The following are abstracted from, with minor editing, the links below. For the full story please go to the original posts.
During
the last several years, Putin arduously worked to suppress and eliminate all
the liberal and democratic elements in his country, which he believed could
challenge his power. To fight them, he actively promoted the anti-liberal and
reactionary forces of the society, granting them extensive political and social
influences. Thus, today, the Russian government has surrounded itself by and in
fact incorporated extreme anti-democratic forces, who exercise almost unlimited
power, creating a union of both far right and far left – radical nationalists,
religious fundamentalists and monarchists united with Stalinists, other
communists and totalitarian utopians.
All
that matters for Putin is their points of agreement: belief in an absolute
autocratic government, repression of political diversity and freedom of speech,
state control over the social and private realms, intolerance to ethnic and
religious minorities, imposition of one state ideology, the pursuit of
“traditional values”, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, hatred towards homosexuals,
etc. As a matter of fact, all these and other properties of the current Russian
state well fit Umberto Eco’s famous fourteen criteria, which he described as
the necessary qualifications of fascism.
“The
current wave of neo-Nazism is different from what the elders remember from
Perestroika in the first half of the 1990’s. In that sense, the wave that came
at the end of the 1990’s and the beginning of 2000, is a new youthful wave of
people who really call themselves Nazis or nationalist socialists, or stand for
‘white power,’ which in European terminology is still considered to be
neo-Nazism. There is quite a large number of such people. Essentially, they
constitute the majority of the Russian nationalist movement.
I
remember very well in Soviet schooling, that the main complaint against
Hitler’s regime was that Hitler killed communists and attacked the USSR, and
other countries. Of course, Nazi Germany was seen first and foremost as the
aggressor. However, if one is not a German neo-Nazi but a Russian neo-Nazi,
this complaint disappears. Communism is also outdated. The rest was silenced in
Soviet school, the Holocaust too, by the way”
Moscow
has released an initial list of “undesirable organizations” that constitute a
“threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian
Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.” The list
includes the MacArthur Foundation (which had been funding cooperation between
Western and Russian scientists). The
move, part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to stifle civil society in
Russia, comes as no surprise
In
the early 1990s, (the author) served as executive director of George Soros’s
International Science Foundation for the former Soviet Union and Baltic States.
We helped tens of thousands of scientists remain in the profession by giving
them emergency support grants to feed their families.
(This was followed by the) MacArthur Foundation (which) devise(d) a
program to advance research in the natural sciences in the Russian education
system. (The) proposal (was) to establish centers combining research and
education at Russian universities — a shift from the Soviet model, in which
universities emphasized teaching while the Academy of Sciences and industry
institutes conducted research. Education minister, Alexander Tikhonov,
in March 1998, was enthusiastic, stating that his ministry would match every
dollar contributed.
(The MacArthur Foundation) selected 16 Russian
universities to receive grants of $1 million over three years; established the
first technology transfer offices at Russian universities, helped Russian
scientists learn how to deal with equipment suppliers, and provided funding to
attend international conferences.
Andrei Fursenko, the minister of education and science
from 2004 to 2012, was a strong supporter. In June 2014 (the author) met with
Mr. Fursenko in Moscow. He expressed concern about Russian scientists refusing
to revise their articles to respond to criticisms and suggestions from peer
reviewers — a major reason behind their declining share of publications in
international journals.
Earlier this month, (the author) saw Mr. Fursenko again.
I expressed my concerns over the Kremlin’s recent actions. He told me bluntly
(repeating the Kremlin’s lines) that things have changed. He said that this was
because “America cannot tolerate any partner who does not behave as an obedient
child listening to a parent’s strictures.” Russia, he said, is tired of this.
These are symptoms of a broader reversal. The Kremlin,
suspicious of the West’s democratic values and what they might bring, now finds
the risks of cooperation to be too great.
Garry
Kasparov is a renowned Russian chess Grandmaster and former World Chess
Champion. He retired from chess in 2005. He is also a political activist and
prominent Putin critic (now living in America). A section about Garry
Kasparov has been removed from a book commemorating the 80th anniversary of the
Russian sports society Spartak. Evgeny Gik, the author of the section on
Kasparov, said that the book’s editor couldn't say who exactly made this
decision.
Every
week produces a rich harvest of manifestations of “official insanity” in
Russia, according to Vera Yurchenko of Moscow’s “Novaya Gazeta” newspaper. Here is her Top 10 for this past week:
A crisis has spread to
almost every third Russian company town, where one employer dominates the local
economy, and only a fraction of them will get government aid, officials said on
Wednesday.
“We have 319 mono-cities, and 94
of them are classified as in crisis,” Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev said in
Usolye-Sibirskoye, a town in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, at a meeting led by
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “According to our estimates, the funds
allocated in the budget for four years will be enough for 20-30 monocities.”
This article
lists 45 secret instructions issued by Beria to the NKVD regarding Poland. From
them it becomes obvious of the Kremlin’s intent to wreck the economies of the
Eastern European countries left in their control after the end of the war.
At the end of the Second World War, half of Europe was
occupied by ‘liberating’ Soviet troops. Officially (The Yalta agreement),
Moscow stated it will respect the sovereignty and independence of the occupied
countries, and ensure the right to self-determination of the entrants in its
area of influence. In reality, their fate was already sealed. In a few years,
they had replaced these countries’ democratic regimes with totalitarian systems
inspired and controlled by the Kremlin.
The plan of this transition was the same everywhere. Much
of it has been theorized by Lavrentiy Beria himself, the dreaded chief of the
NKVD. A secret directive written for the Soviet secret services working in
Poland demonstrates this set developed by the People’s Commissariat for
Internal Affairs on 2 June 1947, bearing the sign “Moscow
02.06.1947 K-AA / CC113, indication NK/003/47.”
Vladimir
Putin was of deep interest to American intelligence even when he was deputy
mayor of St Petersburg in the 1990s.
Yet
surprisingly little is known about the extent of Putin’s personal wealth or
whether it is hidden.
As they did so, a picture emerges of low-level US government
officials gathering material on Putin’s wealth and political appointees, which
was simply ignored by their masters.
judas priest...I think I have one last putin meme for yellowdog granny..after that I don't think I will do them any more.making a joke out of putin is like making a joke out of hitler..feck.
ReplyDeleteNever stop making fun of Putler. He hates it
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