http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/played_by_putin_cVq4SkTdJGy1gcK8BF1E7N

Washington lost a huge bargaining chip. With the missile shield no longer a worry for Russia, there now may be no way to push it to help stop Iran.
The mullahs can continue their march toward nuclear statehood unimpeded — while Team Obama scratches its head over what to do, sans sanctions or military threats.
Which, of course, raises the prospect of Tehran getting its nukes soon after all.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bolton18-2009oct18,0,4090854.story

Canceling the Polish and Czech missile defense bases is understood in Moscow and Eastern European capitals as backing down in the face of Russian bluster and belligerence. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened the day after our 2008 election to deploy missiles targeting these assets unless they were canceled, a threat duly noted by the Russian media when Obama canceled the sites. Given candidate Obama's reaction to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war -- calling on both sides to exercise restraint -- there is little doubt that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's project to re-extend Russian hegemony over as much of the former Soviet Union as he can will continue apace. Why should he worry about Washington?

---

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.

-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.

Does anyone have a subscription?
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl.../russia-reborn

Russia has a declining population, and more Muslims than any other European country (BBC article, maybe)
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/2006/IP162.pdf

Originally Posted by Blairamir

Russia has a declining population, and more Muslims than any other European country (BBC article, maybe)
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/2006/IP162.pdf

Did you see the date on that paper? 1997 (using a dataset that ends in 1995) is pretty old. It doesn't even get to the beginning of the 4th Russian turning, much less halfway through the current 1T. There's a fairly significant amount of in-migration happening -- and growing -- since the mid '00s. And fertility rates bounced back to above European levels right around the 1T beginning (life expectancy remains distressingly low, but it's been on the rebound, too). Here's a good up-to-date page on the fate of the vaunted 'demographic crisis'

Anyway, as far as the religious and ethnic goes, it's worth pointing out that Russia has been multidimensional for several hundred years. A few of those hundreds ago, it was a toss-up as to whether the state religion there would be Orthodox Christianity or Islam. And they've got something like 150 ethnicities making up just plain 'Russian' in the sense of being native rather than immigrant.

Russia still only has 142 million people, which isn't a lot, when you consider they are spread across 4,900 miles. I don't even understand how Moscow continues to control all that land. With the help of state-owned TV and military installations, I guess. But, as far as I can tell, they are still in the game because they own real estate and weapons of mass destruction. What even is the gauge for global power these days? GDP? Nuclear stockpiles? Standing armies?

Originally Posted by Uzi

Russia still only has 142 million people, which isn't a lot, when you consider they are spread across 4,900 miles. I don't even understand how Moscow continues to control all that land. With the help of state-owned TV and military installations, I guess.

A couple other things help. First off, the locals in the Far East have generally seen significant economic benefits in being tied in via Moscow (or via Petersburg before 1917) with Europe. Particularly before China really took off these last couple decades, Europe was pretty much the only viable economic game for north-central-Asia to be in. So Russia was able to maintain its far-flung territories primarily by treating on a basis of mutual self-interest.

Nowadays, that's not so much the case. Really, the only thing still necessarily tying Khabarovsk and Chita (who trade a lot more with China and Mongolia than with Germany) to Moscow is the shared culture -- which is no small thing. The Soviet Union did manage to achieve (in no small part due to exiles and forced mixings-of-people) a very uniform culture throughout at least the territory now making up the RF. With the notable exceptions, of course, of parts of the Caucasus. People in Dudinka think of themselves as just as much Russians as do people in Magadan, Ufa, Kursk, and Tver.

Russia opens full diplomatic relations with the Vatican
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8394079.stm

Medvedev was in Italy negotiating other business
http://www.repubblica.it/2009/12/sez...ia-russia.html

Gas pipelines to Western Europe info
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...603803,00.html

Heroin addicts, post-Soviet lost generation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7935527.stm

Originally Posted by jamesdglick

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/played_by_putin_cVq4SkTdJGy1gcK8BF1E7N

Washington lost a huge bargaining chip. With the missile shield no longer a worry for Russia, there now may be no way to push it to help stop Iran.
The mullahs can continue their march toward nuclear statehood unimpeded — while Team Obama scratches its head over what to do, sans sanctions or military threats.
Which, of course, raises the prospect of Tehran getting its nukes soon after all.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bolton18-2009oct18,0,4090854.story

Canceling the Polish and Czech missile defense bases is understood in Moscow and Eastern European capitals as backing down in the face of Russian bluster and belligerence. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened the day after our 2008 election to deploy missiles targeting these assets unless they were canceled, a threat duly noted by the Russian media when Obama canceled the sites. Given candidate Obama's reaction to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war -- calling on both sides to exercise restraint -- there is little doubt that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's project to re-extend Russian hegemony over as much of the former Soviet Union as he can will continue apace. Why should he worry about Washington?

But what about the latest Muslim terror attack on Russian soil - and the ongoing Muslim terrorism plaguing China, in Xinjiang, which threatens to strip China of literally quadrillions of dollars' worth of mineral wealth?

Sooner or later the you-know-what will really hit the fan - and when it does, missile shields in Poland and/or the Czech Republic will be as obsolete as the Maginot Line.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38308948...d_news-europe/

MOSCOW — The upper house of Russia's parliament on Monday passed a bill granting expanded powers to the country's main security agency, a move that critics say echoes the era of the Soviet KGB.
The bill, which now goes to President Dmitry Medvedev to be signed into law, would allow the Federal Security Service (FSB) to issue warnings to people suspected of preparing to commit crimes against Russia's security.
Human rights and democracy activists say this power could be used to intimidate government opponents and stifle protests.
"This law is targeted against the opposition ... It's a draconian law which is unprecedented in the world and is reminiscent of our repressive past," Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who is now leader of the opposition Solidarity movement, was quoted as saying by Interfax.
Former KGB agent Gennady Gudkov told NPR that the the law is written so vaguely that the government could use it "as an instrument to pressure to pressuer the opposition".

The FSB is the main successor agency to the KGB.
The bill was approved by the upper house by a vote of 121-1. The sole vote against was cast by the house's speaker, Sergei Mironov, who said he had was apprehensive about the measure.

The New Cold War by Edward Lucas

Describes subtle distinctions between the outlooks of Russia and the West.

"...according to Surkov, 'Russian cultural consciousness is clearly holistic [and] intuitive and opposed to [the]mechanistic [and] reductionist.' He continues:

" 'Synthesis prevails over analysis, idealism over pragmatism, images over logic, intuition over reasoning, general over particular. This naturally does not mean that Russians lack analytical thinking and people in the western countries [lack] intuition. The issue here is the ratio. Let's put it like that: the Russian person is more interested in the time than in the blueprint of an alarm clock.' "

Originally Posted by TimWalker

The New Cold War by Edward Lucas

Describes subtle distinctions between the outlooks of Russia and the West.

"...according to Surkov, 'Russian cultural consciousness is clearly holistic [and] intuitive and opposed to [the]mechanistic [and] reductionist.' He continues:

" 'Synthesis prevails over analysis, idealism over pragmatism, images over logic, intuition over reasoning, general over particular. This naturally does not mean that Russians lack analytical thinking and people in the western countries [lack] intuition. The issue here is the ratio. Let's put it like that: the Russian person is more interested in the time than in the blueprint of an alarm clock.' "

Sorry. What does that mean?

MOSCOW — The upper house of Russia's parliament on Monday passed a bill granting expanded powers to the country's main security agency, a move that critics say echoes the era of the Soviet KGB.
The bill, which now goes to President Dmitry Medvedev to be signed into law, would allow the Federal Security Service (FSB) to issue warnings to people suspected of preparing to commit crimes against Russia's security.

"warnings"?

Originally Posted by Adina

"warnings"?

Yeah. Sort of like this. Or this. Or, you know, this.

Terrible, terrible stuff those Godless Commies are doing these days...

They're not Communist anymore.

Originally Posted by Adina

They're not Communist anymore.

Sarcasm. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Yeah. Sort of like this. Or this. Or, you know, this.

Terrible, terrible stuff those Godless Commies are doing these days...

Best not to think about it.

Originally Posted by Tone70

Best not to think about it.

I thought you didn't subscribe to that philosophy.

Ahem, I may have been poking a little fun at someone...

Originally Posted by Tone70

Ahem, I may have been poking a little fun at someone...

missile shields in Poland and/or the Czech Republic will be as obsolete as the Maginot Line.

Aren't missile shields completely defensive?

Originally Posted by Adina

Angering you was not my intention. I apologize for doing so and will endeavor to be nicer. I might note that, in my view, you're a partner (straight"man") in the joke not it's object, at least not entirely---which is why I will be nicer.

Originally Posted by Adina

Aren't missile shields completely defensive?

a) The Maginot Line was a defensive thing, too. Google, dearie.

b) The nature of nuclear warfare makes even ostensibly defensive measures de facto offensive. Since each side only gets a single strike at best, a means by which an opponent's strike could be nullified puts its deployer in a greatly more advantageous offensive position. Their function is to drastically improve first-strike capability. Missile shields are only actually defensive if fielded by non-nuclear-powers -- they have no capacity for first-strike.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38688732...deastn_africa/

Originally Posted by TimWalker

From what I read in the newspaper, Russian cities have been suffering from a rather nasty combination: tripple digit temperatures, and smoke from the many forest fires.

It's been a pretty hot summer to follow a pretty chilly winter there. As for smoke, I talked the other day to a buddy of mine who lives in a southeast suburb of Moscow. Three words:
"Дышать, бля, нечем!" [there's nothing to fucking breathe!]

He and a friend decided to experiment and found that daytime visibility was down to 10 paces. Peatbog fires are nasty that way -- lots of smoke, but not a huge heat gradient in the air to drive winds for blowing the smoke away.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

From what I read in the newspaper, Russian cities have been suffering from a rather nasty combination: tripple digit temperatures, and smoke from the many forest fires.

Isn't Russian agriculture taking a beating from this, too? Thought I read that they were going to be down 25% total ag production.

Originally Posted by Poodle

Isn't Russian agriculture taking a beating from this, too? Thought I read that they were going to be down 25% total ag production.

They've halted grain exports through the end of the year (for #3 global exporter, that's a pretty serious thing). I've seen as high as 30% estimates. They had a high pressure cell just sort of camp out over a goodly chunk of the country for a lo-o-ong time.. So high temps, and very low rainfall. Not generally a recipe for a good growing season.

Innocent people have nothing to fear, right, Adina?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39136836...ew_york_times/

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY


updated 9/12/2010 5:23:43 PM ET

CLIFFORD J. LEVY — It was late one afternoon in January when a squad of plainclothes police officers arrived at the headquarters of a prominent environmental group here. They brushed past the staff with barely a word and instead set upon the computers before carting them away. Taken were files that chronicled a generation’s worth of efforts to protect the Siberian wilderness.
The group, Baikal Environmental Wave, was organizing protests against Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to reopen a paper factory that had polluted nearby Lake Baikal, a natural wonder that by some estimates holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.
Instead, the group fell victim to one of the authorities’ newest tactics for quelling dissent: confiscating computers under the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software.

Not political or anything... just a standard example of how motorcyclists over there drive. Worth watching all the way through -- the last couple minutes are the best.

Varshavskoye Shosse commute.