No Soviet Style Government Here! Here We Have Democracy!

Raise your hand if you don't think Vladimir will be re-elected to the Presidency of Russia.
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okay, except for that one guy who raised his hand, was dragged out and shot by the secret police, does anyone else think Comrade Putin will lose the upcoming election? No? Nobody?

*ahem*

Yes It Can Happen Here

Sergey Larenkov has an impressive series of perspective-matched photos of then-vs-now in various places in Russia. I was reminded by some of them that "it can't happen here" is a very poor excuse for a mental defense against anything, including war. Check out the contrast: people going about their lives vs. soldiers going about their duties, on the same street.

Click through to see the images full-size




Very interesting. If the militia called you up, would you be ready to switch from going about your life to going about your duty? Would you even be willing? Hat tip to Every Day No Days Off

One Jerk Spoils It For Everybody.

You have to meet with a child at least THREE times to adopt him from Russia. One would think you would be able to tell that he is a boy and have a clue that he was a bundle of energy. If you subsequently adopted him, you would have accepted these facts if you were a person without psychological problems.

The stupid [deleted] who put her adopted Russian 7 year-old on a plane -by himself- to Russia with only a note that he has psychological problems, herself has psychological problems. This is the equivalent of calling 911 for a garden snake in your yard, except this time it has made life hard for other people. Russia has (one hopes only) temporarily suspended adoptions to the USA until this sort of thing can be sorted out. Look for some sort of monitoring or reporting requirement for future US adopting parents.

1,800+ Russian children with basically no other hope were adopted to families in the US last year. Now the prospective families of those still in Russia will have additional hurdles to cross if/when Russia allows them to rescue their children again.

Jail time is what this woman needs. And a whole heaping lot of it. Anything could have happened to the boy, but he appears to have arrived physically unhurt. Jail time and a beating or three.

Call Your Senator's Office.

Tell him to vote AGAINST ratification of the treaty President Obama just signed. That is all.

Russia Attacked (again) By the Religion Of Peace

Yahoo/AP spins it thusly, and the Faithful agree:

Russia was arresting the worst of the worst, leaders of the islamic militancy in Russia. They deserved to have two women blow themselves up in the subway under the old KGB headquarters. They had it coming to them for attacking the Religion of Peace, don't you see? It's only payback!

Well, okay maybe they don't come right out and phrase it that way, but that's the perpetual excuse. It's not the islamists' fault, it's always a payback for some perceived wrong done to them. You know, in the 20-ish places where there are shooting wars in the world. It's the neighbors' fault, not the muslims'!

Please join in my prayer that Russia will have the political will to do it hard to the muslims in Russia, unlike the tooooolerant treatment they get in the West.

Ukranian Holodomor

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. -Ecclesiastes 1:18

This filthy little kulak deserved what he got!


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Holodomor translates from Ukranian Голодомор to "murder by starvation."

I mentioned this to a brother at church, in passing. I mentioned it after asking if it were King Solomon (the wisest man ever to walk the face of the earth) who wrote the verse at the top of this post. It was. He asked me what I was referring to.

Before I visited Moonbattery the other day, I had never heard the term holodomor. Having read up on it a little, it seems like you can get to 60,000,00+ dead innocents pretty quickly this way. You hear talk about the holocaust of the Jews during WWII, but have you ever heard of the terror of famine in the Ukraine?

In Ukraine, in 1932, there was a very large crop of wheat. Much, much more than was needed to feed the population. In Ukraine, in 1932-1933 somewhere between 2,000,000 and 20,000,000 persons (depending on whom you ask, most say 10,000,000) perished from starvation.

Wait, what?

That's right. Starved to death, tens of millions of people. Why? Because the State said they should. Stalin said "Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?" Ukranians had this funny idea about Ukraine being its own State when Stalin had a different idea. 83%-ish of the people who died in the Holodomor were Ukranians. Coincidence?

At Moonbattery, I found a link to the Holodomor Website. There, I was able to read charming personal anecdotes from people who were children at the time. Really lovely, heart-warming stuff like:

"Hungry people at night tried to dig out potatoes planted on the vegetable gardens. There were cases, when these “thieves” were dying on the somebody's field. . . Once I went to the school garden (nearly 300 meters from home) to cut linden leaves. I saw dead man on the road in front of the garden. It was very terribly and scary picture. . . It is hard to say how many people died in our large village, because at that time I was only eleven years old."

It could never happen here!

Really? Do you honestly think the soon-to-be-dead people of Ukraine would have believed it, if you told them in 1930 what would soon befall them? Learn a lesson, my friend. The people of Ukraine had no guns. If a farmer saw that he had just a bit less than enough food to feed his children until the next harvest, and the government agents came around poking the earth to find his hidden food stores, and he had a rifle, what do you think he would have done?

The only ones with guns were the ones stealing the food from the people -in accordance with national policy.

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It's a bit LATE for that NOW, isn't it!

Russia Cracks Down On Protestors?

Bears sh*t in the woods?

On the 31st day of the month, protestors gather to protest the Russian government. The russian government says "yah, uhm, someone else had the park reserved for an event that day" (every single time) and declares the protest illegal.

Riot police, beatings with truncheons, the whole works. Just like old times, eh Russia?

Russian oppression: what's the worst that did could happen?

Gazprom Attempts To Expand Russian Sphere of Influence

...by cutting off gas to a half-dozen countries, including one they are in a pretty tense situation with already (Ukraine). They bought a controlling interest in Serbia's energy industry at a time when Serbia was about to see Kosovo declared independent and Serbia in the EU. Russia is looking to put a pipeline through Serbia to work around the European pipeline which makes Russian activity largely beside-the-point.

No no, it is all legitimate business and the countries are cut off because they don't want to pay the going rate (+60%) for their natural gas! It is not the spirit of the Soviets running the country, trying to strong-arm their neighbors! Not at all!

Right, and I have a bridge to sell you.

Putin: President for Life. Yawn.

from Yahoo! news:

He was president for the maximum time possible. Now he's got something of a puppet president and he holds the office of Prime Minister. And his pal Medvedev had this brilliant idea to cram unpopular Constitutional changes down the throats of the good people of Russia, in such a way that Putin can serve a further 12 years as president.

Hmm.

So it turns out old pooty-poot might not feel like giving up control of the old bear just yet? Really? GOSH! who would have thought...

Oh, wait. That's right, he never stopped running Russia. So now they're trying to change the constitution so he can rule for another 12 years. Good. Fine. Great.

It makes me think about a Constitution that Russia had earlier, when it was the RFSFR and, later, the USSR / CCCP. They had this constitutional provision that prisoners were entitled to humane treatment. Of course, the prisoners in Gulag were tortured, starved, even outright murdered, for literally no reason aside from the insatiable need of the State for more laborers. When a person was quite broken by their torturers, they would be given a paper to sign (along with their "confession") that said they were aware of their constitutional rights, and had been well treated. Most would sign and hope their treatment in Gulag would get better at the next station (it didn't, ever.)

The people were not allowed to read the laws of their land, so of course they were ignorant of the laws, and quite surprised they had not only the right to fair treatment, but even the right to protest!

If someone wanted to exercise their constitutional right to protest the treatment they had received, they were free to write a higher authority and await a hearing on the matter... in the same prison, under the same deplorable conditions. This was not necessarily a survivable affair. The fun part was, if you complained of being forced to sleep on a bunk with three other people (that was wide enough for one) in a room designed to sleep 7 that held 50, they might decide to put you in a less-crowded cell. By yourself. For months at a time. In a cell with an uncovered window facing a Siberian winter. With the walls sweating and the air freezing, with a wood-plank bed and no blanket, and maybe a piece of wet bread to eat for your daily meal. And either the rats would eat you to a painful, infected end, or you would freeze to death, or die of starvation, and then the State wouldn't have to deal with your protest: problem solved!

All that to say,

The Russian government has a history of blatantly ignoring constitutional restrictions and seeing them twist it to make Vladimir President for Life, should really come as a surprise to no-one.

Just sayin', that's all.

Russia Wants to Buy, but Nobody Buys Russia?

Russia exports oil. The price of oil is falling like a stone. Russia is not liking this. So they decided to try and monkey with the price of oil by buying it and making an oil reserve like some of the other cool countries have.

The problem (well, one problem) with that idea? Nobody is buying Russia right now. Because it looks increasingly like Russia is a bad risk.

So... where will they get the money?

This could be interesting.

So far, OPEC threatening to cut production hasn't helped hold up the price of oil.

Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing a return to an oil market based on supply and demand and not speculation.

We'll see.

Russia: Move Along, Nothing To See

Russia is supposedly pulling out of "uncontested" parts of Georgia. Somebody wake me up when they start talking seriously about pulling out of the "contested" parts. I guess that will be right after Russia declares them no longer independent. And revokes all the Russian passports they recently issued. And brings back all the dead ethnic Georgians. Can you tell I'm not holding my breath, waiting for the map to look like it did last year?

Oh, and in completely unrelated news, we are specifically not trying to undermine Russia by getting all cuddly with Kazakhstan. Nope. Just trying to be neighborly, that's all.

Does anyone wish to buy a used bridge from me?

"The Yankee hegemony is finished"

That's what Hugo Chavez said. You know what the bad part is? With the current testicle-free "leadership" in the USA, he's RIGHT. Look for the weak-kneed doves to allow this sort of thing to continue.

So Russia has sent the Peter the Great to Venezuela. Nothing to see here, move along. Nevermind that we've got the Commies sending a nuclear powered destroyer with 20 nuclear weapons and 500 antiaircraft missles to our back yard. Oh, and Admiral Chabanenko, an anti-submarine destroyer. Oh, and a pair of Tu-160 Blackjacks, supersonic nuclear-capable strategic bombers. And a thouand or so other troops.

These, you see, are being deployed for joint naval excercises with Venezela's navy. This is specifically NOT a threat to the USA, and also not a response to the US Navy sending warships into the fray when Russia invaded Georgia. Not a response to NATO bases near Russia, when Russia is giving NATO the finger. No, they are not waving their pee-pees back at us, in response to us waving our pee-pee at them. No, you see, they're conducting joint excercises.

Also not a threat: stationing the Blackjacks in cuba, less than 100 miles from you and me.

No people of the United States of America, Russia is our great friend, our ally, fully peaceful in their intention. Also you need their oil because YOU allowed the environmentalists socialists to prevent us using our own oil, or building refineries. When it comes to that, Russia is going to help Venezuela build refineries, so they won't need us to process their nasty heavy crude. Oh, you didn't know that we're pretty much the only country that processes Venezuela's crude oil? You didn't know that the money you pay to Citgo goes back to Venezuela? What do you think they're going to do, when they don't need to sell their oil to us anymore? You think they won't sell that gas to their marxist neighbors instead of us?

No, there is no problem here. No crisis, no looming cold war. What football teams are playing tonight, again?

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Read up:
AFP
Yahoo! News
Debka file
Times Online
Hypocrisy
RIA Novosti
Stratfor

Medvedev Says: What Had Happened Was, That Uh, Hold On, Wait...

From The Telegraph

You see, officer, uh, what had really happened was that, um, they had attackded our for real Russican Citizens, and then what they had did was that uh, they had invaded & stuff, N thin, we like totally had to invade, 4 realz!

Uh, huh! that's why they brought to bear weapons prohibited by treaty and escalated what was already a border skirmish into outright war on 8/6. The events of 8/8 were Russia's 9/11? Excuse me, I think you are -let me pause to consider my diction- making [deleted] up to sound better to the people around the world that already like you, and those not paying close attention.

You know what? When you have an ethnic Russian majority in a province that wants to break away from Georgia, that's one thing. It is quite another when you start handing out Russian passports to the South Ossetians, and then say "well gOLLY! look there's RUSSIANS down there! And when the Georgians respond to an escalation to full war by (predictably) giving warfare back, then you can invade Ossetia and oh maybe a few other minor useless places like Poti, one of the more important warm water ports in the region, and say "gee, world, we were just defending our Russian brothers from those bad ol' Georgians who invaded their territory..." and then you kill off the non-ethnic-Russians in the disputed territory (ethnic cleansing? No, we needn't report on that!) Then you can act surprised and welcome South Ossetia in to join North Ossetia as a Russian territory. And maybe we'll talk about giving the port in Poti back later, eh?

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Of course, it's entirely benign, and not troubling at all that in Sevastopol, Russia has started issuing the same Russian passports to ethnic Russian Ukranians in the Crimean port town where their fleet is based, and their lease is set to expire in 2017. No, there's nothing to be afraid of there, Ukraine! I mean, it's not like Russia is sinking Ukranian ships in the harbor or anything.

Blah blah, Russia, Ukraine, you know who's really screwed over in the Crimea? The Tatars. Thanks Soviets!

For the Americans: there are no lessons to be learned here, and it is not important that Mexico is handing out Mexican ID cards to anybody that wants one, in the USA, with basically no proof required. Nothing to see here either folks, move along!

Cheney in Georgia.

From the International Herald Tribune (complete with commentary saying this may not be a good idea, given Cheney's past 'just words').

Vice President Cheney went to Georgia in person to pledge support for rebuilding

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I would have thought we would help to rebuild AFTER Russia GTFO but I only have as much foreign policy experience as Barry Obama, so what do I know?

So we're going to give Georgia $1B. Any predictions on how much of that is stolen by the russians at their checkpoints?

By the way, if we as a nation could have mustered the political will to get our own natural resources instead of sucking on Russia's teat for the last few decades, we would be in a position to stomp on their balls and throw a few missiles when somebody invades our strategic allies. As it is, we are reduced to saying Pretty Please, with a stern frown on our face. Good job, socialists environmentalists.