I'm tired of the pot-hollering-kettle, agenda-pushing jewspaper picking on Putin. That alone tells you a lot about the guy.
"Putin pulls plug on official news agency; Critics suggest state tightening grip on media" by Steven Lee Myers | New York Times, December 10, 2013
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin dissolved one of Russia’s official news agencies, RIA Novosti, along with its international radio broadcaster Monday, signaling a significant reorganization in state media at a time when Russia has faced international criticism over political oppression and human rights.
From who?
The two agencies will be absorbed into a new state organization known as Rossiya Sevodnya, or Russia Today, to be led by a television executive and host, Dmitry K. Kiselyov, who has provoked controversy with starkly homophobic remarks and virulent commentary about foreign conspiracies against Russia.
Okay....
Putin’s presidential chief of staff, Sergei B. Ivanov, said the decision was part of an effort to reduce costs and make the country’s state media more efficient, but RIA Novosti’s report on its own demise said the changes “appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.”
The decision seemed to catch the agencies’ employees by surprise.
Always does!
Putin made the changes by decree without prior notice or public debate, as is often the case here....
Executive orders by Obama always good here in Amerika!
The reasons behind the timing were also unclear and, to many, puzzling....
I wrote I don't give a shit.
RIA Novosti’s roots extend to World War II, when it was founded as the Soviet Information Bureau two days after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. According to the agency, it has correspondents in 45 countries and provides reports in Russian and 13 other languages. It was renamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and while it continued to serve as an official news agency, its reporting has earned greater respect for balance and a diversity of viewpoints.
I wish I could say the same here.
That troubled at least some here....
The Kremlin’s international television network, now rebranded simply as RT, [is] known for its jaundiced view of the failings of the United States and other Western countries.
I should be watching that rather than reading this.
Alexei A. Navalny, the anticorruption blogger and opposition leader, lamented the demise of a “strong Soviet brand” in a posting on Twitter and said “Russia Today,” as a brand, was “something repulsive.”
That's funny; I feel that way about the Globe.
Andrei Miroshnicheko, an independent media critic here, said that RIA Novosti and the other state news agency, Itar-Tass, had effectively competed for resources and influence. He said RIA Novosti had become the most respected news agency in the former Soviet Union, one he associated closely with the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, who has served as prime minister since Putin returned to the presidency last year.
The new agency, he said, would now revert to its mission before the dawn of “the post-Soviet era,” as an arm of “foreign propaganda,” while Itar-Tass would focus on domestic news.
That's what we have in AmeriKa.
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Related: Russian media: Vladimir Putin retrenches, again
I'm sorry I'm so sour on pot-hollering-kettle media.
"Amnesty bill passes in Russia’s lower house" by Andrew Roth | New York Times, December 19, 2013
MOSCOW — An amnesty bill that seemed to promise freedom for defendants in some of Russia’s most politically charged criminal cases passed the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday. The two jailed members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot and the 30 Greenpeace demonstrators arrested at an Arctic offshore oil rig appeared to be among those likely to receive amnesty.
The bill was initiated by President Vladimir Putin and passed swiftly through the state Duma. The full text of the bill was not made public before the voting; it was scheduled to be printed in state outlets Thursday. The bill is expected to grant amnesty to as many as 25,000 prisoners, including those charged with hooliganism, which would appear to include the Pussy Riot and Greenpeace demonstrators.
The amnesty is seen as a way for Putin to move those two prosecutions, which have attracted wide criticism abroad, out of the spotlight before the Winter Olympics begin in Sochi in February. There has been speculation that some world leaders were considering staying away from the Games because of concerns over Russia’s record on human rights.
Putin said this month in a meeting with Russia’s human rights ombudsman and an adviser on human rights that the amnesty bill “should have a conciliatory effect and should underscore our country’s humane approach,” although he warned that it would not apply to repeat offenders.
The original bill, submitted by Putin last week, sought to release pregnant women and women with young children, elderly convicts, victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, war veterans, and others convicted of minor crimes. Amendments to the bill widened its scope to include defendants accused or convicted of committing hooliganism or participating in mass protests.
That provision would cover some people who were arrested after an anti-Putin rally in Moscow in May that descended into pitched battles between police and protesters. But most of those arrested were charged with inciting mass rioting or attacking police officers and would not receive amnesty under the bill.
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"Putin to pardon jailed tycoon Khodorkovsky" by VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) - In a surprise decision, President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be pardoned, a move that will see his top foe and Russia's onetime richest man freed after more than a decade in prison.
The development, along with an amnesty for two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band and the 30-member crew of a Greenpeace protest ship, appeared aimed at easing international criticism of Russia's human rights record ahead of February's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Putin's pet project.
Related: Pussy Riot Propaganda
Saturday Globe Special: Russian Sphere
Putin waited until just after his tightly choreographed annual news conference to make the announcement, dropping the biggest news of the day after journalists had already peppered him with questions in a four-hour marathon.
Wow! Four hours with the press! Obummer is usually done in an hour at his choreographed sessions.
Putin weathered months of massive protests against his rule in 2011-2012
That part was also included in my print copy.
Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Russian Protests Are Fun
The way protests are described and covered by my agenda-pushing media tells you a lot.
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Related: Russian oil tycoon released from prison
Russian rewrite. Why?
"Russian dissident freed after a decade in prison; Former oil baron immediately flies to Germany" by Nataliya Vasilyeva | Associated Press, December 21, 2013
BERLIN — After spending 10 years in Russian jails for what many in the West believe were trumped-up offenses, Mikhail Khodorkovsky left prison a free man on Friday and flew to Germany.
Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned his longtime rival on Friday morning, and the country’s Federal Penitentiary Service said Khodorkovsky quickly left the IK-7 prison in the remote northwestern village of Segezha.
Khodorkovsky had petitioned to be allowed to travel to Germany to meet his mother, who is undergoing medical treatment, the Penitentiary Service said in a statement.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that Khodorkovsky arrived at Berlin’s Schoenefeld Airport in the afternoon.
In a statement released on the website of his lawyers and supporters, Khodorkovsky said his application for a pardon, which he made Nov. 12, was not an admission of guilt.
‘‘I am very much waiting for the minute when I can embrace my nearest and personally shake the hands of all my friends and colleagues,’’ he said in the statement.
He also thanked former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who met him at the Berlin airport, for his ‘‘personal participation in my fate.’’
A statement from Genscher’s office said he had met Khodorkovsky while head of the German Council on Foreign Relations and agreed to a request from Khodorkovsky’s lawyers to try to help.
OBO Bettermann, a German energy firm that provided the plane for Khodorkovsky, said it did so on Genscher’s request.
During his time in prison on politically tinged charges of tax evasion and embezzlement, the 50-year-old Khodorkovsky has shifted his image from a powerfully wealthy, often arrogant oligarch to a respected dissident.
Translation: the criminal is a western contact
The former oil tycoon became a political thinker and editorial writer who argued for social justice and placed the blame for Russia’s stagnating economy squarely on its longtime leader Putin.
Except their economy is humming.
It was not clear whether Khodorkovsky would continue his opposition to the Kremlin or even choose to return to Russia.
Putin’s announcement less than 24 hours before the release that Khodorkovsky would be pardoned appeared to catch both the public and Khodorkovsky’s lawyers by surprise. His release was equally shrouded in mystery. Several hours before he was allowed to go, Khodorkovsky’s lawyers and family said they still had no idea when he would be let out.
Khodorkovsky’s father, Boris, said he and his wife, Marina, are in Moscow and will fly to Germany on Saturday.
Khodorkovsky’s second wife and three children live in the Moscow region. Pavel, his eldest son from his first marriage, has been campaigning on his father’s behalf and lives with his family in New York City.
Putin told reporters on Thursday that Khodorkovsky applied for the pardon because his mother’s health is deteriorating and she is undergoing medical treatments. The Kremlin’s site had a decree Friday saying that Putin was ‘‘guided by the principles of humanity.’’
The pardon appeared to be a sudden turnaround for the Kremlin, which has vigorously prosecuted Khodorkovsky since his arrest in 2003, in what was widely seen as Putin’s retribution for the tycoon’s political ambitions.
Freeing Russia’s most famous prisoner — along with an amnesty for two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band and the 30-member crew of a Greenpeace protest ship — appears aimed at easing international criticism of Russia’s human rights record ahead of February’s Winter Olympics.
Yeah, I heard that.
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The pre$$ attention this guy is getting also raises suspicions:
"Russian dissident vows to stay out of politics; Says he won’t try to reclaim firm; rocker also freed" by Alison Smale | New York Times, December 23, 2013
BERLIN — The setting was fraught with symbolism. In the museum at Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point along the now vanished Berlin Wall, the man who until Friday was Russia’s most famous prisoner faced reporters for the first time Sunday.
Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky told of his last 10 years in custody and how just two days earlier he had been freed suddenly and flown here to the German capital.
The lack of rancor expressed by Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man until he ran afoul of President Vladimir Putin 10 years ago, was striking. It simply did not surface during the hour or so he spent with a small group of Russian-speaking journalists.
Calm and business-like in a dark blue suit and tie, he appeared fit and was decidedly feisty. Yet, at least for the moment, he said, he plans to stay well clear of Russian politics, will certainly not lay claim to his former oil company, Yukos, and probably will avoid Russia itself.
Three days after Khodorkovsky was freed, the Associated Press reported that a member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot had also been released from prison.
Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were sentenced to two years in prison for an impromptu performance at Moscow’s main cathedral in March 2012. Pyotr Verzilov, Tolokonnikova’s husband, said Monday that Alekhina has been released under an amnesty that allowed her earlier release. Tolokonnikova is expected to be released this week. Alekhina and Tolokonnikova qualified for amnesty because they have small children.
Khodorkovsky, when asked Sunday how his unexpected liberation came about, said he had first written to Putin on Nov. 12 asking for clemency, after the former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who spent 2½ years working on his behalf, assured him that he would not have to admit any guilt.
Arrested on charges of embezzlement, Khodorkovsky became a powerful dissident voice, faulting Putin for consolidating authority and stifling dissent.
That no admission of guilt proviso was crucial, Khodorkovsky insisted, not so much for himself as for all the employees of Yukos, which has since been broken up and largely reconstituted as the Rosneft company, run by the Putin ally Igor I. Sechin.
Admitting guilt, he argued, could have resulted in all employees being accused as part of a large unit of conspiracy or of committing crimes, or it could have allowed Russian authorities to seek the extradition of Yukos employees who had fled abroad.
Talk of clemency, he said, first arose, during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally who served one term before stepping aside last year to allow Russia’s most dominant politician to resume the office he held from 2000 to 2008.
Genscher worked behind the scenes, with the knowledge of just a few German and Russian officials, to bring off Friday’s release, he said.
Asked whether he was grateful to Putin for clemency, Khodorkovsky paused, chose his words carefully, then said: “I was really contemplating for a long time how I would express what I feel toward Mr. Putin. All these years, all decisions in my case were made by one person. And it would be hard to say that I am thankful to him. Let me say: I am happy about this decision. That would be the most precise.”
The police detained Khodorkovsky in October 2003 on his private jet in Novosibirsk, after months during which he had increasingly challenged Putin by funding opposition parties and social movements. Earlier that year, the two men had clashed publicly at a Kremlin meeting.
Khodorkovsky said that before that meeting, unidentified presidential aides had indicated he could speak frankly, even on television. But doing so set him on a path that ended in two trials and a decade in jail.
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"Putin’s pardons reset tone as Olympics near; Punk musicians latest to be freed" by Vladimir Isachenkov | Associated Press, December 24, 2013
MOSCOW — It came as a shock both for those released and the public, yet President Vladimir Putin’s move to pardon his foes has allowed him to drive the news agenda less than two months before the Sochi Games.
Sigh.
Putin is dribbling out a headline day after day in the media.
Feels familiar to me.
First, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was released after a decade in prison, then Pussy Riot activists were pardoned, and now 30 Greenpeace activists are awaiting their turn.
The abrupt moves by Putin to release his adversaries mixed the elements of an astute spin effort with a crude KGB-style operation.
Of course, when AmeriKa does such things it is altruistic good will ion the effort to enhance peace.
The pardons could help repair some of the damage to Russia’s image before the Winter Olympics, which run Feb. 7-23, but it doesn’t ease tensions with the West over Ukraine and other issues, including gay rights, and keeps tight Kremlin control over Russia’s political scene unchanged.
Putin’s release of Khodorkovsky, his arch-foe and once Russia’s richest man, after more than a decade in prison was particularly stunning. Most observers thought authorities would file another set of criminal charges against the former oil tycoon to prevent him from walking free after serving his term.
One-time Kremlin insider, political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, saw the gloomy expectations as part of a carefully choreographed performance ending with Khodorkovsky’s surprise release and his swift move to Germany.
‘‘It’s quite obvious that it was timed for Christmas,’’ Pavlovsky said. ‘‘Putin has turned it into a big European and global show.’’
I always consider that when I read my propaganda pre$$.
Putin announced his decision to pardon Khodorkovsky as he was walking out of a four-hour news conference in response to a question from a Kremlin-friendly news outlet. If he did that at the news conference, it would have diverted attention from other subjects.
Can you blame me for not wanting to read this shit?
Khodorkovsky told the media in Berlin Putin’s decision came as a surprise, even though he had submitted a request for a pardon on German advice.
He had been taken from his bunk in the middle of the night, flown away from prison in a helicopter and put on a Germany-bound private jet.
Some compared Khodorkovsky’s release to the expulsion of dissidents during Cold War times, when Putin served as a KGB officer.
One motive behind the secret effort could be a desire to prevent Khodorkovsky from making a triumphant exit from prison to dozens of TV cameras — something the KGB also tried to do when they quickly and quietly escorted foes of the Soviet regime out of the country.
Khodorkovsky’s release topped the news for several days. Then, on Monday came the turn of the two members of the Pussy Riot punk band, who were serving two-year terms for an irreverent protest against Putin in March 2012.
Skanks.
The two women didn’t receive the same secretive treatment that Khodorkovsky had and were quickly released. Maria Alekhina was driven to a railway station, but she walked away and went to a local non-governmental organization.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova went to her grandmother’s home.
‘‘They were released at a speed unseen in a clumsy Russian prison system,’’ said Stanislav Belkovsky, a Moscow-based political analyst who had close links with the Kremlin in the past. ‘‘There must have been a strict order to do it quickly.’’
The band members slammed Putin’s amnesty as a publicity stunt.
Then go back in the cell.
Speaking of publicity stunts:
The 30-member crew of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise have spent two months in jail for a protest outside Russia’s Arctic oil platform. They are waiting for a stamp in their passports to be able to leave Russia, something expected within days.
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Nothing about Putin stopping a war and invasion of Syria, huh?
"Vladimir Putin takes on Western critics; Depicts Russia as true defender of family values" by Vladimir Isachenkov and Nataliya Vasilyeva | Associated Press, December 13, 2013
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin cast Russia on Thursday as a defender of conservative values against the ‘‘genderless and infertile’’ Western tolerance that he said equates good and evil.
Putin’s 70-minute state of the nation address marked a determined effort to burnish Russia’s image that has been dented by Western criticism of an antigay law that has stoked calls for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, his pet project.
Putin’s speech also contained a strong warning to those abroad who he said were seeking a military edge over Russia — a clear nod at the US effort to develop long range non-nuclear weapons that Russia sees as a threat to its nuclear deterrent.
Russia has insisted that a law banning ‘‘propaganda of nontraditional relations’’ does not discriminate against gays, but gay rights groups say it has given a green light to harassment and intimidation.
Without directly referring to the antigay law, Putin focused on upholding traditional family values, which he said were the foundation of Russia’s greatness and a bulwark against ‘‘so-called tolerance — genderless and infertile.’’
God I'm so sick of the gay issue being so prominent in my agenda-pushing paper.
Putin’s posture as a protector of conservative values and his scathing criticism of the West have been part of efforts to shore up his domestic support base of blue-collar workers, farmers, and state employees against mounting criticism from the urban middle class. But his speech also was pitched to conservatives worldwide.
He knows he is speaking to me and you, readers.
‘‘Many countries today are reviewing moral norms and erasing national traditions and distinctions between nationalities and cultures,’’ Putin said. ‘‘The society is now required to demonstrate not only the sensible recognition of everyone’s right to freedom of conscience, political outlook, and private life, but also the mandatory recognition of the equivalence of good and evil, no matter how odd that may seem.’’
He argued that the ‘‘destruction of traditional values from the top’’ going on in other countries is ‘‘inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of the majority of people.’’
Without naming any specific country, he blasted ‘‘attempts to enforce allegedly more progressive development models’’ on other nations, saying they have led only to ‘‘decline, barbarity, and big blood’’ in the Middle East and North Africa.
In an apparent jab at the United States, Putin said that Russia is not ‘‘seeking a superpower status or trying to claim a global or regional hegemony . . . not trying to patronize or teach anyone.’’
He denied that Russia was trying to coerce Ukraine into joining a Moscow-led free trade pact. The Ukrainian president’s decision last month to spurn an alliance with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia has triggered massive protests in Ukraine’s capital that have been going on for three weeks.
Related: E.U. and U.S. Behind Ukrainian Unrest
And everyone knows it!
Without naming the United States, Putin described the US program of developing ‘‘prompt global strike’’ weapons as an attempt to tilt the strategic balance in its favor and vowed to counter it.
The US program envisages creating long-range non-nuclear weapons that could strike targets anywhere in the world in as little as an hour with deadly precision.
See: Spy Satellite Shit and Rods From God
Putin said that Russia sees the effort as a threat to its nuclear deterrent and will take countermeasures.
‘‘Expanding the potential of strategic non-nuclear precision weapons along with developing missile defense systems could nullify all earlier nuclear arms reduction agreements and upset the strategic balance,’’ Putin said. ‘‘Russia will respond to all those challenges, both political and technological.”
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"Thousands of Russian nationalists rally in Moscow" Associated Press, November 05, 2013
MOSCOW — Several thousand Russian nationalists rallied Monday in Moscow, protesting against migrants they accuse of pushing up the crime rate and taking their jobs.
The Jew World Order paper of globalism doesn't like that.
The protest took place on Unity Day, a national holiday established in 2005 to replace commemorations of the Bolshevik Revolution. Many demonstrators carried Russian imperial flags. One group displayed a banner reading ‘‘Young People Against Tolerance.’’
Animosity is strong among nationalists against migrants from the former Soviet Central Asian republics and against non-Slavs from the largely Muslim Russian Caucasus region. Central Asian migrants are widely employed in big cities in construction and do other low-paid jobs that Russians are not eager to do.
That's the same old $hit they sell us here! Construction is a well-paying plumb of a job -- and we don't want them?
The protesters, from tough-looking youths and neo-Nazis to older people, marched in a quiet southeast neighborhood. The crowd has grown more middle-class since 2005, when the first march was held. A string of well-publicized crimes committed by migrants has embittered many Muscovites who see police as unwilling to prosecute the perpetrators.
My printed paper said persecute, so it's a good thing to see the second-rate talent clean that up.
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Yeah, well, we all know two-faced Russians are racists, homophobic, and a bunch of drunks. I guess that is why they want to spy on us, although one can hardly blame them after a female suicide bomber boarded the bus.
