Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:48 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:50 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:51 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jan 24, 2017 7:53 pm



Post-Soviet Russia, Made in the U.S.A.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Jan 24, 2017 8:54 pm



This video is the gist of what I mentioned in my post.

To demonize Russia as the manipulator of the USA election and puppet master of Trump is close to the height of hypocrisy and disinformation.

I am blown away by how many folks (some at RI even) have been so taken in by this ugly farce of a Russian menace.

As a life long Democratic party member and voter, I am beyond angry to fatigued at the DNC/HRC contingent that have lost the POTUS and the reins of political power from bottom to top and indirectly set back many items of cultural equality in their stupid drive to retain power for their limited neoliberal club rather than look for the good of the Democratic party and USA as a whole. They created the opportunity for Trump and now look to blame their failures and bullshit on Russia.

What the USA should worry about is blowback from their own misdealing and failure to compete successfully without bullying and violence.

To say this is by no means a statement that Russia is all angels and unicorns; Russia and Russian leadership is more than capable of cold actions to protect Russian interests.
User avatar
PufPuf93
 
Posts: 1884
Joined: Sun Sep 05, 2010 12:29 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 29, 2017 11:03 am

Russia parliament votes 380-3 to decriminalize domestic violence
Doug Stanglin , USATODAY , WUSA 6:35 PM. CST January 28, 2017

Russia's parliament voted 380-3 on Friday to decriminalize domestic violence in cases where it does not cause "substantial bodily harm" and does not occur more than once a year.

The move, which eliminates criminal liability in such cases, makes a violation punishable by a fine of roughly $500, or a 15-day arrest, provided there is no repeat within 12 months.

The bill now goes to the rubber-stamp upper chamber, where no opposition is expected. It then must be signed by President Vladimir Putin, who has signaled his support.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists that family conflicts do "not necessarily constitute domestic violence."

The passage by the parliament, or Duma, reverses a ruling by the Supreme Court last year, subsequently backed by parliament, that decriminalized battery that does not inflict bodily harm, but retained criminal charges involving battery against family members. That reform is effectively reversed by Friday's vote.

Andrei Isayev of the main Kremlin faction, the United Russia, said lawmakers are “heeding the public call” by correcting a mistake they made last year.

Russia is one of three countries in Europe and Central Asia that do not have laws specifically targeting domestic violence, according to The Economist.

Critics of the new measure warned it would encourage domestic violence and fuel crime.

“This bill would establish violence as a norm of conduct,” Communist lawmaker Yuri Sinelshchikov said during the debate.

Women's rights lawyer Mari Davtyan told The Moscow Times that the legislative moves are dangerous and "send a message that the state doesn’t consider familial battery fundamentally wrong anymore.”

A survey this month by state-run pollster VTsIOM found 19% of Russians said “it can be acceptable” to hit one’s wife, husband or child “in certain circumstances,” the Associated Press reported. The nationwide poll by phone of 1,800 people was held Jan. 13-15. The survey had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.

In many ways, this reflects the thrust of an old Russian proverb: “If he beats you it means he loves you.”

According to Russian government statistics from the Interior Ministry, 40% of all violent crimes are committed within the family. The figures correlate to 36,000 women being beaten by their partners every day and 26,000 children being assaulted by their parents every year.

Last year's revised law, when it took in effect in July, quickly drew opponents, notably ultra-conservative Russian lawmaker Yelena Mizulina, who called it "anti-family" and said it undermined parents' "right" to beat their children.

That view was echoed at the time by The All-Russian Parents’ Resistance movement that warned on its website that "(p)arents no longer have the right to choose methods of upbringing.”

Alyona Popova, activist and women’s rights advocate, lamented that this attitude is widespread in Russia, The Moscow Times reported. “Traditional, or rather archaic values have become popular again,” she said.

Even Russian police are often reluctant to get involved in domestic violence cases, which many regard as meddling in family affairs.

In November, prosecutors began investigating a police officer who took a call from a woman complaining about her boyfriend’s aggressive behavior. Instead of offering help, the officer reportedly told the woman that the police would only come if she got killed. Shortly afterward, the man beat the woman to death, the AP reported
http://www.kare11.com/news/nation-now/r ... /394158468
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby DrEvil » Sun Jan 29, 2017 8:43 pm

I agree with folks here that western propaganda against Russia often goes off the rails, simply because it isn't necessary.
If they want to demonize Russia all they have to do is report the truth.

See slad's latest post, or the ban on "gay propaganda", or the foreign agent law aimed at muzzling NGOs, or the reporters and opposition people ending up in jail or dead, or the war in Chechnya (and particularly how it came about through massive false-flag bombings), or the death of Alexander Litvinenko, or how Putin set up his own controlled opposition party, or the massive cyber(*cringe*) attacks on smaller states etc.

They may not be worse than the US government, but they sure as hell aren't any better.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:26 am

Image

Russia's Arctic Military Buildup in One Map
The top of the world is now the newest military frontier

By Kyle Mizokami
Jan 26, 2017
476
Since the end of the Cold War, north of the Arctic Circle has generally been a demilitarized zone. The militaries of the world tend to stay clear of that part of the world for two reasons: It's hard to defend and there's generally nothing worth fighting over. Unfortunately climate change is changing that, and Russia is taking the lead in fortifying its share of the region.

The Arctic Circle is generally regarded as north of the 66 degrees, 34 minutes north latitude. It covers roughly four percent of the Earth's surface and is in a perpetual winter, with most of the arctic region locked in ice. But rising temperatures are contributing to a decline in the amount of that very ice. Less sea ice means previously unreachable resources—particularly oil and natural gas—can now be accessed and a new ice-free Arctic shipping route servicing the northern hemisphere appears almost certain.

Russia, which spans eleven times zones across the Northern Hemisphere is staking a claim to the arctic. Perhaps predictably, it's going a little overboard about it. In 2007, Russian robotic submarines planted the national flag under the North Pole. Russia claims the North Pole on the grounds that the Lomonosov Ridge, an extension of Russia's continental shelf territory, passes underneath the pole.


As this new map at Foreign Policy shows, Russia is prepared to back up those claims. By 2015, it had established six new bases north of the Circle, including 16 deepwater ports and 13 airfields. While many of these ports are minor ones for resupply of distant, lonely outposts and many airfields are for emergency use only, it's a network that is growing increasingly robust and well defended. Russia has deployed advanced S-400 long range surface to air missiles, as well as "Bastion" supersonic anti-ship missiles, to protect some of the larger bases.

The map was released by Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who is pressing the new Trump Administration to hammer out an Arctic strategy. The U.S. has no major bases north of the 66 degree parallel but is increasingly training to go there if necessary. In 2015, a combined Army and Air Force exercise deployed Stryker combat vehicles to Deadhorse Alaska, one of the northernmost communities in the United States. In March, ICEX 2016 saw two nuclear submarines rendezvousing at the North Police, where they were joined by helicopters and paratroopers.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/militar ... n-one-map/

Russia’s Defense Ministry is using reindeer photos to send a coded message to the world
Russian servicemen of Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk

Image
Just your normal Russian military reindeer escort. (Lev Fedoseyev/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/Handout via Reuters)

WRITTEN BY

Johnny Simon
3 hours ago
A first glance, the Russian military’s latest promotional photos are hard to take seriously: Released on Jan. 24, handout images of infantry drills in Russia’s Murmansk Oblast region feature troops bundled in all-white, toting white guns and cozying up to local fauna, including huskies and reindeer. The exercises pictured do not make clear what kind of modern military conflict would require a sturdy reindeer.
This theatrical posturing is nothing new for the Russian military, which performed a similar exercise in the Murmansk region just about a year ago. But it’s not to be taken lightly.
Russian serviceman of Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participates in military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk
We have mastered armored-canine-vehicular transport. (Lev Fedoseyev/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/Handout via Reuters)
Russian servicemen of Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk
Russian servicemen of the Northern Fleet’s Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in a military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near the settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk on Jan.23, 2017. (Lev Fedoseyev/Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/Handout)
As Reuters notes, Russia is engaging in its largest military expansion since the fall of the Soviet Union, focusing heavily on Arctic regions. Up for grabs are massive deposits of oil and gas. While oil prices worldwide remain low, Russia is laying the groundwork for regional dominance, including building up a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breaker ships.
Russia’s buildup hasn’t gone unnoticed: This week, US troops are conducting exercises with Poland. Two weeks ago, US Marines arrived in Norway.
Russia has used reindeer in combat before, particularly during World War II, where they were used as pack animals and helped the Russian military move supplies and people across terrain that wasn’t suitable for mechanized transports. There are even memorials in Russia to the reindeer who have served. These handout photos, silly as they seem, carry a clear message from Russia. The reindeer and wooden sleighs might be hokey, but at least they’re local—a little reminder about who knows the chilly Arctic best.

The super moon rises through the clouds over a statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Monday, Nov. 14, 2016.
Want to understand what Trump and Bannon are up to? Look to the Russian Revolution of 1917
https://qz.com/898248/the-russian-defen ... the-world/


Russia in biggest Arctic military push since fall of the Soviet Union
The expansion has far-reaching financial and geopolitical ramifications. The Arctic is estimated to hold more hydrocarbon reserves than Saudi Arabia and Moscow is putting down a serious military marker

Russian servicemen of the Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in a military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near the settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk, Russia Reuters
The nuclear icebreaker Lenin, the pride and joy of the Soviet Union's Arctic great game, lies at perpetual anchor in the frigid water here. A relic of the Cold War, it is now a museum.

But nearly three decades after the Lenin was taken out of service to be turned into a visitor attraction, Russia is again on the march in the Arctic and building new nuclear icebreakers.

It is part of a push to firm Moscow's hand in the High North as it vies for dominance with traditional rivals Canada, the United States, and Norway as well as newcomer China.

Interviews with officials and military analysts and reviews of government documents show Russia's build-up is the biggest since the 1991 Soviet fall and will, in some areas, give Moscow more military capabilities than the Soviet Union once had.

The expansion has far-reaching financial and geopolitical ramifications. The Arctic is estimated to hold more hydrocarbon reserves than Saudi Arabia and Moscow is putting down a serious military marker.

“History is repeating itself,” Vladimir Blinov, a guide on board the icebreaker Lenin, which is named after communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, told a recent tour group.

“Back then (in the 1950s) it was the height of the Cold War and the United States was leading in some areas. But we beat the Americans and built the world's first nuclear ship [the Lenin]. The situation today is similar.”

Under President Vladimir Putin, Moscow is rushing to reopen abandoned Soviet military, air and radar bases on remote Arctic islands and to build new ones, as it pushes ahead with a claim to almost half a million square miles of the Arctic.

It regularly releases pictures of its troops training in white fatigues, wielding assault rifles as they zip along on sleighs pulled by reindeer.

russian-arctic-2.jpg
Russian servicemen of the Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participate in a military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near the settlement of Lovozero outside Murmansk (Reuters)
The Arctic, the US Geological Survey estimates, holds oil and gas reserves equivalent to 412 billion barrels of oil, about 22 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

Low oil prices and Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's actions in Ukraine mean new offshore Arctic projects have for now been mothballed, but the Kremlin is playing a longer game.

It is building three nuclear icebreakers, including the world's largest, to bolster its fleet of around 40 breakers, six of which are nuclear. No other country has a nuclear breaker fleet, used to clear channels for military and civilian ships.

Russia's Northern Fleet, based near Murmansk in the Kola Bay's icy waters, is also due to get its own icebreaker, its first, and two ice-capable corvettes armed with cruise missiles.

“Under [former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev and [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin, our Arctic border areas were stripped bare,” said Professor Pavel Makarevich, a member of the Russian Geographical Society. “Now they are being restored.”

The build-up, which echoes moves in Crimea and Kaliningrad, has been noticed in Washington. US Defense Secretary James Mattis told his confirmation hearing this month it was “not to our advantage to leave any part of the world” to others.

Mattis, in a separate written submission, described Moscow's Arctic moves as “aggressive steps” and pledged to prioritise developing a US strategy, according to Senator Dan Sullivan.

READ MORE
Norway sends hundreds of troops to Russian border region
UK Antarctic base to go into shutdown because of huge crack in ice
Arctic weather warning prompts dozens of flight cancellations
That poses a potential dilemma for President Donald Trump, who wants to repair US-Russia ties and team up with Moscow in Syria rather than get sucked into an Arctic arms race.

The build-up is causing jitters elsewhere. Some 300 US Marines landed in Norway this month for a six-month deployment, the first time since the Second World War that foreign troops have been allowed to be stationed there.

And with memories of Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea still fresh, Nato is watching closely. Six of its members held an exercise in the region in 2015.

The Soviet military packed more firepower in the Arctic, but it was set up to wage nuclear war with the United States not conventional warfare. Arctic islands were staging posts for long-range bombers to fly to America.

But in an era when a slow-motion battle for the Arctic's energy reserves is unfolding, Russia is creating a permanent and nimble conventional military presence with different and sometimes superior capabilities.

Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, is presiding over the reopening or creation of six military facilities, some of which will be ready by the year's end.

They include an island base on Alexandra Land to house 150 troops able to survive autonomously for 18 months. Called the Arctic Trefoil, officials have said they may deploy military jets there. MiG-31 fighters, designed to shoot down long-range bombers, or the SU-34, a frontline bomber, are seen as suitable.

Moscow's biggest Arctic base, dubbed “Northern Shamrock”, is meanwhile taking shape on the remote Kotelny Island, some 2,700 miles east of Moscow. It will be manned by 250 personnel and equipped with air defence missiles.

Soviet-era radar stations and airstrips on four other Arctic islands are being overhauled and new ground-to-air missile and anti-ship missile systems have been moved into the region.

Russia is also spending big to winterise military hardware.

“The modernisation of Arctic forces and of Arctic military infrastructure is taking place at an unprecedented pace not seen even in Soviet times,” Mikhail Barabanov, editor-in-chief of Moscow Defense Brief, told Reuters.

He said two special Arctic brigades had been set up, something the USSR never had, and that there were plans to form a third as well as special Arctic coastal defence divisions.

“Russia's military activity in the Arctic is a bit provocative,” said Barabanov. “It could trigger an arms race.”

In Murmansk, home to Russia's icebreakers and just an hour from the Northern Fleet's headquarters, the prospect of an Arctic renaissance is a source of pride.

The city is steeped in Arctic and military history. The conning tower of the Kursk submarine, which sunk in 2000 after an explosion, looks down from a hill above the port.

And in central Murmansk, scale models of dozens of icebreakers crowd the halls of the Murmansk Shipping Company, while sailors, wrapped in great coats, barrel along its streets.

“These Arctic bases are on our territory. Unlike some other countries we are not building them overseas,” said Denis Moiseev, a member of the Russian Geographical Society.

“Other countries are also very active in trying to push their borders towards the North Pole. Our army must be able to operate on all our territory in extreme conditions.”

One country regularly mentioned as an unlikely Arctic rival is China, a close Moscow ally, which has observer status on the Arctic Council, the main forum for coordinating cooperation in the region, and is starting to build its own icebreakers.

Politicians are keener to discuss a commercial Arctic push.

russian-arctic-1.jpg
A Russian serviceman of the Northern Fleet's Arctic mechanised infantry brigade participates in a military drill on riding reindeer and dog sleds near the settlement (Reuters)
New roads and a railway are being built and ports overhauled as Moscow expands its freight capacity and, amid warmer climate cycles, readies for more traffic along its Arctic coast.

It hopes the Northern Sea Route, which runs from Murmansk to the Bering Strait near Alaska, could become a mini Suez Canal, cutting sea transport times from Asia to Europe.

But while the route's popularity inside Russia is growing, relatively high transit costs and unpredictable ice coverage means it has lost some of its lustre for foreign firms.

Grigory Stratiy, deputy governor of the Murmansk Region, told Reuters there was strong interest in sea route from Asian nations however and that new icebreakers would allow for year-round navigation in the 2020s.

“Whatever the weather, the Northern Sea Route will be needed. Its use will definitely grow,” said Stratiy, who said Russia was keen to attract foreign investment to the Arctic.

When asked about his country's military build-up, he smiled.

“There's no reason to be afraid I can reassure you,” he said, saying it was driven only by a need to modernise.

“Russia has never had any aggressive aims and won't have them. We are very friendly people.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 54111.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 02, 2017 10:16 am

CBS/AP February 2, 2017, 6:04 AM
Russian activist, likely poisoned before, hospitalized again

Vladimir Kara-Murza (L), senior policy adviser at the Institute of Modern Russia, holds up a copy of the report on “Winter Olympics in the Sub-Tropics” as Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov (R) listens during a news conference on “Corruption and Abuse in Sochi Olympics” January 30, 2014 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Nemtsov was gunned down in Moscow in 2016. GETTY

MOSCOW -- A private foundation says one of its employees, a prominent Russian opposition activist, has been hospitalized after a sudden illness reminiscent of a poisoning he suffered two years earlier.

Open Russia, run by exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said in a statement on Thursday that Vladimir Kara-Murza was hospitalized earlier in the day after becoming ill.

Putin political foe shot dead in Moscow

Kara-Murza, a journalist and a close associate of the murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, nearly died when he suffered sudden kidney failure in May 2015.

No cause for that illness has been determined but Kara-Murza underwent tests showing he had ingested a poisonous substance.

In light of the fatal poisoning of defector Alexander Litvinenko and the mysterious deaths of other Russian opposition figures, some worried that Kara-Murza could have been deliberately poisoned.

Kara-Murza’s wife and friends have told Russian media that the symptoms he is currently experiencing are very similar to those he suffered in 2015. They say he is still conscious, but his condition is very bad.

Friends believe his current illness is connected with his work as coordinator of “Open Russia,” and as the organizer of the nationwide screening of a movie about Nemtsov.

Nemtsov, the leader of an opposition political party and an outspoken Kremlin critic, was gunned down in the heart of Moscow almost two years ago. Five people were arrested over the killing, but only one confessed to the murder -- and human rights activists said the confession was the result of torture in custody.

A British judge said last year that an independent investigation had concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin likely ordered the assassination of Litvinenko in a London hotel.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-oppo ... pitalized/



Russian critic Vladimir Kara-Murza suffers sudden organ failure
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38844292





MOTHER RUSSIA IS A RACIST
How Russia surpassed Germany to become the racist ideal for Trump-loving white supremacists
Russian ultra-nationalists march during a demonstration on the outskirts of Moscow, November 4, 2010. Russia marks the Day of People's Unity on November 4 when people celebrate the defeat of Polish invaders in 1612 and replace a communist celebration of the 1917 revolution.
Nationalists unite. (Reuters/Mikhail Voskresensky)

WRITTEN BY
Casey Michel
OBSESSION

2016
December 22, 2016
For America’s white nationalists, there is only one nation—and one leader—worth emulating. And it has nothing to do with lederhosen or Wagner.
Richard Spencer, the current face (and haircut) of US’s alt-right, believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world.” David Duke, meanwhile, believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.” And as Matthew Heimbach, head of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, recently said, Russian president Vladimir Putin is the “leader of the free world”—one who has helped morph Russia into an “axis for nationalists.”
For those Americans who are just now familiarizing themselves with Russia’s current political proclivities—due to the recent, high-profile Russian hacking allegations, say, or the brutal military campaign in Aleppo—Moscow’s transformation into a lodestar for America’s white supremacists is enough to cause whiplash. After all, just a few decades ago Moscow was a beacon for the far-left, and its influential Communist International provided material and organizational heft for those pushing Soviet-style autocracy around the world. Over the past few years, however, the Kremlin has cultivated those on the far-right end of the West’s political spectrum in the pursuit, as Heimbach told me, of reifying something approaching a “Traditionalist International.”
Moscow’s appeal to the American far-right is, in a sense, understandable, if no less worrying. The links between Russia and America’s white nationalists and domestic secessionists have both expanded and deepened over the past few years. And the Kremlin, as with its invasion and occupation of swaths of Ukraine, has gone to only minimal lengths to obscure such ties.
Following the chaos of the Soviet dissolution in the 1990s, Putin’s kleptocracy has restored the state to domestic primacy. Moreover, Putin has positioned Russia as a leader for those in the West attempting to roll back liberal policies, from abortion and LGBT rights to dissolving the distance between church and state. Meanwhile, Moscow has been busily cultivating relationships with far-right groups in Europe, from radical right-wingers in Hungary to Marine LePen, one of the front-runners for the upcoming French presidency.
But links between Moscow and America’s white supremacy movement are far deeper than approving rhetoric. Spencer, for instance, who has said that he “admire[s]” Putin and who has called to break up NATO, also helped organize a 2014 conference in Hungary that was slated to feature, of all people, Alexander Dugin. A political philosopher, Dugin is both an erstwhile Kremlin confidant and the progenitor of modern “Eurasianism,” which places, in part, Russia as the center of global anti-liberalism. Dugin, whose Foundations of Geopolitics continues to be assigned to every member of Russia’s General Staff Academy, was unable to attend the conclave in Hungary due to Western sanctions. But Spencer nonetheless remains married to one of Dugin’s English translators.
Traditionalist Worker Party leader Heimbach—who has led rallies featuring both Confederate and Russian imperial flags flying side-by-side—has yet to visit Russia, but was planning on attending a recent conference in St. Petersburg that would have gathered together heads of the assorted neo-Nazi and white supremacist contingents across the West. The conference, postponed until March, was organized by a group with ties to Russia’s deputy prime minister, and would have been the second iteration of the gathering. The 2015 conference featured both “race realist” Jared Taylor and former KKK lawyer Sam Dickson. All the while, Heimbach has continued expanding the reach of the TWP in the US. The party’s 2015 launch included, of all things, a Skyped-in speech from none other than Dugin.

David Duke, meanwhile, sees Russia as a country that “presents an opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. And a few years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center detailed Duke’s close personal ties with another American neo-Nazi, Preston Wiginton, who has made Moscow his adopted home.
Thus far, no smoking gun financial links have been uncovered between the Kremlin and those who would fracture the US in pursuit of a whites-only enclave. The same can’t be said, however, of ties between Moscow and those who would pursue more traditional means of secession. A few months ago, the Kremlin helped finance a secessionist conference in Moscow, bringing together contingents from Ireland, Spain, and Italy—as well as those from Texas, Puerto Rico, and California. Indeed, the head of the main group pushing California secession, Louis Marinelli, not only lives in Russia, but opened an “Embassy of the Independent Republic of California” in Moscow on Sunday. As Marinelli told a Russian interviewer last month, “In Russia, we have partners who are ready to support us in our aspiration.”
These secessionists, as the California movement indicates, aren’t solely of a far-right bent. But like the white nationalists undergirding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, they all share the same goal: the fragmentation of the United States. And the Kremlin—alongside its hacking campaigns, and in tandem with its push to undercut Western alliance structures—has been only too happy to cultivate rhetorical, financial, and organizational support for these movements.
As 2017 dawns, there’s little likelihood these movements, and these ties, are going to fade during the Trump administration. If anything, the ranks of white nationalists emboldened by Trump’s success will almost certainly swell—as will those who would seek to crack the US under the auspices of secession. And, now, these individuals have found a common foreign backer, and in some cases, foreign financier.
As Heimbach recently said, “Russia’s our most powerful ally. Imagine what could happen to our party when Russia takes interest.” It’s clear, by now, that Russia has taken interest—and with the Trump administration approaching, we may not longer have the luxury of simply imagining just what the fallout of such relationships will be.
https://qz.com/869938/how-russia-surpas ... remacists/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:02 pm

The "Darth Vader" of Russia: meet Igor Sechin, Putin's right-hand man
Updated by Alec Luhn Feb 8, 2017, 10:47am EST

YEREVAN, ARMENIA - DECEMBER 2: Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) listens to Rosneft's President Igor Sechin during Russian-Armenian talks December 2, 2013 in Yerevan, Armenia. Putin is in a one-day state visit to Armenia. (Photo by Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images) Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
Late on the night of November 14, Igor Sechin, the CEO of the Russian state oil giant Rosneft, reportedly summoned Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev to a meeting at the company’s headquarters in a czarist-era building across the river from the Kremlin.

When he arrived, Ulyukayev was handed a large amount of cash in front of Sechin — and then arrested on the spot and charged with soliciting a $2 million bribe. Ulyukayev, who insists that he is innocent, was fired by Russian President Vladimir Putin the day after his arrest.

The unusual sting operation that brought down Ulyukayev, the first sitting government minister to be detained by police since the Stalin era, highlighted the power of Sechin, a shadowy figure who is widely seen as second only to Putin in influence. Russian newspapers reported that Rosneft's head of security — who remains a high-ranking FSB security service official — organized the sting, presumably on Sechin’s orders.

Sechin has been called Putin's “Darth Vader” and the “scariest man on earth” by Russian media, and a leaked US embassy cable described him as the “grey cardinal of the Kremlin.” Now that his friend and business partner Rex Tillerson has become President Donald Trump's secretary of state, Sechin is poised to play an even more important role: as a point man for efforts to improve Russia’s chilly relationship with the US and get Washington to lift its sanctions on the Kremlin.

Sechin’s power — and influence — could soon grow even bigger: Some have speculated that the oil magnate could be considered for prime minister if Putin is elected to another term in 2018.

“Putin will count on Sechin as an agent of influence on Tillerson, as a lobbyist” for better relations between Moscow and Russia, said Stanislav Belkovsky, an analyst formerly connected to the Kremlin.

Belkovsky added that the Russian strongman believes Tillerson, given his oil background, is likely to have a warm view of Sechin, which “can be used” to Moscow’s advantage on sanctions on other issues.

POWER IN RUSSIA DEPENDS ON ACCESS TO PUTIN. THAT’S GREAT FOR SECHIN, ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S OLDEST AND MOST TRUSTED ALLIES.
Washington’s relationship with Moscow is at a post–Cold War nadir, with the US intelligence community accusing Russia of directly interfering in the presidential election to help Trump. Trump has promised to change that, and has spent months shocking allies and officials around the world by praising Putin as a strong and popular leader and rejecting criticism of his dismal human rights record. The latest effort came Sunday, when Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that he respects the Russian president and dismissed O’Reilly’s objection that “Putin’s a killer.”

Words are one thing, actions another. Trump has hinted that he’d be willing to lift some of the sanctions the US slapped on Russia after it invaded Eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Vice President Mike Pence suggested on Sunday that the administration could eliminate some sanctions if Russia helps in the fight with ISIS, and Trump has also floated the idea of removing some of the measures if Putin agreed to a nuclear arms reduction deal.

And that’s where Sechin comes in. He stands to gain financially if the measures are lifted because Washington had frozen some of his assets and barred him from visiting the US. That pales in comparison with the boost he would get if Rosneft were able to resuscitate a deal to invest up to $500 billion in developing energy reserves that he’d signed with Tillerson while the diplomat was running Exxon Mobil. (Tillerson opposed the sanctions when they were introduced, and Exxon estimated it has lost as much as $1 billion because of them.) Restarting the project would be an enormous win for Rosneft — and for Sechin’s continued influence in the Kremlin.

Meet the man with the $60 million house and the $100 million yacht
In the already murky world of Kremlin politics, Sechin is an especially enigmatic figure. He tries to keep it that way, suing two independent Russian newspapers last year for reports about a $60 million mansion he's allegedly building outside Moscow and a $100 million yacht his wife allegedly owns. (Rosneft also sued the independent newspaper RBC for reporting that Sechin was trying to limit BP's control on the company board.)

The entire Russian political and financial systems revolve around access to Putin, which is great for Sechin, who is one of the president’s oldest and most trusted allies.

A 56-year-old with graying hair, a hooked nose, a slightly nasal voice, and a near-perpetual frown, he worked his way out of obscurity and poverty in Leningrad to reach the heights of politics and business. Rumored to be a former spy, he is well-connected with the security services and speaks French, Portuguese, and Spanish. He makes as much as $11.6 million a year, but even his critics admit he works nearly nonstop, powered by his favorite drink, orange juice.

ANALYSTS COMPARE SECHIN, CEO OF RUSSIA’S BIGGEST ENERGY COMPANY, TO CARNIVORES AND CROCODILES
Sechin’s main hobby is hunting big game — an important social pastime among politicians and businessmen in Russia — and he reportedly likes to give Rosneft partners sausages made out of animals he’s killed. When journalist Andrei Kolesnikov, known for his access to Putin, finally convinced Sechin after seven years to write a column for his Russian Pioneer magazine, the Rosneft head waxed lyrical about his love for jazz music: “The most important thing in jazz, as in real life, is improvisation.”

A request for an interview with Sechin was not answered, and a Rosneft spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

Analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, who formerly served as an adviser to Putin's administration and knew Sechin personally, said the Rosneft head could be useful as an intermediary between Moscow and Washington and will seek that role so he can “transform himself into a more legitimate figure in the West.” Sechin has already overseen one smaller rapprochement, having forged closer relations between Russia and Latin America in the late 2000s. Sechin met frequently with Hugo Chávez and even gave a speech in Spanish at a commemoration ceremony after the Venezuelan president’s death, calling him a “brilliant politician, one of the founders of the idea of a multipolar world.”

A Putin crony with close ties to America’s new secretary of state
Sechin’s relationship with Tillerson dates back more than a decade. Tillerson first arrived in Russia in 1997 and oversaw the company's project with Rosneft and Indian and Japanese partners to reach hydrocarbons deep below the icy seas off Sakhalin Island, which was delayed for years by low oil prices and legal holdups. Thanks in no small part to his partnership with Sechin, Tillerson has withstood pressure from the state gas company Gazprom, which forced foreign investors out of another Sakhalin venture, and the consortium is now Exxon’s flagship project in Russia, pumping more than 250,000 barrels of oil a day. Exxon and Rosneft have gone on to sign other major deals.

Sechin got to know Tillerson after he became chair of Rosneft in 2004, reportedly coming to admire the Texan’s tough but transparent dealings with partners. In 2015, he even spoke out in support of Exxon in its ongoing legal battle to regain some of the $500 million in taxes it said it had overpaid Russia.

After Exxon and Rosneft signed agreements to explore Siberia and the Arctic in 2011, Tillerson and Sechin were said to have celebrated with caviar in the luxury Manhattan restaurant Per Se. The next year, Putin, Sechin, and Tillerson were filmed toasting another deal with champagne.

Putin awarded the Russian order of friendship to Tillerson in 2013, reportedly at Sechin's request. The two seem to have become not just partners but friends: Sechin said in 2014 that before he was sanctioned, he had been planning “to ride the roads in the United States on motorcycles with Tillerson.”

In a St. Petersburg Economic Forum appearance last June that was interpreted as a sign of support for Rosneft, Tillerson called Sechin “my friend”: “As to the sanctions question, I’ll use the same approach that my friend Mr. Sechin took. That’s a question for government.”

PUTIN, SECHIN AND TILLERSON HAVE BEEN FILMED TOASTING AN ENERGY DEAL WITH CHAMPAGNE
But Sechin is not one to let friendship get in the way if a conflict arises. His reputation is that of a ruthless insider who holds only three things to be sacred: his loyalty to Putin, Rosneft's ravenous expansion, and his no-holds-barred struggle against political and business rivals. Many of these are liberals like Ulyukayev or Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who oppose his vision of an economy dominated by huge state corporations. Sechin won his most recent clash with the two men, buying the oil company Bashneft in a deal Medvedev had opposed. (Ulyukayev was accused in November of seeking a bribe to back this deal, which he also was initially against.)

“Business leaders who have dealt with Sechin say he has one particular idiosyncrasy: he immediately manages to get criminal proceedings started against any potential partner as a backup, as well as to facilitate the negotiating process,” wrote journalist Mikhail Zygar in his seminal book All the Kremlin's Men.

A rapid rise, fueled by ruthlessness and hard work
Sechin was born into a blue-collar family in Leningrad in 1960. Although his parents worked at a metallurgical factory, Sechin studied at a school that specialized in French and managed to get into a university in Leningrad, where he studied Portuguese and Spanish. According to classmate Larisa Volodimerova, the skinny young man wasn't exceptional but studied hard to escape the poverty he lived in with his twin sister and divorced mother.

“He was interested in money and a career for money from the beginning to exit this nightmare,” she said, remembering there wasn't much food when she came over to their apartment.

After graduating with a higher degree in economics in 1984, Sechin served as a Soviet military translator in the conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. (Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said Sechin told him he had worked for Soviet intelligence in Africa.) According to another classmate, Nikolai Konyushkov, Sechin always liked military discipline and was a platoon commander when the students underwent combat training outside the city. He recalled how his friend once daringly climbed from a neighbor's apartment into a third-story window to let Konyushkov into his apartment when he forgot his keys after one such training.

“He could have served in more or less peaceful places, in the capital, but Igor Ivanovich chose hot spots,” Konyushkov said. “He didn't fear military service; he liked it.”

After his return, Sechin went to work in Leningrad city hall, where he met Putin. By 1991, the future president was chair of the city’s public relations committee, and Sechin became his head secretary, taking down visitors' contacts in a black leather binder. Acquaintances often remark on Sechin's absolute loyalty to Putin: Pavlovsky called him the leader’s “angry guard dog.” A recently rediscovered 1996 video interview shows Sechin faithfully following Putin through the airport metal detector, duffel bag and briefcase in hand.

When then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin acting president in 1999, Sechin became the deputy head of his administration, waiting for Putin at the elevator every morning and at the airport after every foreign trip.

His control over Putin's schedule as well as what papers made it to the president's desk increased his clout — and his willingness to mercilessly go after his rivals.

Sechin’s first major target was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was discussing the sale of a blocking stake in his Yukos oil company to Chevron Texaco or Exxon. According to Belkovsky, Sechin presented Putin with a report the analyst had written warning that Khodorkovsky planned to seize power, and he’s believed to have overseen the subsequent legal attacks on the oligarch. Khodorkovsky was soon imprisoned on charges of tax fraud, and Yukos was broken up. Sechin's prize was chairmanship of Rosneft, which became the largest oil company in Russia after absorbing the main components of Yukos.

In subsequent years, Sechin would outmaneuver or outlast many other rivals, often with similarly underhanded tactics. Russian media linked him to the sudden arrest of Vladimir Yevtushenkov — who had reportedly rejected Sechin’s offer to buy his Bashneft oil company — in connection with an investigation into its privatization more than a decade earlier. Bashneft was seized by the state and sold to Rosneft two years later.

Bob Dudley, who was CEO of the British-Russian joint oil venture TNK-BP, claimed in a leaked US Embassy cable that Sechin was in “direct cooperation” with his partners turned enemies in their attempts to force him out. Dudley later fled Russia — after reportedly surviving a poisoning attempt — and a few years later, Rosneft ended up taking over TNK-BP.

Sechin also served as deputy prime minister from 2008 to 2012, and he is secretary of Putin’s energy development commission.

Yet even his critics have to admit Sechin fulfilled his task of turning a marginal oil company into the country's state champion, combining a legendary work ethic with the zeal of a Jesuit priest. Zygar described him as a “cyborg” who can go days without sleeping and terrorizes underlings with his deceptively soft voice. According to Pavlovsky, he was the hardest-working official in the Kremlin and “read all the papers,” once catching a loophole no one else had spotted in a tax accord with the popular offshore business destination of Cyprus.

At the same time, Rosneft has taken on huge debts in its aggressive expansion and is having to invest far more to keep production up in its declining west Siberian fields. According to Vladimir Milov, an opposition activist and former deputy energy minister who worked with Sechin, he is not a good businessman or manager but rather an “overseer in a labor camp, someone who can intimidate.” He said Sechin is driven by an all-consuming desire to increase his oil empire. (Rosneft has of late made large investments abroad in countries like India and Venezuela.)

“It's not a comprehensive strategy, but rather the spontaneous action of a carnivore, of a crocodile,” Milov said. “He sees something and attacks, but there's no strategy … and the problem of falling production in west Siberia isn't being solved.”

Nonetheless, Sechin's position at the helm of Rosneft and influence over the Russian energy industry seems for now beyond reproach after he delivered much-needed cash to the country's coffers through an $11 billion Rosneft privatization deal late last year, the largest foreign investment since the 2014 sanctions. (The full identities of the buyers remain unknown, raising questions of where the money is actually coming from.) Milov claimed that Ulyukayev's downfall came because he had insisted the Rosneft deal be done with greater government oversight than Sechin wanted.

Now Tillerson’s appointment could allow Sechin to extend his clout once again. “At the very least, his influence on foreign policy will be increased, because he has a history of communicating with American oilmen” like Tillerson and secretary of energy pick Rick Perry, said Evgeny Minchenko, a Kremlin-connected analyst known for his “Politburo 2.0” reports on the ruling elite.

Some analysts have even speculated Sechin could become prime minister if Putin runs and wins another term, a virtual certainty given the strongman’s popularity and lack of any real rivals.

Still, Minchenko warned that although the Rosneft head “has increased his influence and done so pretty dramatically,” there are “no one-way processes” in the Kremlin.

“Even if someone gets stronger,” he warned, “he can be thrown off soon.”
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/8/14539 ... te-kremlin
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:44 am

WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD
How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right
While the U.S. passed gay rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.
By CASEY MICHEL February 09, 2017

—Pat Buchanan asked a question. Taking to the column-inches at Townhall, Buchanan wondered aloud: “Whose side is God on now?”

As Moscow swamped Ukraine’s peninsula, holding a ballot-by-bayonet referendum while local Crimean Tatars began disappearing, Buchanan clarified his query. The former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and intellectual flag-bearer of paleoconservatism—that authoritarian strain of thought linking both white nationalists and US President Donald Trump—wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today[.]” Despite Putin’s rank kleptocracy, and the threat Moscow suddenly posed to stability throughout Europe, Buchanan blushed with praise for Putin’s policies, writing, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”

Three years on, it’s easy to skip past Buchanan’s piece in discussing Russian-American relations, drenched as they are in mutual sanctions and the reality that Moscow attempted to tip the scales in Trump’s favor during the election. But Buchanan’s article crystallized a paradigm shift in religious relations between Moscow and Washington, and in Moscow’s role within the global Christian right. Before 2014 Russia was largely seen as an importer for Christian fundamentalists, most especially from the U.S. But as the Kremlin dissolved diplomatic norms in 2014, Moscow began forging a new role for itself at the helm of the global Christian right.

And Moscow’s grip at the tiller of a globally resurgent right has only tightened since. Not only have Russian banks funded groups like France’s National Front, but Moscow has hosted international conferences on everything from neo-Nazi networking to domestic secessionists attempting to rupture the U.S. Meanwhile, American fundamentalists bent on unwinding minority protections in the U.S. have increasingly leaned on Russia for support—and for a model they’d bring to bear back home, from targeting LGBT communities to undoing abortion rights throughout the country.

“In the same sense that Russia’s [anti-LGBT] laws came about in 2013, we’ve seen similar sorts of laws proposed in Tennessee, for example,” Cole Parke, an LGBT researcher with Political Research Associates, told me. “It’s difficult to say in a chicken-and-egg sort of way who’s inspiring whom, but there’s definitely a correlation between the two movements.”

***

It’s no coincidence that Buchanan’s column, which outlined the players within the “cultural, social, moral war” between Russia and the “hedonistic” West, mentioned a semi-obscure group called the World Congress of Families. As Buchanan wrote, the WCF listed Russia’s emergence as a “Pro-Family Leader” as one of the “10 best trends” of 2013. Indeed, in order to outline how Russia challenged—and supplanted—the U.S. role as a clarion for Christian fundamentalists, you have to parse the WCF’s role, and the group’s attendant impact on Russian policy over the past few years.
Based out of Rockford, Ill., the WCF is an outgrowth of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. Claiming that it wants to “help secure the foundations of society” by, among other things, defending “the natural family founded on marriage between a man and a woman,” the WCF is run by Brian Brown, who also acts as the co-founder and president of the far right, and vehemently anti-gay, National Organization for Marriage. Just this week, Brown landed in Moscow to, as BuzzFeed reported, help continue constructing trans-Atlantic links between Russia and the American Religious Right.

In the two decades since its formal founding in 1997 the WCF has become one of the primary poles around which far-right U.S. evangelicals have exported their fundamentalism, as well as one of the world’s foremost anti-LGBT organizations. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the WCF “is one of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia”—not that the WCF would necessarily take offense to the charge. In 2016, for instance, the WCF hosted a conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, in which, as Coda reported, speakers encouraged attendees to “stay firm against homofascists” and “rainbow radicals.” Conference topics ranged from how sexual education “undermine[s] the family and parental authority” to looking at how court systems push “Anti-family indoctrination.” (The WCF did not return multiple attempts for comment.)

But the WCF isn’t a wholly American export; this isn’t simply some effort to push Christian extremism alongside baseball and apple pie for foreign consumption. Rather, the WCF is a product of joint Russian-American homophobic ingenuity. As Christopher Stroop, a postdoctoral student at the University of South Florida, recently detailed, the WCF was the brainchild of Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov, a pair of sociology professors at Lomonosov Moscow State University, and Allan Carlson, WCF’s current president emeritus. The two Russians, according to Mother Jones, were casting about for a means to stave off their country’s looming “demographic winter”—the idea that progressive legislation, from birth control to LGBT rights, will precipitate civilizational collapse—and stumbled over Carlson’s prior work. Gathering in the apartment of a “Russian Orthodox mystic,” the trio outlined an organization that would help oversee a global Christian right—and restore Russia to a position abdicated during the atheistic Soviet period.

Indeed, while the West saw substantial progressive gains since the WCF’s inception, Russia underwent a stark lurch in the opposite direction. Not only has Moscow, most especially under Putin’s third term, grabbed the rudder of the global anti-gay movement, but it has further unraveled even the most basic abortion rights protocols. To wit, in 2011 the Kremlin enacted an anti-abortion bill that, as The Nation wrote, “many pro-choice activists regard as the first volley in an effort to ban the procedure altogether.”

But this legislation didn’t arise in a vacuum, especially when Moscow was the world’s first to legalize the procedure. Rather, those Russian legislators pushing a domestic abortion clampdown looked to their American colleagues—specifically, the WCF—for inspiration. After all, the package of abortion restrictions, speared by Duma member Yelena Mizulina, was launched a day after a series of WCF honchos, including Carlson and Managing Director Larry Jacobs, settled into Moscow for a “Demographic Summit,” the WCF’s most substantial assembly in Russia to date. As the head of a Russian women’s advocacy group later said, “It was 100-percent clear that everything [in the anti-abortion legislation] was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists and conservative circles of several European countries where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.” Or as the WCF would later claim in its promotional material: The WCF “helped pass the first Russian laws restricting abortion in modern history.”

***

Shortly after the summit’s close, Putin announced plans to return to the presidency, supplanting then-President Dmitry Medvedev. Buffeted by a flat economy, Putin shored up his support by tacking to a nativist, nationalist—and resentful—base. In the first 18 months after his return to the presidency in 2012, Putin corralled protesters, smothered many of the remaining independent media outlets, and dissolved the distance between the Kremlin and the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. All of his moves pointed toward a hard-right shift in outlook—to a return to Tsar Nicholas I’s triumvirate of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.”

America’s Christian fundamentalists followed Putin’s moves with glee—all the more after then-President Barack Obama earned a second term, and same-sex rights charged forward. In 2013, Moscow pushed an “anti-propaganda law” specifically targeting the country’s beleaguered LGBT population. Despite widespread condemnation throughout the West, members of America’s Religious Right tripped over themselves in supporting the Kremlin. Likewise, as a Daily Beast report found, the “anti-propaganda law,” like the anti-abortion measures before it, didn’t arise in some kind of retrograde ether, but “had emerged from a years-long, carefully crafted campaign to influence governments to adopt a Christian-Right legal framework”—stemming from the efforts of both American and Russian WCF officials who had “successfully disseminated a U.S.-born culture war that’s wreaking havoc on women and queer folks all around the world.” Even Moscow’s ban on Americans adopting Russian children that year managed to gain support within the U.S.’s far right, with Christian fundamentalists praising Putin’s move as preventing children from living with same-sex parents.

And then, in early 2014, Russia began its invasion of southern Ukraine, claiming Crimea and sparking sanctions, animus and the downing of Flight MH17—the destruction of which almost certainly came at the hands of Russia-backed separatists. In the midst of the greatest breach between the Kremlin and the White House in decades, the WCF confirmed plans to host its annual September 2014 conference in Moscow. Suddenly, though, a pair of the WCF’s biggest boosters in Russia—Mizulina and former Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin—were placed on the U.S. sanctions list. Citing “uncertainties surrounding sanctions,” the WCF pulled its official imprimatur from the conference.

But that didn’t stop WCF higher-ups from attending the conclave, rechristened “Large Families: The Future of Humanity,” or from cementing further links with those close to the Kremlin. Not only have WCF fundamentalists continued building ties with ultra-Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, but, as Stroop told me, the conference “was pretty much what it was supposed to be.” (To get a taste of Malofeev’s views, he believes Orthodox Christians can’t be fascist because “Russians suffered from Nazis more than any other nation in the world.”) As journalist Hannah Levintova wrote in 2014, the conference went off with a “nearly identical title” and took place “in the same location, on the same dates, and with a similar schedule[.]” For good measure, Alexey Komov, the WCF’s official Russian representative, told a Russian media outlet the WCF was still helping organize the conference.

This time, though, something was different. Two years into Putin’s third term, and a few months after the Kremlin upended the post-Cold War order, Russia was coalescing support from far-right forces across the West, ranging from the white nationalists who would buoy Trump’s campaign to political groups bent on fracturing NATO and the European Union. While Washington pushed toward legalization of same-sex marriage, Russia, to Christian fundamentalists on both sides of the Atlantic, suddenly regressed into the world’s primary bulwark for nominally “traditional” values.

The 2014 conference, Stroop told me, was “a crystallization of this moment of nationalization and exporting [of nominally ‘traditional’ values] on the Russian side—of Russia taking the lead. … There was a moment when Mizulina was saying that it would be impossible for this kind of conference to take place in Europe or America right now.” Mizulina, of course, was mistaken; the 2015 conference took place in Salt Lake City, just a few months after the Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage across America. But in that milieu, in that broader political moment, Russia, to those following the threads of Christian fundamentalism, made a play at wresting control of the global Christian right from the U.S. And Moscow may well have succeeded—and has now even surpassed its American counterparts in terms of regressive social legislation, recently pulling back criminal penalties for domestic violence. As Stroop added, recalling the aftermath of the 2014 conference, “Russia is taking on the mantle of leadership of global social conservatism. … [That conference] gave Russia the chance to say, ‘We’re the leaders here.’ And people have responded to that, and followed along.”

***

After all, it’s not as if it’s difficult to unearth the fundamentalists fawning over Putin’s putative turn toward God. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, who until 2015 was a spokesman for the American Family Association, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Evangelical Franklin Graham has likewise lauded Putin as someone “protecting traditional Christianity,” while Buchanan only continues praising Putin. Even recent frictions—see: Russia’s recent legislation against non-Orthodox proselytizing—have hardly dampened US fundamentalists’ newfound fervor for Moscow. And if Trump, who’s been as lax as any Republican president on social issues as any in decades, decides to deprioritize rolling back same-sex or abortion rights, the U.S. far right will look to Moscow even further support, ensconcing the Kremlin’s position that much more.

We might not know, per Buchanan’s early questions, whose side God is on. But those in Russia are happy to return the support from America’s radical Christian extremists—and clutch the mantle of Christian fundamentalist leadership as long as they can, even after Trump’s election. “They’re using the history of anti-communism as a means of making a point,” Stroop told me. “They’re saying: ‘We survived communism, and so we know how to resist it.’ And they’re playing right into this whole script, which is a Cold War script, that communism and secularism are the same thing.”

It remains to be seen how the trans-Atlantic Christian fundamentalist relationship shifts under Trump, whose pockets, like Putin, are clearly far deeper than his godliness. For the time being, though, there’s a clear head of the global Christian right. As the WCF’s Jacobs said following the 2014 enclave in Moscow, “I think Russia is the hope for the world right now.”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ght-214755
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:41 pm

DrEvil » Sun Jan 29, 2017 7:43 pm wrote:I agree with folks here that western propaganda against Russia often goes off the rails, simply because it isn't necessary.
If they want to demonize Russia all they have to do is report the truth.

See slad's latest post, or the ban on "gay propaganda", or the foreign agent law aimed at muzzling NGOs, or the reporters and opposition people ending up in jail or dead, or the war in Chechnya (and particularly how it came about through massive false-flag bombings), or the death of Alexander Litvinenko, or how Putin set up his own controlled opposition party, or the massive cyber(*cringe*) attacks on smaller states etc.

They may not be worse than the US government, but they sure as hell aren't any better.


I agree with all of that, but I want to add one other issue on which Russia under Putin is particularly offensive that I haven't seen anyone address yet: climate change. The US under Drumpf might be the first nation to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, but Russia is the only big emitter who didn't even bother to ratify it. This piece provides some good analysis as to why:

Russia and the U.S. Could Be Partners in Climate Change Inaction

The only big emitter to not ratify the Paris climate agreement, Russia may find it easier to slough off climate action with the U.S. matching its oil-focused view.

By Neela Banerjee

Feb 7, 2017

ImageRussian President Vladimir Putin, shaking hands with then-Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson during a 2013 ceremony awarding oil company heads and employees, now finds himself aligned philosophically with the U.S. on a lack of enthusiasm for the Paris climate agreement. Credit: Sputnik/Michael Klimentyev/Kremlin/via REUTERS/File Photo



As Donald Trump pushes the United States toward inaction on climate change, he is likely to find an ally in Russia.

Russia is the fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Yet the plan it submitted under the Paris agreement to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is one of the weakest of any government and actually permits Russia to increase carbon pollution over time. The Paris agreement went into effect last November, but Russia is the only major emitter that has not ratified it. Instead, it has laid out a timetable that would delay ratification for almost three years.

"Russia will not artificially accelerate the process of ratification of the Paris climate agreement," Russia's special presidential representative on climate, Alexander Bedritsky, said last September.

A new alignment between Russia and a friendlier United States under Trump could slow climate action even more. Trump denies global warming more nakedly than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who pivoted from years of downplaying climate change to calling it a grave threat in 2015, but has done little to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Russia's sluggishness on climate could bolster the Trump team's plans to abandon climate action, and vice versa.

The Russian Federation has a history of denial and inaction on the issue. The country is a petro-state: It was the world's second-largest exporter of oil in 2015, after Saudi Arabia, and biggest exporter of natural gas. Russia's top politicians and its largest companies have long been reluctant to reduce fossil fuel extraction and use. Recently, some in the government and Russian business have begun taking steps to shift away from fossil fuel dependence. But that progress may slow now that the United States, the world's second-biggest emitter, is shifting its priorities toward increased fossil fuel production, experts on Russian climate policy said.

Under the Paris accord, Russia's plan to cut greenhouse gases calls for reducing emissions by 25 to 30 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. But 1990 was a relatively high mark for Russia's emissions. Starting in 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Russian industry produced a steep drop in emissions.

In 2014, Russia hit its target of a 30 percent reduction from 1990 levels, according to Climate Action Tracker, a coalition of European scientific groups. In fact, Russia's greenhouse gas emissions have been rising by about 1 percent a year since 2000, according to a 2016 paper based on data from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"These targets have basically allowed the economy to develop along business-as-usual lines," the Norwegian authors wrote.

The Paris accord entered into effect after countries responsible for 55 percent of global emissions ratified it. On the same day, Russia, which accounts for about 7.5 percent of global emissions, issued a detailed schedule of study and reports. Ratification would not be completed until after its 2018 presidential election.

If Russia's commitment under the Paris agreement is so weak, why has Moscow been slow to ratify the accord? "It's not a question of logic, but rather one about ideology," said Vladimir Chuprov, head of the energy unit at Greenpeace Russia. The ratification question "is about whether Russia is ready to go green or not, phase out fossil fuels or not."

Russia has only recently begun to accept the scientific consensus that fossil fuel use is driving climate change. Further, it is coming to grips with the fact that pegging its economy to oil and gas exposes the country to great swings in fortune as prices of those commodities rise and fall, experts on Russian climate policy said.

Nonetheless, the political elites are divided about ratifying the Paris accord as swiftly as other nations have. On one side are many senior government officials, ministries, some banks and high tech companies that want to cut emissions, Angelina Davydova wrote in September 2016 article in The Conversation. Lined up against them, however, are many of Russia's largest corporations, mainly in coal, steel, oil and gas.

"Fossil fuels are richer and in a better lobbying position and they are much, much stronger" than the camp that backs climate action, Chuprov said. "The coal companies are the most aggressive but oil also doesn't want to ratify the Paris agreement because it would mean the stoppage of the oil economy and an end to all the subsidies oil gets."

The oil and gas sector also contributes a vast percentage of Russia's greenhouse gases, about 45 percent, according to the UNFCCC's 2014 inventory, wrote Alexey Kokorin of the World Wildlife Fund, Russia in a June 2016 paper in Russian Analytical Digest. Russia's methane emissions account for 2 percent of all global greenhouse gases, the equivalent of emissions from global aviation, Kokorin continued. The oil and gas sector, in turn, produces 75 percent of Russia's methane emissions.

It appears unlikely that Russia will rein in emissions or the expansion of the oil and gas industry, which contributes about half the revenues to the domestic budget. Oil production on land is falling, so Russia is looking to tap the vast petroleum and gas reserves offshore in the Arctic. A friendly administration in Washington could help. In 2011, Russia and ExxonMobil, under chief executive Rex Tillerson, signed a $500 billion deal to develop oil and gas in the Russian Arctic.

But sanctions imposed in 2014 by the Obama administration after Russia's invasion of Ukraine stalled the projects. Tillerson, now secretary of state, and Exxon lobbied against the sanctions. If the Trump administration and the GOP-led Congress lift the sanctions, oil and gas extraction in the Russian Arctic would proceed and unlock a vast amount of greenhouse gases.

So far, Russia has viewed emissions reduction as only an exercise in energy efficiency, not in deploying renewable energy, except for hydroelectric power, Kokorin wrote. But the sanctions have made it difficult to tap capital markets to raise money to improve energy efficiency in electricity transmission and in housing, said Davydova, a Russian environmental journalist and lecturer at St. Petersburg State University.

Russia has commissioned government studies of how ratification of the Paris agreement would affect its economy. It wants to see the agreement produce rules advantageous to Russia before it ratifies, such as calculations of the impact of forests and land use on emissions, experts said. Russia aims to present a draft plan of its 2030 emissions targets in March 2020.

Given how weak the 2020 Russian targets are, the effect of Trump could be minimal. "Russia's climate action can hardly get any less ambitious than it is now, so I can't see how the U.S. intentions can affect it," Maria Sharmina, a lecturer at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Manchester, England said in an email, adding she was more concerned that U.S. disavowal of Paris would lead the rest of the world to pull back from emission reduction plans.

Other Russian climate policy specialists think U.S. rejection of climate action would deal a blow to the emerging pro-climate voices in Russia. "Russia looks to the U.S. and China's plans on climate change," Davydova said in a phone interview. "China might be getting more climate-oriented but if the U.S. pulls out of Paris, it's a huge argument to Russia to go even more slowly."
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
User avatar
stillrobertpaulsen
 
Posts: 2414
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:43 pm
Location: California
Blog: View Blog (37)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 10, 2017 1:30 pm

Italy
Russia suspected over hacking attack on Italian foreign ministry
Exclusive: Italian government official says no classified emails were compromised in attack believed to have lasted more than four months last year
Italy’s prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome
Friday 10 February 2017 07.56 EST Last modified on Friday 10 February 2017 10.46 EST
Russia is suspected by Italian officials of being behind a sustained hacking attack against the Italian foreign ministry last year that compromised email communications and lasted for many months before it was detected, according to people familiar with the matter.

An Italian government official confirmed that the attack took place last spring and lasted for more than four months but did not infiltrate an encrypted system used for classified communications.

Paolo Gentiloni, the Italian prime minister who was serving as foreign minister at the time, was not affected by the hack, according to the official, who said Gentiloni avoided using email while he was foreign minister.


Nato must defend western democracy against Russian hacking, say Fallon

The foreign ministry’s “field offices”, including embassies and staff members who report back to Rome about meetings with foreign officials, were affected by the malware attack. But the government official said sensitive information had not been compromised because it would also have been encrypted.

The official did not confirm that Moscow was behind the attack. But two other people with knowledge of the attack said the Russian state was believed to have been behind it. The hacking is now the subject of an inquiry by the chief prosecutor in Rome.

“There were no attacks on the encrypted level. So the information – delicate, sensitive information – that is usually shared in this net, which is restricted by code, has never been attacked or part of this attack,” the government official said.

The person said that after the attack was discovered, the foreign ministry modified its online “architecture” and introduced new instruments to enhance internal security. The official declined to comment on how the intrusion was detected.

The revelation comes amid heightened concerns that Russia has targeted Nato members, including the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Bulgaria, as part of a cyber campaign that seeks to weaken the governments of those countries and disrupt critical infrastructure.

In the US, intelligence agencies have blamed Russian government-sponsored hacking groups for breaching the Democratic National Committee and officials in Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential elections, in part to try to help Donald Trump win the White House.


White House says Vladimir Putin had direct role in hacking US election

People who discussed the matter with the Guardian on condition of anonymity said they believed the attack against the foreign ministry was an attempt to gain insight into decision-making within the Italian government.

If Russia did attack Italy, it was targeting a country generally considered less hostile to it than other EU countries such as Germany or the UK. While Italy has supported sanctions against Russia that were imposed following the annexation of Crimea, the government under former prime minister Matteo Renzi strongly opposed a proposal to levy new sanctions against Moscow for its role in the Syrian conflict.

News of the hacking could stoke concerns that Russia may seek to influence the next Italian election, which could be called as early as June. In an interview with the Guardian late last year, a foreign diplomat in Rome questioned whether the current centre-left government, which will face a tough re-election challenge, had prepared itself for possible interference by Russia.

The government’s main opposition, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, has adopted pro-Russian positions on topics ranging from Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Syria, to his invasion of Ukraine, to a call for Italy to lift sanctions against Russia and reassess its commitment to Nato.

A representative of the Russian government was quoted by Ansa, the Italian news agency, as saying the allegations were unproven.”There are no facts that prove this statement,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said in a WhatsApp message in response to a question about the veracity of the hacking allegation.

Raffaele Marchetti, a political scientist and cybersecurity expert at LUISS University in Rome, said Italy had stepped up its attention to security recently and that he had been encouraged by the appointment of Marco Minniti as interior minister because of Minniti’s expertise on the cyber issue.


Russian hacking group's 'last member at liberty' comes out of the shadows

“But of course much more needs to be done and implemented,” Marchetti said.

Italy’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks was exposed earlier this year following the arrest of a brother-sister hacking duo who were accused of trying to illegally gain access to the email accounts of Renzi when he was prime minister, as well as several other prominent Italian politicians and business executives.

Giulio Occhionero and his sister Francesca Maria, who was born in the US and is an American citizen, maintained servers in the US that were seized by the FBI as part of the investigation.

The servers are due to be sent to Italy and officials have said the extent of the pair’s alleged crimes will only be known once the servers are examined. While they are not believed to have gained access to Renzi’s email account, there is deep suspicion within the security community in Italy that the two were likely working with or on behalf of other foreign or domestic interests.

The two are still being held in jail. Their lawyers have denied the siblings committed any wrongdoing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... n-ministry


Czech cyber-attack: Russia suspected of hacking diplomats’ emails
Scale and sophistication of hack points to foreign state, says Czech foreign minister, comparing it to attack on US Democratic party

Robert Tait in Prague
Tuesday 31 January 2017 14.12 EST Last modified on Friday 10 February 2017 11.48 EST
The Czech Republic has suffered a damaging security breach after hackers infiltrated the emails of dozens of its most senior diplomats in a massive cyber-attack thought to have been carried out by Russia.

Lubomír Zaorálek, the country’s foreign minister, admitted that his own email account had been breached in a “sophisticated” operation he compared to the onslaught against the Democratic party in the recent US presidential election.

The hack was detected by cyber-experts at the Czech foreign ministry this month, prompting emergency security measures that included password changes.


Chips with everything - The Guardian The Ratio Club and the rise of British cybernetics – tech podcast
Alex Hearn takes a look back at the ‘no professors allowed’ informal dining club which laid the foundations for the British cybernetics movement artificial intelligence
Listen
Some of the correspondence is believed to have concerned the Czech Republic’s relations with its Nato and European Union allies, although Zaorálek contradicted local media reports that classified information had been breached.

Zaorálek did not specify which foreign country he believed was involved but another foreign ministry official – speaking anonymously – confirmed that fingers were being pointed at Russia, which was also blamed by US intelligence officials for the cyber-attack against the Democratic party.

“When I discussed this with the best experts that we have here, they told me that the character of the attack was such that the attack was very sophisticated, that it must have been, according to them, conducted by some foreign state, from the outside,” Zaorálek told a news conference, called after a news site revealed the hack.

“They also told me that the way the attack was done very much resembles the character of attacks against the system of the Democratic party in the United States.”

Neovlivni.cz, a Czech investigative news site, said “thousands of files were downloaded” from the inboxes of Zaorálek and his under-secretaries in what it called the Czech Republic’s “biggest security scandal of recent years”.

Vlado Bizik, a cybersecurity expert with the Prague-based European Values thinktank, said the hack resembled another carried out against the Polish foreign ministry recently, also believed to be Russia’s handiwork.

“The Polish hack was perpetrated by a hard-to-detect Trojan horse,” he said. “Such sophisticated programmes are usually sponsored by state actors and Russia is the one which has the most to gain. I’m quite sure a lot of damage has already been done. They say no classified information was compromised because that was only on the internal system but we don’t know what was being shared outside that system.”


Alleged hacker held in Prague at center of 'intense' US-Russia tug of war
Read more
Bohuslav Sobotka, the Czech prime minister, called the hack “serious” and said it must be “thoroughly investigated”. A special taskforce has been formed to prevent a recurrence.

The attack was reminiscent of one carried out against Sobotka in 2015, when his account was hacked and email correspondence with officials later appeared on an obscure white supremacist website.

The latest episode occurred amid a protracted wrangle over an alleged Russian hacker, Yevgeniy Nikulin, currently being held in the Czech Republic while officials debate an extradition request from the US, which accuses him of breaking into three social media sites: Formspring, LinkedIn and Dropbox.

Russia is also seeking Nikulin’s extradition in a case that is said to have turned into a diplomatic tug-of-war.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ats-emails


Russia Hacked Norway Like US? Cyberattack Similar To Trump Election In 2016
BY GREG PRICE @GP_IBTIMES ON 02/03/17 AT 10:21 AM

Russia allegedly hacked Norway’s Labour Party parliamentary group in the fall of last year. The cyberattack was being likened to the superpower’s alleged hacking of the United States’ presidential campaign and election last year, The Norway Local and television station TV2.

The attack was confirmed by the party’s leader, Jonas Gahr Store, after it was informed by the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST). Store also said the party’s electronic communications were previously compromised, according to the reports.

“I can confirm that we are informed by PST that Labour's parliamentary group was subjected to an attempted digital attack by a group that PST ties to foreign intelligence,” Store’s spokesperson Camilla Ryste said in a statement to outlet Nettavisen.

The attack was believed to be in line with the similar hacking of the Democratic National Committee last year, which U.S. intelligence agencies have said was at the direct behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was believed the Russians wanted new President Donald Trump to win rather that Democrat Hillary Clinton. Hackers also allegedly intended to make Clinton look bad with an influence campaign that included placement of “fake news” articles.

Trump, who has faced accusations of having undisclosed relations with Russia and Putin that have never been proven, initially stated he didn’t believe Russia had tampered with the election. Eventually, he said Russia did play a role but that he still would have defeated Clinton.

A TV2 foreign affairs correspondent tweeted nine total Norwegian institutions and ministries were targeted by APT29, or Cozy Bear, the Russian hacker group believed to be affiliated with the Russian government. Norway’s defense servers were also targeted, but the full extent of the damage, if any, is unknown.
http://www.ibtimes.com/russia-hacked-no ... 16-2485956
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby conniption » Sun Feb 12, 2017 12:35 am

russia-insider
(embedded links)

US Soldiers Pose For Regrettable Photograph — This Time on Russia’s Border


RI Staff Subscribe to RI Staff

American soldiers love to flaunt their stuff. Whether they're posing next to a pyramid made of naked detainees, or just hanging out with their favorite Waffen SS flag, everyone knows that wherever U.S. soldiers go, embarrassing photographs are sure to follow.

And now that U.S. soldiers are congregating on Russia's borders, it was just a matter of time before they took a picture of themselves doing something regrettable. Well, here they are, enjoying Estonia's border with Russia, just like the brainwashed meatheads that came before them:

Image
They never learn

Just like old times!

The Russian fortress they're standing behind is Ivangorod. The medieval castle was used by the Nazis during World War II as a POW camp. It's still Russian territory. Even after all these years and bloody wars.

What can one say about this photograph?

On the one hand, these American soldiers are probably too stupid to know why taking this photograph was such a bad idea. There's no "on the other hand".

They never learn, do they?
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Why Do People Apologize For Russia?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 15, 2017 12:23 pm

Russian Officials See Flynn’s Resignation as a Major Blow to Diplomacy
MPs See Flynn as Victim of American Russophobia
by Jason Ditz, February 14, 2017

The resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, surrounding questions about his pre-inauguration conversation with the Russian Ambassador, has brought a new round of media attempt to US-Russia relations. In Russia, however, it’s mostly just brought concerns.

A number of high-ranking Russian MPs reacted with anger at the news that Flynn was effectively forced out of his position, seeing the negative attention he got as a result of him being a supporter of US-Russia diplomacy, and saw the circumstances surrounding the case as underscoring how dangerous it is for US officials to negotiate, with Russia’s Senate Foreign Affairs Chairman Konstantin Kosachev sayying that Flynn’s “readiness for dialogue is perceived by the hawks in Washington as a thought-crime.”

Kosachev saw the ouster of a National Security Adviser for something he described as a “usual diplomatic practice” as a source of major concern, and said the fact that Trump hadn’t gone to bat for him suggested “Russophobia has permeated the new administration from top to bottom.”

A number of other Russian officials expressed doubt that President Trump would ever deliver on his previous talk of improved relations with Russia, seeing Flynn’s removal as ushering in a shift toward more establishment figures in Trump’s inner circle, and a continuation of the anti-Russia policy of the Obama years.

Trump has yet to meet with Putin, and no such meeting is expected until at least this summer, though there is a possibility Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the next few days. Whether this provides any new insight on a possible rapprochement remains to be seen.
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/02/14/russ ... diplomacy/


Russian Spy Ship Patrolling Off Coast of Delaware
Ship Was Recently in Cuba, Making Move Up US Coast
by Jason Ditz, February 14, 2017

The Russian intelligence ship SSV-175 Viktor Leonov, a small intelligence collection ship, is reportedly some 70 miles off the coast of Delaware this evening, slowly moving north along the American coast, but well out in international waters in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Viktor Leonov recently docked in Havana, Cuba, the first visit in two years, and CBS News is claiming the ship is expected to head north to New London, CT before turning south and heading back toward Cuba, though it’s unclear where they got this itinerary.

It would not be that unusual for a Russian ship, in making a rare visit to Cuba, to make a little tour of the American coast just to underscore its presence. The intelligence ship has some limited signal intelligence gathering capabilities, but it is unclear the ship is actually doing anything beyond being there.

US Navy officials appear largely unconcerned, noting that Russia has every right to have a ship in international waters but that “we are keeping our eyes on it.” During the Cold War, Russian intelligence ships tended to park off the coast near US naval bases, though in this case that does not appear to be the case, and the ship is just slowly navigating the area.
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/02/14/russ ... -delaware/


Russian aircraft buzzed US Navy ship 3 times in a day
By LUIS MARTINEZ Feb 14, 2017, 5:27 PM ET

Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile inside Russia, a move a U.S. official labels an apparent violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed in 1987.

The move is one of several incidents involving the Russian military and the United States that came to light on Tuesday. The Pentagon says Russian aircraft flew low and fast above an American destroyer in the Black Sea last week in an "unsafe and unprofessional" manner and a Russian intelligence vessel has been detected heading north along the eastern coast of the United States.

Known by American officials as the SSC-8, the cruise missile has been in development for years and was most recently tested in 2014.

The Obama administration had hoped that Russia would not place the missile in operational status, a move that would violate the INF treaty that bans American and Russian intermediate-range missiles based on land.

But according to a U.S. official, Russia now has two battalions of the cruise missile, one located at a test location at Kapustin Yar, a Russian rocket launch and development site near Volgograd. The other was moved in December to another military location inside Russia.

"The Russian Federation remains in violation of its INF Treaty obligations," said Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman in a statement.

"As detailed most recently in the 2016 Compliance Report, the Russian Federation remains in violation of its INF Treaty obligations not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile with a range capability of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles," said Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman in a statement.

"We have made very clear our concerns about Russia’s violation, the risks it poses to European and Asian security, and our strong interest in Russia returning to compliance with the Treaty," said Toner. "The Administration is undertaking an extensive review of Russia’s ongoing INF Treaty violation in order to assess the potential security implications for the United States and its allies and partners.”

The missile’s deployment and operational status was first reported by The New York Times.

Meanwhile, it appears Russia has resumed unusually close interactions with American military vessels in international waters that the Pentagon has previously labeled "unsafe and unprofessional."

On Feb. 10, the Navy destroyer USS Porter noted three “unsafe and unprofessional” encounters with Russian military aircraft while in the Black Sea. In each of the incidents Russian aircraft approached the destroyer at an unspecified "low altitude" and some were at "high speed".

The Russian aircraft did not have their transponders on and did not respond when the destroyer's crew hailed the planes on radio.

“Such incidents are concerning because they can result in accident or miscalculation,” said Lt. Colonel Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokesman.

Russia's Defense Ministry denied any incidents occurred on Feb. 10 between Russian aircraft and the USS Porter. "All flights of our aircraft are done and have been done in neutral waters of the Black Sea in accordance with the international rights and security demands" said Igor Konashenkov, a Defense ministry spokesman.

Last April Russian fighters repeatedly buzzed an American destroyer in the Baltic Sea, with one pass coming as close as 30 feet to the USS Donald Cook. That incident was one of several close encounters between the U.S. and Russian militaries in 2016, but officials have said recently that such encounters had become infrequent.

Russian Fighters Buzz US Navy Destroyer at Close Range in Baltic Sea, US Says
Russian Fighter Jet Came Within 15 Feet of US Air Force Plane, US Officials Say
At the time of the incident Baldanza said the destroyer was "conducting routine maritime operations in international waters in the Black Sea following the conclusion of Exercise Sea Shield."

According to Baldanza the first encounter involved a Russian Ilyushin 38, a maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft. The plane "flew in an unsafe and unprofessional manner due to the unusually low altitude" above the USS Porter.

The second incident involved two SU-24 fighters and the third a different Su-24. A U.S. official said that on one pass one of the fighters flew 300 feet above the USS Porter.

Meanwhile American officials are not expressing concern about the presence of a Russian intelligence gathering ship headed northward along the East Coast. The White House deferred comment to the Defense Department on this issue.

According to a U.S. official, the Russian intelligence vessel Viktor Leonov was located 70 miles off the coast of Delaware yesterday in international waters heading in a northerly direction. American territorial waters extend 12 miles out to sea.

The official said the speculation is that the Russian ship is headed near the U.S. Navy's submarine base at New London, Connecticut.

Russian military monitoring of U.S. sub bases used to happen frequently during the Cold War, but became infrequent after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 2015, another Russian spy ship made its way south along the East Coast past the sub base at Kings Bay, Georgia, but was apparently mapping underwater communications cables off the Florida coast.

If the Leonov follows previous deployment patterns it will eventually head to south to Cuba.

The official says there is not much concern about the Leonov's movements or its intelligence gathering capabilities.

The Russian ship was in the mid-Atlantic a month ago and made a port of call in Kingston, Jamaica in early February.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/rus ... d=45490605
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 37 guests