September 03, 2005
President Potemkin
Posted by
Mark Kleiman
I'm with Kevin Drum: this is criminal.
Or it ought to be, anyway. Using resources that could have gone to real relief activity to make phony relief activity for the cameras means that people die who could have been saved.
Update A reader writes in to defend the dead from slander:
I agree entirely with the sentiment but the tag is unfair on the capable Prince Grigori Potemkin. The show tour of the conquered Ukraine he organised for his lover Catherine the Great included two brand new cities, Odessa and Sebastopol. The "villages" was a clever smear by his enemies at court back in St. Petersburg.
