Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Monday, June 18, 2007
The lead editorialist of the Washington Post Fred Hiatt attempts to get a Russian spokesman jailed or killed. He violates journalistic ethics in doing it. The second statement should be the lede, but you get your hackery from the Bush stooge you have, not the one you want or need.
Today Hiatt pounds out another anti Russian demagoguery that is chock full of irony.
Russia bullies it's small neighbors. Russia jails people without due process. Russia is paranoid about everybody being against them. Consider this next quote in light of Hiatt being a true dead end believer in George W. Bush's foreign policy.
Those who spend time with Putin insist that he genuinely believes the West operates as does his Russia. Just as he has political opponents beaten or jailed, so do leaders in Berlin or Washington, he tells associates, and any criticism of Russia's human rights record is nothing but self-serving hypocrisy. His zero-sum view of the world -- if someone else gains, Russia must have lost -- he also ascribes to other leaders.
I agree with Hiatt that Russia does evil to it's critics. Some studies have suggested that 261 journalists have been murdered in Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed. Famous critics of Putin have a way of having bad things happen to them.
Near the end of his presentation last week, I asked Shuvalov about this apparent contradiction: If Putin is so popular, and Russia so content, why does the Kremlin feel it must script the nightly news so tightly on national TV? Why the striking lack of confidence?
Putin's adviser said he could not reply on the record. His CSIS host encouraged him to reply off the record, so I cannot tell you what he said. But if his response would have, if reported, caused him difficulties back home, then the Kremlin feels even less secure than we suspect.
Russian critics of Putin end up having bad things happen to them. In order to prove that, I am going to make it appear that one of his spokespeople said something nasty about him off the record, violating an agreement to keep the conversation private in order to do what exactly? Pray that Shuvalov ends up with pelonium induced baldness? Two shots to the back of the head?
What serious journalist would say that a mob lawyer in public says Bush is great, but off the record he told me some stories about the guy that you would not believe? A newspaper would fire that individual because it would make the rest of the paper's scribes jobs more difficult knowing that they couldn't be trusted. Fred Hiatt, on the other hand, gets to run the paper into the ground.
In the week that Jack Kevorkian was released from prison, let's hope that Hiatt's attempt to assist in the death of a source is as successful as his efforts to rally the public around a never ending occupation in Iraq. To hope that the Washington Post would intervene at this point is wishful thinking.
Friday, May 18, 2007
A U.S. plan to build a missile defense shield in eastern Europe is part of a scheme to encircle Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.
Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week they had failed to bridge their long-standing differences over U.S. plans to put 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic as part of a system to shield Europe from missile attack.
"These Czech and Polish locations perfectly fit into the overall global design of the American missile defense which is surrounding the perimeters of the Russian borders," Lavrov told the BBC World television channel, speaking in English.
To be honest, if I were Russian, it would look that way to me. We are planning on setting up the system in Poland and the Czech Republic to the west of Russia, and the other components will be based in California and crucially in Alaska, just to the east of Siberia.
I am no fan of Putin's Russia. But, their security concerns are legitimate. Every "defensive" weapon can be used offensively. People attacked in the middle ages wearing shields you know. The concept is the same. Paranoid or not, the Russians believe the missile defense is an attempt to do a first strike against them, while repelling Russian counter attack missiles nullifying the mutually assured destruction doctrine.
The thing doesn't apparently work yet after all the billions we spent. But if we did get it to work, it just wouldn't work to "defend" the US, but also be used to attack our adversaries without them being able to inflict reciprocal damage.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Rice told reporters on her flight to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin that Washington's relationship with Russia did not look anything like the one that existed with the Soviet Union.
"I know people talk about, throw around terms like new Cold War. As somebody who came out of that period as a specialist in it I think the parallels ... frankly, they have no basis whatsoever," she added.
Rice said she would try to ease Moscow's concerns about U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Europe and about a plan to grant effective independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo, which has been under U.N. administration for nearly eight years.
Condi Rice appealing to her expertise and authority has me worried. I expect Putin to start up a new missile program any day now.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Another ridiculous editorial in the Washington Post today, unsigned and likely to be from the unserious Fred Hiatt once again. The topic this time is the missile defense shield. While coming to the correct position that it should not be deployed now, it gets there in a bad way.
The Post has no idea why Russia would be concerned about us deploying missile defense to Poland and the Czech Republic other than posturing.
Vladimir Putin has skillfully and cynically used the administration's plans to deploy 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic as a way to stir up trouble in NATO and to justify new steps in Russia's increasingly belligerent foreign policy -- such as moving toward the renunciation of a treaty limiting conventional military forces in Europe. The administration is right to call Mr. Putin's broadsides "ludicrous."
Let me explain this in a way that even Fred Hiatt could grasp. Our government has just done a pre-emptive war in Iraq. We have a recent track record of invading countries without an imminent threat. Pretend we are in a simpler time of the middle ages. Your enemy comes up to you wearing a suit of armor. You accuse him of wanting to attack you. He replies that the armor is just defensive in nature. It blocks incoming blows. How dare you suggest that this is an offensive weapon.
The answer of course is that defensive weaponry is used for a good offense as well. Imagine again for example that we had an out of control administration with no respect for the rule of law, or international opinion. It's tough to imagine such a thing, but go along with me. If this fictitious administration wanted to bomb somebody unilaterally without provocation, and this country had missiles of their own. Wouldn't a great way to get away with it, with lesser blowback damage be to have a shield against their retaliatory missiles?
It's like some people are third graders. Russia has a history of being invaded. It's not likely to happen now, but it develops a strong sense of paranoia. Putting a system in place in eastern europe, the area Russia annexed to buffer itself from invasion, is going to upset Russia. Period. It would upset us.
What if Venezuela set up a bunch of anti aircraft guns in Mexico along the US border. Would we be concerned at all? They could say it was a defensive measure against the US flying down south to topple their government. Any offensive use of this weaponry would obviously just be posturing.
I am not suggesting that a missile shield in the distant future, that actually works, and has strict controls, and treaties in place, that it be used only in defense and not as a shield during attacks, can not be tried. I am suggesting that Fred Hiatt's grasp of reality, geopolitics, and common sense is as lacking as the Bush administration, and this is a good example of why he is still cheerleading their doomed foreign policy.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The BBC has an interesting report on the super wealthy class in Russia and how they live. In a matter of 15 years, 36 men now control 25% of all wealth in kleptocratic Russia.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Police have arrested Russian opposition leader Garry Kasparov at a banned anti-Kremlin rally in central Moscow.He was detained during a huge security operation to prevent opponents of President Putin gathering at Pushkin Square.
The former chess champion leads the United Civil Front group, part of the opposition coalition Other Russia.It accuses President Putin's regime of trampling on democracy. The Kremlin says Other Russia destabilises Russia.Reports say dozens of other opposition activists were arrested, as well as some journalists.
How dare you call my regime undemocratic and repressive. I will arrest you if you say such things in public. His soul is pure though. I heard it from a guy who peaked in.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
MOSCOW - Russians voted Sunday in scattered regional ballots marred by complaints that opposition forces are being frozen out of the country's politics.
Although two mainstream parties and a smattering of smaller ones are on the ballot for legislatures in 14 of Russia's 86 regions, critics say the appearance of genuine pluralism is only superficial.
Many of the voters who turned out in early morning in St. Petersburg, one of the election regions, expressed dismay that some parties had been barred from the ballot.
The liberal Yabloko party was not allowed on the ballot in Russia's second city because electoral officials ruled that more than 10 percent of the signatures checked by authorities were invalid. The party says its appeals were thwarted even after people whose signatures were ruled invalid testified to their authenticity.
Karl Rove was seen this morning in Moscow, wiping a tear from his eye muttering softly, "They are all grown up now", before a meeting with a Russian "businessman" in an alley behind a bar.
Seriously though, I looked into pootie-poot's eyes, and I saw George W. Bush. They genuinely are soul mates. That is where people are wrong to be dissapointed in Vladimir Putin. He is like Bush, and Bush infatuated himself, was in love. Putin is just more efficient at killing his critics. It's true. We each have something to teach each other. It's part of being in the world family, and the league of nations, and the coalition of those willing to urinate on their citizens. So far it's us and Russia. Let's not forget to invite Poland.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
In light of Russia's cooling relations with the United States and NATO, the Russian military leadership has begun to cultivate stronger defense ties with Asia. The head of Russia's General Staff, General Yury Baluyevsky will visit China from March 3 to 5, in preparation for a visit by the new defense minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, a month later. Both will discuss issues of military and political cooperation, including plans for a large-scale training exercise, Global Mission 2007, to be held in Chelyabinsk Region in June. Both President Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, will attend the exercise.
So plutocratic Russia and China are back together naturally. It's ironic. Even during the cold war, there were tensions between the two communist giants. Now the wall has fallen, yet the fear of George Bush has done something that a pithy quote from Karl Marx never could; make them best friends.
Let's review shall we. Osama is still free. The anthrax mailer is still free. The axis of evil thing seems like a big mistake. Europe doesn't trust us. Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega are running things in Latin America. Now Russia and China are doing joint military excercises in Russia! Good thing the grown-ups are in charge. Condi, what do you suggest we do now? You know the Russians. Any thoughts?
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