’ in the community.
Anyway, I wish this post could be published in the Times as a rebuttal. It’s clear they’re trying to whitewash the destruction of a young child and of a family. Not surprised they also slut-shamed the mother, that’s just par for the course with them.
LikeLike
“They focused on the pain of the community and of the rapists’ parents (the rapists were teenagers – some of them athletes – and young adults), and they mentioned that the victim liked to wear lipstick and short skirts (something like that).”
– I’m really glad I didn’t read that because even just reading things like that is too disturbing.
LikeLike
Why not send it to the Times as a rebuttal? It is totally well enough formulated for an op-ed. It is just a question of sending it off.
LikeLike
With every passing day I hate this paper more and more. The saddest thing is that there are so many brilliant journalists – like the ones from that website you always link to – and they don’t get to work for leading national newspapers.
LikeLike
Or send it as an op-ed to Aljazeera America?
LikeLike
// The same criminals who retain the ownership of Maksim’s brother.
What do you mean “retain the ownership”? Previously, you said that the double child stealing was already proven. Why can’t their mother get her living child back? Aren’t their any Russian, American and international organizations and courts?
LikeLike
“Why can’t their mother get her living child back? Aren’t their any Russian, American and international organizations and courts?”
– Because the US has refused to honor the resolution of the Russian courts and the pleading of the Russian government:
The boy’s name is not Kris. The criminals robbed him even of his own name.
LikeLike
// Immediately after this horrifying revelation, the article plunges into a narrative of vicious slut-shaming and vilification against Maksim’s real mother.
I read such on Russian sites too:
Однако соседи, с которыми затем пообщалась “Газета.ru”, утверждают, что ребенка ей отдавать нельзя: она “пьет и шляется” с 13 лет. И больше того, узнав о гибели сына из выпусков новостей, Юлия, по словам очевидцев, отреагировала так: “О, это ж моего в Америке прикончили!”.
Соседи Кузьминой говорят, что изменений в ее жизни с тех пор как детей забрали в США, не последовало. Жительница города Гдов Антонина Ивановна, знакомая с семейством Кузьминых, рассказала побывавшему там корреспонденту сайта страшную историю: “Юлька, ее брат Илья и мать Светлана отбирали у бабушки всю пенсию, поэтому ее подкармливали соседи. Года три назад, перед 8 марта, я тоже притащила полную сумку продуктов. Смотрю, а снег у дома не вытоптан. Постучала – никто не открыл. Тут мы забили тревогу, начали искать родственников. Нашли. Вскрыли дом. Оказывается, уже несколько дней Юлина бабушка лежала мертвая. За это время крысы успели обглодать ей лицо”.
По словам пенсионерки, Юлия Кузьмина “пьет и развлекается с местной шпаной с 13 лет”. “Она и сейчас продолжает пить. В доме нет ни света, ни дров, ни тем более газа. Там взрослому-то страшно жить. Она же пропьет все детские деньги, будет бить мальчика”, – уверена соседка.
Другие тоже говорят, что Юлия “пропивает все, что находит, и в свои годы ни дня не работала”. Раньше она жила в одноэтажном кирпичном доме во Пскове, но потом переехала к своему сожителю-банщику на базу отдыха на берегу Чудского озера, что подтвердил владелец базы. Мать Юлии некоторое время назад исчезла вместе со своим сожителем и, по слухам, либо умерла, либо где-то побирается. Брат Илья в прошлом году повесился. А с отцом, живущим в Гдове с другой семьей, журналист поговорить не смог – тот был мертвецки пьян.
В Гдовской средней школе тоже сохранились нелестные воспоминания о горе-мамаше и ее семье. Социальный педагог Нина Антонова рассказала, что и с ней, и с ее братом всегда были проблемы. Юлия так и не доучилась: “бросила и стала с парнями гулять”, говорит педагог.
“Ей предложили разыграть роль раскаявшейся матери”
А вот что про Юлию Кузьмину рассказал Business FM депутат Псковского областного собрания Лев Шлосберг: “Ее нельзя назвать матерью, она лишена родительских прав, причем лишена абсолютно законно, на всех своих детей. И, кстати, реально неизвестно, сколько у нее их было. Какие-то дети были еще брошены, просто неизвестно куда. Она вела с подросткового возраста абсолютно асоциальный образ жизни”.
По словам Шлосберга, когда пришло известие о том, что Максим Кузьмин умер, даже еще не было известно ничего об обстоятельствах этой смерти достоверно, то в Псковской области было принято “политическое решение” – найти эту женщину и провести спецоперацию по возврату ей родительских прав. Ее нашли в доме у сожителя в абсолютно обычном для нее состоянии.
Ей предложили разыграть роль раскаявшейся матери. Ей эту роль фактически продиктовали. Она ее, как может, играет. “Сейчас эта дама уже в Москве, ее готовят к шоу на российском канале, где она будет из себя изображать кающуюся, я не знаю что”, – заключил депутат.
http://www.newsru.com/russia/21feb2013/badmother.html
LikeLike
These are lies paid for by the enormous child-selling mafia. They have been selling children – including for organs – by the thousand for decades.
LikeLike
Both “adopters are murderers” and “the boys would suffer and even likely die with an alcoholic biological mother” can be true at the same time. I looked at her photos and immediately seen horrible descent into alcoholism, before reading a word of the article. Biological parents sometimes kill their children too, or let them die from neglect.
LikeLike
The facts are that the boys did not die with their mother. They died with the murderers who bought them.
“Biological parents sometimes kill their children too, or let them die from neglect.”
– Yes, I know. I’ve been blogging about child abuse for a long time. But this didn’t happen in this case. maksim died when in the custody of the people who purchased him and fed him Risperdal.
LikeLike
Here is her pic:
http://www.google.co.il/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=0osMmqjlsYXGcM&tbnid=NdndhT_oYse0cM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Frus.ruvr.ru%2F2013_02_22%2FBiologicheskaja-mat-bratev-Kuzminih-dejstvitelno-bila-snjata-s-poezda-iz-za-debosha%2F&ei=aaEjUsPFBLKX0AXes4DYDQ&psig=AFQjCNFUhmzYBdjjs1xC0FGNl6gYfcxe3g&ust=1378153179890934
LikeLike
What do you expect her to look like after her sons were stolen and one of them was murdered?
If people deserve to have their children kidnapped because they are not perfectly coiffed in a moment of grief, then we are all in trouble.
LikeLike
In any case, if she was an unfit mother, there was a procedure that could have been used to remove her parental rights. None of this is an excuse to sell children to insane rich foreigners who tape-measure their heads, change their names, separate them form any contact with their biological relatives, abuse them, and feed them anti-psychotics.
LikeLike
I was reading
http://avva.livejournal.com/2664500.html
and then from comments went to
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/08/ex-texas-teacher-guilty-of-having-sex-with-5-of-her-students/1
RE the second link, she must be punished, but
——
She faces 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count.
——-
seems too much. One doesn’t get more for Manslaughter, Indecent contact with a child, Sexual assault or Aggravated assault in Texas, to give a few examples. (I checked some of Second Degree Felonies – “Two to twenty years in prison and possible fine not exceed $10,000”). Should she be punished as a pedophile?
Hugo, for example, got nothing for sleeping with people above age of consent.
LikeLike
I don’t agree with The Washington Post’s article, btw.
LikeLike
This teacher should be fired and lose her license. But any criminal proceeding is ridiculous since the students were adults.
LikeLike
Yes, but group sex. Texans will not forgive the wife of a soldier who dared have group sex. The lady is in deep trouble. Who cares about laws when group sex is involved?
LikeLike
Read in comments she got 5 years at the end. How much do you think she deserved to get?
LikeLike
There is no crime. Texas should concentrate on actual criminals.
LikeLike
// This teacher should be fired and lose her license. But any criminal proceeding is ridiculous since the students were adults.
Agreed.
LikeLike
I’m always worried about people who want to make life seem to revolve around an ideology of nurturing. They are usually horrible people.
LikeLike
At least many Russians get the fact that The Pravda is piece of propaganda shit. Almost all Americans don’t get the same fact with the NY Times and almost all Québécois don’t get that same fact with La Presse à Desmardais!
LikeLike
Exactly! Every single time I read the NYTimes, I discover outright lies and falsifications. And of course there is a multitude of topics where I can’t judge whether the paper can be trusted. But if there are so much dishonesty I discover all the time in it, how can it be trusted on anything??
LikeLike
Really, this piece deserves a wider audience.
LikeLike
Thank you so much for the support! I really appreciate it.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
LikeLike
OT: A useful tool for when you want to to link to something without giving the author web traffic. I plan to use this for clickbait articles:
Do Not Rank
LikeLike
Those poor little boys.
(And I agree, it would be great if more people could see this post. I know lots of Americans think international adoption is perfectly OK, and even a good thing, because they don’t know that the children are so often stolen from their real families.)
LikeLike