Category — Russia

Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.  Europe couldn’t wait for an Obama presidency, but they might want to reconsider:

The Polish president’s office backtracked Sunday on a previous claim that U.S. president-elect Barack Obama had promised Poland to continue the Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar missile defense program.
Presidential aide Michal Kaminski said Obama “made no declaration on missile defense.” But Kaminski did not explain why Polish President Lech Kaczynski had claimed Saturday that Obama told him “the missile defense project would continue.”

It looks like the Russians have Obama pegged perfectly–get belligerent, and he’ll buckle.  If I were a country bordering Russia, I’d be awfully neverous right now.

When Putin worries about Google reducing competition, you have a comedic collision. This should tell you something about Google!

Russian watchdog rejects Google bid for ad firm

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s anti-trust watchdog rejected on Thursday a $140 million bid by Google Inc. to buy the Begun advertising agency, claiming the deal would reduce competition in the online advertising market. [snip]

Russia’s anti-monopoly service has been under the spotlight since Vladimir Putin, Russia’s powerful Prime Minister, demanded the anti-trust service become more active. [snip]

Google collects more information on people, who use their g-mail, tool bars and search engines, than the KGB.

This election is devolving to a choice between McCain’s experience or drycleaning. For me that’s a problem, since I’m not a fan of McCain. I think half the time there’s a “to let” sign posted on his forehead.

From Hot Air  Ed Morrissey writes:

Bobby Jindal hits back at whining from the Barack Obama campaign over his response to Obama’s attack on Randy Scheuneman. On ABC’s This Week, Jindal was asked about a sharp retort from John McCain after Obama said that McCain was unduly influenced towards our ally because of Scheuneman’s prior work for the Republic of Georgia. Instead of taking that bait, Jindal pressed the experience advantage McCain has over Obama and why it mattered in this crisis:

Tapper: “So you don’t think that Senator Obama is echoing the Kremlin and has views that are bizarrely in sync with Moscow? Is it fair to say you don’t share that?”

The simple non-cowardly answer is yes. Let Obama and his KGB wrestle with that.

Why attack Scheuneman for working on behalf of a democratic ally of the United States? It seems especially strange now, while the Russians drop bombs on civilian centers in Gori and Tbilisi, and most people understand Russian intent to keep Georgia from allying even closer with the West. Scheuneman certainly did nothing wrong in representing Georgia previous to his work for McCain, and Obama’s attack on McCain suggests that Obama doesn’t value Georgia’s friendship and doesn’t understand the strategic necessity of Georgian independence from Moscow.

Jindal uses that as subtext to explain everything wrong with Obama’s response over the last 48 hours. Instead of scolding Russians for attacking Georgia, he told Georgia to exercise restraint as Russian bombers attacked their civilians. Instead of supporting an ally, Obama attacked McCain’s adviser for his previous work for Georgia, an attack supported by current lobbyists for Russia.

Obama clearly has no idea of the issues or the consequences surrounding Putin’s South Ossetia adventure. He’s flailing for a policy, while McCain — who’s actually been to Georgia and studied the ongoing political conflict for a decade — understood immediately what the outbreak of war means, and what its motives are. Jindal does a good job here in driving that point home, while Obama continues to demonize lobbyists as his only response to every policy issue.

Politics of fear? That’s all Obama can sell.

Really Ed, might that not depend on which side one stands? Perhaps he truly is in sync with his side.

The world is getting a taste of war. Not the lawyer kind the US Army is forced to fight, where combatants pretend to be civilians, where churches, mosques and schools are protected armories and our troops have to come under fire before locking and loading.

No, it’s the other kind of war, which our enemies fight. The one where tanks blow holes in homes and kill anything moving in front of them. So what if the tanks grind the bodies to burger as they punch forward for more blood.
This is the kind of war where the bombs are dropped on the towns, then the civilian deaths are blamed on the other side. Why not, the ACLU, Code Pink, the assorted other goofy lefties are not going to speak out on this carnage because the good guys are doing it!
An enormous lack of feck on the part of the anti-war crowd.

What have you heard from the MSM about this civilian slaughter? Yeah, they dropped some bombs. No screaming ledes like Women and children targeted, collateral damage extremely high from Russian attacks. Tanks shell homes as families flee. Where are those grabbers?

Is Obama looking back at a powerful USSR as the time of everything good? When this country was in a struggle with evil? We know the past eight years are not the time, for he has so said. He wasn’t around for the Great Depression so that era is out also.

Obama never has spoken to how well the Iron Curtain worked to keep the western people from rushing in to luxuriate in that splendid socialist state, the USSR. Recreation of those rosy years will contain the wonders like “The Ministry for State security” food shortages, gulags, Trabants, pollution, worthless money, internal passports, and state TV. Many more hearts desires too, I’m sure.

Solzhenitsyn can start spinning in his grave while he’s still fresh.

Flash news

The U.S. Ag bureau advises tomato growers to diversify crops. Prices will drop when the extended growing season at Nome hits full production.
Chick Little posts advisories on sky conditions, postulating serious positional shifts.
Gov. Schwarzenegger predicts fewer fires in CA in the next millennia.
Vermont gets beachfront property again.

U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change

Synthesizing reams of data from its three previous reports, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time specifically points out important risks if governments fail to respond: melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees.

UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast

“Only urgent, global action will do,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world’s two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.
“I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role,” Ban told reporters. “Both countries can lead in their own way.”
Ban, however, advised against assigning blame. [snip]

It is providential to have a U.N. Secretary-General who isn’t a finger pointing hysteric.

Cult awaits end of days in cave after leader’s arrest

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) – Members of a Russian doomsday cult barricaded themselves in a cave to wait out the end of the world as the cult’s leader underwent psychiatric exams Thursday, Russian media reported. [snip]
“It is obviously some kind of insanity,” Mitropolitan Kirill, a high-ranking Russian Orthodox Church official, told Russian television. “It is perhaps even a medical case. A very dangerous phenomena is happening in Russia’s religious life.”

I’m surprised the UN isn’t in the cave with them. Well, they are secure from the sky calamity in the homemade grotto.

Coming Soon to New England Republican!  A look at Weird Wesley Clark!

The suspense finally got to me.  Where have the Clintons been keeping Weird Wes’ since the last Presidential go-round?  Well, apparently Wes’ has been on the lefty lecture circuit, piling up about $40 Large a year yammering about the World To Come when people like him are back in charge.

I mean,you’d think a a guy who bombs Christian and Muslim civilians, orders air strikes on the CNN Belgrade Bureau, demands that Brit soldiers slaughter 200 Russian soldiers, sends Armor to Waco to burn up about 90 religious fanatics, speaks out of both sides of a pinched button-hole shaped mouth, uses hair pomade by the gallon,  and now demands censorship of stuff he doesn’t want to hear….well, that guy would be a Conservative!

Well, uh uh!  Clark’s a Hillary-style liberal when it matters, and something else when he opens his mouth unattended.  Therefore, both left and right are baffled by this brass jackass, and it isn’t because he’s complicated.   He’s just weird.

There are two commissioned officers posting here at New England Republican and one enlisted man.  I’m the enlisted man, and I don’t want to trespass on their territory.  But I’m  puzzled by a closed system that can raise a middling human being like Weird Wes’ to power.  I figured that I’d better look into it. 

The battlefield is about the size of Texas; four times the size of New England.  Its average annual temperature is like that of Massachusetts.  Its capital city is on the same latitude as Phoenix, Los Angeles and Memphis.  It’s mountainous, dramatically uplifted more than a million years ago by the thrust sheets of the advancing Indian subcontinent.  Roughly half of the country is contorted by its definining feature, a majestic but forbidding mountain range.  The capital is Kabul, the battlefield is Afghanistan and the mountain range is the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush, translated by some historians as “Hindu Killer”, is a Himalayan extension of the Alpine system of Europe and North Africa.  It’s officially part of the Pamir-Karakoram chain of the Himalayas;  it angles southwest from Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the Durand Line.  There are seven mountain passes which have served as highways for invaders and trade at least since 1500 BC, when invaders from Central Asia brought what linguists now call the Indo-European languages to the region.

Alexander The Great, after marching and fighting the width of Afghanistan, used the Khawak Pass to reach Samarkand in 330 BC.  He led his starving army over the 12,000 foot snowy pass, and then west back through the Khyber Pass on the modern Hippie Trail to Kabul.  Today it’s likely that Taliban and other tribal fighters use the same passes for the purpose of fighting NATO and American troops.  The blood of thousands, maybe millions, of nameless soldiers and unaffiliated warriors has been spilled here since the first Aryans arrived 5000 years ago.

Afghanistan borders six countries.  Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west and south, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China to the north.  Its China border lies at the dead end of the valley of the Wakhan Corridor.  The Wakhan is a 150-mile long, ten-mile wide geographic tendril, like an appendix, projecting northeast, between Pakistan to the south and Tajikistan in the north to the Chinese border.  It’s an atavistic survival of Britain’s Great Game with Russia, a border anomaly established to deny Russia access to the Indian Ocean.   Marco Polo used the valley almost eight-hundred years ago to travel that portion of The Silk Road.  Today it’s a remote, hostile patch, the habitat of the Marco Polo sheep, and probably the route used to smuggle drugs to China.

The short account is that humans have been scrambling over, fighting for, and surviving in this land for 50,000 years.   It was Hellenized by the Macedonians and their successors, converted to Buddhism by adherents from India, ignored militarily by the Romans but conquered and converted by Muslims, trampled by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, by Darius and other Persians and Parthians; invaded by Turkic tribes, by the British, the Russians and Americans.  Simulataneous with low-grade warfare, it was also a web of routes for The Silk Road, the commercial paths taken by bearers of luxury goods from the east to the Mediterranean world.  The world’s first mobile shopping mall.

The material for Julius Caesar’s silk curtains probably came through Afghanistan from China, over rocky, barren trails now prowled by American Rangers and Special Forces.  Julius and other Romans who possessed silk, believed that it grew on trees.  Julius, Augustus and Tiberius had intermittent difficulties with the Parthians, who, along with the Afghan Kushans, controlled the trade routes through Afghanistan.  The Romans were not welcome there.  The Parthians left no written account of themselves, but must have known the origins of silk.  Perhaps they played the first lasting joke on the Romans.  They told them it was gathered like fruit and nuts.

The historian’s routine explanation for Afghanistan’s long travail is that it lay at the “crossroads” of competing civilizations; that it was the junction between south and central Asia and the Middle East.  These designations are entirely theoretical to the historian-geographer.  They mean nothing.  The human explanation for the boiling activity in the region is that the wars of conquest that tortured Afghanistan for 5000 years were wars for local power, for goods, and to a lesser degree, religion.  They were fought for the things that fill the voids left by deprivation, insecurity and the anxieties of hard-scrabble life.   It hasn’t ended.

The communist coup staged in 1978 led to the Soviet invasion, and then to the Taliban in large part because of American indifference.  Millions were killed and exiled in the civil and religious wars of the past thirty years.  Today Afghanistan resembles nothing as much as itself of a thousand years ago.  Ghosts everywhere, in every corner of every mud hut and mountain pass.    It is our obligation to bring the country back to life. 

Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as “Nashi”, meaning “Ours” - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life. [snip]

No vodka, no drugs and no condoms, it is about the opposite of our public schools.

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin’s newly-minted ideology of “Sovereign democracy”. This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia’s supposed unique political and spiritual culture. [snip]

Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers. [snip]

Those who hoped that Russia’s first post-totalitarian generation would be liberal, have been dissapointed. Although explicit support for extremist and racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is mushrooming.

Slogans such as “Russia for the Russians” now attract the support of half of the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as “fascist”, for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too evident.

The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to take power.

Just as the Nazis in 1930s rewrote Germany’s history, the Putin Kremlin is rewriting Russia’s. It has rehabilitated Stalin, the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. And it is demonising Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically-elected president. That he destroyed totalitarianism is ignored. Instead, he is denounced for his “weak” pro-Western policies.

While distorting its own history, the Kremlin denounces other countries. Mr Putin was quick to blame Britain’s “colonial mentality” for our government’s request that Russia try to find a legal means of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Yet the truth is that Britain, like most Western countries, flagellates itself for the crimes of the past. Indeed, British schoolchildren rarely learn anything positive about their country’s empire. And, if Mr Putin has his way, Russian pupils will learn nothing bad about the Soviet empire, which was far bloodier, more brutal - and more recent.

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes off Stalin’s crimes. It describes him as “the most successful leader of the USSR”. But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and starved in the cause of communism. [snip]

Nashi is both a symptom of the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad.

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren’t they ringing about Nashi?

From pestering the Estonians to arming Iran, fascism is resurging in Russia. The Progressive elements are alive and well in a new Stalinist autocracy, a Tsarist style is more in favor with Putin. Children for the Motherland will replace those not willing to adopt the party line. School them early and often in the “Fascialist” belief system.

Listen to Putin first, then Obama, Clinton and Edwards; not much of a difference separating the crowd. Everything for the state, public schools, healthcare and of that big bugbear democracy, well totalitarianism is so much neater and propitious to a smooth interaction of government and the people.

What’s the difference between Hitlerjugend and Nashi? Looks to me to be only the spelling.

Close Gitmo; send them to Abu Gharib where they belong.

Released Gitmo Detainee Returned to Jihad

Another detainee released from Guantanamo Bay who immediately rejoined the jihad has been killed in a shootout with Russian security services in Chechnya: Russia: Ex-Guantanamo detainee killed.

MOSCOW - A man formerly held in the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was killed Wednesday in a shootout with security agents in a restive North Caucasus republic, Russia’s top security agency said. [snip]

The Donks want them released, because they  give their word of peace. One may see what an Islamo’s word is worth.

A wave of the chuck’s tail to: LGF

Russian President Vladimir Putin opposes the US missile defense system.  The Russians are particularly distraught over plans to cover Western Europe and are threatening to retarget European cities with nuclear weapons.

Now, the Europeans can participate as they see fit.  If they’re intimidated by Russian threats, that’s no skin off our teeth.  However, the threat from rogue states developing nuclear missiles is far too great to scrap the system.  And let’s not forget that nations like Putin’s Russia made this system a necessity.  In the run up to the Iraq War, Russia’s support for Saddam Hussein effectively allowed him to ignore UN sanctions and inspections.

Too many nations have proven their economic interests far outweigh their desire to control nuclear proliferation, which means missile defense is vital to our national security.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGP spy and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, died this week.  Given that people don’t order polonium-210 as an aperitif, it’s not a real stretch to say he was poisoned.  The Russians claim it’s a plot to discredit Putin, but too many Putin critics are being murdered for that explanation to hold much weight.

President Bush may call him Pootie-Poot, but Russia has taken a dangerously autocratic and anti-Western turn under Putin’s leadership.  Russia is not our friend, and one must seriously question our policy of continually rewarding them with with favors like ascension to the World Trade Organization.

I wonder what Pelosi and Reid will have to say about the Russian delivery to Iran of the TOR-M1 air defense system?

Russia has begun deliveries of the Tor-M1 air defence rocket system to Iran, Russian news agencies quoted military industry sources as saying, in the latest sign of a Russian-US rift over Iran.

“Deliveries of the Tor-M1 have begun. The first systems have already been delivered to Tehran,” ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed, high-ranking source as saying Friday.

The United States has pressed Russia to halt military sales to Iran, which Washington accuses of harbouring secret plans to build a nuclear weapon. [snip]

Russia has a contract for 29 of the above with shipping underway. The Putin crowd is making very nice to the Sandland potentate. Included in this love fest is the head of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear agency, with a Dec. 11 arrival date.

All this is occurs because we don’t have a President with a solid foundation and now a congress which thinks Putin changed his spots. The ventelateur is in the path of the merde.

Here’s a story you won’t find in the Boston Globe. A declassified Soviet memo details Ted Kennedy’s offer to help the Soviet Union win a propaganda war in the United States. Kennedy, convinced that Soviet aggression was President Reagan’s fault, offered his help in presenting the Soviet case to the American people in an attempt to unseat President Reagan.

Sadly, you see the same pattern from liberals today who have shifted their sympathy to Iran, North Korea, and various terrorists. It’s our fault these nations are exporting terrorism and building nuclear weapons. Bay State Senators are not covering our state in glory that’s for sure.

The White House appears to have embraced Cold War era containment to deal with nations like Iran and North Korea. Gone is the axis of evil. Forget about spreading freedom and justice. Realpolitik is the new currency of this White House when it comes to international affairs.

But can containment work in the modern world? It’s highly unlikely. The Cold War allies shared a common ideology that allowed them to address problems in a united manner. Does China, Russia, or even Europe share our values? The fallacious notion a containment policy can be implemented is already sunk by Russia and China’s opposition to stiff North Korean sanctions. Good luck getting an oil hungry China to do anything significant to Iran.

If the White House wants realpolitik, try recognizing the people you are consulting as friends really aren’t. Welcome to Clinton redux when it comes to US foreign policy.

World reaction to North Korea’s missile tests is a prime example of why the United States cannot rely on the world community for our defense. Many countries simply do not share our values, which makes reaching an acceptable compromise next to impossible. For example, China believes North Korea has a “legal right” to test its missiles and isn’t contemplating sanctions. Russia is disappointed, but not overly concerned.

Honestly, given our support for Taiwan, China probably relishes North Korea’s saber rattling and how uncomfortable it makes us. Highlighting another important fact liberals refuse to acknowledge—nation states act in their own self-interest. They pretend the United Nations embodies a world “community” capable of taking action and resolving world problems, but it just isn’t so.

Now that it’s clear the world “community” offers little in the way of help, what can be done about North Korea? We can throw military action out the window and not because anybody really cares about the Security Council. We wouldn’t let the Chinese bomb Canada, and short of North Korea nuking Beijing, the Chinese are going to block military action against North Korean. Democrats will look to the UN and Security Council, but that’ll yield a lot of talk and diplo-speak with no substantive action.

We do have a few options though. First, establish upfront we are not going to be blackmailed. If the Russians and Chinese want to pay North Korea, let them, but American tax payers should not be funding North Korean weapon programs. Even aid that wasn’t diverted allows the North Koreans to shift other resources to their weapon programs. Additionally, Iran and other nations are getting ready to join the nuclear club and soon the blackmail payments are going to become cost prohibitive and that’s assuming the North Koreans don’t continually demand more money as time goes on.

And what if the blackmail isn’t just monetary? A lot of people would be inclined to pay the blackmail and move on with life. But let’s say Iran had a nuclear capability during the Mohamed cartoon “controversy”. What stops them from demanding the cartoonist in exchange for not nuking major European cities? It gets a little more difficult when they demand concessions in our fundamental rights.

Second and most importantly, accelerate development of the missile shield. Yes, there are other ways North Korea could deliver a nuclear weapon, but you still lock the front door when a burglar could smash a window. Our “friends” in the international community are free to pay North Korea and live with no protection, but as my mom is fond of saying, “would you jump off a bridge just because Johnny did?”