Uncle Volodya says, "Yulia Latynina recently interviewed Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. When asked what it was like to talk with a crazy person, Ahmadenijad replied. "It wasn't so bad."
Everybody knows someone who is terrible at a particular hobby or chosen field of interest, but who stubbornly continues their pursuit of it in the face of considerable evidence that they have no aptitude for it. Motorhead and music, for example. Steven Seagal and acting. Sarah Palin and public speaking. Anybody from the Indianapolis Colts and football.
To the list, add Yulia Latynina and military strategy. Yulia Latynina and psychology. Actually, Yulia Latynina and everything to do with writing except for fiction, at which she is allegedly not bad.
It’s been some time since Yulia Latynina and this blog crossed paths; ‘way back in August of 2010, to be precise. On that occasion, as on this one, Yulia showcased her largely imaginary familiarity with military affairs. The effort resulted in an exemplary departure from reality which saw Yulia excoriating Viktor Bout for being a shitheel unscrupulous arms dealer while rapturously praising the CIA for giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. It proved extremely hard to draw any conclusion from her angry barking other than that Viktor Bout is a filthy criminal because he is a Russian, while the CIA is a good example of responsible social engineering because it is American.
Have the intervening months marked a sobering of judgment in Ms. Latynina; a more even-handed approach to international affairs and domestic politics? Not so you’d notice. By way – with thanks – of Moscow Exile, here is Yulia’s recent Moscow Times piece, in which she attempts to persuade the reader that Vladimir Putin intends to go to war with Georgia immediately after the March 4th presidential elections in order to silence his opposition with a patriotic distraction. I wish I were making that up, but I’m not.
I have no talent for spontaneous fiction myself, and am seldom tasked with unsupported invention more challenging than, “Does this make me look fat?” Latynina, on the other hand, is apparently a frustrated serial storyteller, and makes dizzying connections based on factors that are not merely coincidental, but which seem to have no causative relationship at all. That’s because, often, they don’t. Let’s take a look at it; I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.
The piece starts off mildly enough; political trouble in South Ossetia, although Latynina’s dramatic declaration that “How you vote in the tiny republic is less important than the number of machine guns you own” is a bit over the top. But it appears to be true that not once, but twice in the run-up to the elections, armed men made demands that had nothing to do with democracy; the first that the president be allowed to serve a third term – presumably without the messiness of an election – and the second that a candidate be allowed to stand for election who does not live in South Ossetia, but lives in Moscow. All indications also seem to suggest that Alla Dzhioyeva did indeed win, and that Kremlin favourite Anatoly Bibilov only began to complain of “voting irregularities” when it became evident he was losing.
But let’s not leave this point; not just yet. It makes some interesting arguments that resonate far beyond South Ossetia.
Consider. According to western media accounts, Dzhioyeva won in the first round on November 27th, with 57% of the vote. However, that’s not exactly what happened. That was actually a run-off, because neither candidate won enough of the vote in the real first round – held November 13th – to score a conclusive victory; they split the vote with just over 25% each. But Georgia and the west dismissed it as illegitimate; therefore, according to the narrative, it never happened. The first election was that of November 27th, which the western-preferred candidate won handily.
Before that, however, the U.S., NATO and the EU made it clear they did not recognize the elections as legitimate.
Whoops!! that was before Alla Dzhoiyeva appeared to have won, but the Supreme Court annulled the results. Now, the story is completely different. It transpired that the election which the west announced it would not recognize as legitimate was nonetheless attended by international observers, who all agreed the vote was fair: “In comments to RFE/RL’s Georgian Service also shortly before the Supreme Court decision was made public, Dzhioyeva said the election results were valid and had been confirmed by the Election Commission, by observers from both campaigns, and by international monitors”. Here’s Maurice Bonnot, an observer from the Paris-based Institute of Democracy and Cooperation: “The election for president of South Ossetia was conducted democratically and this cannot be ignored…The electoral process and the protocols were in order — I hear that there are complaints now, but I don’t see any cause for them. We did not see any efforts to pressure voters. This election was democratic and the election should be validated. This is the choice of the people.”
So now, now it’s the choice of the people, which cannot be ignored, and the election should be validated, according to a representative from a democracy-advocacy agency based in a country that announced in advance that the elections did not matter because they were illegitimate.
I agree the conduct of the elections probably was fair, likely in both the original election and the run-off, and that Alla Dzhoiyeva probably is the duly-elected president of South Ossetia. Any “campaigning” or “pressuring” by her volunteers at polling stations, if it occurred at all, was likely inconsequential to the result. But the larger point here seems to be the west’s evident excitement over her big win, and a new willingness to get involved in the legitimizing of it. Forgive me if I find it hard to form any impression from it other than it is seen to be an opportunity to put a thumb in the eye of the Kremlin.
Is there any other country – anywhere on this planet or those yet to be colonized by Newt Gingrich – that the west so goes out of its way to antagonize?
Yes, is this where I go to audition for Georgian Defense Minister?
The remainder of Latynina’s argument vis-a-vis South Ossetia’s elections is just silly; that the incumbents enjoyed an advantage over the opposition in that they had stolen so much of the South Ossetian grant money from Russia that they could use it to “bribe their benefactors”. That their benefactors are the Russian government, whom they would presumably be bribing with their own money to help candidates they already wanted to win, apparently makes perfect sense to her. I guess it would to you, too, if you approached every set of circumstances with the preordained conclusion that it somehow spelled disaster for the Russian government.
But it is Latynina’s next swing for the fences that made laughing out loud go from possibility to certainty. Putin is clearly, we are told, planning for another attack on Georgia, timed to follow on the heels of his presumed success in the presidential elections, with the designed purpose of “stirring up a patriotic frenzy” and sidelining his “radical opposition” so that any protests will fail to gain traction.
How can she possibly know this? Connections, baby; it’s all so simple when you see it laid out before you as only Latyninaesque epiphany could do. There has been a recent change of command at 58th Army – some of whose brigades went into Georgia in 2008 to throw them out of South Ossetia when Saakashvili tried to retake it by military force, as he had promised to do during his candidacy for the Georgian presidency – and “almost all of its weaponry has been modernized.”
I know it’s cheap to resort to patronization and mockery. But that’s just the way I roll. Yulia, the need for modern military equipment for the Russian army was identified by scores of analysts from around the world almost before the dust had settled; although the Russian counterattack was an unqualified success, four aircraft were lost that did not need to be, mobilization was not as fast as it could have been and positions of enemy artillery and rocket launchers were not known with the degree of certainty they likely could have been. The President of Russia specifically spoke about modernization of military equipment during a visit to 58th Army headquarters in Vladikavkaz four months ago. As one of the few military units actually involved in combat in recent years, 58th Army could reasonably expect to have its equipment modernized early. As to the state of its weaponry, it was also the only army in the Russian Federation to have expended any of its weaponry in a manner other than routine training in the last few years, and shares a border with an enemy who attacked its people. Not to resupply the 58th Army would be a cause for comment, for sure.
A new Commanding Officer, you say? I couldn’t find a history of former commanders of 58th Army, which has existed in its present configuration since 1995 (with its headquarters at Vladikavkaz, although it has existed with its present divisions or very similar capabilities since 1942), although I did try, but I promise you it has not had the same Commanding Officer since 1995. But the North Caucasus Military District, of which 58th Army is a subordinate unit, has had 5 different commanding officers since 2000; the current commander has been in charge since 2008. Looking at their rotation – around 2 to 3 years – suggests he also is due for relief by a new CO.
During the counterattack which was a response to Saakashvili’s grab for South Ossetia – which began in the form of mobilization (see “Georgia’s Propaganda War and the Georgian-Russian War, Gordon M. Hahn) even before Saakashvili declared a unilateral cease-fire, the Commanding Officer of the 58th Army was wounded by a shell splinter. What would have happened if he had been killed, and it had been army policy to keep the same commanding officer for years and years? For this reason, among others, officers with command responsibility are changed out every couple of years in armies around the world – to build a pool of experienced leadership. In fact, unless the new Commanding Officer served previously as the Executive Officer in the same unit, replacing the Commanding Officer only two months before launching an attack – in which he would lead a unit whose strengths and weaknesses were still largely unknown to him – would be the kind of decision only a fool or someone who was out of options would make. The changeover now argues against a military campaign rather than for it.
I don’t think I want to say a lot about Latynina’s interpretation of the findings arrived at by the EU Commission headed by Heidi Tagliavini. The notion that some stringer for Novaya Gazeta and the Moscow Times has a better appreciation for the facts than an investigative body which included 30 legal, military and history experts , among them four former ministers of foreign affairs or of defense, speaks for itself.
The litany of complaints by this wire-haired whackjob against her government and her country is seemingly endless, and it seems Russia can do nothing to suit her. Her beliefs as expressed by she herself encourage her readers to accept that Alexei Navalny should be leader of the Russian Federation, and that while the poor are perfectly adequate to the heavy lifting necessary for revolution, once the revolution has achieved its goal of overthrowing the government, decision-making ought to fall to the wealthy. The USA – the polar opposite of Russia in her eyes – can do no wrong.
Since her beliefs so closely mirror those of the conservative element in the country she idolizes, it seems not too much to ask for them to grant her some small American protectorate – Guam, perhaps – to rule over as she sees fit. Maybe we could visit it in a few years, see what kind of democratic utopia she has made of it. All in favour?
Dear Mark,
I agree with everything you say about Latynina. I have already commented about Latynina and about this article she has written. I think she has become so hate filled that she has lost whatever grip on reality she ever had. As I said the parallel she makes between Russia’s conduct in the South Ossetia war and the Nazi attack on Poland is beneath contempt and frankly outrageous. I cannot imagine a journalist being allowed to write like this about Britain in a British newspaper.
I am not going to comment on the political crisis in South Ossetia because I simply haven’t followed it but I do want to make a number of points:
1. I do not know whether or not the commander of the 58th Army has been replaced but I am sure that Latynina’s claim that the 58th Army has been completely re equipped in simply an invention. Defence spending has increased in Russia over the last few years but the bulk of funding has gone into the nuclear submarine, air defence, shipbuilding and strategic missile programmes. There has been very little additional funding on ground equipment. Apparently the army has stopped buying Kalashnikov small arms because stocks are already very high, whilst acquisition of tanks and armoured vehicles has fallen and may even have completely stopped. The reason for that by the way is that apparently there is a new series of tanks and armoured vehicles in advanced development so that it makes little sense to go acquiring existing systems that are about to become obsolete. Doubtless any losses from the 2008 will have been replaced and perhaps there have been a number of new items provided but I very much doubt that there has been any comprehensive re equipment. Latynina’s claim that the 58th Army has been completely re equipped looks to me like a rhetorical invention.
2. The Tagliavini report did make clear that the 2008 war was started by Georgia but is actually in almost every other respect a disappointing document as was pointed out at the time. If you read it carefully it bears all the signs of having been negotiated undoubtedly in order to remove more pointed criticisms of Saakashvili that were in the original draft. The result is that the text is remarkably opaque and Saakashvili is consistently given the benefit of the doubt in respect of all the claims and counter claims that were made before the war. Pretty much everything that Saakashvili said during the war turned out to be untrue so why anyone should give any credence to any of the claims he made before the war is baffling. The reality of course as we all know is that Saakashvili was the aggressor from the outset, everybody knows it and nobody believes a word he says but for political reasons his US and European supporters have to pretend otherwise. The best and most thorough analysis of the war and of the build up to the war that I have read has been made by Patrick Armstrong onn Russia Other Points of View.
3. Your article made me read the previous article you have written on Latynina. I would make one point about it. I cannot comment on the effectiveness of the Stinger as a weapon but the claim that it brought about the Soviet army’s defeat in Afghanistan is a myth. The USSR had already decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan before a single Stinger appeared on the scene. It did so because the original objective of the intervention, the stabilisation of the pro Soviet government of Afghanistan, had been achieved. There was even a negotiation in Geneva at which the US and Pakistan formally agreed to end their interference in Afghanistan and to stop their arms supplies to the rebels. Needless to say the US and Pakistan broke the agreement but the pro Soviet Afghan government was nonetheless able to survive and hold its own even after the Soviet army withdrew and only collapsed after the USSR had itself collapsed. Even then that its collapse only came because Yeltsin at US insistence imposed an arms and food embargo and via his first foreign minister Boris Pankin actually did everything he could to undermine it. If you want to read a good account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan I would recommend a fine recent study by Sir Rodric Braithwaite, who was formerly the UK ambassador to Moscow, as well as two studies written during the closing stages of the war by Mark Urban, who is former British army officer and who is now the BBC’s main defence correspondence. I believe that there is also a good study by a former Guardian writer called Jonathan Steele, though I have not read it. Needless to say none of these authorities can be accused of a pro Soviet bias. I would add that (as Braithwaite touches on in his study) you need to be particularly careful researching the Soviet war in Afghanistan since there is a huge amount of disinformation on the subject with all sorts of comments about the war attributed to Soviet politicians and generals appearing in all sorts of places that they apparently never said.
Hi, Alex; it’s rare for me to feel such antipathy for any leader as I do for Saakashvili. He’s just such a swaggering oaf, so obviously stuck on himself and accustomed to getting his own way. He gives every sign of believing there is a short cut for everything, and that deliberation and caution are for losers. I’m only sorry he dragged his country down with him and got some of his people killed, although YouTube clips of gleeful Georgian regulars shooting up Tskhinvali apartment blocks from their vehicles suggest a few of them got what they deserved. Video of his stammering, near-tears agreement to negotiate a settlement – with a scowling Condoleezza Rice at his side – was pure candy for the senses.
Anyway, impatient with diplomacy as ever, he gambled that if he only launched the attack – what in the name of God was the west investing all that training and money in his army for, if they didn’t expect him to use it? Saakashvili could read coded messages as well as anyone – the west would gallop to the rescue before a Russian counterattack could do much damage. He was plainly furious that his plan did not bear the intended fruit. He believed he would go down in the history books as the Leader Of The Age; putting Russia in its place, playing the west to his personal advantage through his strategic brilliance, and fast-tracking Georgia into NATO and the EU. Instead, he lost. But he still refuses to act like a loser. Perhaps that’s because the west continues to cover for him; perhaps he reasons that they still have a grand purpose for him, for which they need him untarnished by failure.
My go-to reference for who did what when, as I suggested, was Gordon M. Hahn’s excellent “Georgia’s Propaganda War and the Georgian-Russian War“. I highly recommend it. Mr. Hahn has meticulously chronicled Saakashvili’s deceptions and deliberate false statements in his attempts to “wag the dog” and have the west do battle with Russia on his behalf. And so, in an oblique but very real way, the west shares his failure, and that goes a long way toward explaining the careful treatment of his cupidity in official reporting.
It’s quite true that Stinger had much less an effect on the Afghan war than some popular accounts suggest, although it was and is an excellent weapon and a brilliant piece of martial engineering. It just made me laugh, the manner in which Latynina lectured readers on how wise and farseeing the CIA was with its double-blind manipulations and spycraft, when in fact they gave the weapons to the rebels and then ended up buying them back to keep them off the streets, and even the buyback program was broadly a failure. She seems to get an idea in her head and, after that, that’s the way it is and no amount of refutation will deter her from making a fool of herself.
Here’s another insight into the workings of Latynina’s fevered imagination. Linked below is an atrticle that she wrote for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that appeared on August 8 2008 during the short lived Georgia-Russian conflict, which hostilities were, according to Latynina, the result of the machiavelian mechanations of those heinous siloviki in Moscow: “And then there is the secret budget Russia has allotted for the struggle — estimated at somewhere around $800 million”.
Fact? Or rumour or hearsay? Or what you, my dear, believe to be true?
As regards the bombardment of Tskhinvali by Georgian rockets, she has an answer off pat:
“Whenever someone starts telling us about shelling in Tskhinvali, it is important to keep in mind exactly what Tskhinvali is. It is not a city somewhere in the middle of a republic that is being fired upon by saboteurs…” [saboteurs! - It is now an irrefutable fact that the Georgian military were responsible for the bombardment, although I shouldn't doubt that Latynina would dispute this] “…On three sides, Tskhinvali is surrounded by Georgian villages. The edge of Tskhinvali is a military outpost. South Ossetian forces fire from there into the Georgian villages, and the Georgians respond with fire of their own. To help keep Georgian fire from hitting civilians in the city, all the South Ossetians would have to do is move their military base forward a couple hundred meters…” [Right! Got you! So the S. Ossetians are the guilty party.]
“But, of course, it is a fundamental principle of terrorists the world over — set up firing points in civilian areas and then when your enemy fires on you, you gleefully parade the bodies of your own children in front of the television cameras. Kokoity’s terrorists are following this same principle. If South Ossetia can in any way be considered a state, it must be considered a terrorist state.” [Of course! They're all cowardly terrorists and so got their just deserts.]
She goes on:
“It would seem that the siloviki really thought that there is nothing more to war than lying. Lying about “unprovoked shelling” and about wounded “civilians” who are shown on television wearing camouflage…The siloviki supposed that the war would be won by the side that lied the most. Saakashvili knew that the war would be won by the one who won the war”.
All hail the mighty, tie-eating conqueror!
Rember, this article appeared the day after the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali. Clearly, when Latynina was penning these words, very likely at the same time as the Georgians were bombarding Tskhinvali, the all-knowing Latynina thought that Saakashvili was in with a chance. Furthermore, insofar as she likens the siloviki to a cancerous tumour in the body politic of Russia, Latynina writes that the “joint venture”, namely the actions of the siloviki and the S.Ossetian terrorists “… only had one interest in Russia — the same interest that a cancerous tumor has on its host body. We can only thank Saakashvili for the chemotherapy”.
So it’s “Mikheil the Healer” now!
And the military expert Latynina winds up by discussing the options (on August 8, 2008) open to Russia:
“The main question in the current situation is what will Russia do now. There are two choices. One would be to get entangled in a full-scale war, which is what the siloviki have been trying to force Moscow to do for the last few months. It doesn’t matter to them who wins that war or how many victims there are. The mere fact of a war will mean that the siloviki will maintain their control over Russia. In fact, a defeat for Russia would be even better for the siloviki than a victory; there would be shouts, recriminations, hysterics, and — in the end — more money”.
Strange! Latynina doesn’t seem to have considered one other possibility, the one, which actually happened: an unmitigated defeat for the Georgian armed forces and one that occurred a mere 8 days after the von Clausewitz of Radio Ekho Moskvy had penned her mighty analysis of events.
See:
http://www.rferl.org/content/South_Ossetia_Crisis_Could_Be_Russian_Chance_To_Defeat_Siloviki/1189525.html
Dear Mark and Moscow Exile,
Havng now read the three examples of Latynina’s journalism you have provided I can tell you exactly what she is doing: making it up as she goes along. It is absolutely inconceivable that she has any knowledge of many of the facts she reports. Her harping on about “lies” is an infalliible sign that she is making it all up and is a text book example of psychological transferance.
I have to say that Latynina’s method is an extreme example of much of what passes for liberal journalism in Russia. Politkovskaya was murdered before I resumed my interest in Russia but when I glanced through her book I was upset to find obvious examples of the same method there.
Anyone who invents in the way Latynina does must be under great personal stress and cannot be a happy person. She must be finding it very difficut to separate fact from her own fictions.
I wouldn’t presume to analyze Latynina as I have no training in the field – although I agree you don’t have to be a professional to spot a “textbook case”. But it stands to reason for me that if someone is so obviously sickened by their current circumstances (living in a corrupt cesspool like Russia), yet does not take steps to reconcile those circumstances (like packing up and moving to the United States, where a place of honour might well be found for such nonstop Russophobic invention in one of the nation’s numerous think tanks), then that individual seeks a dramatic reckoning, perhaps one which will make them a martyr to the cause. Perhaps she dreams of being hauled before Putin himself, where she will be ordered to desist from her insightful exposure of his nefarious schemes…to which she will shout, “NEVER!!! I will go on telling the truth, ha, ha!!” and receive a bullet in the back of the head, to be gloriously remembered ever after on underground T-shirts and postcards. If that’s the case, I have to say I don’t see the T-Shirt being a hot seller – she looks uncomfortably like Carrot Top with utilitarian breasts.
Seriously – what are we to make of this nonsense? The USA would call it “giving aid and comfort to the enemy“, but Russia is not really in any danger unless it is overrun by budgies and cockatoos – since the bottoms of their cages is where much of Latynina’s work is consigned for deeper review.
Like many nutcases, though, her slobbering accusations provide interest in the form of contrast. Although it seems plain she invented the “secret slush fund” allocated for the conquest of Georgia, it is a fact that Saakashvili’s government includes a Minister for the Reintegration of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It is also a fact the office was established 8 months in advance of the Georgian strike. From this it might reasonably be deduced that the “peaceful reaching out” was not achieving the desired success. It is a fact – grudgingly admitted by even the Economist in a vituperative article, in which it quotes both Latynina and Lilia Shevtsova (another anti-Russian nutcase) – that Saakashvili promised in his 2008 campaign to reintegrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is a fact, established in the earlier post on Vladimir Ryzhkov, that Ryzhkov derided the state for gratuitously alarming its citizens with apocalyptic inventions about a militarily acquisitive Georgia – “For several weeks now, Soviet — sorry, Russian — television has been hammering home the image of an unpredictable, aggressive Georgia that is feverishly arming itself for an attack on the defenseless, peaceful enclave of South Ossetia” – two years in advance of the actual attack. Finally, it is alleged by Spiegel Online that a secret document entitled “Order Number 2 of August 7″ (secret in the sense that Georgia refused to let the EU Commission see it, although his military leaders quoted from it) may prove Saakashvili deliberately planned and initiated a war of aggression. That would have tremendous legal implications, not to mention the practical difficulties it would introduce to the continued financial and moral support from western countries.
“To help keep Georgian fire from hitting civilians in the city, all the South Ossetians would have to do is move their military base forward a couple hundred meters…”
What?? Georgian artillery is accurate only to within a “couple hundred meters”?? Well, that explains how nurseries, schools and the town’s only hospital were destroyed on the first day; remember, that was before the Russian counterattack, when the Georgian army was opposed only by South Ossetian “militants” and Russian peacekeepers there under an internationally-brokered agreement signed by Saakashvili.
As to the rest of her dribbling hysterics, Moscow Exile has dealt with them appropriately. Thanks, Moscow Exile, for the tip.
Mark, I think that Latynina is not delirious, just her agenda is not evident.
It’s a good option if she’s just a stupid writer. The bad option is if she was asked to study potential reactions of Russians in case of a war.
I’ve read bits of her fiction, although not the science fiction which she also writes (and the one example I saw was worthless dreck); this was a fictional account of militants somewhere in the Caucasus, and it was actually pretty good. She’s capable of writing compellingly as long as distinguishing between reality and fiction is not a requirement.
I don’t doubt her opinion is sought after by western agencies, because she says what they like to hear and is an apparently unrestricted destabilizing influence. But any attempt to use her to sample the public mood would be balked by the same problem – you can’t believe a word she says, and you have to budget in a large “fudge factor” for her opinions being biased in the direction of the state she would like to see; the people of Russia fleeing in terror and shrieking, “Help us, America!!!!” while a misshapen, grunting Vladimir Putin lurches after them with crushed children hanging from his teeth.
She’s probably quite safe as long as she remains a member of the lunatic fringe with a tiny audience, and it might even be helpful from Russia’s viewpoint if western countries believe her addled visions. After all, she is an agent of disinformation who does not even ask to be paid.
I don’t like the coincidences.
For example, have a look: http://forum.polismi.org/index.php?/topic/1352-
(Just to get it correctly, the topic starter lives in the West)
What’s bad about it? The timing is.
I don’t believe for a minute that there will be war between Russia and the USA; Putin is not an hysteric, and the element in the U.S. that would welcome Armageddon is small. Neither country, if victorious, could control the other. Russia has no interest, as one commenter noted, in managing the daily affairs of the USA beyond ensuring they do not harm the rest of the world.
Still, there seems little doubt that a recovering and ambitious Russia is perceived as a threat to the western alliance.
What I find curious in this is the trend in militarism of the two nations. Many conversations revolving around the relationship between Russia and the west, especially the USA, appear to disregard major changes in both since the end of the Cold War, and to assume those changes have not occurred. “Russia does this” and “Russia acts like that” are thrown around as if Russia were still the Soviet Union, with a huge military and firm state control over every aspect of the economy. In fact, the Russian Federation is considerably smaller than the Soviet Union was, and the Russian military has been allowed to decline until it is difficult to perceive it (aside from the nuclear element) as anything more ambitious than a self-defense force. Russia has allowed a number of satellites to slip away undeterred, and has fought just once outside its borders since the close of the Cold War, for a total of 8 days.
By contrast, the U.S. military budget is bigger now than ever, and the growing tendency to use military force to achieve policy goals is unmistakable.
One nation has interfered less and less in the affairs of its neighbours and has regularly argued for moderation on the world stage, while the other has pursued a steadily-increasing policy of active involvement in civil affairs around the world and become a vocal champion of “sending in the troops” to realize its foreign policy aims.
Yet the first nation is the one portrayed as the unpredictable mad dog who is likely to lash out without warning, and to harbour covetous designs on the possessions and sovereignty of its neighbours. Funny old world, innit?
I fully expect some sort of western provocation in advance of the presidential elections. If it follows the formula, timing will indeed be everything, and it will have to be initiated with scrupulous care so as to be early enough to influence the vote, but late enough that people will have to go to the polls without verifying for themselves if it is true. This is usually just a couple of days before the vote, and accompanied by a barrage of press releases to amplify the accusations and muddy the waters, and is a tried and true tactic in western elections. Afterward, it always proves impossible to discover who started the whole thing, and everyone claims to have heard it somewhere else. It’s just politics.
However, I don’t believe the west actually thinks it can stop Putin from winning, and now the goal seems to be to make the vote close enough to force him into a run-off, possibly in the hope that he will have to form new political alliances and build coalitions – which might include liberals – in order to govern. But it’s certainly not planning a war to topple Putin.
re: the link in Evgeny’s post above, in which there is a photograph of a rundown shack that serves as a village shop somewhere in the “former Soviet Union”.
I presume that the person whose site is linked below also lives in the West, in the USA to be precise, and although he/she may not be quite as illiterate as his/her spelling would lead one to believe, I am sure that the trailer park photographs are genuine ones taken in the “Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free” and are evidence of the benefits that have been provided by over 200 years of freedom and democracy to the fortunate citizens of the USA.
However, I should think that not all of the characters in the site that are described alongside their photographs are genuine.
Maybe some of them are.
Then again, perhaps they all are.
Who knows?
See:
http://mytrailerpark.com/
Dear Moscow Exile,
As both of us know there are plenty of places in Britain of a squalor and hopelessness that far surpass those of the shack in the photograph. I live in a prosperous part of London but not ten minutes from where I live there are places where the poverty and misery are simply grinding and can match anything in Russia. These are not however places where visitors or tourists go and they therefore know nothing of them.
I often find Russians who only occasionally travel to the west are oblivious to the reality of western poverty. A few months ago one of my best Russian friends was here and we were talking about why so many Russians have feelings of inferiority to the west. By way of explanation he gestured to the buildings around us. We were in fact standing in the middle of Berkeley Square! I tried to explain to him that this area was completely atypical even for London and that the proportion of British people who live or work in such buildings is microscopic but this did not make much of an impression on him.
@Evgeny: I suspect somebody in the West actually asked Latynina to spin out a scenario. A couple of weeks ago some “strategy” type websites were spinning out a possible scenario “What if USA attacked Iran in a land war?” and one of the correlates was that Gruzia would have to be involved as a troop-transit; in which case Russian base in Armenia would have to be neutralized; in which case Russia would have to invade Gruzia again to reestablish contact with Armenia…. and so on… It was just a wargame on paper. Latynina herself probably threw in the bogus clues about changes taking place in the 58th army. She is probably trying to earn her “stripes” (pun – ha ha!) as a military commentator for Western intelligence services. Is she rich, by the way? Because her ideology is that rich people are good, and poor people are bad. So, I cannot help but wonder if she herself is very wealthy. Probably not, otherwise why would she take on these silly low-paying assignments?
She seems like Anne Coulter in a frizzy red wig.
Excellent ! Should not female psychopaths naturally gravitate to the right wing ?
Still that might be a difference as for the level of sponsors. I doubt that Ann Coulter has connections to a Khodorkovski level political figure in the USA.
See http://dolboeb.livejournal.com/2304613.html
You gotta hand it to Comrade Ziuganov: NOBODY can form a rotten coalition better than him. So rotten, and it stinks so bad, that even Stalin’s maggoty corpse is disgusted. So, anyhow, here is Ziuganov’s proposed coalition government in the (unlikely) event he is elected Prez next month. Some of the names on the list are reasonable men (Rogozin, Lavrov, for example). But check this out:
Счетная палата
Решульский Сергей Николаевич, член Комитета Госдумы по охране здоровья;
Навальный Алексей Анатольевич, политический и общественный деятель;
Болдырев Юрий Юрьевич, государственный и политический деятель, публицист.
Noted fascist and American spy Navalny in a Communist coalition government? Really??
Gee; I wonder what portfolio he’ll be offered, considering his Curriculum Vitae is listed as “political and social activist”.
This is the kind of dramatic nuttiness I would expect from Zhirinovsky.
But there seems little doubt it is only a cheap vote-getter, hoping to snag the protest vote. And everything Navalny has said regarding economic aims and privatizations puts him much closer to Putin’s philosophy than that of the KPRF. Besides, the protesters don’t want Navalny to be a member of government, they want him to rule single-handed, like a benevolent monarch. I doubt they’d be happy with him as mere Minister of Political and Social Activism.
I took another look at Z’s coalition government, it’s mostly a boys club, I count 109 names, of which only 5 girls. In the past, commies at least made the effort to have a gender-quota. If Z wanted to beef up his women’s lib chops he could have at least proposed Chirikova as Minister of Forestry. Ha!
(The fact that Navalny is on it proves to me that this list was put together by McFoul in the American Embassy. No wonder Z spent so much time there…)
I’ve watched many of Zyuganov’s debates and my opinion of him has plummeted. He is a cheap populist and a frequent liar.
To the contrary, my opinion of Mironov has risen substantially. I wonder why he is unpopular in Russia? He is a former paratrooper who preaches social democracy and hasn’t been involved in any major scandals; doesn’t sound like he should be outdone by the likes of Prokhorov, Zhirinovsky, and even Zyuganov.
He does seem like a really great guy; a patriot, a veteran and a well-educated and experienced legislator. He just doesn’t seem like he seriously wants to be president. He is supposed to have said “We all want Vladimir Putin to be president” in 2004 when he was himself a candidate for president and, more recently, advertised himself as willing to lead an “interim Presidency” in which he would need only two years to implement far-ranging reforms. At that time, he would call new elections. However, when Putin was president (as he likely will be again), Mironov proposed several times that the president should be able to serve 3 terms and the terms themselves should be lengthened. He seems to see himself in more of a supporting role rather than being a dynamic and electrifying leader. Self-effacing modesty is welcome after some of the oratorical gymnastics of the likes of Navalny the Rock Star, but there should be a limit to humility; it makes people wonder how you’re going to stand up to foreign heads of state who like to scold Russia’s leader on a variety of perceived inadequacies. That’s where Putin excels – sometimes he just looks at them as if he were looking at a particularly colourful bacteria through a microscope.
Zyuganov seemed more noble and admirable when he was reconciled to always being second-best if he really tried hard. Now he seems to perceive that he actually could be president, if there’s enough of an anyone-but-Putin protest vote. Russians should be grateful for the preview of what he would really be like as leader.
What! No Chirikova?
Ha ha! That’s what I said. Ziuganov should appoint her Minister of Forestry. Then she could spend her time wandering through the woods berating the game wardens and addressing them as ты like some High Lady of the Manor.
On the other hand, Z feels himself to be serious political contender who does not want a “сука и идиотка “ in his precious coalition government:
(Shorina and Nemtsov have Chirikova totally pegged at around 3:30 into the tape: ну, она сука просто..
Viz the comments about Zyuganov, Mironov, Zhirinovsky etc, the miserable truth is that not a single opposition candidate in this election has remotely risen to the challenge, which is a sure sign that none of them expects to win or even wants to. The result is that they all of them indulge in cheap populism in the sure knowledge that none of them will ever be called up to carry out what they promise. I have written elsewhere on Eugene Ivanov’s blog that the great problem Russian democracy faces is not with its government, which is highly intelligent and I think basically well intentioned, but with the abysmal quality of its opposition.
I would just make the following comments about two of the candidates:
1. Unlike Anatoly, Mironov is for me the great disappointment of this election. He is the only candidate who is positioned so that he might notionally win support both from the left and the right and who might conceivably have given Putin a run for his money. He has totally failed to make an impact or win support and some of his comments in which he appears to praise Putin and Medvedev legitimately give rise to the question of why he is bothering to run at all. His challenge seems to be fading away.
2. Zyuganov supposedly leads the biggest opposition party, but his entire strategy so far as I can see is not to win the election but to prevent any other opposition force emerging, which might at some point challenge either him or the KPRF. His completely unprincipled choice of Navalny for inclusion in his so called government and his promises to all and sundry is a transparent device to take away from these people their independent political space. The same is true of his equally unprincipled and I am sure insincere alliance with Udaltsov and of the friendly overtures he is now making to Zhirinovsky. Whatever benefits this may have in the short term for the KPRF Russia needs a responsible opposition and Zyuganov is not providing it.
According to an otherwise unrelated article – which speculates that the next government will have tough choices to make between channeling revenue into efficiencies in the oil industry to keep it from collapsing, or into social spending to pacify “unrest” – Putin is polling 55% (reference for figures is the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion, based on a sample of 1,600 voters) while Zyuganov, in the next-closest position, is polling 9%.
That’s…ummm…..a lot of ground to make up with anybody-but-Putin votes.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-20/russian-oil-boom-s-end-means-lower-tax-that-risks-unrest-energy.html
He has totally failed to make an impact or win support and some of his comments in which he appears to praise Putin and Medvedev legitimately give rise to the question of why he is bothering to run at all.
I respectfully disagree. Overall, Mironov has been highly critical of Kremlin policies, if rarely of Putin directly (unlike the other three). But there are valid reasons for this.
Putin is very popular, and between them, Prokhorov, Zyuganov, and Zhirik already have the clampdown on pretty much all of the stridently anti-Putin opposition – the hardcore commies, the liberals, and the nationalists. Mironov’s most recent shtick is as a reasonable and moderate social democrat, but the problem is that this electorate cuts deep into Putin’s. Hence, frontal assaults will not work; the best he can do is to chip away at the Putin electorate, in the hope of gathering those flakes who want a bit more socialism and a bit more direct democracy than what the current system offers, but without coming off as a demagogue, a populist, and a liar like Zyuganov.
One of my close relatives in Russia was a traditional Communist (Duma) and Putin (President) voter but this time round – tired of Zyuganov’s demagoguery, but also tired of seeing Putin’s people in power for 12 years – she has been swayed round to Mironov. A respectable decision, and I’m sure she’s far from the only one.
Dear Anatoly,
The problem I have with this is that Mironov’s opinion poll rating seems to be dwindling away. Obviously he is up against a calcified electorate that has become entrenched in particular camps but if Mironov was a strong personality and an attractive and charismatic candidate he ought to be able if only to some extent to transcend this. After all putting aside all questions of election fraud his party supposedly got 13% of the vote in the parliamentary elections a few weeks ago, which ought to provide him with some sort of electoral base.
In saying this I should make it clear that I mean the man well. If he does better than at the moment seems likely I for one will be pleased.
We’ll see.
But at this point I’d like to warn you that the pre-elections polls also left questions open as to whether Fair Russia would even break the 7% barrier in the run-up to the Duma elections. Mironov may surprise us with a similar upside.
I agree that Mironov isn’t very charismatic. Still, better than Zhirinovsky’s bombast, though quite a lot of people don’t see it that way.
The most objectionable things I heard from Mironov, and which have recently lowered my opinion of him, was his debate with Zhirinovsky, which I watched yesterday. First, though he acknowledged that Khodorkovsky was sitting his first term for economic crimes, he disagreed with the second term and insisted he had to be freed to avoid making a martyr of him.
Second, while praising the Bolotnaya protesters, he belittled the Poklonnaya protesters as people who were driven there by fear. I didn’t like that either.
His overuse of the word “spravedlivo” also gets tiring. We get it, you like fairness, you lead FAIR Russia. No need to shove it down our throats every other sentence.
Unfortunately, when Navalny mentioned Khodorkovsy he did it in the same manner; he is guilty of a crime, he did his time – let him out. I have to say I never thought about it like that, and it made sense. Then again, I know nothing about the kind of sentences handed down in Russia for economic crimes. But if Khodorkovsky has served a reasonable sentence for his crime, he should be let out. Keeping him in the jug forever does indeed make a martyr out of him.
Some have said all sorts of twaddle about Khodorkovsky being repaid for what the state took from him, and given a government position. I hope Navalny didn’t say that, because it’s deeply silly, but I’m afraid I’ve lost track of who said what. But although I thought he was guilty and deserved to go to jail, I guess I never really thought about him being in jail forever. That seems unreasonable. What’s an average term for robbing the state?
Anyway, I thought – in that narrow framework – Navalny sounded reasonable and even pragmatic. He mentioned the unmentionable name, and then dispensed with the issue in a brisk, some-for-you-some-for-us manner: yes, he was guilty – does he have to stay in jail until he dies? It didn’t make me a Navalny fan, but it showcased him in a fashion I had never seen – reasonable.
Like I said, he may have blown it in the next sentence and said Khodorkovsky should be Finance Minister or something wacky like that. But just for a second there, he sounded like a leader. And if that’s what Mironov said, in the same context, I wouldn’t say it was all that crazy. They have to let him out sometime, and a good politician is always playing the angles.
Well, if it was just a question of letting Khodorkovsky out of the gulag so he could spend the rest of his life quietly drinking himself to death in a trailer park, then who would care? But I think the issue is that Americans have important plans for Khodorkovsky, which probably include him fighting to get his company back, so he can continue the big transaction that Putin aborted.
I don’t trust Mironov: if he says that Khodorkovsky should be freed, then he is just singing fromt he same hymnbook as the others, and that means he has been corrupted by McFaul, same as all the others.
Okay; in that context, it makes sense. It explains why Mironov is not even on the radar (according to the VTsIOM poll). However, “chipping away” at Putin’s constituency in that manner would probably take as long as Putin remains in power anyway, a voter here, a voter there.
I thought I would just provide everybody with a link to an article by a Belgian physicist on the subject of western “humanitarian” or “liberal” interventionism, which I think excellent.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/20/the-case-for-a-non-interventionist-foreign-policy/
Back to topic of Syria and Middle East turmoil:
There are reports of thousands, maybe as many as 18,000 Libyan mercenaries flooding to Syria to fight against Assad. How do these men get around? In Roman times they would have all marched together in a compact army along the paved roads. Obviously that is not an option any more.
One of the ways seems to be using the pretense of sending “wounded rebels” to be treated in hospitals throughout the Middle East. Not all of these men were necessarily wounded or needed to be treated in hospitals. BBC reported on one aspect, which is the economic scam, a way of siphoning off millions of dollars slated for medical expenses by pretending to treat men who do not need treatment:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16932448
But there is another aspect to this scam, it is also a way of sneaking mercenaries into other countries without having them all march together in a compact formation. In particular, Jordan seems to be a transit point to clear Libyan mercenaries on their way to the ultimate destination, which is Syria.
Dramatic story from The Grauniad; they are “wading in blood” in Homs. The reporter is escorted everywhere by activists, and his casualty figures come from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (AKA The Muslim Brotherhood). Naturally, the Free Syrian Army acts to defend the rights of the oppressed, but attacks only military targets.
If that disturbed you a little bit and made you want to write a big cheque to the Free Syrian Army (which I shouldn’t keep saying, because they are just a bunch of rabble), think again. Here’s my hero, Lizzie Phelan;
“The main point is to basically deconstruct the main fabrications that have been put forward by the global media, mainly the western media and channels, particularly Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. And these fabrications are that the army is on a mass systematic scale killing peaceful protesters, that there is no democracy in Syria, that there is no respect for human rights and that there is no support for President Bashar Al-Assad. So the documentary deals with all of these fabrications and in effect shows that in many of the cases they are complete and outright lies.”
You don’t say. Well, there has been a bit of pullback on the part of the west (although, obviously, not The Grauniad) since the Arab League Observer Mission’s report leaked out. What seems to be the direction the media is going in now?
“I think there are two things. First of all as you said at the beginning, there was completely no acknowledgement that the government was fighting against armed insurgents. It was all about the government attacking “peaceful protesters.” But as you say because the A.L have begun to acknowledge the presence it has become impossible for this to be denied. But, and as you rightly say, there is the danger now that these armed groups are being legitimised. And I think this is because NATO countries and other countries like Qatar have been unsuccessful in pushing for intervention in the way they wanted to do it, like how they did in Libya via the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). I think now in creating this organisation they call the Free Syrian Army (FSA) they are effectively trying to say that the FSA or the armed insurgents are legitimate and therefore it is legitimate for us to support them and this is a very dangerous road for us to go down. It is a blatant violation of the sovereignty of an independent nation.”
Lizzie makes so many good points, she is simply amazing. It seems now, from reading Western media, that West (America + Europe + Saudi Arabia + Qatar) has backed off slightly from the Libya scenario of full-on intervention with air bombing. They decided not to do it that way, without a UN mandate. Instead, they are going for a more secretive land war of attrition, arming rebels, sending in mercenaries, etc. Those mysterious “snipers” shooting at Syrian civilians are mostly likely American or British special forces. They did that in Libya too, it helps inflame things, especially when they shoot a child. Real snipers don’t waste their ammunition on civilians, they only shoot at soldiers (preferably officers) or other snipers.
I agree, with the exception of the premise that American or British Special Forces would shoot innocent civilians – including children – when they’re just sitting on a rooftop taking it easy and are not themselves threatened. Accidents happen, and careless western troops have killed civilians before many times, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan – but I’d have to say it was rarely deliberate, and in many of the cases in Iraq where it was deliberate, there was an element of revenge or bitter hatred born in the deaths of comrades or in having to stay there for a second or third tour. I’m not saying it never happens, but it’s rare and somebody who would be doing this would have had to be briefed before he ever left his home country that it would be his mission to shoot unarmed civilians in the interests of influencing public opinion. Of course I don’t know everybody, but I don’t know a single American or British serviceman who would do it on those terms, and Special Forces personnel undergo intensive psychological screening for mental stability. And they’re certainly smart enough that you couldn’t just lie to them and tell them all their targets were insurgents.
Also, he’d have to be one hell of a sniper, because it’s hard to hit somebody in the neck from high above them; their head is kind of in the way.
Most of the ghouls in the west are politicians who never get their hands dirty, and to whom it is all part of the “great game”. They see the military that serves them as a faceless, emotionless tool that applies force to achieve the aim when diplomacy doesn’t work or it doesn’t suit them to try. They’re the real enemy, and it’s worth remembering that the majority of both the British and American populations would not support this kind of operation if they knew what was going on. That’s why the stories are getting ever more lurid and violent; public support is beginning to thin out, despite people’s incuriousity and tendency to be easily manipulated by the media.
The (admittedly unproved) allegation of NATO snipers shooting at peaceful civilians (to stir things up) is a charge made in several “counter-culture” or pro-Green sources, such as Libya SOS blog and pravda.ru, among others. I am not saying the charge is true, how would I know? But it does seem likely to me, since we see this pattern repeating, and this scenario is also in the OTPOR handbook (=regime goons kill innocent martyr, dead child or young woman, demonstrators must use this outrage to stir up the population…). Here is one link, for example, it is about NATO’s (primarily Italy’s) use of snipers in Libya war, the pertinent quote is:
The West uses professionals against unwanted regimes. However, the above-mentioned stories also mean that the West is ready to use its pros against other regimes as well – in Syria, Iran, etc. Foreign special services reportedly continue to sound out the possibilities for the Libyan scenario to repeat in Syria. There are also reports saying that mysterious snipers attack demonstrators and policemen to provoke armed clashes. Will Teheran and Damascus be able to set anything against mercenaries and commandoes who are capable of changing the course of any conflict?
http://libyaagainstsuperpowermedia.com/category/united-states-2/american-military/special-forces/
Maybe; humans are capable of anything and any deception. But I’m not willing to believe yet that western snipers would shoot women and children – or even men who are not doing anything and are supposed to be part of the group they are supporting – just so public opinion would turn against the regime. It’s certainly not part of their training, and in fact the ethics portion of their professional development is exactly opposite. But you’re right that the propaganda war is getting ever dirtier, because the west has cried “wolf” so many times that the electorate requires ever-greater outrages to win its support as they spot old tricks being trotted out again.
This RT package is pretty good, and I recommend watching the full video, which is about 5 minutes long.
Some highlights:
(1) At about 1:10 minutes in, the commentator makes an extremely perceptive point: That as “sectarian” violence in Syria INCREASES, violence in neighboring Iraq is DECREASING. Why? Well, the one is a direct function of the other. America’s herd of Al Qaeda mercenaries are being stampeded out of Iraq and into Syria. They go where they are needed, and there are only so many of them to go around. (It would be as if all the professional criminals living in your city suddenly left one day en masse to move to a different town. Then, all of sudden: no more murders or robberies in your city, blessed relief! all the unpleasantness has moved somewhere else.)
(2) At 1:45 in, Massachussetts Senator Scott Brown asks American intelligence chief Clapper what will happen if Al Qaeda takes over in Syria? Brown seems to be a decent chap, albeit a tad naïve. His colleagues in the government must have forgotten to let him in on their little secret: that Al Qaeda IS America’s Foreign Legion. It is their mercenary army in the Middle East and Africa. Not some alien entity that is hostile to American interests.
(3) At 3:58 in anchor talks about the “Friends of Syria” meeting that is supposed to take place on Friday in Tunisia. This is an event to watch. America is gathering all her allies into one place to plot the destruction of Syria. Russia, taking a principled stance (for once!) has refused to attend, but there is still some doubt about China. Eternal wafflers, China might attend, which would give this meeting of terrorism-sponsors more legitimacy than it deserves. Pushkov’s comments are very perceptive, and he points out the obvious hypocrisy of un-democratic Gulf monarchies supposedly bringing “democracy” in Syria via armed bandit formations.
http://rt.com/news/us-syria-arms-opposition-907/
Dear Yalensis,
Just a few comments:
1. If you go back to my original comments about Syria on this blog you will see that I speculated that much of the violence in Syria is the work of jihadi fighters who were formerly fought in Iraq but who have now following the defeat of the Sunni insurgency transferred their focus to Syria. There was in fact a mass movement of refugees from Iraq to Syria following the US invasion of Iraq. Many of these people will have brought their sectarian and militant beliefs with them and I am fairly sure that they form a large if not a preponderant part of the current insurgency. That does not of course mean that these people are not being controlled or manipulated by interested outsiders such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
2. The last I heard from China is that it is definitely not attending the Friends of Syria conference that has been convened in Tunis. One of the consequences of the Syria crisis is that it has brought home the extent to which China and Russia now work together on international questions. It is not I think too far fetched to call them allies, which does not of course mean that there are not occasional disputes between them. the alliance is still informal and unacknowledged though the two countries are linked in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation but it is no less real for that. I suspect by the way that with the re election of Putin in place of the more liberal and pro western Medvedev this alliance will further strengthen. Who knows it may eventually become one of the major poles of international diplomacy.
3. I have to say that I doubt that the snipers at work in places like Homs are provocateurs from western special forces. Quite apart from the fact that I harbour doubts about whether soldiers (and their commanders) would agree to be used in this cynical and murderous way it seems to me that the political risks involved were such soldiers to fall into Syrian government hands (as they might well do) are so great that even the most demented amongst the western powers would be reluctant to go that far. Frankly I have to say that I am anyway skeptical about many of these stories about snipers. As you of course remember exactly the same claims were made about pro Gaddafi snipers at the time of the original uprising against Gaddafi a year ago, which subsequently proved to be untrue. I suspect that many of the claims about Syrian snipers are the same sort of mixture of exaggerations and disiinformation that we had in Libya and that much of the shooting that is attributed to snipers is actually no more than the normal exchange of fire that happens in a war zone. Of course that does not mean that some of the snipers are not provocateurs but if so I think it more likely that they are jihadis or rebels than soldiers from the west.
More on the subject of China, here is an editorial from the offiicial news agency Xinhua, which sets out the views of the Chinese government
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-02/22/c_131424908.htm
As anyone can see these are in all respects identical with those of Russia with which they have obviously been coordinated.
That’s a pretty tough article to get through. Every once in awhile, when he waxes lyrical about journalists doing the dirty and dangerous job of reporting the news governments want suppressed, you think he’s talking about western governments and you think he’s going to blurt out some great stinking truth – but no, it’s just more foam about the murderers in the Syrian government and how without Colvin, we’d never know the “true scale of the carnage”. I gave up at the point where he had a religious moment as he passed by the abandoned desk of Anna Politkovskaya, during a visit to “one of Russia’s few true opposition newspapers”….Novaya Gazeta. I notice an accompanying article was headlined, “Outside Military Intervention ‘Only Way’, Says Opposition”.
And right on cue, “After the French government confirmed the deaths, President Nicolas Sarkozy said, “That’s enough now, the regime must go.” Stay tuned for Mini-Machiavelli to start airdropping planeloads of weapons to the “Free Syrian Army”, and for new pressure for an arms embargo so the Syrian government can’t get any. I hope the French electorate votes that sawed-off Saakashvili so far out this year that he couldn’t get elected lifeguard in a car wash. It’s clear the west doesn’t like being told, “no”.
And, just as it has been throughout the conflict, “Syrian activists said French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and British photographer Paul Conroy, also of The Sunday Times….Activist Abu Thaer said a total of four journalists were wounded. There were unconfirmed reports….A YouTube video from Homs activist Khalied Abu Salah, showed him standing in the rubble next to the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik…The paper said some activists fear the Assad regime is deliberately targeting journalists to stop news of what is happening in Syria from being reported…”It’s too much of a coincidence … There are reports of planes flying around and they may be looking for the satellite uplinks,” The New York Times quoted a Syrian activist in Cairo as saying…The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the regime of President Bashar Assad against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. Syrian activists, however, put the death toll at more than 7,300″. Activistactivistactivist. That’s all in the same article, and I can’t help noticing almost everything is attributed to activists, it’s like media sources want plausible deniability later, so that they can say, “We never knew. We were told all those things by activists”. But almost nothing is eyewitness, and what is – such as Colvin’s moving account of the dying child, or of counting shell bursts – cannot be sourced; anyone could have killed that child, and nobody is disputing there is shelling going on; it’s who is deliberately shelling civilian centres.
Doesn’t it remind you, a little, of the PR campaign for the first Gulf War? It should; the PR campaign was largely financed by Kuwait. Remember the weeping “hospital volunteer” who described having “seen with her own eyes” Iraqi soldiers entering a hospital incubator room, taking out the babies and leaving them to die on the cold floor as they took the incubators away? It was later – when it was too late, in fact – revealed that she was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family, that her father was the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the USA, and that the vice-president of Hill & Knowlton (the PR firm hired by the Kuwaiti government to sell the intervention, and the firm that pocketed more than 80% of the money donated to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, in fees) had personally coached her in what even the Kuwaiti investigation revealed to be a complete and outrageous fabrication. That video clip proved, more than any other image, to have been the single thing that turned public opinion firmly in favour of war. And it was completely, 100% made up.
It’s hard to believe human beings would sink so low, but just when you think people couldn’t get any lower, it turns out there’s a basement under what you thought was rock bottom.
Mark, I agree with you about the snipers. See my comment below.
Sorry, I meant my comment above!
Here is another article by Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph. Though it is not about Russia I thought I would draw attention to it because of the casual way it makes a quite remarkable piece of anti Russian historical revisionism.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9099092/Marie-Colvin-fearless-committed-essential.html
The article is about Marie Colvin, the US journalist who has just been killed in Syria. Buried in the article is this description of the Crimean War of 1854 to 1856 as
“… a conflict in which an Anglo French Coalition opposed an invading Russian army…”
It seems that the Russians are “invaders” even when as during the Crimean War they are defending their own territory.
Back to Libya, I read the Libyans attacked the Russian, Chinese, and Syrian Embassies in Tripoli after the UN vetoes.
Compare the coverage this receives in the West to, say, the Iranian students’ recent attack on the British Embassy. Pure, unalloyed hypocrisy.
The propaganda war is getting ferocious. NATO/Qatar/Saudi alliance is trying to shame Russia/China, along the lines of: “You are isolated. You support a butcher instead of the oppressed masses who protest outside your embassies. You are out of touch with world public opinion. You really need to repent and join our side, because WE are the good guys!”
(I am still really worried about China caving into this psychological pressure and leaving Russia holding the bag alone; Chinese sometimes remind me of that smart but insecure kid in school who cannot stand being excluded from the “in” clique.)
Anyhow, here is another piece from RT that claims Jordan is hosting a training camp for mercenaries getting ready to flood into Syria. If this is true, then it looks like NATO will ignore their setback in UN and go ahead and launch war against Syria, without a figleaf of a mandate: We will know more tomorrow when NATO and their satellites will meet in Tunisia to plot strategy. Putin, by the way, made a joke yesterday (I think I saw it on INOSMI but I forgot to save the link) saying that even though he will not be in Tunisia, he will have a spy there hiding under the table and reporting back to him what is said.
http://rt.com/news/jordan-syria-intelligence-training-859/
Dear Yalensis,
I don’t think you need to worry too much about China. I follow the Chinese media closely and I get no sense of a change of position. For what it’s worth I am pretty sure China would have vetoed the two Libya Resolutions if Russia had done so. The result most of the vilification and abuse since the UN Security Council vote has been directed at Russia is because the west and the Arabs think it is Russia rather than China which is the weaker party.
@ Moscow Exile,
You are absolutely right about western media coverage of the pro Putin rally in Moscow. The BBC reporter has found no fewer than two (!) people at the rally who told him they were ordered by their employer to attend the rally as well as a bunch of cheeky students who say they thought they had been invited to a folk music festival rather than a political rally (sounds to me like they were taking the piss). I have to say though that the account of the rally on Novosti is almost as hostile.
Just to confirm that China has now officially confirmed that it will not attend the “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunis.
As is their way the Chinese complained that they had not been invited to the conference thereby obliging its organisers to send them an invitation. This raised a flurry of hopes on the part of some excitable people in the west that China’s position was about to shift. In reality it is simply another example of the cat and mouse game China likes to play, which is intended to show that no important international question can be decided without China’s involvement. Having forced the organisers of the conference to send it an invitation, China formally rejected it.
Ha! Good for China!
I like the way they operate. (Sometimes.)
From today’s Moskovskii Komsomolets:
http://www.mk.ru/politics/article/2012/02/23/674795-v-moskve-proshel-miting-v-podderzhku-putina.html
130,000 Putin supporters at the Luzhniki stadium it reports. Some anti-Putin comments at the foot of the article.
Same figure given by Argumenty i Fakty:
http://www.aif.ru/society/article/49814
The BBC Russian Service reports that “a crowd of many thousands” attended:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/russia/2012/02/120223_luzhniki_rally_preview.shtml
The BBC article Stresses Putin’s nationalistic call that Moscow must be defended from foreign powers as it was in 1812. Here it is in English:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17136644
And now the news of the Luzhniki meeting is hitting the British press – “tens of thousands” says the Torygraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/9100338/Vladimir-Putin-vows-victory-in-election.html
Again, emphasis on Putin’s “nationalist” rhetoric, though I should prefer to call it “patriotic”.
It’s 18:40 in Moscow now – 14:40 in london and still nothing in Lebedev’s Independent about the meeting.
MSNBC went with they were all paid/had two days off work for coming:
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/23/10484497-russians-rally-for-vladimir-putin-and-2-days-off-work
Yes, sourced from the media outlet that underestimated the crowd size by about 100,000 (BBC says 130,000, AFP says 30,000). I imagine this has western political hopefuls green with envy; just think, a whole country where you can get people to vote for you even though they don’t support you or don’t care – for two lousy days off work.
Predictable, but still kind of funny in its awfulness. No wonder American journalism is the laughingstock of the industry; even more so than Britain, and that’s saying something.
BBC Russian service interviews Gene Sharp, spiritual leader of OTPOR and impresario of Color Revolutions:
http://www.inosmi.ru/usa/20120223/186623584.html
IMHO this is a very deceptive piece of propaganda, it seems to concede a lot to allegations of Putin/Surkov; yet the end result is that the reader is supposed to walk away with a positive impression of Sharp. After all, he is just a kindly little old man who is nobody’s stooge and only wants what is best for the world.
For example: Sharp is no imperialist shill, why he is a former lefty and draft-dodger and even criticizes U.S. foreign policy! Yeah, right. Sharp may have been a lefty in his youth, but he is one of those intellectuals who switched allegiances and now promotes U.S. interests everywhere in the world. He promotes regime change, but only those regimes that are not beloved of USA. He would never support revolution in, say, Estonia.
The most telling part is when Sharp gloats about his success in promoting anti-Russian revolutions in Ukraine and the Baltics; it does not bother him at all that Russian ethnic minority is discriminated against in Baltic “democracies”. Sharp clearly has a beef against countries like Russia and Serbia, although I am at a loss to explain it, since neither one of those countries ever did anything to him. It is probably simple tribalism: If you are a Western person, then you are supposed to hate Russians and Serbians just because they are the bad guys by definition.
For those who read Russian, check out the comment section. Very few Russian commenters are buying any of Sharp’s B.S.
It might also be that they represent the greatest challenge for a public-opinion manipulator, although that turned out to be not very true of Serbia.
But it must be clear to everyone, or it certainly should, that the west overthrows regimes purely for its own interests, and does not dedicate a dime’s worth of worry to the former “oppressed rebels” once they no longer serve a useful purpose. Witness the lack of coverage of Libya and Egypt now – a few bleeding-heart liberal publications have mentioned that there are less women in the government now in Egypt than was the case under Mubarak, but that’s about it. Libya is never mentioned any more – all the fervor of the western press is trained on Syria in its eagerness to “help the Syrian people to freedom”. The Libyans are freshly free, about the freshest free people in the world – why don’t you ask them how they’re liking it?
The west is undeterred in its determination to overthrow Assad despite a little setback, and it hasn’t forgotten Putin, either. It’s just keeping quiet for the moment.
“…Sharp clearly has a beef against Russia and Serbia, although I am at a loss to explain it, since neither of these countries did anything to him…”
Dear Yalensis,
The reason Sharp dislikes Serbia is because Serbia is a friend of Russia.
Otherwise you have put your finger on what is for me the greatest puzzle. If a Pole or a Romanian or a Lithuanian or even a Swede has issues with Russia I can understand it even if I don’t always agree with it because Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Sweden have had long historic interactions with Russia, which have not always been happy. What however is the reason for the pervasive Russophobia one encounters in the US and to an even greater extent in Britain? What has Russia done to either of these countries that justifies such an extreme attitude? I have no explanation for it though if you read English nineteenth century literature what you will find is that it goes pretty deep.
I ought to say that Poland is a country I know well. My first girlfriend was Polish and one of my best friends is Polish. Incredible though many Russians may find it, I would say that in my experience Russophobia is less widespread in Poland than it is in Britain.
Of the Poles I met, one was a strident Russophobe (Maciej, emigre son belonging to intelligentsia family living in UK; tended to avoid him as his Russophobia was overt and frankly hostile), one was a strident Russophile (Roman, elderly concentration camp survivor living in UK), one was a moderate Russophile (another Maciej, a Polish exchange student at university), and one was completely apolitical including on Russians as far as I could make out (Wojtek, ethnic Pole but born in US).
The two Baltic people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, girl and guy, were both strident Latvians and strident Russophobes. I’ve met plenty of Latvian Russians (no Estonian Russians) – one doing odd bits and ends in the UK, another working at a bank in the US, etc. – and by and large they were happy to be out of there.
Two Georgians I’ve known. One was frankly a corrupt careerist who somehow landed a job in a UK university, he was an overt Russophobe. The other was a university student who was cool and not anti-Russian, but argued that Georgia was 100% in the right in 2008. I didn’t feel like arguing politics so I ignored that when it came up and steered the discussion in other directions.
Without exception all the Bulgarians I’ve met were strident Russophiles, far more Russophile than most Russian emigres themselves actually. This is pretty funny and maybe even surprising until one consider that most Russian emigrants left in the late 80′s – early 1990′s with very bad impressions of Russia.
Most Bulgarians I have met personally are Russophiles. They have long historical memory and still grateful for Russia for helping them out against Turks. However, I did meet one Bulgarian who was very Russophobic. He was theater director, member of artistic intelligentsia, and stridently pro-American. Maybe he is anomaly, though. I have never seen a poll of Bulgarian public opinion. Do they like being in NATO now?
My experience of Poles is that they divide into roughly two camps. One consists of people who are stridently anti Russian and anti German, are homophobic, fervidly oppose contraception and abortion, believe that Lviv and Vilnius should be Polish, think that Josef Pilsudski was a great man and who think that pop music is the invention of the devil. Then there are other Poles (the great majority) who are or believe in none of these things at least to any great degree. The political and cultural agenda in Poland since the end of Communism has to a great extent been dominated by the first group but there is a backlash underway, which has been going on for some time and which is becoming stronger.
As for Bulgaria, I agree that overall the people are strongly Russophilic. However I know three virulently Russophobic Bulgarians. One is my sister in law, with whom I am on very bad terms, the other is a lawyer who works for a human rights NGO, and the third is Nicholas Mladenov, who I first met more than a decade and a half ago when he used to be Russophilic and left wing and who was for a time my guest in my house but who is now Bulgaria’s strongly Russophobic and pro American foreign minister.
Oh, Libya is a paradise now …
if you happen to be a racist sadistic psychopath. This video shows our beloved Misuratan militias taunting their Tawerghan prisoners by forcing them to eat the green Gaddafi flag (while locked up inside a zoo cage, with people watching them from the outside). Note that the video is being filmed, not by any observers outside the cage, but by one of the captors inside the cage.
Correction: I just watched it again. (It is hard to watch.) It is being filmed from OUTSIDE the cage. So it is possible the person filming it is a good guy who wants to be known to the world what is taking place.
Where’s the outrage? Does President Sarkozy know about this? Maybe he will wave his tiny hand, and all the evil in Libya will become good!! Or at the very least he can airdrop weapons to the captives so they can fight their way out. There look to be, what, about 50,000 or so of the “rebels” in that cage, wouldn’t you say? Easily a grass-roots movement. Let’s get a no-fly zone in place to protect civilians – come on, hop to it.
This is completely revolting. So this is what “protecting civilians” amounts to. Once and not so long ago if such a thing had happened it would have been the lead news story. Today there is silence.
This is actually one of the tamer videos. I saw another that was much worse, in which the rebels forced their captives to actually eat part of a human corpse (of a murdered Gaddafi soldier). These jihadist “rebels” are really bad people.
I am worried about the Tawerghans, at their peak there were maybe 25,000 -30,000 of them (men, women and children). They were productive members of Libyan society, they worked in construction and oil refineries. The work was hard, but they earned good wages. Sending a portion of those wages back to their relatives in sub-Saharan Africa, they also helped those communities. Now these productive families are are either dead or unemployed, their population is reduced to something like just a couple of thousand people, and even those few are being attritioned every day by violent jihadist attacks on their refugee camps. Very sad.
What sort of religious beliefs do these people hold when the terrorise people into becoming cannibals? Mohammed the Prophet would have been disgusted. Obviously these people think that people of black colour are less than human. These are Nazi not Muslim beliefs. These are the people we in the west call liberators and who we support! Where do we find these people?
Is Washington pulling a Jackson-Vanik on Libya?
Recall that Jackson-Vanik was a Cold War device to punish the Soviet Union for its emigration policies. Long after Soviet Union dissolved and Russian Federation now has completely free emigration, Jackon-Vanik was never repealed, because it remained a useful tool against Russia.
Similarly… Americans devised many punishments against Gaddafi regime in Libya, including freezing (=stealing) all Libyan cash and gold that Americans could get their hands on.
Now Obama is announcing that America will continue the economic sanctions against Libya for one more year. Is it because he distrusts the new NTC/Al Qaeda government? No, he thinks they are wonderful. He says he is still nervous about threats emanating from the Gaddafi family.
For the record: the only remaining survivors of Gaddafi’s immediate family are Saif (elder son, held captive by Zintan militias), one other son (Saidi, who found refuge in Niger), one daughter (Aisha, who found refuge in Algeria), and Aisha’s 3 small children. Every other child and even grandchild of Gaddafi has been killed by NATO bombs or executed by militias.
Therefore, Obama is being deceptive when he speaks about the threat from the Gaddafi family. More likely, Americans (and Europeans) simply do not want to give up the billions of dollars that they stole from the Libyan treasury. Many people believe that Europeans already spent their share of the loot in bailing out Greece. Hence, the money is all gone, and the pirates are trying to to conceal that fact by blowing a lot of smoke…
http://www.rosbalt.ru/main/2012/02/24/949597.html
Here is an article carried by Novosti from Natalia Antonova of Moscow News about the role of poetry in Russia, which was provoked by Putin’s decision to quote Lermontov during the rally at Luzhniki.
http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20120224/171514078.html
Does poetry really still have the role in Russia that she says? If so then I find the thought charming. I remember how back in the old days we used to hear awesome stories about how the likes of Yevtushenko could fill a football stadium. The only occasion I can remember in recent history of a British politician who tried to quote poetry was Margaret Thatcher when she was first elected Prime Minister. She tried to quote St. Francis of Assisi but famously got her quote wrong.
I like Natalia Antonova; her blog is in my blogroll, and she can be a very emotional and emotive writer. Her English is perfect, as it should be considering she spent most of her life in the USA, but I must assume her Russian is also excellent and she probably speaks Ukrainian as well. She lives in Moscow now – which, as we know, is not a guarantee just because you write for a Moscow newspaper, and some of her archived pieces are beautiful writing. Most of it these days is about the baby and about her family (she got married last year), but that’s nice too if you’re fond of it. Too much like Facebook for me.
When I was visiting Russia we would often take in a school concert, as I have young nieces (had, I guess, the youngest is 15 now) and the youngest, Yulia, is tremendously talented in singing and dance; she’s in a concert in Khabarovsk as we speak. I was struck by the mastery of the arts in even young children – I recall seeing a young girl play an extremely difficult and complex piano piece by Rachmaninoff that must have been at least 9 minutes long, completely from memory and without sheet music. It was an astounding ability to me, and she could not have been older than 13, probably younger.
My wife is a big fan of the arts, and although I always knew that, I was amazed when I told her some years ago (she would have still been in Russia at the time) about a painting that had been stolen from The Hermitage, and she recited the name and its provenance (At The Harem Pool, Jean-Leon Gerome, 1876) as if it were the license number of her car; I just looked it up to be sure I had the name right, and was surprised to learn it was returned to the office of Gennady Zyuganov in 2006. She loves theatre, and we go whenever we get the chance. She said when she was in school she and many students could recite whole passages by Pushkin, although I don’t know if it’s as common now; I’d be interested to know.
My two eldest children go to one of our local state schools, No. 622 at Taganka, Moscow, and are regularly asked to learn by heart great chunks of Russian poetry. They are 11 and 12 years old and over the Christmas and New Year holidays they had to learn the poem Borodino by Lermontov, all 14 six-line stanzas of it, which they had to recite in class on their return to school. They also make regular visits to the theatre to watch drama or ballet or opera. Recently they went with their class to watch a performance of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
My wife asked me if English children have to learn large amounts of poetry at school. I told her that now I think not, but that when I was a schoolboy, we had to learn poems by heart and we also studied Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. All that went by the wayside many years ago in the UK, I should think. I should also add that I was a “whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school” over 50 years ago.
I suspect we are much of an age, you and I, and I would bet your wife is significantly younger than you are, as mine is younger than I. I asked her when she got home (she was at a magic show with our youngest daughter when I wrote my earlier comment) if Russian schoolchildren still memorize “great chunks of Russian poetry”, and she says that yes, they do, it is considered an essential part of their education. They also learn and discuss various meters and styles and learn to interpret what the poet may have meant when he or she wrote what they did. Our daughter can recite Russian poetry at the nursery rhyme level now, and she just turned 5; her Russian is probably better than her English, although she speaks both very well.
As best I remember, there was little memorization in the curriculum when I was at school. We did do some poetry, and I continued to read it as I grew older because I am fond of it, and to memorize particular passages that resonated with me. But the technique most often was that the teacher would read the poem aloud, and then the class would discuss it. I learned more about meter from lyrics by The Eagles than I ever did in school (“Hollywood Waltz” is an excellent example).
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde at the ages of 11 and 12! That is impressive.
I have no children alas but I have a niece who is 14 and my best friend has two daughters aged 13 and 10. Both my brother and my friend fret that their children don’t read. Pretty much the only music they hear is pop and rap.
I can confirm there is no rote memorization in UK schools having attended one in the not TOO distant past.
I can’t say I’m unhappy with the situation either. It’s boring, and memorization is a very low level cognitive activity. The time can be better spent developing other core skills.
That said, I am consistently impressed with my grandma, who at her respectable age can quote by heart lengthy stanzas from almost any Russian poet. It’s an impressive skill to have, and useful in rhetoric (if that were still respected nowadays).
From what I understand, American children do not recite poetry in school any more. However, that was different in the 50′s and 60′s, when they learned to recite by rote many important American poems by such poets as Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier. This part of the curriculum was satirized in the children’s cartoon show “Rocky and Bullwinkle”. The character Bullwinkle the Moose had a recurring segment called “Poetry Corner” in which he satirized and butchered the very same poems that the children were learning in school. (This same series introduced many other great cartoon characters such as Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right, evil villain Snidely Whiplash, and also Russian spies Boris Badinov and his side-kick Natasha.)
It’s not just so much the memorization by rote; pupils were taught that way in the hope that they would feel the poetry the way you do music, and be moved by it. It’s not only an intricate way of telling a story (like Kipling or Robert Service), sometimes it means something darker and completely different to what it appears on the surface. Not everyone is fond of it, of course, and people who lean toward the technical trades and skills often have no patience for it.
In fact, the very nature of victory these days reminds me of a favourite poem; from the great Robert Service, and “Victory Stuff”;
D’ye think of the boys we used to know
and how they’d have topped the fun?
Tom and Charlie, Jack and Joe;
gone now, every one.
How they’d have cheered as the joy-bells chimed
and grabbed each girl for a kiss!!
But now they’re rotting in Flanders slime
and they gave their lives – for this
Dear Mark,
This is all hugely impressive, the girl from what was apparently an ordinary school who can play Rachmaninoff especially so.
Wow wow wow….. I think the only piece by Rachmaninoff I can play(with plenty of mistakes) would be the famous Prelude in C sharp minor. And that too when I was in the early twenties(my fingers are creaky now). Alas….how I wish I was more talented!
As for rote memory….we Chinese are really good at this. I had a friend in medical school who could remember more than a thousand page from our anatomy textbook word for word. He had a ‘photographic memory’. But he was good at applying all that huge amount of knowledge as well. Hence, both ‘rote learning’ and the ability to understand the knowledge are equally important, in my opinion.
sinotibetan
Hamas abandons Assad and backs the Syrian rebels.
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/02/24/hamas-abandons-assad-backs-syrian-rebels/
It will be interesting to see all the Israel Firsters confusion since they think Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad, Iran, and Al Qaeda are one and the same. The ones not part of AIPAC are eschatologists who truly believe these are signs of Jesus’s returns and that Russia is Magog. Not everything done in Washington is calculated. Much of it is just lunacy.
Well, I be go to hell. Hamas and the USA and the UK are allies. They say you’ll see everything if you wait long enough and don’t let your attention wander.
I expected this. Hezbollah has not been relevant since the early 90s, and Hamas thrives in disorder. The US and UK have been pushing this sectarian conflict, so they should not be surprised if it comes out like this.
I have not decided whether Obama is an empty suit or really in charge here. Clinton – on the other hand – is an old hand of the Democrat establishment. It seems that Hillary just declared the Friends of Syria the sole legitimate government before the public knows anything about them. She did say that weapons will reach the rebels, but not really how that would happen. Did she arrive at all this democratically? Is her goal to become the empress and autocrat of NATO?
Oh man this is going to make the neocons, liberal interventionists and sundry imperialists squirm in gormless bewilderment.
Just delicious.
Here’s something that’s the polar opposite of delicious: a tentative prediction that unless something can be done to derail the AIPAC Express, the United States will be at war with Iran before autumn. I was particularly interested in the item alleging that Mossad agents had posed as American CIA agents, extending to carrying American passports and paying off their operatives in American dollars, when they recruited Jundallah (a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist group) to kill Iranian government officials.
The “false flag” op is a Mossad favourite; they have used Canadian passports on occasion as well.
I too am not surprised by Hamas. The whole story of the so called Arab Spring is of a descent into violence and religious sectarianism.
They will be called upon to make a mental adjustment.
The Hamas flip, although it came as a surprise, on second thought it kind of makes sense. Because I see Hamas as primarily a religious movement (similar to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) and only secondarily Palestinian nationalists. Since their main gig is Islam, this would have been the carrot offered them by Hillary: Join our coalition, we’ll take power in Syria, your buddies can implement their Islamic fantasies while we walk away with the oil.
So, I am trying to keep score, the anti-Assad coalition now consists of: NATO, Al Qaeda, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and now Hamas. Did I miss anybody?
Talk about rotten coalitions — sheesh! they could teach Ziuganov a trick or two…
Not sure Israel is in said coalition.
It’s been keeping very, very quiet on Syria. Presumably because they much prefer Assad over the Islamist crazies.
Anatoly: In the Ria article that Mark links below, the author, Alexei Pilko, explicitly links Israel to the anti-Assad coalition:
Syrian officials, including Vice President Najah al-Attar and Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, with whom a group of Russian experts (and the author of this article) met recently, mention Turkey, Qatar and Israel among the main instigators of international pressure on Syria, along with the United States standing behind them. The American factor in the Syrian crisis (and, to a lesser extent, the Israeli factor) is one of the main topics of discussion in Damascus at the moment. Syrians emphasize that the main target of the United States and Israel is not Syria but rather Iran, and that they are interested in destabilizing Syria for the sole purpose of depriving Tehran of a “counter play” in the Middle East in the event of a military operation against Iran. In general, the Syrian political elite is convinced that there is an international conspiracy against Damascus.
In Pilko’s view, Israel’s main target is Iran, but they can’t get to Iran without going through Syria first. All part of the giant chess game underway…
Oh, and that reminds me: I forgot to add Turkey to the list of actors in the anti-Assad coalition.
I think Israel is keeping quiet because they are nervous at the idea of another country being run by the Muslim Brotherhood, and they look like the likely inheritors of Assad’s throne. But they will back any initiative – with every means at their disposal – if it looks like it is keeping the USA on the road to attacking Iran. When the dust settles, the only countries remaining in the region that have not been attacked and wrecked will be reliable U.S. toadies. With the exception of Israel, of course, which actually is the brains behind its big brother. Israel might even be contemplating expansion, and a wrecked Syria under new ownership might be amenable to such a suggestion. At least there’d be no more arguments about the Golan. If I were Lebanon, I’d be jittery; according to the devotees of Eretz Israel, the goal is a state that is contained by natural boundaries – the Jordan on one side and the Litani on the other.
Dear Yalensis,
Hamas is in fact closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Of course it is the Muslim Brotherhood who are behind the uprising in Syria. It makes complete ideological sense for Hamas to support their Muslim Brethen in Syria.
What is very worrying about this situation is the way in which the Middle East is being divided on sectarian lines. There is as you of course know open talk of arming the Syrian rebels. At the meeting in Tunis the Saudi Foreign Minister called this an “excellent idea”. Does it occur to the people who suggest this sort of thing that two can play at this game? Do they understand how dangerous what they propose is? All Arab and Middle Eastern states except surprisingly Iran are riven by bitter ethnic and sectarian differences and Saudi Arabia itself is no exception. There are large Shia communities in Saudi Arabia itself, in Bahrain and in the other Gulf States and Oman is predominantly Shia. Many Yemenis who anyway have historical reasons to dislike the Saudis are also Shia. A substantial proportion of the population of Turkey is Alawite (some say up to 20%) and the Turkish Kurds, though Sunni, have long been at loggerheads with the Turkish state. Going down the road of arming the Syrian rebels sets what could turn out to be a disastrous precedent. I can easily see the whole situation spiralling out of control. If everyone starts arming the domestic opposition to everyone else then we could easily see an explosion.
And in fact you can largely thank that for the roller-coaster ride at the gas pump; Saudi Arabia arbitrarily started pumping an extra 500,000 barrels a day back last summer, because they needed the extra money for social improvements to keep their own people pacified and quiet. Oil analysts said at the time that it was unsustainable, and I’m not sure they are still doing it, it would be something to look into. In any case, the information was offered as stage-setting to prepare people for a significant price jump in 2012, as the extra oil was keeping prices artificially low or at least stable.
Returning to our old subject of the Snowflake Revolution, Interfax reports Prokhorov as saying that the protest movement is losing momentum. That of course is true but did he really say it?
I have not heard anything about Prokhorov making such a statement about the protest movement losing momentum, but it seems that “anti-Putin” demostrations in Russia seem to be getting less attention now from the Western media.
There was a demonstration “for fair elections” in St. Petersburg today. I have not seen anything about it in the Western news media. Navalny was there and Kasparov. The police say 2,500 attended whilst various Russian media sources give figures of between 10,000 and 15,000. The organizers say that 25,000 attended.
Who to believe?
See: http://en.rian.ru/society/20120225/171526283.html
Thanks for this. As I have often said I tend to believe the police. In this case the discrepancy is so great that I am sure their figure is the right one.
“…it seems that “anti-Putin” demonstrations in Russia seem to be getting less attention now from the Western media.”
That’s because (1) as you note in your comment, they’re getting significantly smaller; it’s hard to support a “rising groundswell of protest” with those figures, and nobody wants to hear about an “ebbing groundswell of protest”. (2) the “pro-Putin” demonstrations are considerably bigger. You can only get so much mileage out of suggesting they were all forced to attend or the FSB would break their legs, or were bought off with a couple of days off work.
Just made a comment in the UK Independent to an article from Reuter’s about Ksenia Sobchak, saying that she was booed off stage by many demonstrators at the December 25th “fair elections” rally and that this ant-corruption socialite owes her wealth to the corrupt practices of the Yeltsin years.
My comment was immediately flagged with the notification that the “moderators have specifically asked to approve this author’s comments”.
Does this mean that they believe I am a “Kremlin stooge” or that I work for the FSB?
What’s wrong with being a Kremlin Stooge? Ha, ha; I couldn’t say for sure since I don’t comment on The Independent, but if you have commented there before and identified yourself as living in Moscow, it’s my guess that they want to see comments from those who have the credibility of local knowledge. If so, they’re a remove ahead of The Grauniad, who seem to want to hear from you less the more credible you appear to be, if you go against the narrative they’re pushing.
Prokhorov has a new gig now, he is a rap musician (a really bad one, I might add):
He does suck, but I have to admit a certain prejudice toward that entire genre of music, and he beats the hell out of Karl Rove as a rapper.
….meanwhile a new cluster of opinion polls with Levada suggesting that Putin could win as much as 63-66%.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120224/171504714.html
I’m suspicious of Levada, owing to their association with the Carnegie Moscow Centre, the Gorbachev Foundation and the Moscow Higher School of Economics (from whence Russia-bashers like Open Democracy and RFE/RL draw their dissident economists such as Vladimir Mau and Yevsei Gurvich). They’re supposed to be non -partisan, but are funded by the ubiquitous National Endowment for Democracy.
Although the linked article supports the figure you quoted (66%), I’d be more comfortable with the previously-cited 58%. I believe Levada’s purpose in citing the higher total is so that a lower win will seem like a disappointment; artificially raising expectations is an old trick, but as long as it keeps working they’ll keep using it. It might also be to create a lull, so that a last-minute push against Putin would come as more of a tactical surprise. Still, you can almost taste the bitterness implicit in speculation on Putin’s projected win, and they settle for nasty chuckling that his popularity will fall off steeply after the election – based on the impossibility of his being able to repeat feats like raising Russians’ real incomes 142% between 1999 and 2009. I should think not, and it would be ridiculous to expect it. The article whines that Putin’s campaign is laden with anti-Americanism – gee, ya think? I wonder why? Putin is apparently pretty nervy to suggest that American-funded NGO’s are actively stoking dissent in Russia, even though they are.
Don’t miss the picture ad for The Incredibly Russophobic Simon Shuster’s “Russia’s Incredible Shrinking Prime Minister”. I won’t read it, because it would only make me want to throw the laptop across the room – if ignorance were tarmac, Simon Shuster would be the Daytona 500 of ignorance. Show me a western leader that has a reasonable expectation of a 60% election win. Those who lie to themselves are the greatest disappointed.
It iseems another nice Russophobic book about Putin the mafia godfather chock full with the same cliches and fables is on its way
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/9100388/Vladimir-Putin-the-godfather-of-a-mafia-clan.html
Given the number of such books all of which repeat the identical stories and make the same claims one would have thought that by now the market would be totally saturated but it seems not.
It’s like, when you’re really ugly, you can’t get enough of monster comics and movies. It’s a bittersweet balm to know somebody is uglier than you, and it’s no fun pissing downwards unless you can piss on somebody below you. As Putin pointed out, for a few years they said, let the Russians poodle about; they have nothing left but rust. As long as that was true, the attitude was one of amused, patronizing tolerance. A resurgent Russia invites abuse. But, like a friend of mine was fond of saying, an insult from a fool is a compliment.
Dear Mark,
I agree with you about all of this.
Given the sameness of these books one might be forgiven for thinking that they were all written by the same person using different aliases. However it would seem not.
Another Russophobic Putin book hot off the presses is “The Man Without a Face” by Masha Gessen, which was reviewed in the UK Daily Telegraph a couple of days back. (see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/9100593/Book-extract-The-Man-Without-a-Face-by-Masha-Gessen.html)
The same Gessen also wrote a comment for the UK Guardian on 26 December 2011 and entitled “Vladimir’s World is Falling Apart”, where she wrote;
“A friend sent me a link to a programme broadcast on Russian national television recently (the link was to a YouTube clip, since most people I know do not have actual working television sets – the habit of watching TV has quietly died among the educated class here over the last 10 years). For over 10 minutes it made fun, crudely and openly, of Vladimir Putin’s annual televised Q&A session. ‘What do you make of this?’ my friend wrote. ‘Is this fake?’ It was not fake. And what I made of it is that television, the most vital of organs in a state like Russia, is failing”.
(See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/26/vladimir-putin-world-falling-apart)
Notice how Masha (the Russian diminutive of Mariya) lets the reader know that she’s an educated person. I and my Russian acquaintances and, I should think, many of the great unwashed, must appear extremely boorish to Gessen, as we all have several TV sets in our flats as well as computers and laptops linked by routers to a wireless homegroup. And she goes on and on about harsh authoritarian regimes…
In the Telegraph article linked above, Gessen uses the Kursk disaster to illistrate how evil Putin is:
“Putin appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live. When King asked, ‘What happened?’ Putin shrugged, smiled – impishly, it seemed – and said, ‘It sank.’ The line became infamous: it played as cynical, dismissive and deeply offensive to all who were affected by the tragedy. Only reviewing the transcript of the show 10 years later did I realise what Putin was trying to communicate. He was indicating that he would not press the line some hapless Russian spin doctor had invented – that the Kursk had collided with an American submarine. Never mind that crazy conspiracy theory, his shrug was intended to say. It just sank”.
It seems that Masha is not so smart as she thinks she is. It took her 10 years to catch on to the import of Putin’s squashing of Mr. King. When I and most of my colleagues saw that CNN transmission, we knew at once that Putin was telling King: “Don’t try and set me up Mister!”
I remember when Gessen had a column in the Moscow Times. She was another one of those native Muscovites employed by that publication that had long ago left Mother Russia. In 1981, when Gessen was 14, she and her bourgeois family (father: computer scientist; mother: literary critic and translator) joined the exodus of Russian Jews emigrating to America and settled in Boston. Gessen became a writer, specializing in dishing the dirt on the Evil Empire. One regular feature of her anti-Soviet articles was the antisemitism that she claims is rife amongst Russians, evidenced by the fact that in her old Soviet passport she had stamped under “nationality”: “Yevreika” – Jewess. (That Georgians, Armenians, Ukrainians etc. also had their nationalities stamped in their passports as well as their Soviet Union citizenship seemed of no import to Gessen.)
In 1991 Gessen returned to Russia on a magazine assignment where she was to , report on the country’s fledgling women’s movement. (Tough task!) She began to return more frequently on assignments before finally moving back in 1994 to take a job as chief correspondent on a news weekly, Itogi.
And then the “nationality” entry in the new Russian passports was abolished. And guess what? Gessen wrote a column in the Moscow Times, bleating about this change, saying that with the removal of “Yevreika” from her passport, she somehow felt robbed her of her “identity”.
As ol’ Abe once famously said: You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
You can’t please “intellectuals” like Masha any of the time. And in a way, I understand it. I mean, how chipper would you be if you lived in a country you hated for the sole purpose of bringing enlightenment to its bovine dullards who were not intellectuals, and they wouldn’t even listen to you and get themselves a leader like that nice Mr. Kasparov, who after all was a chess champion, which is almost intellectual? How about if all you and your friends could buy was those cheap plastic cyclops TV’s from the early 70′s, with a tube in the back that weighed as much as a dead preacher as you and your intellectual friends staggered up the stairs with it to the ninth floor because Russia doesn’t have elevators – but the cattle were able to find flatscreens somewhere (probably smuggled in from America in loads of cabbages)? Maybe you wouldn’t like the way people only wore ill-fitting, shoddy dark clothes and shuffled hopelessly from bus to factory to one-room-flat-with-three-generations-in-it while you were around, but partied like it was 2012 as soon as you were gone? What if all the joy and purpose of life emptied from in front of whichever direction you went by some invisible force like the pressure wave in front of a metro train, and all you saw was pain and sorrow and ugliness and longing for something better?
What if you had a plan to help the poor downtrodden masses get rid of their autocratic Hitlerite leader, and they kept electing him over and over? You might be a little waspish yourself.
Wow, Mark, you have gone all high-literary essay with the dystopic psychology of a later Tolstoy (in his “Ivan Ilyich” phase). That was brilliant!
The reviews of Gessen’s book here in Britain have not been completely laudatory. Though none challenge her overall portrait of Putin several refer to the book’s “emotional” and “passionate” nature and its obvious bias against its subject. The Financial Times says that a “problem” is that Gessen often provides no evidence to support her claims. Quite.
Here is an extract, published in today’s UK Daily Telergraph, from Gessen’s book on Putin:
“The murder of Litvinenko is indisputably the work of the Russian government authorised at the very top: polonium-210, which killed him, is manufactured exclusively in Russia. Its production and export are tightly controlled by federal nuclear authorities, and the extraction of the needed dose required top-level intervention at an early stage of the manufacturing process. The authorisation for such an intervention had to have come from the president’s office. In other words, Vladimir Putin ordered Alexander Litvinenko dead”.
What mind blowing logic this woman uses to reach the conclusion that Putin ordered Litvinenko’s death!
I should think that the evidence that Gessen presents above for accusing Putin of Litvinenko’s murder would be classified as “circumstantial” in a court of justice, in that more than one explanation of his death by Plutonium-210 poisoning could be posited.
I just cannot understand why Putin does not sue Gessen and her ilk for libel. I rememember how several years ago the four-times-married, thrice-divorced (so far) German Chancellor Schröder threatened to sue a British newspaper for alleged libellous articles concerning his then long term mistress: the newspaper ceased publication of the story.
The British “Mail on Sunday” was served an injunction by a Hamburg court after that paper had made several claims about the German chancellor’s then marriage, which claims were then reported by some newspapers in Germany. The injunction issued on behalf of Herr Schröder forbad the newspaper publishers, Associated Newspapers, from repeating the claims.
It was claimed that if the injunction was ignored, the paper could be fined Euros 250,000 (£164,000).
Old Schröder, it seems, is very conscious about his public image. The year before the Mail on Sunday was issued an injunction on his behalf, the former chancellor successfully sued a German press agency for suggesting that he dyed his hair.
However, the much maligned Vladimir Putin has, to use his own words, “diaorrhea” poured over him by the news media, yet he does not litigate.
I shouldn’t be surprised if Gessen’s book “The Man With no Face” soon appears here as a Russian translation, and nothing will be done about it for fear of the West accusing Russia of “human rights” infringements in that if publication of her libellous tome be banned, her “freedom of expression” would be deemed to have been curtailed.
In the West, of course, you can make accusations right left and centre about public figures – I don’t think!
This is the kind of reading you need if, as I read somewhere else recently, you need a surge of energy to lift a car off an imprisoned child or something. The west constantly prates that Russia suffers from oppressive state censorship, and yet people who live in Russia are allowed to publish this kind of reckless slander. It’s almost as if they are trying to provoke the authorities to beat the crap out of them so they can be a martyr, while the rest of the world shouts, “See??? SEE??? I TOLD you!!!”
The Syrian opposition rhetoric is being ratcheted up to a fever pitch now in an escalating effort to bring in western guns and bombers – check this story, portraying the situation as “come now, or don’t bother, because we’ll all be dead, we have almost nothing to eat and Assad is on our rooftop shooting my children every time they try to go out to get food.” Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I think you’ll agree this is the sort of narrative that warhawks like Hillary Clinton have no problem selling, and they’re just trying to help her get the intervention train rolling. The message is “Don’t think – just drop what you’re doing and come”.
Interestingly, though, a new element is being introduced: not only did Russia fuck them over by vetoing the mercy resolution that might have saved thousands of people – Russia is bringing in weapons and mercenaries to support the government forces!!! Why, it’s spitting in the face of Mom and Apple Pie!!
The Muslim Brotherhood must be rubbing its hands in satisfaction.
Meanwhile, read what is happening in Syria from the viewpoint of somebody who actually just returned from there.
Michel Chossudovsky makes a lot of good points about Syria conflict in this RT interview. Meanwhile, latest word from Homs is that the armed rebellion has been mostly put down by Syrian army, and the situation is now stable. This explains why Hillary is whining about bringing “humanitarian” aid in, I guess she is hoping to sneak in more of her Al Qaeda mercenaries (posing as soup kitchen workers) to stir things up again.
Dear Yalensis,
Thank you for this.
You may be interested in looking at a post I wrote on my blog as long ago as 11th October 2011 following the Russian and Chinese vetoes of the first Resolution about Syria that the western powers put before the Security Council:
http://mercouris.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/syria-and-the-security-council/
As you can see I analysed the manoeuvres in relation to that vote and came to the conclusion way back then that despite their protestations to the contrary the western powers have a very definite regime change agenda in Syria and that this most certainly does involve plans for military action. I also predicted in that post that despite their defeat in the Security Council the western power had not abandoned their plans and would look for other ways to achieve their objective.
Everything that has happened since that vote in October has been exactly in accordance with my predictions in that post.
Formidable, Michel; je célèbre votre courage. This squares perfectly with Lizzie Phelan’s reporting from the region – Assad is fighting an armed insurrection, and Turkey is playing much more of an interventionist part in it than we were previously led to believe. This is the first source I’ve seen that has come right out and said unambiguously that armed insurgents create a situation that demands a government response, then blame the government for the deaths of the innocent that result from the clash between government forces and insurgents. And Syria seems to contain a substantial number of snakes in the grass who are only too willing to hype the al Qaeda storyline – I’d be hunting them down after this is over, if Assad manages to retain control. But this is still essentially a voice in the wilderness, as is Ms. Phelan’s – hers being billed as a hippie hater of the west who gives aid and comfort to the enemy, while RT’s will be billed as acting purely from self-interest and self-justification. It seems clear Russia and China are on the side of the angels this time, and there will be some satisfaction in this in the post-crisis analysis, but for now the mainstream press still has the momentum. Symbolic, somehow, to see the west embrace the coverage of al Jazeera now, whereas once if you cited their material you were asking for a beating. We are all al Jazeera now, it seems.
The under-the-radar coups against democratically-elected leaders of yesteryear relied on being able to control the storyline, and often exposure never happened until the governments involved smugly admitted it long after it was part of history. In the instant-information age that’s more difficult; here’s hoping the voices of protest will not come too late or too feebly to change the course of events.
This begs another question – if the west enables a huge militant al-Qaeda army with its own governments backing it that sprawls across the entire region, how does it propose to control it afterward? How does it propose to ignore the cries of the people it sells into oppression, afterward? Especially after the weepy narrative about how we must come to the aid of the desperate Syrian people who only yearn to breathe free air?
Turning back to the subject of Syria, I get the impression that the Friends of Syria conference in Tunis was something of a debacle with no consensus about what to do and even some recriminations starting to fly around. There are even confused reports that the Saudi delegation walked out apparently because their demands for tougher action went unheeded.
I am beginning to think that the danger of an immediate military attack on Syria may have receded. It is clear that Syria has a great deal of support internationally, not just from Russia and China but also from such countries as Algeria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, India, Brazil, the ALBA states and Iraq, and I suspect that there is concern that without Security Council authorisation the international reaction to a military attack would be so strong that it might not be possible to sustain it. As for the Saudi proposal to arm the opposition, that is of course happening already but frankly the rebels do not seem remotely up to taking on the Syrian army by themselves even if they are armed. Supplying more sophisticated weapons such as might change the balance of forces on the ground would run all the risks that I discussed previously and since Syria is not under embargo the Russians and the Iranians would be in a position to supply the Syrians with counter weapons if they were minded to do so.
It may be because western plans have hit the buffers that there has been a series of angry articles and speeches demanding that Russia pressure Assad to go. There was an article to that effect in the Daily Telegraph on Friday, an editorial to that effect in the Times yesterday and a similar editorial in the Observer/Guardian today. Hillary Clinton and McFaul have been publicly saying the same thing. The threat in each case is that unless Russia abandons Assad it will supposedly lose the friendship of the Arab world. I have to say that this seems like a completely empty threat to me since Russia does not have the friendship of the Arab world to lose. All the big Arab states have been allied to the US for decades and supported the anti Russian insurgencies in Afghanistan and Chechnya so what this great friendship amounts to is something of a mystery to me.
By the way I should quickly say that in articles in the Daily Telegraph, in the Observer and in the editorial in yesterday’s Times (the angry and bitter tone of which is beyond belief) the British press has flatly said that the Syrian authorities deliberately murdered the two journalists in Homs. There is of course not a scintilla of proof for this allegation.
Ditto the suggestion that Syrian military aircraft had been observed casting about, and that they “might be looking for the satellite uplinks” so that they can track down journalists and eliminate them. Syria has no such capability. The uplink/downlink is a direct digital communication between the satellite and the source, usually a phone in this case as there are no direct western journalist feeds (they appear quite happy to use YouTube clips supplied by activists, and a television truck with a satellite dish on it would sort of eliminate the need for intercepting the uplink in order to locate journalists), and finding it by blundering into the connection would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Although there is a bit of splash, it’s a very narrow beam. Locating it would not allow the interceptor to pinpoint the journalist holding the phone, probably not even accurately enough to identify the building they were in. Analyses prepared to help Israel make an assessment of risk involved in attacking Syria (not particularly recent, and compiled by American assessors rating the Syrian Air Force against the Israeli and both countries’ Air Defense capabilities) are at pains to highlight how old the Syrian Air Force is by comparison. This is simply a lie, possibly circulated to discourage foreign journalists from venturing to Syria and making those who are already there keep their heads down, so they don’t see too much. They needn’t worry – the mainstream press has totally bought into the help-the-poor-Syrians-throw-off-the-shackles-of-Assad-and-be-free meme.
But despite the intrepid courage of individual reporters, the press as an industry is a coward. If things get to the point that they can no longer look the other way and pretend up is down, they will turn on the politicians who depend on them to control public opinion with the same avidity they showed for pounding the war drum.
Dear Mark,
As I have said before I am no military expert but everything you say is obviously correct. Doubtless Syria has by Middle East standards a well trained and strong military but it has not received significant arms supplies from Russia since the 1980s. I was reading earlier an article in the Daily Telegraph that attributed to the Syrian army sophisticated Russian tanks that are supposedly impervious to rocket propelled grenades (are there such things?) advanced mortars, drones, missiles that can home in on radio and telephone transmissions and such like. There is no indication of when Russia is supposed to have supplied Syria with such weapons and I am sure that Syria doesn’t have them.
Although nothing is “impervious” to RPG’s or anti-tank weapons, off the top of my head it sounds like reactive armor. That consists of studding the outer hull with blocks of explosive that are a cleverly-designed shaped charge with a strong backplate and an internal director like the punt in a champagne bottle, which causes the explosion’s force to be directed outward. Anything striking reactive armor is destroyed in the instant counterexplosion. It’s apparently quite effective. I couldn’t say without checking if Syria has anything like that, but offhand I would say no. I’m just on my way out, so I’ll have a look when I get back. Syria doesn’t have any drones at all and thus far they are a largely unexploited technology in Russia as well. There are no missiles that can home in on telephone transmissions because the telephone is a receiver, and when it is used as a transmitter the transmission comes from its cellular tower, like when you backtrack a computer you get its server, not the actual physical computer; what a ridiculous concept. Any such missile would rely on you constantly transmitting, like saying “lalalalalalalalalalala” without stopping until the missile hit you, even if it could home in on an individual phone, which it can’t. The Telegraph is simply complicit in passing along fairy tales to an incurious and ignorant world. It seems we live in an age when newspapers will pass along any stupid bit of gossip they hear without bothering to research it even casually. There’s pretty much nothing left but tabloids.
I am getting the first reports from Russian news agencies about the Garden Ring protest. The police say that 11,000 people have turned up. The protesters say 40,000 people. Whichever of these you believe it is surely significant that the police and the protesters are each giving figures that relative to the numbers each say turned up to the previous protests makes this the smallest protest yet. I gather that only 14,000 people confirmed through Facebook that they would participate in this protest, which is also by some distance the smallest number.
I suspect that the leaders of the protesters are aware that their numbers are dwindling, which is why they chose this form of protest instead of a demonstration in a single place where their numbers would of course have been much easier to count.
Well, I am no mathematician, but there should be an easy way to calculate the number of protesters: Take the circumference of the Ring in kilometers, which is a known quantity. Then make an assumption about average width of each person in meters (including space in between if they are holding hands); even though the people are 3-dimensional, you can, for the purposes of this problem, assume that each person is a 2-D segment of a line. Next figure out how many people needed to close the whole Ring, did they close it or not? If not, calculate how many average people in the gap, and subtract from the total needed. QED.
Dear Yalensis,
I understand that people are making precisely these sort of calculations but of course are coming up with completely different results. The opposition claim that to complete the ring there would have to be 34,000 people and that since the ring is complete that means that there must be at least 34,000 people participating. The trouble is that it is not clear that the ring is in fact complete or what complete even means. Did they for example all hold hands? Also at street intersections the chain was broken because the protesters agreed that they would keep the roads clear and would not obstruct the traffic.
All in all it seems to me that one can say two things: a lot of people turned up but fewer than at the previous opposition protests.
Dear Yalensis,
Novosti is reporting that the crowd “thinned considerably” between Oktyabrskaya and Park Kultury metro stations, which given that Novosti of all the Russian news agencies is the one that is most sympathetic to the protesters, I take to mean that the ring was not continuous at that point. Obviously this is a small section of the garden ring. However bear in mind that many of the offices of the news organisations such as Novosti itself are situated near Park Kultury so it may be they are simply in a better position to report on that section then they are for other sections. Also one would have thought that the organisers of the protests would make a special effort to bring out people in this section of the garden ring precisely because Novosti and other news organisations have their offices there.
Incidentally I must take strong issue with the description of this protest as a “flash mob”. It is nothing of the sort. A flash mob is one that is raised suddenly on the eve of an event (usually a party or a rock concert) in order to confuse the law enforcement authorities. Today’s event has on the contrary been trailed weeks in advance. There is nothing of the “flash mob” about it.
Lastly, I must once again draw attention to the extremely law abiding and orderly nature of these so called “revolutionaries”. Not only have they been careful to observe traffic rules so as not to obstruct the traffic but since this was not an authorised protest they have apparently in the great majority obediently followed the rules against displaying banners or placards wiith overt political messages. This in what is supposed to be a political protest!
I construe this to mean that the hardcore of opposition supporters who are prepared to break the law and risk paying a fine or going to prison is extremely small, which explains why unauthorised rallies when they take place are so poorly attended.
I have just done a quick round up of the British press today and so far this is one opposition protest which the British media has failed to cover at all. I cannot find a single reference to it on the Guardian, Telegraph or Independent websites or on the BBC website. Today admittedly is a Sunday but the news media here is usually still busy so the fact that the protest has gone unreported is a sign that the turnout was disappointing. We will see if the media carry more about the protest tomorrow.
The Guardian is the first British newspaper to write up the garden ring protest in a despatch by Miriam Elder. Though her despatch is heavily slanted towards the protesters it is a lot more sober in tone than her euphoric accounts of the earlier protests. I notice that on this occasion she does not give her own estimates of the numbers who turned out or report those of the opposition as if they were fact but instead gives the estimates of both the protesters and of the police without indicating which she believes is the more accurate.
I have been watching TV news reports here in Moscow and what has particularly struck me was the presence of very many young people in the chain – and by “young” I mean of school age, which reinforces what many middle-class, upwardly mobile young Russians of my acquaintance have repeatedly told me in recent months, namely that many that take part in these “anti-Putin” demonstrations do so because it’s the fashionable thing to do.
Below is a video clip from RT, which wrongly describes the participants as being a “flash mob”. The RT translators want their collective arses kicking for that! Mostly shot near Park kultury metro station.
It seems clear that it is now a game of numbers, and that the pro-dissension side is losing in spite of creative math.
Still, it strikes me as funny that the pro-revolution western press will go to great lengths to find that one person in a pro-Putin crowd – if he even exists; there are likely thousands of pension-age men in Russia named Yevgeny, and the popular press have become such accomplished and unabashed liars that its hard to know what’s true anymore – who will say he was paid, ordered or otherwise coerced to come out for Putin, and then characterize the whole crowd as being comprised of grudging, unwilling participants. It seems to me that anyone so afraid of Putin or of his employer that he would actually show up at such a demonstration against his will would be most unlikely to “find that moment of courage” and blab his pique about it to a western reporter.
And yet the obvious fact that many of these protesters shown in this video are not old enough to vote is blithely passed over. If they were pro-Putin demonstrators, the narrative would be that they were all Nashi, or that Putin was attempting to recreate the HitlerJugend.
And while I mention pro-Putin, what’s with the demonstrators carrying the heart placards? It’s very difficult to read them, but they appear to say, “Putin (something) Everyone”. I suppose it might say “Putin Hates Everyone”, but if so, a heart is an odd vehicle to use to say it. And if it is a positive message, they are not anti-Putin at all – therefore their numbers cannot be included to pad the overall “protest movement” total.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thank you for confirming this because I have been saying much the same thing from the start of the protest movement back in December. The overwhelming impression I have got is that the protests are driven by young people, some of them very young. A breakdown I saw of the people who turned up to the opposition rally on 4th February 2012 also appeared to say that the majority of the protesters at that rally were young people in their twenties.
It needs to be said that not everybody who turns up to these rallies is young just as it is also a mistake to think that most young people support the opposition. However to the extent that these are protests by young people the point to remember is that youthful protest is common in most democratic countries and should be seen for what it is, which is a rite of passage into adulthood. There is no reason why Russia should be different. Where the authorities are wise (as they have been in Russia up to now) they allow these protests to take place in the knowledge that they are of no larger significance. In time young people settle down, have children, start jobs and with greater responsibility the fire of protest fades away.
Anyone interested in reading Novaya Gazeta in English can now do so. Lebedev now provides a link to an English edition on the Independent’s website. It comes complete with a long front page interview with Khodorkovsky alias the Russian Mandela and two articles by Yulia Latynina.
The Russian Mandela??? Does it actually say that?? God, give me strength.
That’s the line that Bloomberg was pushing two years ago!
See:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-11/-mandela-moment-awaits-russia-in-yukos-trial-commentary-by-julian-rimmer.html
No in fairness Novaya Gazeta does not call him the Russian Mandela, at least not in the edition I have read. That was my own someone facetious addition. However having said that I have seen Khodorkovsky referred to as the Russian Mandela in the British press, which is where I got it from. I don’t remember where that was but if and when I see it again I will let you know.
From The Moscow Times:
“The analogy to Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years under South Africa’s apartheid regime, may seem like a stretch. The causes they championed were diametrically opposed. Mandela was fighting for freedom from a racist government. Khodorkovsky was mostly concerned with personal enrichment and is hardly viewed as a flower of liberty. But the two cases illustrate defining moments for two nations that struggled to adopt democracy and the rule of law”.
See:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/russias-nelson-mandela/423606.html
From Bloomberg:
“The analogy to Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years under South Africa’s apartheid regime, may seem like a stretch. There are no similarities in the path they trod to incarceration, and the causes they championed were diametrically opposed. Mandela was fighting for freedom from a racist government. Khodorkovsky was mostly concerned with personal enrichment and is hardly viewed as a flower of liberty.
But the two cases illustrate defining moments for two nations that struggled to adopt democracy and the rule of law”.
See:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-11/-mandela-moment-awaits-russia-in-yukos-trial-commentary-by-julian-rimmer.html
Dear Moscow Exile,
You’ve supplied the citations. Thank you.
I tried twice to post a similar comment, even citing the same paragraph as you have, and each time my computer abruptly failed just as I was about to submit it. I think my faithful Toshiba might be headed for the elephant graveyard. Now I’m using my wife’s Sony Vaio. Anyway, you’ve highlighted pretty much everything I said. I merely pointed out that although the article was surprisingly realistic despite its alarmist headline, and depicted Khodorkovsky much as he actually is rather than lionizing him, it still pushes the cynical trope that Russia should free him rather than let the west make a martyr of him, and that doing as the west would like might promote friendlier relations and perhaps even earn a pat on the head. As if.
Dear Alex,
Just a short addition to what you said…..
I think mainstream Western media are now full steam in trying to stoke chaos in Russia(which I doubt would be successful):-
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-russians-hold-hands-against-putin-105549004.html
“If the foundation of a house is weak, the walls won’t stand. The foundation of our country was the December 4 election. The presidency is nothing without a strong Duma (parliament),” said a 63-year-old pensioner who gave his name only as Yevgeny.
“These protests will continue even until revolution. The authorities aren’t going to back down and we won’t back down. So anything could happen.”
I don’t think the majority of Russians want another ‘revolution’.
sinotibetan
Dear SinoTibetan,
I think that is exactly right.
By the way I too have acquired Mark’s cynicism about some of the interviews that get reported such as Yevgeny’s. I remember some years ago reading an article by a very well known British journalist calling for western recognition of Abkhazia so as to “win it away” from Moscow. In support of the claim that there was a big pro western anti Russian constituency in Abkhazia the article featured around half a dozen interviews all of which were anonymous and all of which I have no doubt were fabricated by the writer. Having said that there are of course real opposition supporters like Yevgeny who think and say the sort of things Yevgeny is reported to have said so on this occasion I will give the journalist the benefit of the doubt and treat the interview as genuine.
Overall though you are absolutely right that the agenda now is no longer to prevent Putin becoming President (I think there was a brief flurry of hope for that in December but that has now gone away) but to deprive him of legitimacy. Like you I do not believe there is the remotest chance of it.
A better clip from RT about today’s “flash mob”:
http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday/featured
And Navalny said today: “And yes, on 4th March Putin will be president, but we won’t accept him”. (In clip shown in today’s UK Daily Telegraph.)
There speaks a “democrat” who believes that votes that go counter to what he wishes are automatically invalidated.
So if 60% plus of the Russian electorate votes for Putin, Navalny and friends won’t accept him.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Navalny and the liberals are not democrats and never have been. Anybody who thinks they are should take their mind back to the events of 1993.
In reply to marknesop’s query about what was written on the young protestors’ heart-shaped placards, it was: “Putin loves you!”
In fact, those youngsters with those placards were Nashi members. They were outside the RIA Novosti HQ near Park kultury metro station.
However, there were plenty of youngsters too young to vote with white ribbons as well as very young children with white ballons alongside their white-ribbon bedecked parents
“I’m gonna take my problem to the United Nations.
Well I called my congressman and he said Quote:
I’d like to help you son but you’re too young to vote.”
(Eddie Cochrane, “Summertime blues”.)
I too have seen pictures of lots of very young children waving white balloons and such like who have obviously been taken to the protest by their parents. There is nothing wrong with this and it happens everywhere but one wonders whether these children are being added to the totals or not.
If they were Nashi (and I tend to think the propensity to lump all pro-Putin rally attendance into the “I was bussed in because my boss made me come” category extends to identifying all pro-Putin youth as Nashi), it seems clear they were included in the count, as the line in places was so stretched people had to hold onto the belts of each other’s coats to maintain contact. A decisive and unmistakable public repudiation of the government this was not. There is no way the total could approach 40,000 – probably not even half that – without including them. And I saw a lot of those heart placards in the crowd.
Ha! The Nashisti are lame too. By showing up with those stupid “I Heart Putin” signs, they made it look like the “Ring” was more completed than it was.
They should have stayed home, then it would have been glaringly obvious to McFaul that his compradores cannot muster enough troops for La Revolution.
Here’s the Mouthpiece Of Qatar’s take on it – the protest rally’s organizers “needed 34,000 …to complete the chain along the Garden Ring, and they appeared to have succeeded”. Oh, yeah; there was a pro-Putin rally, but “only a few dozen people attended”.
Oddly enough, the article closes with “Putin is all but certain to win the presidential election on March 4th..” How do you figure, when the forces arrayed against him are huge and immovable, with the strength of the just, while he has only a few dozen supporters whom are bussed in from outside the city and bribed with a couple of days off?
Oh, yeah; that’s right…He’s going to RIG THE ELECTION!!!! Dust off the boldface type that says “Massive Fraud!!!”, mainstream press.
That’s the point I was making. They surely include in the body count those older youngsters who are still at school and too young to vote as well. They would have also included me in the count if I had gone, and I can’t vote. I pay my taxes but I can’t vote! I’ll have to start an Exiles with a Full Moscow Residency Permit for Foreigners protest movement. Shouldn’t complain though, as I’ve got a Moscow pensioners’ public transport pass.
An “Exiles with a Full Moscow Residency Permit for Foreigners Protest Movement”…
Is this the great Napoleonic threat to the Motherland Putin warned against at Luzhniki on Thursday!!!?
I am eagerly looking forward to receiving an invitation from Mr. McFaul to meet and discuss this possible tactical move with him.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Be careful what you ask for! For all we know the invitation is already in the post.
Possibly taking their cue from some comments of Udaltsov’s the protesters seem to have reduced their estimates to 30,000. The truth is that with this sort of protest any estimate they make can be no more than a guess. In such a widely dispersed protest even geodesic experts or agencies like Redus can be only of limited use unless there exist simultaneous photographs of the protest at its peak at every point round the garden ring. I gather by the way that the protest was timed to last just 20 minutes.
Having said this one should not lose sight of the fact that quite a lot of people did turn up and as was the case at the previous protests the turnout if not overwhelming was certainly respectable.
The BBC TV World Service report that I have just been watching says about today’s demonstration: “It wasn’t an unbroken chain, but they made their point, and it was a powerful reminder that this protest movement is not going away”.
BBC reporter: “It’s been another impressive display of what has essentially become an anti Vladimir Putin movement. They know he’s going to win the presidential election, but this time they’re not going to let him win without their voice of protest being heard”.
What does this mean? If they don’t want him to win, then surely they will vote against him; if they believe he is going to win, then they already accept that more will vote for him rather than against him. And so they intend to protest against a majority decision because they won’t like it – or is the BBC journalist subliminally suggesting that the election result will not represent the true wishes of the electorate?
Enter the foreign agent Navalny in the BBC transmission: “Yes. Everyone understands that on the fourth of March Putin will announce himself president again…”
(Funny that! I thought there was going to be an election and that the electorate will choose who the president shall be and the result will be announced by some high ranking bureaucrat or judge or whatever.)
“…but we will not recognize him”.
And a grim face Navalny turns away from the BBC interviewer.
The BBC report continues: “The Russian capital is bubbling with political rebellion…”
Really? All 14 million plus of its inhabitants?
“What do you think of today’s demo, Natasha?” I said to my wife.
“What demonstration?”
Dear Moscow Exile,
Your analysis is spot on. Apparently according to the BBC it is democratic to reject a democratic result if Putin wins it. Alternatively one could equally well argue that according to the BBC the result is not democratic if Putin wins it even if he wins it democratically.
The one fact I take from this broadcast is that the BBC has confirmed that the ring was not unbroken contrary to what the protesters say.
I notice BBC gets quotes from blogger Anton Nosik-Ketamine. He is nicknamed that because wrote a post telling people how to buy horse tranquilizers from India.
Meanwhile our old friends Luke Harding & Co at the Guardian are back with an exclusive interview with Khodorkovsky. I have not read the interview but from the summary it sounds a bit like the interview Khodorkovsky has given to Novaya Gazeta though of course there is no reason why Khodorkovsky should not give two interviews at the same time.
Incidentally Mandela was not allowed to give interviews from prison but then he of course was a political prisoner….
Why is this zek allowed to talk to reporters? Grrr!!!
Dear Yalensis,
I have now read the interview. I will spare you the torment of a link. It is predictable rubbish that says nothing interesting or new. What does he have to say anyway that is either new or remotely interesting?
More news on the Misrata militia. It seems they have now taken two British journalists captive and have denied Human Rights Watch contact with them.
There’s gratitude for you. What has Luke Harding to say on the subject?
Send him to Libya. How long can he be their Russia correspondent when he has not visited the country in a year?
I don’t think the west wants to know too much about Libya right now. However, here’s an interesting article that suggests Russia and China (as well as Brazil and India) “saw right through it from the beginning”. This is a compelling account of self-interest served, from Sarkozy’s “ambitious agenda of strategic redeployment of France in the Arab world” to “David of Arabia” Cameron’s plans for Libyan wealth lifting Britain out of recession. Sadly, it all seems to have been about money after all – sorry, romantics and democracy advocates. Qatar looms large as scuttling western toady.
Russia and China seem to be taking a nap on this issue. These are two of the world’s wealthiest countries, and both are awash in hard currency – in China’s case, courtesy of the USA’s spendthrift high-rolling. The west’s consolidation of its acquisition-motivated victory very much depends on Libya settling down and welcoming the exploiters in to
pillage freelyset up mutually profitable arrangements with the new landlords. If it were up to me, Libya would be a long time settling down, because I (as Russia and China) would be bankrolling and arming the now-rebel Greens. I don’t know that the west has ever had the tables turned on it, and been on the receiving end of covert support to rebel elements and oppositionists just when it wants things to quiet down. But I’d love to hear how it would phrase its protests at such interference.Add Amnesty International’s voice to that of Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch in united dismay at the lawlessness and chaos that prevail in The New Libya.
Included is the optimistic gem from Libyan Interior Minister Fawzy Abdilal (you don’t see many Fawzys; the last one I remember was a bear on “The Muppets“) hopes to integrate the “out of control militias” into a national security force!!!
I can’t imagine what could go wrong with that.
Are you talking about Nick and Gareth? They are British citizens, but they work as stringers for the Iranian press (Englsh-language service). Since they work for the “bad guys”, I guess the “world” doesn’t care about them. Well, at least they are males, they will be abused but probably not raped. Whenever the Misratans get a female journalist in their hands, especially a Western woman with uncovered hair, they usually gang rape her then post the video on you-tube.
Also note that Misratans are still detaining Libyan female journalist and television personality Hala al-Misrati. The video below shows the young thugs who captured her at gunpoint from her television studio while she was taping her talk show. She has been in their hands for a long time, and there are many reports that she has been tortured and raped by them. But at least we know now that she is still alive, because her captors paraded her on TV just a week ago. They put her in a modest hijab and posed her in front of the Italian colonial flag to tell the world how wonderful she is being treated by her captors.
Here is one of the commenters to the you-tube clip, somebody named “mpineiroable”, this is one of the best comments I read:
Nothing says ‘legit government’ like 3 teenagers with AK47s getting off on video of a woman prisoner crying + being taunted with a gun in her face. Is this what al-Jazeera calls “liberation” … for women, who were empowered during the Green Revolution to be doctors, journalists, proud and strong … because al-Jazeera journalists are proudly posting the sick hostage tape where this proud Libyan woman is forced into hijab + forced into saying how she likes her imprisonment. It’s shameful.
Dear Yalensis,
You are right, I did mean Nick and Gareth and I had not realised that they were employed by Press TV. As you correctly suggest their detention has barely attracted attention.
I remember during the battle of Zuwiyah a British journalist and his Arab interpreter were arrested by Gaddafi’s troops in the city. I think they were from Sky TV News but I may be wrong about this. Anyway what I do remember was the extraordinary outcry this provoked. After they were released I remember them going on television to discuss the way they had been tortured by Gaddafi’s troops. At the time I was suspicious because though they both described beatings neither displayed any visible bruising. Anyway I wonder whether if Nick and Gareth are roughed up in the way that you say whether this will attract much or any attention?
Dear Yalensis,
Another disturbing video. What struck me was the extreme youth of the three boys with with the guns. They look like teenagers who should be at school. What are they becoming?
PS: I don’t know whether you have heard of it but there is a famous English novel called Lord of the Flies about a group of schoolchildren who become marooned without adults on an island during a nuclear war. They rapidly descend into barbarism and cruelty and start murdering each other. Is that the fate of Libya?
PPS: I notice that in his latest article Putin refers to Gaddafi’s murder as not just medieval but primeval. I am glad someone has noticed.
Dear Alexander: I did read “Lord of the Flies” in school. We were given the Marxist slant, i.e., that this is a fairly accurate portrayal of the lives of upper-class British schoolboys. Seriously, though, that is probably the correct interpretation!
Just read there was an assassination plot against Putin that was uncovered in Odessa, Ukraine.
Does anyone know what happens if a candidate is assassinated during a Presidential race in Russia? Would it have carried on as before, just without Putin, with probably Prokhorov facing off Zyuganov in the second round?
A good question though thankfully a hypothetical one. I don’t think the constitution allows for a delay in the election. However in practice if Medvedev were to declare a state of emergency (which he might well do) I cannot see how it would proceed.
According to RT, Putin’s assassination was not supposed to take place until AFTER the election, some time after March 4. So, it would not have affected the campaign.
If all of this is true (which it probably is), then it looks like a conspiracy of the usual suspects: Britain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and of course the Caucasian Islamists.
http://rt.com/news/putin-assassination-attempt-thwarted-271/
Latest I heard: Apparently the assasins foiled their own plot. (And were not foiled by “crack” team of Ukrainian counter-intelligence – ha!) Terrorist idiots accidentally blew up the apartment they were staying in where they were mixing their explosives.
Presumably then the beneficiary of the plot if it had succeeded would have been Medvedev who as Acting President and designated Prime Minister would have succeeded Putin if Putin had been killed.
Maybe; I’m not sure if election law covers such extraordinary circumstances, and if it did westerners would only point to contingency planning for the assassination of a political figure as evidence of what a backward, dangerous country it is. I would speculate – and it’s only that – that Medvedev would carry on for a short time, to be determined by extraordinary vote or referendum, with the stipulation that elections be held at a fixed date which marked the end of the period.
I can imagine the western response, though: “this is not a time for accusations and finger-pointing…this is a time for healing…”
The frothing at the mouth xenophobes that make Russophobic comments in the UK Telegraph are having a field day with this story, howling that it’s a put-up job by the Evil Sauron and his Orc minions. Why they should ridicule the idea that Vladimir Putin might have been the intended target for an assassination attempt puzzles me somewhat, for one of the most regular contributors of Russophobic comments to that newspaper, a certain Timothy D. Naegele, only 2 months ago posted the following comment:
“‘Dictator-for-Life’ Putin is a brutal killer who must be terminated. While his numbers do not equal those of Stalin, Hitler and Mao thus far, his ruthlessness is every bit as much as theirs. What he has done to the Chechens, Georgians and other opponents is what Stalin, Hitler and Mao did to their opponents”.
Needless to say, the Telegraph thought it uneccessary to remove Naegele’s exhortation that Putin be “terminated”.
Today, Naegele commented on the foiled Putin assasssination story thus:
“This is the oldest ploy in Putin and the KGB’s—oops, FSB’s—playbook. And they are blaming Chechens, as always. Next will come the ‘show trial’, filled with coerced confessions.
What is crystal clear is that ‘dictator-for-life’ Putin must go, however this happens”.
Now if that is not incitement to murder, I fail to see what is. And that comment has still not been deleted by the censor, nor do I think it ever will be.
And here’s the rub: the charming Mr. Naegele is a US Attorney at Law no less. He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, which specializes in Banking and Financial Institutions Law. he has also been counsel to US senate committees.
See: http://www.naegele.com/
Naegele also has a blog that matches the infamous La Russophobe’s for its endless venom directed at all things Russian.
See: http://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1910
Here’s a copy-and-paste from my email; it came from BNE (Business New Europe). The author is Ben Aris.
“I am sorry – I simply don’t believe it. This morning, February 27, Russian media reported that Ukrainian and Russian security services had foiled an assassination plot to kill Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shortly after the presidential election due this weekend.
A group of criminals, already on the international wanted lists, were arrested in the Ukrainian seaside resort of Odessa in January after a bomb accidentally exploded in their apartment killing one and injuring two more. One of the men confessed after weeks of interrogation that the bomb was intended for Putin “soon after the March 4 elections,” according to the reports.
One of the survivors, Ilya Pyanzin, claimed Chechen militant leader and Russia’s most wanted man, Doku Umarov, hired him and the deceased Ruslan Madayev to kill Putin. Pyanzin and Madayev came from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey to Ukraine. In Odessa, they were met by a local fixer, Adam Osmayev, who was supposed to brief the militants about the plan and send them to Moscow, reports Ria Novosti.
There are many problems with this scenario. The timing of the announcement immediately raises suspicions, coming only days before the vote despite the fact the men were arrested weeks ago. But even in the West the authorities would probably sit on a story like this to make maximum political use of it. The obvious incompetence of the assassins, who managed to blow themselves up, raises another question mark.
However, the rest of the evidence is very thin and more importantly the entire shape of the plan jars with the way Chechen terrorists work.
According to reports, police found an assassination “plan” on a laptop in which they would have to “learn the structure of Putin’s security team and how his bodyguards worked,” the reports say. This is an expression of intent, not an actual plan with details of how Putin’s security detail actually works. Moreover, if they had not even started to study Putin’s security only a month before the assassination (and were still thousands of miles from Moscow at the time), this doesn’t sound like a particularly serious attempt to find a chink in Putin’s armour. Surely, planning an attempt on a PM’s life takes months and months of meticulous planning.
The stated plan was to plant mines along Kutuzovsky prospekt and detonate them as Putin’s convoy passes on his way to work. But there are a string of problems with this too. I used to live on Kutuzovsky and everyday as Putin drove past, the street would fill up with beefy FSB officers every 100 metres or so along the route to check the road. Secondly, Kutuzovsky is an eight-lane road and Putin’s entourage drives extremely fast down the middle as all traffic is cleared out of the way. A bomb that could reach and catch Putin’s car (which is armoured) and actually destroy it would have to be massive and very hard to hide – certainly they would have to be more powerful than to simply “tear apart a truck” that a security officer told Russia’s First Channel.
Still, even this is all possible. But what makes this alleged attack most unlikely is that the style of the whole plan is totally out of keeping with all the other Chechen attacks, which can be divided into two types: hostage taking and bomb attacks.
Chechen commander Shamil Basayev set the tone for hostage taking with his raid on the Budyonnovsky hospital in southern Russian in June 1995, where 129 civilians died and another 415 were injured after the Russian army stormed the hospital. (Basayev escaped back into Chechen and was eventually killed in July 2006). This incident was followed by the Dubrovka theatre incident in October 2002 and the especially tragic Beslan school crisis in September 2004. However, all three of these incidents were broadly similar in nature: Chechen fighters – not mercenaries – attacked and mined a building full of Russian hostages.
The second type of attack has been bombings, the most recent of which was the attack on the Park Kultury metro station in March 2010 that killed 38 people and injured dozens more. The metro bomb was the first since a similar attack on the Paveletskaya metro in 2004 that killed 41.
However, all the bombing attacks have been carried out by Chechens and most of them have been suicide bombings. In Chechnya itself, attacks were constant and all well planned: in December 2002, Chechen suicide bombers rammed vehicles into the local government headquarters in Grozny, bringing down the roof and floors of the four-story building and killing 80; in June 2003, two women suicide bombers killed 15 people at an open-air rock festival at Moscow’s Tushino airfield; in May 2004, Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and six others are killed by a bomb that was buried in the football stand months earlier during reconstruction. And the last two metro bombs were suicide attacks.
Finally, there is the weird historical echo of this alleged plot. When Putin won the presidency first time round in 2000, he was swept into office in an atmosphere of fear following a series of four apartment bombings in 1999 that killed 293 Russians sleeping in their beds.
The apartment bombings were also blamed on Chechen terrorists, but have been dogged since by claims that the FSB were actually responsible. Chechen rebel leader Ibn Al-Khattab denied his forces carried out the attacks at the time, saying he was fighting Russian soldiers not “women and children.”
The truth about this plot will probably never be known, but the reports are likely to make the inevitable return of Putin to the president’s office a certainty. If this plot is a PR stunt, then it bodes ill for Russia that the Kremlin prefers to fight its elections using fear rather than policy and persuasion.”
Got that? This ginned-up publicity stunt is likely to make something that was already certain even more certain, and it bodes ill for Russia to use the politics of fear to win elections. Orange Alert, anyone? Dick Cheney, “the problem is, if we make the wrong choice, we could be attacked again”, anyone?
Since when has Odessa – fine city that it is – been a “seaside resort”?
Dear Mark,
There are two basic problems with Ben Aris’s approach.
1. He makes the mistake of thinking that because the plans were not yet well developed that means that the plot was not serious and that the assassins were incompetent and that there was only at best an intention to commit a murder as opposed to a plot to do so. The law however makes no distinction between an intention and a plot of the sort that Ben Aris seeks to make. On the contrary when more than two people come together to discuss and plan a murder in the way Ben Aris describes that amounts most definitely to a conspiracy to murder even if the discussions and plans are still at a very early stage. Conspiracy to murder is a very serious offence in any jurisdiction regardless of how advanced the planning actually was. In this case it is clear that the planning was at an early stage and that the would be assassins had not yet worked out the details of their plot or fully settled on how to carry it out but that is not a reason for not taking it seriously and in legal terms for the crime of conspiracy it is completely irrelevant.
2. There are no grounds for doubting this plot on the basis that it does not correspond to Ben Aris’s ideas of how Chechen terrorists operate. Chechen terrorists are hardly concerned to stay consistent with Ben Aris’s ideas of how they should operate, which ideas are of course purely Ben Aris’s own. As a matter of fact there have been many cases of Chechen terrorists using assassination as a tool. Ben Aris touches on one himself: the assassination of Ahmed Kadyrov, Ramzan’s father, by a bomb, which appears to correspond closely to the idea of using a bomb to assassinate Putin in this case.
I am tired of the way people like Ben Aris still trot out the apartment bombings in a way that suggests that there is some doubt about terrorist responsibility for them. All the persons involved in those bombings have long since been identified and though most of them were killed in battle a few have been caught and convicted and are serving prison sentences for their part in them. Besides Basayev openly admitted terrorist involvement in the bombings at the time though he retracted it later. I once went through all the evidence of Putin’s or the FSB’s supposed involvement in the bombings as part of a dialogue I had about the matter with a believer in this theory who lived in Cambridge and I came to the conclusion that not only were these claims entirely baseless and obviously untrue but that Berezovsky was behind many if not most of them. In fact it was that study that made me realise what sort of a person Berezovsky is.
Lastly, Moscow Exile is right that Odessa is not a resort but a beautiful commercial city. It also has a reputation for being a centre of organised crime (see “McMafia”, Misha Glenny’s flawed book on the subject) and would be an obvious place within the former USSR to plan such a plot beyond the immediate reach of the Russian authorities.
That guy spams his blog everywhere. I think he is a disturbed internet crank.
Former UK Daily Telegraph Moscow correspondent.
Enough said!
I can’t recall hearing his name before. In any case, he is a razor-sharp analyst with a calm, introspective methodology compared with that nutjob Timothy Naegele cited earlier. Putin must be terminated; yikes. And he was supposedly a Captain in the U.S. Army, working in intelligence? That explains a lot, when you think about it.
Sorry – it’s clear that one of the men photographed has been mistreated; he has blood on his face and head, and if his hair were not so short it would undoubtedly be messed up. This tells me the whole “plot” is just a cynical Putin PR fake to boost his ratings just before the election: ratings that were falling steadily so he could only be sure of getting about 15% of the vote. Transparent – transparent and sad. If Putin really had any imagination, he would arrange to be near-fatally poisoned and then recover just in time to ride to glory.
Oh, wait; that’s been done.
The western media will never buy it. It is almost certain to be sold as a contrived election ploy, no matter how much proof is provided. The conspirators who have confessed will of course have done so under duress and torture, and were probably in reality Caucasian opposition political figures the Kremlin wanted to remove because the wave of freedom was cresting in the Caucasus, and the Kremlin needed to reestablish control under its thug Kadyrov.
Hey, I could write this stuff, it’s easy.
I see no reason to doubt that the plot is genuine. It is hardly as if Umarov & Co are not fully capable of this sort of thing. One has to wonder also whether the Ukrainian security services would be party to a fabrication of the sort being alleged. Besides these people will at some point have to be put on trial either in the Ukraine or Russia at which point if the plot is obviously concocted this would be very embarrassing to all concerned and to Putin personally as well. Possibly news of the discovery of the plot was timed with the election in mind but that is hardly a crime.
Alexander:
I agree.
Putin’s popularity is based on the idea that he is a man of his word. Indeed, some of his promises are overstretched and may not be realized. But overall, he is a good approximation to being “a man of one’s word”.
To risk being denounced as a liar does not seem to justify marginal benefits during the election.
Looks like at least some facts in this story are undisputable:
“Как известно, в начале января Главное управление МВД Украины в Одесской области возбудило уголовное дело по факту взрыва и пожара в доме на улице Тираспольской, 24 в Одессе, во время которого погиб 26-летний гражданин РФ и серьезно пострадал 28-летний гражданин Казахстана. Третий постоялец исчез. По данным СМИ, это был Адам Осмаев. Взрыв произошел во время изготовления взрывного устройства.”
http://www.ukrinform.ua/ukr/order/?id=1079825
Let’s wait for the SBU comments?
By the way, Mark, a couple of articles from Canadian press:
1) http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1136933–criticism-of-putin-hypocritical
2) http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-road-to-damascus-goes-through-moscow/article2345566/
Not bad at all!
An interesting artile about “L’Université d’Oxford au coeur de la déstabilisation de la Russie”,/i>. Compare with http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/attacks-mcfaul-belie-bigger-reset-issues-6393?page=show
Google translation (http://www.solidariteetprogres.org/L-Universite-d-Oxford-au-coeur-de-la-destabilisation-de-la-Russie_08581):
February 14, 2012 (LPAC) – In 1812, exactly two centuries ago, the young American republic and Russia were threatened with annihilation, when the British landed on the East Coast of the United States to burn the new capital, Washington DC, where the Russians were obliged to burn Moscow to prevent the advance of Napoleon Bonaparte.
At the time, the U.S. ambassador in St. Petersburg, John Quincy Adams, and his interlocutor, Count Nikolai Rumyantsev, Minister of Commerce, Foreign Affairs and Chancellor of Tsar Alexander I, seeking both to work together to counter the danger posed by the British Empire and Napoleon his toy.
Today, the new U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul, sent to Moscow by another British puppet, Barack Obama is an ideologue on the contrary, deployed by the British oligarchy to destabilize Russia.
McFaul himself its mission statement in an interview in June 2011 with the site Slon.ru: “Most observers of Russia are diplomats, security specialists or weapons. Or of Russian culture. I am nothing of all this, I can not recite Pushkin by heart. I am a specialist in democracy, anti-dictatorship movements in revolutions. ”
When events associated with the “orange revolution” in Ukraine in December 2004, McFaul had candidly admitted in an editorial published by the Washington Post as “agents of influence Americans prefer to use different language to describe their activities – Assistance Democracy, democracy promotion, support to civil society, etc.. – But their work, regardless of the label we are trying to stick him, intended to influence political change in Ukraine. ” He then listed the sources of funding allocated to this operation by the U.S. government, either directly or through various NGOs, and the involvement of the Open Society Institute of George Soros shark. [1]
“This intervention does violate international codes? Not anymore, “says McFaul:” There was a time when the defense of the sovereignty of nations was a progressive idea, since the development of sovereign statehood had helped destroy empires. Today, however, those who defend state sovereignty above all often do to preserve autocracy, while those who defend the sovereignty of peoples are the new progressives. ”
Thus, according to this doctrine, the United Nations can be overwritten without complex on behalf of “peoples”, even if they are required to submit to the tyranny of an oligarchy of imperial brutality unprecedented in recent history .
McFaul’s arrival as ambassador in January shows that now is Russia that is in the crosshairs, and many Russians are well aware.
At a recent Internet conference with the American economist Lyndon LaRouche, a longtime activist for civil rights in Russia asked why Obama had appointed a personality as “marked” as ambassador. “McFaul is not a career diplomat, but a Russia specialist who was for years associated with liberal reformers,” he said. “He himself has told several people I know that he came to the Soviet Union in the late 80′s until the early 90s, as part of projects ‘democratization’, but not interested at all to develop democracy as such. He was only interested in the collapse of the Soviet Union. On Monday [Jan. 16], McFaul presented his credentials. And on Tuesday, he met representatives of the liberal opposition to the Kremlin. (…) McFaul did he not been sent with the intention of breaking Russia, as was the case vis-à-vis the Soviet Union 20 years ago? ”
The same question was asked by former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, in an interview Jan. 20 with the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
With globalization, the world’s people are now reduced to the status of labor pool of cheap, not only for the extraction of raw materials, as was the case during the colonial era, but for all stages of processing to finished product. Anyone who is not directly involved in this process is regarded as surplus, condemned to elimination by Prince Philip of Edinburgh and other ideologues of the Empire. Any officer or rebellious likely to resist this vision is about to be overthrown by movements “anti-dictatorial” cultivated and deployed either as a weapon in its own right, or in combination with military action.
The historical origins of liberal interventionism
If the sources of financing such operations are relatively well known, their doctrinal foundations are much less. They usually go back to Oxford University, England, as evidenced, among others, cases of McFaul and his partner Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Both are “Rhodes scholars”, that is to say, the recipients of a scholarship program for high-level study at Oxford established by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), according to the wishes expressed in his will, to recruit and train (with a focus on the United States), an elite capable of defending the interests of the British Empire.
With decolonization that followed World War II, it was decided to develop a more subtle form of domination, indirect, based on the concepts of “democracy” and “popular revolution”, carefully crafted by the same suite in Oxford .
All this resulted in a project called Civil Resistance and Power Politics (CR & PP), led since 2006 by two professors at Oxford, Sir Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash. Sir Roberts is the origin of liberal internationalism, also called liberal interventionism or liberal imperialism, Lord Palmerston operations in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, such as before the time of the intervention of a state in business another independent state under the guise of “values” liberal. [2]
Note that Roberts also directs the Oxford University Programme on the Changing Character of War, to insert the non-violent action in a political and military strategy more broadly.
At an international conference in March 2007 at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, organized as part of PP & CR [3], Michael McFaul was invited by Roberts as speaker for the session on “role of external actors in civil resistance. ” Recall that McFaul studies at Oxford had been devoted to Africa, but he converted later in Russia specialist.
The mentor of the whole operation is a Gene Sharp, an American also a graduate of Oxford but born a generation earlier. Sharp is the author of the reference manual on “civil defiance” [4], containing 198 tactics to make a revolution, among which are the use of a symbolic color for each.
Like all his Oxford friends, Sharp has specialized in recovering heroic movements such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but by transforming powerful metaphors, as Gandhi’s refusal to wear clothes not made in India in simple marketing tactics, like using an arbitrary color.
Note that the work of Sharp on “non-violent action in the fight against totalitarian regimes” are largely inspired, by his own colleagues and several other historians, from an article published by the patriarch Bertrand Russell in the Atlantic Monthly In April 1915, promoting an unrealistic scenario of passive resistance in the case of a German invasion of England. Russell has long defended the idea that the British Empire could do without the disadvantages of industry and science (including its military applications) to defend themselves, and would rather rely on the division and manipulation to confound the powers rising at the time. This great pacifist however, was not afraid to ask in 1946 what launches a nuclear bomb on Russia to force it to accept the establishment of a world government as the sole authority entitled to possess nuclear weapons . [5]
The offensive of March 4
There is no doubt today, in light of recent events in Libya and Syria, the RC & PP was designed from the ground up as a new form of irregular warfare, in addition to the panoply of weapons “innovative” that are drones and targeted assassinations, and they are massively deployed by the Obama administration and the British Empire.
The new target of the oligarchy, Russia, has already been awarded and the white color, since the movement Golos (Voice), has long funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, called the Russians to show with a white ribbon to protest against electoral fraud during the parliamentary election on December 4. This operation had been mounted several months in advance, and the next phase is in preparation for the presidential election on March 4.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, during a debate on December 8, noted that the United States invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” to manipulate the electoral process in Russia. “We must develop tools to protect our sovereignty against external interference,” he said.
Some Russian patriots, unhappy to see their country join the WTO and abide by the rules of a global financial system into bankruptcy, are even more outraged at the interference in their internal affairs and expressed a desire to see Putin begin an even greater shift, getting rid of some members of his administration close to the international financial interests, but also permanently burying the monetarist policies imposed on Russia under Boris Yeltsin.
Benoit Chalifoux
This article is written based on a detailed study of Rachel Douglas, destabilizing Russia, the ‘Democracy’ Agenda of Oxford McFaul and His Masters, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) February 3, 2012.
The U.S. Embassy invests our suburbs
A Type CR & PP in France?
While France suffers from a lack of political representation of its minorities, it is surreal to see the U.S. Ambassador Charles Rivkin, representing a country where economic and social inequalities have never been greater, to up “an aggressive strategy of communication to young people” of our suburbs, and a “comprehensive study of the causes of inequalities in France”, otherwise the country may fall under him in a “withdrawal” and become an “ally less interesting.”
The real aims of this program can only be to develop the support points that will destabilize France the day she begins a shift in its strategic vision. (Source: wikileaks, January 10, 2010 dispatch from the ambassador Rivkin at U.S. State Department)
————————————————– ——————————
Notes:
[1] George Soros: an “economic hit man” in the service of the British Empire, Solidarity & Progress folder for sale online here. Donations of NED are reported on an annual basis, and USAID projects are published as a list of available HERE.
[2] Lord Palmerston’s Multicultural Human Zoo, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), April 15, 1994.
[3] “Civil Resistance and Power Politics”-Project Outline, Centre for International Studies, Department of Politics and International Relations, European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
[4] Gene Sharp, Power and Struggle, Part One of The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973).
[5] See Russell, Wells, Huxley, How science has been perverted in the twentieth century
I kind of wish they hadn’t cited Lyndon LaRouche, who – while he often expresses beliefs I agree with – has the disadvantage of being a little bit crazy. Still, the other references are solid, and I couldn’t agree more regarding McFaul; I can’t conceive of a worse choice for Ambassador, except perhaps for John Bolton.
The suggestion that Barack Obama is a tool of the British oligarchy is a novel and uniquely Eurocentric viewpoint, and the United States probably views its global influence quite differently; but again, the suggestion that the west is committed in a fairly big way to Russia’s destabilization is not at all unreasonable.
I would not be sorry to see Putin take a harder line; not because I wish to see Russia dominate the west (which I have never seen as his intent), but because Russia (and China) places a stumbling-block in the way of western interventions that an unconstrained west would most certainly instigate otherwise, and which are not in its best interests over the long term.
And Napoleon Buonaparte was a toy of the British Empire?
That would come as a surprise to Lord Nelson!
To return to the thoughts of Alexei Bayer, whom I wrote about in a previous thread, the Moscow Times native Muscovite columnist who has been a US citizen most of his 55 or so years, he writes in today’s MT:
“Despite continuing street protests, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remains very likely to return for a third term as president, probably after the first round of the election on March 4″.
See: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-eternal-oil-curse/453651.html
What a turn about that is! It was only a fortnight ago that Bayer was writing in the MT that Putin’s popularity was plummeting.
See: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/moscow-is-unlovable-and-unlivable/452894.html
Like I always say: if you want to repeatedly tell lies, you’ve got to have a good memory.
“Like I always say: if you want to repeatedly tell lies, you’ve got to have a good memory.”
Or write for a paper that only has a print run of 35,000 copies. The chances that one person will read both articles is thereby restricted to a small cadre of nuts who probably believe everything you say anyway.
“Or write for a paper that only has a print run of 35,000 copies”
….and whose readers are completely uninterested in anything so banal as mere facts or consistency in the way they are told.
Here’s a link to that U.S. working paper comparing the Israeli and Syrian Air Forces and Air Defense capabilities I spoke of yesterday:
http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/081125_is_syria_air_sam.pdf
I’m pretty sure Syria did not take delivery of any aircraft between 2008 and 2012 that would allow them to intercept and localize satellite uplinks so they could track and kill foreign journalists. More Muslim Brotherhood (and who knows what other collaborators) bunk designed to shape the narrative for a gullible audience.
Dear Mark,
Thank you for this.
I can’t see that there is any contest. It seems that the Syrian air defence system is largely based around Soviet missiles and aircraft that date from the 1960s apart from a small number of more advanced MiG 29 fighters, which might conceivably be able to give a good account for themselves but which would quickly be overwhelmed in any attack. Even that seems to be questionable since if I understood the study correctly Syrian pilots get only a quarter of the training that Israeli and presumably western pilots do. Certainly the Syrian military does not have the sort of capabilities we discussed previously. There are suggestions of how the Syrian military could be updated with references to all sorts of advanced Russian missiles and aircraft that Syria might import which could radically change the picture but the reality is that Syria has not imported any of this equipment as quick check on Wikipedia shows. Given the financial sanctions that have been imposed on Syria it is difficult to see how it could now import this equipment, a fact which incidentally explodes the myth that Russia is protecting Syria because of the profits it gets from its arms sales to Syria. In fact looking at Wikipedia there is precious little evidence of significant arms sales at all apart from some advanced anti ship missiles which may or may not yet have been delivered and which are completely irrelevant in an internal conflict.
I’m frankly surprised that paper is unclassified, and I certainly would not have posted it if it were.
A couple of takeaways from it are:
(1) Israel is routinely coy about its possession of nuclear weapons. The section on Israeli Ballistic Missiles clearly specifies that they have a nuclear capability; and
(2) Aside from those dedicated to protecting Dumayr airfield, the remaining SA-5 batteries are concentrated in the vicinity of Homs. This is a 250 km missile and an important Syrian asset, sufficiently so that considerable resources are dedicated to protecting the battery itself. I wonder if destruction of these could be a contributing factor to the strategic importance of Homs? If so, this would suggest the mercenaries are receiving outside direction as to destruction priorities. The SA-5 could cover even returning aircraft all the way back to Israel for almost half its total landmass. It also offers Syria its best protection against the Turkish Air Force, which is third-largest in NATO and includes UAV’s.
Dear Mark,
Would the SAM 5s be able to interfere with an Israeli strike on Iran?
Also how effective a weapon is it? I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that it was developed and initially deployed in Russia in the 1960s, almost fifty years ago, and that it began to be replaced after the 1980s in Russia by much more advanced and sophisticated missiles.
It’s hard to say how effective it would be now, but the fact that each is surrounded by short-range systems and antiaircraft batteries suggests it is still viable and an important strategic asset, and it’s the longest-range system the Syrians have. I doubt it would be able to interfere with a strike on Iran; many such systems (especially old ones) have little capability against a crossing target, where the lead angle is rapidly changing. But that’s the sort of leap of imagination I have come to expect from you – lawyer, indeed!
The Phoenix missile (AIM-54) carried on the F-14 Tomcats is nearly that old, but I have read that inbound raids of Iraqi aircraft (fed with target data from helpful western AWACS aircraft loitering in the area) would break off the attack if even one AWG-9 (the acquisition/tracking/guidance radar on the Tomcat) was detected over the target. They were simply afraid of that missile, despite its age. I’ve mentioned it many times, but it is significant that Iran is the only foreign nation ever to fly the F-14. Iran was once the USA’s Great White Hope in the Middle East, and he USA built its Air Force and trained its pilots. Although there is obviously no more support or spare parts, the Iranians learned to reverse-engineer almost everything and it is believed as many as 25 of their F-14s are still flying. An Iranian pilot is also supposed to hold the unofficial record for range of a successful intercept, and it is right on the edge of the missile’s rated envelope.
RT reporting (with very dramatic, apocalyptic music) on the Wall Street connection to the Libya war.
Basic facts:
(1) Under Gaddafi Libya was a VERY VERY wealthy country, owning billions of dollars in sovereign gold and cash.
(2) Unfortunately Gaddafi made a bad investmnent in Goldman Sachs and lost a billion dollars in the 2008 crash..
(3) An angry Gaddafi threatened to go medieval on Goldman; they placated him by offering Libya a significant sharedholder stake in the company. Gaddafi accepted.
(4) Suddenly NATO discovered that Gaddafi was a monster, overthrew him, and Goldman quietly reneged on their agreement with the Libyan government.
(5) Barack Obama was elected in 2008 with a quite large political donation from Goldman Sachs.
This is no conspiracy theory, it is basic economics!
Correction: I just learned that the above piece is not actually produced by RT (I thought it seemed kind of overly-dramatic for them!), the editor collated several RT clips together and added the narrative.
Does not detract from the message, which is accurate, I read about this Goldman Sachs transaction in many other sources.
Latest from Syria: Assad’s proposed referendum has passed overwhelmingly. This will lay foundation to end Baath party monopoly and for Syria to become multi-party parliamentary democracy. (If only NATO will leave them alone.)
Based on this photo, Syrian women seem extremely attractive, are they a nation of super-models?
http://www.smh.com.au/world/syrians-go-to-the-polls-as-shelling-continues-20120227-1tyv6.html
A lot of Arab women are extremely attractive. Unfortunately, a lot of Arab men simultaneously treat them like dirt and then freak out if a foreigner so much as looks at them. I briefly knew an Iranian girl in England, and she was quite attractive; sadly, her father was some bigwig in something or other and she was very stuck on herself, but it didn’t hurt her looks.
I notice further down in the story that even Hillary Clinton, who never met a war she didn’t want to get knee-deep into, id backing away from military intervention and is starting to parrot the “it could make things worse” doctrine. But I can only imagine how cheated the warhawks feel, and I’m fairly sure they will continue the push to wreck Syria under the radar. Assad would be wise to stay away from the windows.
Of course the opposition shrieked that it was not enough, it was all a feint, because they probably know Assad is likely to remain in power unless he is forcibly deposed or killed. Nothing will be enough unless Assad jumps off a bridge, leaving his checkbook, the keys to his car and to the palace on the railing along with a note willing everything to the opposition. But I’ve observed that a recent trend in modern democracy is the ignoring of democratic rulings you don’t care for. As somebody mentioned earlier, Navalny has vowed that even though Putin will be elected March 4th, he and his followers will never recognize him as legitimate. He probably learned that from Sarkozy, who just recognizes whoever he likes as the legitimate government. Have I mentioned how devoutly I hope the French kick him out of office so emphatically this year that he suffers from re-entry burns when he falls back to earth?
Dear Yalensis,
Since the Syrian regime is determinedly secular it is one of the few Arab countries where women are able to appear in public uncovered making it possible to see them as they actually are. If you read old historical works the women of Syria were famously beautiful. Zenobia the Queen of Palmyra is a case in point. Assad’s wife is another. She by the way has been the subject of an extraordinary campaign of abuse and threats by the London Times which in a disgraceful editorial a few weeks ago threatened her with death if she did not abandon her husband.
For your information the Alawites, the Shia sect to which Assad belongs, consider women equal to men. Their women are not veiled or confined to the house and are free to obtain an education and to mix socially with men. The Alawites also reject various common Islamic practices such as the Hajj. There is a very closely related Shia sect called the Alevi in Turkey, which holds the same views (personally I believe they are the same sect though some ethnographers disagree) which may account for as much as 15% of the Turkish population. Needless to say fundamentalist Sunni Muslims consider such beliefs and practises the work of the devil, which is one reason for the intense hatred the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis and the Wahhabi have for the Assads. I read somewhere that when Bashar’s father Hafez Al Assad became President of Syria back in the 1970s this was as horrifying to some Sunni Muslims as it would have been for the Orthodox if a Jew had become Tsar in nineteenth century Russia. By contrast Khomeini in Iran recognised the Alawites and the Alevi as genuine Shia Muslims even if he did not endorse some of their beliefs.
On the subject of the referendum, it has been much derided in the west. However the results on the face of it look plausible enough. Whilst 90% of those who voted supported the constitution that is no more than what one would expect. Given that the opposition called for a boycott one would expect the overwhelming majority of those who voted to be Assad’s supporters and to vote for the constitution. The figure that matters therefore is the turnout, which at 57.4% appears to confirm the result of a recent opinion poll which put Assad’s support at 55%. Of course not all the 42.6% who did not vote necessarily oppose Assad or want to use force to overthrow him and probably given the difficulty of voting in some areas support for Assad is higher than the figures suggest.
That’s very interesting; I didn’t know it, and it is another brick in the wall of motive for this current witch-hunt. Odd, though, to see the west backing shariah law against moderation. I’ve read in many sources that the Saudis are among the world’s most oppressive in their treatment of women.
A few years ago, a ship on which I used to be a crew member visited Dubai, and some of my friends who are young ladies, as well as many of the crew, made for the hotels in town rather than sleep on board. Things like a hot shower that you can let run for as long as you like, and no machinery noises offer more allure than you might imagine after you’ve had to put up with or without them for an extended period. They told me later (I was not aboard at that time) that the Arab men were pigs, that when they were sunning themselves beside the pool in their swimsuits, the men would hang off the balconies like baboons, rubbing their fingers together suggestively and making moist kissy noises. But if the girls took notice of them and glared at them or spoke loudly to them, then they were in the wrong and had given offense, because apparently the polite thing to do is pretend to be unaware. I had read before that that Arab men in many countries are raised to believe western women are incredibly promiscuous and will sleep with anyone at the drop of a hat, and that even western women who are in the company of a western man are sometimes followed in the street and given the come-on. I couldn’t say, as it’s a region I’ve never visited.
As far as Islam goes, the Shiites seem like the lesser of two evils. I don’t blame them for not doing the Hajj, that ritual simply gives too much geo-political power to Saudi Arabia. I am thinking of the analogous situation in Middle Ages when Rome tried to use her religious power to rule Europe. Any country that wanted to be truly independent either had to have its own Pope, or break away from Catholic Church altogether. Similarly, any Islamic country that wants to be free of Saudi control would have to set up its own local pilgrimages and sites, etc.
On the topic of Islam, I realize that I condemn myself with my own ignorance, but what is the big deal about the burning of the Korans in Afghanistan? I mean, we are not talking about the Gutenberg Bible here, or some kind of unique rare exemplar from a museum. We are not talking about some work of literature that only exists in one unique manuscript, like the works in the great Library of Alexandria. These are just cheap books that are printed in tirage of millions of copies. Every one of those idiots who is rioting in Afghanistan probably has 10 copies of the same book at home. If I were religious and my koran accidentally got thrown away, I might be annoyed, but I would not riot, I would simply buy a new one, or download onto my Kindle.
It’s the word of god, though.
Isn’t it?
The subject of the Koran is a fascinating one. Strict Sunni Muslims do believe it is the word of God given to Mohammed the Prophet as a divine revelation. However the important thing to understand is that it was not written down by Mohammed during his lifetime. Indeed there is a tradition within Islam that Mohammed was illiterate (though many dispute this).
Musliim tradition claims that after Mohammed died Omar, who was the second of the Caliphs to succeed Mohammed, became concerned that with the passing away of the generation that knew Mohammed memory of his teaching would fade. He therefore initiated a programme bringing together those who remembered what Mohammed had said and arranged for it to be written down. Eventually a complete text was put together in the form that we now know as the Koran and a set of copies were produced which were then distributed by Omar’s success Uthman to various cities within the Muslim Empire or Caliphate. Supposedly two of these original Uthmanic Korans survive. One ended up in the Imperial State Library in St. Petersburg (what is now the Saltykov Shchredin Library) during the nineteenth century. After the Revolution Lenin gave it to the Muslims of the USSR and it is now kept in an Islamic library in Tashkent. It is said to be about 50% complete. The second is in Istanbul in the Topkapi palace. Neither has been scientifically examined so the Uthmanic date of these two Korans has not been scientifically corroborated. More recently a number of very early parchments with extracts of the Koran have been found in a library in Sanaa in Yemen. The parchments have been scientifically dated to within the litetime of people who might have known Mohammed. However it is by no means certain that the texts on the parchments are that old, parchment being an expensive material that was often re used, and calligraphic experts think the texts on the parchments may be a full century later than the parchments themselves.
As you will gather from this there is more doubt about the extent to which the Koran reproduces Mohammed’s actual words than is widely supposed. There is also a school of thought that believes that the tradition anyway is wrong and that the Koran as we know it has little to do with Mohammed himself but evolved over the course of the early Islamic centuries as a result of Muslim contact with other religions, notably Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.
The extreme reverence of the Koran like much else in contemporary Islam that we think of as typically Islamic is a very modern development. In Islam’s medieval heyday it would have been considered bizarre and even slightly idolatrous. I suspect it is largely a consequence of the spread of Wahhabism (or Salafism as it is more propely called), which insists that the Koran is the absolute and literal word of God, which cannot be discussed, questioned or analysed, and which accordingly rejects all the great tradition of Islamic theology and philosophy that extends all the way back to Mohammed.
@alexander: Thanks for fascinating discussion. I had not known about the ancient Koranic manuscripts or Lenin’s role in archiving them, but it doesn’t surprise me, because the Bolsheviks, albeit atheists, were very respectful towards national minorities and their cultures. They were also respectful towards anything old and priceless and things that belonged in museums. Obviously, it would be a crime to destroy one of these ancient, unique manuscripts, and that is not what I am being flippant about. I am being flippant about the mass-produced cheap korans which American MP’s apparently handed out to their Afghani prisoners and then disposed of when cleaning up their military base.
Even if I believed (which I don’t) that god exists and wrote something down, then it seems to me like the message itself is more important than the medium it was written on. No? I mean, suppose god’s message was “e-mc2″. Okay, got it, thanks, god. So long as somebody made a backup copy somewhere.. What am I missing?
Come on; you know better. What makes food kosher, except for some old man mumbling a few words over it? Oftentimes the Rabbi can bless the entire factory, probably by email, so that everything it produces is kosher. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of Jews still who probably believe you will turn into a pillar of salt or something if you eat food that isn’t kosher. Try your luck with an article in The American Conservative, why don’t you, that makes fun of the Jewish people’s belief in kosher restrictions while extolling the virtues of non-kosher meats. You’ll probably get chased out of town by the local version of an AIPAC motorcycle gang. Deliberately offering offense (and the foot is the dirtiest part of the body in Muslim belief, there is no greater insult to a man than to put your foot on his face) by stepping on an icon of religious belief of another culture is simply a challenge and an insult. Is that any way to promote your own sense of values?
Often, all it requires is a bit of thought. How much effort would it have taken to whistle up a religious figure and say, Father (or Dyeda, or whatever), we have these Korans that are without owners. Please, could you give them to those who need them, or make such use of them as you think fitting? Whose bright idea was it to burn them, where people would see and report it? Do we burn Bibles when we don’t have any further use for them? We might, but I bet we don’t have a bonfire in the courtyard where Christian fundamentalists can throw themselves on the ground and caterwaul like banshees. Just think, that’s all I’m asking: the disposal of the Korans could have been easily achieved without offering offense in a region where America is allegedly trying to make friends. Why does America always have to learn things the hard way?
Well, according to one Western news outlet (I think it was CNN), the Korans had been distributed to detainees in one of the (many) American prison camps in Afghanistan. Then the detainees used the Korans to pass secret messages to each other through the cages. All the more reason not to burn them, they might have contained valuable Intel!
Well, point taken, i am not going to defend Americans, they are indeed thick-headed barbarians. Not civilized and culturally-sensitive, like you Canadians!
Of course, it is the symbology of deliberate destruction, and by foreigners and unbelievers. You have to believe each book contains part of the book, or you wouldn’t be able to keep your faith in what God knows is a trying and often hopeless set of circumstances. Of course everyone knows on some level it’s just paper and only a reproduction – but why do Americans lose it when foreigners burn their flag? After all, it’s just a rectangle of coloured cloth, available anywhere. It’s because it’s a deliberate manifestation of contempt and rejection of the values symbolized by the flag or, in this case, the Koran.
Every day without fail, except in the cases of half-masting to mark a significant sorrow, naval ships alongside in ports throughout the world raise the flag of their service (called the Jack, and flown forward at the bow) and the national flag (called the Ensign, and flown aft at the quarterdeck) to their mastheads in ceremonies called Colours (when you put it up, at 08:00 every morning) and Sunset (when you take it down at the end of the day, at sunset). In all this handling, you must not let it touch the deck. If you do, it will earn you at the very least a rebuke, because it is symbolic of something far more than a rectangle of cloth and you owe it respect.
Dear Mark,
Viz your comments about male Arab attitudes to women, I do not want to generalise but I know two English girls and one Italian girl who have had relations with Arab men. All three were utterly traumatised by the experience. All three confirm what you say, that the Arab men they came into contact with (not just their partners) assumed that they were entirely promiscuous and essentially whores and could be treated in that way. I knew one of the Arab men in question and since he and the woman in question met in my house I felt responsible for what happened.
I ought to say that my strong impression is that this is an Arab as opposed to an Islamic mindset. I have heard that in west Africa, which is also largely Islamic, attitudes to and treatment of women are completely different and that western women who travel to west Africa do not experience anything like the kind of harassment your friends were subjected to.
Just a reminder that not all our ideological allies are as progressive as we like to think;
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_02/religious_freedom_from_immodes035694.php
We learn that women singing in public is an inexcusable display of immodesty, and could cause men to “become aroused”. They should therefore be silent to prevent this.
Not to put too fine a point upon it, but that’s the nation in whose behalf the west is being urged to attack Iran.
It is true that Americans go ape-shit whenever somebody burns their flag. Are Canadians like that too?
(I don’t think Russians care that much about their flag. Every generation or so Russians get a new flag and/or a new national anthem.)
It is not a very good flag either. The fact that it is splashed all over Yeltsin’s tomb, and that it has only been used during difficult times for Russia are good reasons to change it.
We don’t see flag-burning very often: I suppose other Canadians might do it as a form of protest. According to this site, burning the flag as a form of protest is impolite – although not criminal – and is most often seen in Canada when Quebec nationalists want to play nationalist politics. However, it points out that the proper way to dispose of a worn-out or damaged national flag is to burn it.
I think this is a symbol of (fundamentalist) Islam’s inability to adapt.
The stricture against burning Korans was made in a time before printing, when each copy of the Koran took dedicated effort and several months (if not years, if well illustrated) to compile. Apart from the symbolic attack on their culture, destroying such a work would have constituted the destruction of thousands of bushels of grain embodied in it (to feed the scholar while he was copying it).
The economics to this day cannot be more radically different, but the Afghan rioters, etc. either intentionally or willfully do not recognize it.
Why do we swear on the Bible when we’re in court? It’s just paper and cardboard, although once it too must have taken years to produce. As already discussed, Americans lose their minds when someone burns their flag, and I seem to remember Republicans agitating to make it a criminal offense. Or perhaps it already is; anyway, it’s still a very big deal, and it’s just cloth, probably not even natural, and they probably cost less than $20.00 to make in standard size.
Other cultures continue to force their ways and beliefs on countries like Afghanistan, while ignoring the ways and beliefs of the country in which they are an unwelcome guest. I recall there was a complaint before about an American guard urinating on an inmate’s Koran in Bagram or one of the detention facilities; let me see if I can find it….Oops, my mistake – it was at Guantanamo, but it involved a Muslim detainee. Seriously, is anyone going to buy that explanation that the guard went outside to urinate, and some of his urine “blew through the air vent” onto the detainee’s Koran? Come on. As for the remainder of the behavior, stepping on the Koran and then saying “Hey, sorry ’bout that”, what would Fox News say about it if it were an American detainee in an Islamic prison, and a Muslim guard did that to the Bible? There would be screams to go and teach those towelheads some respect. But I’m pretty sure no Islamic commentator would get far with the suggestion that it merely illustrated Americans’ inability to adapt, and that they should just lighten up.
Well, I admit you are correct in what you are saying. It goes to the legal concept of “intent”. There is a Russian proverb that “even a dog knows the difference between you accidentally tripping over him versus deliberately kicking him.” In Case #1 you exclaim, “OMG I am so sorry I tripped on you!” and all is forgiven.
I guess even the most illiterate Afghans are no fools, they know the American soldiers despise them, and I am sure the feeling is mutual.
Dear Mark,
Is America a ‘Christian’ country? It certainly is NOT. It might have been once a nation(like many Western nations) much influenced by teachings in the Bible – but sadly(to me) – it is no longer such a nation.
As for the Bible in America, well the Republicans like to portray themselves as ‘defender’ of conservative Christians there – of which in the past I’ve always voiced my suspicion that they do that just like Democrats portray themselves as ‘defender’ of liberal ways – i.e. it’s all political rather than true conviction of beliefs.
Well, if the Bible gets burned in the US – more than 50% of Americans will shout a hearty ‘hurrah’ and the other shrinking socially conservative crowd will murmur how morally degraded the country is becoming – and I agree with the latter(although I often don’t agree with the type of leaders the latter prefer). Unlike the majority here, though a supporter of Russia(or rather no Western meddling of Russia’s internal affairs), I certainly view ‘liberal social values’ with disapproval. Only when it pertains to Russia, I perceive, do we converge, as for our views on society, I have to sadly admit we diverge and antagonize each other. The West will go down the road of eventual irrelevancy of the kind of mores I and many socially conservative folks believe in. The same Western media that speaks bias against Russia promotes ‘liberal social values’ and such ‘values’ are surely more agreeable to the majority of Americans(if not mankind even). Hence, do not worry about the huff and puff of fundamentalist pastors – these will become extinct in America in the near future. Their ‘faith’ in politicians(rather than God) will see to that.
“what would Fox News say about it if it were an American detainee in an Islamic prison, and a Muslim guard did that to the Bible? There would be screams to go and teach those towelheads some respect.”
Well, Muslims hate to see their religious icons treated with contempt and so would Christians(or any other adherents to other beliefs) as well. This is not to ‘defend’ double-standards shown by the likes of some ‘conservative-wannabe’ Republicans or Fox-News dudes but I do wish to point out that mainstream Western media and Hollywood have given us the most negative and putrid assessment of Christ, the Bible and Christians(particularly the hypocrisy of pastors and believers and their ‘lunatic firm faith in proven non-truths’) and at least you have to give the credit to most Christians the world over that there are sporadic cases of violence at most but mostly it remains verbal and written protests of a peaceful nature. The same cannot be said if Muslims are insulted – and liberal Western media seldom does that.
Another point I wish to say is that – as I’ve said in my previous comments – while being ‘hard’ on Christianity, there is some double standards in accessing Islam – as a religion. Many here are ‘soft’ on Islam. I wonder why this ‘double standard’. In terms of social values – Islam is even more conservative than Christianity. And that too without addressing the political aspect of Islam – not as what one understands by hearing Muslim apologists – but what is actually being taught in the Quran and Hadiths. Of course some will howl that the knowledge of the Quran and Hadiths is irrelevant and that ‘no one knows the exact teachings of these books’ to put down any criticism but ‘the Bible – we know the exact teachings’ – or else no one here can criticize its teachings if we don’t know what’s EXACTLY being taught in it, can we? I must say I protest this unfairness in terms of criticism of these two religious beliefs in this blog.
I am convinced that , as a religious teaching, Islam – if practiced to its ‘fundamental core’ is far more intolerant, less accommodating and hostile to non-believers(of Islam , that is) compared to other ‘main’ religious beliefs. Buddhism is the most docile and most tolerant.
Lastly, of course everyone can criticize Christianity – and do it so if you are convinced of the moral bankruptcy of this belief – however, I do hope that there is some fairness in assessing Islam as well.
Dear Alexander,
“I have heard that in west Africa, which is also largely Islamic, attitudes to and treatment of women are completely different and that western women who travel to west Africa do not experience anything like the kind of harassment your friends were subjected to.”
We can generalize but we cannot be sure based on the experiences of even not a few individuals. Not all Arabs are male chauvinists and certainly there are many Africans who treat their women as mere playthings! I have seen these in my country as we have an upsurge of African migrants to my country…. of course Malaysian girls are the ‘playthings’. As for Islam’s treatment of women – you can look up my previous posts on Islam. There is always some divergence from what is actually being taught and what is actually practiced in any religion. To assess any religion is to see what’s being taught – not assessing what its adherents fail and succeed in complying with.
sinotibetan
For my part, I don’t believe I “promote” Islam, and I certainly have no interest in adopting it myself. I might view such people in my community as religious nuts who had more God than was good for them. But I would pay them the courtesy of letting them worship as they chose, in much the same manner as I would accord routine politeness and non-interference to the fundamentalist Christian opposers of abortion who have 14 children provided they don’t lean on the community to support the results of their beliefs.
I object to the constant interference with other people’s religion and persistent attempts to cast it as an “enemy” of Christianity that must be subdued before enlightenment can progress. I’m not interested in enlightenment – I’m interested in being a decent person insofar as it does not interfere with my enjoying my own life, and letting other people be unless they ask for my help. If they don’t, I assume they want to be left alone. I expect the same courtesy. Because the west cannot seem to leave Islam alone, persisting in trying to sort the “good Muslims” out from the “bad Muslims”, I am forced into defending freedom to worship a faith I really could care less about.
Dear Mark,
Thanks for the reply. A few things:-
1.)”For my part, I don’t believe I “promote” Islam, and I certainly have no interest in adopting it myself.”
Well, certainly I do not think that you ‘promote’ Islam(i.e. in terms of proselytizing it – since you are not even a Muslim) but comments thus far -at least in my own perception – seems to ‘paint’ Islam in a better light than it should be while putting Christianity in a more negative light than it should be. I sense less hostility towards Islam than towards Christianity whence both religions share similar traits in quite a few instances. The seemingly sarcastic remark you have towards fundamentalist pastors with 14 children who oppose abortion(by the way, I oppose abortion but I don’t believe in having 14 children!) – well I tell you that for fundamentalist Muslim clerics, it would be OK to have 4 wives and even more than 14 children(and there are many in my own Muslim-dominated country) – and why don’t you have a sarcastic remark on that as well? By the way, Islam opposes abortion as well. As I’ve said, I don’t care if you(or anyone else) say anything ‘negative’ about Christianity – yalensis(I hope) can vouch for this consistency – or any religion whatsoever. I respect that freedom of speech. But I do hope that at least the assessment and criticism be FAIR.
2.)”I object to the constant interference with other people’s religion and persistent attempts to cast it as an “enemy” of Christianity that must be subdued before enlightenment can progress.”
Who does that? I doubt that even the nuttiest Republican can TRULY interfere with Islam. And although you may hate Republicans and their politics – one must remember that Republicans manipulate professing Christians in the US for their political ends and that Republicanism is NOT synonymous with Christianity although they may ‘use’ Christian-like catchwords. Enlightenment? Which brings me to point #3….
3.)”Because the west cannot seem to leave Islam alone, persisting in trying to sort the “good Muslims” out from the “bad Muslims”, I am forced into defending freedom to worship a faith I really could care less about.”
a.) The West is now basically atheistic/agnostic/humanistic. I NEVER view the Western nations as Christian nations. The West is NOT synonymous with Christianity. And the liberal elites in the West today by and large believe Christianity is a benighted, unenlightened, barbaric belief. The ‘enlightenment’ that Western nations believe they have are democracy, freedom, egalitarianism etc. put forth by their literati – many who were and are mostly anti-Christian, diverge from Biblical dogmas or irreligious at best(eg. David Hume, Voltaire – who by the way considered Islam ‘a barbaric religion’, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Paine – to name a few) and though I do not deny the influence of professing Christian thinkers within that movement, as of currently the intrinsic ‘enlightenment’ has been exorcised of whatever religious connotations it might have once had….. except for the almost evangelical ideals Western politicians have for the spread of this new gospel of ‘enlightenment’.
b.) And it’s not the Muslim nations only who are subjected to this ‘interference’ by the West. Predominantly Non-Muslim nations as well – eg. North Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Russia, China, etc. etc.
c.) Which brings me to the point that the main reason Western politicians are against ‘certain Muslims’ while supporting ‘other Muslims’ or those list of countries that I listed might purely be just political agenda – i.e. a projection of power plus/minus greed. I don’t even think that these elites truly believe EVEN their own gospel of enlightenment for if all men are equal then what happens to the elites? Those countries/people groups are opposed because they oppose(or are an affront to) the agenda of the financial-political elites in the Western world.
To summarize all my points – the West is not synonymous with Christianity, though once in the past, deeply influenced by the latter. I hope you keep them distinctly apart.
sinotibetan
Report from RT about the EU pushing forward with sanctions against Syria even though the majority of Syrians (89%) in a 57% turnout have voted in a referendum for constitutional reforms.
Clinton has called the referendum “a cynical ploy”.
The British journalist interviewed in the clip says that even though a majority has voted for Assad and his constitutional reforms, it seems that their views don’t count: for the West they are non-people.
Sounds familiar to the Western view of the projected 60% plus that will very likely vote for Putin on Sunday. As Navalny the “democrat” said yesterday: “Putin will be president, but we won’t accept him”.
The west (or, at least, western government insiders) are determined to attack Syria and make it free for the 20% or so Syrians plus another 20% or so mercenary invaders to form a government, and the native Syrian majority whose voice is being deliberately stifled can just suck it up. Why? Because it’s on the schedule. It brings the Vulcans one step closer to Iran.
I guess we should give Mrs. Clinton credit for being able to recognize a cynical ploy, though. She should be familiar with cynical ploys by now.
I came across a Russian study a few weeks ago, which said that 20% of Syrians strongly support Assad, 40% support him because they fear the alternative, 10% strongly oppose him and 30% are neutral. Obviously I do not know how these figures were calculated or arrived at.
I have heard that Qatar wanted to build a pipeline to Europe through Syria (and presumably though Turkey), but Assad would not allow this. If Syria broke apart – though I am not entirely certain of the geography – I think this would allow them to do this. The Sunnis would probably do this as well if they came to power in the country. The only problem I think is that northeastern Syria has the last major concentration of Assyrians in the Middle East, and their boundaries intersect with the Kurdish ones. Assyrians have not done well with their Kurdish neighbors, since most were slaughtered by Kurds and Turks in the twilight days of the Ottoman Empire, and the remaining ones have been forced from Northern Iraq recently. Independent Kurdistan would be death for the oldest nation in existence, but who cares about them?
Dear Cartman,
You are absolutely right, Qatar did want to build a pipeline through Syria and Syria did refuse. There were rumours that Syria did this under Russian pressure. I doubt though that that is the only or even the main reason for Qatar’s hostility to Syria.
I once met an Assyrian years and years ago. He looked exactly like Assyrians look in ancient reliefs. Indeed he could have walked straight out of one. His native language was Aramaic (there are still speakers), the native language of Christ. I asked him to and he recited for me in Aramaic the Lord’s Prayer. I am not a Christian but the experience was still moving.
You are absolutely right about the indifference to the fate of these people. Such details never concern liberal interventionists. Nor do they care about history or about civilisation. The great archaeological sites of Iraq have been trashed. Do Bush and Blair and their cohorts care? Blair openly brags about his indifference to history. Has anyone shown the slightest interest in what is happening to Lepcis Magna, one of the great archaeological sites of the classical world, located I understand near to Misurata?
Independent Kurdistan would be a boon for the oil giants, though; doubtless you recall that Kurdistan declared its unilateral independence in the giddy days after the fall of Baghdad and the “national government” announced its intention to negotiate its own oil contracts with the majors – who, for their part, seemed dead keen on it. However, I believe they were spoken to sternly by the puppet Iraqi government of the day, and the oil majors had to show solidarity with the central government, so nothing really came of it.
Dear @alexander: You are right about the indifference of some Western nations to archaeological sites. When Saddam Hussein was ruler of Iraq, he did a very good job preserving Iraq’s priceless artifacts of Mesopotamian anqituity. The museums were well funded and well guarded. The Director of the Museum was an esteemed leader of society. Then, when Americans and British invaded, they allowed the museums to be gutted and priceless artifacts looted. I regard this as one of the worst war crimes of that period.
I also note that historically the British have treated cultural artifacts very poorly, and shown an almost reckless ignorance. To contrast, the French have always been more civilized than the British. When Napoleon invaded Egypt his soldiers took very good care of Egyptian artifacts (as we all know from history; in fact, his troops discovered the priceless Rosetta Stone, and the Napoleonic invasion actually gave rise to the study of Egyptology in the West). Contrast with British troops, who simply looted and destroyed native cultures and their artifacts.
As for the priceless Roman remains in Libya, I have not been following what has happened to those sites or how they have fared. Like Saddam, Gaddafi’s government had a positive attitude towards culture; funded and guarded those sites, but Gaddafi is gone now, and his government replaced with local militias consisting of ignorant teenage boys waving AK47’s. I will attempt to research, as best I can, and let you know what I find.
It is not just looting. A lot of 3000-year-old brickwork in Babylon was crushed and broken under wheels of armored vehicles.
I spotted on Anatoly’s Twitter feed that the Moscow Times has a story on a video being circulated that purports to show ballot fraud in the presidential election, a week before it takes place. Unfortunately, I could not get the link to load beyond the masthead. So far nothing anywhere else.
Is it early voting or faked video?
Here’s the bogus falsification video:
Here’s the MT article on the above:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/bogus-video-documenting-vote-fraud-causes-web-stir/453815.html
It’s an alleged falsification of voting falsification which is being used to throw those that protest about voting falsification into a bad light.
However, it could be a false alleged falsifacation of voting falsifiaction, and the exposure of said false alleged falsification will then be used to attack those who protest that voting falsications do not take place but are manufactured by those who insist that they do so – if you see what I mean.
Thanks, @Exile, you have succeeded in twisting my brain into a pretzel.
You must have a fairly devious mind youself, to even imagine so much deviousness!
Anatoly has put it more succinctly on his facebook, where he says it could be a falsification of a falsification of a falsification.
On the other hand, though, it could even be a falsification of a falsification of a falsification of a falsification…
(Head explodes!)
So… If an odd number of falsifications, then the Navalnyites did it. If an even number, then the Nashisti. Only one way to know for sure: hunt down the filmmaker and find out who he works for!
Latynina is in fine fettle in this morning’s Moscow Times!
See :
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/rallying-for-autocrats/453832.html
Of course, what the hatred-filled Latynina refuses to accept is that the real popular demonstration in favour of Vladimir Putin takes place at the ballot box on Sunday. The purpose of her article is to imply that no matter what Sunday’s vote count reveals, the real opinion of the Russian electorate as regards Vladimir Putin’s election to the presidency has been that expressed by the supporters of assorted factions that have assembled in diminishing numbers at Bolotnaya Square and at other places these past three months and that those votes counted in favour of Putin on Sunday will have only been falsified or cast by dolts.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thanks for providing another example of Latynina’s style of historical falsification. Just to confirm:
1. De Gaulle organised a massive counter demonstration by his supporters in 1968. My mother was there in Paris in May and June 1968 and remembers it vividly.
2. Saakashvili also regularly organises counter demonstrations by his supporters;
3. Papandreou did not organise counter demonstrations by his supporters because he did not have any. It is in fact regular practice in Greece for political parties, including governing parties, to bring out their supporters onto the streets especially during election seasons. If Papandreou had had any supporters that certainly is what he would have done.
4. Unlike Putin and Medvedev, De Gaulle in 1968, Saakashvili in 2007, the US government this year and last and within the last few days the UK government have all dealt with demonstrations including the May 1968 disturbances, the demonstrations in Tbilisi in 2007 and the Occupy Protests by unleashing the riot police to disperse them. The riot police in Paris in 1968 and in Tbilisi in 2007 both used extreme brutality. Hardly attractive precedents for Latynina to cite!
5. As a matter of fact in May 1968 De Gaulle seriously considered declaring martial law and had talks with military leaders about bringing in the army to regain control of Paris.
6. Though Papandreou lacked supporters to stage counter demonstrations he did try to offer the Greek people a referendum on the EU imposed austerity programme. He was removed from office for doing so. The latest talk in Greece is that the elections that were due to happen first in February and then in April may be postponed again, on this occasion indefinitely. In addition all the main political parties in Greece have been forced by the EU to sign a memorandum pledging to carry out the austerity programme regardless of who wins the election. Again hardly a happy democratic precedent for Latynina to cite!
My passionate message to the Greek people:
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, default NOW and return to drachma before it’s too late!
Well, I’m afraid she’s right. I mean, look at the pro-government rally held in this autocratic state. Some people involved in the rally were not even permitted to remain and were ejected because the clothing they wore was assessed to carry a message non-supportive of the dictator.
Not only was that the case, a street protest 5 months later which drew a half-million demonstrators into the streets in a single city had no perceptible effect on the election, and the dictator was “reelected” to another term amid accusations of vote-rigging.
Good point Mark!
I forgot to mention that Latynina says in her article that the protesters in Greece have stormed the parliament. That is completely untrue. “Pro democracy” protesters have stormed and torched parliament buildings in Bulgaria and Moldavia and have attempted to do so in Kiev (in 2004) and allegedly in Minsk last year but presumably Latynina supports these people and what they did. This has certainly not happened in Greece.
Lastly, on this article of Latynina’s, the other thing that comes across (again!) is her complete infatuation for Saakashvili which is the mirror of her hatred for Putin. In fact it is almost as if she sees in Saakashvili an anti Putin. Obviously Saakashvili can do no wrong in her eyes even when he violently breaks up demonstrations, as he did in 2007, rigs elections, as he probably did in 2008, seizes independent television stations, as he did in 2008, manipulates citizenship laws to prevent independent candidates from standing against him, as he has just done, or wages aggressive wars on his neighbours, as he did in 2008.
Кинопродюсер: Майкл Энтони Макфол
And here’s how the BBC reported yesterday on some of those oh-so-smart Russian emigrés in London who are busy little bees right now organising demonstrations against Vladimir Putin.
One such tormented Russian soul living in exile in Moskva-na-Temze, Konstantin Pinaev, said that he never paid much attention to Russian politics until December’s parliamentary elections, when he saw images of thousands of middle class Russians marching in Moscow. It was then when Pinaev “felt he couldn’t sit still”, so he organised a protest in London. He says about 600 people attended.
If they are so concerned about the political situation “back home”, why don’t they fly back there and vote? i’m sure they can afford to do so. Yevgeny Chichvarkin, another London Russian, exile certainly can.
The BBC article reports millionaire Chichvarkin as saying that there is now in Russia a split between “a new, internet-savvy generation and the majority, whom he describes as ‘zombies, who wake up after drinking beer and vodka and switch on the first (state-controlled) TV channel. They don’t want to think, they don’t want to work, they don’t want to learn’.”
I wonder which group Yevgeny considers he belongs to?
The Russian term for those whom Chichvarkin disparages so is быдло, and I’m pretty sure that’s how Chichvarkin would have described those Russians whose opinions he scorns so if he had been speaking in Russian to the BBC journalist: it is cerrtainly the term that Chirikova used when describing in her social network site those Russians whose political views she despises. She also said on her website that when NTV television journalists were pressing questions on her outside the US embassy recently, after her little chat with US ambassador McFaul, that she wanted to “spit into their ugly mugs”.
This lumpenproletariat, these cattle-like dullards whom Chichvarkin and Chirikova ridicule are, I presume, those same people who Latynina infamously opined not so long ago were not “capable of choosing their own leader”. Latynina then continued in one of her Moscow Times articles: “Unfortunately, only wealthy people are truly capable of electing their leaders in a responsible manner. Poor people elect politicians like Yanukovych or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“Poor people are capable of feats of bravery and revolution. They can storm the Bastille, overthrow the tsar or stage an Orange Revolution. But impoverished people are incapable of making sober decisions and voting responsibly in a popular election”.
Smug bastard!
Well, that’s my opinion anyway.
See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17178830
Dear Moscow Exile,
The class snobbery of these people is nothing short of astonishing. It is also extremely ugly and of course completely undemocratic. It beggars belief that these people can seriously call themselves democrats or that people in the west can think that this is what they are.
On Anatoly’s Facebook page I made the comment that the elitist arrogance of these people is wholly unmerited. It is not after all as if there is a Tolstoy or a Mendeleyev amongst them. What I did not say, which perhaps I should have done, is that none of the great intellectuals of Russia’s past including of course Tolstoy and Mendeleyev felt any contempt for the Russian people at all. On the contrary they repeatedly sought to take the side of the Russian people, as is repeatedly emphasised in their work. It astonishes me therefore when people refer to this lot as the current intelligentsia when what the elitist things they stand for betray so completely what the true Russian intelligentsia was all about.
Dear Alexander,
Further to Chichvarkin’s comment about “zombies, who wake up after drinking beer and vodka and switch on the first (state-controlled) TV channel” led me to think of one of the things implied by that London resident Russian millionaire and which is often repeated in the Western media, namely that on the state controlled Russian media you only see and hear of Vladimir Putin’s presidential candidacy and of the United Russia party.
At work in Moscow this afternoon I had some time to kill because of a cancelled appointment and spent my free time watching a huge plasma screen TV at the reception of a Russian oil company. There I saw party presidential candidate political broadcasts for Putin, Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov. They were transmitted one after the other in that order. And yet I still regularly read aticles in the Western media that Putin controls the Russian media and the air time for party political broadcasts, and that nobody else gets a look in. This is patently untrue. What is true, however, is that when the darling of the West, Boris the Drunk, was president of Russia, the Russian media was certainly locked down during presidential elections and Boris got maximum airtime. Furthermore, Yeltsin’s media barons were the criminals Berezovsky and Guzinsky. Nothing said about this at the time, though, because Yeltsin, Berezovsky, Guzinsky et al. were all on the side of fredom and democracy – weren’t they?
I should add that I have so far seen one funny Putin broadcast which doesn’t feature Evil Incarnate himself, but just shows an old newsreel of Zhirinovsky ranting away in the state Duma. Whilst Vladimir Volvovich is still in full spate, standing up behind his Duma desk waving his arms about, the volume is lowered and a voice-over asks “Do you want this man to be president?” – or words to that effect. And I had to laugh, for the Russians are clearly taking a page out of the American party politics book with this style of campaigning.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Absolutely right on all points! Indeed I actually heard that in 1996 Zyuganov was allowed just 15 minutes exposure on television during the whole presidential election campaign. By contrast what we have seen this time is a real campaign, arguably the first proper such campaign in Russian history.
Furthermore to your furthermore, Yeltsin actually banned opposition parties (temporarily). That apparently did not interfere with his deification, or the cheated notion among western analysts that hope for individual freedoms in Russia died with his presidency. And Yeltsin’s popularity going into that election was less than 10% if I recall correctly, before the oligarchs took his candidacy in hand and squirted money everywhere it looked like it might help. Totally with individual freedoms and human rights in mind, though. Of course.
Clintin Clinton says that “based on definitions of war criminal and crimes against humanity, there would be an argument to be made that he (Assad) would fit into that category”.
Oh, the irony!
See:
“If it’s in our interests, it’s OK. If you’re disobedient, we’ll make you a bad guy, and we’ll get you”. Love it. That’s exactly the way it is, and I note more and more – as I’m sure I’ve mentioned – that media sources are careful to slip in every once in awhile that it’s “difficult to know exactly what’s going on on the ground” and “it’s hard to know just who is who”. Similarly, all their casualty and damage reports are “according to activists”. I believe these are deliberate efforts to pave the way for plausible deniability later for actions yet to come. Perhaps the west did learn something from Libya after all, at least that the rubes won’t fall for that responsibility to protect civilians stuff twice in the space of a calendar year. Maybe if Libya hadn’t been so obviously taken over by al Qaeda-supporting cold-eyed teenagers getting off on rule by force. Oh, well; you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, right?
I’m actually feeling optimistic that Syria is not going to go the way of Libya. There’s much more resistance this time around, over and above the Russian/Chinese veto, and the demonization of those countries in the western press got a fairly sluggish and disinterested response except for the baying for blood from the usual suspects like John “Grampy Turtleneck” McCain. Sources that went along passively last time are starting to ask questions – not because they’ve suddenly discovered a spine, but because following the western march of destruction like a shameless lickspittle is beginning to look like it will have consequences.
She’s ratching up her rhetoric in the hopes of preparing the world for her peroration that will end with her now infamous Gadaffi obsequy: “We came, we saw, we killed him!”
Instead of quoting Julius Caesar this time around, Hillary may have to settle for “I came, I incited, I slunk away.”
There are reports this morning that Syrian army is massing for a ground assault on rebel army holed up in Homs (after days of softening up with artillery). The Al Qaeda mercenaries may well have made a strategic mistake: focusing most of their forces in one place. They may be copying what worked for them in Libya (i.e., focusing forces in Benghazi and Misrata). Even in Libya, facing an inferior army, that strategy only worked for the rebels because NATO came swooping in to save them (“Responsibility to Protect”) from what would have been a Libyan army mopping up operation. In the Syrian case, with no R2P, the Al Qaeda mercenaries may well have painted themselves into a corner from which there is no escape; now they are sitting ducks for Syrian army. Seeing this, Clinton went with Plan B, shrieking about letting in “humanitarian aid” (no doubt a way of sneaking in new mercenaries to help their comrades break out of the trap). But Russians/Chinese are not buying that ploy either. So, now the mercenaries are doomed, trapped orphans. If things go well for the Syrian army, their soldiers can kill quite a lot of Al Qaeda mercenaries all at one time.
And, BTW, when Americans whine about Assad “killing his own people”, the fact is that that a lot of these rebels are decidedly NOT his own people, they are somebody else’s people!
She also conveniently forgets about the Gruzian tie-eater bombarding “his own people” – well if not “his own people”, then, on his own admittance, his fellow Gruzia citizens, even if they don’t want to be.
I wanted to add a cultural comment that synthesizes two above threads: (1) reciting poetry, and (2) the symbolic importance of flags.
This poem is called “Barbara Frietchie”, by great American poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The poem is based on a true story that occurred during the Civil War. When Confederate Army troops (led by Stonewall Jackson) took Fredericksburg, Maryland, they ordered the local inhabitants to take down the Union flag and fly the Confederate flag instead. An old lady named Barbara Frietchie, who was a Union loyalist, risked her life by refusing to comply with the order. General Jackson was so impressed by her courage that he ordered his troops to leave her alone and not shoot her, and even allowed her to continue to fly the Union flag from her attic window:
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain-wall;
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet,
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced; the old flag met his sight.
‘Halt!’ – the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
‘Fire!’ – out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman’s deed and word;
‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on! he said.
All day long through Frederick street
Sounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids nor more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewalls’ bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round they symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!
P.S. Here is the Bullwinkle the Moose version of that poem, with Russian spy Boris Badinov in the role of Stonewall Jackson:
“I may be patriotic, but I’m not crazy!”
I remember this poem from when I was a kid. We didn’t learn it in school (although most of our history education at that time was American), but I read it somewhere else.
A couple of interesting links on the subj:
1. A reserved-to-negative view about Navalny by Russian finanial oligarchs key newspaper:
http://www.vedomosti.ru/library/library-investigation/news/1501392/pesnya_o_blogere
See also http://file-rf.ru/context/1289
2. FT reaction to the most recent Putin’s article:
Putin launches tirade against US – FT.com
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4bce88ec-615e-11e1-94fa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1npKQTMHk
Thanks, @kievite, for very interesting links, especially the Navalny piece. Navanlny’s financial biography shows him to be a typical hustler from the 90’s era, involved in petty deals, shady trades, this and that, earning a few rubles here and there, he would have always remained a small-time crook until he accidentally fell into politics. Seems like he might have set his sights on becoming a Duma member, but after he got expelled from Yabloko, he had to change tack. Being a resourceful little crook, soon enough he discovered two lucrative income streams: (1) American government grants, and (2) using his “anti-corruption” campaign to blackmail Russian companies:
После того как в прошлом году недоброжелатели Навального взломали его почту, встал вопрос, насколько бескорыстной была борьба Навального против жуликов и воров. Из его переписки с политологом Станиславом Белковским следует, что в январе 2010 г. Белковский за $50 000 заказал Навальному кампанию против UC Rusal Олега Дерипаски — компания как раз проводила IPO на Гонконгской бирже. Навальный в течение нескольких дней опубликовал на актуальную тему (почему не надо покупать акции UC Rusal) несколько постов у себя в «живом журнале», статью в «Ведомостях» (на странице «Комментарии») и на Slon.ru.
After Navalny’s e-mail was broken into last year … the question arose just how selfless is his struggle against crooks and thieves. From his e-mail with political pundit Stanislav Belkovsky, it became known that in January 2010 Belkovsky gave Navalny $50,000 to launch an [anti-corruption] campaign against Oleg Deripaska’s company “UC Rusal”, a company that was at that moment trying to launch its IPO on the Hong Kong stock market. In the course of several days Navalny published several posts (in his Live Journal blog) on the theme, why not to buy “UC Rusal” stocks…
The piece also lays out Navalny’s ties to Khodorkovsky, as follows: As an attorney, Navalny basically only has two clients, one of whom is his family business; the other is a man named Pavel Ivlev, former attorney for YUKOS and one of the accused parties in the YUKOS case. Ivlev has lived in USA since 2004 and is director of something called “American Institute of Contemporary Russia”, founded in 2010 by Ivlev and Pavel Khodorkovsky (son of the imprisoned oligarch). In essence, this trio (Ivlev, Pavel Khodorkovsky, and Navalny), along with Maria Gaidar constitute a small group of well-heeled people whose purpose in life seems to be to free Khodorkovsky.
I’ve said it before, and I say it again: In Russian Oppositionist politics, EVERYTHING is ALWAYS about Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky is the Alpha and Omega. It’s all about him. Always. Why is he so important? I don’t know, he just is.
The Rothschild connection may have something to do with Khodorkovsky’s eminence.
The obsession with Khodorkovsky is astonishing. Interfax today reports that Prokhorov has said that if he wins the election he will release him.
This worship of Khodorkovsky makes no rational political sense. Not only is Khodorkovsky a false God but to support him in this way is politically speaking completely counter productive. Whilst most Russians will have little idea of the precise charges that have been brought against Khodorkovsky and may even buy into the idea that he is being persecuted because he fell out with Putin, the one thing all of them do know about him is that he is a billionaire who made his fortune in the 1990s. As such he belongs in a world and a class that is as far removed from the lives of most Russians as it is possible to get. By constantly harping on about Khodorkovsky all the opposition does is communicate to most Russians that it cares more about what happens to corrupt billionaires like him than it does about the millions of ordinary Russians like them.
The BBC News service online today has yet another jibe at Russia and alleged media censorship there. In an article about LiveJournal, the BBC gushes on about how this ” relatively obscure and nowadays rather dated platform” has turned into “a huge, seething mass of political anger, colourful prose and clever repartee”.
The BBC in its wisdom says: “In a country with tightly controlled TV and few independent newspapers and radio stations, the internet is a vital space for alternative opinion. Almost all of it appears on the blogging platform LiveJournal, known in Russian as Zhivoy Zhurnal, or simply ZheZhe” and maintains that “An opposition rally on 5 December was ignored by the mainstream media but actively discussed in the blogosphere”.
Really? So the December 5 rally was ignored by the Russian media? You mean just like the 24 December anti-Orange rally at Poklonnaya was largely ignored by he Western media?
And then in the middle of the article, despite its allegations of news censorship and the absence of freedom of speech in the Evil Empire, the BBC journalist blithely states: “Unlike some other countries, Russia has never made any attempt to block LiveJournal – perhaps because it would alienate too many internet users”.
Oh, I see. So there is some freedom of speech in Russia after all, not that the BBC would like people to run away with this idea.
See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17177053
More nice words from our Syrian freedom fighters. Courtesy of Starikov.
“The dissident Sadallah Jabri in the newspaper Zamad Al-Wasal: “Russia and China have become enemies of the Syrian Arab people… I demand, that the Russian people go out and protest against the criminal Putin regime and its support for Assad… If this doesn’t happen, then we should seek vengeance, we should kidnap and kill every Russian, every Chinese, whom we find in Syria.”
Ahhh… the old, “Do as we say or we’ll kill you” strategy – persuasive, but not used so much any more. Naturally the west rushed to condemn this guilt-by-association rhetoric, considering the west is now the umbrella organization for all dissidents, activists, malcontents and turncoats in the region, totally unmoved by the bonus that it will turn public opinion against Syria in both countries and make it more difficult for their governments to maintain an uncompromising stand. I would not be surprised to see Belhaj selected as Time’s “Person of the Year” for 2012, or perhaps they will just go with a composite and make it “The Islamic Dissident”.
Doku Umarov said pretty much the same thing: that so long as Russians were out in the streets protesting against Putin, then he would temporarily halt his terrorist attacks against the Russian people. I guess if Russians elect Putin, then they are fair game once again.
PS. I’m particularly amused by the heroic stance Saudi papers have taken against Assad’s “tyranny.”
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6059.htm
I wonder if they write about (let alone condemn) how their own country regularly beheads people for witchcraft? LOL.
It’s instructive to remember that the people shouting that any Russian or Chinese citizen in Syria should be kidnapped and killed are not only the group the west is backing – and they should be called on it ceaselessly until they condemn it – but the same group that hopes to form, inform and influence the future government of Syria.
There is less than zero chance that these people are remotely interested in forming the “prosperous market democracy” western media are always bleating about whenever they decide to throw another small country against the wall until it submits. In their frenzy to achieve their goal with western assistance, they are revealing themselves more and more, and everyone who sees what they are should be appalled. Should you wonder, “appalled” is not a good basis for an alliance.
Here is an account on Itar Tass of a press conference given by Ilya Ponomariev of the Just Russia party.
http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/356501.html
Not only does Ponomariev make a host of demands and threats concerning an election that has not yet taken place but incredibly he threatens to bring out half a million people if a winner is declared in the first round. In other words he has already decided before a single vote is counted that he will reject the result the result of a ballot if he does not agree with it and will call out his supporters on to the streets in order to overturn it.
What is this if not an outright call for an anti democratic putsch? I am not an expert on electoral law but if a prominent politician in Britain behaved in this way immediately before an election I am sure he would be prosecuted if nothing else for contempt of parliament and for threatening a breach of the peace and quite possibly on much more serious charges. Actually the idea that a prominent politician and sitting MP would behave in Britain in this way is unthinkable. If any day the sensation it would cause would be extreme. In Russia it seems that people like Ponomariev can talk in this fashion with complete impunity and it is all considered par for the course.
Incidentally I understand that Ponomariev has migrated from party to party over the course of his career and started out as a Communist. Doubtless that explains the contempt he obviously has for the election process and the democratic ballot.
Meanwhile in what I find a reasonably sober article by Natalia Antonova in the Guardian there is a suggestion that Udaltsov is set to replace Zyuganov as the leader of the KPRF. One wonders what the Comrades will make of that!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/01/putin-election-russian-stability-over
PS: There is one point about this article with which I do take strong issue. It seems to me that Antonova like many Russians confuses political activity with political instability. There is no doubt that the political scene in Russia has become more active over the last few months but there is no reason to see this as a harbinger of instability. On the contrary it is merely an indication that Russia is maturing as a democratic society. Every mature democracy has to have space for political activism and Russia is no different. Russia’s problem is not that there is a growth of political activity but that the opposition is so completely irresponsible, which is why the majority of the people don’t trust it.
That’s true, but instability and the potential for instability must be seen as associated. The portion of society which supports the opposition is the most easily radicalized – used here in its mildest sense when compared with the craziness raging in the Middle East and Africa – and it is on this portion the opposition and its western backers depend to cause a disturbance that might bring a strong authoritarian response which could be used to delegitimize the new government. The goalposts are continually moving, but they are always there; I believe western governments actually entertained hope once of stopping Putin’s election. When the protest numbers proved disappointing, the goal shifted to preventing a first-ballot win and forcing a run-off, which would be used to humiliate Putin and necessitate coalition-building which might give opposition figures more clout. Now that it seems clear Putin will win in the first round despite all the meddling and protest numbers are declining, the emphasis is on screeching that the win was illegitimate, and hoping a new Putin government will break a few heads controlling protest. Western government manipulators are still tirelessly looking for that destabilizing spark that will touch off rioting and chaos.
Dear Mark,
I completely agree with you about the three stages that we have seen. As I have repeatedly said, though a colour revolution is not going to happen that does not mean one is not being attempted and of course the goal of promoting instability is always there. My point is simply that it is a mistake to confuse political activism with political instability. The trouble is that western interference conflates the two and makes normal political activism more difficult.
Alex; I must admit conflation of the two having a stifling effect on political activism had not occurred to me, and you’re right. However, is this likely to be be interpreted by activists as having been caused by western misinterpretation, or by government inflexibility? If the latter, it’s still win/win for the west.
“…is this likely to be interpreted by activists as having been caused by western misinterpretation,….”
No of course not and there is the tragedy. The west does not allow Russia to develop its politics by itself so the result is the politics become poisoned in the way that has happened over the last few months.
The Orange Revolution still followed a hotly contested election between Yanukovych and Yushchenko. But if Putin wins in one round it will be difficult to pull that off. Also, anyone else who makes it to a second round would probably lose by a wide margin.
But Russia had its colour revolution guy and it will be at least another 20-30 years before another generation is fooled.
I like her article better than Miriam Elder’s. She does not dismiss the pro-Putin protesters as paid Kremlin agents, and she even bothered to talk to many of them. This flippant attitude is reminiscent of those who criticized the victims of Yeltsin’s parliament bombing as non-democrats. But at that point in time they represented the majority, who were being silenced. I think Ms. Elder would have done the same and shed a few crocodile tears for the readers if she was the correspondent back then.
I agree. If you see I was careful to call the article reasonably sober. Actually I think she is a good journalist even if not one I always agree with.
Here is the latest editorial in the Guardian about the elections:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/01/russia-presidential-elections-rigging
I am not going to comment on the description of provincial Mordor (sorry, I meant Russia), which no one who knows the country would recognise. I would in passing point to the way it says that the election result in Moscow was faked by 11% in favour of United Russia as if this was fact rather than iinference and also at the way it says that the demonstration on Monday will be the biggest ever, though the opposition says it will only be between 10,000 and 30,000. However the truly shocking thing about the editorial is the way it all but calls for a revolution to overthrow Putin even though it admits he is going to win the elections and would win them fairly even if they are not rigged and even though it admits that the people of Russia do not want a revolution.
Alex – could I prevail upon you to do a guest post on this article?
Dear Mark,
I’ll try! Thanks! It’s late here now (1:40 am) so I’ll get back to you tomorrow.
Hi, Alex; I’ll contact you by email when I get home from work.
Just to say that not all commentary about Russia in the British press is as uniformly hostile and negative as the editorial in the Guardian. Michael Binyon who is the Times’s former Moscow correspondent and who has been travelling to Russia since 1967 recently re visited the country after a long break (he was last there in 1993). His description of his visit and of his impressions of provincial Russia has just been published in the Times and was absolutely glowing. He even comments on how clean railway station toilets have become and how they can now compare in hygiene with those of Germany. Unfortunately I cannot provide a link because the article is behind a pay wall.
@alexander: It is nice to have people recognize how many positive things in Russian provinces. Russia is not just Moscow and Petersburg, I also want to point out how much talent and how many nice people populate the Russian hinterland. Here is one example: I recently discovered this wonderful young Russian singer who is an ethnic Tatar and native of Kazan, her name is Rigina Valieva, she is a huge talent and a rising star in the Russian opera repertory.
I challenge anybody to listen to this beautiful voice and not feel uplifted:
It’s a pity that much of the best (in relative terms) stuff is behind paywalls.
This, the FT, Stratfor (before they got hacked), …
FT belongs to Economist, does it not?
There is a workaround for the paywalls on all their sites (which I hope they do not find out about). Just find the article with Google and use the preview button. Wait for it to load, then click on the article from the preview.
Ha, ha!! That does work! Amazing! I couldn’t find the article Alex cited, though. But everything else I read by Michael Binyon was the usual Russophobic codswallop, sneering and patronizing, and Russia-SO-wishes-it-was-England.
More interesting info about Navalny:
http://master7009.livejournal.com/28225.html
http://master7009.livejournal.com/28050.html
Thanks for links @kievite, this is extremely interesting research about Navalny.
Part II is especially interesting as it concerns Navalny’s fellowship at the Yale program. The photo showing Navalny’s class. As author notes, the gentleman sitting on the armchair on the right, Fares Mabruk, was an “activist” in Tunisia revolution and openly admitted in an interview that his role in this revolution (as the creator of a French/Arabic think tank) was something that he learned to do at Yale.
It seems like a safe assumption that any person who participated in this Fellowship is a devoted colour revolutionary. They are brainwashed even before they arrive in New Haven, and doubly brainwashed after they leave. Hence, they will all be expected to return to their homelands and fight to the death for lofty transcendent ideals of Global Government and American Exceptionalism, as laid out in the brochure:
• Глобализация: новая инкарнация старого процесса (англ. Globalization: New Avatar Of An Ancient Process)
• Большая стратегия (англ. Grand Strategy)
• Личность (англ. Identity)
• Религия и политика (англ. Religion and Politics)
• Американская исключительность и права человека (англ. American Exceptionalism and Human Rights)
• Гражданство и равенство (англ. Citizenship and Equality)
• Международные аспекты демократизации (англ. International Dimensions of Democratization)
• Транснациональное управление (англ. Transnational Governance)
• Коррупция, демократия и развитие (англ. Corruption, Democracy, and Development)
• Теории лидерства (англ. Theories of Leadership)
Article notes that American citizens themselves are NOT eligible for the scholarship. God forbid they should learn how to overthrow their own government, which is already perfect.
Sorry for spamming on Mark’s blog about this, but its something a lot of his readers will be interested in and necessary because I left it to the last minute and I’m far from sure everyone will get the message in time otherwise.
I’m running a contest on my blog to see who can best predict the results of the elections. Winner gets free T-Shirt, if at least 10 people participate.
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2012/03/02/predict-2012-russian-election/
Please visit the site to read the rules. Predictions have to be to one decimal place, for all the five candidates, as well as the share of invalid ballots.
Anyone at all interested in the great thoughts about the elections of that peerless correspondent and commentatorator Luke Harding should be aware that as of 12:30 pm London time he is engaging in a question and answer session:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/02/russia-presidential-election-luke-harding
Is the fearless Chief of the Guardian Moscow Bureau back in Mordor, or is he still swanning around in Moskva-na-Temze?
Yes, paragraph after paragraph of pure undiluted crap. Tried reading it, but found out that I simply wasn’t masochistic enough to go through all of it. I do not get it. He is so incompetent he cannot even lie properly, as most of it are either absolutely transparent lies or some incoherent ramblings that make no sense to anyone with even a shred of basic logic (not that there is an abundance of that among Guardian readership). Why does he still have his job? Couldn’t they find someone who would at least TRY making pouring crap over Russia seem like an intellectual effort?
Just skimmed through it . Bloody undiluted, grade-A crap! All except one of the questioners seem to be members of the I-love-Luke-Harding club that ask leading questions such as: Hi Luke, how much money do you think Putin has and where did he get it from? Harding’s damning evidence as regards the tyranny that rules in Mordor is – wait for it! – the WikiLeaks.
Before the lid was put on the thread, presumably so that the feature didn’t too much resemble something that had been plagiarized from the Völkischer Beobachter, the very last questioner was allowed to ask why Harding’s purpose in life seems to be to pour shit on all things Russian and what evidence he had that the December Duma elections were rigged. Harding replied that carousels and ballot stuffing were in operation, but he presented no evidence of this, saying only: “…evidence that December’s elections were rigged is overwhelming – with well-documented evidence of carousel voting”.
Yes Luke! But where is the evidence? Where are these documents and who drafted them? When and where? As regards the final query as to why Harding appears simply to be an anti-Russia propagandist – no answer.
I am absolutely sure that the questions were filtered and censored. If not, then this is the first Guardian feature on matters Russian, especially one featuring the daring investigative Moscow correspondent Harding, in which no contributions have been deleted and notification thereof posted: all queries, bar the last, were of the style: Hi Luke! Could you just tell me why the Evil Empire is so evil?
The Guardian is one heap of putrid shit that masquerades as the liberal-minded thinking person’s British quality paper. I wouldn’t even use it as bog paper, for fear of insulting my arse!
Two things I noticed in particular.
(1) Three of the comments were deleted for not abiding by Ndranguardia community standards.
(2) I noticed that our old friend @larussophobe featured prominently in the comments, and that Luke is on first name terms with her.
Notice also how he repeats the fiction about the mass migration from Russia and the brain drain.
Not only is Luke Harding on first name terms with “Kim” alias La Russophobe but one of the other questioners is one of the Guardian’s own regular Comment is Free commentators on Russian affairs, David Hearst. One wonders what the point of having him of all people ask questions is?
Anyway, David Hearst has now followed up with his own thoughts in a piece on Comment is Free
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/02/russia-rusty-machine-putin-election
The idea expressed in this article, that regardless of whether or not Putin wins the election the political system is becoming unworkable and that unless Putin supposedly liberalises the political system he is doomed, is in my opinion completely wrong even though it is becoming an increasingly common trope in much western and some Russian commentary. Not only does it reflect a mistaken and frankly blinkered understanding of how Russia’s political system works but it also in my opinion misunderstands the population’s mood and priorities. I do not think that the great majority of Russians are at all interested in the liberalisation of the political system, a nebulous concept at best, whilst the belief that there has been a great increase in popular dissaffection since the parliamentary elections and the tandem switch is in my opinion quite simply wrong.
The great majority of the people who have demonstrated against Putin over the last few weeks are so far as I can see overwhelmingly people who have always opposed him. They opposed him before the parliamentary elections and the tandem switch and they oppose him now. They have not become his opponents because of the parliamentary elections or the tandem switch because they were that already.
What has changed is not any great shift in the mood of the country or a dramatic change in the balance of popular forces but the fact that for the first time in Moscow (but no so much anywhere else) opposition supporters have been prepared to come out together to demonstrate at one place and time. The main reason for that by the way is not any genuine unification of the opposition or liberalisation of the political system but rather a change in the tactics of the liberal (as opposed to the whole) opposition. Whereas before the liberal opposition (or its western backers and controllers) sought to provoke the authorities by staging unauthorised protests intended to paint the government a dictatorship, they now try to maximise the numbers that turn out for their protests by staging authorised protests intended to draw in a wider range of opposition supporters many of whom however are not liberals. The tactic has however been only partially successful with no evidence so far that it has succeeded in drawing to the protest movement significant numbers of people who were not opposition supporters already before the protests began. This in my opinion is why the protest movement has so far failed to gain critical mass.
What I expect to happen in the event of Putin’s overwhelmlingly likely victory in the first round is that over time and with no coherent or realisable aim or cause to rally round the opposition will fragment and re divide into its various constituent parts, probably with a fair amount of recrimination along the way.
He is as thick as a cedar stump; you could saw the top off of his head and count the rings to establish his age. Him and every clown like him who keeps repeating the same tired untruths.
Latest from Syria: after 26-day siege of Homs, Syrian ground troops finally swept in yesterday. Assault was successful, as it was inevitably fated to be once it was known that NATO rebels have been orphaned by their “protectors”.
Syrian army is now mopping up and rebel mercenaries are attempting to flee, as best they can. Al Jazeera is in hysterics. Western press has quickly switched tack and are now trying to bury the lead (of their military defeat) by focusing on secondary issues like Red Cross, evacuating journalists, and so on.
Turkey better watch out too, Syrian troops are chasing rebels in hot pursuit towards Turkey:
Rebels withdrew on Thursday in a key moment in the year-old uprising. An official at Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said the army had “cleansed Baba Amro from the foreign-backed armed groups of terrorists.”
Activists said Syria’s army had begun hunting down and killing insurgents who had stayed to cover their comrades’ retreat, although the reports could not be verified. They said 10 young men were shot dead on Friday.
(…)
Rami Abdelrahman, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian troops had entered Ain al-Baida, near the Turkish border and 100-150 rebels had fled the area.
One pro-government figure said troops had “broken the back” of the uprising and the rebel withdrawal heralded impending victory over what he termed a Western-backed insurgency.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/02/syria-idUSL5E8E21JS20120302
Turkey is a proportionately very powerful country militarily with – as I think I mentioned – the third largest Air Force in NATO, over 700 aircraft. I don’t think they have much to fear from Syria, and in fact Syria’s bristling air defences might owe something to its neighbour’s capabilities. Although hostility on some level has been part of Turkish/Syrian affairs before, the surprise for me this time was Turkey’s willingness to act in NATO’s behalf where it has steadfastly refused to do so before, notably in the Iraq war.
While it’s too early to do any victory dances yet – and I don’t necessarily want Assad to “win” so much as I want Syria to not be the victim of another regime-change assault that leaves it broken and under the stewardship of known brigands as was the case in Libya – I believe NATO may have been made to back off this time. We can thank Russia and China for that, else NATO would have been gearing up right about now to go in and pound Assad’s forces to dust, and the voices who spoke out and said the press phase of the operation – the pre-assault barrage against public opinion, you might say – was a fraud and represented special interests’ viewpoint rather than what was actually happening.
I’m sure that now they will try and starve Assad out through sanctions, but Russia will surely not suffer from that as it will have the effect of keeping oil prices high. Gaddafi would have been able to laugh off sanctions, too, had that been the result and had he lived. NATO is not so powerful in the markets as it would like to think.
Dear Mark,
I absolutely agree with you about here. I too am not on Assad’s “side”. What I oppose is regime change which is a euphemism for aggression.
@Yalensis, the British media has been busy representing the fall of Baba Amr not as a defeat but as a “tactical withdrawal” carried out by the rebels for humanitarian reasons and intended to prevent more harm being done to civilians.
During the Second World War the Germans (as they said) also engaged in “tactical withdrawals”. In fact they “tactically withdrew” all the way to Berlin.
@alexander: Both British and American press are lockstep on message: tactical retreat from Homs, rebel army still stong, took only a few losses, busy regrouping, blah blah blah. These propagandists are sore losers and never admit defeat.
P.S. I suppose I AM on Assad’s side now, in the sense that I am rooting for him and hope he militarily defeats the NATO/Al Qaeda rebels. I don’t know much about Assad. In following Libya conflict I came to have some real sympathy for Gaddafi, I saw him as a huge, Shakespearean figure: very flawed, but also possessing many good qualities. Gaddafi truly was the “Lion of the Desert”. I don’t get that same sense of Assad, obviously, he is more like a technocrat with no personality. Yet he has shown a real willingness to compromise and allow for gradual reforms of the system. Gradual reforms to a multi-party system, combined with a decade-long transitional period: This seems to me like the best recipe for a peaceful succession of a secular majority-Muslim nation. Something that Gaddafi was not able to pull off, because he had no real succession plan, other than Libya becoming a family dynasty.
Britain’s Defense Secretary is skulking around with Uzbekistan’s president, because they care too much about human rights?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/defence-secretary-meets-uzbek-dictator-7469065.html
In that same part of the world, Russia has recently suffered a diplomatic setback in Kirgizia, whose leaders now look to be orienting towards NATO. Relations between Russia and Kirgizia are getting worse with every day.
Dear Yalensis,
This is one occasion when the information we are getting is completely different. What I have heard is that the new Kirghiz government is anxious to join the Customs Union but that it is Moscow that is suggesting that it undertake certain internal changes first. The new Kirgiz President has in the meantime voiced his support for Putin’s re election and made clear his intention to close the US base.
On a different note, I interpret Saakashvili’s decision to lift visa restrictions on Russians as a sign that his meeting with Obama was a failure and that he is trying to re establish economic links with Russia in order to rescue his economy, which faces the start of heavy loan repayments from this year. Any thoughts?
Maybe it is another instance of a western press source crafting the story to reflect what it would like to see happen rather than what is actually happening. God knows we’ve seen that before.
Reference Saakashvili, I would say just on the face of it that yours is a shrewd analysis, but I didn’t know about his overtures to Russia (which must taste like ashes in his mouth) so I will have to look into it a bit before expanding.
БИШКЕК, 3 марта. Министерство обороны России погасило задолженность перед Киргизией за использование мест дислокации военных объектов РФ на территории республики, сообщает “Интерфакс”.
“Министерство обороны России погасило задолженность перед Киргизией за использование мест дислокации военных объектов РФ на территории республики”, — говорится в сообщении.
По данным ведомства, от министерства обороны Российской Федерации (МО РФ) на адрес министерства обороны Киргизии поступило письмо о том, что МО РФ 1 марта перечислило денежные средства в сумме $15 млн 466 тыс. 238 за использование мест дислокации российских военных объектов на территории Киргизии в 2008-2011 годах.
Ранее сообщалось, что Россия может лишиться ключевого военного объекта в Центральной Азии — авиабазы в киргизском Канте. Президент Киргизии Алмазбек Атамбаев обвинил Москву в неоплате аренды и пригрозил закрытием базы.
Заявление о том, что Бишкек рассматривает возможность закрытия 999-й авиабазы РФ в Канте, Алмазбек Атамбаев сделал по итогам завершившегося визита в Москву. “База только тешит самолюбие российского генералитета, не платит аренду, обязательств не выполняет. Зачем нам это надо?” — объяснил он. Позднее выяснилось, что имелись в виду другие российские объекты в Киргизии.
Bishkek 3 March. Russian Ministry of Defense [paid up in full Russia’s] debt to Kirgizia for use of Russian military bases on Kirghiz territory. (…)
Okay, maybe just good old fashioned horse trading, Central Asian style.
Looks like Russia did not want to pay bills for her military bases and owed back-rent for the years 2008-2011. An irritated Kirgiz president Almazbek Atambaev, during his visit to Moscow, threatened to close down Russian airbase in Kant, complaining that the Russian generals do not pay their bills!
In response, on March 1 Russia cut a check for $15,466,238 , the full amount of what they owed.
Problem solved.
http://www.rosbalt.ru/exussr/2012/03/03/952893.html
P.S. On the Saakashvili thing: I hope you are right, that Saak’s overture on the visa issue is a sign of weakness on his part, e.g., feeling the need to revitalize his economy with Russian investments, etc. However, I am not really sure that is the case. Saak and his inner circle are doing great living off American grants, they don’t need to trade with Russia, and they don’t care if the rural population is sinking into poverty. Saak himself is spinning this move as Gruzia thrusting herself forward to be the “beacon” and regional leader for the entire Caucasuses. He actually believes that. On the other hand, maybe Americans are nudging him to find some other revenue streams, because their own budget is getting a bit tight these days, and maybe they are sick of feeding this parasite.
Dear Mark,
I have checked my hotmail account and I don’t yet seem to have had an email from you. Possibly it is because I may have miswritten my email address. I have an eyesight problem with my left eye, which affects my writing and sometimes when I write things they come out wrongly. For future reference my email address is alexandermercouris@hotmail.com.
Since time is now short before the election rather than write a whole post, which will be quickly overtaken by events, why don’t I instread give you and everyone else on this blog an account of what Michael Binyon wrote in the Times? Favourable comments about Russia are few enough but in this case what Michael Binyon wrote is in such stark contrast to the dystopian picture of provincial Russia in today’s editorial in the Guardian that it makes a useful contrast.
I should first say that Michael Binyon first visited Russia in 1967. He was the Moscow Bureau Chief of the Times from 1978 to 1982. He last visited the country in 1993 and this is his first return visit since then. As you absolutely rightly say everything he has previously written about Russia has been completely conventional from a western point of view, which of course makes his latest article, which appeared in the Times on 27th February 2012, all the more interesting.
He opens darkly enough. “The Soviet infrastructure” he tells us “is still there, debris litters the landscape and old factory chimneys herald the entrance to each big town”. However already on the railways things look different. In the “dank, echoing Soviet stations” one now finds “kiosks that sell iPhones, fashion magazines, crisps and Snickers.” “The station buffet now offers Stella Artois, Heineken, whisky and Baileys. You can buy fast food and eat in a Japanese restaurant”. As for the station lavatories, “an infallible yardstick of a nation’s sophistication”, they are “no longer the Augean Stables that left you retching, but sometimes even approach German levels of hygienic sparkle”.
Things then go on getting better. “It is when you arrive in the cities that the shock of the new begins to strike home”. “Outside, the streets lead to a different country from the one I last saw”. “The buildings have been smartened up, not just with paint thrown haphazardly over them as in former days, but with new windows, redesigned facades, elegant signs and inviting shopfronts”.
Having expressed himself in general terms, he them moves on to describe individual towns he has visited. The first is Belgorod, which he informs us was “always a provincial town, a bit sleepy and a bit slow”. The place is transformed. “Now it has the settled feel of a prosperous market town in Eastern Europe. The park is kept, the new blocks of flats designed with style, the roads jammed with commuters going home to their villas in the suburbs and the churches – restored and reopened – proclaiming again a confident faith from their golden cupolas”. To his astonishment Belgorod even has “an Irish pub….four floors of authentic Irish indulgence, with every poster, beer jug, table and bartop brought over from the Emerald Isle, together with Irish bands and singers to entertain the lively crowd of young Russians while the Guinness flows”.
He then moves on to Rostov on Don whose “four universities boast facilities Britain’s hard pressed higher education centre would envy”. In place of “the grubby canteens, spartan corridors, ill fitting doors and boastful wall displays of Leninist achievers” of former times there are now “academic offices furnished like any in America, a sports club with a new pool that is half Olympic size and students with excellent English who cross question the rector at open day orientation sessions”. (Guardian please note: no sign of sullen apathy here!).
He then returns to generalities but not before passing through the airport restaurant in Volgograd, “which will keep you going with homemade soup and a fry up”.
“Last year” he solemnly informs us “10% of Russian adults made one flight abroad, “Foreign” no longer means better. The bigger internal airlines use new Airbus aircraft, make announcements in English and offer something tastier than the rubber chicken that was Aeroflot’s standard fare”.
“There are about 225 million mobile phone accounts” he rhapsodies. Even “the bureaucracy’s inflexible rules have given way to commonsense” (there then follows a long and boring account of how the sensible way border officials dealt with a problem involving his visa. No suggestion incidentally of any bribe being asked for or paid).
Lest anyone accuse Binyon of painting an excessively rosy picture, he then adds at the end of the article that “Of course, some things don’t change. Fleecing the unwary is still the taxi driver’s first response. Corruption is running out of control. The weallth gap is huge. The young prefer beer to vodka but alcoholism still takes a heavy toll”. However his overall conclusion is determinedly positive: “In myriad ways, Russia has become a more normal country. It has also become impatient, less cowed by authority. It wants efficiency in the public as well as private sector”. In other words it is in all respects the diametric opposite of the Graphic Novel nightmare vision we read about in the Guardian.
Everyone of course can take whatever they want from reading Binyon’s account. In my view what it shows is that there are two entirely different countries. One is the hideous hell hole dreamt up by the Guardian and the Russophobes. The other is the real place actually inhabited by real people with all its many complexities and problems. The second country’s problem is that it has the misfortune to share the same name as the first.
Hi, Alex; I sent you an email once I received this post. I imagine it has a lot to do with the time difference, but I was just then leaving work. I don’t like to use my work account for non-work stuff if I can avoid it, and it is generally discouraged as it opens the defense net up to hacking and malware. Better safe than sorry, right? Anyway, as I suggested in the email, you are very welcome to do a guest post at any time, as are Moscow Exile and Kievite (with whom I will also establish contact by email). So is Anatoly, of course, and he has my email address, although he is usually fairly busy on his own blog. If you spot something that enrages you – an exigence that demands eloquence, as it were – please put it in a Word document or some common format, include references (links) to back up your opinions and comparisons, and email it to me. If it’s your first one, please include a short bio that’s only as much as you choose to reveal, and I’ll post if for you under your name. You can moderate comments. I value both the support and the diversity of style other posters bring to the game.
I’m afraid, as Tim Newman of White Sun of the Desert used to say, I’m going to be a pain and disagree. Oh, not that something other than abuse is unwelcome, and it is an encouraging first step. However, I beg to infer that each sign of progress Mr. Binyon remarks is to the degree it resembles something in the west, or is a familiar and happy touchstone of life lived outside of Russia. You can buy foreign brands in train-station kiosks – iPhones, Snickers, Stella (a personal favourite) and Baileys. You can eat Japanese food. The toilets are clean – my, yes, every nation should be proud of its ability to clean toilets. Belgorod reminds him of a prosperous East-European market town: it even has an Irish pub!!!. The airlines use Airbus aircraft.
Perhaps he’s not even conscious of it, but each new delight he finds in the brave new “normal country” is measured in how like the west it is or how it conforms to a western standard, or the availability of western brands. For example, I’d like to see something about the improvement in domestically-produced aircraft, rather than a pat on the head for being smart and ditching the Russian junk in favour of nice French airplanes. I’d like to see something about the delicious local fare offered in railway station restaurants, rather than marvel that I can get a Stella and a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, neither of which are made in Russia. Do you see what I mean? He’s not slagging Russia, and that makes a very pleasant change, but the compliments are all for western products that Russia has had the good sense to make available for discerning foreigners.
I can’t fault him entirely; for one thing, he’s right about the problem of loose litter and trash blowing everywhere. It’s one of the most unlovely things about Russia, and it speaks directly to civic pride and they damned well should do something about it. Anybody can pick up trash, it’s just a matter of education and establishing it as a priority. Despite his characterization of that as “Soviet”, to the best of my understanding it is decidedly post-Soviet and maintenance of public property was considerably better in the Soviet Union. There’s a beautiful stream just as you enter my wife’s home town in Russia, with a pretty woodland park adjacent – both are choked with litter: plastic bags, snack wrappers, plastic bottles and various junk, most of which is recyclable and all of which has a proper place that is not in the stream or in the park. Many Russians seem oblivious to it, and perhaps they are, but that’s something that needs to change: civic pride starts small, and it’s in the details. There’s no budget for public beautification any more, and while that could do with improving (I shall definitely ask Mr. Putin next time I see him), there’s a lot people could do without getting paid for it, and it would really make a difference.
Likewise, he is being genuinely complimentary when he mentions the attractive new shopfronts, the attempts to attractively renovate and maintain buildings, the better-than-British facilities available to students at Rostov-on-Don’s universities and the American-style offices. You have to have something to compare things to, and if he chooses western models and Russian counterparts compare favourably, that’s very good to hear. But you don’t hear visitors to Poland say the country has undergone a great leap forward because you can buy Twinkies and Budweiser at the Bus Station, or say of Germany that it’s a pleasure to see them step up to the Ford Focus for their taxis.
I hope I’m not being a dog in the manger about it, because it’s refreshing to hear a British journalist say something pleasant about Russia. But I think any country so rated which had an ounce of pride would rate it a backhanded compliment at best.
Dear Mark,
Actually I agree with all of your points. My reason for drawing attention to Michael Binyon is that the Guardian & Co paint such a totally grim picture of life in provincial Russia. Michael Binyon has recently visited Russia and though a completely conventional westerner with all the usual western assumptions and hang ups has come even on that calculus to the diametrically opposite view.
PS: I have just received your email. Thanks.
Yes, and that much I am glad to see. Incremental progress is still progress, although The Grauniad is one of the worst papers in the English-speaking world, rivaling even The Economist.
For my part, now I will have to check my email, which I am somewhat lax at, occasionally not even opening it for a week or so.
Dear Mark,
“…..Incremental progress is still progress,….”
If only that were true. Sadly on the way Russia is reported there is no progress of any sort whether incremental or otherwise. The diametric opposite. Year by year British press coverage of Russia is becoming increasingly hostile and negative. The point about Binyon is that he is a British journalist of an earlier generation. I remember his commentaries when he was the Times’s Moscow Bureau Chief and they were unyieldingly hostile. However as he is not one of the present bunch of British Russia commentators he does not share their ideological hang ups or affiliations so he is able to admit the progress and indeed transformation that has taken place even if as you rightly say he measures that progress purely against western measures. As such his article is a shaft of light in a darkening sky.
After not having visited Russia for several years, Mary Dejevsky of the UK Independent wrote a very lengthy, three-part “retrospective diary of impressions” on Russia after having attended a Valdai conference there in Kaluga last November. She also visited the Volkswagen plant near that Russian provincial city. Her articles make interest reading, in that they do not paint the usual “Evil Empire” picture much beloved of most Russian “commentators”.
Dejevsky is a regular commentator on Russia, the EU and the US and has worked as a foreign correspondent all over the world, including Washington, Paris and Moscow. She is now the chief editorial writer and a columnist at The Independent and has never, as far as I know, been accused of plagiarism.
I often find it an extremely refreshing change to read what Dejevsky says about “The Evil Empire”. What is especially interesting for me in the linked article is that Dejevsky mentions that she studied in the Soviet Union at Voronezh State University and compares Kaluga with that city. I can only vouch for her accuracy on this point, as I too, studied at Voronezh and also last year I spent some time in Kaluga as well.
All in all, in my opinion Dejevsky paints the most accurate picture of the state of present day provincial Russia that I have so far ever seen in any English language newspaper. Of course, not all would agree with me on this point: at the end of the third and final part of Dejevsky’s “retrospective diary”, there are some comments, and first in line is Zigfeld, who, quoting a line that Dejevsky has written in the article, scornfully writes:
” ‘Certainly, year by year, the Soviet period seems further and further away.’
“What an utterly asinine thing to write. Russia is governed by a proud KGB spy who has restored the anthem of the USSR, rehabilitated Stalin and declared himself president for life. Skolkovo is a classic neo-Soviet boondoggle. It is like this author is writing from another planet”.
Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?
For my part, it also seems that the Russia described by Harding, for example, is also situated on another planet when compared with that Russia which Dejevsky describes, a Russia in which I live – on planet earth.
I think.
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-dejevsky/mary-dejevsky-russia-notebook-part-1-6264293.html
The “proud KGB spy” thing is a knee-jerk reaction with Kimmie, and “jerk” might be the most appropriate description of her, at least as far as her journalistic talents are concerned. But that never stops her from leading with her chin, and “proud KGB spy” must be her most frequently-repeated phrase of all time. I’m sure we’ve been over this before, but Mr. Putin has not been a member of the KGB for roughly the same amount of time that Tony Blair has not been the lead vocalist in a rock band, and nobody refers to him as “proud rock singer Tony Blair”. Is being in the KGB the most significant thing Mr. Putin has accomplished in his life, do you think? Comes to that, Alexander Lebedev was in the KGB, and now he’s part owner of Novaya Gazeta. Does Kimmie ever refer to him as “proud KGB spy Alexander Lebedev”? She does not. Because she loves her some Alexander Lebedev.
I should also think that in making her usual leading-with-the-chin “proud KGB” expression, Zigfeld was blissfully unaware that the owner of the newspaper to which she posted her above quoted comment is owned by a former “KGB spy”. Don’t know whether Lebedev was a proud one, though.
If I ever formed my own rock band I would call it “Proud KGB Spy”, because I think that would be a cool name for a rock band.
That would be a cool name. Some Japanese students were visiting the school where my wife works a couple of days ago, and they wrote out all our names in their pictograph writing – mine translates to Hemp Long Time.
If I ever have a band, we’re calling ourselves Hemp Longtime.
Here is a description of the mood in Moscow on the eve of the elections by Israel Shamir:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/02/putin-in-strong-position-for-sundays-vote/
As I have said before, whatever view one has of him on Russian politics he is a shrewd observer.
A shrewd observer he may be, but I think that pronouncing Mr. X’s followers as having “seized the streets of the capital last December” is rather giving them a lot of credit. Even if they are rated in their most generous strength – say, 140,000 – that’s still a miniscule part of the population of somewhere around 15 Million, and by no means did they “seize the streets”. Even those sober heads not given to hysteria and hyperbole are making the “protest movement” sound like a massive groundswell that will sweep all before it if it is not appeased. Horseshit. I’m sure the liberals will try to stage massive protests – indeed, they are already long in the planning stages – in an attempt to make the country ungovernable. And I am sure they are receiving covert support, as they have been all along. But they will fail. because they must. What they are attempting is not in the country’s best interests, and Russians are no longer the kind of people who will long endure something that goes directly against their interests. The west will do nothing for the protesters once they have revolted, because that is the goal, just as the west did nothing for the Hungarians in 1956 and the Kurds in 1991. The west has no interest in an open war with Russia because it is a nuclear power, but it has an abiding interest in destabilizing it.
Extremely funny: CNN Will Putin be able to make Russia great?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/02/opinion/lynch-putin-russia/index.html?hpt=hp_abar
This hapless Allen C. Lynch (a professor of politics at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Virginia) is of course a typical academic bum and judging from this article it is clear that he is a hired gun, but the title is really funny (especially for CNN as a disinformation machine)
Editor’s note: Allen C. Lynch is a professor of politics at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of a new book, “Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft.”
Perhaps he was slipped some sort of sleeping potion, and believes he is in 1999.
Officially sanctioned mass protests will take place in Moscow on Sunday, according to this Moscow News report:
http://www.themoscownews.com./local/20120302/189506674.html
There are also reports that certain sections of the so-called opposition are determined to provoke the police into forcefully evicting them from areas of protest. In a Moscow Times article (linked below) it is stated that some protesters intend to set up Maidan Square style tent encampments, although “opposition” leaders have stated that they have not called for such anaction.
Be that as it may, Navalny has said permanent encampments are a way to force authorities to meet opposition demands: new Duma elections and, increasingly, the resignation of Vladimir Putin.
Navalny is certainly pushing for a fight:
“At a certain time, we’ll take to the streets, and we won’t disperse,” he said in a recent discussion published in Afisha. “The authorities will use force against [us]. … It’s the only way to battle tyrants,” he said.
See: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/city-opposition-settle-rally-dispute/453984.html
Hm… Looking like Navalnyites might try to incite violence. Not to make colour revolution (which is not possible right now), but simply as spoilers, to taint Putin’s probably victory. I am very worried about what might happen Sunday night…
Dear Moscow Exile,
These planned protests should be understood for what they are: an admission of failure. The opposition is incapable of defeating Putin through the ballot so it is engaging in these illegal activities instead. However it faces the same insurmountable problem that it has faced ever since the protests began back in December. This is that whilst it insists (before there is any evidence!) that the election is rigged it is incapable of saying convincingly who it thinks it is rigged against. The reason the colour revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and the Ukraine gained traction was because in each case the opposition had in Kostunica, Saakashvili and Yushchenko a candidate for the Presidency it was plausibly able to claim had actually won (PS: I am not saying that any of these candidates did in fact win. In the case of Kostunica and Saakashvili I suspect they lost and in the case of Yushchenko I am sure of it). In Russia the opposition has no such candidate despite the rather desperate attempts of Udaltsov to fit Zyuganov for that role.
Dear Yalensis,
Here I am afraid I agree with you. The possibility of violence is very real. Remember that the protest movement was triggered by a violent demonstration on 5th December 2011 in the aftermath of the parliamentary elections. Though the violence was incited by Navalny (the film you have shown us of his speech proves as much) the opposition claimed that the violence was the government’s fault.
The one thing I would say is that the government on this occasion is fully aware of the danger (as it was not back in December) as Putin’s recent comments about the oppositon looking for a sacrificial victim show. One must assume that precautions are being taken and that some sort of plan for dealing with any violent disturbances is in place. Also I would say I suspect that many people who may have been originally fooled back in December have by now wisened up. I confess that I am surprised (and impressed) by the limited impact that Navalny has made over the last few weeks whilst the opposition’s insistence even before a single vote has been counted that the election is being rigged must already be grating with a lot of people and causing them to suspect its motives. Still the danger you warn against is there.
Good point, @alexander. Navalny has not yet ripened to the point where HE is the alt-candidate.
I agree, and because the aim of those opposed to Putin suits the aim of those opposed to Russia – to make Russia ungovernable – those opposed to Russia will support such protests in their popular press and invest them with a nobility of purpose they do not possess. However, they might find a much less conciliatory Putin this time around. Putin has never shrunk from the tough decisions, and if it means filling the prisons with those who refuse to obey the legitimate and agreed-upon law of the land, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, it is what it is. The west would have a field day with it, screaming, “Authoritarian Putin crushes the flower of democracy beneath his jackboot!!”, but as long as they choose to use oil to fuel their economies they will have to come around in the end.
Well look on the bright side.
With the OWS tent evictions, the US and the UK have put a democratic stamp on the process.
If it really comes down to removing tends, I hope Russia will have the imagination to spin the above for all its worth.
Another Fleet Street hack with an axe to grind concerning Russia, namely Walker of the UK Independent, writes today:
“…there is no doubt Mr Putin is still the most popular candidate on the ballot. The most recent pre-election survey suggested he has the support of more than 40 per cent of Russians.”
Something of a climb down that – admitting that the Tyrant is still the most popular presidential candidate. Nevertheless, in acknowledging 40% popular support for Putin, Walker still makes a gross underestimation of his popularity.
Is this sloppy journalism – or is this “underestimation” intentional?
The last polls have been published and according to them it is clear that Putin will win on the first round.
VTsIOM. FOM and Levada have all published similar findings and their numbers average out at: Putin 60-61%; Zyuganov 15%; Zhirinovskiy 8-9%; Prokhorov 7-8% and Mironov 6%.
As Moscow correspondent for the Independent, Walker should be aware of these latest figures. He should also be aware that any significant variation from these numbers will be cause for suspicion.
If the the final presidential election results correspond to those of a long series of opinions polls from different sources – as did the Duma election figures last December – then if some make claims that the results are fraudulent, then the burden of proof will be upon those who make such accusations. Walker should also be aware of that – or is this, perhaps, too difficult a concept for him to comprehend?
Of course, there are many that choose, for whatever reason, to believe that there is only 40% or even much less support for Putin amongst the Russian electorate. If, as the polls predict, Putin in fact gains 60% of the vote, then those that maintain that only 40% of Russian citizens support him, such as most Western journalists and Hilary Clinton et al., will no doubt scream out, as they did after the Duma election: Massive falsification!
Dear Moscow Exile,
I have seen this figure of 40% appearing in all sorts of places here in Britain. Since it does not correspond with the result of a single opinion poll I have seen I do not know where it comes from. Presumably it is the number that the Anglo American media and the opposition in Moscow after consulting with each other have decided in advance is the number they are going to report as the “true” level of Putin’s support even though there is not a shred of evidence for it. It is the cynicism of the whole exercise that take’s one’s breath away,
I would just make one observation here. All this reporting is predicated on the assumption that the majority of Russians do not support Putin and would not vote for him in an election that was free or fair. Why though should that be the case? No one seriously disputes the enormous economic recovery that has happened in Russia over the last dozen years even if there is argument over the reason for it. Given that it is a universal rule of politics that all other things being equal economically successful governments are popular and tend to get re elected why suppose that Putin is unpopular?
PS: No need for anybody to answer this question. It is of course merely a rhetorical one,
Never mind – the polls are a matter of record and it should be easy to challenge a “massive falsification” charge with poll results, much as it was last time. This is why international observers must not be given control of the exit polls. That was the big mistake in both the Rose and the Orange revolutions.
At first I gave them the benefit of the doubt and just assumed that they’d forgotten to adjust upwards by removing the Wouldn’t vote / undecided people, a very incompetent mistake but not mendacious. However I had a look at the polls and realized that even that wouldn’t explain the 40% figure. Minimums in the past three months are all in the mid-40%’s.
So I suspect you may indeed be onto something.
On Libya: Even United Nations which, under Ban Ki-Moon has become rubber stamp of USA and NATO, is now slightly “concerned” about Misratan militias repeated persecutions of Tawerghan residents:
Through this past January, militia members continued with the mass arrests of former soldiers, police officers, suspected mercenaries and others perceived to be Qaddafi loyalists, the report said. Certain revenge attacks have continued unabated, particularly the campaign by the militiamen of Misurata to wipe a neighboring town, Tawergha, off the map; the fighters accuse its residents of collaborating with a government siege.
Such attacks have been documented before, but the report stressed that despite previous criticism, the militiamen were continuing to hunt down the residents of the neighboring town no matter where they had fled across Libya. As recently as Feb. 6, militiamen from Misurata attacked a camp in Tripoli where residents of Tawergha had fled, killing an elderly man, a woman and three children, the report said.
The commission remains “deeply concerned” that no independent investigations or prosecutions appear to have been instigated into killings by such militias, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/world/africa/united-nations-report-faults-nato-over-civilian-deaths-in-libya.html?_r=3
Nice work, NATO. Take a bow, why don’t you? Excellent judgment, President Sarkozy, you jug-eared little fuck.
From Shaun Walker in today’s not-so independent UK Independent:
“It is distinctly unfashionable to be pro-Putin in Moscow, and even apolitical socialites have been joining in the protest movement”.
So there you have it: being pro-Putin is so “out” these days. And “political socialites” such as, I presume, Sobchak, who, by Russian standards at least, has enjoyed a fabulously wealthy and priviliged lifestyle thanks to her father’s sound business sense and political connections in those halcyon Yeltsin days of laissez-faire capitalism, are at the forefront of the thinking people’s protest movement.
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/politics-in-russia-are-no-longer-wholly-predictable-7534771.html
…and in the BBC, Navalny squawks about “grandiose scale of falsifications, especially in Moscow (hear that dog whistle, Muscovites?)..mass use of carousel voting”. Allegedly the League of Voters volunteer group has recorded 3000 violations (nice round number), while GOLOS was also receiving reports of carousel voting. And of course, every one of these falsifications is going to turn out to have been in favour of Putin.
I seem to remember a recent story in which a young couple was invited to participate in carousel voting (in the Duma elections), and went along just to expose this illegitimate practice. It seems that it would be pretty easy to do if you wanted to show how widespread the practice is or to make it appear to be widespread when it actually is not. Break the law to show the law is being broken, in other words. I truly hope if such incidents have been captured that it is possible to identify the individuals, because I am betting it is another liberal setup. Such incidents and individuals should be dealt with to the limit of the law.
In any case, the opposition strategy seems to be growing clearer – since they seem unable to stop Putin from winning, they will simply ignore the win and proceed as if there was no president of Russia, with (hopefully, from their viewpoint) huge demonstrations demanding the vote be held again and again until someone else wins. They’ve had good success with this in the past, in Ukraine and Georgia. It’s a win/win proposal for them, because it forces the government to adopt an authoritarian pose in keeping public order. But I don’t think Russians are going to buy it.
I see members of FEMEN have made another one of their exhibitionist demonstrations against Putin today. They stripped off to the waist at the polling station where Putin had just cast his vote and staged an attempt to steal the ballot box into which the prime minister had just cast his vote, and shouting in Russian : “Putin is a thief!” .
The thing that puzzles me, though, is why these Ukrainian women feel that the Russian elections are any of their business? I mean, the territory of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is now a sovereign state that calls itself “Ukraine”, is it not? And Putin even stated that he thought there was nothing wrong with the deal that Tymoshenko had brokered with Gazprom, which deal has ended up with the former “Gas Princess” being banged up in the slammer somewhere or other, where she has become for the “Free World” Ukrainian Political Prisoner No 1.
I’m pretty sure the members of Femen that have appeared semi-naked to date in Moscow are “ethnic Russians”, though. I’ve never heard them speak Ukrainian on videos – and there are plenty of them on the net where they explain the purpose of their protests and do half-undressed dress rehersals for invited photo journalists.
I wonder who pays their fines?
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DgXsRpB0zqc#!
(Warning! Heavily censored
)
They’re Ukrainian but they’ve also in places like Davos, so they’re also booby voted vs. Davos, so it’s not like they have a strictly neocon/anti-Russia agenda.
Sorry! Should be “apolitcal socialites” above.
Moscow Exile had undergone a short metamorphosis owing to his comments concerning the Russian presidential election being blocked in the “free West” and had forgotten to restore himself to his former self when making his last two comments to this thread.
Wazzert has now been laid to rest.
That was you??
I am easy to confuse…
I think I start to love Canada.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Afghan+vets+reject+Anders+apology/6246539/story.html
Calgary Conservative MP Rob Anders has apologized for describing two Afghan war veterans, who volunteer their time to help homeless former soldiers, as “NDP hacks” and supporters of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
Anders made the comments about Jim Lowther and David MacLeod, both former members of the Canadian Forces.
But when contacted Friday night and told of Anders’ apology, the two men said they didn’t accept it and called on him to resign from the Commons veterans affairs committee.
On Thursday, the two had voiced their anger that Anders fell asleep during their presentation earlier this week at a Commons veterans affairs meeting in Halifax. The men were detailing how their volunteer group, Veterans Emergency Transition Services, also known as VETS, was trying to deal with the homeless problem affecting former soldiers. In the last year the group has helped 13 veterans get off the streets and find shelter.
Anders said he never fell asleep and accused the men of being NDP supporters who had praised Putin.
However, both men are card-carrying Conservatives who have put aside partisanship to help veterans. Lowther has served in Bosnia and Afghanistan. MacLeod served in Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
As for any connection to Putin, MacLeod pointed out that he had mentioned during the presentation that even the Russians took care of their former soldiers, offering them housing and setting up a hospital to offer post traumatic stress counselling to Afghan war veterans.
I appreciate it; I’m pretty proud of it myself most days, and even on the worst day I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But although this is a very positive report, it should be remembered that the Canadian government will always vote and proceed in what it perceives to be the best interests of Canadians. That’s not surprising – any leadership group would do the same. But decision-making in Canada is often tied strongly to trade, and our trade is overwhelmingly with the United States. Consequently Canada often votes in lockstep with the USA on international matters and in particular those having to do with Israel. Canada is not penetrated to the degree the USA is with AIPAC-type organizations, but it is perceived as a loyal friend of Israel and that’s the way it usually votes.
Nothing wrong with that when Israel is in the right. But as you’re well aware, often it is not.
Canadian trade, at least on the west coast, is beginning to undergo a paradigm shift. Much of our trade is in lumber, and the U.S. market is still weak owing to the persistence of recession and the slowness of economic recovery, while the Asian markets are hungry. More and more of our lumber exports go overseas. However, that’s not as profitable as selling to the U.S., where almost everything can go by road. We’ll see where we are in a few years. For the record, I’ve never objected to Canada’s tendency to vote with its largest trading partner when that partner was in the right, as it often is. But there have been some decisions that were driven purely by self-interest, and I don’t like to see Canada support those. Libya was a good example of a horrible decision to go along.
What’s not to love? Canada is wonderful country. I have never forgotten my visit to Quebec, how beautiful the city, and the women so lovely and elegant! I have also visited Victoria, B.C. on a one-day ferryboat from Seattle, Washington (both totally awesome cities). It is my dream someday also to see Nova Scotia.
Dear Mark, yalensis, Alexander and Moscow Exile,
I would concur with most of your comments on the current Russian Presidential election. My opinion: Putin will win the election without a runoff. But what about the aftermath? Some of my thoughts – do criticize if you disagree:-
1.) The Russian ‘liberal opposition’ – the likes of Nemtsov, Kasyanov etc. and now joined by Navalny and ‘independent’ Golos are claiming and will claim ‘widespread voting irregularities’ to create doubt in the legitimacy of Putin’s win to two main audiences – their benefactors in Washington and London; and Russian voters. The former, of course, have a vested interest in ridding Putin so there’s nothing much to comment about these nefarious characters. The latter – those hardcore anti-Putinites will remain hardcore anti-Putinites; as for the majority – I think they have no mood for anymore instability and chaos or protests.
2.)I agree with yalensis and Alexander that the possibility of violence among the radical anti-Putinites(and I believe they will be goaded by Navalny especially) is quite high. Although these protesters(and especially the more radical ones) would be a minority of the protest crowd and would not pose immediate challenge to Putin, their reasons for stoking violence are the following in my opinion:
a.)For leaders like Navalny etc. – they have to show to the West that they have the semblance of an ability to ‘shake’ Putin up and hence remain under Western support(and perhaps payroll?).
b.)The final intention is not to dislodge Putin in the short term(they know they can’t) but to press Putin into making some tough decisions on violent(and probably persistent) protesters – a ‘battle of wills’. If Putin ‘tolerates’ them – it might embolden less energetic opposition supporters to protest as well. Putin might also appear ‘weak’ and unable to ‘control’ the situation. The ‘hope’ is for a final weakening of Putin’s regime to stage a ‘revolution’(although this ‘hope’ would not likely be realized in the near future, weakness in the current regime means such a potential can still be realized in the long run). On the other hand, if Putin uses the security forces to put down violent protests, the opposition hopes to use that as ‘proof’ that he is a dictator and no doubt Western media will scream at fever pitch of ‘the brutal and evil dictator Putin’.
3.)What would Putin do if the protests turn out violent? I think that he most likely would make the decision of arresting them and a show of force. This will ‘win’ him howls of criticism and ‘wrath’ from Western leaders – but since he is already in their ‘bad books’, why bother? To the Russian voters, he might explain that the reason for arresting the protesters is not that he does not tolerate dissent but he does not tolerate dissent that stokes chaos and violence. Also, perhaps incriminating evidence of opposition leaders ties with Western benefactors might crop up to justify their arrests. Whatever it is, Russia-West relations would deteriorate mostly because the West refuses to back down in stoking internal instability within Russia. A sad state of affairs indeed!
Western media and ‘liberal Russia’ bias continues with their seeking opinions only(or majority) from obviously anti-Putin, disgruntled fellows like Navalny, Nemtsov and the crowd and projecting this minority mood as the majority mood in Russia:-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/world/europe/russia-votes-in-presidential-election.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/dismay-with-putin-on-the-rails/454057.html
They sound like spoiled-sports or sour grapes – green with envy that ‘Putin is poised to win again’.
sinotibetan
It is the same at sites for people who like to feel progressive, even though they have long forgotten the meaning of that word. Huffington Post kept asking if Putin would win, then leads with a post about massive fraud. It is just as insightful as that, with the comments talking about Bush and Sarah Palin. Very embarrassing for the new media. MSNBC also led with Maria Gaidar’s picture and a caption quote denying she ran over a girl. There was no depth to the reporting – no mention of the conductor who is serving a sentence for the crime or the witnesses who described a vehicle that was responsible.
Dear cartman,
I am not American or Canadian – and I think my ‘political views’ are like a mix of different ‘ideologies’ – i.e. I cannot classify myself as ‘progressive’, perhaps ‘unclassifiable’ are my political views. In the past, I thought I was sort of ‘conservative’(i.e. if I were American) but then I don’t agree with many things advocated by American ‘conservatives’ – certainly in disagreement with many of the views of ‘neoconservatives’. Admittedly, I am a ‘social conservative’ and probably would be in disagreement with many commentators here if the subject-matter were social issues. As for ‘foreign relations’ – again if hypothetically I were an American – I think I am closer to the views of ‘paleoconservatives’ : a dislike of man-made Utopia and disbelieve in military intervention. I also dislike the idea of ‘forcing’ my values and beliefs unto others – believing more in sane, logical dialogues instead….hence no country(especially a ‘superpower’) should behave likewise. I also do not believe there is ‘one universal ideology’ that is a panacea for every situation for any given country at any given time. Hence, Western politicians ‘democratization’ crusade bordering on religion is not something I believe in. Just too many to list regarding my ‘political views’. Thanks for trying to understand this disorganized comment.
sinotibetan
Thanks Sino-T, your analysis about Western “sour grapes” is spot-on. American interests (and media) suffered 2 major losses in the same week: (1) Syria (=Assad putting down the NATO/Al Qaeda rebellion); and (2) Russia (=Putin winning election in first round). No wonder they are so bitter!
On #1: I notice that Western media emulated Al Jazeera in hysterics about Assad “brutally” executing 47 “deserters” from Syrian army. Well, these 47 soldiers defected from the regular army over to the side of the mutineers. Then they were captured when Syrian army overran Homs. One of 2 things took place (I cannot say which): (1) the defectors were killed while resisting; this is likely since they are devout jihadists willng to endure “martyrdom” and hence fight to the death; OR (2) the defectors were captured, then quickly put before military tribunal and shot. Which is normal during wartime. Either way, these 47 defectors are now in “paradise” enjoying their 72 virgins!
Dear yalensis,
I have not much knowledge on the current situation in Libya and Syria but most of my friends from the Middle East are dismayed. They know that Assad and the late Gaddafi were not innocent of all wrongdoing but most are very clear that thanks to the West’s ‘intervention’, the situation is worse than it originally was.
Western ambitions of overthrowing Putin remain in spite of this major setback. They want to try the ‘Gaddafi method’ – alas Russia has nuclear weapons and a major world power unlike Libya – so those ambitions remain their wet dreams.
sinotibetan
Hmmmm…..even as I was writing the above comment, Putin won the elections. Congratulations to Putin!
http://www.globalnews.ca/putin+easily+wins+russias+presidential+election++exit+polls/6442593870/story.html
sinotibetan
Thanks, Sino-T, and long time no see!! Congratulations to Mr. Putin, and it looks like I am in with a chance to win Anatoly’s Sublime Oblivion T-Shirt based on the exit polls – they give Mr. Putin between 58% and 59%, and my bet was 58.8%.
I agree with your possible scenarios, and as I said earlier, the liberal strategy seems to be emerging as an attempt to simply ignore the elections as if they had never happened and call for new ones until somebody other than Putin is proclaimed the legitimate ruler of the Russian Federation. But I don’t think they’re going to get any mileage out of it, not even from serial-premature-transitional-government-recognizers like Nikolas Sarkozy.
It’s kind of depressing, though, to see otherwise quite sensible people argue that this political system (absent the electoral fraud, which I think will be discovered to have been mostly fabricated) is destined for the rubbish heap – that people need “more choice”.
Really? More choice, like what? Like the United States, which realistically only has two political parties, many of whose policy positions are almost indistinguishable from those of the other party? A political system in which fundamentalist religion is a landmine that candidates have to step carefully around – often pretending to religious zeal they do not feel – in order to avoid being branded a Godless Communist? The example cited is particularly funny as it captures “Pastor Ted” Haggard in full-on crazy mode, ranting that “abortion and salvaging of stem cells from fetuses is no different than Hitler making lampshades out of human skin (something history suggests Hitler himself never did)” and practically rolling around on the floor in a religious ecstasy against gay marriage and homosexuals styling themselves as if they were normal people. That looked a bit hypocritical a short time later when he admitted to being a willing participant in “drug-fueled homosexual trysts”, something that was almost certainly going on at the same time as he was proclaiming himself the Defender of Normality. But I’m getting off the subject.
A political system which offers an abundance of choice results in many competing parties all struggling for power. It’d be fine if that meant the parties would try to outdo each other in offering great incentives for the people to vote them in. What in fact happens is all the parties try to sabotage each other and prevent others from gaining and exercising power, or form shifting alliances they almost immediately betray in order to reach the top of the pile. This is painfully evident even in a two-party system in which a single senator can put a “hold” on presidential nominees for vitally important positions simply because the rules give him the power to do so – and in this case, to prevent the employees of the subject agency from joining a labour union. In such a system, inserting patronage “earmarks” into bills that are sometimes totally unrelated in order to reward generous political donors is so common as to hardly arouse interest; it’s “just business”.
I think Russia is already as democratic as it needs to be, and while the popularity of a single leader should not allow him to rule forever, it should also not be an impediment to his continuing to lead within the limits of the law provided the vote is free and fair. Putin’s established popularity suggests that busloads of surly workers being shuttled in with orders to vote for Putin or lose their jobs is nonsense. The “carousel voting” is easy to fake. We’ll see. But no matter how solid the proof, the west will never accept Putin as legitimate and will do all it can to destabilize Russia under his governance. That it does so at the same time it is publicly backing and agitating to arm “Syrian rebels” (many of whom are Libyans and other foreigners) whose stated position is that any Russian or Chinese citizen found in Syria should be kidnapped and killed should teach you a lot about the concept of “legitimacy”.
Dear Sinotibetan,
I agree with all your points listed above.
What should the Russian government do when faced by civil unrest organized by a foreign funded vocal minority?
Throw the book at them, I say! Have them arrested quickly and publicly with minimal necessary violence; then have their trials made public and attended by the foreign press corps. Let them have foreign advocates, if they wish; let them bring Robert Amsterdam and his cohorts over and then throw the bloody book at their clients!
At such public trials the demonstrators will be exposed first and foremost as having been in breach of public order laws, no matter what political garnishing the defendants may pour over their activities in defence of their breach of the peace. And when the West criticizes these arrests and the charges that have led to them, then the Russian government can just roll out recent examples of similar mass arrests of protestors who have been in breach of public order in the USA, UK, France, Italy, Greece etc.
More importantly, in such criminal trials made against those who may be arrested for, say, setting up camp on the Moscow streets, the prosecution should be able to expose the foreign funding of these anti-government activities and activists. When such foreign funding is exposed (surely not too difficult a task), that should provide enough material to shame into silence the yuppie iPad bourgeoisie and the priviliged few, such as Sobchak and her ilk, that have tagged along with the “opposition” crowd because it is “cool”; for if they continue to protest that their actions are in he best interests of the state, it can easily be pointed out that even if subjectively that may indeed be the case, objectively their actions are in the best interests of US global hegemony; in much the same way as subjectively Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but objectively was an agent of the German Empire.
Apart from cases which may include charges of serious assault against law enforcement officers, I think that those who are put on trial should not receive custodial sentences and that their fines should be kept to a minimum.
In other words, i advocate a good old show trial carried out from a position of power, which trial will only serve, hopefully, to consolidate such a position.
Let us take a deep breath before we start calling for people to be arrested and rounded up.
If people demonstrate lawfully and peacefully then they are exercising their democratic right. If however they behave in a violent and criminal way then it is the duty (not the right) of the authorities to arrest and prosecute them according to the law in an open court accessible to legal observers and the press in which the defendants are given a fair trial and are properly represented by lawyers and advocates of their choice. The latter are requirements under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights of which Russia is a signatory. Let us avoid using words like “show trials”, which is not what Moscow Exile is actually calling for or describing, but which has a very specific meaning and which Russia of all places has a special reason to avoid.
Dear Moscow Exile and Alexander,
Thanks for the comments!
I actually agree with both of you and I have no doubt that Putin would only resort to arresting protesters that have behaved violently and in a criminal way. The recent protests and how Putin cleverly dealt with them have shown that Putin is up to the task. Sadly, I think people like Navalny et al. wants to instigate unrest for the reasons I have mentioned. Then, arrests by the security forces would be inevitable. As for the Western political elites, they just never learn!
sinotibetan
I have to say that in the light of the exit poll results and with the turnout higher than it was in December or four years ago I think the protest movement is going to struggle to maintain momentum. The distance between the vote Putin is getting and that of his next challenger Zyuganov is so enormous that even if one allows for some fraud it is simply impossible to claim that Zyuganov has been cheated of victory. Indeed the idea is incredible.
I am afraid that does not mean that we may not see violence today or tomorrow. However given that whatever fraud there has been cannot have affected the outcome to any degree it is going to be very difficult to sustain people’s sympathy or interest. On the contrary the leaders of the opposition and the protest movement will look increasingly like what some of them (eg. Zyuganov) are, which is bad losers, whilst the fact that what they really object to is Putin rather than rigged elections will become increasingly clear.
Dear Alexander.
“I am afraid that does not mean that we may not see violence today or tomorrow. ”
Sadly, I agree.
“However given that whatever fraud there has been cannot have affected the outcome to any degree it is going to be very difficult to sustain people’s sympathy or interest.”
In fact, the majority of Russians might even be angry with the protesters who disrupt their daily life. Hopefully the protests fizzle out quickly and radicals are too few to cause much violence or disruptions.
sinotibetan
“…In fact, the majority of Russians might even be angry with the protesters….”
I think that is very likely, which is why I actually do think that the protests will fizzle out. However that makes the potential for violence greater not lesser since otherwise the protesters are staring total failure in the face.
Clinton/McFaul badly overplayed their hand. Their Keystone cop bumbling attempt at Orange (sorry, White-Ribbon) Revolution in Russia only awakened a sleeping giant (= the Russian silent majority). Now these clowns will be forced to spend the rest of their careers trying to come to grips with this failure.
Anybody who wants to read bad, biased journalism need only go to the election coverage in the Guardian. I am not going to bother to provide a link.
I would just say that the Guardian (and specifically Luke Harding) are repeatedly showing what looks to me to be the same example of ballot stuffing that was caught on web camera in a polling station in Dagestan. It is not reporting that the results from that polling station have been cancelled as is confirmed by Itar Tass.
The Guardian is also showing film of what it says is carousel voting. However it is far from clear to me that the film is showing anything of the sort. One film simply shows a queue of people lining up to vote. Other fim shows people being bused in to vote. The fact that people are bused in to vote at a particular polling station does not mean that they are not entitled to vote at that polling station or that they are being bused around polling stations so that they can engage in multiple voting, which is what carousel voting is. I understand that some factories routinely provide transport to their workers to enable them to vote. There is nothing inherently wrong and illegal about that. It happens in Britain as well.
Have you see Anatoly’s election post at Al Jazeera? He specifically addressed the bus issue, although in the context of resigned and sullen workers being bussed in from outside of town, coerced to the core, to demonstrate for Putin in advance of the elections. He pointed out that even if you doubled the number of buses that appeared in photographs and video on the fringes of the protest, then imagined them filled to capacity and further that every person on every bus was ordered to come, it would still only total 4000 people. The oposition is so jumpy – or so eager to scream “fraud” – that every public conveyance is implicit of fraud.
Real “carousel voting” is difficult to prove unless you have someone very distinctively dressed or otherwise easily identifiable observed voting multiple times – behavior that would not be consistent with someone trying to hide it. That would be the behavior of someone trying to get noticed, and as we have already discussed, only one group would benefit from that and it would not be Putin.
Dear Mark,
I have seen Anatoly’s post and I think it is an outstanding post. By the way like you I have lost my chance for a free T shirt. I heavily underestimated Putin’s vote.
On the subject of carousel voting, the web cameras ought to make it possible to capture it if the same people are turning up to different polling stations. Surely that was the point of installing the web cameras in the first place? That is not what the videos put up by the Guardian appear to show.
By the way I understand that Ivan Melnikov of the KPRF is claiming that the government has created “secret polling stations” (which no one of course has seen) to circumvent the problem. Golly! The ingenuity of it! These guys are not only wicked but brilliant!
How are the voters supposed to know where these “secret polling stations” are? And if the voters know, how are they secret?
I’m reminded of one of my favourite quotes, by the cynically comical Voltaire; ” I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one. O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it”.
The idea of the “secret polling stations” is of course absurd.
I am beginning to think that the videos put up by Luke Harding that purport to show carousel voting all relate to a single incident at a place called Strogino north west of Moscow. If so there has been an investigation and what sounds like a satisfactory explanation has been offered. This is that the people in the videos are local building workers who were bused in by their employer from local construction sites. Apparently because they all arrived at the same time this caused a queue to form. It seems that there may not be anything more to the incident than that.
Dear Alexander Mercouris,
But what you say is what I said. I am not calling for the arbitrary arrests of known oppositionists: I am calling for the arrests of those that commit public order offences, which is what some, no doubt, are being encouraged to do or have a mind to do even as I now write: there are, I believe, very many in Moscow who are no doubt willing to assemble illegally and to demonstrate publicly with the intention of inciting public disorder.
That is a criminal offence – anywhere.
And those who are perhaps now preparing to assemble in Moscow without having received appropriate sanctions to do so; those who may take it upon themselves to “storm the Kremlin”, as the US agent and rabble rouser Navalny has already suggested they were capable of doing, should be arrested quickly and efficiently and put on trial for breach of public order.
I should add that I have great experience in matters concerning breach of public order in the UK. During the year long miners’ strike 1984-1984, I cannot remember how many times I was arrested under Section 6 of the Public Order Act (if I remember the act correctly), and finally I had a court order imposed upon me by a stipendary magistrate that forbad me from going within one half mile of National Coal Board (the British state deep coal mining authority) premises, which in my case meant that after the imposition of that order I could barely venture further than my garden gate for fear of arrest. In effect, I was under partial house arrest for the best part of 6 months.
I don’t recall at the time any human rights advocates such as Robert Amsterdam of Toronto volunteering to take up my case, and that of my striking colleagues who were in the same predicament as I was, to the European Court of Human Rights.
Dear Moscow Exile,
I know that is what you said and I hope I made that clear.
I didn’t realise you were a miner. The treatment of the miners during the strike was absolutely disgraceful. Though it will be of little consolation to you to know this I happen to know than many senior judges and law officers were shocked by what happened and by the gross misuse of the law by the government and the police with the assistance of the magistrates. It marked the moment when the traditionally very conservative British judiciary began to part company with the Conservative government. The campaign from within the judiciary to enshrine the European Convention of Human Rights into English law through the Human Rights Act began at that time and was a response to what happened. It is one thing the miners did achieve though the present Conservative government naturally wants to undo it.
Time for a new blog entry
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russians-voting–and-watching/2012/03/04/gIQA3j6CqR_story.html?hpid=z1
Actually, I have a new post about one-quarter complete. It will be entitled (unless I change it) “A Russophobic Rogue’s Gallery” and feature many of the teeth-gnashing pathological Russia-haters we all know; coincidentally, Kathy Lally was first up.
Dear Mark, Kievite and Yalensis,
Any guesses about how much it has cost our friends to create and sustain the protest movement? A very well informed source in the Greek Foreign Ministry told me that the cost of the Orange Revolution was well over $200 million and that the funding provided to Tymoshenko for the parliamentary elections in 2006 was about the same.
Hi Alexander,
Any guesses about how much it has cost our friends to create and sustain the protest movement?
I would double this figure.
Here is my line of thinking about that. There are two large source of financing opposition in Russia: USAID and Human rights funding
The total official budget for USAID/Russia in 2008 was $76.6 million. (http://russia.usaid.gov/about/faq/). The official figure for 2011 is $70 millions. http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2011/2011_CBJ_SummaryTables.pdf
You need to add 160 millions for Human rights http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Thomas_Melia_Testimony.pdf
In such cases the simplest way to get the realistic estimate is to double the official figure (we need to add Soros and other financial sources and that is not easy). So half a billion dollars seems to me a reasonable estimate of net expenses.
Of course not all the money reach the opposition. Probably 10% is admin overhead. So I think 400 millions is a more reasonable estimate.
Dear Kievite,
I agree. $400 million is around the figure I would have guessed. Thanks for the information.
@alexander: I am not very good with money, so I would not even venture a guess. But I am sure it is in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars of American taxpayer $$$. In this case, the money was completely wasted, as the White-Ribbon Revolutionary movement only succeeded in making Putin more popular than he was before it started!
P.S. It was probably enough money to bail out Greece. And it would have been better spent that way, because Greece is a very great country, and I’m not just saying that to suck up, I really believe it!
Thanks Yalensis! Much appreciated.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Permit me to say something – even though, I think as a lawyer, Alexander is more than capable of explaining himself.
Actually both you and Alexander are in agreement. I think the only point that Alexander was trying to make was to not use the word ‘show trial’ because of its definition in legal terms:
“The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as an impressive example and as a warning. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than correctional justice. The term was first recorded in the 1930s.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_trials
Sorry for quoting lowly wikipedia – but then I consider myself a ‘legal illiterate’.
You did not mean ‘show trial’ in its legal definition by your explanation. I.e. those criminal protesters are arrested because they are found guilty not because they are ‘deemed guilty beforehand’.
sinotibetan
Dear SinoTibetan,
Moscow Exile and I are in complete agreement. My point was to avoid use of the words “show trial” especially as there are people in the west and in Russia who are going to claim that that is what any trials of protesters who break the law are.
In Russia and in western reporting of Russia the words “show trial” inevitably bring to mind the Moscow trials of the 1930s, which were the diametric opposite of what Moscow Exile is calling for.
Dear Alexander,
Thanks for your clarification. Thus I know I did not misunderstand what you said.
sinotibetan
The Guardian is insinuating that Putin was sobbing at his victory speech outside the Kremlin and is claiming that Putin is being ridiculed for this on Twitter. I have just watched the speech on the BBC and I saw nothing like that and no sign of any tears. Not of course that it would matter if there were. By the way the crowd looked enormous.
I gather that Putin did wipe away a tear but is putting it down to the wind. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Guardian or anyone else thinks the fact that Putin shed the odd tear somehow reflects badly on him.
Especially when the current Speaker of the House of their most fawned-upon ally, John Boehner, bursts into loud and semi-convulsive sobs at the slightest of provocations. I haven’t seen any Grauniad articles mocking him for being such a candy-ass, and his supporters are of the opinion it only makes him more manly and “human”. He certainly could use any help that he can get to make him appear human, and he just as certainly had better not rely on his intellect.
Oops!!! I stand corrected!!
This just proves Putin is Westernizing, if the Botox wasn’t enough.
It is becoming acceptable for men to cry in public, as it shows they are sensitive, “genuine”, etc. Observe Boehner, Glenn Beck, etc.
Did Grim Putin shed a tear? Scandalous! Let us call it Tear-Gate. I cynically attribute this to the Western media trying to change the subject and distract the public with nonsensical trivia. With Putin winning easily on Round #1, they just endured an Epic Fail, all their predictions turned out to be false; so this is their way of going “Hey! Look over there!”
P.S. Whenever I am in a bitter cold wind, my eyes tend to run; and my nose also tends to run like a fountain. Did Putin’s nose get all snotty? Now THAT would have been a story!
What?? They were wrong??? Well, that’s easy to fix – the press will simply change their tack to, “Everyone knew Putin would win on the first ballot. He had to, because it was rigged”. That’s why I simply loved La Russophobe’s comment to Luke Harding on the Guardian website, in which he said something to the effect of, nobody could have predicted…bla bla bla. To which La Russophobe responded, Bullshit. You predicted it yourself, and you were wrong. She is also stingingly contemptuous of Navalny and his “grassroots movement”, and has pointed out elsewhere (on her own site, if I remember correctly) that in order to proportionally equal the Orange Revolution crowd, Moscow would have to come up with at least 1.4 million protesters. Go get ‘em, Phobie!!!
I am starting to like Kimmie, because she is a straight-shooter.
Oh, I am sure she is by no means a straight shooter or anything like it. She’s just sufficiently bitter about Navalny’s failure to spark a bloody revolution, with lots of Russian deaths and Putin’s first and foremost, that she is being unfamiliarly realistic. Somebody who would argue that black was white and then delete your response when you sent a link to black doesn’t change overnight.
It’s funny and ironic how the most extreme Russophobe is so warped that she actually ends up doubling back into the Russophile position!
I’ve agreed with a lot of what she wrote in the past few months.
One last comment from me in this flurry.
I was very dubious about the web camera idea but with hindsight it was a stroke of genius. Firstly the efficiency of the operation over such a vast territory is awesome. If anybody had proposed anything like this in Britain with the inertia and incompetence we have here it would have taken years to set up and even then it probably wouldn’t have worked properly. That in a country as enormous as Russia such an operation could be up and running within months shows a level of organisation that is nothing short of astonishing.
Secondly, it has swamped out the video nasties purportedly showing election violations being prepared by the opposition, which simply cannot compete with the official (ie real) film. I gather that the audience has been enormous with people looking to see themselves and their friends voting as well as checking up on various celebrities.
By the way is it true that at a polling station in Kaliningrad people threw an impromptu disco with strobe lights and all?
On the Russian net there’s a spate of strange scenes shot by video cameras at polling stations. It turns out, however, that the scenes were shot to test the cameras before elections took place, so you can see, for example, people dancing at a disco held in a school hall that was going to be a polling station and also people doing aerobics at another place where the polling booths etc. are visible in the shots.
Dear Sinotebetan,
I wrote “show trial” in my comment above out of a certain sense of mischievousness. It was foolish of me to do so in the written medium, for the written word cannot convey the cynicism that lies behind my use of that term above. You see, I often notice that every trial in Russia is portrayed by the Western media as being farcical and parallels are often drawn between them and the infamous political show trials of the Stalin era.
Everything that I see reported in the Western media about the Russian judiciary always seems to present the whole Russian legal edifice as a show, a Potemkin Village judiciary, a faux legal system.
I work with several Russian advocates every week, and they are, in my opinion, “the real deal”. They are in-house oil company lawyers and the contracts that they draw up in English and which I proof read are certainly not for show. Furthermore, about 10 years ago I once apprehended a thief after quite a chase around the blocks of my district in Moscow, a man about 10 years younger than I was at the time. Unfortunately for him, after I had relieved him of the shopping bag that he had stolen, two cops walked around the corner by chance and, on seeing my altercation with the thief, asked me what was going on. I just told them that it was something personal, but the smarter of the two caught on to what had happened and arrested him.
After that, I spent an age in Taganskaya precinct police station with the cops and had to make several visits to a public prosecutor, a charming young woman whom I also had to accompany to the notorious Butyrka prison in central Moscow in order to put the finger on the unfortunate thief. And there he was in a big cage with other remand prisoners. I felt sorry for him because he had by that time been on remand for some three months, and I told the prosecutor that if I had my way I would have the charges dropped. She urged me not to have any sympathy for him because he had already confessed to numerous thefts and burglaries, all against old people. At his trial he was in a cage again and he confessed to all charges and was given a custodial sentence, after which he was to be deported: he was an illegal immigrant – a Ukrainian citizen.
I witnessed nothing untoward about that criminal trial. The only strange thing – even shocking to a Westerner no doubt – about it was the cage. But that is Russian practice.
Interestingly, the fact that St. Mikhail of the Gulag had to appear in a cage during his trials was one of the things that the European Court of Human Rights criticized in its judgement over whether Khodorkovskiy was a political prisoner, and even imposed a fine on the Russian state for making him suffer the indignity of being in such a cage. No such anguish, however, over the thousands of accused criminals that appear in such cages everyday in courts throughout Russia.
Anyway, the “show trial” that I had in mind above should have been better expressed as a “public trial”, namely I think that any who are arrested for riotous assembly etc.as a consequence of Putin’s presidential election victory should not be tried in camera but so that the whole world may witness Russian criminal law in action against those accused of criminal offences.
Then again, in hindsight that may not be such a good idea, for the accused would then be seen on benches within cages and there would then follow much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the West over Russian barbarity.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thank you for taking time to explain your views. I appreciate it tremendously!
“You see, I often notice that every trial in Russia is portrayed by the Western media as being farcical and parallels are often drawn between them and the infamous political show trials of the Stalin era.”
It is a stereotype that the Western media want to etch in the minds of Western readers. It’s as much used as a ‘justification’ for their own politicians to self-righteously claim their ‘superiority’ over others. It is this stereotyping by their own media that has misguided and misinformed many – Western readers and many non-Western English readers(like myself in the past). I used to have very high regard for all those Western media – believing(now I know, erroneously) that their views are ‘independent’ and ‘impartial’ for that’s how Western media have portrayed themselves to be. That’s why I believe this blog is a good platform to correct the misinformation about Russia in Western media that have brought a lot of harm.
Even Western travel books have not freed themselves from some of these stereotyping – even such ‘reputable ones’ like Lonely Planet. I guess we all see events in the lens of our own biases – the sad thing is that the Western media add to the myopia.
All I can say that here in Asia, we do not see the Russian people nor the judiciary system nor anything like the way the Western media portray. I did not have those biases until I read their media. Thankfully blogs like these help to correct those misconceptions.
sinotibetan
64.4% now for Putin according to RT:
http://rt.com/
Shit! There goes my T-Shirt. The vote was rigged, damn it.
Someone has just (00:45 Moscow time) fired off a “salyut” (firework display) near my house, which is situated about 2kms from the Kremlin.
One (very last!) comment.
According to the Guardian even Golos’s “independent tally” of the vote currently puts Putin at 55% (ie above the 50% threshold). If even Golos is saying this then what then does the opposition have to protest about or discuss? The official tally with 40% of the vote counted is 64%.
Incidentally I gather the disco happened somewhere called Kirov and not in Kaliningrad.
Cheering about that was premature. Golos’ figure for Putin now down to 50.2%.
http://sms.golos.org/all/data?utf8=%E2%9C%93&org%5B%5D=1&org%5B%5D=3&org%5B%5D=8&org%5B%5D=9&org%5B%5D=12&org%5B%5D=13&org%5B%5D=14&cs_y=1®ion_id=&uik=&x=122&y=11
I’m sure they’re pulling out all the stops in a focused effort to get him below that threshold, so that they can claim he did not win on the first ballot and that there should be a run-off between him and Zyuganov. Obviously he would cream Zyuganov, but that’s not what this is about – this is about whether Russians are going to let foreigners and the foreign press with their hysterics about fraud dictate Russian electoral policy. No matter what Putin agreed to, the only thing they want to see and the only thing that will satisfy would be for him to step aside and let someone else have the presidency. And we know he’s not going to do that, so there’s no point acknowledging them at all. This is just a transparent effort to whip up big demonstrations. People ought to think a little about the likelihood GOLOS cares anything about the Russian people and democracy. All they care about is stirring up shit and destabilizing Russia.
I can’t say I am surprised. Frankly I was surprised that Golos put him up as high it did. I am sure Mark is right and they will find some way to get Putin’s number below 50%.
I notice by the way that Golos puts Prokhorov’s vote almost equal to Zyuganov’s. No surprise there.
On the subject of Golos I am surprised that no one has commented on the absurd pretensions of this organisation. Russia is the world’s largest country with an electorate of 110 million people spread out over multiple time zones. Yet Golos, a relatively small organisation, claims to be able to duplicate the work of the official election authorities and of the Central Electoral Committee and to provide a result within a fraction of a single percentage point that is more accurate than the official count! Truly the work of supermen with psychic powers.
GOLOS hasn’t been trying to show that the run off should have been between Putin and Zyuganov. They’ve been trying to show that the run off should have been between Putin and Prokhorov (and with that they have been helped by the Economist, which is to be expected). Surely with a 50.2% figure they can then cite a margin of error (and emphasize that the margin of error could put the “real” tally to say 48%) and with Prokhorov having just as much votes or more than Zyuganov according to their data then it should have been the “ev0l Putin” versus “Saint Prokhorov the Good” in a second round ballot and Russians would have come to their senses and voted for the goodly Prokhorov.
Which is particularly odd given that all the western sources were happy with the idea of Zyuganov winning and happy to pimp for him while he was increasing market share, so to speak. Prokhorov was an amusing curiosity. The west always has an eye for a comer, doesn’t it? Not.
More of the same from Luke Harding aka Tintin
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/04/russian-elections-putin-brezhnev
The Great Man himself explains in the comments to this article by reference to an article of Miriam Elder’s that the reason so many comments get deleted from Comment is Free is because they are the work of Kremlin Trolls.
I have never myself bothered to comment on an article in Comment is Free. Anyone here who has tried and been deleted (Mark, Anatoly, Moscow Exile?), you now have it from the man himself.
I have just been reading through the feed on the BBC website concerning the election. Though most of the comments by the British journalists are predictable (though moderate in tone) and though there is an interview with Navalny it also includes a fair number of Twitter comments etc from Russian voters most of which seemed to be strongly pro Putin. Makes a change to what one reads elsewhere in the British press.
Oh, I don’t know; if you look at the comments below the Luke Harding piece, the overwhelming majority – about 8 in 10, I’d say – offer the opinion that he is just being spiteful and/or mock him for his nonstop plugging of his book.
I saw that, and I have saved the Elder piece for a reference when she is discussed in the next post.
I stopped logging in to the Guardian a while back. I just got sick of the dross that Guardian editorials and Harding and Tisdall were constantly churning out about matters Russian. I think that the majority of those commenting in the Guardian about Russia are critical about the Guardian’s incessant anti-Russian line, but it just got too much for me when the comments section to an article about Russia seemed to have every other comment deleted and especially after the great man himself took pains to respond to one of my comments by suggesting that I work for the FSB.
The deletions in comments made about Guardian Russian articles became especially noticeable whenever comments were made in reply to Harding articles. I think it’s one of the Guardian house rules that commentators cannot criticize Guardian employees, so as soon as the question of Harding’s proven plagiarism turns up in the comments, there appears a spate of deletions. And the curious thing is that the Guardian long ago acknowledged that their Tin-Tin in Moscow is a plagiarist, in that that newspaper made a public apology for his plagiarism when the shit hit the fan in 2007 after the Exile in Moscow had exposed the similarity of his articles to those of Kevin O’Flynn in the Moscow Times.
See: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8725&IBLOCK_ID=35
But it seems that Harding’s plagiarism is a habit that he finds difficult to kick: it’s his not-so-secret vice. One year after he had been exposed as a plagiarist, the following blog caught my eye:
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/07/24/russian-bears-refuse-to-eat-guardian-hack-harding/
To close, something from RT concerning British corespondents in Russia:
http://rt.com/usa/columns/namenotfound/namenotfound-british-reporters-navalny/
It’s from an RT collective op-ed called NameNotFound:
See: http://rt.com/usa/columns/namenotfound/
Thanks, this is great! I haven’t done Harding’s part yet, and I hope it won’t be plagiarism if I borrow your links!
Torture, mass murder and cannibalism by our Friends in Libya is OK but desecrating British war graves is beyond the pale.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9121706/Libyan-rebels-desecrate-graves-of-British-war-heroes.html
Admittedly, that is pretty disgusting. What is it going to take for the west to apologize in a public forum to the Libyan people for the horrific plague it visited upon them? Does this discourage the appetite for intervention? Not a bit of it.
Another one: money for the Libyan war wounded is going to tummy tucks and lip enhancement.
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/libyans-get-tummy-tucks-with-money-meant-to-treat-war-wounded
Well, the NTC can certainly afford it – they’re blowing through Ghadaffi’s money (what remains of it after the west plundered it to bail out Europe) and when it’s gone the IMF will be glad to advance them billions, so long as they say they’re going to use it for “democratic reforms”.
There have been reports of as many as 18,000 Libyan “rebels” faking wounds and seeking medical treatment in Jordan in order to slip into Syria to join Al Qaeda rebellion against Assad. If they actually get tummy tucks and breast implants instead, well, that is good news for Assad. (Unless he ends up still fighting against a physically more attractive rebel army.)
Re: Desecration of British war graves in Libya. This story would be confusing to anyone who has not been following the Libyan “rebels” in all their glory. A casual reader might believe that the rebels are anti-British or hate the Brits for helping to bomb their country last year; which is not the case. I believe I can explain this odd behavior because I have read many stories about the “rebels” desecrating all kinds of graves, including those of fellow Muslims. (From what I understand, most Muslims do not build tombs or mausoleums; but some do; and these Salafists consider that to be a heresy.) In other words, these “rebels” are members of an extreme religious Islamist sect which believes that ALL grave markings are unholy and go against the “true” teachings of Islam; their anti-tomb activism is a a form of “anti-idolatry”. In other words, their desecration of graves is a religious more than a geo-political act. In other words, they are idiotic barbarians.
A deeper undercurrent runs below that, though. NATO – and by extension, the British – must have known that such a group would be totally incompatible with an inclusive, vibrant market democracy with themselves at its head: is there any such society led by Salafist fundamentalists? They likewise had to have known the claims that the whole country was opposed to Ghadaffi and wanted him gone were lies, as were the reports (tried again for the campaign against Syria) that government forces were firing heavy antiaircraft machine guns into crowds of protesters and the silly but much-hyped crock that Ghaddafi was issuing Viagra to his forces so they would become rape cyborgs.
But they went ahead until they rubbed him out anyway. This suggests they also had a pretty good idea how Libya would end up.
War crimes, anyone?
NATO is run by smart guys who could not possibly believe they could turn Libya into a vibrant market economy/parliamentary democracy by bombing it into Stone Age then imposing primitive jihadist government. That was just the propaganda lie they fed the rubes. All NATO gangsters really cared about was executing Gaddafi and every member of the Gaddafi family. Why? I am now thinking the answer is quite simple: I believe the main reason for this war was the Goldman Sachs transaction, as discussed in above thread. To prevent Libya from acquiring a controlling share in Goldman Sachs. In other words, in this deteriorating New World Order, NATO has become the army and air force of the Wall Street bankers.
Oops!! Canadian war memorials as well. It’s touching, the way this report covers for them by suggesting they were angry over the burning of Korans in Afghanistan, rather than members of a sect that despises the trappings of foreign ceremony and religion. Or perhaps it’s simply ignorance; God knows that has been elevated to a virtue in this brave new world.
The grave desecrations have NOTHING to do with the Koran burnings. That is simply spin on the part of journalists trying to excuse the behavior of these Libyan barbarians.
I can prove this, because I remember reading several articles about rebel desecrations of graves/mausoleums, etc. which occurred LONG before the Koran burnings became known.
The Koran burnings became an issue just last month (February 2012), but the grave desecrations have been going on for months, actually since August 2011 when the rebels took power. There are many examples, here is one example showing Misratan rats using rockets to explode a (Muslim) mausoleum in the town of Tawergha:
The latest editorial from the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/05/russian-election-putin-vote-rigging
Apparently the vote in Moscow was stolen by carousel voting. There is actually little evidence of carousel voting so far. It is inherently difficult to organise and is only worthwhile in single constituency elections of the sort we have have in Britain. The idea that it can seriously affect the vote in a city of 14 million people is for the reasons Mark and Anatoly say absurd
The Guardian disappears every dissident poster by labeling them “Kremlin trolls”. So if you post there, you must be sure to state that you are not a Kremlin troll.
As I did. I am “Kanuk”.
Luke Harding: “Many thanks for your comments! For those wondering why some have been deleted here’s Miriam Elder’s piece on Kremlin internet trolls:”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/14987148
Lord give me the strength to finish my blog post “Luke Harding, Sleaziest Journalist in the World” which is 25% complete.
I tend to lose interest in hit pieces well before I finish them but Harding really deserves one to himself.
He will have a special place in the “Rogue’s Gallery of Russophobia”, which is also about 25% complete.
Let’s celebrate, friends! The most suitable candidate won a clean election AGAINST ALL ODDS. Accusations will never stop, these “experts” who want to express “concerns” all the time make me sick. But who cares… It was like that in 2004 and 2008 and it will be like that in the future, until an anglo-saxon citizen becomes president of Russia. That will be the only “clean” elections in history.
Keep up the good work with the education of the western common people, at least joes and janes could see, that hating an independent Russia is an irrational foolish thing, not a national interest.
“We have demonstrated that nobody can impose anything on us.” – this is the motto, which cause their “concerns”
Agreed, except that the west would be happy – for now – if just anyone but Putin were elected. The Russophobes even made mildly enthusiastic noises about the Communists: think of something like that happening in the seventies! Welcome back, it’s great to see you again!
I am constantly here and watching posts/comments. But I usually don’t reflect, because I am not so much up-to-date any more, and there is an enlarged community here with great answers. I am enjoying the comments, and I feel I can’t add too much useful information any more. It was just too much time to be up-to-date… and first of all I am an engineer.
If you need info about Hungary, I am ready to share experience. We fight great battles with EU now, just like I predicted back then… As we have installed a little bit more competent government with its own agenda, EU liberals has already started shouting “autocratism” based on the false reports of our domestic liberast traitors. Nice picture. And some say, that Hungary has nothing in common with Russia…
Greetings, friend @PvMikhail, last I heard you were finishing your studies. So you are a professional engineer now? Congratulations! I for one would be very interested to hear what is going on in Hungary, if you have some comments..
yalensis, you are very kind.. no no, I am a basic machining engineer who’s now struggling to get a job. That’s how it is. I pass my freetime with learning some German and Russian. Let’s see how it goes…
P.S. In our mass media: after the usual “Putin won amid the accusations of falsification by opposition” simplified sentences they edited a Navalniy interview into the coverage. I think this says everything about the quality and essence of our mass media.
When I got up in the morning, the radio had shouted, and an “expert” from the Institution of International Affairs (who could not speak 2 straight sentences in a row) spread the same old propaganda: 65 % voted in favor of Putin out of fear and because there is no alternative. And the remaining 1/3 is CATEGORICALLY REJECTS Putin system in general (this statement is a joke in itself). 2/3 – 1/3 split of Russia is dangerous, and if Putin wants to keep the country in one, he has to obey EU standards. The usual manipulation: YOUNG/EDUCATED hate Putin, because there is no freedom, opposed by old communists and people who used to fear authority.
This is like a joke, LITERALLY. There is a joke circulating here: Little Rabbit walks in the woods, meanwhile the Wolf and the Fox have decided, that they will beat him. But why should they beat him? The Fox says: “If he wears a hat, we’ll beat him, if not, likewise. So does it happen: Little rabbit wears no hat, so they beat him mercilessly. Tomorrow they want to beat him again. But why should they beat him? The Fox says: “We’ll ask for cigarettes. If he’s got cigarettes with with filters, we’ll beat him, If he has them without filters, likewise. So the Little Rabbit is approaching and they ask him: “Rabbit, give us cigarettes!” Little Rabbit says: “What kind would you like? With filter or without?” Wolf and the Fox caught by surprise. But finally the Fox: “Hey Wolf, do you see this? He has no hat!” So they beat him mercilessly. (I translated this from Hungarian, so I hope it is enjoyable to some extent.)
All in all: If VVP won 99% of votes with 99% turnout he would be a falsifier and dictator by evidence. Now, that VVP won a more or less fair election with maximum measures for transparency, where he got 64% with roughly the same turnout, he is a falsifier AND loathed by 1/3 of the country (false assumption), so he is a dictator, because he does not listen to liberal minority which is “western” educated, so more important than the dumb majority. Liberals are always more important than anybody! The others should just die… Same at Hungary.
I don’t know how liberals would have won Great Patriotic War without the dumb masses of majority… Any ideas? During Leningrad blockade they would have started street protest against Stalin and Hitler, then a hunger strike and petition to both dictators in addition with a letter to Great Britain for help after they betrayed even always western loyalist Poland.
That’s kind of criticism is weird coming from Hungary.
Elections there may not have falsifications, but the Constitutional amendments made by Orban would favor the majority at least as much as the c.5% level of pro-vlast fraud in Russia.
As far as I’ve heard, the new media law mandating “balance” in coverage is potentially far more restrictive than the main anti-media law in Russia, Article 282 against extremism.
I am not an average Hungarian. I am just interested in Russia. I have been a regular reader of your blog and other anti-antiRussian blogs since I got internet roughly 5 years ago when I started university. I had my clear opinion about Russia and the World in general back then, and I have just reinforced it since then with truckloads of data and analysis. I think I belong to a generation, which doesn’t affected by communism/anti-communism and fascism/anti-fascism so much, however the generation of our leaders and intelligentsia are greatly infected with such things.
Western media says that internet helps dissenters in closed “undemocratic” countries. Yes. And there are dissenters here as well. We have to educate people to see the problems we already know, and internet is good for that. It isn’t just Russian affairs I am talking about. The financial/economic system lead by anglo-saxon West is destroying the rest of the World, the main resources are finite, the place for waste is finite, but the power and appetite of capital is infinite. I know that you also interested in this. So If you want, you can call me a dissenter against the dominating Western/World system, because it can’t even admit its own defeat and keeps on rolling into disaster in the medium term. Unsustainable. And I am sick of people who glorify it as the only way. We have to act fast and responsibly develop new ways. This can not happen, if there is a hegemony on Earth, because it’s only goal is to keep status quo and keep the wasteful luxury exploited from the rest of the World.
I addition to that, liberal Europe culturally, demographically (and economically accordingly) destroys itself.
http://premier.gov.ru/eng/visits/ru/18081/events/18137/
But I have NEVER EVER seen such conferences by ANY politicians of European countries with super low fertility, including unfortunately my homeland. And in the light of this I don’t give a sh!t about democracy or media freedom. MY COUNTRY AND NATION IS DYING. And our politicians in EU are arguing about irrelevant details.
About media-law: Imagine a parallel with Russia. Orbán and Fidesz is like Putin and Unity (United Russia) in 2000 but with a strong anti-communist leaning. Socialist-liberals f%#ked up the country so bad after 8 years, that people fed up with them and chose Fidesz with more than 2/3 of the vote. Orbán is a pretty talented and increasingly independent politician, noone can even come close to him even from Fidesz. However the problem with Fidesz that unlike UR, it is not centrist, but strongly right leaning, and ideologically strongly infected with anti-communism, even anti-socialism and religion (which is not bad in general, but for a national 2/3 party). The left leaning liberal intelligentsia supporting socialist/liberal parties (the half of them are jews) hate them with so much passion that they do everything to bring them down, even initiating smear campaign against whole Hungary at abroad with full of false allegations. These people are traitors, because their only goal is to weaken Fidesz and they don’t care about the damage they cause to the country. If I read a Der Spiegel (or any other western) article, I will find so much false information… BUT I KNOW, I LIVE HERE. These things affect the country’s relations with the EU centre where the Hungarian government was constantly attacked by left/liberal politicians. The media law is one of these attacks. I am not saying it is perfect, but it doesn’t really affect the coverage of our media. If I turn on the TV, pretty much the same sh!t going on as 4 years ago. Even there is a left/liberal program which constantly digs dirt at the current government, it was first aired in 1998, when the first Orbán cabinet started work. The program kept it’s anti-Orban stance during socialliberal terms when Orbán was in opposition. So i guess media law is not a big deal. Public television channels however were quickly transformed to pro-Fidesz stance with the change of management, but come oon… public TV was always pro-government during soclib terms too. So big deal…
So I hope, if it is possible, that Orban will learn from Putin and does it’s job resurrecting the country. Otherwise I hate the FIdesz’s ideology, but who cares? The nation is at stake.
Sorry If I was long and obscene, but this is how it is, I am a frank person.
EU reluctant to congratulate Putin:
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2012/march/eu-reluctant-to-congratulate-putin/73776.aspx
Except they Miss Ashton to congratulate Nazarbayev after his win.
This is from an Economist website. So if it goes behind a paywall, you know what to do.
Reply
“Miss Ashton to congratulate Nazarbayev after his win.”
Obviously Putin’s mistake was not to win the election with 99.9% of the vote on a 99.9% turnout. In that case we can be sure he would have received the EU’s and Miss Ashton’s fulsome congratulations!
Novosit in this article http://en.rian.ru/society/20120305/171755419.html is now admitting that the number of people who participated in the garden ring protest on 26th February 2012 was just 18,000. It claims this on the basis of a headcount it says it carried out. It did not say this at the time and nor has it explained why it delayed in publishing this estimate at least on its English language website until after the election. Anyway this figure is far below the 30-40,000 claimed by the protesters on the day and must mean that the ring was not complete. For what it’s worth it is not too far from the 11,000 estimated by the police.
I have spent the morning reading the Russian election coverage in the British press and it has been a deeply depressing experience. I do not know of a single other story where the coverage is so monolithic and so uniform. Without exception all the newspapers and magazines I have read (and I have checked the Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Economist, the New Statesman and even the Sun on Sunday (where there is a peculiarly nasty article about Putin and Russia written by the former Foreign Secretary David Miliband)) offer the same view. This is that though Putin retains some residual popularity this is in steep decline and that notwithstanding his re election, which was fixed in advance, his fall is now inevitable as the middle class turns against him. All the articles and commentaries offer him essentially the same choice: capitulate to the demands of the opposition by arranging to transfer power to it, in which case he might be allowed a dignified exit (though that is not guaranteed), or face revolution and his own downfall and presumably imprisonment or death.
One looks in vain for a single article or commentary that deviates from this line. Indeed its uniformity is so complete that as on other occasions I am left to wonder whether it is the result of journalists and commentators gossiping and agreeing and copying each other in Moscow or London bars or whether it has been imposed or directed on them from above. Even in the worst days of the Cold War I do not remember media coverage of Russia being this bad. Brezhnev by comparison had it easy.
Even if one agrees with this analysis, which of course I don’t, it beggars belief that everybody does and that there are no alternative views. Where are they and why do we not see them?.
This is what some RT journalists wrote about Harding and others in an an anonymous op-ed feature that they run:
“Isn’t asking Edward Lucas and Luke Harding for their opinion on the Kremlin a bit like asking Bernard Fox (of Long Kesh fame) how he feels about her Majesty’s government? Both not only appear always ready, willing and able to heap crap on Putin and his “henchmen”, including RT, but seem to derive some perverse pleasure in doing so.
Both the intrepid Miriam Elder and the young Shaun Walker have some growing up to do in that department, but judging by the overall tone of their reporting from Moscow, they are also very determined to qualify for the Anti-Kremlin Premiership this season already.
Of course, some would ask whatever happened to Mary Dejevsky of the Independent, whose long-time reporting on Russia was a tiny bit less, shall we say, doom and gloom? Well, Mary seems to have been reassigned and now writes about breast implants and rogue ATMs.
Angus Roxburgh lived in Moscow for close to 20 years, running the Beeb’s office during the break-up of the Soviet Union and the exciting Yeltsin era. Roxburgh speaks flawless Russian. Luke Harding studied English and lived in Moscow for two years. Now Harding criticizes Roxburgh’s book for not understanding Russia. Pinch us, who’s smoking what here?
And to all of that we say “too bad”. Reading Messrs. Lucas, Harding, Walker and Ms. Elder will help you little in understanding Russia. It might help in nurturing your stereotypes though. That choice is totally yours”.
What a conceited twit is this Harding person to have criticised Roxburgh in such a fashion.
When Harding was the guardian’s Tin-Tin in Moscow, it was a standing joke, I believe, amongst some correspondents here that he hardly left the Guardian bureau. Well he hardly needed to, it seems, seeing as he was just taking his Moscow stories “off the wire” or simply plagiarizing them from the Exile or the Moscow Times.
See: http://rt.com/usa/columns/namenotfound/namenotfound-british-reporters-navalny/
and: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8652&IBLOCK_ID=35
I miss the Exile!
They are coordinating on twitter like little workers. I do like the idea for parody articles attributed to their names, since it seems like they have already made their minds up.
I’ve just watched on TV here a summary of the US news coverage of the election. Unbelievable! They all run a line similar to: Pushkin Steals the Election!
On the same news programme I saw Navalny and Kasparov giving a press conference before the election, where the latter says: “It doesn’t matter who wins the election. It doesn’t matter if someone other than Putin wins. No matter who wins, we will not recognize their legitimacy.”
I suppose he’s looking for some Romanov somewhere or other who will take over the role of legitimate heir to Nicholas II.
On the other hand, that “we” that Kasparov used might have been a royal one and he might consider himself, stunning intellectual giant that he is, to be the true heir to the title Tsar of All the Russias.
@Exile: “PUSHKIN steals the election?” Ha ha! Freudian slip? You must be a poetry fan!
A mere tpyo!
I generally find attempts to compare electoral systems ineffective and misleading but here is an article by a Finnish lawyer reproduced in the internet version of Pravda, which does make some interesting comparisons between the electoral systems in Russia and those in the US.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/05-03-2012/120688-russian_elections-0/
Early reports of the protest rally on Pushkin Square give the total that has turned out as between 14,000 (according to the police) and variously 20-40,000 (according to the opposition). Either way this looks like less than previous opposition rallies (except possibly the garden ring protest, which was not a rally). The Guardian in its editorials has of course predicted that this would be the biggest rally yet.
Dear Alexander,
In contrast to the more than 100,000 pro-Putin supporters earlier on….
sinotibetan
Dear Sinotibetan,
Thank you for this.
nfortunately the violence that we talked about appears to be taking place. The mood of the rally (which even the protesters now seem to agree numbered no more than 20,000 people) was quite ugly with angry speeches by both Udaltsov and Navalny that can only be seen as incitement. It seems that after the main part of the rally ended a hardcore of several hundred led by Navalny and Udaltsov tried to remain on Pushkin Square obliging the police to disperse or detain them. Navalny and Udaltsov have both been arrested. I gather than Ilya Ponomariev was also there. I do not know whether he too has been arrested.
The one thing I would say is that I strongly doubt that most of the protesters want to be involved in this sort of thing. Resorting to this sort of behaviour may put some people off attending such rallies in the future.
Dear Alexander,
Sometimes it can be quite sad to be correct. Agree with your views indeed!
sinotibetan
What is this fixation of Luke Harding’s with Putin’s tears?
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/05-03-2012/120688-russian_elections-0/
What’s wrong with Putin showing a little emotion after a big election victory? Is it forbidden for him to shed the odd tear? Even Homer let his heroes weep.
I have to say that in the views about Russia he expresses Luke Harding is in every respect a totally conventional British journalist. What sets him apart is his loathing of Putin, which has an intensity and a personal quality that is off the scale,
Dear Mark,
Yes…long time no see! I had been (and remain) very busy – hence my ‘silence’. As usual, many very insightful comments here!
[that people need “more choice”.]
I think this rhetoric is mostly for the domestic audience in America(you can substitute that with France or the Uk) – ‘we, Americans are free people – we have the freedom to make choices and we are the greatest defenders and the epitome of freedom’ – and the politicians MUST be seeing to have almost quasi-religious reverence to that dictum. And that sounds as if in Russia ‘there are not many choices for Russian presidency’ and thus are ‘unfree’. However, as you have astutely pointed out in your comment – if you have ‘many choices’ but they are all bad ones , then it’s still almost tantamount to ‘no true freedom’ at all. I think that the great ability of some Western politicians is to conjure the ‘feeling’ among their populace that “they are free-er than some other ‘backward’ nations that need some ‘tutoring’(eg. Russia?)”. Perhaps America can be justified by calling China ‘unfree’/'undemocratic’ but certainly that accusation cannot apply to Russia. ‘Freedom’ – like ‘love’ – is an often abused/misused word.
“Really? More choice, like what? Like the United States, which realistically only has two political parties, many of whose policy positions are almost indistinguishable from those of the other party?”
Agree. I think, as I’ve said before – one party ‘courts’ those conservative folks while another ‘courts’ the more liberal folks. But their party elites have similar aims when it comes to international relations – perhaps the manner they go about achieving similar goals may vary. I know many Americans may vehemently ridicule me for saying this: the majority of Americans are being duped to believe that ‘they have freedom of choice’ to choose between Democrats and Republicans – but that ‘freedom’ is more artificial and superficial than real when both parties are just heads and tails of the same coin.
“But I’m getting off the subject.”
Permit me to do that for just this short paragraph. As for the issue of homosexuality, we both take antagonistic views(as per our previous comments) but I agree – many politicians use religion(or rather a cloak of religiosity to hide their own immorality) to manipulate others to support them. Having said that, the hypocrisy of such leaders(like “Pastor Ted” Haggard) does not disprove the view that homosexuality is not right. Somewhat akin to a murderer castigating others that murder is a sin – he is hypocritical but the idea that murder is wrong is correct.
“But no matter how solid the proof, the west will never accept Putin as legitimate and will do all it can to destabilize Russia under his governance. ”
That is a given. Nevertheless, it looks like Britain is ‘conceding’ somewhat. Why did Britain do that? I think – ‘just in case’ their ‘destabilization plans for Russia’ fail(and I reckon they know most likely it would fail) – hence the conciliatory gesture. Well – too late for conciliatory gestures – Putin is not stupid – he will deal with the Western political elites accordingly.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-victory-a-decisive-result-says-no-10-7537175.html
Even so, protests have started in Moscow – albeit with much lower turnouts. So, I think the protests would be unsustainable though no doubt the likes of Navalny might instigate violence.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0305/breaking49.html
sinotibetan
“Police break up anti-Putin protest in Moscow”…..more biased reporting from the West:-
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jdceGS5h5rkIWBKRAl_0a_aT3xVw?docId=7d13693dd29d4d9fa534e4491e7431cf
I wonder if another cacophony of denunciation from the West would follow?
sinotibetan
Moscow, 5 March 2012, 22:45:
The time allocated for the “opposition” demonstration at Pushkinskaya Square, a 10 minute walk up Tverskaya St. from the Kremlin, was scheduled to end at 21:00. Navalny urged a “sit-in” when the time to go arrived. Most left the square at 21:00, but a hardcore remained. Many of those that had left hung around to see what would happen.
OMON moved in and methodically started moving those that remained. Many of those remaining on the square were sitting in the empty fountain basins. From what I could see live on TV, there were a few scuffles and hoards of photojournalists – no doubt the majority of them being foreigners – flashing away with their cameras in search of “good copy”.
They say Navalny has urged people to come to the Square tomorrow and sit in. There are rumours that Navalny has been arrested.
It is snowing heavily, temperature minus 6C. I am pretty sure Navalny wants to make Pushkin Square Moscow’s Maidan.
I wonder when the tents arrive?
And the hot tea and sandwiches?
If they want hot tea and sandwiches, then they need to let Timoshenko out of jail to make them tea and sandwiches, because that was her specialty.
Yeah! That’s clearly what these “oppositionists” in Russia lack: their own, home-grown Jeanne d ‘Arc with faux-peasant tresses. They ought to be able to find some willing maiden somewhere or other whom they could dress up as a matryoshka and who could lend a hand with distributing tea and sandwiches at Pushkin Square.
Maybe Chirikova? Granted she has that cute little pageboy do. But nothing a blonde wig and hair extensions couldn’t fix?
Not to mention the brains (or braids) behind the latest gotta-have-it shopping bag.
She has been busy while she’s been behind bars. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.
What is going on in Russian and Ukrainian prisons? Timoshenko is shopping, and Khodorkovsky is blogging. They should be doing pushups in their cells so they will have the muscles to beat other inmates nearly to death to show their dominance.
I heard Tymoshenko did her own GAZPROM tattoo with a hat pin and some ink that was smuggled in inside a bonbon. That’s pure prison chic.
If she were in a British nick, she’d be a dab hand by now at doing rollies out of three strands of tobacco and splitting matches. More than likely, though, is that she would have by now long since become a “tobacco baron” inside. In my day, you were allowed to buy 2 ounces (about 25 grammes) of tobacco in prison out of your meagre earnings – that is if you were lucky enough to have been given mind numbing work. Result was that tobacco became the means of exchange inside and he who controlled the distribution of surplus tobacco acquired by various nefarious deeds became a “tobacco baron”. In Russian prisons I believe tea is (or was) the means of exchange and by which they make “chefir”, which is a potent brew (take 1 kilo of tea and half a litre of boiling water!) that can give you a high. It can also make your ticker stop beating.
Hey, you leave my Yulichka alone! I don’t care what people say, she is still my Amazon Goddess… (And Putin has a soft spot for her too, you wait and see, he will lean on Yanukovich to spring her from the slammer.)
Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth Yulichka might possibly have had a hand in the launch of a new vodka brand called Khokhlushka (Хохлушка), which means “Ukrainian woman”, but can sound somewhat derogatory or condescending or patronizing or rude or cheeky or whatever. (It comes from the word хохол [khokhol], which is the traditional tuft of hair that Ukrainian men sported on an an otherwise clean-shaven pate; the word is also used rudely to mean a Ukrainian man: it’s like calling someone from the Ukraine “tufty”, I suppose.)
Anyway, the charming Mrs. Tymoshenko should get some money fror the use of her instantly regognisable features on the vodka bottle stopper.
See: http://www.novostioede.ru/article/vodka_khokhlushka_v_rossiyskoy_stolitse/
The blurb says it’s made in Khazakstan!
Some more pictures:
http://trinixy.ru/68353-vodka-hohlushka-5-foto.html
Bear in mind, this vodka brand (see link below) has been on the market for years until, for some reason or other, the Moscow distilliry “Kristal” stopped its production early last year :
mages.yandex.ru/yandsearch?p=2&text=водка путинка&noreask=1&img_url=i064.radikal.ru%2F1008%2F7b%2F5fd78bd8cb6a.jpg&rpt=simage&lr=213
Bum link!
Try this one:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Vodka_Putinka.jpg
I wonder why Kristall took it out of production? Did they think last year that Vladimir Putin was yesterday’s man?
Dear Moscow Exile,
I’ll respond to your earlier reply to me after this one. Thanks for the description of the protest.
“It is snowing heavily, temperature minus 6C. I am pretty sure Navalny wants to make Pushkin Square Moscow’s Maidan.”
Wishful thinking on his part because:-
1. Looks like even the weather is against him.
2. The protest mood has fizzled except among the ‘hardcore’.
3. Navalny has less support than he supposes.
sinotibetan
Dear Sinotibetan,
I agree with all your points. Thanks also Moscow Exile for being again the reporter on the spot.
What this episode has done is that it has exposed the hardcore ringleaders: Navalny, Udaltsov, Yashin and Ilya Ponomariev. The latter strikes me as one of those individuals who whilst brilliant in his way suffers from a total lack of a restraining moral centre. I think I am right in saying that he has migrated from party to party starting with the Communists and ending up in Fair Russia. One wonders what Mironov makes of him and how long he will stay with Fair Russia. I gather that he was present at the meeting with McFaul. He is clearly someone to watch.
It is obvious that this venture has been planned for some time and it is clear that the police had got wind of it and were prepared for it. It is significant that Zyuganov though apparently invited to the rally by Udaltsov failed to attend and that Yavlinsy, Prokhorov and Nemtsov left the rally with the main body of protesters at the time when the rally was timed to end. The 1-3,000 people who remained behind and who tried to stage the sit in were obviously in on the secret and are doubtless the same hard core of oppositionists who routinely turn up to all the opposition’s rallies, authorised and unauthorised, and who have been doing so for years.
This is what really counts, the others are just the same mantra again and again. Who knows Russia and its place in the World backed by basic geopolitics knowledge, doesn’t care about bullshitting for “democracy”.
“Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, will call Putin later today, according to her spokesman. He said that the shortcomings in the elections were “regrettable” but referred to Putin’s “success” in the elections.
Merkel will also offer Putin a deepening of the “strategic partnership” between the two countries, the spokesman said.”
EU doesn’t exist in geopolitical reality, neither OSCE so I don’t care what they think.
Moskva-Berlin-(Paris) > Wahington-London-Warsaw
I think that I am right in saying that as of the time of writing, a full day after the result of the election became known, not a single western leader has telephoned Putin to offer him congratulations on his victory. If he is wise he will not reciprocate the discourtesy but he should not forget it.
Double victory: a group of very happy (and relieved) Syrians demonstrate their joy at Putin’s election outside Russian embassy in Damascus. They know damned well that Putin (and China too) saved them from the horrible fate of enslavement to Al Qaeda genocidal thugs:
Serbs in Kosovska Mitrovica:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi507KH5tfs
Interested in election fraud? Here is a lesson about it care of the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/will-vladimir-putin-serve-full-term
The title in capitals asks “Will Vladimir Putin serve a full term?” Below are two buttons, one saying “Yes” the other saying “No”. So if you press the “Yes” button you are voting to say that Putin will serve a full term right? Wrong! If you read the small print carefully you will see that if you press “Yes” you are actually agreeing with “experts” who think Putin will not serve a full term.
Truly the Russians still have so much to learn about how to conduct proper elections.
Sorry here is the original page in the Economist before I voted on it
http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/will-vladimir-putin-serve-full-term
PS: I voted No.
I voted Yes for trolling purposes.
Currently (counting my “No” vote) running 69% “Yes”, 31% “No”. Will you be surprised if this is later offered as an informed survey indicating broad international disapproval of Putin’s return to the presidency?
Navalny: I advocate escalation.
Navalny’s lawyer: “He didn’t really mean that. He misspoke”.
Prosecutor: “I advocate incarceration”.
Chirikova has been noticeable by her absence from recent events in the Evil Empire. Has she been banished to Khimki, I wonder? Is she wandering round the forest now. talking to her tree friends? Or is she busy getting all her things ready for emigrating to the USA? She bleated on her social network site that if things did not go as she wished here, then she would be forced to leave her motherland.
Navalny, on the other hand, after his release from his brief stay in a local lock-up last night, said to journalists that he would “fight to the end”. The end of what?
The BBC is certainly infatuated with Navalny. The other day that august organization stated that Navalny was “arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years,” and US Time magazine has even described him as “Russia’s Erin Brockovich,” a curious reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a trade union organizer.
If Navalny has heard of or read about these accolades, and many others of like nature, which I am sure he has, and believes them, which I am sure he does, small wonder that he is willing to “fight to the end”, for ahead of him lies a golden future as the Sakaashvili of the Russian Federation.
Personally, I would be less than happy with an accolade that compared me to a character which was always female, both in reality and in the film. But maybe Navalny is sufficiently a new-age man that such gender flips don’t bother him and he sees the compliment as it was doubtless intended – that he/she is a ruthless crusader for fairness against the moneyed fat-cats, and who will not stop even though he is tired and whom those in trouble naturally trust and gravitate to.
Who the hell is that, though? Not Navalny. His influence had peaked and was already declining before the elections, and it was at its peak then because his supporters thought somehow, some way he was going to force a re-do of the Duma elections. Nobody seriously thought he was going to stop Putin from being elected, and since the big drama is over, he’s just another inconsequential shouter. If he started his own political party now, it would go nowhere because he does not have anything like the broad support the western press pretends he does.
Thirteen French officers ‘captured by Syrian Army’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9122749/Thirteen-French-officers-captured-by-Syrian-Army.html
Looks like France has been caught organizing the uprising.
Hey, let’s talk about Syria blocking the Red Cross from administering aid to the wounded!!! Nothing to see here, people: move along…
Back to Latynina!
In today’s Moscow Times she describes what she witnessed as an election observer at two polling stations. At one station everything was “squeaky clean” she says and the ballot was in favour of Prokhorov. At the other station she witnessed carousel voting.
Now one station was in a midddle class part of town with middle class voters, whereas the other was working class and the voters were “drunk as skunks”.
Which of the two stations do you think was was the squeaky clean one?
Clue: Latynina thinks poor people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
See:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/what-i-saw-as-an-election-observer/454247.html
I should have said above: At the other station she witnessed an attempt at carousel voting.
A different view from Thomas Fleming.
“America’s overworked political pundits have a tough job, shaping and dishing out, week after week, the agitprop of the two-party state. This week, they hardly know where to begin. Should they pick the winner in the Ohio primary or join the chorus attacking talkshow host Rush Limbaugh insulting a law student who demanded free contraceptives? However, even more urgent than the desire to destroy Limbaugh is the need to cast doubt on Vladimir Putin’s victory in Russia’s presidential election.”
“Everyone knew that Putin was going to win, and even anti-Putin pollsters admitted he would get at least 60% of the vote, which would be a landslide in an American election. But, cry the pundits, Putin has the support of the peasantry. The smart people in the cities who can watch the BBC and read the New York Times–the people who really count in any country–they are holding spontaneous anti-Putin demonstrations. Pro-Putin demonstrators are either state employees doing a job or mere yokels. In other words, Russia=the USA, where only rubes and crazies would support Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul.”
“The pundits, long in advance, were also predicting corruption and irregularities, as they always do whenever the the US regime disapproves of election results. The fall-back position is that Putin and his cronies rigged the election in advance by restricting the pool of candidates.”
And it goes on:
http://fleming.dailymail.co.uk/2012/03/putin-and-democracy-american-style.html
Interestingly, the Moscow News reported a similar event in the North Moscow Sokol district, which is a working class area. The MT reported that at a polling station there, it had been observed that drunken workers had been engaged in carousel voting, in that they had been bussed there en masse and had voted at a table that had a sign “additional lists” on it. The MT implied that these drunken working class criminals were engaged in carousel voting, namely that the polling station in question was only one of several that they must have visited that day, notwithstanding the fact that MT journalists only saw them vote once, did not follow them on to another station, or ascertain whether they had already visited other stations that day. Most damning of all the evidence that MT presented as proof of these drunken workers’ criminal activities was the reply off one of them after he had been asked who had he voted for. “Putin, of course! He’s our only leader”, was the reply.
Clearly one of the dolts whom Chichirovka and Latynina despise so much.
Notice the similarity to Latynina’s little tale linked above? The drunken workers whom she espied undertaking their criminal activities also only voted once, and no evidence was presented by her of their intention to visit or of their having already visited one or more other stations in order to cast multiple votes.
MT reported that a Communist Party observer at the Sokol polling station kicked up a fuss at what he claimed was multiple voting taking place there: only one table, it seems, was for locals, whereas most voters that day, clearly Putin’s hirelings, had voted on the additional list. No doubt the irregularity was duly noted and officially registered.
However, to give MT its due as regards the Sokol polling station story: that newspaper did add that additional lists are absolutely legal and used for voters who cannot go to the station where they are registered because they are working far from home or because their work is too essential for them to leave it for too long a period. In fact, MT said that the workers bussed to the Sokol station were all construction workers employed by two civil engineering firms and that they were all employed in driving a tunnel in the Sokol district.
Latynina in her warning tale also mentioned that the drunken working class crew that she witnessed being bussed to a polling station were employed by a power company: again – essential workers. Latynina said that the despicable, drunken working clas bydlo that she witnessed engaged in carousel voting only voted once because, on seeing her, they chickened out and cleared off. (Who could blame them for doing so?)
Good job she had dogged them, though, and put an end to their little ruse, even though she presents no concrete evidence of their alleged carousel voting.
No matter! They were clearly engaged in carousel voting.
If Latynina says it is so, it must be so, because she would not lie – and all the American and British newspapers said there would be carousel voting and they are usually right about Russia, so there must have been carousel voting.
If sources you admire tell you there will be talking dogs and you want to see talking dogs, you will see talking dogs if only you look hard enough.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Moscow News and Latynina are clearly becoming desperate if they are reduced to trying to pass off as carousel voting what was clearly nothing of the sort.
By the way I saw the editor of Moscow News on RT the other day. I hadn’t realised that he is British. He was open about his disappointment that there had not been a run off and that Navalny had not stood in the election. He thought that if Navalny had stood there would have been a run off. That is absurd and it is alarming that someone who edits a Moscow newspaper should be so far out of touch as to think it.
This western infatuation for Navalny is very odd. I am coming round to the view that westerners are more impressed by him than Russians. Where does the west find these people?
The question was asked above, why has Chirikova not been heard from recently?
Apparently she is miffed that the big boys of the Opps did not even consult with her before staging their “sit-in” after the end of the authorized rally on Pushkinskaya; she also disagreed with their choice of locale for the demo:
По ее словам, для нее стало “полной неожиданностью” решение некоторых ее коллег не покидать Пушкинскую площадь после окончания официально разрешенного митинга. Она сказала, что из уважения к своим товарищам поддержала их, но вообще, считает, что “такие акции надо проводить не в фонтане (акция оппозиционеров продолжилась вокруг и в центре замерзшего фонтана напротив кинотеатра “Пушкинский” — прим. “Росбалта”), а где-то ближе к сердцу Москвы”.
From this I deduce that Chirikova is not part of the Opps “inner circle” any more, if she ever was. Navalny and his gang are planning meetings, speakers, actions, etc., without even informing Chirikova, let alone asking her opinion.
Чирикова сообщила, что является сторонником ненасильственного сопротивления в духе Махатмы Ганди. В то же время, она назвала акцию на Пушкинской “иррациональной”, которую затмила “еще большая иррациональность ее разгона с применением силы”.
Chirikova [also] stated that she is a proponent of non-violent resistance in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi. She labelled the action on Pushkinskaya “irrational”….
Hm… Chirikova and Navalny not getting along? They were supposed to be the “power couple” of the Opps…. I am experiencing déjà vu…. Timoshenko/Yushchenko redux?
Sorry, I forgot the link:
http://www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2012/03/06/954289.html
Dear Yalensis,
This is very interesting.
If you were able to work out that there was going to be some sort of violent incident on Monday night then it is impossible that Chirikova was not aware of it. I understand that before the rally the police asked Navalny and Udaltsov to meet with them, presumably to give them a warning, but they refused to go. This shows that the sit in was prepared well in advance, that the police had got wind of it and that it was an open secret. In other words Chirikova must have known about it and disagreed with it and she has now gone further and made he disagreement public.
Another thing this incident shows is that Navalny and Udaltsov are working closely together even though they pretend to have opposite views. I have always had my doubts about Udaltsov and how much of a Leftist he really is. For a supposed Leftist he gets remarkably favourable coverage from the British. Presumably he is there to win over to the opposition people (especially young people and students) with Leftist views who might otherwise not want to be involved with the liberals. Cynical I know but how can one not be? His movement is after all part of Kasparov’s Other Russia group.
It is also clear that of the new generation of opposition leaders Chirikova is not part of the inner ring and neither it seems is Vladimir Ryzhkov. Since they disagree with the tactics of Navalny, Udaltsov, Ponomariev and Yashin, perhaps there is hope for them yet.
My strong impression is that the rally was a disappointment with far fewer people turning up than had been expected and the planned sit in degenerating into an ugly farce. It has absolutely failed to light a spark like the violence at the rally did on 5th December 2011. This time the incident was too obviously planned and prepared in advance and received too much advance publicity for anyone to be taken in by it or to believe the story of police brutality. The western media, which had been primed to expect a massive rally (the Guardian in its editorial last Friday predicted that it would be the biggest rally yet) is struggling to contain its disappointment. If the rally on Saturday is not significantly bigger then it will be clear that the protest movement has lost momentum and is fizzling out.
Is there a link in English for the protest/sit-in? I’m afraid I am really out of touch, for the last two days I have been helping my Mom prepare to move on Thursday, painting out her new place, and I am there and working all day from early in the morning until supper time; I just can’t keep up the way I normally would. Was there in fact some kind of protest rally?
Speaking of Navalny and the Great Western Democracy Roadshow reminds me of a great passage I read once in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have no way of knowing if Hunter Thompson really took all the drugs he says he did, but even wired to the last brain cell, he could conjure imagery like Stradivarius could make violins. He says;
“…that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no sense in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Poor Navalny. His wave broke early, and rolled back without ever really cresting. It’s not hard to understand how bitter and cheated he must feel. Yale seminars and western adulation prepared him for so much more than this. Now he has to throw bigger and more extreme tantrums all the time just to keep his level of support even, never mind increasing it by leaps and bounds. Eventually he will overdo the attention-getting stunts.
Dear Mark,
Here’s a link to RT that shows the spontaneous post-election demontrations of the dissapointed majority that had their votes stolen by the Forces of Evil:
Thanks for that – oh my. That huge apocalyptic stage, with unidentifiable fanged beasts and the whole bit, all for about a thousand hangers-on. Kind of symbolic.
Udaltsov started off as a Stalinist.
Ten years later, he is… whatever he is now.
Give him a decade more, and there will be a new dawn.
@alexander: I am inclined to take Chirikova at her word that she was not filled in on the Navalnyite “post-rally” plans (= to stage a sit-in). These Russian Opps are like Opps everywhere: they bicker among themselves and cannot get along. They form cliques, and inner circles. This is normal. We know from Nemtsov’s tapes that he despises Chirikova, and it is plausible that she and Navalny also do not get along. Chirikova is an egomaniac in her own right, and this would get in the way of her submitting to Navalny’s alpha-male leadership, hence it is plausible that he cut her out of the loop and just relies on his trusted posse consisting of Udaltsov and a few other beta-males.
Right again Yalensis! The latest is that Mitrokhin is also complaining that he was not consulted about the sit in on Monday and that he thinks it was a mistake. Significantly he says that the police reaction though excessive was triggered by provocateurs amongst the crowd. He has even said that whilst people like Udaltsov gain the publicity they want from these events the price is paid by other people who have to endure a cold night in a police cell. I gather that Mitrokhin has even suggested that it might be better if Udaltsov (he is carefully not to name Navalny) held in future their rallies separately from everyone else.
Udaltsov has responded to all this by saying that the opposition should fight Putin and not each other.
I would make two comments about this:
1. Whilst Mitrokhin and Chirikova are to be commended for their refusal to participate in these provocations they are clearly less well informed about what their brothers in arms in the revolution are doing than you!
2. The contrast to the reaction following the last episode of crowd violence instigated by Navalny (on 5th December 2011) could not be greater. On that occasion everyone blamed the authorities and the police. On this occasion even people like Chirikova and Mitrokhin are blaming Udaltsov and if only by extension Navalny. Nothing perhaps illustrates better the change in the mood.
We will see what happens on Saturday.
Dear Alexander,
If the protesters are left only with people like crazy ultranationalists, radical ultraleftists, ‘liberals’ and the like(it seems so) – and these don’t get along with each other as many highlighted here – then it’s going to be a small crowd. I think the size of the crowd may also depend on whether the Communists decide to join these other misfits. I’m not sure if the Communist Party will join the protest – does anyone know?
sinotibetan
Dear Sinotibetan,
I have no doubt that the protest movement will in time and probably before long disintegrate and descend into recriminations with its various members quarrelling and going their separate ways. We are starting to see it already. The basic problem with this movement, quite apart from its lack of numbers, is that it has no coherent strategy or sense of direction. Its leaders simply do not think or behave realistically and have a grotesquely inflated opinion of themselves which gets in the way of effective action. Chirikova for example is now suggesting that they concentrate on local politics and build up the movement’s political base that way. That is actually sensible but does anybody really believe that our self styled heroes, Navalny, Yashin and Udaltsov, are prepared to spend the next 6 years patiently working away on drains, rubbish collection and housing questions? Nemtsov was for a time in charge of local government in Nizhni Novgorod. A very dear friend of mine spent a summer there and gave me a vivid account of how in the time Nemtsov was there he completely disorganised the city, which when she was there was still struggling to recover from the experience. Not surprisingly Nemtsov’s attempt to get himself elected Mayor of Sochi was a failure. Does anybody seriously suppose that someone who once seriously dreamed of succeeding Yeltsin and becoming the country’s President would be happy to end his career in local government?
As to whether the Communists will join the rally on Saturday, they were involved in the rallies on 10th and 24th December 2011 but I get the sense that they are now starting to distance themselves from this movement, which in Moscow at least has only worked against them. We shall see.
The one thing I would say is that after the disappointment of the rally on Monday the opposition will doubtless do all it can to ensure a good turnout on Saturday. Of course if it fails to do so then it is doomed. Still there are a lot of opposition supporters in Moscow and though I suspect much of the fire is gone I would still expect the turnout on Saturday to be at least respectable. After that though I would expect it to decline if only because most of them must sense that they simply do not have anything like the necessary support or strength to force through their stated objective, which is new parliamentary and presidential elections, whilst they seem to have no real idea what to do next.
In the longer term I want to repeat a comment I have previously made about Navalny. He has already shown a propensity for violence and if he senses that destiny is slipping from him his frustration will grow and the danger that he may turn further to violence to do something stupid will increase.
@alexander: Even Simon Shuster agrees with that assessment, as he describes Udaltsov dragging Navalny and the others down to a waterly “grave” as they experience their Waterloo moment in the Pushkinskaya Fountain:
For one thing, the crowd went home, leaving only a couple of hundred protesters. The biggest group was from the Left Front movement, which is to say, a group of rowdy Che Guevara wannabes. Their leader, Sergei Udaltsov, climbed into a fountain on Pushkin Square with a bullhorn and started chanting slogans. “Power to the millions,” he shouted, “not the millionaires.” Navalny at first did not seem sure if he wanted to get involved. “I don’t know what the plan is,” he told TIME in the fountain. “There isn’t really a plan. I should go talk to Udaltsov.” But that didn’t seem to help. “O.K., I guess we’re standing here for now,” he said after consulting with his comrade. There was a brief attempt to pitch a tent, but it didn’t get further than a tarp attached to a tree before it was abandoned.
The riot police, officially known as OMON but nicknamed RoboCops by the activists, meanwhile closed in on the square by the many hundreds, carrying batons and metal shields. As they formed a human chain around the fountain, which is about the size of a two-bedroom house, the government made one last attempt to play nice. Valery Bakunin, an assistant to the Kremlin ombudsman for human rights, elbowed through the crush until he reached one of the leaders of the liberal opposition, Ilya Yashin, who was standing beside Navalny. “Listen for a second,” the official said into Yashin’s ear. “If you don’t provoke the OMON, you can stand here as long as you want. Nobody will touch you.” But Yashin brushed him off, “What do you mean ‘don’t provoke them’? They’re about to arrest us!” And with that, the negotiation ended, the apparatchik climbed out of the fountain, and the RoboCops climbed in.
Working in teams of four, they started peeling away the protesters packed around Navalny. Their methods were far from delicate, but they did not use batons or pepper spray. The OMON would simply yank people away from the crowd, lift them up, throw them out of the fountain like a lump of meat and shove them into the police trucks. Ilya Ponomaryov, a member of the Russian parliament who has been leading the protests, was meanwhile screaming into his bullhorn for the OMON to desist. “You are breaking the law! We are having a peaceful meeting!” It had no effect. His deputy, Alyona Popova, 29, was thrown face first into the snow and got her arm fractured. Navalny, Yashin and Udaltsov were arrested, along with 250 protesters, but nearly all of them were released by morning, usually with fines of less than $20.
In the coming weeks, it will become clear whether the rout at the fountain has knocked the wind completely out of the opposition. Things don’t look good. When TIME asked Navalny on Tuesday night, in a text message, whether he still thought it would be possible to occupy a square in Moscow, he wrote back, “No, I don’t think so.” Certainly not during the next rally, which is scheduled for the March 10, but “in principle,” he wrote, it would be possible in the future. Many of his comrades are meanwhile thinking of jumping ship. “Maybe it’s time to go back to our regular jobs,” said one activist who has been helping organize the rallies since they started in December. “It’s depressing. But the opposition is going to have to learn to live with Putin. Hopefully he can learn to live with us.”
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2108418,00.html?xid=gonewsedit
McFaul has apparently tweeted that it was “troubling to watch arrests of peaceful demonstrators at Pushkin Square.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry here has responded: “The police on Pushkin [Square] were many times more humane than what we saw during the breaking up of Occupy Wall Street and tent camps in Europe
William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, has called for allegations of electoral fraud during the presidential vote to be “thoroughly investigated”, and added: “A Russia with greater political freedoms, including the registration of political parties, freedom of assembly and freedom of the media, is in the interests of Russians and of the wider world”.
And so it goes on: blah, blah, blah!
The hypocricy of McFaul concerning the arrest of peaceful demonstrators has not been lost on many world wide.
I am worried about these ominous noises emanating from the shores of Misty Albion though: William “Palmerston” Hague might be dreaming of sending Royal Navy gunboats up the Moscow River if those pesky Russkies refuse to tow the line after his pompous huffing and puffing from the august coridors of Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Westminster.
It’s interesting to see the Russian Foreign Ministry so unambiguously challenge the U.S. Ambassador, as if it were warning him to either adopt the language of diplomacy rather than sounding like Yulia Latynina’s next lead, or shut up. They rarely do that, and usually it’s just something like, “Ambassador McFaul’s tone is regrettable”. If this is a glimpse of what his term as Ambassador is going to look like, it argues for a rocky road ahead and not much getting done on the international cooperation front. I would also have hoped that someone of McFaul’s alleged brilliance and diplomatic acumen could have come up with a less hackneyed response. But this signals to me that there is not going to be a big Russian climbdown, with McFaul free to throw his weight about and hobnob with opposition figures while paying no commensurate toll in diplomatic courtesy. This looks like, “Keep such company as you choose, but don’t expect to walk as a friend among the group you brand as the enemy” to me.
I am going out on a limb and make a “psychic prediction” that McFaul will be recalled and replaced within a couple of months, on some pretext. He was sent to Russia charged with 2 tasks: (1) prevent Putin from re-election (via colour-revolution, or whatever means); and (2) secure Russia’s support for attack on Syria. He failed both assignments, in the most spectacular manner! In fact, his bumbling brought about the opposite of what he intended, AND he has wasted and misused what was supposed to have been one of America’s long-range assets, I am speaking about Navalny, of course.
I agree. And he’s going to become an embarrasment if he continues tweeting.
I wouldn’t be so sure. Ambassadorial appointments are heavily negotiated in the US government system where much depends on patronage and where McFaul has powerful patrons. Also far too much has been invested in the “democracy promotion” (aka regime change) project with which McFaul is associated for it to be lightly abandoned. If Romney wins the White House in November then McFaul whose links are to the Democrats may go but if Obama is re elected I would expect him to stay.
Incidentally I am going to make my own guess, which is that if Obama is re elected the next US Secretary of State will be Susan Rice.
In my opinion, McFaul is well out of order tweeting comments about “peaceful demonstrators” being arrested. If he and the state that he represents are so concerned about these arrests, they should do so through the correct diplomatic channels.
McFaul is doing what Her Majesty’s former ambassador to the Russian Federation, Sir Anthony Benton; who is now no longer a diplomat, but an advisor to Lloyds Insurance and the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.
Brenton’s diplomatic career in Moscow took a nosedive after he had attended a “united front” so-called opposition meeting in Moscow; indeed, he was on the platform and spoke against the then incumbent Russian government.
Firstly, I am sure that such an action is beyond the remit of Her Majesty’s or any other ambassador to the Russian Federation – or any other sovereign state for that matter; secondly, on the same platform as Brenton were assorted leaders of extremist Russian parties, such as Limonov’s now banned National Bolshevik Party. Limonov is still classed by the British and US media as an “opposition” leader. Limonov, however, is not allowed entry into Germany, where he is considered to be a neo-Nazi: that’s how the German media always describes him, in much the same way as the Western media always puts the tag “former KGB spy” on Putin’s name.
Brenton is often wheeled out by the powers that be in the UK in order that he throw shit from a position of perceived authority at Russia, The same is done with the Russian traitor, now a British citizen resident in the UK, Gordievskiy, who really was a KGB spy – big time.
Brenton invariably appears on the BBC, as indeed he did only three or four days ago, in order to pontificate about how evil a regime Russia is and to describe what Nashi did to him on Putin’s orders after he had spoken against the Russian government on an “opposition” platform.
What Nashi did after Brenton had chosen to speak on the same platform as the Russian equivalent of the Nazi Party and the BNP, as well as with Russian monarchist parties and other assorted miscreants, was to daily assemble outside the entrance to the Moscow British Embassy with banners and placards and make loud noises demanding that he apologize for his actions.
Of course, Brenton has the right to attend political meetings of his choice in an individual capacity, but not as her Majesty’s Ambassador. Imagine the furore that would ensue in the UK if the US Ambassador to the Court of St. James chose to speak in his capacity of US Ambassador at a BNP (British Nationalist Part) meeting in London.
Nashi dogged Brento for several weeks around Moscow and he bleated and wailed about it: he still does.
Of course, most in the West have been psyched up to believe that Nashi is Putin’s Hitlerjugend (sounds like Nazi as well, which hasn’t gone unnoticed amongst the predominantly monolingual British) and that Putin is some kind of monster that wishes to resurrect a Russia totalitarian state.
As I have already mentioned, a few days ago Brenton was waxing lyrical again during a BBC interview. He said that Putin had suffered “his biggest ever setback” in that he had lost the support of the “political elite”. This Brenton said notwithstanding Putin’s election victory yesterday, though he did rather reluctantly grant in the interview that the political elite are very small in proportion to those that support Putin in the polls.
He then went on to say that although the elite are small, it consists of the top movers and shakers in the state – including judges – who no longer support him.
He then said that this anti-Putin elite has now taken to demonstrating.
What’s this? Judges and the grey Cardinals of the Kremlin demonstrating? It seems that those whom Brenton labels the elite inner circle have now morphed into the Bolotnaya Square mob!
Clearly, old Sir Tony has not been in Moscow recently, where he would have noticed that the “opposition” protesters are not the “elite” that he earlier described: those that have taken to demonstrating consist of yuppies, “socialites”, actors, musicians, assorted luvvies and the young middle class; they are bourgeois and they have had their ranks enlarged in their demonstrations by the presence of extreme nationalists, monarchists and communists.
Brenton’s talking here about 150,000 maximum turn out in Moscow that has demonstrated in the past 3 months against Putin. That’s out of a population of 14 million plus in Moscow and 144 million plus in the Russian Federation.
The protest meetings have not grown, but diminished.
And these are his “elite”?
These are not the grey cardinals of the Kremlin, members of the judiciary or top rankers in federal security: they represent one tenth of 1% of the 120,000,000 voting population of Russia.
The BBC interviewer then led Brenton into commentating that people have begun to laugh at Putin – as though that were a capital offence. And Brenton picked up that lead by agreeing and adding that for Putin that is “a worrying turn of events”.
“Because if they’re laughing at him”, says his interviewer, “then they are not afraid of him!”
Brenton agrees.
So there you have the two of them conjuring up this image that everyone was afraid of Putin but now a brave few “elite” are laughing at him.
What poppycock!
Always these shits try to portray an image where Russia is a land where everyone creeps around in morbid fear of the system; of being whisked away to a Siberian camp, never to be seen again.
It’s the fantasy Russia many love to believe in. I often get hurled at me on the web: “If you like Russia, why don’t you go and live there?”
“I do”, I reply.
Pause.
“Oh, you’re Russian?”
“No, I’m English.”
Then I can almost hear the brain overload systems switching in and the circuit breakers popping away furiously.
The two chums in the interview then go on to relations between the UK and Russia. Brenton admits that businesswise, things are fine.
I’ve got news for him: when it comes to counting shekels, corporations, banks, insurance companies etc. don’t give a flying f*ck about the rights or wrongs of a particular regime. Brenton certainly knows this, of course, he being an adviser to Lloyds.
But there are some outstanding problems that he mentions, such as the Litvinenko murder.
He gives a pregnant pause before saying “murder”.
Well, if Sir Anthony should care to go to Westminster coroner’s court and ask for a report on the unfortunate Litvinenko’s death, he won’t find one – because there isn’t one, not public at least. It’s had a 75-year closure order imposed upon it.
So we have a victim of poisoning, but no coroner’s verdict. In fact, we have no victim of anything, only a radioactive stiff with no report concerning the circumstances that led to the untimely and unnatural demise of Alexander Litvinenko..
Now for a man to have died in such strange circumstances without there having been a coroner’s report made on his death is very, very unusual. The only other time that this has happened in modern times in the UK was when Dr. David Kelly mysteriously died – of a heart attack. No coroner’s report and the case closed for 75 years. (Kelly was the UK government scientist that had been forced to recant after blowing the gaffe on the British government’s line that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was made to apologize – and then he died. Unexpectedly.)
You see, officially, Litvinenko is dead. That’s all. Not murdered. And there is no officially published cause of death either.
And if Sir Anthony should ask the Crown Prosecution Service for evidence that led it to require the extradition of a suspect from Russia to face murder charges in London, he won’t be given any, because none has so far been presented.
The Russian State Prosecutor has asked for such evidence, stating that if satisfactory, the suspect can be prosecuted in Russia by British prosecutors. The Russian prosecution service is still waiting for said evidence to appear.
And they won’t see any either, because the point of the exercise, namely asking for extradition, knowing full well that that would not be possible, and making a serious accusation without presenting any evidence, was not only to prevent a trial from taking place but to make it look as if the wicked, evil Russians were responsible for this trial not taking place.
And the result? No trial and the case shelved.
But the press were given assorted tales and theories (Gordievskiy, mentioned above, was most loquacious on this matter) about who “murdered” Litvinenko, and what took place then was the point of the whole exercise: trial by the media.
The two diplomats who have served as UK ambassadors in Russia since Brenton’s recall have kept within the remit of their ambassadorial duties. The same goes for all the other ambassadors to the Russian federation, save for one: McFaul. And he shows no such inclination of doing so: he’s here to co-ordinate dissaffection against the incumbent government.
It’s just not bloody cricket!
Found it!
Here’s the BBC Brenton interview which I was ranting about above.
It was made on Sunday morning, March 4th 2012, when the presidential election was taking place.
See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17249877
Dear Moscow Exile,
There is a very short answer to the question of whether McFaul’s comment was appropriate or not. The answer is that it was not. It is not the function of the US ambassador to carry on a running commentary on the conduct of Moscow’s police force. Such behaviour is definitely incompatible with McFaul’s status as a diplomat and there would have been a time when he woud have been expelled for it.
Hi PvMikhail! Long time no see!
I am constantly surprised that you and I are in agreement in so many things…and we live thousands of kilometers apart! Those that I completely agree with:-
1.)”In addition to that, liberal Europe culturally, demographically (and economically accordingly) destroys itself”
This is completely true. In fact, I would say EU helps to escalate this process.
“MY COUNTRY AND NATION IS DYING. And our politicians in EU are arguing about irrelevant details.”
Actually most European nations are dying. That’s why I, being a Europhile, am visiting European nations as a tourist before the inevitable national suicides occur if the European politicians carry on with their irrelevant policies.
I know this may be pessimistic – but I don’t see how Europe is going to get out of the deep chasm with the kind of politicians they have.
2.)”The financial/economic system lead by anglo-saxon West is destroying the rest of the World, the main resources are finite, the place for waste is finite, but the power and appetite of capital is infinite.”
Completely agree. I am not totally against capitalism nor am I a leftist/socialist – but the kind of ruthless, inhuman, rapacious capitalism advocated and promulgated by the likes of Washington et. al. is a road to perdition.
I have many more things to say…but I have to go now.
sinotibetan
I am glad that there are people like me elsewhere… It is really remarkable, given the fact that we have probably different family background and education. We are one of the few people of Europe, who came from inner Asia, that could be an explanation
XD
Internet is a miracle.
Otherwise, do you know what is the worst of all? The attitude. Consumer society totally blindfolds people. They just don’t care. Or if they care, they BELIEVE in the system. For example I had a very clever classmate at university, the guy is bright, he want to work for NASA. He comes from a social liberal middle class background, his father is a middle tier bank manager. We like to argue sometimes. Basically he thinks, that all the problems will be solved by the science community exactly when it is needed. For example I showed him evidence about the (natural, long term) depopulation of major European countries, and talked about the economic (other) hardships caused by this. He replied: by then automatisation will lift the productivity so high, that we won’t need so much people at work. He just doesn’t understand the essence. And this is a guy, who probably have higher IQ than me. So we have to spread awareness at least in the higher classes, intelligentsia, which has opinion influencing power. Nobody will convince common people about changing economic/financial system, resource management until he has car under his ass, McDonalds in his mouth and LCD TV in the living room despite the gargantuan debts/mortgages.
Common people has no memory at all. Example: The gasoline prices in my country. Some years ago (I think it was 2004) 1 l gasoline was 250 HUF. Drivers in Hungary was like: Gasoline is sooo expensive, we don’t know what will happen if it reaches the 300 HUF “psychological mark”. Everybody said that it will inflict mass protests or people will use mass transit system instead of cars. Now gasoline price is at 430 HUF and nothing happens, nothing changes. People borrow money, buy new cars for mortgage and use 430 HUF gasoline as they did in 2004.
Greeting PvMikhail,
Haven’t interacted before but I would agree with sino-t in that you seem spot on in your analysis. The gas price complaints are familiar to me as well (I’m West Indian) and I find it astonishing that now people are complaining about the rise in gas prices when four or five years ago the current prices are what would presumably have sparked protests and riots. I think it is a just a common thread in humanity to complain. Certainly people prefer to complain rather than to actually DO something. I remember on one of these blogs someone related the story of a young female relative (a niece I think) speaking out against Putin and when he asked her if she voted, she replied “No” which of course makes no sense. If you are going to be that vocal about a politician and participate in protests, why wouldn’t you vote for a candidate whom you would rather see win than him? Likewise, here in the region we are blessed (and I should say at times cursed) with abundant sunshine yet the leading countries in terms of solar power are Germany and Norway. In fact in Belize the prime minister who has just won re-election is promising to secure more cheap oil from Venezuela (which makes no sense if one is concerned about high oil prices – the smart thing to do would be to diversify away from oil, not become more dependent on it) and in Jamaica the energy minister presented a plan for diversifying to solar energy but got a cool reception to say the least (with many in the media and opposition saying it would be: too expensive/wouldn’t work/blah, blah blah and instead calling on the government to “do something” about gas price increases). Meanwhile in most of the islands (like Antigua, Jamaica, St. Vincent, etc) the common refrain is for governments to do something about the rise in gas prices and to simultaneously complain that in the oil producing island of Trinidad there is some kind of unfair “subsidy” because gas prices there are cheaper (about a third of the price as in the rest of the region). But of course investing in solar power, natural gas, coal, hydropower (which could be provided from the likes of Guyana and Venezuela in abundance) is nowhere near the top of the agenda for most. It’s a similar story in other places too I gather, like Africa (broadly speaking). When I think of some of the news reports and documentaries I have seen on places like Congo-Kinshasa and the number of low buildings which would seem to be quite perfect for solar panels it just boggles my mind that nobody seems to have the slightest interest in investing in the future. In particular I remember a documentary which featured the town of Goma in the DR Congo and my first thought when I saw a view of the town was “why the hell are these people burning wood for fuel when the obvious solution is for the government and townspeople to work in partnership (maybe with some kind of international loan) to have solar panels installed on the rooftops?” It was incredible how many buildings were of a similar nature (height, construction) and how many rooftops were being pelted with what looked like unrelenting sunshine. And yet here was a place where some didn’t have electricity!
Grampy McCain wakes up from his afternoon nap, and remembers he was once a fighter pilot. Therefore he is listened to courteously while he explains that only U.S.-led airpower can “establish and defend safe havens for delivering humanitarian and military aid in Syria.”
There should be a law that says if the last time you flew, airplanes still had four wings, you can’t keep using your former-fighter-pilot status for street cred. Perhaps there is. If so, it should be enforced.
Grampy was a BAD pilot. Drunken basterd couldn’t fly straight and got hisself shot down !
McCain was once a shot-down fighter pilot. He was shot down over Hanoi. So much for US air power.
I used to have some time for McCain. He seemed a voice of decency and humanity in the mad court of Bush II. Also there is no doubt about his bravery. He was by all accounts a fine fighter pilot and was cruelly tortured by the Vietnamese. He does not seem to be the same man that he was. I suspect that his defeat by Obama has embittered him and affected his judgement.
McCain was spreading lies about Iraq’s WMD long before Bush ever pulled the trigger. In the 2000 election, the neoconservatives were the ones backing him until they jumped ship to George W. Bush. They may have hesitated to do this since his campaign eschewed intervention and he said that the United States should not be nation building.
He was in fact not a particularly good pilot, and if I am not mistaken it was a Zuni rocket from the plane immediately behind his that started a massive fire on the carrier FORRESTAL in 1967, which incident was made into a training film we used for years in the Navy. I remember there was some talk during the election campaign that it was something stupid he did, although that may have been political. There is no disputing he was extremely brave to have endured such a lengthy period as a POW, but then he cheapened it by attributing all sorts of fanciful character strengths and moral fiber to the present-day McCain owing to his years spent as a POW, all for political gain because his handlers told him to use it.
I don’t think it was defeat by Obama that embittered him, but the realization that he was not the iconic leader his campaign team made him out to be that embittered him. Or maybe he still sees himself as that great leader, and is bitter at everyone for not noticing.
Ilya Yashin after his release from detention following his arrest on Pushkin Square on Monday, 5th March:
“On March 10, we’ll take to the streets. I don’t see any other options”.
According to analysts, however, after three months, protesters are losing their taste for large street rallies. Citing relatively poor turnout and an apparent lack of enthusiasm at Monday’s protest, Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Policy, said “There’s no demand for them anymore”.
For more, see Moscow times:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/protest-organizers-reach-crossroads/454258.html
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thanks for this.
sinotibetan
Another load of crap from today’s Moscow Times:
“The lukewarm market greeting for Vladimir Putin’s election win soured badly on Tuesday when stocks nosedived the morning after an opposition protest in Moscow was forcefully dispersed by thousands of riot police.”
Three observations:
1) “The protest was broken up”:
The protest had ended when OMON arrived. It had to officially end at 9 pm and the vast majority of protestors had already left the square by then. Rent-a-gob Navalny, however, had urged people to stay, in order to provoke a reaction off the authorities. The no more than a thousand law breakers were then dispersed: some were arrested. They were all released a few hours later.
Catherine Fitzpatrick, in a comment to AK’s article about the election on the Aljazeera site, said: “Alyona Popova has a broken arm today from OMON riot police. Putin is a thug.”
Of course, I should think it would have never entered Fitzpatrick’s head to label Obama a thug because one of New York’s finest, whilst engaged in crowd dispersal, squirted pepper spray into the face of an old woman who was sat on a bench in the vicinity of an Out of Wall Street demonstration.
2) “…dispersed by thousands of riot police”:
Thousands?
THOUSANDS!!!
There weren’t even a thousand Navalnyites there on Pushkin Square waiting for their tents to turn up.
3) “…lukewarm market greeting for Vladimir Putin’s election win”
Not according to the Wall Street Journal .
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120305-701586.html
See the full Moscow Times article here:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/stocks-drop-on-moscow-clashes/454271.html
There’s gratitude for you!! Putin reaches out by appointing a personal riot policeman for every protester, so they can begin to bond and build trust, and in return the protesters spit into his outstretched palm. There is apparently no pleasing them!
Seriously, in bizarro world, where up is down and Novaya Gazeta and the Moscow Times coexist with flying pigs and pink elephants, it’s perfectly possible for the stock market to tank at the same time it’s going up. I mean, it wasn’t always going up, was it? Surely there was a moment when it retreated a little? There you have it, then. It nosedived as soon as the market took stock (heh, heh, “stock”, get it? Stock? Market? Oh, never mind) of Bloody Vladimir’s swashbuckling return. Anything other than that was an illusion rigged by Putin to hide his desperation at winning but not having a plan for Russia beyond building himself even more ornate palaces and throwing more political enemies in jail. How will he hide this failing for the next 5 years and a bit? The Emperor has no clothes!!! The Emperor has no clothes!!!
And they wonder why they give the paper away, and still can’t increase circulation. It’s crazy as a supermarket tabloid.
Dear Mark,
Here’s another video from RT showing the crowd dispersal at Pushkin Square of last Monday (February 5th 2012) night. Judging by the faces of the “hardcore” staybehind Navalnyites that can be seen in the video, many of them look like the bourgeois participants of student “demos” in the UK that I remember of my youth. As the demonstrators are being dispersed, some are chanting “Pozor! Pozor!” (Shame! Shame!)
Pushkin Square remains barricaded off as I write. I saw a news report last night (7th February) that some people had been arrested after they had climbed over the barricades in order to “occupy” the area. Some, it seems, are dertermined to turn that place into a Moscow Maidan.
Perhaps it might have been better if the city authorities had let them stay there last night. It’s minus 14C (7F) as I write at 09:20 Moscow time. I reckon if they had been allowed to stay on the square, they would have long ago crept off home to their mums.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbJEyocNUSo&feature=uploademail
Thanks for that; doesn’t look like much of a crowd, and moreover, it seems to lack purpose and unity – it’s just a bunch of people standing around, yakking on their cell phones. When they get together for a chant (like “Pozor”) there seem to be only a dozen or two. Pretty feeble, unfocused and haphazard, and just going through the motions. Must have been immensely disappointing for the organizers.
Not February, of course! It’s March 2012 now : March 8th, in fact – International Women’s Day and a public holiday here in the Evil Empire.
Поздравления с 8 Марта: международным женским днём!
Do not forget to buy your wife some flowers, @Exile.
Otherwise, YOU will be the one sleeping out in Pushkinskaya Square tonight!
I recommend red tulips. (That is what Putin was handing out at his victory rally.)
Oh, I haven’t forgotten, believe you me! If I had, my wife (Miss KGB 1983), would have made my life so unbearable that I might even have thought of returning to Merry England. (Nah, she couldn’t be so heartless as to make me do that!)
I always joke about today’s holiday, calling it “International Women’s day only in Russia”, for I think that there are very few countries in the world, apart from, possibly, some former “friendly socialist countries” that observe this day of respect for all women everywhere.
Most Russians of my acquaintance know that Mothering Sunday is a very old English tradition; it is now called Mother’s Day in the US, I think, in order to put it in line with other US “card holidays, such as Father’s Day and whatever; but like I said, March 8th is big here, and yesterday, as I was coming home from work, the metro and streets were full of women and girls of all ages with big bouquets of flowers. Some of them were a litttle tipsy, after having had a small party at work, and were singing on the metro.
Tomorrow is also a holiday, because if it were not, I am sure that there would be a high level of absenteeism. Sunday, however, is a working day in lieu of Friday.
God, life is hard here under the iron rule of that cruel despot Putin!
Thanks to both of you for the reminder – I was able to surprise my wife with my elephantine memory even though I had completely forgotten about it. You’re right that although it exists outside Russia, it more or less passes without remark here, although I try to remember it for the ladies in my family and for my wife’s Russian girlfriends, to whom it is sufficiently important that they are grateful to be remembered. Russia in fact has considerably more holidays than either Canada or the USA.
Last time I checked, the European country with most public holidays is Greece and the one with the least is the UK. What might come as a surprise to many is that Germany is at the top end of the holidays league table.
Since the Russia Federation declared its independence from the Soviet Union, there have been many changes in state holidays In Russia. The biggest change has been the New Year/Christmas holidays. In the USSR only New year was celebrated, but in the ’90s Christmas Day (January 7th) was added to the state holidays (there was some debate over whether to have December 25th as a public holiday), with the result that in Russia now there is a lengthy seasonal thrash that sometimes lasts for 10 or 11 days, as it does in the West, depending on which day of the week the Russian Eastern Orthodox Christmas falls.
Then there follows “Defenders of the Fatherland Day” (formerly “Red Army Day”, which wasn’t a public holiday) on February 23rd, followed by “International Women’s Day” on March 8th, then “Spring and Labour Day” on May 1st. Easter is not a public holiday here. Then there is “Victory Day” (over the Fascists in Europe, 1945) on May 9th, which only became a public holiday in the ’80s if Im not mistaken, followed by “Russia Day” on June 12th. That one was originally called “Day of the Adoption of the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Russian Federation” (from the USSR); many mistakenly think it is called “Independence Day”. Then there is “Unity Day” on November 4th that replaced the “Day of the Great October Revolution” of November 7th. Before they created Unity Day, the powers that be renamed the November 7th holiday “Day of Reconciliation”, which didn’t go down too well I think. So they choose November 4th as a state holiday, as that was the date when a popular rising kicked off in 1612 in order to eject the Polish intervention and occupation that had occurred as a result of Poles taking advantage of “The Time of the troubles” (1598-1613), the interregnum between the end of the Rurik dynasty and the founding of the Romanov one.
So that”s six days that are public holidays plus the big New Year/Christmas bender.
There should be more!
Never underestimate the enemy. They were able to keep a tent city going on Maidan Square in Kiev even though the weather there was also very cold. Kievite can confirm this. That is why the police are right to prevent this starting.
News reports suggest that there have been scattered attempts to try to organise sit ins in Pushkin Square and Red Square throughout the day. I gather the police have been rounding up small groups of young people and some 20 have been detained in total.
@Moscow Exile, when you say Pushkin Square is barricaded do you mean it is sealed off? I say this because it has struck me as being a key traffic artery. If it is indeed sealed off to traffic then the disruption must be severe. I wonder what the good citizens of Moscow feel about that?
True, Tverskaya St., the main drag in Moscow, traverses Pushkin Square, but the part of the square where Pushkin’s statue is, namely on the right hand side as one heads out of the city centre and away from the Kremlin, and where the fountains are, is where the meetings have been allowed to take place. A stage had been erected for the last authorised meeting (5 March), situated at that side of the square furthest from Tverskaya and backing onto the cinema “Rossiya”.
You can see the stage, cinema and fountains in the video below at time 1.16.
Navalny and chums “occupied” the fountain basins. Did they think they would be unassailable there, that the fountains would serve as bastions?
At time 1.21 in the video you can see the barricades, which consists only of movable metal tubular steel fencing, but I believe there is a constant police presence there now. You can also see at 1.21 the electronic checking gates through which all must pass in order to enter the area allocated for meetings, as well as portable toilet cubicles, which is jolly decent of those bestial Russkies, don’t you think?
The juveniles – and many of the protesters do seem so to me – are shouting “Russia shall be free!” and “Shame on you!”
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbJEyocNUSo&feature=uploademail
They were able to keep such a tent city going thanks to Berezovsky’s largesse; proper cold-weather tents, hot food and drinks and an army of volunteers (including Tymoshenko) to circulate constantly to see if anyone needed anything and to keep the party atmosphere going. To be associated with Berezovsky’s regime-change budget in Russia would be the kiss of death.
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thanks for the explanation. All is now clear.
@ Mark, it certainly would be the kiss of death for any opposition movement if it became known that Berezovsky was funding it. I ought to say that during the recent court case in London (which I followed closely) evidence suggested that Berezovsky has spent so much of his money on his various plots and schemes as well as in supporting his baroque lifestyle (he lives like a late Roman Emperor) that he is now heavily in debt. However there is no shortage of other people who would be willing to fund a tent city. See Kievite’s comments made earlier on this post.
“A survey among 300 CEOs and managers in Germany, France and Great Britain showed that all participants agreed that Russia’s untapped markets are “very attractive” and its natural resources “very important.” According to 90% of the participants, the investment climate had clearly been enhanced during Putin’s first term of office, but more “reforms” should be made. The participating CEOs and managers do not expect Putin’s re-election to be an obstacle. 70% even expect that he would guarantee “stability” in the country.[7]”
“A survey organized in December 2011 by the German Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations and the German Russian Chamber of Commerce arrived at nearly the same results.[8] This survey focused on 100 enterprises, with 55,000 employees in Russia and annual sales worth 13.8 billion Euros. The participants also consider the business climate to be on the whole positive and expect a favorable development. Only 25% of the survey’s participants expect that another term of office for Putin would have a negative impact on the business climate, whereas 45% expect a continuation of the current profitable situation and 30% expect even new positive impulses. DGAP expert Rahr explains that “the German economy” is hoping “for stability in Russia.”[9] All in all, he expects that the economic interests will prevail in the end: “The Germans will never isolate Russia.” Behind the scenes, there is strong controversy between the partisans of this position and those of a confrontational course towards Russia. This is not new: For centuries the relationship between Germany and Russia has been meandering between the closest of cooperation and the most brutal confrontation.”
http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58283?PHPSESSID=gudorvl8fbp0ptvdt3v7uu1pm3
Old Bismarck was nobody’s fool and a cornerstone of his foreign policy was never to rub up the Russian Empire the wrong way. Of course, fundamental purpose of this policy was the avoidance of the German military nightmare of a war on two fronts, east and west. Unfortunately, on his accession to the German Imperial throne, Kaiser Wilhelm II ditched Bismarck and pursued his own foreign policy, which basically seemed to be to get up everybody’s nose. The fact remains though that despite the tragedy of the two European bloodbaths of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, in which the Second and Third Reichs were at war with the Russian Empire from 1914-1917 and the Soviet Union from 1941-1945, the German speaking peoples in those territories that eventually coalesced into the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg and German Hohenzollern Empires have always been the biggest trading partners with the Slavic lands to their east. Teuton and Slav have traded peacefully with each other for far longer periods than when they have been at each others’ throats.
Bismarck said that launching a pre emptive war against Russia is like committing suicide to avoid death.
“The US has broken the second rule of war. That is, don’t go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don’t march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself.”
Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, in the House of Lords on American policy in Vietnam, 1962
Exactly this is what I was talking about. Russian-German strategic partnership will define Europe’s present and future. The anti-continental forces (USA, UK) will always try to play the two great power against each other. The question is: will they succeed again?
This educational video by Michael Parenti (Yale historian) could be interesting for the participants of this blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDmovEja_f0&feature=related
You can plan your future only if you understand your past.
In today’s (March 8th 2012) UK Independent, the Russia correspondent Shaun Walker, a person with a similar mission, it seems, as Harding’s of the UK Guardian, “reports” the opinion that, in view of the Russian President-elect’s recent offer of a government position to Prokhorov, then the oligarch might possibly have been Putin’s stooge all along:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/was-putins-presidential-rival-really-an-undercover-ally-all-along-7544515.html
More signs that NATO is backing off on Syria and has no stomach to bomb them like they did Libya. Previously, if you recall, their UN puppet, Ban Ki Moon was flailing his arms and calling Assad “illegitimate” and demanding that he step down immediately to make room for Rebel government. That method of diplomacy did not work so well, for some reason. So now the incompetent Moon has stepped back and Kofi Annan (his more competent predecessor) has returned to take charge of the situation. Appointed Special Ambassador to speak for UN (and Arab League), Kofi is in Syria now, and is calling on Syrian “Opposition” to dialogue with the Assad government. Once Rebels agree to dialogue, that is already an admission of defeat. Assad’s military victory in Homs was bigger than what Western media would allow to believe.
http://www.rosbalt.ru/main/2012/03/08/955009.html
Speaking of Libya: That unfortunate country has begun its inevitable break-up into 3 regions, with the East (=Cyrenaica =Benghazi) declaring its autonomy. NATO puppet government (=NTC) head Jalil makes frantic threats to kill the secessionists, but he lacks one small thing: an army. NATO will probably not swoop in this time to help him against the secessionists. In fact, the break-up was probably The Plan all along, as indicated by the fact that Bernard-Henri Levy aka Godfather of Jihad (=Sarkozi’s spiritual advisor on all things Libyan) has endorsed the Cyrenaica split-off and even helped design their new flag.
http://rt.com/news/libya-split-cyrenaica-autonomy-971/
Dear Yalensis,
Evidence that the plan was to split Cyrenaica from Libya may be provided by the mysterious appearance in Benghazi in large numbers of monarchist flags at the start of the rebellion a year ago. These had to have been produced beforehand and their appearance is strong and even conclusive evidence that the rebellion was planned.
The point is that the pre Gaddafi monarchy was based in Cyrenaica. The Muslim fundamentalist Senussi movement out of which it grew originated there. Shortly before the coup that brought Gaddafi to power Idris, the Senussi leader who was Libya’s King, was actually in the process of building a new capital there. I should say that there was also considerable talk before Gaddafi came to power that Libya might split into its three separate parts, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan, when the British troops who up to the 1960s were occupying the country left.
The overwhelming impression I have got is that a majority of the people in Tripolitania and the overwhelming majority of the people of Fezzan continued to support Gaddafi to the bitter end. Creating a western backed oil rich monarchy in Cyrenaica possibly headed by the Senussi once more would make for the western planners perfect sense. I would merely add that both Resolutions 1970 and 1973 spoke about the importance of maintaining Libya’s territorial integrity but since practically every other part of those Resolutions has been broken what is another breach more or less?
Well Well Resolution 1244 also spoke about the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia in 1999. Didn’t stop the West from recognizing Kosovo though.
I think that a split involving Benghazi is less important to the western powers than who will end up with the Sirte Basin. Benghazi might be a very large city, but it is going to be an Islamic-fundamentalist majority city eventually, which holds no interest for NATO beyond hurling its hate against some future holdout if it needs another flip-flop army. The water in the North is of abiding importance – although I doubt the developer of its original potential will ever be remembered – and the Sirte Basin contains much of the known oil reserves.
NATO likely figures Benghazi independence – whoopty-doo – just means a bunch more ragheads who can be expected to look after themselves and can be divorced from western aid.
Whoops! On reading the article more closely, Benghazi will be in control of the Sirte Basin. That puts an entirely different complexion on things – that would make Benghazi the beneficiary of western approbation and fawning until western oil majors can set up sweetheart deals with the ignorant ragheads. It will be the former capital that can deal with its crumbling empire without western help.
Oddly enough I remember reading the surprising “fact” that (according to the autonomists in Benghazi apparently) the semi-autonomous region of Cyrenaica stretches from the town of Sirt(e) to the Egyptian-Libyan border. I found this surprising because on no map of Libya showing the traditional regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan will one see the border of Cyrenaica starting at Sirte. Instead it always starts at some point between Ras Lanuf and Brega. Of course moving the border of the traditional Cyrenaica to Sirte makes sense when you look at this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Libya_location_map-oil_%26_gas_2011-en.svg
It would put even more of the oil resources under the control of Cyrenaica (even though most of Libya’s oil resources are already in traditional Cyrenaica).
Looks like we might have to get ready for Libya to become the Somalia on the Mediterranean……
Hmm….might that lead to the return of the Barbary Pirates?
This could be applied to Saudi Arabia?
90% of their oil comes from fields in the predominately Shiite eastern province. This region was grabbed by the Saudi regime from the crumbling Ottoman Empire. With sectarian tensions being stoked largely by the Saudis themselves, I could see their legitimacy here coming into question.
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/saudi_arabia_s_shiite_problem
I have heard that Saudi Arabia deliberately sank the price of oil in the 80s and 90s as a form of economic warfare against the Soviet Union. They could not have done this without a powerful protector (the United States) and a Soviet leader who prioritized better relations with the West. I think today if they overestimated their power and tried to step on Iran and Russia they could be making enemies that have nothing to lose on the Arabian peninsula.
Does anybody have any views on the prosecution of the Pussy Riot group for their “performance” in the Cathedral of the Saviour? I think they should be let off with a warning not to pull off such stunts in places of worship again. Who are these girls?
They should be released, because if they stay in prison, opposition will start to idolize them as “martyrs for the people”. These are just dirty punks, not freedom fighters. As a catholic, I feel offended by their stunt and I think all believers feel the same. They should be charged with large amount of money for breeching the law and offend people. Imagine, if they did their stunt in a mosque, they would be cut in half. That’s all. Harsh sentence, humiliation if possible, but no prison.
I agree they should be treated leniently.
Incidentally, if they were truly the radical stick it to the Man types they say they are, they should try pulling off their stunts in a mosque.
After all more Muslims voted for Putin than Christians, even adjusted for fraud, so it would be more appropriate (well, as appropriate as one can get doing this is a religious building, anyway).
That would be fun to watch. But I doubt they would.
According to today’s RT: “Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for Church and Society Vsevolod Chaplin has urged the authorities not to send the young women to prison. He was quoted saying that although the punishment should be strict, charity needs to be shown as well”.
See: http://rt.com/art-and-culture/news/pussy-riot-church-altar-027/
Once upon a time, bands were content to play music to get attention. If you didn’t get any, it probably meant you weren’t very good. Then you needed to get better. Not any more.
Which RT report runs contrary to what Walker of the UK Independent says about the matter. No surprise there! Walker’s Russia articles are always intended to throw anything concerning Russia into a bad light.
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/punks-who-took-on-russian-president-face-years-in-jail-7544516.html
We know who these presstitutes are. They defend each other and coordinate their distortions together. Putin did not have them arrested for criticizing him, though the article makes it seem like he did. Shaun Walker is as ashamed of being a liar as Luke Harding is of being a plagiarist.
Correction: it was yesterday’s RT where the Patriarch was quoted above. I agree with him: I think the women should be fined, but not sent down. In any case, they are going to be held on remand until April 24th. I’ve been in the main remand prison in Moscow, and it’s pretty grim.
Interesting expose showing connections between Al Qaeda, MI6 and Western journalists. Also connecting Libyan and Syrian “rebels”. A key connecting figure, as always, is Qatari agent and Al Qaeda warlord Abdul Hakim Belhaj:
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/03/journalist-paul-conroy-is-mi6-operative.html
Grampy to Putin: “Vlad, your days are numbered!”
Putin to Grampy: “Crawl back into your pit and stop calling me Vlad, it’s not my real name!”
http://www.inosmi.ru/russia/20120309/187717776.html
Yeah, it really bugs me when Western journalists and assorted Russophobes call Putin “Vlad”. This is partly, I am sure, through ignorance, but is also a result of their thinly disguised attempt to blacken Putin by associating him with the monstrous Vlad the Impaler. In any case, Vlad Drakyl “The Impaler” was not from the Evil Empire: he was from what is now Romania, and they say he picked up his habit of impaling folk that annoyed him off the Ottoman Turks..
Two of the most common diminutives for Vladimir (meaning “universal ruler/prince”) is Volodya or Vova – and there are many more, but Vlad is not one of them, although I have seeen some American web sites that say that it is. Well, it may be on Brighton Beach, but no Russian that I have spoken to about this says that Vlad is a friendly way of addressing a Vladimir..
My son is called Vladimir, and it bugs him when they call him Vlad in the UK.
The Russian male name that has as one of its diminutives “Vlad” is Vladislav (glory rule).
Although that is usually abbreviated “Slava”. Western cultures assume a desire to assimilate on the part of all others, and often don’t believe their awarding of new nicknames will be taken as an insult or that they can’t be bothered to learn to say things properly will be interpreted as ignorance. Comes to that, it used to annoy me when western journalists used to refer offhandedly to “Saddam” as if they knew him well. In fact, that is his family name, while Hussein was his personal name.
We had a neighbour where we used to live who insisted on referring to my wife as “Savannah” because she couldn’t say “Svetlana”, or said she couldn’t. I’m sure Sveta wasn’t offended, but at the same time I’m sure she didn’t think it was clever or cute, and I can’t recall ever being introduced to someone in another country where they didn’t try to say my name properly even if it didn’t fit comfortably with their alphabet (such as Japan or Korea). But McCain’s brash ignorance should come as no surprise.
Own of my close relatives, who is called Vladimir, says, “Just call me Vlad” to people who can’t pronounce the name.
My shortened name here is “Toly” (not “Tolya”, as it should be).
One has to make compromises…
From Wikipedia:
Anatoly, Анатолий (Russian),[1] is a common Russian and Ukrainian male name, derived from the Greek name Ανατολιος Anatolius, meaning “sunrise.” Other common Russian transliterations are Anatoliy and Anatoli. The French version of the name is Anatole. Saint Anatolius was a third century saint from Alexandria in Egypt.[2] Anatoly was one of the five most popular names for baby boys born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2004.[3] One in every 35,110 Americans are named Anatoly and the popularity of the name Anatoly is 28.48 people per million. [4]
Should we start calling you “Sunshine” ?
There’s also something darkly comical about a 76-year-old man telling a 60-year-old man, “your days are numbered”. Take a look in the mirror, Grampy; you’re starting to look like the fifth California Raisin.
Well Anatoly is a name that has been adopted into a number of other languages including those spoken in Western Europe. So the nicknaming conventions for those forms of “Anatoly” would probably be different especially if they developed independently. You’re more likely to find someone who is not of Greek or Slav extraction being named “Anatoly” than you are to find a similar person being named “Vladimir” (Cuba and some other Latin American countries notwithstanding). I wonder what the diminutive for “Vladimiro” is in those countries….
…and here’s an interesting item: super-hacker “Sabu”, who, among other mischief, was responsible for “battering Arab government websites in support of regional uprisings”, is revealed to have been an FBI plant. This will likely be remembered in the context of the FBI having successfully infiltrated the ultrasecret hacker community, but it’s worth remembering that while working for the FBI since last June, he helped to discombobulate Arab governments in support of “Arab Spring” uprisings. Can you think of any significant events in the alleged spontaneous and non-fabricated uprising that occurred since last June? I can.
The thoughts of a United States journalist in today’s Moscow News:
“Russia’s democratic opposition now has to deal with the elephant in the room: Russia’s silent majority elected Vladimir Putin president on Sunday.”
So the penny has dropped! The majority supports Putin. Yet he describes those oppposed to this majority as “the democratic opposition”, implying that those whom they oppose are undemocratic.
So let me get this straight: the decision whereby a majority decision is accepted is not democratic, whereas the minority who opppose the majority decision are democratic.
Right?
The hack then goes on to say: “Cool Russia and un-cool Russia will have to come to terms”.
No prizes for guessing which Russia he considers to be “uncool”.
After suggesting that when spring has sprung those thousands of “democratic” and “cool” people whom he so admires “…should migrate to city parks – like Moscow’s newly renovated Park Kultury”, where “…the tens of thousands of people who volunteered Sunday as election observers can channel their energies into building the foundation blocks of civil society – joining neighborhood groups, green groups, women groups, new political parties, and, dare I say it, gay groups”, the Moscow News journalist then uses another example of US patois by conceding that such action “is not sexy”.
I should think that on reading this article many Russian speakers of English not au fait with American English idiom would be somewhat at a loss to understand what sex has to do with such open air teach-ins and socio-political workshops that he suggests should take place in Park Kultury, apart, that is, from any extra-curricular activities that may spontaneously arise behind the bushes.
See:
http://www.themoscownews.com./russiawatch/20120307/189520472.html
“So let me get this straight: the decision whereby a majority decision is accepted is not democratic, whereas the minority who opppose the majority decision are democratic.”
I noted the same thing over at AK’s blog: http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2012/03/09/economist-on-russia-elections/
The Economist implies that Putin is not “legitimate” simply because a “large minority” of the total population and a “large majority” of the capital city which contains only 8-10% of the total population did not vote for him. Essentially they are promoting the idea of minority rule. As I demonstrated, replace “Putin” with “Mandela” and replace “Moscow” with “Pretoria” and what the Economist is essentially saying becomes an argument for apartheid-style “democracy”.
Any last minute estimates on the turnout for the protest today?
I’ve just been checking out the TV and the papers here in Moscow and there is no up-to-date news about these protests, only old news that estimated attendance ranges from 50 to 100 thousand. The MT and MN, of course, write of a “massive police presence” in the city centre, where my wife and elder daughter have just set off for. I’ll ask her when she comes back whether the centre was swamped with cops.
RT at 07:20 this morning, 10th March 2012:
http://rt.com/news/opposition-russia-novy-arbat-245/
From Moskovskiy Komsomolets: video clip (top centre page) showing Udaltsov and Navalny mouthing it off in the fountain at Pushkin Square last Monday evening (5th March 2012). Other clips on left, including one of Navalny.
One of the protesters interviewed says that according to the constitution he has the right to assemble anytime, anywhere, anyplace. Clearly, he hasn’t studied the constitution. I think he’s confusing the constitution with a Martini ad.
The mob shouts “OMON is breaking the law!”
Fact is, the protesters are breaking the law as it has passed the allocated for the demonstration to end.
A protester shouts at the officers, “What are you doing this for, lads? What for?”
Pretty dumb question.
“Russia without Putin!” they chant as one demonstrator holds up his Ipad to record the police action.
Such shocking brutality!
“Move along quickly now!” says the cop as the protesters disperse, many of them chatting away on their mobiles. And “Shame on you!” shouts somebody as a girl is bundled away by the cops.
The Western media said that hundreds had been arrested and that “thousands” of cops had been deployed.
All those arrested were released a few hours later. One woman had her arm broken as she was thrown into the snow from the fountain basin.
Udaltsov said yesterday that he was expecting 100,000 to protest against the election result today.
I think he’s going to be disappointed.
See: http://tv.mk.ru/video/3245-aktsiya-oppozitsii-zakonchilas-massovyimi-zaderzhaniyami.html
Wife’s just come back from downtown. I asked her if there were cops everywhere. “No”, she said,”why?”
The “democratic opposition” call OMON “Robocops”. I wonder what they would call these cops shown in the video below:
Whataboutism!
Hasta la vista chiquita! – I don’t think.
It was in Barcelona. The papers were full of reports about it.
Weren’t they?
As it happens from RT.
Pictures of Novy Arbat, Moscow, where todays “democratic oppositon” is now protesting against Putin\s victory.
http://rt.com/news/opposition-russia-novy-arbat-245/
Police estimate: 8,000.
By the end of the day that will be converted into 150,000 by the “opposition”, for sure.
“Khodorkhovsky for President!” reads one of the protesters’ banners.
And with such a demand I reckon they can kiss their collective arse goodbye as regards gaining popular support for their movement, not that they had much of it anyway.
According to this report (MK newspaper, in Russian) they’re demanding an annulment of the March 4th election result and the holding of another “fair” election.
Some hope!
http://www.mk.ru/politics/article/2012/03/10/679822-oppozitsiya-oboznachila-novuyu-temu.html
10,000 on Novy Arbat says Komsomolskaya Pravda:
http://www.kp.ru/daily/25848.4/2818032/
Many thanks to MoscowExile for being the man on the spot with info and links about the activities in Moscow. I watched the whole 18-minute video of the Pushkin Square event from last week, and it seems even more clear that this was the Opposition’s “Waterloo” moment. Literally, when grinning OMON had to drag them, one by one, like squirming rats, out of the fountain. (Actually, tough work for OMON, but they are well paid, after all.) Other impressions: Udaltsov is looking beefy and seems to have regained all the weight he lost during his hunger-strike in December, during which time he got very skinny. Now he just looks like a beefed-up zek. Navalny is a failure, his speech was lame, and he keeps just chopping his hands for emphasis. He needs to go back to Yale and take a class in public speaking. Is obvious he and Udaltsov simply had no plan other than to hold out in the fountain, what were they planning to do, build a tent city inside that little fountain? If they want to learn to build REAL city barricades, well, then they need to fly to Paris to study from the masters. [Allude to Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables”, impressive series of chapters on how to build awesome barricades.]
Aux barricades!!!!
I’d follow that bonny lass anywhere!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg
Early FEMEN.
Lady Liberty had a slight wardrobe malfunction!
I have just seen the pictures on RT of the protest in Moscow today helpfully provided by Moscow Exile (for which thanks!). Of course I do not know at what stage in the protest these pictures were taken. It may have been either at an early or at a late stage before the full turnout. However it is clear that the road was not blocked and that traffic was able to pass through. Anyway my impression is that the crowd in the pictures is closer to 10,000 than 20,000. Obviously that is no more than a guess. I gather that the protesters themselves are claiming 20-25,000, which is anyway far less than the 50,000 they said would turn up.
Just one further observation based on what I realise may be unrepresentative pictures. The crowd seems much more somber than on previous occasions and there seem to be far fewer young people. I saw none of the funny costumes and carnival floats one saw in the earlier protests whilst most of the people seemed to be over 30. In fact this looked by some distance the “oldest” protest so far.
I would just remind everybody that Navalny on 24th December 2011 predicted a million protesters and that the Guardian in its editorial on the eve of the elections said that the protest that happened on Monday would be the biggest so far. Wrong on all counts.
Dear Alexander Mercouris,
Yes, I noticed that age difference too between most of those pictured on Novy Arbat today and those pictured at earlier demonstrations. In fact, it looks like rent-a-gran might have been in operation again, that same outfit that seemed to have provided the vociferous protesters outside of the Moscow court where Khodorkovsky last appeared.
The BBC is also saying that this is the smallest protest. See its account. It puts the number at “up to 20,000″.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17323565
I think we can now say that the Snowflake Revolution is over, melting with the snow in spring.
It’s all over now bar the shouting!
RT says that “roughly 10,000″ turned up: “Much less [sic] people came than were initially expected” said their correspondent on Novy Arbat. Dissension within the “opposition” ranks as regards what post-election direction is to be taken is one of several causes given for the apparent waning of the numbers of protesters.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5CDk_knq5k&feature=uploademail
I see the UK Independent (Lebedev’s rag) tries to beef up events in Moscow today with the article headline: “Thousands Protest in Moscow Over Putin”. Which is absolutely true: about eight thousand, actually. The population of Moscow is….I don’t know: nobody does exactly. I reckon about 14 million.
Oh, they weren’t all from Moscow, were they?
I see. That means they were bussed in?
The writing appeared to be well and truly on the wall as regards what has happened today at Novy Arbat when one considers the content of an article (linked below) that appeared on March 7th in Nezavisimaya Gazeta – “The Independent”, for which the odious Latynina writes and in which Gorbachev and Lebedev of the UK Independent has shares.
You remember Gorbachev, don’t you? He’s the one that lectures Putin on democracy, though he never stood for election by popular mandate to become effective head of state in the capacity of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: he was also the one responsible for the shooting of demonstrators in Baku and Vilnius shortly before the demise of the USSR.
Anyway, the article is entitled: “Who’s for the Maidan and Who’s for the Fountain?” (It rhymes in Russian). It starts thus:
“This past Monday at Moscow’s Pushkin square the opposition rally was a flop for the organizers. This was noted not only by political experts, but also by Russian bloggers, who previously had supported the action “for fair elections”. The rally did not stand out as being a massive one. Experts believe that this suggests that protesting has played itself out, as the opposition has been unable to give a relevant agenda to the participants of rallies on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue. According to official figures, less than 14.5 thousand. people gathered at the meeting “For Fair Elections” held on Pushkin Square on Monday, whereas organizers had predicted a much larger audience. Interestingly, the comparative poor turn out was a surprise even for the city. Prior to the meeting, the possibility of blocking traffic on Tverskaya Street was being seriously discussed, in order to accommodate all who came to the meeting”.
With some prescience The Independent gave the very reasons for the low turnout at Pushkin Square that are now being given fotr today’s flop on Novy Arbat.
See: http://www.ng.ru/regions/2012-03-07/1_maidan.html
The UK Daily Telegraph:
“An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people gathered on Saturday for the peaceful demonstration on Novy Arbat, a boulevard to the west of the city’s centre.”
I think the journalist should have his eyes tested. Does it look like 20,000 people assembled in the photograph accompanying the DT article?
See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9135792/Moscow-protest-opposition-call-for-civil-rights-campaign-against-Vladimir-Putin-after-his-election-victory.html
15,000 to 20,000?
http://grani.ru/files/58411.jpg?1331375407
See also:
http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/activism/m.196281.html
Moskovskiy Komsomolets says that authorities gave permission that a meeting be held on Novy Arbat with a maximum participation of 50,000 people. The town hall also gave permission to close the thoroughfare to traffic if the need arose, but it didn’t: the protesters only occupied the paved area where the stage had been erected.
Take a look at the phots and especially the video at the end of this MK article linked below. How many demonstrators do you think took part?
See: http://www.mk.ru/politics/article/2012/03/10/679875-test-na-protest.html
Dear Moscow Exile,
Thanks again for this.
If I was to judge the rally by the video at the end I would put the number at well below 10,000. In fact if I had not heard other much higher numbers I would say 3-5,000 at most. However we do not know at what point in the rally the film was made. I cannot believe that the police would say that turnout was higher than it was so I would guess that 10,000 must be the bare minimum and 20,000 the absolute maximum. Let’s split the difference and say 15,000 or roughly the same as the number who turned up on Monday. Certainly we are looking at far fewer than 50,000 and as for the million that Navalny spoke about on 24th December 2011 and Udaltsov announced for future rallies today, that is for the birds.
A few further points:
1. Though the protesters have claimed that Putin’s supporters are bused in to his rallies here we have the clearest possible evidence that the protesters are doing exactly the same thing. There are several coaches in clear view and two coaches with more protesters seem to be drawing up towards the end.
2. Who is that extremely tough and frankly unpleasant looking young man with the rather sinister arm band we saw at the start of the film who seemed to be handing out leaflets? I wouldn’t want to meet him alone in a dark place.
3. I gather that Udaltsov again tried to lead a break away of about sixty followers to Pushkin Square for another sit in only to be detained again by the police. This is becoming tedious. It looks to me as if he is going down the same route of irrelevant exhibitionism as did Limonov before him.
We have seen time and again that the western media exaggerates the size of anti-Putin/anti-United Russia protests and downplays the size of pro-Putin/pro-government rallies in roughly the same measure, by at least half. They backed away from it a little bit around the time of the single large protest, when it seemed as if the anti-government “movement” was picking up steam and they might not have to exaggerate. But they have continuously minimized pro-Putin rallies as “a few thousand”, while demonstrations like this one are billed as “thousands”. The same thing, actually, but simple literary tricks make the one seem meager while the other seems huge.
Anyway, the worst that anyone could do now would be to mock them or make fun of them. Without a focal point for their anger – which might be conveniently offered by mockery – the whole thing will just crumble and fall apart. A tone of conciliatory forgiveness would be best, and understanding that they just lost their way for a minute. It would have the advantage of taking the moral high road, which just makes the western agitators look worse. It looks like La Russophobe called Navalny correctly right from the start, while many, many analysts well above her pay grade dropped the ball in favour of Navalny crushes.
Dear Mark,
On the subject of Navalny here I too have to make a confession. I never thought he was an imminent danger and I did expect him in time to burn himself out but I did think he was a much more powerful force than he has turned out to be. Looking back his best moment was at the rally on 24th December 2011. Ever since he has failed to have anything like the impact I expected. Given the publicity he gets this cannot be because Russians don’t know enough about him. It must mean that they are far less impressed with him than I thought they might be. Good for them! I gather there was a survey of the people who turned up at the 24th December 2011 that made that clear.
“Given the publicity he gets this cannot be because Russians don’t know enough about him.”
Doesn’t that sound like Nemtsov? He, too, feels bitterly cheated that Russians don’t grab hold of his anti-Putin message, and whenever he loses at some bid for office he claims it’s because the state monopolizes advertising. But the comparison doesn’t carry all the way, because Navalny was just a “rebel leader”, and had no political status. Nonetheless, he certainly eclipsed Nemtsov, for a brief moment in time.
I wonder what Navalny will do now? Considering he’s vastly more revered in the west than he is in Russia – except for a small core of adoring supporters – perhaps he will move to the west to become another agitator-from-overseas. I’m sure the west won’t give up this easily, but it must recognize that there is little potential for overthrowing Putin based on broad dissent, and will have to settle for nibbling at his policies and pouncing on any signs of discontent with them. Apart, I mean, from John McCain, who is sure only of Sundays because that’s the day he appears on conservative-friendly talk shows. In his addled mind, there’s still a chance.
There’s an “opposition” supporter over on the RT thread about today’s meeting that says “…most russians, especially the educated, intelligent ones and also the working class does not support the current regime. Especially Putins most criminal party, United Russia, which is made of billionaire oligarches, criminals and hypocrites”.
I commented as regards majority support remaining for Putin and United Russia even if one makes adjustments to compensate for the highest alleged perentage of fraud in both elections, but it’s there again: that which Alexander Mercouris mentioned above: that class antagonism, that bourgeois sneering at those who voted for Putin.
I am sure he just tagged on as an afterthought “and also the working class” so as not to sound too obnoxious in saying that most Russians, especially the educated and intelligent ones, do not support the regime. If, however, his comment about the working class is not an afterthought, then that means he believes that all working class Russians, but only most of the educated, intelligent ones, are against the regime, namely that the Russian working class as a whole is smarter than educated and intelligent Russians are as a whole.
Perhaps it’s his command of written English that caused him to write his curious statement. Be that as it may, he is definitely wrong in believing that most Russians are against the regime. Perhaps he reads and believes too much of what is written in the Western news media.
Or he thinks, as Latynina does, that the poor betray the nation with their voting choices – voting for the leader who promises to throw a chicken in the pot from time to time – and thus should be restricted to pick-and-shovel work while the heady intrigues of political maneuvering are left in trust to the elite, who are less apt to vote their stomachs.
Strangely, that’s just about an exact encapsulation of the sort of thinking the west rails against when it’s trying to get a revolution off the ground. Imagine Paul Revere arguing for a political system in which the court of privilege made all the weighty decisions while the rabble squabbled over the price of potatoes. I know I’d certainly like to see the opposition articulate this philosophy, because nothing would kill it stone dead faster.
Most interestingly the BBC itself seems to have mellowed a bit. The day before the March 10 protests I remember hearing them report that even the organizers of the protests were downplaying expectations of a 50,000 turnout and they questioned whether the protest movement was running out of steam.
Couple that with a surprisingly balanced (as one can get in the British media) discussion on Putin on their World Have Your Say program some days ago (which can be heard here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/whys as “WHYS 60: Is Putin a great leader?” and downloaded here:http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/whys/whys_20120305-1912a.mp3) and the conclusion I’ve come to is that for the Beeb at least they are either:
1. slowly becoming bored of the topic
2. they’ve seen the writing on the wall and are coming around to reality even if they don’t like it (which I think might be the case given this tweet: http://inagist.com/BBCTimWhewell/176720710721474560/)
The discussion program in particular was surprising as in addition to the usual cast of anti-Putin types who quite often sounded quite disconnected from reality they had expat Russians (in London!) who had few or no problems with Putin and supported him over other candidates and John Lockland, Director of Studies at the International Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, who seems to be a Brit with a fairly level head when it comes to Russia – particularly surprising was when he pointed out that he was disappointed with the debate so far and expected a much higher level of discourse since up to that point all the anti-Putinistas were harping on about were Putin’s personal characteristics (“he’s authoritarian”, “a dictator”, yada yada yada) as opposed to specific policies that he implemented and which were disagreeable. That bit floored me to be honest.
Dear Hunter,
I too have noticed how much more sober BBC reporting of Russia has suddenly become. It has always of course been much more sober than that of the printed media, which isn’t saying much.
Dear Alexander Mercouris,
In answer to your question No. 2 that you posed above: I don’t know. I was wondering about him myself. You see, where he is being filmed is not on Novy Arbat but at the entrance to Arbatskaya metro station, which is a good half mile from where the stage on Novy Arbat was erected and is the station that most would have used to arrive by metro for the meeting.
When I saw the photos like this…
http://grani.ru/files/58411.jpg?1331375407
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02164/russia1_2164197c.jpg
…I too thought attendance had plummeted. As the police were claiming 8000, and the protesters 30,000, and since the Law of Averages had worked so well in the past, I assumed real attendance was at around 15,000.
However, the geodesic engineer Nikolai Pomeshchenko, whose estimates we have no reason to distrust (previous estimates: Bolotnaya I – 60k; Sakharov – 56k+; Bolotnaya 2 – 62k) gave a much higher than consensus estimate of 26,000.
http://jedimik.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/rally_arbat/
http://jedimik.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/d181d185d0b5d0bcd0b0-d0bcd0b8d182d0b8d0bdd0b3d0b0-1-1.jpg
Well, be that as it may, it’s still less than 50% of the size of the previous rallies.
Dear Anatoly,
I have just commented on this on your Facebook page. I think the geodecisist’s numbers may be too high. I say this with whilst recognising that he is a professional and that this is his field, whilst I of course am not a professional and can only make a guess. I also have to say that my impression (and it can be no more than that) is that Sakharova was bigger than Bolotnaya I and II though he claims it was smaller.
There is an interesting graph on Mark Sleboda’s Facebook page that shows the total number of people who registered on Facebook for each demonstration. The peak by quite a large measure (60,000) is for Sakharova which tends to support but of course does not prove the possibility that this was the largest protest.
Here is the graph from Mark Sleboda’s Facebook page. Obviously it does not provide direct information about the size of the protests but it is suggestive and anyway it is interesting for itself
http://yfrog.com/espwnnxj
I’m afraid I’m going to have to call bullshit. His geodesic dilithium crystals appear to be resonating at the wrong frequency, because there’s no way the western press would report it at “maybe 15,000 to 20,000″ if there were the slightest chance it might have gone higher, since their instinct is to double the best estimate. That’s unless there were no western journalists there at all, and I think we can agree that’s unlikely.
Maybe Mr. Pomeshchenko has a spot of dirt on his screen that looks like 10,000 people. But it does highlight that we need a better method of measuring crowd size, because western sources will continue to exaggerate wildly when it suits their purposes.
The BBC was certainly there. I have seen their broadcast.
Though as I have said I have my doubts about Pomeshchenko’s figures I do not doubt his professionalism and good faith. Bear in mind that his estimates deflated the claims made by the opposition for the Sakharova and Bolotnaya II rallies whilst basically vindicating those of the government’s supporters for the size of their rallies especially the one on 4th February 2012. At the end of the day we are not talking about an exact science but rather about an opinion science so there is always scope for disagreement and error.
Anyway the important point (as Anatoly has pointed out) is that even if Pomeshchenko is right this is much the smallest rally so far apart from the one on Monday and momentum has definitely gone. Udaltsov has talked wildly of a million people turning up before Putin’s inauguration. In his dreams!
Dear Alexander,
“Anyway the important point (as Anatoly has pointed out) is that even if Pomeshchenko is right this is much the smallest rally so far apart from the one on Monday and momentum has definitely gone. Udaltsov has talked wildly of a million people turning up before Putin’s inauguration. In his dreams!”
Indeed…the momentum is gone. I think those who initially joined earlier larger rallies have some of the following sentiments(or a mix of these):-
1.) A sense of futility and acceptance of reality – i.e. the majority of Russians support Putin.
2.) That the wild claims of vote-rigging and cheating have turned out unsubstantiated.
3.)A realization that the police will not tolerate anymore untoward protests(the police had been very patient with previous protests but now that the elections are settled, these protests are seen as provocative and a hindrance to peace and daily activity).
4.)A minority may have even realized that they were manipulated upon by Navalny et al and realized Western interest in destabilizing Russia. I wonder if such minority contributed to the upswing of Putin’s popularity?
As for this:-
“Udaltsov has talked wildly of a million people turning up before Putin’s inauguration. In his dreams!”
He and (Navalny, Nemtsov, Kasyanov etc.) will be happy ‘leading’ a few hundred and thousand hardcores in their routine ‘protests’ so that the Western media can continue reporting ‘ many Russians are very unhappy with that dictator, Sauron-like Putin ….see the consistent protests?’. The one million ‘supporters’ can come from a virtual computer game ……
sinotibetan
Dear all,
Thought of sharing with all of you a Malaysian perspective(from a pro-Government Malaysian newspaper) regarding the Arab Spring madness and the anti-Putin protesters in Moscow – all instigated upon by those imperialist in Washington-London. Not that I am pro-Malaysian government(in fact I dislike both Malaysian opposition and government) but perhaps this article represents a shift of the English-speaking elites in my country away from making USA idol #1. Most Malaysians know little about Russia though. But I think the world over is tired of American meddling the affairs of other states. Here it is:-
http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?file=/2012/3/11/columnists/behindtheheadlines/10886600&sec=behindtheheadlines
I’m sorry if this comment is lengthy – but I thought some selected ‘quotes’ would reduce the hassle of actually going to the website for most of us busy people.
Some selected ‘quotes’:-
“US, Israeli and European cheerleaders of Arab “regime change” through street politics have realised by now that the naive notion of ousting dictators does not travel in a straight line. Among other things, the new regimes that emerge have tended to be more independent and less Western-friendly.”
“Nonetheless, neither religion nor showy forms of piety is the issue: it is a country’s unwillingness to comply with Western requests and demands that is. The stakes are raised when such a country is oil-rich and occasionally snubs Western concerns as well.
Currently the most conspicuous example of this is Russia, or rather president-elect Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is a country that happens to channel the West’s worst “fears” today: being big, rich in oil and gas, independent-minded, “uncooperative” with the West over Libya, Syria and Iran, and even opposed to Nato’s eastwards expansion right up to Moscow’s doorstep.”
“Now weeks later, opposition claims of vote fraud favouring Putin is still without substance. Opinion polls before the election indicated a two-thirds majority support for Putin, and the results have since shown 64%.
Even Putin’s opponents had agreed that he had no problem securing enough votes to win the election. Until now his opponents and critics have not explained why he needed to cheat to win, and furthermore they failed to show that he had cheated.”
“Interestingly, the OSCE observers indirectly rebuffed opposition claims of multiple voting by Putin supporters, and instead reported on the negative perceptions that attended the voting. The Europeans had no evidence of vote fraud and declared that there were no significant violations, but they still hankered after attaching a negative spin to the election and its result.”
“If anyone had any “actionable” evidence of fraud it would have been the OSCE observers, yet they served up nothing. Their position would in effect have been a workable endorsement of the election’s credibility.”
“At the heart of such reporting and editing is a tendency to approach opposition claims with less scepticism than government ones, although both sides are equally interested parties in an electoral contest. It is an approach typical of the Western media in the Third World.”
(sinotibetan’s note: this is a subtle suggestion that the West supports Malaysian opposition like they do in Russa – and it’s TRUE. That’s one reason I dislike our opposition. However, my government is ruled by ‘a party of thieves’ – which Putin and his friends would appear like saints if he[Putin] were to be compared to the buffoons we have in our Government).
“Essentially, the protesters did not endorse any particular candidate but were instead just being anti-Putin. The very fact that they have been doing so openly without being packed off to a gulag in Siberia for life shows the distance Russia has travelled since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
(sinotibetan’s note: Due to the fact they are actually just anti-Putin show the liberal opposition’s lack of ingenuity, facts and credibility. It seems to send a message that they wish they can replace Putin rather than being interested with the concerns of the average Russian on the street).
sinotibetan
Thanks for interesting link, Sino-T. Proves that common sense still exists in some editorial offices in some parts of the world.
Hey, Sino-T; this is indeed interesting. However, I think it makes the early mistake of assuming that stable, western-friendly democracies was truly the aim of U.S./UK interventions, and that the west is truly surprised when the result is a ferment of ethnic hatreds and cut-and-thrust coalition building. It is not. The people who supply the money for regime change – the taxpayers – maybe. But the people who allocate and spend the funds and select the military objectives – the government – don’t believe that varnish about humanitarian concerns and dictators. In fact, the west would be the most surprised if prosperous stability turned out to be the result, and makes little effort to achieve it once the leadership of its victim has fallen. The aim is stability for the USA and a few selected friends, and instability for everyone else. Like a tired old magician pulling battered paper flowers from his sleeve, the west imagines these redirections are still invisible to everyone even after multiple repetitions of the same trick.
I give Yeltsin credit for one thing – when he decided to go the western way and build a “market democracy” with competition and private ownership, he probably believed the west really would help to achieve that goal. He probably believed Russia could not put off modernization any longer – and he was right about that – and that it should be done now when he could count on the guidance of powerful international friends. He probably honestly meant it all for the best.
And now there are still people who wonder why Russia will not trust the west.
Dear Mark,
First of all, I am sorry for our disagreements on certain issues and I hope that you will not(as I have not) taken some of the comments where I ‘voice’ out these disagreements to heart! Thanks for patiently replying even when we disagree resolutely!
However, I somewhat agree with your criticism of the article:-
“However, I think it makes the early mistake of assuming that stable, western-friendly democracies was truly the aim of U.S./UK interventions, and that the west is truly surprised when the result is a ferment of ethnic hatreds and cut-and-thrust coalition building.”
As I have alluded in my ‘disagreeable’ comment, the Western Imperium want states that fulfill its every demand and states that don’t are ripe for ‘internal destabilization’. I agree that the desire of a stable, western-friendly democracy is not OFTEN true. They want a western-friendly or more aptly western-DEPENDENT regime – whether ‘stable’ or ‘unstable’ is not the main intention.
As for Western ‘selection’ of ‘certain Muslims’ vs ‘other Muslims’, I can see that somewhat in my own country. Here in my country, the West ‘implicitly’ supports the opposition -which include an Islamist party(which would prescribe Syariah and Hudud to replace secular laws once they are in power) inconveniently ‘politically married’ to secular parties vs the so-called ‘moderate Islamic ruling party’ – which strong hold in the reins of Government parallels that of Mubarak or Assad. Whichever ‘Islamic party’ come to rule would not negate the discrimination towards non-Muslims in my country, in my opinion….in fact, I am apprehensive of the more Islamist one but am fed up with the racism and discrimination of the present one. The editor – being pro-Government alludes to the superficial ‘semblance’ the current regime has towards fallen regimes in the Middle East and also(to their erroneous assumption) towards Putin’s as well. I remember the former Russian Ambassador to Malaysia comparing United Russia to BN(the National Front) in my country. The semblance is there – albeit superficial only. I thought I’d put the article in perspective.
As for the mistaken assumption of the editor – well, the West has projected herself as a defender of democracy, egalitarianism, freedom – the new social gospel – and that her military interventions, sanctions and UN vetoes are to that end – it’s no wonder that many, even among the most erudite, could be deceived.
sinotibetan
Hey, Sino-T; not at all. I welcome disagreement, although I am at a disadvantage when discussing religions as I am not particularly religious myself. Not an atheist – just not particularly religious.
I was only responding to the suggestion that I and other commenters here are “soft on Islam”. I agree it is considerably more conservative than Christianity, but my point was that western media sources simply will not leave Islam alone and want to “rescue” all those under its cruel yoke. My position is that those who wish to be rescued will tell you so.
“Up to 10,000 protesters flocked to a central Moscow avenue today to demand Vladimir Putin’s resignation and protest electoral fraud.”
Associated Press, The Independent (UK), Saturday, March 10th 2012.
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/thousands-protest-in-moscow-over-putin-win-7553131.html
“More than 20,000 protesters streamed through Moscow yesterday denouncing Vladimir Putin’s presidential election win,… ”
The Independent (UK), Sunday, March 11th 2012. (No source given)
See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/three-detained-in-protest-over-putins-election-win-7555065.html
If there were 20,000 at Novy Arbat on Saturday, I’ll show my arse in front of Lenin’s tomb!
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin accuses Libya’s (unelected) Prime Minsiter, el-Keib, of supporting terrorist insurgents in Syria. El-Keib just happens to be Chairman of The Petroleum Institute, an international organization funded by British Petroleum.
The major players who conspired to assassinate Gaddafi all seem to have ties with either Goldman Sachs or British Petroleum… hm… I am starting to see a pattern… I guess I’m just being paranoid though…
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/03/libyas-big-oil-pm-rolls-over-for.html