Sundance HACKED! OMG!

Sundance Film Festival was hacked.  

The Russians did it!

Predatory Russians UPDATED

The Witch hunt is alive and well in the US.  And Democrats with witless Republicans are chasing after the perpetual enemy of all that is holy - Russia.  Well, at least part of that is true.

And Democrats have to demonize the Russians.  They MUST.  In an ongoing effort to de-legitimize Trump's election, and diminish the reconciliation Trump will manage with Putin (look at how bad the Russians are, how can he be friends with them, they haven't even apologized for x,y,z).

After reading several columns / JV writing bits in the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, and Seattle Intelligencer ... I thought we were dealing with an arch-enemy after finishing the last paper.  Diabolical and evil.  The Soviet Union reincarnate.  I was fearful and wanted to hide under my table.  Afraid to look outside that a Russian spy might be lurking at Elliott Bay or under the Needle.

I reminded myself I too had been hacked by the Russian government.  I had a malware installed on my computer and after consulting with a very reliable tech consultant in Colorado, I was informed it was Russian malware and the Russian hackers wanted bitcoins before they gave the code to decrypt the files.  Those damned Russians.  Always hacking computers.  How did they know I was the Green Hornet!

And Kennedy, look what they did to President Kennedy - they murdered him.  Oswald was Russian, his wife was Russian - the Russian government was involved.  Killing our presidents and hacking our elections and electrical grids.  We need to nuke them quick.


Then I climbed out from under the table, stood up, shook off the fear and reminded myself liberal retards had written that rubbish.  Bad people can be Russian, English, French, Egyptian, Saudi, Yemeni, Afghan ... and if you are a bad person, why not head to Nigeria.  Every email scam is Nigerian, and Nigerians buy computers and some of them come from Russia, therefore the Russians are behind every computer scam.

THAT is the level of intelligence being passed off today in the media and by our government.

Retards.

Is Putin innocent of all crimes and misdemeanors?  Nope.  probably should be indicted for something (including ordering assassinations), but not for hacking the electrical system nor the voting system (you want a nearly 100% means of ensuring it won't be hacked - I should get paid for this - STOP with internet or digital, return to days of paper.  It may take a couple days, but the level of corruption will be no higher than the 1960 election.).

Russian policing of their internet is primitive.  The bad guys in Russia are better than the police and if you want to be a bad guy, go to Russia, or not wanting the hassle, route your actions through Russian servers.

What could these 'bad agents' want?  Easy peasey.  MONEY.  Even a Hillary supporter should be able to figure that out.

Find a weak link, sell it to Al Qaida or ISIS (the JV team and not the JV writers at the major media outposts) ... to use against the US.  Could they be Russian citizens?  Possible, but also possible they aren't.


However, in the US, fear feeds fear, especially if you are a fear-monger - AKA Democrats.

From Bloomberg -

BURLINGTON, Vt. –  Malware code linked to Russian hackers and found on a Vermont electric utility's computer is further evidence of "predatory" steps taken by that country against the U.S., a Vermont Democratic congressman said Saturday.

(so maybe we need 1000 more nukes to help)

 The Burlington Electric Department confirmed Friday it had found on one of its laptops the malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, the name Homeland Security has applied to a Russian campaign linked to recent hacks. The company said U.S. utilities were alerted by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday of the code.

"This attack shows how rampant Russian hacking is. It's systemic, relentless, predatory," Rep. Peter Welch said in a statement. "They will hack everywhere, even Vermont, in pursuit of opportunities to disrupt our country."

(Welch should be retired.  He is a twit, twat, and a fear-monger)

 Welch said the breach also underscores that sanctions President Barack Obama took against Russia this week were warranted. Russia, which has denied hacking U.S. systems, has been accused of interference in the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.
Sen. Patrick Leahy said the latest discovery of the malware "goes beyond hackers having electronic joy rides." It is the latest example that state-sponsored Russian hacking is a serious threat, the Vermont Democrat said in a statement Friday.

 (AS I stated above, THEY MUST argue this to discredit Trump, diminish any effort at reconciliation, and carve out a whacking stone they can take a swat at whenever they are feeling hurt)
 
The Washington Post first reported on the Vermont utility's discovery of the malware. Burlington Electric, which is municipally owned, confirmed in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that it detected the malware in a laptop not connected to its grid systems. It said it took "immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials."

....

(and a governor who deserves to be retired also, another fear-monger who knows less about less)

"Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world's leading thugs, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety," the governor (Peter Shumlin)  said in a statement.

 NOW, the coup de grâs ... "it detected the malware in a laptop not connected to its grid systems."
[emphasis is mine]

Hmmm.  Someone took the laptop home, used it at home, downloaded emails or visited webpages they shouldn't have, received a virus, went to work, plugged it in, and the virus checker found the malware.

It was not connected to the grid, had not been, and the virus it received was separate from and unrelated to the grid or the electric company.  But, when you're a Democrat, you don't need to tell the truth - use it to your advantage and the witless Republicans fall all over themselves like seizure victims.

And these people are the leaders.

Oh dear Lord.  Protect us from the witless and hapless many, who do more to harm the United States than all our foreign enemies combined.



UPDATED:
The Washington Post, without apologizing or calling to task the morons who made ridiculous comments did run a new story about this issue -

"An employee at Burlington Electric Department was checking his Yahoo email account Friday and triggered an alert indicating that his computer had connected to a suspicious IP address associated by authorities with the Russian hacking operation that infiltrated the Democratic Party. "


 But they are sticking with the Russians infiltrating the DNC ... media quoting Democrats quoting other Democrats who quote the media who hear it from one source ...

You are worse than the National Enquirer.  They are respectable. 

Phone Calls!

So Donald Trump called the President of China last week, spoke to him.  Outrageous!

He called Putin!  Scandalous.

He called the Philippine President!   Oh My God.  What has he done!

He spoke to the President of Taiwan!

Liberals are going bat-shit crazy.  They are out of their minds!

My prediction - we will develop a better relationship with Russia than any re-set button accomplished, than any diplomacy by the Secretary of State ever accomplished.  We will have a better relationship with the Philippines (no more son of a bitch comments).  The Chinese will, respect us.  And we will stop pretending about so many things in the world.  Refreshing.

On January 21, 2009, at approximately 12:45-1:00 pm, Barack Hussein Obama made his first phone call as President of the United States.  In the decades past, that phone call had ALWAYS AND EVERY SINGLE TIME been to the Prime Minister of Canada.  Mr. Obama changed all that.  I am sure he consulted with the State Department as has become such an issue, and suggestion to Trump, recently, given that Trump did not ... Obama called ... the leader of the Fatah political party in the West Bank - Mahmoud Abbas.


Yep.

So, liberals, go bat-shit crazy over this, just remember ... Obama had 8 years of phone calls, and none of his foreign policy has worked out well.

The books will be written and will not all be kind.

It looks like Abbas / Palestinians are the last piece of foreign policy Obama works on as he leaves the White House.  Interesting.

Bat-shit crazy.  Off you go.

Russian TV - War Footing

But I suppose Donald Trump is a bigger issue than war with Russia or deterioriating relations between the US and Russia.  Between Iran and US.  Between the US and ... practically everyone.

War Talk Returns to Russian TV as U.S. Ties Hit DeepFreeze 

Henry Meyer meyerhenry4 

October 10, 2016 — 7:19 AM PDT Updated on October 11, 2016 — 8:15 AM PDT 

Russian state television is back on a war footing.

This time, the ramped-up rhetoric follows the collapse of cease-fire efforts in Syria. As the U.S. and Russia accused each other of sinking diplomacy, Moscow increased its military presence in the Mediterranean and Baltic regions, and suspended a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. A prime-time news program warned that the U.S. wants to provoke a conflict.

The sudden escalation puts the relationship back into the deep freeze it was in at the peak of the crisis over Ukraine in 2014, which also sparked a wave of hostility in state media. That anti-U.S. campaign ended as the Kremlin sought to ease Western punitive measures imposed over the Ukrainian crisis -- hopes that now seem to be in tatters.

“Offensive behavior toward Russia has a nuclear dimension,” Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said in his “Vesti Nedelyi” program on Sunday. “Moscow would react with nerves of iron to a Plan B,” he said, referring to any possible U.S. military strike in Syria.

The Kremlin’s control over Russian media has in part helped keep President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating above 80 percent during the country’s longest recession in two decades and portrayed military deployments in Crimea and Syria as victories against western encroachment.

Sanction Threat

The rise in tensions could lead to new sanctions against the Kremlin, which some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party have sought to penalize over Syria. It risks blowing off course efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, which provoked the worst standoff since the Cold War after Putin annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Following the collapse of months of diplomacy, Russia is pursuing an air campaign in Syria to bolster its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against U.S.-backed rebels and establishing permanent bases there. The Obama administration suggested that Russian actions in Syria could amount to war crimes and blamed Russia for cyber attacks aimed at disrupting the U.S. election.

The result will be the “ossification of U.S.-Russian relations at an abysmally low level,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy. “Deep mistrust of Putin will now be structural and unanimous among U.S. policy makers.”

Hollande, Merkel

In a signal of the renewed rupture, Putin canceled a planned trip to France next week after his French counterpart Francois Hollande refused to appear alongside him at a ceremony to inaugurate a Russian religious center in Paris. Hollande said he was only willing to meet Putin to discuss Syria amid French calls for a halt to the bombing of the city of Aleppo, where a quarter of a million civilians are trapped. “It will be to Russia’s shame if there isn’t a stop to the killings in Aleppo,” Hollande said.

There is a possibility that Putin will meet the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine in Berlin the same day as the planned French trip for “Normandy format” talks, Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov suggested Monday in Istanbul. These talks are aimed at solving the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia supports separatists fighting the government.

Bombs, Missiles

Over the past week, Russia stepped up its confrontation with the U.S. over its bombing in Aleppo, where it says it is fighting terrorists. Russia on Oct. 8 vetoed a French-proposed United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to air attacks on the northern city.

Russia deployed the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria and reinforced its presence by sending three missile ships to the Mediterranean. It confirmed Western media reports it’s stationed Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Poland’s defense minister said the action caused the “highest concern.”

“The world has got to a dangerous phase,” former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with state news service RIA Novosti on Monday.

‘Dangerous Games’

Both the Iskander and the Kaliber missiles carried by these ships can be fitted with nuclear warheads, Kiselyov said in his program. The presenter is known for making provocative statements critical of the U.S. He bragged in 2014 that Russia is the only country capable of turning the U.S. to radioactive dust.

After a strike by the U.S.-led coalition on a Syrian army base last month that the Pentagon said was a mistake killed dozens of soldiers, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it won’t allow a repetition. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with state-run Channel One broadcast Sunday said Russian defenses can protect the Syrian army from any U.S. attack and warned the American military to desist from “dangerous games.”

Alexei Pushkov, a senator who headed the lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee until recently, in a Twitter post raised the specter of a confrontation like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

Russia won’t back down, said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament. The risk of military clashes between the U.S.-led coalition and Russian military in Syria “is rising every day,” he said.

For Putin, the only strategy is to raise the bet, said Eurasia’s Kupchan. “He’s masterfully playing a weak hand to the detriment of U.S. security and economic interests,” he said.

(A previous version of this story was corrected to fix the Eurasia Group chairman’s first name.)

Nuclear War is Imminent (say the Russians)

Nuclear war 'IMMINENT' as Russia tells citizens to find out where the closest bunkers are

NUCLEAR war could be imminent as Russia told its citizens to urgently prepare for a devastating radioactive conflict as relations with the West stoop to their lowest since the Cold War.

 

A terrifying Russian television broadcast explicitly told civilians to find out where their nearest bomb shelter is and repeatedly asked viewers if they were ready for nuclear war.

One apocalyptic broadcast told viewers on Moscow's state-owned TV channel NTV: "If it should one day happen, every one of you should know where the nearest bomb shelter is. It’s best to find out now."

 

Russia and Putin: What are they up to!

What are they up to!!




Putin wants all defense contracts concluded this week




English.news.cn
2011-09-06 00:18:49




MOSCOW, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday demanded all contracts under 2011 state defense order be concluded this week.

"I hope that by the end of this week all these contracts, including in shipbuilding, the missile industry and aircraft industry, will be concluded," Putin said at a meeting of United Russia party activists in the city of Cherepovets.

"We must guarantee the quantity and the quality of armaments along with the profitability of (defense industry) companies," he was quoted by local media as saying.

The Russian government plans to allocate 20 trillion rubles (over 720 billion U.S. dollars) for the military industry before 2020, some 4.7 trillion rubles (159.6 billion dollars) of which, according to Putin, will be used to develop the Navy.

However, disagreement between the Defense Ministry and arms manufacturers over price issues may hinder the plan, according to local analysts.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
russia

Russia's Sham Democracy

If this was stated by an American, few would listen.  When it is the last Soviet leader, speaking about what he sees in Russia today - I surely hope so.  I wouldn't listen to Gorbachev on issues related to non-Russian issues, but when it comes to Russia and Democracy ... he has a clue.



Mikhail Gorbachev lambasts Vladimir Putin's 'sham' democracy

Former Soviet leader launches harshest criticism yet of Russia's ruling regime ahead of 80th-birthday celebrations




Miriam Elder in Moscow
guardian.co.uk
Monday 21 February 2011


Russia under prime minister Vladimir Putin is a sham democracy, Mikhail Gorbachev has said in his harshest criticism yet of the ruling regime.

"We have everything – a parliament, courts, a president, a prime minister and so on. But it's more of an imitation," the last president of the Soviet Union said.

Gorbachev, who oversaw the , has become increasingly critical of the modern Russian state, accusing its leaders of rolling back the democratic reforms of the 1990s.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of his 80th birthday, Gorbachev criticised Putin for manipulating elections.

In response to the prime minister and former president's comments that he and his protégé, President Dmitry Medvedev, would decide between them who would run for office in March 2012, Gorbachev said: "It's not Putin's business. It must be decided by the nation in elections."

He called Putin's statements a sign of "incredible conceit".

Asked how he thought the regime approached human rights, Gorbachev said: "There's a problem there. It's a sign of the state of our democracy." He was echoing statements made by Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Russia last week.

Gorbachev said United Russia, the ruling party founded with the sole goal of supporting Putin's leadership, was a throwback.

"United Russia reminds me of the worst copy of the Communist party," he said. "We have institutions but they don't work. We have laws but they must be enforced."

Its stranglehold over political life would eventually backfire. "The monopoly ends in rotting and hampers the development of democratic processes."

Gobachev said he did not like how Putin and Medvedev were behaving. "It's a shame that our modern leaders aren't very modern," he said.

Gorbachev now runs a charity foundation that will hold a gala at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 30 March to mark his birthday. He co-owns the country's leading opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

Held up in the west as a hero for his softening of the Soviet system and eventual acceptance of its fall, Gorbachev remains widely despised inside Russia, where he is seen as a traitor who allowed the empire to crumble and ushered in a period of great uncertainty. Over the years he has aligned himself with the cause of Russia's sidelined liberals.

On Monday, Gorbachev called the regime's campaign against jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky politically motivated. "Politics shouldn't have been involved in [the case], but they were," he said.

He noted the case of Natalya Vasilieva, a court clerk who worked on the Khodorkovsky trial and broke ranks to publicly announce that the judge had been pressured throughout and had a verdict and sentence pushed on him.

"I fully believe her," Gorbachev said. "People can't stand it anymore – she saw what was happening with her own eyes."


















russia

Russian Crime Syndicates AKA the Russian Government

Prior to reading, Wikileaks - cables from Moscow concerning the gangster / mafia controlled government.  A country rife with corruption and controlled by crime bosses.

And then this article / interview:



Khodorkovsky says Putin is ‘pitiable’


By Isabel Gorst in Moscow
Financial Times
December 24 2010 14:27



Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian tycoon, has lashed out at Vladimir Putin, describing his nemesis as a pitiable but dangerous leader steering his country towards degradation and chaos.

In a newspaper article published on Friday, three days before a judge begins reading the verdict in a fresh trial that could keep him in jail until 2017, Mr Khodorkovsky said the Russian prime minister was trapped in the cynical political establishment he had created, indifferent to the fate of its people.

“I suddenly realised I was sorry for this man – no longer young, but vigorous and horribly lonely in the face of a vast and unsympathetic country,” he said.

The latest trial reaches its conclusion before the expiry of an eight-year sentence handed down after a first trial for fraud and tax evasion. After his conviction in 2005, Yukos, the giant oil producer he founded, was confiscated and sold, mainly to state oil companies, to help settle alleged tax debts.

Critics say the new charges are aimed at keeping Mr Khodorkovsky, who emerged as a champion of democracy before his arrest, behind bars long after presidential elections in 2012.

Together with Platon Lebedev, his business partner, Mr Khodorkovsky is now being tried on fresh charges of embezzlement that even his critics have slammed as absurd. On Monday, a Moscow judge will begin reading out a verdict that is expected to hand the two men additional prison sentences of six years.

The publication of the stinging article comes after Mr Putin suggested during a nationwide phone-in with Russians last week that Mr Khodorkovsky could have blood on his hands after Yukos’ former security chief was convicted for murder.

Defence lawyers for Mr Khodorkovsky accused Mr Putin of putting pressure on the judge to pronounce a guilty verdict and threatened to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

In his article, Mr Khodorkovsky said corruption had increased tenfold since Mr Putin came to power in 2000 and disputed the prime minister’s claims to have boosted stability in Russia.

He drew a direct link between rising corruption and the outbreak of racial clashes in Russian cities this month that has exposed a dangerous surge in ultra-nationalism in the country.

“Don’t fool yourself. Thousands and thousands of suddenly brutalised youngsters are a clear signal that our children see no future for themselves. This is clearly the threatening result of Putin’s stability,” he wrote.

“They are our future, they are our grief, they are the most tragic result of the decade of ‘getting back on our feet’ when there was money in abundance but no compassion.”

Mr Khodorkovsky has said in the past he would stay out of politics after his release and dedicate his life to social and charitable projects. But on Friday he hinted of a possible return to politics. “ We will develop the country ourselves ... We can do it. We are the people after all. And it is ours. Russia.”

Mr Khodorkovsky’s second trial is seen as a litmus test of Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president’s pledge to reform the judiciary and uproot corruption.

Speaking to television journalists on Friday, Mr Medvedev, a lawyer by training, refused to comment on the trial.

“Neither the president, nor any other official, has the right to express his or her position on this case or any other case before the verdict is passed, regardless of whether it is a guilty or an innocent verdict,” he said.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
russia

The New Russia: Freedom is Fleeting

There is no room for opposition in Russia, unless they operate within parameters established by those in power.  And with a community organizer in the White House who spends more time golfing and vacationing than dealing with local and national problems, he certainly does not have the braintrust to deconstruct the implications of these events.  Russia is moving further and further away, into an orbit they previously held, one which is not a friend of the United States, nor of freedom.

 



Police seize 100,000 anti-Vladimir Putin books




Russian police seized 100,000 copies of a book critical of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that activists planned to hand out at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.


6:22PM BST
16 Jun 2010
The Telegraph


Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin Photo: BLOOMBERG Copies of 'Putin. The Results. 10 Years on', written by opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov were "intended for participants of the forum", starting Thursday, according to Olga Kurnosova, head of the city's branch of the opposition United Civic Front, said.

The reasons for the seizure "are not very clear", she said.

The book, which has a total print-run of one million copies, aims to "tell the truth about the real results of the leadership of Putin and the tandem", Mr Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, wrote in his blog on Monday.


Mr Putin served two terms as president from 2000 onwards before being elected as prime minister. He is still viewed as Russia's strongest political figure in a power tandem with his ally President Dmitry Medvedev.

Earlier this month, Mr Putin said that he supported opposition protests as long as they were within the law.

"Without a normal democratic development this country will have no future," he said at a televised meeting with prominent arts figures.

Mr Nemtsov presented the book about Mr Putin in Moscow on Monday. Last year he published a similar book about Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who won a libel case and forced him to retract a statement about corruption in the city hall.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
russia

Putin, Bush, and Obama

Listening to, or reading all the Obama spin about his efforts in Russia you would think he had just rescued US relations from the Cold War ... Putin, the single most powerful man in Russia has another view on US / Russian relations and the work Bush did to keep relations warm - as opposed to what just happened with Obama.




Putin praises Bush hospitality during Obama visit
Jul 7, 2009

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised the hospitality and openness of U.S. former President George W. Bush in a telegramme sent hours before meeting his successor Barack Obama.

"During the last years we have been working on strengthening Russia-U.S. cooperation. Although there were differences between our countries, I always valued your openness and sincerity," Putin said, congratulating Bush on his 63rd birthday on July 6.

"With special warmth I recall your hospitality in the Crawford ranch and your family estate in Kennebunkport," Putin wrote, referring to their 2007 meeting at the Bush family vacation home when the two leaders went fishing and ate lobster.

Bush had said he "was able to get a sense of his soul" when he first met Putin and since then their warm rapport has helped limit the damage from a series of rows that returned ties between their administrations to chilly Cold War lows.

On Tuesday, Putin, who stepped down as president last year but remains the most influential Russian politician, invited Obama for a "Russian-style" breakfast during their first meeting at Putin's forest residence outside Moscow.

Russian agencies, quoting the government's press service, said Putin treated Obama to black caviar with sour cream, smoked beluga with pancakes and tea made in the traditional Russian samovar, a big coal-fired kettle.








Bush

Obama / Medvedev Spin

Find the spin.


Obama needed this more than the Russians.

Russia wanted Obama to give on the missile defense.

Obama was hopping for quite a bit more.




Obama, Medvedev agree to deal to cut nuke weapons

Jul 6, 2009
STEVEN R. HURST

MOSCOW (AP) - Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev confidently committed to a year-end deal to slash nuclear stockpiles by about a third on Monday, but the U.S. leader failed to crack stubborn Kremlin objections to America's missile defense plans - a major stumbling block to such an agreement.



Both men renewed pledges to pull U.S.-Russian relations out of the dismal state into which they had descended during the eight years of the Bush administration. And to that end, they signed a series of agreements and joint statements designed to enliven and quicken contacts on a broad range of issues - including cooperation on Afghanistan, a key Obama foreign policy objective.

[Now the question has to be asked - what did Obama get on Afghanistan? The answer: right to fly over Russia and save $130 million a year. ]


Obama said the leaders both felt relations had "suffered from a sense of drift. President Medvedev and I are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past."
His host expressed similar good will.

[Well, it is important how this is written suggesting Medvedev and Obama both agreed to this sense of drift, but upon careful reading / listening - it is Obama depicting relations as having drifted.]


"This is the first but very important step in improving full-scale cooperation between our two countries, which would go to the benefit of both states," the Russian leader said. But he injected a note of caution, saying discussions so far "cannot remove the burden of all the problems."

There was no statement of Russian readiness to help the United States persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, even though Obama's top Russia adviser, Michael McFaul, told reporters in a post-meeting briefing that Iran dominated the two leaders' private meeting that opened the summit. Talks continued in an expanded session that included 12 advisers for each president.


[Translation - it was Iran that was the REAL centerpiece of this meeting and Obama got nothing.]


For all the upbeat public statements, a pall of disagreement on missile defense and NATO expansion lingered over the glittering Kremlin hall where Obama and Medvedev answered reporters' questions. Obama said the meetings had been "frank," diplomatic speak for difficult.


Obama sits down on Tuesday with Medvedev's patron and predecessor as president, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the target of a verbal poke from the U.S. president last Friday. In a pre-summit interview with The Associated Press, Obama said Putin still had one foot in the old, Cold War way of doing things.



While Medvedev insisted on Monday that a replacement to the keystone START I nuclear arms reduction treaty, which expires Dec. 5, must be linked to Russian concerns about the U.S. missile defense program in Eastern Europe, it remained unclear if the Kremlin was prepared to scuttle the negotiations over that issue.

Gary Samore, Obama's chief adviser on weapons of mass destruction and arms control, told reporters he did not believe the Russians were prepared to walk away.


[Believing is a good way to conduct foreign policy.]

"I think at the end of the day - because our missile defense does not actually pose a threat to Russia's strategic forces - I think they'll be prepared to go ahead without trying to extract a price on missile defense."

And McFaul said it had been made "crystal clear" from the beginning that negotiations about a START replacement would not include any missile defense issues.

Washington insists the defense program is designed only to protect European allies from missile attack by Iran.


Hoping to ease Kremlin concerns, Obama promised that an assessment of whether the missile defense would actually work would be finished by late summer, earlier than expected, and that he would share initial U.S. thoughts with Medvedev.


Obama also said he understood in principle that arms control must take into account both offensive and defensive weapons. But he insisted the missile defense installations planned for Poland and the Czech Republic would pose no threat to Russia. He said they were not being built to intercept missiles from "a mighty Russian arsenal."

Obama does not approach the missile defense issue with the same fervor as former President George W. Bush, whose administration was responsible for reaching agreement with the two former Soviet satellites to serve as sites for the system.

The planned START replacement pact - the centerpiece summit agreement - calls for each side to reduce strategic warheads to a range of 1,500 to 1,675, and strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500 to 1,100. Current limits allow a maximum of 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles. The new treaty, as conceived, would run for 10 years. Each side would have seven years to reach reduction goals with the final three years used for verification.

Medvedev called the plan a "reasonable compromise."

Among the deals meant to sweeten Obama's two days of talks here and show progress toward resetting U.S.-Russian ties was a joint statement on Afghanistan. It included a deal to allow the United States to transport arms and military personnel across Russian land and airspace into Afghanistan.


The White House said that would save $133 million a year, through a transit fee waiver, shorter flying times and fuel savings.


[Our national debt increases a million dollars every few minutes. 133 minutes and the savings have been erased. This means NOTHING.]

The presidents outlined other areas in which they said their countries would work together to help stabilize Afghanistan, including increasing assistance to the Afghan army and police, and training counternarcotics personnel. A joint statement said they welcomed increased international support for upcoming Afghan elections and were prepared to help Afghanistan and Pakistan work together against the "common threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking."


[So - Russia, having just lost 60,000 men in Afghanistan less than 15 years ago, is about to venture back in, and risk a jihad against them??? I think not. in fact, I am more than sure they will not - they may accept Afghan police and army sent to a Russian base outside Afghanistan for training. The counter narcotics .... this is a joke really. This would be equivalent to Bill Gates being given financial aid for Microsoft to the tune of $1000.00 as an incentive to hire a new employee.]

Among other side agreements was the resumption of military cooperation, suspended after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia last August and sent relations into a nosedive. Last August, after the Georgian president ordered his military to try to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Russia invaded and crushed the tiny nation's military.


This is resetting relations to what they were before Russia invaded Georgia and before Obama was elected.]


McFaul said Obama would never accept Russia's contention that South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgia region, are no longer part of Georgia.

Putin has voiced deep anger with Georgia's coziness with the United States as it lobbies to join NATO, and the standoff about Georgia is likely to be a central issue when Putin meets with Obama on Tuesday.

Obama also will deliver a speech Tuesday to graduates of Moscow's New Economic School in a bid to reach out to the Russian people. In addition, he plans to meet with opposition leaders who are continually under government pressure for their complaints about retreating democracy and freedom under Putin.

[Perhaps he will tell them to be better socialists, fight for the people, run for election, stand for democracy ... and leave him alone because he is much too busy. Obama did get the Russians to do one thing - buy some beef from us. That was the big gain, that and the fly over rights. Meanwhile the spider prepared dinner for the fly - Putin will eat Obama for dinner. All that slickness Obama oozes doesn't blind the Russians and Putin is so much better at this than Obama.]








I think this photo is appropriate. Notice the body language. Who seems to care a great deal more than the other. Almost waiting for the bow.

Obama

Obama and Russia

Obama assured of a chilly Russian welcome despite first signs of thaw

04 July 2009
By Chris Stephen in New York
The Scotsman

BARACK Obama will have few traffic problems getting to the Kremlin for his first summit with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev on Monday – the Obamamania that has swept much of the rest of the world is absent from Moscow; there will be no adoring crowds to greet him.

A recent poll by Russia's Levada Centre found only 23 per cent of citizens believe the US president will "do the right thing in world affairs", with many doubting his promise of change will heal antagonisms between Russia and the West.

A long list of issues – from Nato's eastward expansion, to missile defence, to human rights, to the contest for oil and gas in Central Asia – continue to poison relations between the former Cold War superpowers.

Russian news agency Pravda was less than subtle in an editorial summing up the Obama administration, headlined: "Obama: Deceiver, cheat, swindler, liar, fraudster, con-artist."

The root cause of the antagonism is a belief in the Kremlin that relations with the West must inevitably be a "zero-sum" game – every gain for the West is a loss for Russia.

Masha Lipman, of the Moscow Carnegie Centre research group, said: "Russia has negative priorities, so-called 'red lines', such as Nato enlargement that might include Georgia or Ukraine."

But America needs Russian co-operation on a host of global issues – for example, the Start treaty limiting the number of nuclear warheads held by Moscow and Washington expires in December and a new one must be negotiated. Those negotiations will be complicated by Russia's anger at US plans to deploy a missile defence shield in the Czech Republic.

Washington also sees Russia as playing a pivotal role in the diplomatic chess game Mr Obama has launched in the Middle East and Asia, which will rely on unity among the big powers to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, combat the Taleban and prod Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks.

Michael McFaul, Mr Obama's director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, said: "There are ways that we can co-operate to advance our interests, and at the same time do things with the Russians that are good for them as well."

Climate change is one such issue, and Mr Obama will also find common ground with his Russian counterpart in his two days of talks on efforts to tackle the global recession, terrorism and drug trafficking.

And Mr Medvedev is ignoring Mr Obama's criticism of Mr Putin. In a statement on the Kremlin website, he said: "The new US administration headed by President Obama is now demonstrating readiness to change the situation, and build more effective, reliable and ultimately more modern relations. And we are ready for this."








Russia

Putin Kaput?

And he lectures the US.




Protests against Putin sweep Russia as factories go broke


From Vladivostok to St Petersburg, Russians are taking to the streets in anger over job losses, unpaid wages and controls on imported cars


Luke Harding in Khabarovsk
The Observer, Sunday 7 June 2009



Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is facing the most sustained and serious grassroots protests against his leadership for almost a decade, with demonstrations that began in the far east now spreading rapidly across provincial Russia.


Over the past five months car drivers in the towns of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, on Russia's Pacific coast, have staged a series of largely unreported rallies, following a Kremlin decision in December to raise import duties on secondhand Japanese cars. The sale and servicing of Japanese vehicles is a major business, and Putin's diktat has unleashed a wave of protests.



Instead of persuading locals to buy box-like Ladas, it has stoked resentment against Moscow, some nine time zones and 3,800 miles (6,100km) away.


"They are a bunch of arseholes," Roma Butov said unapologetically, standing in the afternoon sunshine next to a row of unsold Nissans. Asked what he thought of Russia's leaders, he said: "Putin is bad. [President Dmitry] Medvedev is bad. We don't like them in the far east."


Butov, 33, and his brother Stas, 25, are car-dealers in Khabarovsk, not far from the Chinese border. Their dusty compound at the edge of town is filled with secondhand models from Japan, including saloons, off-roaders and a bright red fire engine. Here everyone drives a Japanese vehicle.


Putin's new import law was designed to boost Russia's struggling car industry, which has been severely battered by the global economic crisis. It doesn't appear to have worked. In the meantime, factories in other parts of Russia have gone bust, leading to rising unemployment, plummeting living standards and a 9.5% slump in Russia's GDP in the first quarter of this year.


An uprising that began in Vladivostok is now spreading to European Russia. Last Tuesday some 500 people in the small town of Pikalyovo blocked the federal highway to St Petersburg, 170 miles (270km) away, after their local cement factory shut down, leaving 2,500 people out of work. Two other plants in the town have also closed. The protesters have demanded their unpaid salaries, and have barracked the mayor, telling him they have no money to buy food. They have refused to pay utility bills, prompting the authorities to turn off their hot water. Demonstrators then took to the streets, shouting: "Work, work."


Putin visited Pikalyovo on Thursday and administered an unprecedented dressing-down to the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, throwing a pen at him and telling him to sign a contract to resume production at his BaselCement factory in the town. He also announced the government would provide £850,000 to meet the unpaid wages of local workers. "You have made thousands of people hostages to your ambitions, your lack of professionalism - or maybe simply your trivial greed," a fuming Putin told Deripaska and other local factory owners. But Deripaska had had little choice but to shut his factory, since Russia's construction industry has now virtually collapsed.


Across Russia's unhappy provinces, Putin is facing the most significant civic unrest since he became president in 2000. Over the past decade ordinary Russians have been content to put up with less freedom in return for greater prosperity. Now, however, the social contract of the Putin era is unravelling, and disgruntled Russians are taking to the streets, as they did in the 1990s, rediscovering their taste for protest.

The events of last week in Pikalyovo also set a dangerous precedent for Russia's other 500 to 700 mono-towns - all dependent on a single industry for their survival. When their factories go bust, residents have no money to buy food. Seemingly, the only answer is to demonstrate - raising the spectre of a wave of instability and social unrest across the world's biggest country.

Most embarrassingly for the Kremlin, the latest demonstrations took place just down the road from the St Petersburg Economic Forum, an annual global event designed to showcase Russia's economic might and its re-emergence as a global power. But after almost a decade of high oil prices - until last summer - Russia has done little to invest in infrastructure, or to help its backward, poverty-stricken regions.

The uprisings began last December when thousands gathered in Vladivostok, demonstrating against the new law on car imports. To crush the protest, and sceptical as to whether the local militia would do the job, the Kremlin flew in special riot police from Moscow. The police arrested dozens of demonstrators and even beat up a Japanese photographer. In Khabarovsk, around 2,000 drivers staged their own noisy protest, driving in convoy with flashing lights to the railway station. Protesters dragged a Russian-made Zhiguli car to their meeting, decorating it with the slogan: "A present from Putin". They signed it, then dumped it outside the offices of United Russia, Putin's party.

Among locals, resentment against Moscow is building. "There is no democracy in Russia. They promise a lot. But they don't listen," Butov said. He added: "Medvedev isn't my president. He's never in the far east." The Kremlin's intransigence could provoke a major backlash, he predicted: "In the next few years there could be a war between the east and west of Russia."

The protests have carried on, with demonstrators regularly taking to the streets in Vladivostok, including last month. Russians in the far east all own right-hand-drive vehicles, which are cheaper to import than the left-hand-drive models used and manufactured in European Russia.
Until recently, the Kremlin had been relatively successful at concealing the scale of the protests, imposing a virtual media blackout. But the demonstrations have become more difficult to ignore.

In April Kommersant newspaper reported that angry motorists had called for Medvedev and Putin to be blasted into space, while others waved a banner with the playful slogan: "Putler kaputt!", apparently comparing Putin, Russia's prime minister since last year, to Hitler. The authorities were not amused and launched an investigation.

"Russians are a very forbearing people," Yuri Efimenko, a historian and social activist in Khabarovsk said, sitting in a cafe close to the town's Amur river, which forms part of the border between Russia and China. "There isn't love towards the Kremlin, but there used to be respect. Now that's gone," he said. He added: "People have become more sceptical towards central power."

According to Efimenko, there is little danger Russia will have a revolution. Instead of wanting to overthrow the Kremlin, most Russians want Putin to turn up personally and solve their problems - an age-old model in which Putin plays the role of benevolent tsar. Analysts believe there is little possibility of an Orange Revolution in Russia, or much appetite for western-style reform.

The big winner from the protests are the siloviki - the hardline military-intelligence faction, who advocate more state control of business, and want to get rid of the Kremlin's remaining liberals.


The big loser is Medvedev, the hapless president, who may be turfed out of the presidency when his term expires in 2012.


In the meantime, Putin has been promoting Russia's indigenous car industry. Last week he took to the wheel of his Soviet-era Volga Gaz-21 car, giving Russia's patriarch a lift. He also gave a £505m loan to help AvtoVAZ, a struggling Russian car factory on the Volga.


The Butov brothers, however, have a unanimous view of Russian-made cars. "They are crap," Roma said. He recalled how last month Khabarovsk officials gave a free Lada to a war veteran, to celebrate the annual Victory Day on 9 May. "The veteran drove it for a mile. Then it broke down. He came to me and asked if he could swap it for a Japanese model."

Russia