EDITORIAL
BRAVO!! The Republicans finally Stand up to Russia
We are thrilled beyond words with the earth-shaking announcement from the new Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress that they will block ratification of the Obama nuclear arms treaty with Russia, a treaty which offers no meaningful cuts in weapons by the Russians, which undercuts American strategic power, a treaty which serves the propaganda interests of the Kremlin and seriously undermines democracy in the former USSR.
At long last, the Republicans have remembered the legacy of Ronald Reagan and moved forward decisively to pull the country back from the precipice of appeasement towards which the Obama regime has recklessly led it over the past two years.
At long last, the good-hearted people of Russia, those few who still care about their country’s future and are willing to defend it, can once again hope for some leadership and assistance from Americans as they struggle to defend basic American values of democracy and freedom from absolute extinction in their country.
And at long last, the demonic forces in control of the Russian Kremlin will be forced to confront the harsh, cold reality of American power.
For too long, the craven and ignorant Obama regime has allowed the Kremlin to forget how American power outclasses Russia in every category of economic, political and military competition.
For too long, the apes who roam the Kremlin have been allowed to delude themselves into thinking they are smarter and tougher than Americans, that all Americans are weak and gullible fools like Obama. The Kremlin’s attitude towards the United States has become fully neo-Soviet, and Obama’s outrageous misconduct, repeatedly betraying American values and interests, gave the KGB clan in the Kremlin little reason to doubt the accuracy of that attitude.
But now the unthinkable has happened. Russians have watched as something they have never once achieved has again occurred in American, the party of power has been thrust out and the opposition, full of confidence and vigor, has seized the policy initiative.
All Russians can do is stand slack-jawed and watch as their best-laid plans collapse just like the USSR so recently did.
We urge the Republicans to go further. It is time to roll back Obama’s “reset” of relations and return to sanity. It is time Russia was cast out of the G-8 group, in which it is utterly lacking in membership credentials like the other civilized members possesses. It is time to impose tough economic and political sanctions on Russian misconduct and savagery, from Ossetia to Moscow where journalists are routinely attacked and killed by Kremlin-friendly forces.
The Republicans should bring prominent Russian leaders like Nemtsov and Milov and Kozlovsky and Ryzhkov and Latynina and Yusupova before them in Congress to tell the world about the outrageous acts of the Putin regime an to demand support from the Obama government which would protect them from further atrocities.
It is time for the Republicans to lead American away from the abyss!
La Russophobe 
If the republicans show the slightest weakness we will vote them out on their ear. The Rinos have to go.
Oh, but why do they need the nuclear arms treaties at all? To control each other? To stop building new nuclear weapons?
This is clearly against Respublicans’ interests. And Chinese too, by the way – China benefits from the US spending money on arms they can’t afford…
Somewhat naive (they’re directing this to “the Russian government” and talk about “Chechen law enforcement and security forces”), but anyway:
Russia: Vienna Trial Should Prompt Inquiry
Upcoming Trial Suggests Links between Ramzan Kadyrov and Vienna Killing
November 14, 2010
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/11/15/russia-vienna-trial-should-prompt-inquiry
For years, Memorial, Human Rights Watch, and other groups have documented human rights violations by pro-Kremlin Chechen forces under Kadyrov’s de facto control, in the context of Chechnya’s counter-insurgency campaign. Despite these repeated allegations and reports, the Russian government has taken no meaningful steps to investigate them.
“This trial turns a spotlight on what is happening in Chechnya.” Denber said. “For years, Chechen law enforcement and security forces have abducted, secretly detained, tortured, forcibly disappeared, and even killed relatives of alleged insurgents or those suspected of any form of collaboration with the insurgency. While Israilov’s abduction and torture ordeal happened in 2003, these abuses are going on in today’s Chechnya.”
Kadyrov in Spotlight at Austrian Murder Trial
17 November 2010
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/kadyrov-in-spotlight-at-austrian-murder-trial/423530.html
Peter Pilz, a Green Party deputy in the Austrian parliament, said after attending the trial that the prosecutors’ vagueness on the killers’ motives showed that the Austrian government was not ready to confront Russia.
“The prosecution presented impressive evidence and argued plausibly, but it failed to address the motive convincingly. I believe this reflects political considerations,” he said by telephone from Vienna.
Pilz said there was “a huge gap” on the defendants’ bench without Kadyrov and promised to step up public and political pressure to bring him to Austria.
“Austria must signal that it enacts the rule of law. We need an indictment and international arrest warrant for Ramzan Kadyrov,” he said.
In a bizarre twist, Kaltenbrunner’s lawyer Mayer said he would ask for Kadyrov to be called as a witness so that the Chechen leader could confirm his innocence. “Maybe he will come,” he was quoted as saying by Die Presse.
Pilz also complained that Austrian authorities had failed to crack down on a Vienna-based 30-member gang that used “all means, including attacks, blackmail and kidnapping” to force refugees to return to Chechnya.
Kadyrov’s Web of Influence
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,729330,00.html
In May 2009, a Chechen living in Vienna who had received similar calls contacted the authorities. The terrorism experts were even able to identify the suspect in the case: a wealthy Russian citizen known in Berlin for his big cars and his villa. Was he planning a murder from his base in Berlin? The files suggest that the telephone surveillance and the subsequent investigation did not lead to any action against the suspect in Berlin, however. A memo from Vienna states matter-of-factly that officials took “no further steps.”
Where are the jobs Mr Boehner????
Reagan raised the stakes in the nuclear arms race thus bankrupting the Soviet Union, but it could have spelt Armageddon for the human race. His support of the Taliban during the Afghan/Russia war came back to haunt us in the shape of Al Kheida. Don’t even get me started on defecits under Reagan.
How come Kasparov did not get a mention in your article. His mastery of English means could best articulate the misery of today’s Russia to our grid-locked congress.
Reagan’s deficit’s?
The House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, was controlled the entire 8 years of Reagan’s presidency by the democrats. He tried to control spending but was thwarted by idiot liberals. The arms race wasn’t all about nuclear weapons, it encompassed all weapon systems. Representative Boehner won’t be swore in as Speaker of the House until january, the democrats are still in charge. More cynical tripe from a typically ignorant person calling himself a progressive.
Ay, he just had a rep senate and influenced some dems in the house to make sure they vote for him as well
America should be building and testing improvements in all weapons including nuclear on a continuous basis. Old nuclear weapons should not be discarded, but stored for emergencies. We also should be constantly improving delivery systems and pointing these delivery systems right at the bad guys necks.
Please could you elaborate a little on what exactly emergency should you store your old nukes for?
I mean, why would you need 5,000 instead of 1,000 warheads?
So Ron, “Point them” at your bad guy or my bad guy?
What if we’d pointed them at sassan? But wasn’t he supposed to have been pointing them at us? But he didn’t have any, did he? What gives you the right to take the moral high ground?
Where are the jobs Mr Boehner????
Shay:
We point them at the ones the left likes most.
Hispanics?
Russia lives in the past and considers itself a ‘global power’ in par with the USA – while in reality Russia is a third world country, with aging unguarded nukes and a population that is disappearing; on top of that Russia is heading for the civil war – hence investment dollars are leaving Russia with the spead of light. So the whole treaty is a farce, concocted by Russia.
third world
unguarded nukes
disappearing
civil war
spead of light
treaty is a farce
No need to comment:)
This article is ridiculous and is based on unfounded bigotry towards a largely peaceful nation. The author’s living in a world half a century ago, terrified and played by McCarthyism propaganda – who actually takes any of this seriously?
“Harsh cold reality of American power?”
Because obviously it’s only a powerful nation that can lose a war to the poorest country in the world: Afghanistan. And, stupidly, you make it sound like you want another war. Because Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan just aren’t enough.
“Demonic forces of the Kremlin?”
This has got to be a joke. The author should focus more on providing the truth rather than building up anti-Russian feelings through sensationalist lies. The KGB? Really? The Cold War ended 20 years ago, even if you evidently want it to still continue. Your out-dated racism has no place in democratic, liberal, accepting America.
Jane, thanks for post above!
Sometimes one needs some small proof that sane people are still a majority in the US.
Jane, or Manfred or Dymasza or whoever. wrote;
This article is ridiculous and is based on unfounded bigotry towards a largely peaceful nation. The author’s living in a world half a century ago, terrified and played by McCarthyism propaganda – who actually takes any of this seriously?
comment;
I will take ‘McCarthyism propaganda’, which, in reality was a cleansing of the soviet communist spies in th USA in th efifties, any time of the day; or should I go for the Soviet/Russian version of communist propaganda that translates into gulags, starvation, denunciations, the mockery of the justice system, total disentagration of any democratic and human vestiges. Apparently Russians loved it and now totally deny that that horror has ever happened to them; it is being done in the name of the russian empire which can only be described as a barbarian idiocy….
Jane,
I’ve got something for you to read. It’s about you and your kind, about the life (and death) in Russia (“a largely peaceful nation”), and the US (and global) appeasement of the literally murderous Russian fascism in general:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2000/02/29/war-crimes-chechnya-and-response-west
Since the beginning of the conflict, Russian forces have indiscriminately and disproportionately bombed and shelled civilian objects, causing heavy civilian casualties. The Russian forces have ignored their Geneva convention obligations to focus their attacks on combatants, and appear to take few safeguards to protect civilians: It is this carpet-bombing campaign which has been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict in Chechnya. The Russian forces have used powerful surface-to surface rockets on numerous occasions, causing death tolls in the hundreds in the Central Market bombing in Grozny and in many smaller towns and villages. Lately, Russian commanders have threatened to use even more powerful explosives, including fuel air explosives which could have a disastrous casualty count if used against civilian targets. The bombing campaign has turned many parts of Chechnya to a wasteland: even the most experienced war reporters I have spoken to told me they have never seen anything in their careers like the destruction of the capital Grozny.
Russian forces have often refused to create safe corridors to allow civilians to leave areas of active fighting, trapping civilians behind front lines for months. The haggard men and women who came out of Grozny after a perilous journey told me of living for months in dark, cold cellars with no water, gas or electricity and limited food: their little children were often in shock, whimpering in the corners of their tents in Ingushetia and screaming in fright whenever Russian war planes flew over, reminding them of the terror in Grozny.
Men especially face grave difficulties when attempting to flee areas of fighting: they are subjected to verbal taunting, extortion, theft, beatings, and arbitrary arrest. On several occasions, refugee convoys have come under intense bombardment by Russian forces, causing heavy casualties. Currently, tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in the Argun river gorge in Southern Chechnya, stuck behind Russian lines without a way out from the constant bombardment and rapidly running out of food supplies.
For many Chechens, the constant bombardment was only the beginning of the horror. Once they came into contact with Russian forces, they faced even greater dangers. Human Rights Watch has now documented three large-scale massacres by Russian forces in Chechnya. In December, Russian troops killed seventeen civilians in the village of Alkhan-Yurt while going on a looting spree, burning many of the remaining homes and raping several women. We have documented at least fifty murders, mostly of older men and women, by Russian soldiers in the Staropromyslovski district of Grozny since Russian forces took control of that district: innocent civilians shot to death in their homes and their yards. In one case, three generations of the Zubayev family were shot to death in the yard of their home.
On February 5, a few days after Secretary of State Albright met with President Putin in Moscow, Russian forces went on a killing spree in the Aldi district of Grozny, shooting at least sixty-two and possibly many more civilians who were waiting in the street and their yards for soldiers to check their documents. These were entirely preventable deaths, not unavoidable casualties of war. They were acts of murder, plain and simple. Refugees are returning to Grozny to find their relatives or neighbors shot to death in their homes. And most disturbing of all, there is no evidence that the killing spree has stopped.
(…)
Equally worrying is the lack of a strong Western response to the abuses in Chechnya. Instead of using its relationship with Russia to bring an end to the abuses in Chechnya, the Clinton administration has focused on cementing its relationship with Acting President Putin, the prime architect of the abusive campaign in Chechnya. Secretary of State Madeline Albright traveled to Moscow while bombs were raining down on Grozny, and chose to focus her remarks on Acting President Putin’s qualities as the new leader of Russia, rather than on the brutal war in Chechnya. U.S. officials continue to understate the level of atrocities in Chechnya, talking about “abuses” in the war rather than calling those abuses by their proper name, war crimes.
And some more. And try to remember they did all this (mass destruction, mass murder, organized looting, rape and extreme torture – then followed by the forced “disappearance” of thousands when the “war against bandits” was declared “over” for the first time) to the Russian-speaking “Russian citizens in Russia” including even many ethnic Russians victimised just for living in this place – they would do just the same if not even worse to the progressive people of the “democratic, liberal, accepting America” including you and your family, if they could (I mean things like: rape and kill you, steal everything they could carry off from your house, then burn the house):
In the past month, the Russian authorities have begun arresting large numbers of civilian men throughout Chechnya. These men, numbering well over a thousand, and some women, have been taken to undisclosed detention facilities, and their relatives are desperately trying to locate them. I have spoken to men who have been able to pay their way out of these detention facilities, and they have given me consistent testimony about constant beatings, severe torture, and even cases of rape of both men and women. One of the men suffered from a back injury after being hit with a heavy metal hammer; a second man had several broken ribs and suffered from kidney problems from the severe beatings.
The constant attacks by Russian forces against the civilian population have caused more than two hundred thousand Chechens to flee into neighboring Ingushetia, overwhelming the local population, which numbers only some 300,000. Many more internally displaced persons are trapped inside Chechnya, especially in the southern Argun river gorge, unable to seek safety because of the refusal of Russian forces to create safe corridors.
The conditions in the refugee camps are dire, with inadequate shelter, food, clean water, heating, and other essentials. Only a minority of refugees are housed in crowded tent camps or railway cars: the majority live in makeshift shelter in abandoned farms, empty trucking containers, or similar substandard shelter; many are forced to pay large sums for private housing. Because refugees are forced to rely on their own limited resources for survival, they are often forced to return to what is still a very active war zone when they run out of money, putting their lives at renewed risk. Russia is not allowing humanitarian organizations to operate freely in Ingushetia, and is virtually blocking any direct assistance to needy persons inside Chechnya. Refugee children in Ingushetia are not attending school, and medical needs often go unmet. The contrast with the international response to last year’s Kosovo crisis is striking, although the security concerns and Russian obstruction are certainly relevant factors.
Russian authorities have repeatedly attempted to force refugees to return to Chechnya by denying them food in the camps or by rolling their train compartments back to Chechnya. Russia is attempting to relocate refugee populations to areas of northern Chechnya under Russian control, which would place them beyond the reach of international humanitarian agencies and under more direct Russian control. The border between Chechnya and Ingushetia is regularly closed, preventing refugees from fleeing to safety and often splitting up families stranded on different sides of the border. Following the destruction of the capital, Grozny, and many other towns and villages in Chechnya, and the widespread looting and burning of homes, many refugees simply no longer have a home to return to: everything they owned in this world has been destroyed.
One of the most troubling aspects of the war is that the Russian authorities have failed to act to stop abuses perpetrated by their troops in Chechnya. There is simply no indication that the Russian authorities have taken any steps to prevent these abuses, to investigate them when they do happen, and to punish those responsible. As a result, a climate of impunity is rapidly growing in Chechnya: Russian soldiers know that they can treat Chechen civilians however they like, and will not face any consequences.
Nowhere is the failure of the military authorities to stop abuses in Chechnya more obvious than in the widespread looting which has taken place in Chechnya since the beginning of the war. Soldiers are systematically looting civilian homes, carting away the stolen goods on their military trucks, and storing them at their barracks in plain daylight. The looting is visible to everyone, and is occurring right under the noses of their commanders. Yet nothing is being done to stop this and other abuses. The absolute failure of the Russian military command to stop war crimes, particularly summary executions, in Chechnya makes them highly complicit.
Dear Jane,
Are you a kremlinoid or just a historically challenged clueless teenager?
Germany was largely peaceful nation, but the Nazis in power were not.
No, little sunshine, neither Germany, nor France, nor Britain were peaceful. They are peaceful now, when the US took their place of a metropolitan power robbing the world.
Jane:
What world do you live in??? “Demonic forces of the Kremlin” rather understates it. The Russian people will be very close to starvation this winter because of feckless Russian leadership.
Roger L Simon believes the Democratic party will go out of existence because the Obama crowd has revealed fully who they are. Ta Ta liberals. My understanding is that laying in the corner chewing on a rug is helpful for your condition.
What planet are you from dear Jane?? It’s you that has lost the plot, and lost it completely.
Maybe you have been swinging from branch to branch with Tarzan for far too long and in the process lost all trace of reality. Face the cruel facts bimbo, because it’s the likes of you and your ilk that allows terrorist governments like Putin and co. to flourish while at the same time suppressing freedom in their own country.
Bohdan, it’s quite strange that while you boast you fight for what you think is happiness for Russian people, most Russians coming here ask you to stop doing it. It looks like you do it wrong.
Dmitry, I avoid you and what you represent like the bubonic plague – but I will reply to your unbelievably far fetch’d and ridiculous propaganda just this once!
Please, do not speak for “most Russians” when you are just a pesky and annoying solitary voice out there in Putin’s paid ‘nashi’ wilderness. But, instead, be good enough to explain in your quint (and for that matter far fetch’d) way, WHY so many honest and brave reporters who have the decency and strength to report the truth on what is happening in the KGB controlled land that is present day RuSSia are being murdered, beaten up and crippled under Putin’s criminal dictatorship – while to this day not one perpetrator of these murders or cowardly thug meted crippling bashing’s, to silence these brave and heroic voices, have been located – let alone arrested.
By the way, I don’t expect an answer because you will not have one for the above types of crimes being perpetrated by YOUR beloved Putin, himself a cowardly thug ‘a la par excellence’ and the ‘Potemkin’ society that he is creating in his RuSSia while the cowardly majority of the Russian sheeple just baa, baa to his dictates.
Bohdan, all this BS you mumble aside, I am speaking only for the most Russians *who come here*. They normally think you’re such a bastard.
As to the *most Russians* in general, say, statistic – and number of people coming to your beloved neocon Kasparov’s rallies – shows very well that he’s almost just as pathetic as you are, a tragic clown of a sort.
As to brave reporters, brave policemen, brave state officials (like that city major murdered by Khodorkovsky’s buddies) – there’s one reason for it. After the 10 years of decay under Yeltsin, russian judiciary system has degraded to such level that it will take decades to clean it from corruption.
Nobody’s well protected, and least of all journalists. But it would be really stupid – and thus, most probably, your next move – to say they were killed by the federal government. This country has never killed journalists.
To Ron and Bohdan,
You ask what planet Jane is from? She’s obviously from the same nitwitville planet Obama resides in. These idiot liberals are incapable of objective thought and one should just roll your eyes back and say lalalalalala while they enlighten us all with there drivel.
Sad you reside on different planets with Obama.
And what do you call an “objective” thought there on the planet you’re from? Like, some kind of a thought independent from a person who thinks it? A “thought in itself”? Some “ideal” mother of all thoughts?:)
I agree that Afghanistan wars never have a successful conclusion, but there is a benefit. Our military is improving its systems and intel to a point that the Taliban leadership is being wiped out. They go to sleep and wake up dead. The Afghan people hate them, rat on them and point out the house. When the guy in Alabama gets off break he lets them have a nice small, ever cheaper bomb down the chimney. Cheap little unmanned airplanes and cheap little bombs are a side benefit of this war. Keeps us sharp.
@Cheap little unmanned airplanes and cheap little bombs are a side benefit of this war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_attack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azizabad_airstrike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narang_night_raid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruzgan_helicopter_attack
“The Afghan people hate them”. Them – who?
You would think that LR wrote this, but the American press is beginning to wake up?
Instead, Mr. Putin is erecting a Great Russian empire. He has imposed a brutal police state at home. Journalists routinely are killed. Critics and dissidents are jailed. Media freedoms and opposition parties are under assault. A gangster elite runs the Kremlin, plundering the country’s vast wealth.
Russia has become a rogue state. Mr. Putin’s aim is to make Moscow the center of an anti-American, anti-Western axis. Russia has waged a genocidal war in Chechnya. It has de facto annexed the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It has reduced Belarus to an economic vassal. It menaces the Baltic States. Moscow asserts a sphere of influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus. It has sold vital missile and nuclear technology to Iran’s mullahs. It has close ties with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.
Putin understands that his imperial ambitions ultimately can be achieved only if Ukraine is subjugated. Russia with Ukraine resembles America – a vast continental superpower. Without it, Russia is more like Canada – a large country mostly covered in snow.
Moreover, a democratic and prosperous Ukraine is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Putin regime. It will serve as a model for its northern Slavic cousins to imitate – a viable, attractive alternative to Mr. Putin’s barbarism. Hence, for Moscow, Ukraine must be smashed; its experiment in independence must be subverted.
It is high time Washington takes notice. President Obama’s efforts to press the “reset button” in relations with the Kremlin have failed, emboldening Mr. Putin’s fascist regime. Ukraine’s descent into Putinism would be a tragedy of historical proportions. Contrary to Moscow’s propaganda, Ukraine is not a regional outpost of Russian civilization; rather, it is part of the European main – a long-suffering nation with a distinct cultural identity rooted in Western values, a separate language and unique Slavic heritage.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/18/will-ukraine-survive/
Dmitry:
“This country has never killed journalists”
I know you have to lie to keep your job, but you need to be more sophisticated. Your boss is going to critisize you for being too blunt. Fuzz it off he will say. A blunt, obvious lie works poorly. Do like the American left. They lie constantly, but with lots of meaningless words.
@A blunt, obvious lie works poorly.
Ron, you see, you, the “right” of the USA live in a world of beliefs.
There’s no point in noting you can’t give one example where a journalist was murdered by a federal authority.
You just believe in what you think is true – and you don’t ever question your picture of the world, and need no proofs.
I’d say – let it be. Live like you like to live. I don’t care for the USA. Just stop disrupting other people’s lives with your beliefs, like you did dozens of times with people all around the world.
But yes, Ron, here’s a bad video of a federal power really murdering journalists. Western journalists trying to investigate a brutal war this agressor state started.
‘Ha, ha, I hit ’em.’ ‘Look at those dead b******s.’
Not surprisingly, this “federal power” is the US government.
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