Russian roulade

President Putin says he will step down from office in 2008 (MAXIM MARMUR / AFP / GETTY IMAGES)

I'd like to see our worst enemy step down in 2006, instead.

Putin says he will step down in 2008
Macon Daily.com | Sun Sep 10, 2006 | Guy Faulconbridge via al-Reuters
Posted on 09/10/2006 9:50:47 AM EDT by NautiNurse
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698807/posts

Putin stands firm on energy control
by Michael Binyon
The Times
September 11, 2006
Mr Putin insisted that Russia would act responsibly in global energy markets but he rejected European Union demands that Russia sign the new EU energy charter, which calls for open access by independent producers to the Russian pipeline network... [T]he Russian leader insisted that he would not splurge the vast earnings from energy exports... that the so-called Stabilisation Fund would be used only for long-term projects, paying off debts, investing in infrastructure and encouraging high technology... The only special case he allowed was agriculture, which he said still employed 40 million people. "This is their life," he said. "It is a special sphere." But petro-dollars would not be used to subsidise agricultural exports or introduce a system like that of Western Europe... Mr Putin gave a tough defence of Russian policy on Iran, China, Japan and Europe. He repeatedly criticised American policy towards Russia... Mr Putin recently announced a range of measures to bolster the faltering birthrate and improve life expectancy for men. Mothers will receive new benefits totalling almost $10,000 (£5,300). Money would be available for adoption, maternity leave would increase and male mortality would be reduced by combating alcoholism and the bad accident rate. The President acknowledged that labour shortages could be alleviated by greater immigration... There had, however, been no success in deciding the future of four former Japanese islands occupied by Russia after the Second World War... On Iran, both Russia and China are against sanctions, but Mr Putin reiterated his opposition to Tehran's drive to enrich uranium. He said that the line between using this for peaceful or military purposes was fuzzy. He called on Tehran to abandon the programme and accept Russia's suggestion of special centres outside Iran where there would be free access to the enrichment technology and spent fuel could be handed in.

Hmm. Did he mention the kalishnikov factories and advanced fighters he's sold to Venezuela?

Ping!

Russian elections these days are as fixed as Iranian elections.

Putin will step down, but one of his Kremlin buddies will be annointed next. Any possible challengers from different parties will be thugged before the election into losing badly.

You mean Teddy Kennedy or Hillary Clinton?

Your way of quoting this article was very skilful. Congratulations!

This is your quote:

"Mr Putin insisted that Russia would act responsibly in global energy markets but he rejected European Union demands that Russia sign the new EU energy charter, which calls for open access by independent producers to the Russian pipeline network... [T]he Russian leader insisted that he would not splurge the vast earnings from energy exports... that the so-called Stabilisation Fund would be used only for long-term projects, paying off debts, investing in infrastructure and encouraging high technology...

And here in red are the passages someone else could have kept. GOOD JOB man!

[...] any contracts must be fair and take into account Moscow’s needs and interests.

Mr Putin insisted that Russia would act responsibly in global energy markets but he rejected European Union demands that Russia sign the new EU energy charter, which calls for open access by independent producers to the Russian pipeline network. He said that this would not benefit consumers or bring the price of gas down, would hand over any extra profits to intermediaries and would not offer Russia anything in return. [...] [T]he Russian leader insisted that he would not splurge the vast earnings from energy exports... that the so-called Stabilisation Fund would be used only for long-term projects, paying off debts, investing in infrastructure and encouraging high technology...

Mr. Putin's point is that economic exchange and coooperation should benefit both sides while present European demands would benefit only West.

Russian elections these days are as fixed as Iranian elections.

They are as "fixed" as elections of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the FOUR terms in White House.

The US Constitution was amended after to prevent American people from expressing so long lasting support for the leader.

Were you an election observer during the last Russian election? If the truth be known, I suspect you have never been to Russia. The 71% Putin received in the last election was less than his popularity showed in several opinion polls. Also, read all of Russian Election Watch from Harvard University. Please read the complete paper without cherry picking comments.

"Yet if the rule of law had even begun to take hold in Russia, the country would now be witnessing a massive, sustained onslaught on corruption at every level of business and government, in the form of police sweeps, trials, jail terms, public education initiatives — and purges of the judiciary and police themselves."
What, again big purge? New GULAG must be built, old jails are overcrowded, for democracy caused big increase of criminality. Surely provocation. Remembering Chodorkovsky case, reaction of West is easily predictable.

Let's see what Major Ron Hamilton, an American military intelligence officer and Soviet expert has to say on these subjects.

From: Ronald Hamilton
Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005
Subject: Rebuttal to Mr. Sharansky's recent Bowing to Russia article/JRL 9280
Rebuttal to Natan Sharansky's Washington Post "Bowing To Russia"
By Major Ron Hamilton (Ret)
US Army Intelligence
The writer retired as a Major and Russian linguist from the U.S Army's Military Intelligence Corps on October 31st 2005 to pursue business and academic goals. He has served worldwide in numerous command and staff positions at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. His interests are the applied effects of foreign policy theory and its implementation on the ground - specifically the transitioning Caucasus nations and the roles that the USA and Russia play in their democratic development.

Without taking anything away from the fact that Mr. Sharansky is an honorable man who spent nine years in prison for his beliefs, it is important to dig a little deeper into his basic thesis that the Khodorkovsky case is an example of unacceptable democratic regression (backsliding) by Russia and the Putin government.

What strikes me is what Mr. Sharansky doesn't say in his article. First and foremost is that he completely ignores the fact of Mr. Khodorkovsky's guilt or innocence. The likelihood that he is guilty, and that a jury of his Russian citizen peers has convicted him in a court of law makes the probability of his guilt very high. In fact, he (along with many other oligarchs to whom Mr. Sharansky alludes) is guilty as sin of numerous crimes against the state and the people of Russia. Second is that just because you haven't caught and tried all of them at once doesn't make trying one at a time any less important. So, selective prosecution isn't negative as Mr. Sharansky indicates and is simply a red herring he throws out to attempt to show that others did it and weren't tried so trying only one for crimes is somehow unfair and sinister. Don't fall for this trick. You can't point to the unpunished bad behavior of others as a reason to justify the bad behavior of one. Selective prosecution occurs in every advanced democratic nation on the planet and is based on numerous conditional parameters. Mr. Sharansky knows this. Why is it so much more dangerous to democracy in Russia than in his own country or in mine for that matter? It happens all of the time everywhere.

The next point Mr. Sharansky avoids is the Russian oligarchs-in-exile population. The reason they are in self-imposed exile is to avoid being tried for their crimes in Russia. If they were to return home they too would be arrested, tried, and found innocent or guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers and Mr. Sharansky's Poor Khodorkovsky probably wouldn't be alone at the labor camp. The reason they are on the run and will not face the charges is because they are very likely guilty as sin too. Mr. Sharansky along with most other Eurasia regional experts knows full well that the oligarchs and organized crime leaders were out of control and breaking just about every rule and law on the books in their unfettered quests to become Russia's version of America's Robber Barons in a lightning fast ten year period. These men went from rags to Billionaires in months and they were killing, maiming and stomping on anyone that got in their way and Mr. Sharansky knows this too.

The ill-gotten gain and influence these extra-legal, above-the-law oligarchs wielded prior to President Putin was far more dangerous and inimical to the rule of law and democratic advancement than any of the so-called democratic back sliding events Mr. Sharansky attempts to place on the current government. Mr. Sharansky knows that the current period in Russian democratic advancement is far more stable, constitutional, rule-of-law oriented, and more fair than the period of the Oligarchy which preceded Putin. Nobody could get anything done during the so-called period of democracy that Mr. Sharansky seems to think existed prior to President Putin without paying obeisance (and large sums of cash) to the oligarchs, crime bosses, and corrupt government officials who were on the mafia's dole.

Objective facts such as assassination of legitimate businessmen, the lack of prosecuting officials accused of bribery and corruption, the amount and frequency of bribes required to do business in Russia, etcetera are all improved dramatically since Vladimir Putin was elected. The reason Western interests and Western investors have dramatically increased capital investments in Russia has nothing to do with their lack of morals as Mr. Sharansky and others seem to be implying, but on the contrary they see advancement in openness (democracy), decreases in corruption, and transparency in government operations on the rise. Most objective people in the world call this progress.not regression.

Regression (Backsliding) implies that one was more advanced and has dropped back. This is simply patently false. Russia was not more democratic and rule-of-law oriented prior to President Putin. In fact, a very small group of extremely wealthy and totally selfish men were allied with numerous criminal elements and were working hard to subvert the legitimate will of the people in order to maintain their own powerful perks, privileges, and positions as the unelected ruling elite of the Russian people. They didn't try to use the rule of law to legitimately change things like President Putin has done. They didn't have to because they were using money and the threat of violence to subvert the rule of law and influence things to their own advantage and not to the Russian people's advantage.

Nearly every person I know who follows Eurasian and Russian development in particular knew prior to Putin and knows now that the two main obstacles to Russian democratic advancement were the Oligarchs and the powerful mafia controlled regional governments who had fashioned a loose-confederated government within the Russian Federation. The Oligarchs and the most powerful regional clans controlled Russia and ran it into the ground for personal gain. The Kremlin (Federal Government) was marginalized, infiltrated, and influenced by numerous unelected mega-wealthy persons. President Putin, like America's Teddy Roosevelt, had to exert government control and reign in the Robber Barons and the regional clan controlled governments. Just because he chose to do it in an organized and controlled manner over a period of time rather than coming in with both guns blazing doesn't make it wrong. In fact, the cool, calm, and collected manner that he has set about dismantling the power of the oligarchy and mafia is completely in character for President Putin and any psychologist or observant person would tell you that this is how he thinks, works, and executes his plans. Most of these Russia focused people will also tell you that they thought the problem was so bad back then that they would have bet against President Putin being able to overcome the situation and come out on top.

Mr. Sharansky also fails to give credit where credit is due. To put it into perspective President Putin is attempting to lead a country that covers eleven time zones, has a nuclear arsenal as large as America's, a population of 170 million, a Wahabbi supported radical Islamic guerilla war in Chechnya that is spreading into Dagestan and Ingushetia (every bit as intense as America's struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq) except his is inside of his sovereign borders, a depression that makes the US Great Depression look like a time of plenty, an average life-span for a Russian citizen that looks like something from the Dark Ages, and to top it off he is managing all of this on a budget a little larger than New York City's. Talk about a bridge to far.

There are only two types of people on the planet who would take his job - an unintelligent megalomaniac (Sadam Hussein comes to mind) or a true blue patriot in love with his country. And, Putin is the latter and that is why President Bush said I looked him in the eyes and got a sense of his soul. This is someone I can work with. Both Bush and Putin are plainspoken (often tongue-tied) centrist oriented patriots trying to lead their countries to a better place. A man (a non-politician) like Putin is preferable to a suave, smooth, sophisticated, silver-tongued devil any day.

It is part of the human condition to notice the 5% left undone and ignore the 95% already accomplished. If he had only just held everything together, it would still be an incredible accomplishment, but he has gone into the super human category and actually started pulling out of the nosedive that looked like a sure bet to crash. If President Putin were to simply sit back now and coast, his legacy would still be viewed with great admiration by historians of the next century. One doesn't have to know history very well to be able to find leaders who were faced with many of the same circumstances. Putin like Lincoln has a civil war, like T. Roosevelt he is attempting to exert government control over extremely powerful Robber Barons, and like FDR he is dealing with a very severe depression.

He has three gargantuan problems to deal with all at once and three of the greatest leaders in American history only had to deal with one at a time. Our collective hats should be off to President Putin.

Mr. Sharansky as always has written brilliantly, but he is cherry picking select little morsels of information to make his case that Russia is backsliding on the democracy front and leaving out the underlying reasons for recent events, which in my humble opinion is intellectually dishonest.

Another very influential thinker from the Holy Land once said, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considereth not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Mr. Sharansky's considerable worldwide influence should be used first in his own adopted land to bring democracy to the Palestinians then maybe he could move back to Russia and run for office and help them advance democratically according to his own particular theoretical formula. I suspect that he would find out very quickly that his theoretical evangelical democracy philosophizing and his casting of stones from afar would run smack head on into the reality of the sheer difficulty of advancing democracy realistically on the ground with real humans and real conditions.

Ping

There is more from Major Ron Hamiltion.

From: Ronald Hamilton
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 05:29:04 -0500
Subject: re JRL 9289 Nathan Arnold
Recently, 1LT Nate Arnold wrote that the prosecution of Khodorkovsky in Russia is not about crime, but politics. This could also be said about the Tom Delay case in Texas, which most likely is politically motivated in my opinion, but it doesn’t mean America is less democratic like many try to say about Russia.

He further makes the Sharansky argument that because some are breaking the law and haven’t yet been caught or prosecuted that it is somehow sinister. Again, unpunished illegal behavior can’t be used to excuse the illegal behavior of those caught and prosecuted. There are examples of injustices and crimes that go unpunished in all countries not just Russia. Why is the bar so much higher for Russian courts?

The trial was indeed about right and wrong and also about maintaining control of the political process. Prior to Putin, crime syndicates and Oligarchs controlled the process. Any nation would prefer that control remain with the elected government.

In Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France among others, many consider the US system of justice barbaric. I think that France will not even extradite fugitives to the USA in capital case because of the death penalty. This doesn’t mean the system is a joke just because others don’t like it or because theirs is different. Taking a US centric point of view and finding the Russians lacking in their ability to mete out justice is similar to what the French do to the US.

All people, not just the Russians, trade some freedom for economic stability and security. Things were so bad in Russia and so absolutely difficult to endure that some discipline and a more controlled advance had to be instituted. It was just indescribably hard to survive and endure the mental anguish and physical hardship that the Washington Consensus-Laissez Faire approach put the Russians through. Americans have traded some freedoms in the form of the Patriot Act in response to a threat and to head off insecurity and instability in our own country. It is what people do during tough times. We imprisoned the Japanese-Americans during WWII to ensure security. Security and stability are the primary responsibility and role of government. That is why we have various levels of freedom to respond to certain conditions. For example, the US President could declare martial law during a grave national threat and some of our constitutional freedoms would be curtailed during such a period. Just because we are using common sense and have adopted the Patriot Act, which curtails some of our freedoms, doesn’t mean we are bad or insensible or backsliding or regressing nor does it mean the Russian people are responding inappropriately by selecting a leader and supporting his initiatives to help ensure stability and security.

The idea that the rising Russian economy hasn’t trickled down to all Russians is unfair. We’re only talking about the period from 2000-2005 - 4 ½ years here. Putin has been dealing with an economic crash that occurred in 1998 that was more severe than the US Great Depression. Our leaders dealt with our crash from 1929 to 1940 and only successfully pulled us out of it with the war economy. It takes time to move an entire nation of 170 million people up economically. The point is that it is being done and fairly successfully to boot. Give it a little more time before using it as a point that the people aren’t enjoying a rising Russian economy. Many average Russian citizens have gone from unemployed or earning wages of 100-200 per month to 400-600 per month in various regions and industries in Russia. Also look at the reasons for the crash. A big part can be laid at the feet of the Washington Consensus plan and the selfish oligarchy. Putin is just cleaning up the mess.

The idea that chaos is freedom is a stretch and the statement that Putin has put a stop to freedom of the press, speech, and elections is false. This is a question of perspective. The press was controlled by the oligarchy before. If that is what is considered a free press then Nate and I are just different. As for the election of governors, it was in response to regional governors not being responsive to the central government. Many of the governors were from the most powerful family and crime clans and not the free and fair choice of the electorate. It was a situation very much similar to how Hughie Long ran Louisiana. The USA fought a four-year civil war to avoid the country becoming a loose confederation of states and to preserve a Federal Republic. During reconstruction there was a congressional bias against allowing the confederate states to have free and fair elections of their own governors, and military officers were appointed to oversee the elected officials. The Russians are trying to ensure that they have a federal republic with a strong central government just like the USA and just like Hamilton argued for in the Federalist Papers. If you were to place Russia on the US historical timeline, rather than judging her from our current modern day perspective, she is roughly where the USA was circa 1900 during the T. Roosevelt presidency. Russia has advanced from zero democracy in 1991 to roughly where we were in 1900. It took us 124 years to advance as much as Russia has in 14 years. Many countries appoint regional governors. Tiny Georgia has been appointing them since independence and we don’t consider her unfair or trading freedom for political control. It is just a phase all of these countries are in and is just a response to the culture. It doesn’t mean they aren’t free.

The argument that government is first and foremost about order, stability, security and economic growth is true and has always been true. The entire purpose for people uniting is to increase the chance of survival. Political repression in Russia is a relative term. Repressed compared to what? The USA and the Native American population or our two party system, China, Israel and the Palestinians, Switzerland, France?

The first reason for government is security and stability and this is best provided through freedom and democracy. Russia has both and just because it doesn’t look like American democracy and justice overnight doesn’t mean it isn’t going to get there. Again, comparing Russian democracy and her current place on the developmental timeline to the USA is comparing apples to oranges. Most every Westerner who thinks Russia isn’t advancing is using the Khodorkovsky trial and Putin appointing regional governors similar to what other developing democratic countries like Georgia are doing. Actually, Putin nominates a candidate and the regional locally elected assemblies vote yes or no. Saakashvili in Georgia just appoints governors by decree. The USA doesn’t see this as bad or undemocratic and continues to support Georgia as a developing democracy. After Israel, it receives the most US aid.

What it really comes down to is that the Russians have selected a slower development path than the West is comfortable with. The vast majority of western and anti-Russia pundits and philosophers are using the Khodorkovsky trial and the 2004 (legally conducted) amendment to Russian law that allows Putin to nominate regional governors as evidence of regression and backsliding on the democracy front. Those who are ill informed are simply piling on and repeating what they have heard. This is classic information warfare operations. Follow the money and trace to the source of these two generally accepted beliefs and propaganda tidbits and the truth will come out. They began about two years ago and one year respectively. Do a search on the initial articles and look at who wrote them and do a link analysis of reporters and owners and oligarchs-in-exile since these articles' genesis.

Best Regards,

Ronald G. Hamilton Major (Ret)
U.S. Army Military Intelligence.

Putin appointing regional governors similar to what other developing democratic countries like Georgia are doing.

Not only "developing democratic countries" but also several countries in Western Europe.

I'm not concerned with Putin's public justifications, and quoted what he did and said.

I'm not concerned with Putin's public justifications, and quoted what he did and said.

You did, but you did it selectively in a MISLEADING way.

Heh...

Well put.

It was in no way misleading. It just emphasized the facts. I leave it to you to emphasize Putin's propaganda 24-7.

And neither one of you have been to Russia and seen the freedoms they enjoy.