Blogging the democratic revolution
In January of this year, Gazprom ???????turned-off???????? the gas to Ukraine. The reason? Some say it was economically motivated ???????? Ukraine pays substantially less than the fair market price. So, Gazprom was merely acting as any other economically driven company would. However, perhaps the more frequent explanation for the gas crisis is that it was politically motivated. The common answer under this heading is that Russia used Gazprom as a foreign policy tool/weapon to punish Ukraine????????s new found Western focus. Yet there is a third explanation which I believe is closer to the truth: Russia and Gazprom believe that Ukraine…
Note to readers – due to technical issues, I couldn’t post the image described in graf one but will do so later -Mora The image above shows a corpulent former Russian President Boris Yeltsin bedecked in toga and driving the ???????young farm girl??????? and ???????young factory fellow??????? from a famous Soviet monument like horses before his chariot. The caption reads: ???????Corruption: An impediment to progress.??????? Will Russia fall as Rome did, it seems to ask? Yeltsin was justly criticized during his reign for personal and systemic corruption but in fairness we must ask: Was it any difference before or since…
We have previously documented on these pages the horrifying explosion of race-based violence in Vladimir Putin????????s Russia. As ghastly as those developments are, though, something even more sinister is underway in Russia these days, something that makes it seem that Russia would better be referred to as the Neo-Soviet Union: It????????s an attack on democracy itself. Just as it was Britain, by means of Winston Churchill????????s famous ???????Iron Curtain??????? speech, which warned the West about the rise of the original USSR, it is today British journalism that sounds the clarion call that warns of USSR redux. Three major pieces of…
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recently issued a statement in regards to the large number of civilian deaths in the bombing of Qana this past weekend. Ironically, the statement was issued by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister. “The Russian Presidency in the Council of Europe profoundly deplores the mass deaths of civilians in Lebanon caused by Israel????????s attacks, in particular, the death of dozens of residents of Qana, including women and children. On behalf of the Council of Europe we extend our condolences to the leadership and people of Lebanon. The killings and wounding of…
In January, Russia’s state-controlled natural gas company Gazprom shut off the pipelines to Ukraine, causing shortages all throughout Europe. It could have been because Ukraine didn’t want to pay higher rates for its gas, but more likely it was political pressure aimed at dislodging the new pro-Western government of Viktor Yushchenko. And it worked. Now it looks like Russia’s favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, may be taking the reins of power soon. But if you thought that was bad, it’s not the half of it. Russia maintains “peacekeeper” troops in places where they aren’t want. One such place is the Transdnistria…
Venezuelan and Belarusian dictators strut before lines of troops in Minsk Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! First, take a look at the top of line weaponry Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is buying from Vladimir Putin of Russia, to aim at us, just 1350 miles from our shores. This is but one step removed from another Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s a main reason for this junket to Belarus and Russia. So much for peace and friendship. What’s peace and friendship compared to advanced weaponry! Miguel Octavio at Devil’s Excrement in a brilliant essay, writes of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s visit with Aleksander…
Above are two images taken from Neo-Nazi websites operating in Russia. The first urges the viewer to ???????Protect your Motherland! Protect your Loved ones!??????? from the scourge of dark-skinned people. The second asks the view to remember that their ancestors refused to hand over Russia to the Germans, yet they seem to be handing over Russia to the ???????niggers??????? without even putting up a struggle. This article will review recent developments in Russia regarding the outbreak of race violence. It concludes that despite an enormous amount of evidence that Russia has a serious problem with race violence that is getting…
On Monday, Russian forces killed Shamil Basayev, the Chechen terrorist responsible for the Beslan attack, in counterinsurgent operations in Ingushetia. Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev confirmed his death. “Fragments of the bodies of two militants were found on the scene of the explosion. Basayev’s body has been identified through some of the fragments, including his head,” Aushev told Interfax. Putin said that Basayev “deserved retribution” for Beslan and for taking hostages in Budyonnovsk in 1995. Chechen President Alu Alkhanov called the killing a moment where Chechnya could finally turn “one of the blackest pages in ÄitsÅ history” and that…
While the Bush administration has lost its ability to assert itself internationally, the void in cohesive diplomatic power combined with fluctuating energy markets has created the opportunity for problematic relationships to develop outside of the Western spheres. China, a country high on energy demand and human rights abuse, and Russia, supplier of ever more tainted and corrupt oil, have become trading partners. With the United States and Great Britain’s involvement in Iraq, NATO’s deployment in Afghanistan, and the short-term reliance on Russian gas in continental Europe, China and Russia have built a viable economic partnership as both continually support undemocratic…
Shamil Basayev, the radical field commander who ordered the hostage-taking of Beslan schoolchildren, has been appointed vice president of the Chechen seperatist government by the new president. Which means, should President Dolu Umarov be killed, he will become the new leader of the separatist movement. In so few words, that is not good. PRAGUE, June 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) — The man who claimed responsibility for the 2004 Beslan school siege, rebel field commander Shamil Basayev, has been appointed vice president of the breakaway republic’s separatist government, putting Russia’s most-wanted man next in line to become separatist president. Basayev’s appointment, first…
Not long following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Russian government has killed its own most wanted terrorist, Chechen rebel leader Adbul-Khalim Sadulayev. PRAGUE, June 17, 2006 (RFE/RL) — Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov announced on June 17 the death during a special operation in the town of Argun, east of Grozny, of Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev, who succeeded Aslan Maskhadov as Chechen president and resistance commander following Maskhadov’s killing in March 2005. Akhmad Zakayev, whom Sadulayev named foreign minister of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI) on May 27, confirmed Sadulayev’s death in a telephone interview with RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service…
President Putin might want to watch out! A colored revolution may be brewing in his own backyard, as the protest babes advance on him. This babe, who represents the most decadent kind of freedom (my favorite kind), is setting up a youth group as an alternative to the many pro-government ones set up over the past few years. Serious threat or publicity play? You decide. All I know is if I were a male Russian teenager, I’d be rushing to join this club. RUSSIA’S most famous party girl has formed a political youth movement that could undermine one of her…
BBC News: Russian President Vladimir Putin has used a Victory Day parade to issue a warning to neo-Nazis and other nationalist extremists. He said they were “leading the world to a dead end” and would not be tolerated in Russia. His comments follow a series of attacks on foreigners – some of them fatal. Ä…Å By using a big, set-piece occasion to raise the issue, Mr Putin is stressing the moral urgency of Russia’s racist problem, says the BBC’s Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke. “Those who are again trying to raise the defeated flags of Nazism, who sow ethnic hatred,…
Well, as we approach nearly 2 months since Ukraine’s first democratic elections of the century, the political wrangling continues. Any Kiev watchers will be familiar with the daily news stories coming out from Our Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc, The Party of Regions and the Socialists in regard to coalition building talks. Every evening a brief Google news search highlights constant backstabbing, foot-stamping and occasionally outright lies passed on to the international media. Today, one such story emerged from the oh so reliable ITAR-TASS. For the busy, a brief summary: Our Ukraine (Viktor Yushchenko’s pro-European, Liberal Bloc) and the Party of…
Yesterday, April 21, 2006, the United Nations Environmental Program gave out awards to ???????the Seven protectors of the Earth.??????? These seven individuals are hailed by the UN as ???????the Champions of the Earth.??????? One of the seven ???????protectors of the Earth??????? and a United Nations ???????Champion of the Earth??????? is Mikhail Gorbachev! This coming week will be the twentieth anniversary of what is commonly accepted as one of the worst environmental incidents of all mankind????????the Chernobyl disaster. On April 26, 1986, while plant operators were conducting a safety test on Chernobyl’s Unit 4, it overheated and caused a hydrogen explosion.…
Russia took over the rotating chair of the Group of Eight (G8) Presidency on January 1, 2006, and therefore Russian President Vladimir Putin will host the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July 2006. Putin has made it clear that he wants ???????Energy Security??????? to be the number one topic of the summit, and it appears that he will get his way. The Russian government wants the summit to be a success and wants to pull it off without any public disputes, however, the US, behind closed doors, is making it clear that Iran must be on the agenda????????threatening that…
It started back in September 2005 when 18 children from the Chechen village of Staroshchedrinskaya were hospitalized with signs of poisoning, and then a month later 8 more children from the same school were hospitalized with the same symptoms. In December 2005 13 more children from the Chechen Shelkovskaya district were hospitalized with very similar symptoms. Since December more than 50 other children have developed the same symptoms, including children in the Chechen villages of Shelkozavodskaya and Starogladovskaya. The symptoms are fatigue, asphyxia, headaches, convulsions and hysteria. Some children also reported memory loss and hallucinations. All most all of the…
Last month Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 75th birthday. Gorbachev, the final leader of the brutal Soviet Union, was treated to a media love fest that proclaimed him the architect of the democratization of the former captive republics of his regime. ABC News called him, ???????The man who ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime..??????? Katrina vanden Heuvel attended a party for Gorbachev and proclaimed, ???????He liberated Eastern Europe to find its own political path.??????? The party also had video tributes from former President George Bush, Bill Moyers, Leonardo di Caprio, former President Bill…
Racial and ethnic violence is becoming more visible in Russia as some high profile cases have entered the news. There have been many explanations given for this rise of racial extremism. What tends to be missing however is the view that this is all connected to the general reconfiguration of Russian national identity. The first high profile case was this weeks sentencing of Alexander Koptsev, 21 years old, to 13 years in prison for attacking worshipers at a Moscow synagogue. On January 11, Koptsev broke into the synagogue with a knife. According to witnesses he began shouting ???????I will kill…
Perhaps the most irritating part about the entire Belarus affair right now is the lies that come out of the Russian media, and the two-faced and often misled reporting done by many news organizations in Europe. For the former, they tell a story completely dislodged from reality; so far off that you can’t really tell if they believe it, or if they’re just trying to hide their grin. For the latter, they either tell the story to the West and repeat the lies to the East, or are simply so lazy in collecting information that they end up benignly repeating…
Putin has okayed the return of the Sarospatak Library, seized by the Nazis and then by the Russians in WWII. Of course, this raises some eyebrows over the larger repatriation issues, even if the Russian official media feel the need to demonstrate that no new repatriation precedents are being set with the move. Given this, it’s no big surprise that Hungary has agreed to pay the Russians for “storage costs” that Putin’s buds can then turn around and tout as a foreign-policy success. So, what’s going on? A couple of things, as I see it. One, Putin is getting set…
The municipal government in Volgograd has decided to close down a local newspaper for printing a cartoon showing Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses watching a crowd of clashing people while saying, “We never taught them to do that…” The mayor of the city is quoted as saying that the paper was shut down in order to prevent inter-religious strife; meanwhile, the prosecutor-general is looking to file charges. Jim Hoft wonders if Russia is just being PC or crushing dissent. I’d say both. But more than anything it is being opportunist. Volgograd is in the south-west of the country, has a…
Andy Young of Siberian Light fame is now blogging over at Taking Aim, and he reports now that Russia is expecting a huge shortage of vodka. The issue is so big, in fact, that it was front page news on Komsomolskaya Pravda. Cause? An anti-counterfeiting law that came into effect on January 1 stipulating that every bottle of vodka must have an excise duty stamp on it. It sounds like the Stamp Act of 1765 that helped produce a boycott of British goods and push forward the American Revolution. A shortage of vodka would be terrible politics for Putin. Hell,…
Kill terrorists ‘like rats’ Just so you know.
I’m currently reading The Oligarchs, a truly fascinating book about the six everyday Soviet citizens who bought up Russia during the period of privatization and came to rule the country from behind the scenes. It’s very good, very detailed, and told smoothly like a story. The most fascinating part about it is not so much what these men did, but how they did it — and the author starts from the beginning, going from the mid-’80s through the late-’90s — involving exactly how they built their empires in a legally deficit environment where everything goes. Check it out.