March 28, 2024, 10:44:27 AM

Author Topic: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin  (Read 56333 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #270 on: April 23, 2014, 09:56:54 AM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #271 on: April 23, 2014, 03:49:47 PM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.

No need to get testy - Answer the question. You seem have some arbitrary standard that, when applied anywhere else, falls down immediately. Presumably, simply owning some territory for a long time is not enough for a valid claim, otherwise the world would be a much more anarchic place.

Offline kounty

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 3153
  • Truthfulness is brighter than the light of the sun
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #272 on: April 23, 2014, 06:27:58 PM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.

No need to get testy - Answer the question. You seem have some arbitrary standard that, when applied anywhere else, falls down immediately. Presumably, simply owning some territory for a long time is not enough for a valid claim, otherwise the world would be a much more anarchic place.
probably if the great majority of trinidadians wanted you to.

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #273 on: April 23, 2014, 07:08:20 PM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.

No need to get testy - Answer the question. You seem have some arbitrary standard that, when applied anywhere else, falls down immediately. Presumably, simply owning some territory for a long time is not enough for a valid claim, otherwise the world would be a much more anarchic place.

Right...when Trinidad is populated by a majority British nationals, and we've just had a coup and a government that now includes racial extremists, followed by a referendum declaring us Independent of (whichever country is in your imagination) and then a part of the British Empire, and invite the British to take over...then you can draw that comparison. Until those things occur, do shut up.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Ramgoat

  • Full Warrior
  • ***
  • Posts: 147
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #274 on: April 23, 2014, 07:23:18 PM »

Ramgoat - Crimea has not always been Russian, as noted above. The majority ethnicity was Crimean Tatar for a thousand years before Stalin forcibly removed them. It's as if 50 years ago all Black Trinidadians were removed from the island and Venezuelans were installed there. Then, Venezuela started promoting unrest on the island and annexed it to "protect ethnic Venezuelans". The comparisons with Hitler's move in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia are entirely justified, especially given his admission of using special forces.
Did you ever questioned why Stalin expelled them ?
 They were aligned with  Hitler forces  against Russians and Stalin was justified in meting out this kind of  punishment . That is what Victors do
 As for your Trinidad Venezuela analogy , well it don't make  no  sense

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #275 on: April 24, 2014, 12:10:45 AM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.

No need to get testy - Answer the question. You seem have some arbitrary standard that, when applied anywhere else, falls down immediately. Presumably, simply owning some territory for a long time is not enough for a valid claim, otherwise the world would be a much more anarchic place.

Right...when Trinidad is populated by a majority British nationals, and we've just had a coup and a government that now includes racial extremists, followed by a referendum declaring us Independent of (whichever country is in your imagination) and then a part of the British Empire, and invite the British to take over...then you can draw that comparison. Until those things occur, do shut up.

So now ethnicity matters?

Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Would you like to clarify your position? 'cause it's all over the place.

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #276 on: April 24, 2014, 12:18:27 AM »

Ramgoat - Crimea has not always been Russian, as noted above. The majority ethnicity was Crimean Tatar for a thousand years before Stalin forcibly removed them. It's as if 50 years ago all Black Trinidadians were removed from the island and Venezuelans were installed there. Then, Venezuela started promoting unrest on the island and annexed it to "protect ethnic Venezuelans". The comparisons with Hitler's move in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia are entirely justified, especially given his admission of using special forces.
Did you ever questioned why Stalin expelled them ?
 They were aligned with  Hitler forces  against Russians and Stalin was justified in meting out this kind of  punishment . That is what Victors do
 As for your Trinidad Venezuela analogy , well it don't make  no  sense

You really need to be more critical... The idea that 250,000 Crimean Tatars (and only those of that ethnicity) were Nazi collaborators is complete rubbish. So much rubbish that The Soviets overturned this in 1967 and the new Crimean Government declared it "a tragic fate" - that's the new Pro-Russian Crimean government. That you would call that justified is a worrying signifier of your morality.

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #277 on: April 24, 2014, 11:01:40 AM »
Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Well Trinidad was part of Great Britain for 150 years, does that mean we get to invade and conquer you? Your standards seem arbitrary to me - when do they lose the right? How long makes it valid

You retarded yes.

No need to get testy - Answer the question. You seem have some arbitrary standard that, when applied anywhere else, falls down immediately. Presumably, simply owning some territory for a long time is not enough for a valid claim, otherwise the world would be a much more anarchic place.

Right...when Trinidad is populated by a majority British nationals, and we've just had a coup and a government that now includes racial extremists, followed by a referendum declaring us Independent of (whichever country is in your imagination) and then a part of the British Empire, and invite the British to take over...then you can draw that comparison. Until those things occur, do shut up.

So now ethnicity matters?

Why you doh learn to read like yuh always telling everybody else? Nobody said anything about any "ethnic" makeup. What isaid wss that it was part of Russia.

Would you like to clarify your position? 'cause it's all over the place.

No sir, you're the one who's "all over the place".
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #278 on: April 24, 2014, 11:17:01 PM »
Interesting article. LONG but interesting.

The Ukraine Imbroglio and the Decline of the American Empire
by ARNO J. MAYER
When discussing the Ukraine-Crimea “crisis” it might be hygienic for Americans, including their political class, think-tank pundits, and talking heads, to recall two striking moments in “the dawn’s early light” of the U. S. Empire: in 1903, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, under President Theodore Roosevelt America seized control of the southern part of Guantanamo Bay by way of a Cuban-American Treaty which recognizes Cuba’s ultimate sovereignty over this base; a year after the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched 5,000 U. S. troops to Arkhangelsk in Northern Russia to participate in the Allied intervention in Russia’s Civil  War, which raised the curtain on the First Cold War.  Incidentally, in 1903 there was no Fidel Castro in Havana and in 1918 no Joseph Stalin in the Kremlin.

It might also be salutary to note that this standoff on Ukraine-Crimea is taking place in the unending afterglow of the Second Cold War and at a time when the sun is beginning to set on the American Empire as a new international system of multiple great powers emerges.

Of course, empires have ways of not only rising and thriving but of declining and expiring.  It is one of Edward Gibbon’s insightful and challenging questions about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that is of particular relevance today.  Gibbon eventually concluded that while the causes for Rome’s decline and ruin were being successfully probed and explicated, there remained the great puzzle as to why “it had subsisted for so long.”  Indeed, the internal and external causes for this persistence are many and complex.  But one aspect deserves special attention: the reliance on violence and war to slow down and delay the inevitable.  In modern and contemporary times the European empires kept fighting not only among themselves, but also against the “new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child,” once these dared to resist and eventually rise up against their imperial-colonial overlords.  After 1945 in India and Kenya; in Indochina and Algeria; in Iran and Suez; in Congo.  Needless to say, to this day the still-vigorous

U. S. empire and the fallen European empires lock arms in efforts to save what can be saved in the ex-colonial lands throughout the Greater Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

There is no denying that America’s uniquely informal empire, without settler colonies, expanded headlong across the globe during and following World War Two.  It did so thanks to having been spared the enormous and horrid loss of life, material devastation, and economic ruin which befell all the other major belligerents, Allied and Axis.  To boot, America’s mushrooming “military-industrial complex” overnight fired the Pax Americana’s momentarily unique martial, economic, and soft power.

By now the peculiar American Empire is past its apogee.  Its economic, fiscal, social, civic, and cultural sinews are seriously fraying.  At the same time the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Iran are claiming their place in the concert of world powers in which, for a good while, one and all will play by the rules of a new-model mercantilism in a globalizing soit-disant “free market” capitalist economy.

America’s splendid era of overseas “boots on the ground” and “regime change” is beginning to draw to a close.  Even in the hegemonic sphere decreed by the Monroe Doctrine there is a world of difference between yesteryear’s and today’s interventions.  In the not so distant good old times the U. S. horned in rather nakedly in Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1962), Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980s), Grenada (1983), Bolivia (1986), Panama (1989), and Haiti (2004), almost invariably without enthroning and empowering more democratic and socially progressive “regimes.”  Presently Washington may be said to tread with considerably greater caution as it uses a panoply of crypto NGO-type agencies and agents in Venezuela.  It does so because in every domain, except the military, the empire is not only vastly overextended but also because over the last few years left-leaning governments/“regimes” have emerged in five Latin American nations which most likely will become every less economically and diplomatically dependent on and fearful of the U. S.

Though largely subliminal, the greater the sense and fear of imperial decay and decline, the greater the national hubris and arrogance of power which cuts across party lines.  To be sure, the tone and vocabulary in which neo-conservatives and right-of-center conservatives keep trumpeting America’s self-styled historically unique exceptionalism, grandeur, and indispensability is shriller than that of left-of-center “liberals” who, in the fray, tend to be afraid of their own shadow.  Actually, Winston Churchill’s position and rhetoric is emblematic of conservatives and their fellow travelers in the epoch of the West’s imperial decline which overlapped with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and Communism.  Churchill was a fiery anti-Soviet and anti-Communist of the very first hour and became a discreet admirer of Mussolini and Franco before, in 1942, proclaiming loud and clear: “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”  By then Churchill had also long since become the chief crier of the ideologically fired “appeasement” mantra which was of one piece with his landmark “Iron Curtain” speech of March 1946.  Needless to say, never a word about London and Paris, in the run-up to Munich, having willfully ignored or refused Moscow’s offer to collaborate on the Czech (Sudeten) issue.  Nor did Churchill and his aficionados ever concede that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact (Nazi-Soviet Pact) of August 1939 was sealed a year after the Munich Pact, and that both were equally infamous ideologically informed geopolitical and military chess moves.

To be sure, Stalin was an unspeakably cruel tyrant.  But it was Hitler’s Nazi Germany that invaded and laid waste Soviet Russia through the corridor of Central and Eastern Europe, and it was the Red Army, not the armies of the Western allies, which at horrendous cost broke the spinal cord of the Wehrmacht.  If the major nations of the European Union today hesitate to impose full-press economic sanctions on Moscow for its defiance on Crimea and Ukraine it is not only because of their likely disproportionate boomerang effect on them.  The Western Powers, in particular Germany, have a Continental rather than Transatlantic recollection and narrative of Europe’s Second Thirty Years Crisis and War followed by the American-driven and –financed unrelenting Cold War against the “evil empire”—practically to this day.

During the reign of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev NATO, founded in 1949 and essentially led and financed by the U. S., inexorably pushed right up to or against Russia’s borders.  This became most barefaced following 1989 to 1991, when Gorbachev freed the “captive nations” and signed on to the reunification of Germany.  Between 1999 and 2009 all the liberated Eastern European countries—former Warsaw Pact members—bordering on Russia as well as three former Soviet republics were integrated into NATO, to eventually account for easily one-third of the 28 member nations of this North Atlantic military alliance.  Alone Finland opted for a disarmed neutrality within first the Soviet and then post-Soviet Russian sphere.  Almost overnight Finland was traduced not only for “appeasing” its neighboring nuclear superpower but also for being a dangerous role model for the rest of Europe and the then so-called Third World.  Indeed, during the perpetual Cold War, in most of the “free world” the term and concept “Finlandization” became a cuss word well-nigh on a par with Communism, all the more so because it was embraced by those critics of the Cold War zealots who advocated a “third way” or “non-alignment.”  All along, NATO, to wit Washington, intensely eyed both Georgia and Ukraine.

By March 2, 2014, the U. S. Department of State released a “statement on the situation in Ukraine by the North Atlantic Council” in which it declared that “Ukraine is a valued partner for NATO and a founding member of the Partnership for Peace . . . [and that] NATO Allies will continue to support Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future, without outside interference.”  The State Department also stressed that “in addition to its traditional defense of Allied nations, NATO leads the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has ongoing missions in the Balkans and the Mediterranean; it also conducts extensive training exercises and offers security support to partners around the globe, including the European Union in particular but also the United Nations and the African Union.”

Within a matter of days following Putin’s monitory move NATO, notably President Obama, countered in kind: a guided-missile destroyer crossed the Bosphoros into the Black Sea for naval exercises with the Romanian and Bulgarian navies; additional F-15 fighter jets were dispatched to reinforce NATO patrol missions being flown over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; and a squadron of F-16 fighter bombers and a fulsome company of “boots on the ground” was hastened to Poland.   Of course, theses deployments and reinforcements ostensibly were ordered at the urging of these NATO allies along Russia’s borders, all of whose “regimes” between the wars, and especially during the 1930s, had not exactly been paragons of democracy and because of their Russo-cum-anti-Communist phobia had moved closer to Nazi Germany.  And once Hitler’s legions crashed into Russia through the borderlands not insignificant sectors of their political and civil societies were not exactly innocent by-standers or collaborators in Operation Barbarossa and the Judeocide.

To be sure, Secretary of State John Kerry, the Obama administration’s chief finger wagger, merely denounced Putin’s deployment in and around Ukraine-Crimea as an “act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of pretext.”  For good measure he added, however, that “you just do not invade another country,” and he did so at a time there was nothing illegal about Putin’s move.  But Hillary Clinton, Kerry’s predecessor, and most likely repeat candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, rather than outright demonize Putin as an unreconstructed KGB operative or a mini-Stalin went straight for the kill: “Now if this sounds familiar. . . it is like Hitler did back in the ‘30s.”  Presently, as if to defang criticism of her verbal thrust, Clinton averred that “I just want people to have a little historic perspective,” so that they should learn from the Nazis’ tactics in the run-up to World War II.

As for Republican Senator John McCain, defeated by Barack Obama for the Presidency in 2008, he was on the same wavelength, in that he charged that his erstwhile rival’s “feckless” foreign policy practically invited Putin’s aggressive move, with the unspoken implication that President Obama was a latter-day Neville Chamberlain, the avatar of appeasement.

But ultimately it was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who said out loud what was being whispered in so many corridors of the foreign policy establishment and on so many editorial boards of the mainline media.  He advocated “creating a democratic noose around Putin’s Russia.”  To this end Graham called for preparing the ground to make Georgia and Moldova members of NATO.  Graham also advocated upgrading the military capability of the most “threatened” NATO members along Russia’s borders, along with an expansion of radar and missile defense systems.  In short, he would “fly the NATO flag as strongly as I could around Putin”—in keeping with NATO’s policy since 1990.  Assuming different roles, while Senator Graham kept up the hawkish drumbeat on the Hill and in the media Senator McCain hastened to Kiev to affirm the “other” America’s resolve, competence, and muscle as over the fecklessness of President Obama and his foreign-policy team.  He went to Ukraine’s capital a first time in December, and the second time, in mid-March 2014, as head of a bipartisan delegation of eight like-minded Senators.

On Kiev’s Maidan Square, or Independence Square, McCain not only mingled with and addressed the crowd of ardent anti-Russian nationalists, not a few of them neo-fascists, but also consorted with Victoria Nuland, U. S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.  Too much has been made of her revealing or unfortunate “f**k the EU” expletive in her tapped phone conversation with the local U. S. Ambassador Geoffrey Ryatt and her distribution of sweets on Maidan Square.   What really matters is that Nuland is a consummate insider of Washington’s imperial foreign policy establishment in that she served in the Clinton and Bush administrations before coming on board the Obama administration, having close relations with Hillary Clinton.

Besides, she is married to Robert Kagan, a wizard of geopolitics who though generally viewed as a sworn neo-conservative is every bit as much at home as his spouse among mainline Republicans and Democrats.  He was a foreign-policy advisor to John McCain and Mitt Romney during their presidential runs, respectively in 2008 and 2012, before President Obama let on that he embraced some of the main arguments in The World America Made (2012), Kagan’s latest book.  In it he spells out ways to preserve the empire by way of controlling with some twelve naval task forces built around unsurpassable nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, its expanding Mare Nostrum in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.

As a disciple of Alfred Thayer Mahan, quite naturally Kagan earned his spurs and his entrée to the inner circles of the makers and shakers of foreign and military policy by spending years at the Carnegie Endowment and Brookings Institution.   That was before, in 1997, he became a co-founder, with William Kristol, of the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century, committed to the promotion of America’s “global leadership” in pursuit of its national security and interests.  A few years later, after this think tank expired, Kagan and Kristol began to play a leading role in the Foreign Policy Initiative, its lineal ideological descendant.

But the point is not that Victoria Nuland’s demarche in Maidan Square may have been unduly influenced by her husband’s writings and political engagements.  Indeed, on the Ukrainian question, she is more likely to have been attentive to Zbigniew Brzezinski, another highly visible geopolitician who, however, has been swimming exclusively in Democratic waters ever since 1960, when he advised John F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign and then became national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter.  Heavily fixed on Eurasia, Brzezinski is more likely to stand on Clausewitz’s rather than Mahan’s shoulders.  But both Kagan and Brzezinski are red-blooded imperial Americans.  In 1997, in his The Great Chessboard Brzezinski argued that “the struggle for global primacy [would] continue to be played” on the Eurasian “chessboard,” and that as a “new and important space on [this] chessboard . . . Ukraine was a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia.”  Indeed, “if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its [then] 52 million people and major resources, as well as access to the Black Sea,” Russia would “automatically again regain the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia.”  The unwritten script of Brzezinski, one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors: intensify the West’s—America’s—efforts, by means fair and foul, to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence, including especially the Black Sea Peninsula with its access to the Eastern Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea.

Presently rather than focus on the geopolitical springs and objectives of Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine-Crimea Brzezinski turned the spotlight on the nefarious intentions and methods of Putin’s move on the Great Chessboard.  To permit Putin to have his way in Ukraine-Crimea would be “similar to the two phases of Hitler’s seizure of Sudetenland after Munich in 1938 and the final occupation of Prague and Czechoslovakia in early 1938.”  Incontrovertibly “much depends on how clearly the West conveys to the dictator in the Kremlin—a partially comical imitation of Mussolini and a more menacing reminder of Hitler—that NATO cannot be passive if war erupts in Europe.”  For should Ukraine be “crushed with the West simply watching the new freedom and security of Romania, Poland, and the three Baltic republics would also be threatened.”  Having resuscitated the domino theory, Brzezinski urged the West to “promptly recognize the current government of Ukraine legitimate” and assure it “privately . . . that the Ukrainian army can count on immediate and direct Western aid so as to enhance its defense capabilities.”  At the same time “NATO forces . . . should be put on alert [and] high readiness for some immediate airlift to Europe of U. S. airborne units would be politically and militarily meaningful.”  And as an afterthought Brzezinski suggested that along with “such efforts to avoid miscalculations that could lead to war” the West should reaffirm its “desire for a peaceful accommodation . . . [and] reassure Russia that it is not seeking to draw Ukraine into NATO or turn it against Russia.”  Indeed, mirabile dictu, Brzezinski, like Henry Kissinger, his fellow geopolitician with a cold-war imperial mindset, adumbrated a form of Finlandization of Ukraine—but, needless to say, not of the other eastern border states—without, however, letting on that actually Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, had recently made some such proposal.

Of course, the likes of Kagan, Brzezinski, and Kissinger keep mum about America’s inimitable hand in the “regime change” in Kiev which resulted in a government in which the ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists, who had been in the front lines on Maidan Square, are well represented.

Since critics of America’s subversive interventions tend to be dismissed as knee-jerk left-liberals wired to exaggerate their dark anti-democratic side it might help to listen to a voice which on this issue can hardly be suspect.  Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and renowned inquisitor of anti-Semitism, concedes that “there is no doubt that Ukraine, like Croatia, was one of those places where local militias played a key role in the murder of thousands of Jews during World War II.”  And anti-Semitism “having by no means disappeared from Ukraine . . . in recent months there have been a number of anti-Semitic incidents and there are at least two parties in Ukraine, Svoboda and Right Sector, that have within them some extreme nationalists and anti-Semites.”

But having said that, Foxman insists that it is “pure demagoguery and an effort to rationalize criminal behavior on the part of Russia to invoke the anti-Semitism ogre into the struggle in Ukraine, . . . for it is fair to say that there was more anti-Semitism manifest in the worldwide Occupy Wall Street movement than we have seen so far in the revolution taking place in Ukraine.”  To be sure, Putin “plays the anti-Semitism card” much as he plays that of Moscow rushing to “protect ethnic Russians from alleged extremist Ukrainians.”  Even at that, however, “it is, of course, reprehensible to suggest that Putin’s policies in Ukraine are anything akin to Nazi policies during World War II.”  But then Foxman hastens to stress that it “is not absurd to evoke Hitler’s lie” about the plight of the Sudeten Germans as comparable to “exactly” what “Putin is saying and doing in Crimea” and therefore needs to be “condemned . . . as forcefully . . . as the world should have condemned the German move into the Sudetenland.”

Abraham Foxman’s tortured stance is consonant with that of American and Israeli hardliners who mean to contain and roll back a resurgent great-power Russia, as much in Syria and Iran as in its “near abroad” in Europe and Asia.

As if listening to Brzezinski and McCain, Washington is building up its forces in the Baltic states, especially Poland, with a view to give additional bite to sanctions.  But this old-style intervention will cut little ice unless fully concerted, militarily and economically, with NATO’s weighty members, which seems unlikely.  Of course, America has drones and weapons of mass destruction—but so does Russia.

In any case, for unreconstructed imperials, and for AIPAC, the crux of the matter is not Russia’s European “near abroad” but its reemergence in the Greater Middle East, presently in Syria and Iran, and this at a time when, according to Kagan, the Persian Gulf was paling in strategic and economic importance compared to the Asia-Pacific region where China is an awakening sleeping giant that even now is the globe’s second largest economy—over half the size of the U. S. economy—and the unreal third largest holder of America’s public debt—by far the largest foreign holder of U. S. Treasury bonds.

In sum, the unregenerate U. S. empire means to actively contain both Russia and China in the true-and-tried modus operandi, starting along and over Russia’s European “near abroad” and the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait connecting the South China Sea to the East China Sea.

Because of ever growing budgetary constraints Washington has long since complained about its major NATO partners dragging their financial and military feet.  This fiscal squeeze will intensify exponentially with the pivoting to the Pacific which demands steeply rising “defense” expenditures unlikely to be shared by a NATO-like Asia-Pacific alliance.  Although most likely there will be a cutback in bases in the Atlantic world, Europe, and the Middle East, with the geographic realignment of America’s global basing the money thus saved will be spent many times over on the reinforcement and expansion of an unrivaled fleet of a dozen task forces built around nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.   After all, the Pacific and Indian oceans combined being easily more than twice the size of the Atlantic and though, according to Kagan, China is not quite yet an “existential threat” it is “developing one or two aircraft carriers, . . . anti-ship ballistic missiles . . . and submarines.”  Even now there are some flashpoints comparable to Crimea, Baltic, Syria, and Iran: the dustup between Japan and China over control of the sea lanes and the air space over the potentially oil-rich South China Sea; and the Sino-Japanese face-off over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.  Whereas it is all but normal for Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea to have tensions, even conflictual relations, with China and North Korea, it is something radically different for the United States to NATOize them in the pursuit of its own imperial interest in the furthest reaches of its now contested Mare Nostrum.

The Pacific-Asian pivot will, of course, further overstretch the empire in a time of spiraling fiscal and budgetary constraints which reflect America’s smoldering systemic economic straits and social crisis, generative of growing political dysfunction and dissension.  To be sure, rare and powerless are those in political and academic society who question the GLORIA PRO NATIONE: America the greatest, exceptional, necessary, and do-good nation determined to maintain the world’s strongest and up-to-date military and cyber power.

And therein lies the rub.  The U.S.A. accounts for close to 40% of the world’s military expenditures, compared to some 10% by China and 5.5% by Russia.  The Aerospace and Defense Industry contributes close to 3% oi GDP and is the single largest positive contributor to the nation’s balance of trade.  America’s three largest arms companies—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing—are the world’s largest, employing some 400,000 hands, and all but corner the world’s market in their “products.”  Of late defense contracting firms have grown by leaps and bounds in a nation-empire increasingly loathe to deploy conventional boots on the ground.  These corporate contractors provide an ever greater ratio of contract support field personnel, many of them armed, over regular army personnel.  Eventually, in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom private contract and regular military personnel were practically on a par.

This hasty evocation of the tip of America’s military iceberg is but a reminder of President Dwight Eisenhower’s forewarning, in 1961, of an “immense military establishment” in lockstep with “a large arms industry. . . [acquiring] unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,” injurious to democracy.  At the time Ike could hardly have imagined the gargantuan growth and political weight of this military-industrial complex or the emergence, within it, of a corporate-contract mercenary army.

The formidable oligarchy of arms makers and merchants at the heart of the military-industrial complex fields a vast army of lobbyists in Washington.  In recent years the arms lobby, writ large, spent countless millions during successive election cycles, its contributions being all but equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.  And this redoubtable octopus-like “third house” is not about to sign on to substantial cuts in military spending, all the less so since it moves in sync with other hefty defense-related lobbies, such as oil, which is not likely to support the down-sizing of America’s navy which, incidentally, is far and away the largest plying, nay patrolling, the world’s oceans—trade routes.

There is, of course, a considerable work force, including white-collar employees, that earns its daily bread in the bloated “defense” sector.  It does so in an economy whose industrial/manufacturing sectors are shrinking, considerably because of outsourcing, most of it overseas.   This twisted or peculiar federal budget and free-market economy not only spawn unemployment and underemployment but breed growing popular doubt about the material and psychic benefits of empire.

In 1967, when Martin Luther King, Jr., broke his silence on the war in Vietnam, he spoke directly to the interpenetration of domestic and foreign policy in that conflict.  He considered this war an imperialist intervention in far-distant Southeast Asia at the expense of the “Great Society” which President Johnson, who escalated this war, proposed to foster at home.  After lamenting the terrible sacrifice of life on both sides, King predicated that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He even intimated that “there is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent . . . the richest and most powerful nation in the world . . . from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”

Almost 50 years later President Obama and his staff, as well as nearly all Democratic and Republican Senators and Representatives, policy wonks and pundits, remain confirmed and unquestioning imperials.  Should any of them read Gibbon they would pay no mind to his hunch that “the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness” which by blowback corroded the polity, society, and culture that carried it.  Of course today, with no barbarians at the gates, there is no need for legions of ground forces so that the bankrupting “defense” budget is for a military of airplanes, ships, missiles, drones, cyber-weapons, and weapons of mass destruction.  Si vis pacem para bellum—against whom and for which objectives?

In the midst of the Ukraine “crisis” President Obama flew to The Hague for the third meeting of the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) chartered in 2010 to prevent nuclear terrorism around the world.  The NSS was Obama’s idea and project, spelled out in an official statement issued by the White House Press Secretary on the eve of its founding meeting in April 2010 in Washington.  This statement stressed that “over 2,000 tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium exist in dozens of countries” and that there have been “18 documented cases of theft or loss of highly enriched uranium or plutonium.”  But above all :”we know that al-Qaeda, and possibly other terrorist or criminal groups, are seeking nuclear weapons—as well as the materials and expertise needed to make them.”  But the U. S., not being “the only country that would suffer from nuclear terrorism” and unable to “prevent it on its own,” the NSS means to “highlight the global threat” and take the urgently necessary preventive measures.

Conceived and established in the aftermath of 9/11, by the latest count the NSS rallies 83 nations bent on collaborating to head off this scourge by reducing the amount of vulnerable nuclear material worldwide and tightening security of all nuclear materials and radioactive sources in their respective countries.  At The Hague, with a myriad of journalists covering the event, some 20 heads of state and government and some 5,000 delegates took stock of advances made thus far in this arduous mission and swore to press on.  But there was a last minute dissonance.  Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, and Yi Jinping, the President of China, along with 18 other chief delegates, refused to sign a declaration calling on member nations to admit inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to check on their measures to rein in the menace of nuclear terrorism.

Inevitably the standoff over Ukraine-Crimea dimmed, even overshadowed, the hoped-for éclat of the Nuclear Security Summit.  President Obama’s mind was centered on an ad hoc session of the G 8  in the Dutch capital; a visit to NATO Headquarters in Brussels; an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican, in Rome; and a hastily improvised meeting with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.  Except for his visit with the Holy Father, from which he may have hoped to draw a touch of grace and indulgence, in his other meetings the President reasserted and proclaimed that America was and meant to remain what Hubert Védrine, a former French Foreign Minister, called the world’s sole “hyperpower.”  The Ukraine-Crimea imbroglio merely gave this profession and affirmation a greater exigency.

It is ironical that the scheduled Nuclear Security Summit was the curtain-raiser for the President’s double-quick imperial round of improvised meetings in the dawn of what Paul Bracken, another embedded and experienced geopolitician, avers to be The Second Nuclear Age (2012), this one in a multipolar rather than bipolar world.  Actually Bracken merely masterfully theorized what had long since become the guiding idea and practice throughout the foreign policy-cum-military establishment.  Or, as Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain would put it, for many years the members of this establishment had been “speaking prose without even knowing it.”

The negotiated elimination or radical reduction of nuclear weapons is completely off the agenda.  It is dismissed as a quixotic ideal in a world of nine nuclear powers: U. S., Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea—and Israel.  It was on Obama’s watch that the U. S. and post-Soviet Russia agreed that neither would deploy more than roughly 1,500 warheads, down from many times that number.  But now, with Russia’s reemergence as a great power and China’s prodigious forced-draft renascence, in a multipolar world the U. S. seems bent on keeping a considerable nuclear superiority over both.  Whereas most likely Washington and Moscow are in the throes of “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals and delivery capabilities, in this sphere China is only beginning to play catch-up.

Standing tall on America’s as yet unsurpassed military and economic might, Obama managed to convince his partners in the G 8, the conspicuous but listless economic forum of the world’s leading economies, to suspend, not to say expel, Russia for Putin’s transgression in Ukraine-Crimea.  Most likely, however, they agreed to make this largely symbolic gesture so as to avoid signing on to ever-stiffer sanctions on Moscow.  With this American-orchestrated charade the remaining G 7 only further pointed up the prepossession of their exclusive club from which they cavalierly shut out the BRICS.

The decline of the American Empire, like that of all empires, promises to be at once gradual and relative.  As for the causes of this decline, they are inextricably internal / domestic and external / foreign. There is no separating the refractory budgetary deficit and its attendant swelling political and social dissension from the irreducible military budget necessary to face down rival empires.  Clearly, to borrow Chalmers Johnson’s inspired conceptually informed phrase, the “empire of bases,” with a network of well over 600 bases in probably over 100 countries, rather than fall overnight from omnipotence to impotence risks becoming increasingly erratic and intermittently violent in “defense” of the forever hallowed exceptional “nation.”

As yet there is no significant let-up in the pretension to remain first among would-be equals on the seas, in the air, in cyberspace, and in cyber-surveillance.  And the heft of the military muscle for this supererogation is provided by a thriving defense industry in an economy plagued by deep-rooted unemployment and a society racked by a crying income and wealth inequality, growing poverty, creeping socio-cultural anomie, and humongous systemic political corruption.  Notwithstanding the ravings of the imperial “Knownothings” these conditions will sap domestic support for an unreconstructed interventionist foreign and military policy.  They will also hollow out America’s soft power by corroding the aura of the democratic, salvific, and capitalist City on the Hill.

Whereas the Soviet Union and communism were the polymorphic arch-enemy during the First Nuclear Age terrorism and Islamism bid well to take its place during the Second Nuclear Age.  It would appear that the threat and use of nuclear weapons will be even less useful though hardly any less demonic today than yesterday.  Sub specie aeternitatis the cry of the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center and Boston’s Marathon was a bagatelle compared to the fury of the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.  It is, of course, commendable that so many nations now seek to prevent “nuclear terrorism” by way of the Nuclear Security Summit.  However, there being no fail-safe systems of access control this endeavor is bound to be stillborn without a simultaneously resolute drive to radically reduce or liquidate the world’s staggering stock of nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear materials.  After all, the greater that stock the greater the opportunity and temptation for a terrorist, criminal, or whistle-blower to pass the Rubicon.

According to informed estimates presently there are well over 20,000 nuclear bombs on this planet, with America and Russia between them home to over 90% of them.  No less formidable are the vast global stockpiles of enriched uranium and plutonium.

In September 2009 Obama adjured the U. N. Security Council that “new strategies and new approaches” were needed to face a “proliferation” of an unprecedented “scope and complexity,” in that “just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city—be it New York or Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing, London or Paris—could kill hundreds of thousands of people.”  Hereafter it was not uncommon for Washington insiders to avow that they considered a domestic nuclear strike with an unthinkable dirty bomb a greater and more imminent security risk than a prosaic nuclear attack by Russia.  All this while the Nuclear Security Summit was treading water and the Pentagon continues to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal and delivery capabilities—with chemical weapons as a backstop.  With the cutback of conventional military capabilities nuclear arms are not about to be mothballed.

Indeed, with this in mind the overreaction to Russia’s move in Ukraine-Crimea is disquieting.  From the start the Obama administration unconscionably exaggerated and demonized Moscow’s—Putin’s—objectives and methods while proclaiming Washington’s consummate innocence in the unfolding imbroglio.   Almost overnight, even before the overblown charge that Moscow was massing troops along Ukraine’s borders and more generally in Russia’s European “near abroad” NATO—i. e., Washington—began to ostentatiously send advanced military equipment to the Baltic counties and Poland.   By April 4, 2014, the foreign ministers of the 28 member nations of NATO met in Brussels with a view to strengthen the military muscle and cooperation not only in the aforementioned countries but also in Moldova, Romania, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.  In addition NATO air patrols would be stepped up while anti-missile batteries would be deployed in Poland and Romania.  Apparently the emergency NATO summit also considered large-scale joint military exercises and the establishment of NATO military bases close to Russia’s borders which, according to Le Figaro, France’s conservative daily, would be “a demonstration of force which the Allies had themselves foregone during the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.”  Would tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable aircraft—or nuclear-capable drones—be deployed on these bases?

To what end?  In preparation of a conventional war of the trenches, Guderian-type armored operations or a total war of Operation Barbarossa variety?   Of course, this being post Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there must be a backup or contingency plan for nuclear sword play, with both sides, should reciprocal deterrence fail, confident in their first and second strike capabilities.  Not only Washington but Moscow knows that in 1945 the ultimate reason for using the absolute weapon was transparently geopolitical rather than purely military.

With the weight of the unregenerate imperials in the White House, Pentagon, Congress, the “third house,” and the think tanks there is the risk that this U. S.- masterminded NATO “operation freedom in Russia’s European “near abroad” will spin out of control, also because the American Knownothings are bound to have their Russian counterparts.

In this game of chicken on the edge of the nuclear cliff the U. S. cannot claim the moral and legal high ground since it was President Truman and his inner circle of advisors who unleashed the scourge of nuclear warfare, and with time there was neither an official nor a popular gesture of atonement for this wanton and excessive military excess.  And this despite FDR and Truman Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy confessing that “in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages,” an observation possibly anticipated by General Eisenhower’s plaint to Secretary of War Stimson of his “grave misgivings” and belief that “dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary and… our country should avoid shocking world opinion…”   Is there a filiation between this cri de coeur and the forewarning about the toxicity of the “military industrial complex” in President Eisenhower’s farewell address?

This is a time for a national debate and a citizen-initiated referendum on whether or not the U. S. should adopt unilateral nuclear disarmament.  It might be a salutary and exemplary exercise in participatory democracy.

Arno J. Mayer is emeritus professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author of The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions and Plowshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (Verso).
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #279 on: April 25, 2014, 02:09:53 PM »
Before this continues to get lost in all the propaganda...

Article from January 2014
Ukraine: far-right extremists at core of 'democracy' protest

As violent scenes play out on the streets of Kiev, we look at the major role extremist right-wing movements have played in Ukraine's "pro-democracy" movement.

Ukraine's far-right is gaining support and confidence through its role in the street protests, with the Svoboda party assuming a leading role in the movement and paramilitary groups leading the street fighting.

In December US senator John McCain travelled to Ukraine to offer his support to the opposition, appearing on stage with leaders of the three opposition parties leading the protests - including the far-right Svoboda party.

Svoboda is currently Ukraine's fourth biggest party and holds 36 seats in parliament. It is also part of the Alliance of European National Movements, along with the BNP and Hungary's Jobbik.

Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok is one of the faces of the protests, appearing regularly along with opposition leader and former boxer Vitali Klitschko (see picture right) voicing opposition to Putin's influence over the region.

However, Tyahnybok has provoked controversy in the past with his anti-Semitic claims that a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" controls Ukraine.

His party was registered in 1995 and initially used a swastika-style "wolfsangel" rune as its logo. It restricted membership to ethnic Ukrainians. Until 2004 it had a paramilitary wing called Patriots of Ukraine, and though it ended its link to the group in 2005, the two continue to be closely associated and to participate in protests together.

Svoboda has played a leading role in the protests. Its member of parliament, Igor Myroshnychenko, claimed responsibility for the toppling of the statue of Lenin, and it led the occupation of the city hall.

In December inside city town hall, an organisational hub for the protests, a white power logo was displayed in the centre of the stage alongside Svoboda party flags.

Quote
Fascism is like a fashion now with more and more people getting involved.
Sergey Kirichuk

It has helped to revive 1930s Ukrainian nationalist chants, which even Vital Klitschko has now adopted, shouting "Glory to Ukraine!", to which the crowd reply "To heroes, glory!".

Svoboda flags have been a permanent fixture in Independence Square, with pictures from clashes also revealing the presence of militant far-right groups carrying neo-Nazi flags and the red and black Ukrainian "insurgent army" flags.

On new year's day, Svoboda led a 15,000-strong torch-lit march in memory of controversial Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who fought against the Soviets during world war II.

Hooligans strike
As violent scenes played out in recent days, groups of "autonomous nationalists" separate from Svoboda, who recruit from far-right football hooligan groups, have taken a leading role in the fighting.

Acting under the name Pravy Sektor, they are reported to have 500 militants inside government buildings seized by the protesters.

Sergey Kirichuk, a member of the group Borotba, which publishes and anti-fascist magazine in Ukraine, told Channel 4 News that these neo-Nazis are the most violent elements on the streets.

"These people are separate from Svoboda, though they will have many links through activists - but they are not controlled by any one group," he explained.

"They are the ones throwing molotovs and trying to kill policemen, the most violent element fight at European Square.

"When left-wing groups tried to join the protests they were attacked and beaten by fascists. Svoboda are leading ideologically now. Fascism is like a fashion now, with more and more people getting involved."


(Above: militants carry shields marked with neo-Nazi logos)

Paramilitaries from the Patriot of Ukraine group, Svoboda's former paramilitary wing, have been present throughout the protests. Their masked activists, wearing distinctive yellow armbands, have been pictured carrying chains and bricks through the crowd and leading attacks on riot police.

In 2012 the presence of a violent and highly organised far-right in Ukraine and Poland became global news ahead of the Euro 2012 tournament.

The dominance of racist chants, Nazi salutes and neo-Nazi banners among football fans provoked controversy ahead of the tournament, prompting President Yanukovych to promise matches would be closely watched by security services.

Anti-Semitic attacks
The World Jewish Congress has called for Svoboda to be banned for its hardline anti-Semitic stance, and public Jewish events celebrating hanukkah were cancelled last month due to fears of violence, with Jewish leaders urging people to "increase security everywhere".

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish student, Dovbear Glickman, was stabbed while leaving a synagogue last week, suffering massive blood loss. It is the second anti-Semitic assault this month after a Hebrew teacher was followed home from synagogue by a gang before being beaten.

http://www.channel4.com/news/kiev-svoboda-far-right-protests-right-sector-riot-police
« Last Edit: April 25, 2014, 02:15:27 PM by Toppa »
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #280 on: April 25, 2014, 02:14:18 PM »
December 2013

Far-right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator

Protests continue in the Ukrainian capital after an endorsement from US Senator John McCain but at the heart of the movement in Kiev lies an extreme right wing party with links to the BNP.



Ukraine's pro-EU protests show no sign of stopping – US Senator John McCain dined with opposition leaders this weekend, including the extreme far-right Svoboda party.

During his trip the former US presidential candidate met with government and opposition figures, but gave his endorsement to the pro-Europe protesters.

Senator McCain later waved to protesters from the stage in Independence Square during a mass rally in Kiev, standing with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the anti-Semitic Svoboda party.

Growing far-right
Svoboda, meaning freedom, has been enjoying a boom in success in recent years winning their first parliamentary seats in 2010, taking just over 10 per cent of the vote to become Ukraine’s fourth biggest party with 36 seats out of 450.

The ultra-nationalist group is aligned with other European far-right parties including the BNP, but their radical stance has made them a central force in the ongoing street protests.

The party was registered in 1995, initially called the Social National Party of Ukraine and using a swastika style logo.

Continues: http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #281 on: April 25, 2014, 03:24:58 PM »
How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine's power vacuum

In the new Ukrainian government politicians linked to the far-right have taken posts from deputy prime minister to head of defence. We profile the nationalists filling the power vacuum.

Read more here: http://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #282 on: May 02, 2014, 02:52:56 PM »
Well, the conflict in Eastern Ukraine continues to spread. Kiev has sent in more forces to Sloviansk (presumably to seize the large stock-pile of soviet-era weapons stored there) and two of their helicopters have been shot down with two pilots reported dead and one presumably captured.

And just recently, Pro-Kiev Far right nationalist set fire to the Odessa Trade Union building killing dozens. The anti-Kiev folk seemed to hve taken out a few of those other blokes too, shooting from the rooftop (or so it hasbeen reported in the article).

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-odessa-building-fire

« Last Edit: May 02, 2014, 04:19:22 PM by Toppa »
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #283 on: May 02, 2014, 03:23:14 PM »
Sadly looks like Civil war...

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #284 on: May 02, 2014, 04:06:10 PM »
So the 411 is the the Right Sector were bussed in by the hundreds.

Wow - the video footage clearly shows the tents being attacked and then to building set out fire to. But yet still "reputable" media outlets like the Guardian and the BBC report that is it 'unclear' how the fire started.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/s9AMjLBIliw#t=11" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/s9AMjLBIliw#t=11</a>


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/BfqoWVwmP2Q" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/BfqoWVwmP2Q</a>
« Last Edit: May 02, 2014, 04:17:16 PM by Toppa »
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #285 on: May 02, 2014, 05:35:46 PM »
Police in the Black Sea port of Odessa said late Friday that 31 people died when a union hall was set ablaze as pro-Russia demonstrators battled in the streets with Ukrainian loyalists.

Most victims were killed by smoke, while eight others died when they jumped from the upper floors, Reuters reported. Police initially put the death toll at 38.

Late Friday, the Interfax-Ukraine news service said that in addition to those killed in the fire, 12 others lost their lives and 123 were hurt in the day's violence.

The Trade Unions House was set on fire after being occupied by pro-Moscow demonstrators, the Kyiv Post reported.

Witnesses and journalists reported that as the building burned with people inside, a crowd shouted, "Glory to Ukraine!" and "Death to enemies!"

TV footage showed people on window sills trying to escape the smoke and flames. Video later showed blackened bodies claimed to be of victims who were trapped inside.

Citing Ukrainian newspapers, the Associated Press reported that the Russian sympathizers took refuge in the trade union hall on Kulikovo Field Square after government supporters rousted their encampment outside and then burned their tents. Police said the building was set on fire with Molotov cocktails.

Earlier, police said at least four men were shot dead after a march by thousands of pro-Kiev supporters was attacked by Russian sympathizers. Molotov cocktails, explosives and paving stones were thrown during the clashes.

The day's death toll is the highest since more than 70 people died Feb. 20 on Independence Square in Kiev during the so-called EuroMaidan Revolution, which toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich.

The fire came hours after Ukraine's new president said that "many" pro-Russian rebels had been killed or wounded in a crackdown by Ukrainian troops in eastern city of Slovyansk, which had been held for days by separatists.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/02/ukraine-odessa-fire/8620829/
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #286 on: May 03, 2014, 01:56:23 AM »
Toppa, I see all the right-wing reporting, are you ignoring the murder of the Ukranian politican and seizing of foreign observers? This is the problem with major news stories like this - everyone picks a side and acts as their own little propaganda machine.

Offline kounty

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 3153
  • Truthfulness is brighter than the light of the sun
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #287 on: May 03, 2014, 06:52:19 AM »
Toppa, I see all the right-wing reporting, are you ignoring the murder of the Ukranian politican and seizing of foreign observers? This is the problem with major news stories like this - everyone picks a side and acts as their own little propaganda machine.
well the 'observers' are released. I hear your point about picking sides, but it is so hard when the 'interests' are so clear that the very media we hope will paint both sides clearly for us, buries the truth of the situation deep on page 5 and 6 of a google search, or in a small (almost hidden) passing reference.
War isn't straight forward.
But my original take is that I get your point. It doesn't matter which side I am predisposed to support. The videos that Toppa posted brought home for me the humanity of the situation. I imagined the people trying to help the wounded being of opposing views. Just tragic.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2014, 07:15:39 AM by kounty »

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #288 on: May 03, 2014, 09:38:14 AM »
Toppa, I see all the right-wing reporting, are you ignoring the murder of the Ukranian politican and seizing of foreign observers? This is the problem with major news stories like this - everyone picks a side and acts as their own little propaganda machine.

haha Right wing reporting? You called posting the facts right-wing reporting? Interesting insight into your mindset.

I'm so sorry you took offence to the article in USA today which clearly attributes the blame where it belongs. The bbc and the guardian seem content to say things like "no-one will ever kn ow who is responsible" and their painting of the situation as though the building spontaneously combusted, despite clear images (that they themselves posted) of the nationalists from OUTSIDE hurling cocktails into the building - a fact verified by video footage.  Here's more video for you - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/IVXm9nnY-AQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/IVXm9nnY-AQ</a>


P.S. - I don't know what politician you are talking about you was killed and the "observers" have been released.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2014, 09:40:19 AM by Toppa »
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #289 on: May 03, 2014, 02:04:05 PM »
Ukraine alert as politician killed
BBC News


Ukraine's acting president has ordered the relaunch of military operations against pro-Russian militants in the east after two men, one a local politician, were "tortured to death".

Olexander Turchynov said the body of politician Volodymyr Rybak was found near rebel-held Sloviansk.

"The terrorists who effectively took the whole Donetsk region hostage have now gone too far," he said.

The move came as US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Ukraine.

As he met Ukrainian leaders in Kiev, Mr Biden called on Russia to "stop talking and start acting" to defuse the Ukraine crisis.

The US and the West accuse Russia of using undercover military to back separatists in eastern Ukraine, where public buildings are occupied in at least nine cities and towns. Russia denies involvement.

Mr Biden warned Russia that further "provocative behaviour" would lead to "greater isolation" and urged Moscow to end its alleged support for pro-Russian militants.

In remarks to Ukrainian MPs, Mr Biden said the US stood with Ukraine's new leaders against "humiliating threats" - an apparent reference to Russia.

Read More here

Toppa you are ignoring the reports from teh ground that contradict your opinions, focusing heavily instead on those from the Russian side. Both Russia and the US have blood on their hand, given their involvement in urging one side or the other, but only Russia put troops on the ground, annexed a part of Ukraine, and continues to use special forces to foment violence and hatred on the ground. As I pointed out earlier, the admission by Putin of putting paratroopers on the ground disguised as Pro-Russian troops should have really made you at least pause and think, but you seem to be heavily invested in one side. You're doing yourself an injustice in this respect - the parallels with Hitler's Sudetenland really need to be ringing in your ears.

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #290 on: May 03, 2014, 03:24:48 PM »
Ukraine alert as politician killed
BBC News


Ukraine's acting president has ordered the relaunch of military operations against pro-Russian militants in the east after two men, one a local politician, were "tortured to death".

Olexander Turchynov said the body of politician Volodymyr Rybak was found near rebel-held Sloviansk.

"The terrorists who effectively took the whole Donetsk region hostage have now gone too far," he said.

The move came as US Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting Ukraine.

As he met Ukrainian leaders in Kiev, Mr Biden called on Russia to "stop talking and start acting" to defuse the Ukraine crisis.

The US and the West accuse Russia of using undercover military to back separatists in eastern Ukraine, where public buildings are occupied in at least nine cities and towns. Russia denies involvement.

Mr Biden warned Russia that further "provocative behaviour" would lead to "greater isolation" and urged Moscow to end its alleged support for pro-Russian militants.

In remarks to Ukrainian MPs, Mr Biden said the US stood with Ukraine's new leaders against "humiliating threats" - an apparent reference to Russia.

Read More here

Toppa you are ignoring the reports from teh ground that contradict your opinions, focusing heavily instead on those from the Russian side. Both Russia and the US have blood on their hand, given their involvement in urging one side or the other, but only Russia put troops on the ground, annexed a part of Ukraine, and continues to use special forces to foment violence and hatred on the ground. As I pointed out earlier, the admission by Putin of putting paratroopers on the ground disguised as Pro-Russian troops should have really made you at least pause and think, but you seem to be heavily invested in one side. You're doing yourself an injustice in this respect - the parallels with Hitler's Sudetenland really need to be ringing in your ears.


Mmm yes, thanks for the article. The politician was killed and the new leaders in Kiev placed the blame ambiguously on Russia.

So I guess this justifies the Right Sector burning people alive in Odessa. What was your point exactly?

And don't try to conflate things - Putin said there were Russian troops in Crimea...he never "admitted" to what you're alluding there. Try again.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #291 on: May 04, 2014, 04:46:31 AM »
Actually, he exactly admitted to that. The BBC in March pointed out the existance of Russian troops in Crimea;

Russia's "Little Green Men" - BBC News

Apparently Putin didn't like that term, and admitted that these were in fact Russian troops during his annual Q&A on RT

<a href="https://www.youtube.com//v/C-ApPC4XoV4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com//v/C-ApPC4XoV4</a>


His justification was to secure the referendum, but the troops were in way too early for that. Moreover, he's doing exactly the same in Easte Ukraine, despite his claims he isn't;

BBC News on Ukranian claims of Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine

Coming after his thinly-veiled threats of invading Ukraine during the previously mentioned Q&A;

BBC's analysis of Putin's Q&A

The Russian propaganda war is going quite well, the BBC detailed some of the tactics commonly used;

"Ukraine shooting highlights Russian media tactics"

The problem is multiple, but stems from Putin's insecurity of NATO expansion, leading to his annexation of any areas he can claim a Russian ethnic "majority" to "protect". Human beings often respond to violence with violence, leading to the rise of the far-right in Ukraine and a spiralling, violent civil war. Ukraine is now a fractured country, thanks to Putin, and central government has little control left;

Ukraine unrest: PM blames security service over Odessa
BBC News


Ukraine's PM has blamed the country's security services for failing to stop violence in the southern city of Odessa that left more than 40 people dead.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the BBC there would be "full, comprehensive and independent investigation".

Most of the victims were pro-Russian separatists who died in a fire after barricading themselves in a building.

The PM's comments came as Ukrainian troops surrounded the pro-Russian stronghold of Sloviansk in the east.

'Real war'
Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

They took our own city from us. Fascists!”

Odessa resident
Sorrow and anger in Odessa
'Nobody expected this'
Mr Yatsenyuk said of the Odessa violence: "I personally blame the security service and law enforcement office for doing nothing to stop this crackdown."

Mr Yatsenyuk said: "These security forces are inefficient and they violated the law."

He said the police chief of the Odessa region had been removed and that the prosecutor's office had started an investigation.

"The prosecutor's office is to investigate everyone - starting with the chief of police, his deputies and every single police officer."

Some 42 people died in Odessa on Friday, most of them in the fire at the Trade Unions House, where separatist protesters had barricaded themselves following running battles with pro-Kiev activists.

Mr Yatsenyuk blamed pro-Russian groups for "provoking the unrest".

He accused Russia and pro-Russian protesters of orchestrating "real war... to eliminate Ukraine and eliminate Ukrainian independence".

Read More

My main point is that you are self-propaganderising yourself, limiting your news intake and not taking in what is a complex situation because you feel some sort of "tie" to one side, produced by your public position in a forum. You are backing an evil man by all accounts - he has destroyed meaningful democracy, murdered journalists, restricted freedoms of the press and internet, and is now annexing parts of their neighbour. When will you realise what type of dictator Putin is exactly?

Hitchens put it best in 2009 before his death, commenting on the Russian Orthodox Church elevating Stalin as an icon and defender of Russia, and their heavy involvement with Putin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL15-TULjEQ)

Quote
Believe you me we will all live to see and regret what we have allowed to happen; the conversion of modern Russia into a heavily-armed, aggressive, self-pitying, chauvinistic theocracy
« Last Edit: May 04, 2014, 06:01:18 AM by Tiresais »

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #292 on: May 04, 2014, 10:09:23 AM »
Idiot, we all know that Russian troops were in Crimea. But there has not been any evidence (that stood up to scrutiny and then conveniently removed from the narrative in the West) that Russia troops are operating in Eastern Ukraine. Stop insinuating lies. Everything we have seen shows us that it is the citizens of Eastern Ukraine protesting against the COUP-imposed government. But all you see in the Western media are headlines like: Kiev strikes back! When were they ever under attack? And Ukraine launches Anti-terrorist operation - conveniently just a day after the visit from the CIA director. Their citizens are terrorists now right? Where have we seen that narrative before? Oh yes, it's the tried and true method of the US Government.

Secondly, as evidenced by the articles I quote - my main news sources are the BBC and The Guardian but when it became abundantly clear that they were creating a narrative that was in-line with what the White House wanted to promote, instead of reporting the news impartially and factually, I've begun to include other news sources in my search for a better grasp of what really is going on in Eastern Ukraine. But I know none of that matters to an idiot like you.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #293 on: May 04, 2014, 11:30:05 AM »
Toppa you have attacked me but not the arguments with any success. Russian troops are right now in Eastern Ukraine, just as they were in Crimea, but you are selectively filtering your information. The situation is terrible, but how would you suggest the Ukranian government respond to Russian-backed militias seizing government buildings? In the US you'd see a SWAT team deployed to deal with armed militias seizing buildings, so it's not exactly clear what the appropriate conduct would be here. Clearly the murder of Ukranian citizens by the Ukranian forces is a deplorable forfeiture of their duty to theri own citizens, but it's incredibly hard to know how this happened given the misinformation campaigns by both the Ukranian government and Russia/Putin. In order to contain information, Putin has done stuff like seize Russian social media sites and ramp up anti-western rhetoric on his news outlets, further confusing the situation.

Moreover, Putin's hand in this makes it hard to separate out the genuine will of Ukranians and agitating and arming of violent militias in order to seize control. There's hundreds of thousands of people in these cities - how can we determine if these few thousand represent the majority? Especially when they're armed and funded by Putin, and receiving support and training. Imagine if the most violent nationalists/independence movements in your area were funded and armed by a foreign government, who sent in troops to bolster their numbers.

The US has a terrible record in sponsoring coups and I have no doubt they had a hand in overthrowing the Ukranian president - I've stated this much earlier in the topic. However, dissidence under his regime was strong before US influence, and his clear case of massive corruption makes it hard to compare that situation to Crimea or Eastern Ukraine, where Russian-speaking groups were absolutely not discriminated against.

Again, when will you see the parallels with the Sudetenland Toppa? Is Putin's dismantling of Ukraine not a warning sign to you? Do you trust Putin?

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #294 on: May 04, 2014, 02:07:41 PM »
Ok buddy. Thanks.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #295 on: May 06, 2014, 06:00:22 PM »
The Biggest Loser from Russia Sanctions? Visa

Conventional wisdom says that sanctions against Russia are more palatable to the U.S. than Europe, because U.S. companies have less business to lose. The last part of that sentence is about to become untrue -- at least until the European Union starts punishing Russia's economy.

Two U.S. companies, Visa and Mastercard, will be the first to feel significant blowback from the sanctions. Their losses will exceed even the direct cost that U.S. sanctions to date -- excluding capital flight due to fears of possible future measures -- have inflicted on Russia's financial system.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the national payment system law, which both Visa and Mastercard recently warned investors about in their earnings calls. The new law completely disrupts the business and technological models used by Visa and Mastercard in Russia, where they process about 90 percent of all card transactions.

If they want to continue working on the domestic market, Visa and Mastercard will need to keep transaction data within Russia's borders. The rather vaguely formulated law also tells them to cede "control" of their operations to the Russian central bank or other Russian entities, or else deposit collateral with the central bank to the tune of two days' processing volume. Oh, and there will be fines of up to 10 percent of the collateral deposit per day for unilaterally stopping service to a bank.

That last requirement is a direct response to U.S. sanctions against four Russian banks that belong to President Vladimir Putin's friends. The biggest, Bank Rossiya, is the country's 16th largest by assets. In terms of the size of their retail operations, the sanctioned banks are dwarfs: SMP Bank is only number 30 in private deposits, and the others have even smaller client bases. When the U.S. moved against the banks' owners, clients voted with their feet: Rossiya lost 5 percent of retail deposits in March, and SMP lost 13 percent, even though the sanctions against it came in April: Depositors understood which way the wind was blowing. There must have been further outflows in April, for which data are not yet available.

Still, for the Russian financial system and the U.S. payment networks that serve it, the four banks' problems were barely a hiccup. Visa and Mastercard say the banks accounted for less than 1 percent of their Russian business volumes, before getting cut off from the payment systems.

Russian legislators were, of course, inclined toward vengeance when they drafted their response. They also had valid practical considerations: Someone will need to process domestic payments, even if the entire Russian banking system is hit with U.S. sanctions. So the law Putin signed also decrees the creation of a national card processing system controlled by the central bank, a technological task that can probably be completed by the end of 2014. Several Russian operators have already developed much of the required software.

Visa and Mastercard need to decide whether they want to stay in the game and compete with the national system or just make deals with it for the processing of cross-border transactions, the way they do in China, where the local payment system, UnionPay, has a monopoly on local business, or in France with the Carte Bancaire system.

William Sheedy, Visa's executive vice president for corporate strategy, said on a recent earnings call that "the Russian market is huge business for us as a country, growing faster than any other country we have within the global franchise." Under the new law, however, the costs of continuing to provide full service may outweigh the benefits. According to the Russian central bank, the volume of card transactions in Russia reached 7.3 trillion rubles ($204 billion) in the 4th quarter of 2013. If the two U.S. companies processed 90 percent of that volume, about $2 billion per day, they would have to deposit $4 billion with the central bank between them. Their combined Russian revenue in 2013, at 0.1 percent of transaction volume, looks to have been about $724 million, although that may be a generous estimate: Mastercard says Russia accounts for 2 percent of its revenues, a mere $167 million in 2013.

Then there are the fines for ceasing service, which the card companies will be forced to do in accordance with U.S. law as sanctions are rolled out.

The payment companies are talking to the central bank to clarify their options. "A lot will depend on the dialogue with the Central Bank of Russia, which will establish the rules and the processes by which the legislation actually gets implemented on the ground," Mastercard chief executive Ajay Banga said on an earnings call on May 1. "What's foreign, what's domestic, how do you become more domestic, does on-soil with clearing authorization and settlement make you more domestic? Is it something else that makes you more domestic? Not clear."

Visa chief executive Charlie Scharf cannot believe Russia would go as far as to force the U.S. operators out. "If you just get down to reality for a second, we have 100 million cards in Russia today," he told analysts. "And it's not in anyone's best interest, inclusive of the Russians, to make those cards not available to their own citizens. And so that's why we are hopeful that as this situation unfolds that people understand things like that".

Russia, however, appears to be resigned to the loss of Visa and Mastercard as domestic payment processors, should they consider the costs of keeping that business too high under the new law. It is conceivable that the companies will soon only be able to process cross-border payments for their Russian cardholders. While these provide about 10 times the yield of domestic transactions, Banga says most of the company's Russian revenue comes from domestic payments.

The upshot is the potential loss of a large market for two major U.S. companies. There will also be a considerable cost for the Russian taxpayer, who will foot the bill for the creation of the national payment system, as well as inconvenience for Russian banks and their clients. Yet these will be one-off costs and in the longer term a national payment system is a potentially profitable venture. The Chinese experience inspires Putin's advisers: UnionPay, whose cards are accepted in 135 countries, is now bigger than Mastercard and second only to Visa in processing volume.

The U.S. government needs to think though the effectiveness of sanctions as diligently as European governments do. So far Visa and Mastercard stand to lose more than Ukraine is likely to gain.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-05-06/the-biggest-loser-from-russia-sanctions-visa
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Bakes

  • Promethean...
  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 21980
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #296 on: May 07, 2014, 01:12:09 PM »
Putin announces yet another withdrawal of the imaginary troops

MOSCOW — In an apparent attempt to halt the escalating violence in southeastern Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin said on Wednesday that Russia was pulling troops back from the border, and he urged Ukrainian separatists to call off a referendum on sovereignty they had hoped to hold on Sunday.

Continued...

Offline Toppa

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 5518
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #297 on: May 07, 2014, 06:43:35 PM »
The Guardian reported it slightly differently. He is quoted as calling for the referendum to be "postponed" and those in Donestk said they will consider what Putin has said. In Sloviansk some have expressed a feeling of betrayal.
www.westindiantube.com

Check it out - it real bad!

Offline Bakes

  • Promethean...
  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 21980
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #298 on: May 07, 2014, 09:06:40 PM »
The Guardian reported it slightly differently. He is quoted as calling for the referendum to be "postponed" and those in Donestk said they will consider what Putin has said. In Sloviansk some have expressed a feeling of betrayal.

Toppa now you just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.  Did you check other sources?

Quote
“We were told constantly about concerns over our troops near the Ukrainian border. We have pulled them back. Today they are not at the Ukrainian border but in places of regular exercises, at training grounds,” he said after meeting with Swiss president and current OSCE chief Didier Burkhalter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10814096/Ukraine-crisis-Vladimir-Putin-withdraws-troops-from-border.html



Quote
Russian President Vladimir Putin took a step back from confrontation with the West over Ukraine, calling Wednesday for pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country to postpone an independence referendum that had been scheduled for Sunday. He also said he had withdrawn troops from the Ukrainian border.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ukraine/article18505621/



Quote
Putin also said he had withdrawn some of the estimated 40,000 Russian troops from the Ukraine border. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said "we have seen no change in the Russian force posture along the Ukrainian border."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/07/putin-ukraine-referendum/8802277/


I'll stop at three links.  You refuse to concede that Russia has massed troops on the border, posted comments from Putin 6 weeks ago and you dismissed them.  Same way I remember you dismissing talk of Russian troops being in Crimea.

Offline Tiresais

  • Hero Warrior
  • *****
  • Posts: 2817
    • View Profile
Re: A premature history of the second Cold War and Putin
« Reply #299 on: May 08, 2014, 06:12:03 AM »
Putin signs law forcing bloggers to register with Russian media office
The Verge


President Vladimir Putin has signed a law tightening the Russian government's already strong hold on the internet. Earlier this week, Putin officially passed what's become known as the "bloggers law," which requires popular internet writers to follow rules normally reserved for larger media outlets. Under it, any blogger with more than 3,000 readers is required to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia's media oversight agency. According to Reporters Without Borders, the law covers not only traditional blogs but microblogs and social networks. In addition to following existing laws, writers will be responsible for fact-checking any information they post and removing any inaccurate comments, and they're forbidden from harming the reputation of a person or group or using their platform to "hide or falsify information of general interest."

Aleksey Mitrofanov, head of the State Duma legislative body's information policies committee, has denied that this law regulates bloggers as a kind of mass media. "Special legal regulation for bloggers is to be introduced," he told the ITAR-TASS News Agency when the bill passed in April. "It is the other way around, bloggers who have been registered as an online publication are not subject to the operation of that law." But it apparently strips away one of the most basic elements of blogging: anonymous or pseudonymous publishing. Popular writers will be required to publish their surname, initials, and email address, apparently in addition to registering with the Roskomnadzor. Reporters Without Borders has criticized the law's wording as vague, and Global Voices notes that if a writer falls below 3,000 readers, they apparently bear the burden of proactively trying to get their name removed from the register. According to ITAR-TASS, individual violators will be fined between 10,000 and 30,000 rubles (roughly $280 to $850 at the current exchange rate), while "legal entities" will face fines of 300,000 rubles or $8,500.

Russia passed a sweeping internet-filtering bill in 2012, and the Kremlin has increasingly used its power to pressure critical media outlets. In December of last year, Putin dissolved the venerable RIA Novosti news service, putting its remains under the control of a supporter. A month later, Pavel Durov, founder of "Russian Facebook" VKontakte, sold his stake to an ally of Putin. Popular opposition blogger Alexei Navalny saw his blog blocked by ISPs in March; the news site of chess champion Garry Kasparov, among others, was also caught up in the crackdown. Along with the "blogger law," Putin also signed a bill barring profanity in films, theater, and other media, though its full scope is unclear.

The rules' implications for international bloggers seem nebulous, and while the Roskomnadzor will probably use external traffic measurements, some sites are attempting to make it harder to find a blog's readership. In April, ahead of the bill's passage, search engine Yandex shut down its blog search ranking tool. Later that month, LiveJournal head Dmitry Pilipenko announced that all LiveJournal subscription counts would stop at 2,500, with only bloggers and moderators able to see the real number. Page view-based rankings will also stop. "The above changes are based on plans to take measures to optimize the service," Pilipenko insisted. "All coincidences are accidental."




But he's definitely protecting freedom in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine...

 

1]; } ?>