Posted on 11/25/2004 1:33:24 PM PST by neverdem
@jimbo123
Not to defend Putin, but you could get pictures of any world leader standing by murdering thugs at the UN.
So you support Putin giving Iran a "nuclear power plant"? And you supported Clinton giving North Korea a "nuclear power plant"? Whose side are you on?
What world leaders are making pilgrimages to the mullahs in Iran besides Putin? I'd like to know.
See post #1 and #25 on the following thread. Adds a whole new dimension to what's going on in the Ukraine.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1288428/posts
Sorry, I thought they were all UN pics.
There's really no good guy, here. The soros backed internationalist loser would be used as a cudgel against our interests on anything the euroweeniew wanted him to, and the putin backed guy would help back a strong nationalist russia. Pick your poison.
It appears that he is a tad sharper than his predecessors, knowing well-enough that a ruler is obliged to court his consituency. Impatience will do him in if there's an evil bone there.
A v strane s kazhdym dnem vse slozhnee i slozhnee. Narod ne ustupaet vlasti i vse bolee aktivno vystupaet za svoi prava. Yushchenko segodnya ob"yavil o sozdanii narodnoy gvardii, chtoby zashchishchat'sya, a takzhe ob"yavlena vseobshchaya politicheskaya zabastovka. Vse predpriyatiya ne rabotayut, instituty ne uchat, shkoly ne poseshchayutsya. Mnogie goroda ob"yavili o tom, chto oni ne podchinyayutsya Yanukovichu, v nekotorykh gorodakh siloviki pereshi na storonu bastuyushchikh, ehto khorosho, ne budut strelyat' (ne dovedi gospod') v svoy narod. No samoe smeshnoe to, chto Yanukovich planiryet provesti inaguratsiyu. No Verkhovniy sud priostanovil lyubye deystviya po publikatsii o ego naznachenii, t.k. Yushchenko popal v Verkhovniy sud isk na fal'sufukatsiyu so storony Yanukovicha vyborov. Budem nadeyat'sya, chto Verkhovniy sud primet reshenie, kotoroe otmenit rezul'taty vyborov tam, gde oni byli sfal'sifitsirovany komandoy Yanukovicha. No na ehto nadezhdy malo, t.k. sud pod davleniem vlasti. No, vdrug. Zhivem na vulkane. No raduet to, chto my ne stali bydlom i smogli raspryamit' plechi za chto nas stal uvazhat' mir."But in (our) country every day is more and more complicated. The people won't back off from the government and are ever more actively demanding their rights. Yushchenko declared today that he is forming a people's guard, in order to defend themselves, and also a nationwide political strike was declared. All the businesses are closed, the institutes are not giving classes, no one is in school. Many cities declared that they will not work under Yanukovich, and in several cities the police and armed forces have gone over to the side of the strikers, it's good that they won't shoot (God grant that it doesn't come to this) on their own people. The most amusing is that Yanukovich is planning to have an inauguration, but the Supreme Court has ceased all activities related to publishing him being named (as president), and Yushchenko has a suit against Yanukovich in the Supreme Court by for falsifying the election. Let's hope that the Supreme Court decides to change the results of the election in those places where there was falsifying by Yanukovich's team. But there is little hope, since the court is under pressure from the government. But, it could happen. We live on the edge of a volcano, but I'm happy that we didn't act like cattle and were able to straighten our shoulders, and for this the world has begun to honor us."
Something to consider before taking at face value all the change and upheaval in Russia, the Ukraine, Red China, etc. This was written in 1992, but the underlying strategic thinking is just as valid today as it was then.
Europhobia has links to more concerns about Yushchenko found by http://www.allaboutlatvia.com/ (All About Latvia)
All About Latvia has some other entries that talk about Yushchenko's desirablility. It should be noted that they support him. (note that the site is orange, which was his colour in the campain)
The link is at the update for the top post at http://europhobia.blogspot.com/
"That means I am on the Winner's side which happens to be backed by Putin. I honestly think that Putin is ALOT more Chrisian friendly than European Liberals would be."
Very good advice from Dr. Alexandr Nemets re: Ukraine, etc...
America and the Eurasian Alliance (Part II)
Dr. Alexandr Nemets
Friday, May 23, 2003
On May 18-19, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov visited Malaysia and, according to initial data, concluded new agreements regarding Russian weapons supply to this country.
What remains of the sometimes firm American grip on Southeast Asia? Probably the Philippines alone. That's because Chinese influence in Singapore and Thailand is burgeoning, and other members of the Eurasian Alliance will follow the Chinese lead in these countries.
3) Expansion to Belarus, Ukraine and, possibly, Poland
Belarus, "the last dictatorship in Europe," enjoys perfect ties with both Russia – within the framework of the emerging "United States of Russia and Belarus" – and China. Moreover, Belarusian President Lukashenko is developing ties with Western Europe while opposing the "American dictate."
Poland, which is doing its best to become the real ally of America, is located between China-Russia-Belarus (eastern part of Eurasian Alliance) and Germany-France-Belgium (western part of Eurasian Alliance). For how long will the "Polish buffer" be capable of withstanding the growing pressure from both East and West? It would be particularly irrational to underestimate Germany’s influence over Poland.
Ukraine, criminalized and chaotic, is extremely unstable. This country is under great pressure from Russia, namely:
The Kremlin intends to add Ukraine to the "United States of Russia and Belarus"; Putin himself is giving top priority to ties with Ukrainian president Kuchma and other local leaders.
Russian oligarchs are purchasing, almost for nothing, tidbits of Ukrainian petrochemical and steel industries.
Russian TV channels broadcast to Ukraine pictures of "Mother Russia prospering under kind czar Putin." And this works: The starving Ukrainians are jealous of half-starving Russians!
Remarkably, China also has strong positions in Ukraine as the major purchaser of Ukrainian weapons technology, steel, etc. These positions solidified after President Kuchma's visit to China in mid-April.
And it is hard to overestimate the political and economic influence of Germany and France in Ukraine, which prefers the euro to the dollar and aspires to become an EU member.
At some moment, the pressure from East and West will become unbearable, and Ukraine will fall under Eurasian Alliance control. That's very probable. And this will add to the pressure on Poland. By the way, Moscow is extremely irritated by Polish consent to send troops to patrol postwar Iraq.
4) Expansion in Central Asia
In October 2001, NATO put air bases in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. It was supposed that, in the new environment, Chinese, Russian and Iranian influence in oil-rich Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations would weaken dramatically.
However, French and German servicemen came to these bases along with American servicemen. And French oil companies are presently expanding investments in oil and gas deposits in western Kazakhstan. Will it be possible for American troops as well as U.S. and U.K. oil companies to counterbalance the influence of the Eurasian Alliance in this strategic region?
5) Expansion on Korean Peninsula
On May 11-15, the Moscow media – both the leftist and the pro-government media – gave following "average" estimation of the events on the Korean peninsula:
North Korea recently, after the Iraqi War, accomplished its exit from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, thus openly challenging Washington. At the end of April, U.S. representatives came to Beijing for talks with North Korea, thus confirming Beijing's role of mediator and arbiter.
In several days, Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed, the conflict will be solved on the basis of old conditions, shameful for America: fuel oil deliveries to Pyongyang in exchange for nuclear weapons production termination. And such termination is non-checkable in the environment of Kim Jong-il's regime.
Eventually, it is possible to conclude that China will confirm its dominating position in Northeast Asia. (end of Moscow media estimations)
Can we agree with such an insulting-to-America conclusion? The point is that Chinese economic and political influence also grew very strong in South Korea, not just in North Korea, in 2000-2002.
South Korean magazines claim that the old "Degoog" (Great Country) phenomenon has been reborn. In medieval Korea, top-ranking officials used to call China the "Great Country" and considered the emperor's court in Beijing to be the supreme authority.
Now South Korean former presidents, parliament deputies, etc., are using every opportunity available to visit Beijing and meet the president or premier of China, to ask them for mediation and support in their troubles with North Korea, to scratch out some economic concessions. "Degoog" is back.
And Moscow, enraged by the defeat in Iraq, is hopeful for "compensation," with Chinese assistance, on the Korean peninsula: If America is "out" and Moscow is "in," then it would be possible to lay the dreamed-of Trans-Korean railway, which could be connected, through the Trans-Siberian railway and Moscow, with Western Europe. A lot of gains for the entire Eurasian Alliance!
By the way, in 2001-2002, the EU established ties with Pyongyang.
6) The struggle is also under way on the South Asian subcontinent, the Middle East (out of Iraq and Iran), Eastern Europe (out of Poland), Balkans, etc.
3. Some Conclusions
It is easy to see that, by May 2003, almost the entire Eurasian Continent became an arena of struggle between America, U.K. and their allies (Eastern European countries, Italy, Spain, Scandinavian countries, Japan) and the expanding Eurasian Alliance. No side can claim victory at this stage.
However, the most important fact is that the Eurasian Alliance is only forming, taking its initial shape. At the next stage, the mature Eurasian Alliance could become extremely threatening to American interests, because it would combine
the mighty financial and technological potential of Germany, France and, probably, the three countries of Benelux;
the huge economic potential and work force of China;
rich Russian natural resources and the remaining military-technological potential of this country.
America would have to deal with an "unbeatable" adversary. Moreover, the geopolitical struggle could spread – or is spreading already – to Africa, Latin America and Oceania.
However, Russia, which put together the Eurasian Alliance both geographically and organizationally, is also the most vulnerable point of the newly emerged alliance.
If and when Moscow – NOT Russia – is out of picture, the Eurasian alliance would cease to exist. The following should be taken into account in the most serious way:
Almost the entire real wealth of Russia is concentrated in Moscow; Moscow is an object of hatred by almost all other Russian regions, particularly by the destroyed and impoverished peripheral regions of the Far East, the northern part of European Russia and the North Caucasus.
Some of these regions – both "local elite" and "common people" – are eager to accept any assistance from outside, particularly from the U.S., the U.K. and Japan – to get rid of "Moscow’s protection."
U.S. diplomacy should "forget" Moscow and the Kremlin and concentrate efforts on the Russian periphery. This is a life-and death-problem.
Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is co-author of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of Taiwan and New Geopolitics" and the forthcoming "Russian-Chinese Alliance."
Link:
http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/22/150547.shtml
National Review
September 20, 2004, 8:14 a.m.
No Peter the Great
Vladimir Putin is in the Andropov mold.
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Vladimir Putin looks more and more like a heavy-handed imitation of Yuri Andropov — does anyone still remember him? Andropov was that other KGB chairman who rose all the way up to the Kremlin throne, and who was also once my de facto boss. Considering that Putin has inherited upwards of 6,000 suspected strategic nuclear weapons, this is frightening news.
Former KGB officers are now running Russia's government, just as they did during Andropov's reign, and the Kremlin's image — another Andropov specialty — continues to be more important than people's real lives in that still-inscrutable country. The government's recent catastrophic Beslan operation was a reenactment of the effort to "rescue" 2,000 people from Moscow's Dubrovka Theater, where the "new" KGB flooded the hall with fentanyl gas and caused the death of 129 hostages. No wonder Putin ordered Andropov's statue — which had been removed after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 — reinstalled at the Lubyanka.
In the West, if Andropov is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving the badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West.
In early 2000, President Putin divided Russia into seven "super" districts, each headed by a "presidential representative," and he gave five of these seven new posts to former KGB officers. Soon, his KGB colleagues occupied nearly 50 percent of the top government positions in Moscow. In a brief interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, Putin admitted that he had stuffed the Kremlin with former KGB officers, but he said it was because he wanted to root out graft. "I have known them for many years and I trust them. It has nothing to do with ideology. It's simply a matter of their professional qualities and personal relationship."
THE NATIONAL POLITICAL PASTIME
In reality, it's an old Russian tradition to fill the most important governmental positions with undercover intelligence officers. The czarist Okhrana security service planted its agents everywhere: in the central and local government, and in political parties, labor unions, churches, and newspapers. Until 1913, Pravda itself was edited by one of them, Roman Malinovsky, who rose to become Lenin's deputy for Russia and the chairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Duma.
Andropov Sovietized that Russian tradition and extended its application nationwide. It was something similar to militarizing the government in wartime, but it was accomplished by the KGB. In 1972, when he launched this new offensive, KGB Chairman Andropov told me that this would help eliminate the current plague of theft and bureaucratic chaos and would combat the growing sympathy for American jazz, films, and blue jeans obsessing the younger Soviet generation. Andropov's new undercover officers were secretly remunerated with tax-free salary supplements and job promotions. In exchange, Andropov explained, they would secretly have to obey "our" military regulations, practice "our" military discipline and carry out "our" tasks, if they wanted to keep their jobs. Of course, the KGB had long been using diplomatic cover slots for its officers assigned abroad, but Andropov's new approach was designed to influence the Soviet Union itself.
The lines separating the leadership of the country from the intelligence apparatus had blurred in the Soviet satellites as well. After I was granted political asylum in the United States in July 1978, the Western media reported that my defection had unleashed the greatest political purge in the history of Communist Romania. Ceausescu had demoted politburo members, fired one-third of his cabinet, and replaced ambassadors. All were undercover intelligence officers whose military documents and pay vouchers I had regularly signed off on.
THE MAKING OF A DICTATOR
General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the Soviet gauleiter of Romania who rose to head the Soviet foreign intelligence service for an unprecedented 15 years, used to predict to me that KGB Chairman Andropov would soon have the whole Soviet bloc in his vest pocket, and that he would surely end up in the Kremlin. Andropov would have to wait ten years until Brezhnev died, but on November 12, 1982, he did take up the country's reins. Once settled in the Kremlin, Andropov surrounded himself with KGB officers, who immediately went on a propaganda offensive to introduce him to the West as a "moderate" Communist and a sensitive, warm, Western-oriented man who allegedly enjoyed an occasional drink of Scotch, liked to read English novels, and loved listening to American jazz and the music of Beethoven. In actual fact, Andropov did not drink, as he was already terminally ill from a kidney disorder, and the rest of the portrayal was equally false.
In 1999, when Putin became prime minister, he also surrounded himself with KGB officers, who began describing him as a "Europeanized" leader — capitalizing, ironically, on the fact that he had been a KGB spy abroad. Yet Putin's only foreign experience had been in East Germany, on Moscow's side of the Berlin Wall. Soon after that I visited the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig and Dresden to see where Putin had spent his "Europeanizing" years. Local representatives of the Gauck Commission — a special post-Communism German panel researching the Stasi files — said that the "Soviet-German 'friendship house'" Putin headed for six years was actually a KGB front with operational offices at the Leipzig and Dresden Stasi headquarters. Putin's real task was to recruit East German engineers as KGB agents and send them to the West to steal American technologies.
I visited those offices and found that they looked just like the offices of my own midlevel case officers in regional Securitate directorates in Romania. Yet Moscow claims Putin had held an important job in East Germany and was decorated by the East German government. The Gauck Commission confirmed that Putin was decorated in 1988 "for his KGB work in the East German cities of Dresden and Leipzig." According to the West German magazine Der Spiegel, he received a bronze medal from the East German Stasi as a "typical representative of second-rank agents." There, in those prison-like buildings, cut off even from real East German life by Stasi guards with machine guns and police dogs, Lieutenant Colonel Putin could not possibly have become the modern-day, Western-oriented Peter the Great that the Kremlin's propaganda machine is so energetically spinning.
Indeed, on December 20, 1999, Russia's newly appointed prime minister visited the Lubyanka to deliver a speech on this "memorable day," commemorating Lenin's founding of the first Soviet political police, the Cheka. "Several years ago we fell prey to the illusion that we have no enemies," Putin told a meeting of top security officials. "We have paid dearly for this. Russia has its own national interests, and we have to defend them." The following day, December 21, 1999, another "memorable day" in Soviet history — Stalin's 120th birthday — Putin organized a closed-door reception in his Kremlin office reported as being for the politicians who had won seats in the Duma. There he raised a glass to good old Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin, meaning "man of steel," was the dictator's nom de guerre).
Days later, in a 14-page article entitled "Russia on the Threshold of a New Millennium," Putin defined Russia's new "democratic" future: "The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as required." The Chechens' effort to regain their independence was mere "terrorism," and he pledged to eradicate it: "We'll get them anywhere — if we find terrorists sitting in the outhouse, then we will piss on them there. The matter is settled." It is not.
SCAPEGOATING AND CONSOLIDATING
On September 9, 2004, Chechen nationalists announced a $20 million prize on the head of the "war criminal" Vladimir Putin, whom they accuse of "murdering hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians on the territory of Chechnya, including tens of thousands of children."
For his part, President Putin tried to divert the outrage over the horrific Breslan catastrophe away from his KGB colleagues who had caused it, and to direct public anger toward the KGB's archenemy, the U.S. Citing meetings of mid-level U.S. officials with Chechen leaders, Putin accused Washington of having a double standard when dealing with terrorism. "Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Putin told reporters in Moscow.
Then Putin blamed the collapse of the Soviet Union for what he called a "full scale" terrorist war against Russia and started taking Soviet-style steps to strengthen the Kremlin's power. On September 13, he announced measures to eliminate the election of the country's governors, who should now be appointed by the Kremlin, and to allow only "certified" people — that is, former KGB officers — to run for the parliament.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, its people had a unique opportunity to cast out their political police, a peculiarly Russian instrument of power that has for centuries isolated their country from the real world and in the end left them ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of modern society. Unfortunately, up until then most Russians had never owned property, had never experienced a free-market economy, and had never made decisions for themselves. Under Communism they were taught to despise Western democracy and everything they believed to be connected with capitalism, e.g., free enterprise, decision-making, hard work, risk-taking, and social inequality. Moreover, the Russians had also had minimal experience with real political parties, since their country has been a police state since the 16th century. To them, it seemed easier to continue the tradition of the political police state than to take the risk of starting everything anew.
But the times have changed dramatically. My native country, which borders Russia, is a good example. At first, Romania's post-Communism rulers, for whom managing the country with the help of the political police was the only form of government they had ever known, bent over backwards to preserve the KGB-created Securitate, a criminal organization that became the symbol of Communist tyranny in the West. Article 27 of Romania's 1990 law for organizing the new intelligence services stated that only former Securitate officers "who have been found guilty of crimes against fundamental human rights and against freedom" could not be employed in the "new" intelligence services. In other words, only Ceausescu would not have been eligible for employment there. Today, Romania still has the same president as in 1990, but his country is now a member of NATO and is helping the U.S. to rid the world of Cold War-style dictators and the terrorism they generated.
Russia can also break with its Communist past and join our fight against despots and terrorists. We can help them do it, but first we should have a clear understanding of what is now going on behind the veil of secrecy that still surrounds the Kremlin.
— Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former two-star general, is the highest-ranking intelligence officer to have defected from the Soviet bloc. His book Red Horizons has been republished in 27 countries.
Thanks for ping! We will see what our politicians will do tomorrow, cause half of them is in Kiev :-) I read that Yanukovych want publish the results of the elections in two newspapers (daily "Uriadowym Courier" and parliament newspaper "Ho.los Ukrainy".), even when Supreme Court didn’t allow him to do it
=== We live on the edge of a volcano, but I'm happy that we didn't act like cattle and were able to straighten our shoulders, and for this the world has begun to honor us."
So long as they don't end lambs to the slaughter.
I wouldn't give a rat's ass for the "honor" bestowed on me by this world, in this day and age in particular.
bump and bookmarked.....and lots of prayers for these people
Seychas my tak prikovany k telekam, esli ne na ploshchadi, kak nikogda. Na vsekh kanalakh zhurnalisty proveli zabastovki, chtoby im dali vozmozhnost' realizovat' svoi professional'nye vozmozhnosti i ne rabotat', kak prostye diktory, chitat' o tom, chto napisali v administratsii prezidenta, t.e. po 'temnikam'. I dobilis' svoego. Teper' mozhno smotret' kanaly i informatsiya skol'ko raznaya, chto neuspevaesh' prereklyuchat' kanaly, potomu chto informatsii mnogo i ona nasyshchennaya. Seychas k nam priexali kak posredniki Solan i Kvasnetskiy. Ne uverena, chto dostignut kakogo-to rezul'tata, slyshkom vlast' daleko zashla.It's no fun to live in interesting times."Now we are riveted to our television sets, if not out in the square, as never before. On all the TV stations the journalists cover the strikes, in order to finally realize their possiblities of their profession and not simply work as simple announcers, reading whatever the president's administration has written. And they are getting theirs. Now one can watch the stations and there is so much information and it's all so different that you can't even change the channel because it's so saturated. The mediators Solan and Kvasnetskiy arrived. I'm not sure that they'll reach some kind of result, the government has gone too far."
U menya, v sem'e, kak v strane, obrazovalas' oppozitsiya, kaolitsiya. Ya sobirayus' na nedele uezzhat', khochu poexat' v kakoy-nibud' sanatoriy do Novogo goda pobyt' vne doma i dat' im vozmozhnost' pobyt' bez menya. A mozhet byt', spokoyno tam umru.
"In my family, just as in my country, there have formed an opposition and a coalition. I'm getting ready to leave in a week, I want to go to some sort of sanitorium and stay there until the New Year, and give them some time here without me. Perhaps I'll just die there in peace."
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