Blogging the democratic revolution
Recently, two Russia blogs we admire, Sean????????s Russia Blog and Vilhelm Konnander????????s Weblog, have leveled harsh charges of anti-democracy at Kazakhstan, charges that unfortunately tell only half that country????????s story and fail to give a fair sense of the broader geopolitical context. The charges were apparently prompted by a recent comment by U.S. President George…
Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov are a pair of Russian artists who produce work such as the image above under the name ???????Dark-blue Noses??????? (???????????????????? ?????????????????). They have represented Russia at the Venice Biennale and shown widely in Russia and internationally. The Matthew Bown Gallery of London scheduled a show of their work for November…
Amid escalated confrontation with Russia and no perspective of things getting better there Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is apparently trying to guarantee himself and his ruling United National Movement (UNM) from surprises due to a possible Moscow involvement. Saakashvili asked the parliament to cut his term by several months and hold parliamentary and presidential elections…
Under Ceausescu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej regime (Dej was the political mentor of Ceausescu) 250,000 Jews have been sold by Romania. The German ethnics who held the Romanian citizenship were also sold to the West Germany. Aside from the financial transaction, Ceausescu asked Israel to smooth the relations of Romania with the United States. This…
Israeli President Moshe Katsav is currently facing charges for rape. Recently, an Israeli diplomatic delegation including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. An article from the Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted Putin as follows, speaking to the group: “?????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????! ???????????????????????????????? ????????????????????? ?????????????????????????? ????????????????????! ?????????????????????????? ????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????! ???? ???????????????????????????? ????????…
Ranks are beginning to close on the question of Vladimir Putin????????s Russia in the West????????s pro-democracy circles. The question is no longer whether action is required but rather what action, how and when. Last week, Publius Pundit documented the importance of two watershed events in Russia, the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the onset…
Between them, Russia and China account for 17% of the world????????s territory (roughly 26 million square miles out of about 150 million total) and nearly 25% of its population (almost 1.5 billion people out of over 6 billion total). Yet, the two countries only account for 7% of the world????????s nominal economy ($3 trillion out…
Over the weekend, the anti-democratic crisis brewing in Russia took a horrifying turn for the worse. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the Moscow police were circulating requests to primary schools requesting that they be provided with lists of all students with Georgian-sounding last names; the orders came in the wake of the forcible…
At VCrisis, Alek Boyd has firsthand info about how Hugo Chavez’s shiny new Russian weapons purchases are being used – to massacre Venezuelan and Brazilian peasants from helicopters in the deep jungle. There was a great big massacre of miners in the Amazon rainforest this week and Boyd is on the scene with tons of…
As Publius Pundit readers know, a crisis is brewing in Georgia. After discovering a spy ring seeking to subvert the current pro-West presidential administration on Russia????????s behalf, just as Georgia entered the final round of talks on NATO membership, the Georgian government took action to arrest the conspirators, who included several Russian military officers. In…
If chills did not run down your spine when you heard the tune for the Soviet national anthem, written to glorify the mass-murdering dictator Joseph Stalin, playing for Russia at the Winter Olympics this year in Italy, if you do not shiver every time you hear about Russian people favoring Vladimir Putin, a proud KGB…
The Moscow Times newspaper maintains an impressive stable of pundits analyzing Russian political developments, and their weekly columns are often required reading for those who wish to understand and properly respond the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union. Two recent examples deal with the disturbing and self-destructive rise of official anti-Americanism in Russia: Georgy Bovt documents…
We have previously discussed the question of Russia????????s membership on the G-8 panel; given Russia????????s feeble economic performance and, more importantly, its widespread corruption and anti-democratic politics, it is virtually impossible to offer any cogent argument in favor of membership. Russia simply is not qualified. However, there is a second major question which is harder…
A string of high-level surveys of social development over the past year have equated Russia????????s level of achievement with that of the African nation of Niger, a landlocked sub-Saharan state of 14 million roughly half of whose national budget is derived from foreign aid. In October of last year the ???????Corruption Perceptions Index??????? from the…
In my view the strongest force of all . . . was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted. The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace,…
In a moment where the forces of dictatorship and tyranny seem to be pushing back against democracy, the common thread that has successfully aligned nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, and Sudan have been the supply and demand of energy. While it is encouraging that the relationships forged seem to be more based on…
On September 3rd a disturbing number of negative developments in the area of human rights and democracy have were reported in Russia. First, Human Rights Watch issued a report detailing how Russian prosecutors railroaded two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay that the U.S. foolishly released to Russia’s clutches when Russia claimed they were terrorists. The…
Deep sea oil rig, Gulf of Mexico Source: National Aeronautics & Space Administration Today, a quiet revolutionary time bomb was presented to Hugo Chavez. He has no idea what it is or what it means. But this gift means it’s all over for the brutal Venezuelan tyrant in the next few years. He won’t be…
The shocking news was reported by RIA Novosti on August 30th that Russia????????s most prominent and well-respected newspaper, Kommersant (???????the Merchant???????), had been sold to Alisher Usmanov (pictured below), the owner of the Metalloinvest and Gazprominvestholding holding companies, the latter a subsidiary of Kremlin-controlled Gazprom. Usmanov is an Uzbek-born oligarch who has served six years…
Another domino falls. Another symbol, if not the representative of Russian independent media, has been scooped up by a Kremlin ally. The business daily, Kommsersant was sold this week for $300 million to Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov is the owner of Owner of Oskol Steel Mill, the Ural Steel industrial complex, the Lebedinsky Iron Ore Mining…
RIA Novosti reported on August 30th that “Russia’s GDP growth of 5.5% in the first quarter of 2006 was the highest among the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations for the period.” Relying on data from the IMF, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service “said real year-on-year GDP growth in Russia during the first quarter reached…
One of the most ominous questions hovering over democratic politics in the world today is how harsh an anti-democratic crackdown Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would be prepared to support in order to maintain control over the Russian population in the event of an economic downturn. Recently, Putin has been recording 70+% approval in public opinion…
Ruins of a Russian jet crash which killed 170, Aug. 22, 2006 Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! News On Tuesday morning (August 22) it was reported by the Associated Press and Reuters that a Russian passenger jet, a Pulkova Airlines TU-154 airliner bound from the Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed in…
Next week will mark 15 years since the August Putsch. On August 19, 1991 a group of Soviet politicians calling themselves the State Executive Committee (Gosudarstvennyi Komitet po Chezvychainomu polozheniiu, GKChP) attempted to seize power in Moscow. The ???????putsch??????? took a very Soviet form. The Committee announced that Gorbachev was ill and was relieved of…
According to an article in today’s Guardian Unlimited, United Russia, the largest Russian political party by far, is losing its appeal with the electorate. It seems that the party’s narrow platform, to support the President in every way, is something of a turn-off. So, what is to be done? ‘Create another…ÄpartyÅ…that pretends to be an…