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Russia blames US in missile row
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| Russia blames US in missile row Mr Putin said Russia's actions were not aggressive Russian President Vladimir Putin has said a recent ballistic missile test was in answer to US plans to create a defence shield in Central Europe. Mr Putin said it was a "response to maintain the strategic balance in the world", in what he called a "new round of the arms race". He added that Russia would continue to improve its resources. Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, which can be armed with up to 10 warheads, on Tuesday. These actions by Russia should not be feared, they are not aggressive President Vladimir Putin Europe diary: Missile defence "Our American partners have left the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty," Mr Putin told a press conference. "We have warned them then that we will come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world." 'New weapons' Mr Putin defended Russia's actions, insisting they were not the "initiators of this new round of the arms race". "(Our partners) are stuffing Eastern Europe with new weapons," he said. "A new base in Bulgaria, another in Romania, a site in Poland, radar in the Czech Republic. What are we supposed to do? We cannot just observe all this." He added: "These actions by Russia should not be feared, they are not aggressive, it's just an answer to rather tough and unjustified unilateral actions by partners." Washington wants to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic to counter what it describes as a potential threat from "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea. The US maintains its system is not directed at the Russians, but Moscow says its security is being threatened. Russia's test launch took place at the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on 29 May. The missile, called RS-24, was designed to evade missile defence systems, the Russian defence ministry says. The test missile successfully struck its target 5,500km (3,400 miles) away on the far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces said. |
Ahhhh the cold war all over again...
THIS TIME WE WILL BANKRUPT YOUR COUNTRY ALL THE WAY!!! YOUR COUNTRY IS IN RUINS, YOU SUB FLEET IS RUSTING AND YOUR NAVY IS A FOCKING CROCK!!! ONLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA WILL SUFFER CAUSE OF THAT PUSSY PUTIN AND STUPID FOCKING RUSSIANS LIKE YOU!!!
/my typical neo-con response
sad really when people in Russia are starving and your economy is a joke.... Yeah lets build some missiles
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| Originally posted by LazFX Ahhhh the cold war all over again... THIS TIME WE WILL BANKRUPT YOUR COUNTRY ALL THE WAY!!! YOUR COUNTRY IS IN RUINS, YOU SUB FLEET IS RUSTING AND YOUR NAVY IS A FOCKING CROCK!!! ONLY THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA WILL SUFFER CAUSE OF THAT PUSSY PUTIN AND STUPID FOCKING RUSSIANS LIKE YOU!!! /my typical neo-con response sad really when people in Russia are starving and your economy is a joke.... Yeah lets build some missiles |
starving people, OMG, stop showing your stupidity
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| Originally posted by star-traveller Why do you bother answering if you don't anything on what is in Russia now anyway? |
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| Originally posted by star-traveller starving people, OMG, stop showing your stupidity |
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| 36 Million Russians Cannot Afford Eating Every Day Overcoming of poverty does not belong to the Russian government top-priorities At today’s sitting of the government, results of social and economical development of Russia within post-crisis years will be discussed. While yesterday’s widened collegium of Labour and Social Development Ministry, organised by minister Alexandr Pochinok, seems to have been timed to this sitting. At the collegium however, it turned out that spite bettering of basic figures, there is nothing to be proud of: almost 36 million Russians live under poverty verge. At least several times a year, Alexandr Pochinok illustrates with figures Stalin’s old slogan: “Living has become better, living has become more joyous.” Yesterday, Pochinok in particular noticed that the population real incomes increased by 8.8 percent in 2002, real salary – by 16.6 percent, while real pension – by 16.4 percent. Though, percent figures cannot deceive Russian citizens. Even Pochinok himself must have admit that, according to a preliminary estimation, about 36 million Russians, or every fourth Russian citizen, lives today under poverty verge. Though, the minister notices, in 2002, about 2 million citizens succeeded in overpass of this verge. And what about the rest? This probably was not reported to the minister. The labour minister did not tried to evade a slippery question: the difference between incomes of the rich and the poor. According to him, this correlation has remained on the 2001 level: 14 to 1. Though, these are official figures. And what about the reality? Either Pochinok, or his subordinates hardly know it. And they are hardly interested in it. The minister noticed that the problem of salary and social payments is still pointed. In particular, he said, arrears of wages made 30.6 billion rubles in 2002. Though, Pochinok immediately noticed that was not the federal centre guilt, the question is that the money is not paid on regional level. The regions still spend money for non-proper aims. Among positive tendencies, Mr Pochinok noticed 3.6-time reduction of strikes in 2002. According to him, this is connected with the government active work for development of social partnership. The situation in labour market is said to have become better, too. In particular, employment figures in 2002 were the best within last seven years. According to International Labour Organisation, the number of unemployed reduced by 14 percent and made 5.5 million people or 7 percent of economically active population. 3.9 million Russians found job in 2002 (however the ministry does not know how many of these 3.9 million succeeded in holding out on the found work for more than 3 months). Actually, it is not so difficult to find a job. Though it is more difficult to find a job at least to subsist on it. While it is much more difficult to make the employer pay the promised salary. Though, that are unnecessary details for Labour Ministry. PRAVDA.Ru already wrote about Pochinok’s obvious incompetence as labour minister. Though, the question is probably not only about professional unfitness of some ministers, but in the essence of the government policy. The government is not concerned with increasing real welfare of Russian citizens. The population’s claims to the government were in the best way expressed by the State Duma deputy and co-chairman of the Liberal Russia, Viktor Pokhmelkin. In particular, Pokhmelkin said the state had by the moment some reserves to increase pensions to the level of living wage. In fact, Zurabov and Pochinok, if they cannot manage their task, have to send in their resignation. Though, this is not the main problem. According to Pokhmelkin, this government as well as the previous ones, express the bureaucracy interests, but not that ones of the people. It does not formulate its task like overcoming of poverty, this is why the gap between the poor and the rich is growing bigger. According to Viktor Pokhmelkin, now nobody is shocked with the government ministers richness. While labour minister Pochinok should be ashamed for living in too luxurious conditions in such a poor country, like Russia. Pochinok’s wife, as well known, possesses a big casino in Moscow, so Pochinok’s prosperous life could be explained. Though, it is at least immoral to show this luxury to millions of poor TV viewers. Dmitry Slobodyanyuk PRAVDA.Ru Translated by Vera Solovieva |
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| Since the beginning of the year, protests have been under way, primarily by pensioners, against the transformation of social benefits into substantially smaller cash payments. (See: “Russia: wave of protests against welfare cuts,” 27 January, 2005; and “Russia: Putin lays siege to social benefits,” 21 September, 2004.) Government propaganda has sought to attribute the spread of protests to problems in the implementation of the new laws on social security benefits, while insisting the laws themselves are necessary and inevitable. However, protests by pensioners are only the tip of the iceberg. The underlying cause of growing discontent is the enormous degree of social inequality that has resulted from the introduction of capitalism in the former Soviet Union. In his New Year speech, President Vladimir Putin maintained that the social situation of most Russians had improved over the previous year. Just a few days later, however, the outbreak of protests indicated what broad sections of the population thought about this question. Even a cursory examination of the social situation in modern Russia reveals a deeply divided society. An array of statistics documents the reality of two different worlds that hardly come into contact with one another. One—the world of wealth and luxury—is inhabited by an insignificant minority. The other—the world of social decline and an arduous struggle for life’s necessities—is inhabited by millions upon millions. Figures showing the distribution of wealth reveal the glaring nature of this social polarisation. According to government data, the incomes of the very richest members of Russian society are 15 times those of the poorest—one of the highest levels of social inequality to be found among the world’s leading countries. In Moscow, this difference is 53-fold. Below the poverty line According to figures published by the World Bank at the end of last year, 20 percent of the Russian population lives below the poverty line, which is defined as a monthly income of 1,000 roubles (less than 30 euros, or $38). The great majority of Russian families are teetering on the edge of poverty. The World Bank has calculated that an average decrease in income of 10 percent would produce a 50 percent rise in the poverty rate. The majority of the poor in Russia are to be found among working families headed by adults with average technical professional training, and in families with children. Most of the poor workers are employed in the public sector, including teachers, physicians and low-ranking civil servants. The occupations with the lowest incomes—including those employed in the health services, such as nurses and medics—are of great social importance. The poor living conditions of those employed in these sectors contribute to a decline in the structures upon which a functioning society is based. The well-off receive greater privileges and benefits than the poor or the near-poor. The World Bank writes that medium-level social allowances (with the exception of those for children) paid to the relatively rich exceed those received by poorer social layers. Russia’s National Statistics Office officially classifies a total of 31 million people (22 percent of the population) as poor. Other surveys, however, place the poverty rate at 40 percent or higher. The All-Russian Centre for Living Standards published the following figures for the varying degrees of poverty: At the end of 2003, average monthly income was calculated at 2,121 roubles (60 euros/$77 a month), with those who are employed receiving 2,300 roubles (65 euros/$83) and pensioners receiving 1,600 roubles (45 euros/$58). Those whose income falls below these levels are defined as poor. A second category, those who are badly off, includes families where per-capita income lies between 2,121 and 4,400 roubles (60-126 euros/$77-$161). A significant section of the population can be found in these two categories. The Centre for Living Standards regards the “middle layers” as households with a per-capita monthly income of between 4,400 roubles and 15,000 roubles (126-430 euros/$161-$550). By Western standards, this level of income would represent poverty. Pensioners and young people constitute the poorest sections of Russian society. The Social Opinions Fund has found that practically no young people (just 1 percent) are saving for their old age. Two thirds of young people who were asked said they could not afford to buy anything. Young people living in the countryside or in small cities are at greatest risk of being poor. In contrast to Western countries, where poverty is often concentrated in the large cities, the poor are more frequently found in Russia’s villages and towns. Families with children are exposed to the constant danger of poverty, particularly those with two, three or more children. Children from families with low incomes have substantially decreased chances of going on to gain an apprenticeship after graduating high school. Only 15 percent of children from poor families go to the more specialised technical colleges and universities. A low level of education is an important factor in the persistence of poverty. The poor are more frequently ill or succumb to alcohol. The incidence of tuberculosis in Russia is 10 times higher than in Europe. Scientists have calculated that since the beginning of the 1990s, some 8 million Russians have died prematurely. The mortality rate has risen one-and-a-half times over the same period. In 2003, it reached a high point at 16.4 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants. The average Russian man can presently expect to live only to 58. That means married women, on average, are widowed for 15 years. This is due both to women’s greater life expectancy and to the younger age at which women marry. Despite the adversities of everyday life in the Soviet Union, for most people the social situation was substantially better than that which exists in contemporary Russia. Today, the minimum wage covers only 27 percent of what is needed to sustain an adult of working age; the child benefit covers just 3 percent of necessary expenditure for a child; and the minimum pension covers only 46 percent of the minimum expenditure of a pensioner. In the Soviet Union, the minimum wage amounted to one-and-a-half times the minimum required consumption. Russia’s minimum wage would have to be trebled to cover the minimum level of consumption. A serious struggle against poverty is impossible without a real reform of the educational system and health service. Both would have to be made accessible to broad layers of the population. However, the tendency is in the opposite direction. For increasing numbers of Russians, it is becoming clear that further capitalist “reforms” will not improve their situation. The wealthy end of the spectrum Then there is the other Russia. It finds its personification in figures like Roman Abramovich, governor of the remote region of Chukotka (just across the Bering Strait from Alaska) and owner of a controlling interest in the Russian oil giant Sibneft. He is considered the richest man in Britain, where he now resides. Two years ago, he acquired the English soccer club Chelsea for an astronomical sum. Russia is ranked third in the world for the number of billionaires, and thirteenth for having the largest enterprises. Taken as a whole, the fortunes of Russia’s billionaires amount to nearly half as much as the total value of the largest Russian enterprises. By comparison, in the US, this sum amounts to 6 percent. The greatest part of shareholdings in the largest Russian enterprises can be found in the hands of this tiny social layer. According to the World Bank, in 2003, the 23 largest business groups account for 57 percent of all of Russia’s industrial production. Forbes magazine has calculated that, measured against the economic output of the country ($458 billion), there are more billionaires in Russia (36) than anywhere else in the world. The total assets of these 36 richest Russians amounts to $110 billion—24 percent of the country’s economic output. Most of the Russian billionaires and multimillionaires control raw materials and their associated industries. According to Forbes, this applies to 66 of the 100 richest Russians. The 34 others have gained their wealth from new business fields—above all, telecommunications, construction, food production and retail trade. The incomes of the top managers are also incomparably greater than those of the ordinary citizen or pensioner. Gaseta.ru cites data showing they receive annually between $1 million and $3 million. The president of Lukoil gets $1.5 million. If the business achieves certain goals, he enjoys a bonus of $2.2 million. The vice president gets $800,000 annually, with up to $1.1 million in bonuses. The picture was the same at Yukos, until it was liquidated by the state. In large-scale enterprises like the United Mechanical Engineering Works and the Tyumen oil company, basic executive salaries amount to $500,000 and more. Oleg Deripaska, the boss of the Basis Element aluminium producer, paid taxes of $294 million in 2001 on his income in the Siberian Republic of Khakassia. His pay constituted 10 percent of the total income of the republic. The “new Russians,” as they are sometimes called, often live abroad, where they can be found in the most expensive hotels, clubs and restaurants. They possess racehorses, yachts and mansions. Practically every billionaire has his own yacht and airplane. They particularly enjoy buying expensive antiques and jewelery, as well as purchasing real estate in the most expensive areas of Europe’s capitals. A special attraction for them is London. Russians constitute a third of all foreign investors on the London property market. Over the past 10 years, the number of British visas given to Russians has increased eightfold. Of 250,000 Russians living in London, 700 are multimillionaires. New Year celebrations are the high point of profligate consumption for the Russian nouveaux riches. The International Herald Tribune reported recently that some 20,000 Russians “wallowed in luxury, ate, drank and went shopping” in the elite boutiques of the ski resort of Courchevel, which lies in a snow-covered corner of the French Alps. In this spa resort can be found four-star hotels like Les Grandes Alpes, where a room costs between 550 and 1,250 euros ($704 and $1,600) per night. In the hotel restaurant, one can drink wines for a mere 1,750 euros ($2,239) a bottle. A new suite opened in the hotel Byblos des Neiges recently that measures 220 square metres and costs 6,500 euros ($8,318) a night. The International Herald Tribune writes that Russian ski teachers are being employed to cope with the wave of Russian tourists in Courchevel, where Russian advertisements can be seen everywhere. “This is wonderful business for us,” explained the owner of one local four-star hotel. This is the reality behind the invocations of “national unity” proclaimed by the Putin government. It is no wonder that ordinary Russians increasingly demonstrate their discontent and protest against the worsening of their situation. These protests will inevitably continue and intensify under conditions in which the government lacks any solution for Russia’s mounting social problems. |
come on Laz. Russia has a bright future with all those escorts.
Can't we just have one thread titled "Star-Traveller and Metalgearsolid's wank-fest over Russia, China and the 'please please please God' next Cold War"?
That way this board wouldn't be chockablock full of random threads that just happen to mention Russia on the international stage?
Failing that, here's some sources star-traveller may feel interested in looking at himself (without having to subject the rest of us to it every ten minutes)...
http://news.bbc.co.uk
www.cnn.com
Its ridiculous.
Russia already has detterent capable enough against the west.
These missile interceptors can knock down only one or two incoming missiles at a time. They would serve as inadequate protection against the hundreds that would be storming a westward if Russia would want to get in on the fun of WWIII.
It really is only good against "rouge" nations.
Well it's not actually good against even rogue states at the moment seeing as it doesn't work!
However, if it did work, it would pretty much neutralise China's nuclear arsenal and with all the other planned and possible compenents (and depending on the speed America could mass produce these "defences") it could provide a credible defence against Russia's arsenal too (but like I said, the BMD doesn't work)
I am all for it. Let Russia build sophisticated strategic defense systems to defend itself against this encroachment by NATO and their allies an an excuse to fight Iran. Its such a big pile of bullshit when they are installing bases and missile defense / radar systems all over Eastern Bloc countries and around Russia (Georgia) and are claiming its all against Iran. I dont buy that crap. They started building these bases before Iran declared its nuclear power intentions. Russia successfully tested recently new systems that are faster and more maneuvrable than any previous strategic weapons systems. And there's no reason it shouldn't - there's the threat of NATO - that along with USA regularly criticize Russia, terrorists, rogue states ...
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium I am all for it. Let Russia build sophisticated strategic defense systems to defend itself against this encroachment by NATO and their allies an an excuse to fight Iran. Its such a big pile of bullshit when they are installing bases and missile defense / radar systems all over Eastern Bloc countries and around Russia (Georgia) and are claiming its all against Iran. I dont buy that crap. They started building these bases before Iran declared its nuclear power intentions. Russia successfully tested recently new systems that are faster and more maneuvrable than any previous strategic weapons systems. And there's no reason it shouldn't - there's the threat of NATO - that along with USA regularly criticize Russia, terrorists, rogue states ... |
x100,000,000,000
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| Originally posted by emc^2 You're a perfect lap dog of putin's brainwashing system. Oh well... Once a SLAVe, always a SLAVe. F*ck russians - they should keep mouths shut. One of the biggest arms suppliers to middle eastern terrorists and enemies of US all over the world, including Hamas, Hizbolah, Iran, and others. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiap...iban/index.html NO SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS DONE MORE TO DE-STABILIZE THE PEACE THAN RUSSIA. NOT EVEN US WITH ALL ITS CONFLICTS AND WARS. IF ANTI-CHRIST AND ALL THE HORSEMEN OF APOCALYPSE WERE TO CHOSE A PRIMARY RESIDENCE, IT WOULD MOST LIKELY BE IN KREMLIN. |
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| Originally posted by star-traveller You are one stupid american. Brainwashed by the system that doesn't differ from the USSR much. |
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| Originally posted by star-traveller You are one stupid american. Brainwashed by the system that doesn't differ from the USSR much. |
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| Originally posted by emc^2 Seriozno? Ya takoi zhe amerikanets kak ty umniy. Ya viros v USSR, tak chto, pozhaluista - otstav' pizdesh nahui, okey? Vash putin vseh vas v zhopu ebet ne menshe Busha. Tol'ko vam eto nravit'sa. Tak chto, stanovites' v pozu. Translated: Seriously? I'm as "American" as you are smart. I grew up in USSR, so please - leave the BS, ok? Your Putin f*cks you in the a$$ as much as Bush does us. Difference between us - you happen to enjoy it. So, assume the position. |
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| Originally posted by LazFX fuck even a hispanic from the USA can school you on your own country?/ You Are a Fucking JOKE!!!! 36 Million Russians Cannot Afford Eating Every Day oh and here is some more you focking CUNNT!! Wealth and poverty in modern Russia It is no wonder that ordinary Russians increasingly demonstrate their discontent and protest against the worsening of their situation. These protests will inevitably continue and intensify under conditions in which the government lacks any solution for Russia’s mounting social problems |
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| Fascist America, in 10 easy steps From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all Tuesday April 24, 2007 The Guardian Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody. They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration. Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have. It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise. Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US. 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end." Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth. It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms. 2. Create a gulag Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guant�namo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place. At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well. This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising. With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guant�namo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street. Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately. But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niem�ller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guant�namo set a dangerous precedent for them, too. By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions. 3. Develop a thug caste When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution. The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities. Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order". 4. Set up an internal surveillance system In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched. In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent. 5. Harass citizens' groups The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone. Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition. 6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list. In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens. Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list". "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee. "I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution." "That'll do it," the man said. Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life. James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guant�namo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest. Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list. It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off. 7. Target key individuals Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors. Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933. Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them. Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job. Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow. 8. Control the press Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already. The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration. Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career. Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers. Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers. You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. 9. Dissent equals treason Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution. Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade. In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors". And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly. Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guant�namo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guant�namo, is all isolation cells.) We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR. Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now. 10. Suspend the rule of law The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens. Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'." Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction. Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that. Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion. It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster." As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone. That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs". What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise. What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite. Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world. We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now. "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry. � Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September. |
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| Originally posted by emc^2 You're a perfect lap dog of putin's brainwashing system. Oh well... Once a SLAVe, always a SLAVe. F*ck russians - they should keep mouths shut. One of the biggest arms suppliers to middle eastern terrorists and enemies of US all over the world, including Hamas, Hizbolah, Iran, and others. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiap...iban/index.html NO SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS DONE MORE TO DE-STABILIZE THE PEACE THAN RUSSIA. NOT EVEN US WITH ALL ITS CONFLICTS AND WARS. IF ANTI-CHRIST AND ALL THE HORSEMEN OF APOCALYPSE WERE TO CHOSE A PRIMARY RESIDENCE, IT WOULD MOST LIKELY BE IN KREMLIN. Let's not forget to thank Russia for supplying Iran with means and know-how to manufacture nukes. Just STFU, you t00l. Putin needed an excuse - he got it. Besides, what can you expect from this KGB scum who said that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was disbandoment of USSR and who said Stalin is his role model? Looks like Commie cancer is still alive, well, and strong. Besides, what better way to unite bunch of disinformed, dis-enchanted, poor and hungry people than behind an old and familiar cause? What irks me the most is that how Bush and Putin continue to call each other "PARTNER". x100,000,000,000It's sad that TERRORISTS HAVE WON. This is a separate discussion but Osama should consider attacking US success beyond any imagination. He accomplished more than destroy 3000+ lives +landmarks. He allowed neocons to take over AND CHANGE THE WORLD! Freedom is fast becoming non-existent under blanket of terrorist war, international ties are strained to the point of rupture (like in this case) + U.S. can be officially considered "all bark, no bite". If this doesn't define "successful mission" + "mission accomplished" - for Osama, I don't know what would.... and he's ALIVE AND FREE! p.s. still, F*CK russia... and |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium Shut the f up, idiot. You dont know Russia. You only see it from western TV screens. Russia doesnt have the money or the power to destabilize the situation in the world. Last time I checked its countries like US and UK that invade others, carpet bomb them and incite all the radical movements. Russia is not funding Iran. Its not any different than US selling sophisticated weapons systems to world dictators from China to Pakistan to Indonesia. US is the world's LARGEST weapons smuggler, seller. So keep your mouth shut if you dont know what you are talking about. The wars in the Middle East are not fought because of Russia. And 9/11 terrorists were not funded by Russia or whatever you might want to believe. Iran doesnt have the capability to even have a nuclear reactor at the moment, you idiot. The reactors are NOT COMPLETE. So clear up your head and think twice before claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Russia is giving them nukes. Far from the truth. You are a big asshole too, you seriously havent read enough of my posts. I hate communism. I really do. And I love Russia, I support my motherland, support my culture and my people. Just because things are not perfect there I am not going to ditch it in favour of idiots like you who know little about the subject other than throwing nasty words and meaningless statements. But you are double-standarded on the issue, it seems and dont understand politics as a whole. Because of idiots like you who are in control of some western countries, there's such strong anti-Russian rhetoric, no wonder why Russia is alarmed and are rebuilding their weapons and borders because they can see the threats from idiots and thin-minded people like you. Instead of welcoming and helping Russia into the western world, Russia is treated with suspicion, criticized, ignored and its cries for economic and political help in 1990s were ignored. Instead companies were eagier to make huge profits from Russia's resources, and today these same companies who have made so much money from people's suffering and who have done almost nothing to help Russia politically and economically are whining that their power and control over Russia's resources is being taken away. Cry babies. |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium Shut the f up, idiot. You dont know Russia. You only see it from western TV screens. Russia doesnt have the money or the power to destabilize the situation in the world. Last time I checked its countries like US and UK that invade others, carpet bomb them and incite all the radical movements. Russia is not funding Iran. Its not any different than US selling sophisticated weapons systems to world dictators from China to Pakistan to Indonesia. US is the world's LARGEST weapons smuggler, seller. So keep your mouth shut if you dont know what you are talking about. The wars in the Middle East are not fought because of Russia. And 9/11 terrorists were not funded by Russia or whatever you might want to believe. Iran doesnt have the capability to even have a nuclear reactor at the moment, you idiot. The reactors are NOT COMPLETE. So clear up your head and think twice before claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Russia is giving them nukes. Far from the truth. You are a big asshole too, you seriously havent read enough of my posts. I hate communism. I really do. And I love Russia, I support my motherland, support my culture and my people. Just because things are not perfect there I am not going to ditch it in favour of idiots like you who know little about the subject other than throwing nasty words and meaningless statements. But you are double-standarded on the issue, it seems and dont understand politics as a whole. Because of idiots like you who are in control of some western countries, there's such strong anti-Russian rhetoric, no wonder why Russia is alarmed and are rebuilding their weapons and borders because they can see the threats from idiots and thin-minded people like you. Instead of welcoming and helping Russia into the western world, Russia is treated with suspicion, criticized, ignored and its cries for economic and political help in 1990s were ignored. Instead companies were eagier to make huge profits from Russia's resources, and today these same companies who have made so much money from people's suffering and who have done almost nothing to help Russia politically and economically are whining that their power and control over Russia's resources is being taken away. Cry babies. |
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium Shut the f up, idiot. You dont know Russia. You only see it from western TV screens. Russia doesnt have the money or the power to destabilize the situation in the world. Last time I checked its countries like US and UK that invade others, carpet bomb them and incite all the radical movements. Russia is not funding Iran. Its not any different than US selling sophisticated weapons systems to world dictators from China to Pakistan to Indonesia. US is the world's LARGEST weapons smuggler, seller. So keep your mouth shut if you dont know what you are talking about. The wars in the Middle East are not fought because of Russia. And 9/11 terrorists were not funded by Russia or whatever you might want to believe. Iran doesnt have the capability to even have a nuclear reactor at the moment, you idiot. The reactors are NOT COMPLETE. So clear up your head and think twice before claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Russia is giving them nukes. Far from the truth. You are a big asshole too, you seriously havent read enough of my posts. I hate communism. I really do. And I love Russia, I support my motherland, support my culture and my people. Just because things are not perfect there I am not going to ditch it in favour of idiots like you who know little about the subject other than throwing nasty words and meaningless statements. But you are double-standarded on the issue, it seems and dont understand politics as a whole. Because of idiots like you who are in control of some western countries, there's such strong anti-Russian rhetoric, no wonder why Russia is alarmed and are rebuilding their weapons and borders because they can see the threats from idiots and thin-minded people like you. Instead of welcoming and helping Russia into the western world, Russia is treated with suspicion, criticized, ignored and its cries for economic and political help in 1990s were ignored. Instead companies were eagier to make huge profits from Russia's resources, and today these same companies who have made so much money from people's suffering and who have done almost nothing to help Russia politically and economically are whining that their power and control over Russia's resources is being taken away. Cry babies. |
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| AFP News brief Gates optimistic about China despite military buildup 02/06/07 06h31 GMT+1 by Jim Mannion The United States and China turned down the heat Saturday in a simmering dispute over Beijing's military buildup, with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates expressing optimism about future relations. After Gates spoke at a Asian security conference here, a top Chinese general defended his country's increased military spending as purely defensive and said it was "gradually making progress" in meeting US demands for greater openness. Gates downplayed past US rhetoric on China's military might, alluding only in passing to a recent Pentagon report that detailed Beijing's drive to modernise its armed forces. "We are concerned about the opaqueness of Beijing's military spending and modernization programmes -- issues described in the annual report on the Chinese armed forces recently released by the US government," Gates said. "But as General Pete Pace, our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out, there is some difference between 'capacity' and 'intent.' And I believe there is reason to be optimistic about the US-China relationship." Gates was speaking to regional security officials attending the Shangri-La Dialogue, a conference organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, an independent think-tank. His mild tone contrasted sharply with that taken by his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld, who used the same forum two years ago to sharply question China's intentions in building up its military. A senior US defence official told reporters traveling with Gates that China has met or exceeded the military milestones identified two years ago, putting it on a path to become a force capable of thwarting US forces in the region. But he said Gates decided to let the Pentagon report speak for itself, in part to encourage greater engagement and openness by China. "We have increased military-to-military contacts between all levels of our militaries, most recently dramatised when General Pace sat in the cockpit of the top-of-the-line Chinese fighter during his last visit," Gates said. |
Of course the US will try to kiss China ass by any possible means. They could afford a war with Russia, but having it with both Russia and China will be too much for them.
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| Originally posted by Magnetonium Shut the f up, idiot. You dont know Russia. You only see it from western TV screens. Russia doesnt have the money or the power to destabilize the situation in the world. Last time I checked its countries like US and UK that invade others, carpet bomb them and incite all the radical movements. Russia is not funding Iran. Its not any different than US selling sophisticated weapons systems to world dictators from China to Pakistan to Indonesia. US is the world's LARGEST weapons smuggler, seller. So keep your mouth shut if you dont know what you are talking about. The wars in the Middle East are not fought because of Russia. And 9/11 terrorists were not funded by Russia or whatever you might want to believe. Iran doesnt have the capability to even have a nuclear reactor at the moment, you idiot. The reactors are NOT COMPLETE. So clear up your head and think twice before claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Russia is giving them nukes. Far from the truth. You are a big asshole too, you seriously havent read enough of my posts. I hate communism. I really do. And I love Russia, I support my motherland, support my culture and my people. Just because things are not perfect there I am not going to ditch it in favour of idiots like you who know little about the subject other than throwing nasty words and meaningless statements. But you are double-standarded on the issue, it seems and dont understand politics as a whole. Because of idiots like you who are in control of some western countries, there's such strong anti-Russian rhetoric, no wonder why Russia is alarmed and are rebuilding their weapons and borders because they can see the threats from idiots and thin-minded people like you. Instead of welcoming and helping Russia into the western world, Russia is treated with suspicion, criticized, ignored and its cries for economic and political help in 1990s were ignored. Instead companies were eagier to make huge profits from Russia's resources, and today these same companies who have made so much money from people's suffering and who have done almost nothing to help Russia politically and economically are whining that their power and control over Russia's resources is being taken away. Cry babies. |
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