Jackie Mason '08 Vlog 48 The Russian Georgia Conflict

I love Jackie MasonAs a new Hitler emerges in Russia in the form of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the world is in a serious crisis. Stop Russia from invading Georgia like we should have done when Hitler rolled into Poland and Chekslovakia, or allow Russia to rebuild it's Asian and European Empire once again and thus leading to world war.

At this time in history, can we as a nation afford to have an inexperienced President like Barack Obama?

For the sake of our nation and the world, we must elect John McCain, someone who at least understands this this threat better, and can lead our nation against this and the countless other threats in our future.

Sizing up Medvedev, the next Russian president

Sizing up Medvedev,
the next Russian president
By C.J. Chivers

ALABINO, Russia: Dmitri Medvedev, the man chosen to be the next Russian president, sat surrounded by soldiers. It was Feb. 23, Defenders of the Motherland Day, and Medvedev had traveled to the parade grounds of the Tamanskaya Motorized Rifle Division.

The division has been a perennial character in Russian political life. One of its tanks opened fire on the Parliament building in Moscow in 1993, preserving Boris Yeltsin's presidency. Eight years ago, as a new president, Vladimir Putin, was introducing himself to the world, its platoons fought for the capital of Chechnya, helping forge Putin's persona as a leader of icy resolve.

Now Medvedev, the presidential successor Putin has personally selected, is creating his own public identity. And here, in a mix of Soviet and Russian symbols, the man rising to Kremlin power avoided the stern themes that have often accompanied Putin's appearances.

He wanted to talk about living conditions - for soldiers and citizens alike. "Let's talk about the problems that exist," he said to the soldiers beside him. "Let's have a normal conversation. Please."

The monthlong presidential campaign in Russia has become a season of unstated contrasts. The outcome on March 2, when voters will cast ballots, is already known. Barring something extraordinary and unforeseen, Medvedev, a young and unprepossessing bureaucrat who has never held an elected office, will win by a landslide and become the Kremlin's new leader. He has said he will appoint Putin as his prime minister.

But Medvedev, 42, is a protégé for a former spy who lacks his sponsor's imposing KGB resumé. As he has become the country's second most-watched man, he has implicitly presented himself as both a Putin loyalist and president-in-waiting who will wield power in a manner more gentle than what the world has seen under Putin's brand of rule.

Medvedev, in commentary outside of official Russian circles, has been cast as a puppet - a president who will labor according to Putin's command. But he has made unanticipated moves.

In a speech Feb. 15, he publicly embraced personal freedom, saying that liberty is necessary for the state to have legitimacy among its citizens. He has laid out domestic policy goals that seem to speak to Russia's expanding consumer class.

Medvedev has also struck a campy pose - hamming it up with Deep Purple, the British band whose music was popular in Soviet times - that suggested a dormitory-life playfulness decidedly un-Putinesque.

His words and behavior have raised unexpected but pervasive questions: Does Medvedev mean what he seems to say? Can he relax the Kremlin's grip on Russian political life that has been a central characteristic of Putin's rule? And if he does, will he clash with Putin, his principal source of power?

Analysts are split. Sergei Markov, a political scientist who is close to the Kremlin and a member of Parliament, said Medvedev, a trained lawyer with roots in St. Petersburg, has an affinity for the West. He expects that Medvedev will push for more political freedom - to a point.

"Medvedev will try to encourage political competition within the system without destabilizing the system," Markov said. "How he does this, we will see. But I think stability will be the priority."

He also said that the model Putin has chosen for his transition from Russia's highest office, and Medvedev's flashes of liberal inclinations, could lead to unintended divides in Russia's circles of power. That, he said, is a reason Medvedev will only push so far.

"The Russian government has weak institutions," Markov said. "A split between two personalities could destabilize the political situation, and because politics plays a main role in the Russian economy, if there is a split, it could destabilize the economy, too. So that is a major risk."

Michael McFaul, director of the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University, agreed that Medvedev has a more Western orientation than many Kremlin insiders. But he suggested that his official embrace of freedom was more packaging than substance. "That's public relations," he said. "That's not strategic shift."

As Russians and analysts contemplate the future, the contrasts between president and president-to-be, and between the Kremlin's latest words and the Kremlin's recent history, are visible in many ways, no less than in the very context of the discussion.

The election season here is not an election season as a Westerner would understand it. It is a certification.

Medvedev, who is a first deputy prime minister and chairman of the board at Gazprom, the powerful Russian gas monopoly, has toured the country without the distractions of competition, in part because the government blocked the sole true opposition candidate from the ballot.

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister and critic of the Kremlin, was barred in January by the Central Electoral Commission on the ground that more than 13 percent of the signatures he had collected in support of his candidacy were invalid.

There are three other candidates: Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader who has been marginalized in part by Putin's popularity and his mastery of Soviet nostalgia; Andrei Bogdanov, the almost unknown head of an even less powerful Democratic Party, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist who has served as an unofficial jester in the Kremlin's court.

The remnants of the organized opposition have suggested that these candidates are a troika encouraged to run by the Kremlin to create the appearance of a race. Polls predict that they might capture as little as a combined 20 percent of the vote. With no viable candidate to compete against, the Kremlin has used the run-up to the formalities of inauguration to introduce a new leader.

Medvedev, who emanates intelligence and calm but little intensity, is one step short of supreme; only Putin remains above him. State-controlled television covers him extensively and warmly. There is little public contest over competing ideas about Russia's course, and few questions about whether Medvedev is qualified to be the next leader of a country with 140 million people, a nuclear arsenal and the world's largest hydrocarbon reserves.

Instead, Medvedev has used the campaign as an open microphone, outlining an agenda to make Russia a vibrant and economically diversified state. While the country has rebounded from the financial crisis of the 1990s, it has enduring problems with infrastructure, public health, corruption and an economy that relies on the extraction of natural resources.

Medvedev has promised to improve schools, build housing, encourage business and change the tax codes in ways to encourage household and social stability, including offering tax breaks for retirement savings, charitable donations and education and medical costs.

He has said he will change the healthcare system to allow more choice, and he has challenged the persistent sense that Russia's government, whose bureaucracy has grown in size under Putin and remained inefficient and corrupt, is inevitably elephantine and beyond the ability of citizen's to change.

Much of his agenda overlaps domestic plans that Putin himself has outlined, including fighting corruption and reversing Russia's poor state of public health.

Still, the differences between the two men's styles can be stark. When Medvedev arrived to meet the soldiers here, he had to walk past a huge banner that bore Putin's face beside scenes of weapons and combat.

"The work of a real man - to defend homeland, family and loved ones," the banner read. Putin, an exercise buff and martial-arts expert, can emanate a cat-like fitness and comfort with conflict. Medvedev is trim but has no similar aura. He walked briskly by the poster, looking at the ground.

Unlike Putin, Medvedev, in most of his appearances, has also avoided dwelling on foreign policy themes or discussions about Russia's tensions with the West.

Western capitals are hoping for a shift from Putin's assertiveness. But aside from a statement of support for Serbia and a refusal to recognize Kosovo, Medvedev has not offered a detailed sense of how he views Russia's role in the world.

Few analysts expect significant change.

"Personalities change, but that doesn't change a nation's interests," said Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Institution for Globalization Studies and Social Movements in Moscow.

McFaul, of Stanford, said he also expects that when Medvedev moves to the Kremlin, the United States and Russia will still face diplomatic difficulties, no matter what Medvedev's inclinations might be.

"He's more pro-Western, and more Western in his attitudes, than any of the other candidates out there," he added. "Having said that, he is weak."

One senior Western diplomat said that those following Russia closely have come up with one possible test of whether Medvedev will marshal power. This summer, the Kremlin will send a delegation to the Group of Eight meeting in Japan. Already, informal bets are being placed, he said: will Putin attend, or Medvedev, or both?

Russia bans presidential opponent from running

Russia bans

presidential opponent
from running

The former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov will not be able to take part in Russia’s March presidential elections after the Central Election Committee of the Russian Federation voted for him to be banned. He has called on his supporters to boycott the poll.


Hat Tip to my friend Jenn @ Ft. Hard Knox

For more info click here

Russian bombers to test-fire missiles in Bay of Biscay

For background see 'A Good Old Missile Parade'

January 22, 2008
Russian bombers to test-fire
missiles in Bay of Biscay
Times Online and agencies in Moscow

Russia has sent two long-range bombers to the Bay of Biscay, off the French and Spanish Atlantic coasts, to test-fire missiles in what Moscow billed as its biggest naval exercise in the area since the Soviet era.

A Russian Bear-H bomber

Firing missiles off the coastline of two Nato members is the latest in a series of Kremlin moves flexing Moscow’s military muscle on the world stage.

Russian bombers joined aircraft carriers, battleships and submarine hunters from the Northern and Black Sea fleets for the Atlantic exercises, which come as the country enters an election campaign to choose a successor to President Putin.

“The air force is taking a very active part in the exercises of the navy’s strike force in the Atlantic,” the Russian air force said in a statement reported by Reuters. “Today, two strategic Tu-160 bombers departed for exercises in the Bay of Biscay, which ... will carry out a number of missions and will conduct tactical missile launches."

There was no immediate comment from Nato about the exercise.

Mr Putin has used military manoeuvres, including controversial North Sea overflights, to revive domestic and international respect for Russia’s armed forces which were shattered by the chaos of the 1990s.

He has also boosted military spending, renewed long-range bomber missions and approved a plan to upgrade Russia’s nuclear attack forces, which he said was needed after Nato built up its forces close to Russia’s borders.

But some analysts note that while the sabre-rattling is popular at home, Russian military spending in absolute terms is substantially lower than that of China, Britain or France and less than a tenth of that of the United States.

Discipline is also still a major problem for Russia’s armed forces, which rely heavily on conscripts and outdated equipment.

Russia last month said it would begin major navy sorties into the Mediterranean, with 11 ships backed up by 47 aircraft, that would then travel to the Atlantic for exercises.

The navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Soviet-made Admiral Kuznetsov, was leading the fleet in the Atlantic where Nato were trying to keep a close eye on Russian movements, Russian media reported.

“This is the biggest exercise of its kind in the area since Soviet times,” a spokesman for Russia’s navy said, adding that more details would be released later. There was no further

Information about where in the Bay of Biscay, which lies off the west coast of France and the northern coast of Spain, the missile tests were due to take place.

Russia’s air force said turbo-prop Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers, codenamed “Bear” by Nato, would join ATO, would join the exercise on Wednesday “From January 23, the aviation component in the zone where the exercises are going on will be widened and the following planes will take part: Tu-160, Tu-95, Tu-22 M3, Il-78, A-50,”, the air force said.

A Good Old Missile Parade

If you are my age or older,
You can remember the
USSR Missile Parade

Moscow returns to Soviet era
with weaponry on parade
Luke Harding in Moscow
Monday January 21, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, reviews troops during the military parade on Red Square in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

It was one of the highlights of the Soviet calendar, and a chance for the world's only communist superpower to show off its military might.
For ordinary citizens, it was also a rare opportunity to eyeball their gerontocratic leaders standing on top of Lenin's tomb - and to check that they were still alive, and could wave.

But 17 years after the last communist tanks trundled through Red Square, the Kremlin has decided to revive the Soviet-era practice of parading its big weaponry.

For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, combat vehicles will return to the heart of Moscow, driving past the Kremlin during Russia's annual military parade on May 9, Russia's defence ministry confirmed today.

As well as six thousands soldiers in shiny new uniforms, Russian generals plan to show off their latest tanks and rockets, including the country's new, and lethal, intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol-M.

"Under the plan adopted by the president, land and air military equipment will be involved in the parade on Red Square," General Yuri Solovyov said today. The parade will include the new S-300 missile defence system - which Russia has just sold to Iran - and 32 fighter jets.

The decision to revive one of the most pregnant symbols of the Cold War is likely to provoke criticism from Russia's opposition, who accuse president Vladimir Putin of turning Russia into a pastiche version of the Soviet Union.

It might also raise a few quizzical eyebrows inside Britain's Moscow embassy. Last week Russia forcibly closed the British Council's two regional offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg using what British officials described as "'classic KGB tactics".

On Friday, Britain's ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, compared post-communist Russia to the Soviet Union after officers from Russia's main domestic intelligence agency - the FSB - interrogated British Council workers.

President Putin has already demonstrated his fondness for Soviet emblems. He has updated the Soviet national anthem. Last year he said Russia should preserve the hammer and sickle on victory flags, arguing it was a part of Russia's past.

Today, one observer said that the Kremlin was using different symbols from Russia's Soviet and pre-revolutionary past to recreate a 'new national idea' of Russian greatness.

"It's a very complicated postmodern mix that borrows from the Soviet past, but also from Russia's imperial past and the tsarist era," Nikolay Petrov, scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow said.

He added: "It's an ideological concept. The point is to show that Russia was great before the revolution, was great during Soviet times and to say we are restoring its greatness."

The Soviet Union's military parades, to celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 9 and the Bolshevik revolution on November 7, were a twice-yearly feature of Soviet life, watched by millions live on TV.

The parades invariably featured portraits of Lenin and Stalin, as well as balloons, motorcades and rictus-like grinning folk dancers. Kremlinologists used the occasion to try and divine who might become the next Politburo leader - by scrutinising who stood nearest to the current general secretary.

"We will be using military vehicles. But we haven't decided yet which and how many war machines will be used," Oleg Yushkov, spokesman for the Moscow military district told the Guardian. "We'll know by mid-March," he added.

Combat vehicles were last paraded in Red Square on November 7, 1990, shortly before the Soviet Union vanished. No parades were staged from 1991 to 1994. Parades resumed in 1995, but without any of the tanks and 20 metre-long missiles characteristic of the Soviet epoch.

As well as rehabilitating old Soviet imagery, Putin has also boosted defence spending. After the Soviet Union's demise, Russia's vast military economy collapsed. The squeeze continued in the 1990s, but since 2000 spending has gone up, with last year's budget of $31bn almost four times the amount spent in 2001.