Russia for the last 8 years has benefited from America's war on terrorism, with high fluctuating oil prices and the stranglehold of gas supplies to Europe from central Asian states. Most of the economic growth was also from the maturation of many reforms passed under Yeltsin. Putin's strong stance against Chechnya and dismantling of oligarchy wins favour with the Russian public. Anything is possible for the people of Russia as long as they do not think of becoming involved politically against the Putin's KGB cadre.

However with the economy now entering recession people's lives will be affected, Putin froze the prices before elections earlier in the year, dissent would rise as the illusion of economic growth now fades and change is pushed for. The Kremlin will come down hard on anybody who will start to resist. This is the reality of State Managed Democracy in Russia.

More:
The Rise of Pro-Putin Youth
Putin Warns Countries Not To Interfere With Russian Affairs
Why Democracy: Russia's Village of Fools
ex-KGB spy speaking against Putin shortly before his death
Real News: Eric Margolis comments on Putin and Russia's Duma
Russians back Putin, Russian Elections deemed a 'farce'
Suppression of Opposition Groups in Russia
Putin's Message to the West
Death of a Nation: Russia in 2006 by Marcel Theroux
Kasparov on Maher--Being Very Clever
Panorama - The poisoning of Litvinenko
Russians mark Anna Politkovskaya's Murder

DEC 14 2008 MOSCOW— The Russian police detained dozens of antigovernment protesters attempting to hold an unsanctioned rally in Moscow on Sunday.

Police officers and armored riot control personnel prevented the planned protest in central Moscow from materializing, in the latest sign that public expression of dissent against the authorities would not be tolerated under President Dmitri A. Medvedev any more than it had been under his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin.

As many as 100 people were detained, including Eduard Limonov, the head of the banned National Bolshevik Party, said a spokeswoman for Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups led by Mr. Limonov and the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, among others. The police said that about 10 people were detained during a similar protest in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
The Moscow demonstration was meant as a protest of the Kremlin’s handling of the financial crisis and its plans to change the Constitution to extend presidential and parliamentary term limits. Government critics say such a move could be used to extend the authority of Mr. Putin, who is now prime minister, and possibly lead to his early return to the presidency.

Mr. Putin, while he has said Mr. Medvedev will remain president until his term ends in 2012, has not ruled out running for a third term after that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/europe/15russia.html?_r=1

"hold on vladimir my baby wants to say hi"

genius

I am very uncomfortable with Obama's attitude toward Iran. However, I have to say that I think he's more likely to avoid war with Iran than McCain is. Mccain, if elected would try to open any talks with Ahmadinejad (or whoever the Iranian president at the time might be.).

This is not going to be an effective way to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons research. Ahmadinejad is NOT in charge of the nuclear program. That is under the direct oversight of one of Ahmadinejad's political opponents, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The President of Iran has no jurisdiction over that area.

It has been proposed that one of the reasons the Clinton administration had so little luck in preventing Iranian nuclear research was that they approached the President rather than the Supreme Leader. As Vladimir Putin's talks with the Ayatollah show, the only way to get anything done with regard to Iranian nuclear research is to deal with Khamenei directly.

While Obama has never directly stated that he would talk with Khamenei instead of Ahmadinejad, it can be implied from his public statements on the matter. Obama has explicitly avoided saying that his talks would be with Ahmadinejad, and has reminded the press that "President Ahmadinejad is not the leader of Iran." The only reasonable interpretation of Obama's words is that he wants to talk with the Leader of Iran.

In contrast, McCain's response sent the impression that he's completely unaware of the Supreme Leader and the broad constitutional powers granted to the holder of that office. If McCain is elected, any talks with Iran would follow policies that have been proven ineffective.

The song is written by Vladimir Vavilov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vavilov
under the mysterious pseudonym "Francesco da Milano" - to make it look like the song was very old.

It was that or lift up the shirt of some random little kid to kiss them on the stomach: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Always-Affectionate-Vladimir-Putin

Hi/diary cheesemoo,
I'm happy to announce the cow has returned in a Chinese embed thanks to the Zonbie
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bezmiegs-Insomnia-2004-Vladimir-Lesciov
I think you'll n-joy
Eklek

*vladImir, apparently

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891156,00.html

Please DO NOT view the below perversion of science unless you can remain "unsentimental". It is the result of work by Vladimir Demikhov in 1954, on dogs. It is the upper body of a small dog grafted onto the shoulders of a larger dog. I can recognize that there may have been made advances in vascular surgery but just because you can, doesn't mean you should. In this case it's two dog brains and therefore two dog 'souls'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_AHPF7hnTM
^WARNING VIEWER DISCRESSION^

Dghandi has an interesting point though. Better to be a paraplegic and alive? Maybe, but it's the brain stem that runs the ticker, so all that would have to be connected. Maybe some day.

On August 28th 2007 it was announced that 10 people were arrested in connection to her murder:

"Controversy arose because the prosecutor, Yuri Y. Chaika, suggested that the motive for killing had not been to silence Ms. Politkovskaya, whose efforts to uncover corruption and brutality under President Vladimir V. Putin had brought her international acclaim but scorn from officials here.

Rather, the prosecutor said, the killing was intended to discredit the Kremlin, by raising suspicions that it had been involved, and ultimately to destabilize the Russian state. That now-official theory is markedly different from one broadly accepted by her peers, who have said she was killed in retaliation for her work or to prevent additional articles from being published.

Among those arrested, the prosecutor said, were a police major and three former police officers, who were working with a criminal gang led by a Chechen. Also arrested, he said, was a former officer in the F.S.B., the principal successor to the K.G.B.

Mr. Chaika added that the killing had been ordered from abroad, although he refused to identify the man suspected of being the mastermind or disclose his whereabouts, and provided no evidence to support the claim. The prosecutor would not release the names of any of the suspects.

His description of the motive aligned neatly with Mr. Putin's first public statements about the killing last year and with a pattern of government contentions that foreigners were trying to undermine Russia and the Kremlin, and to tarnish their reputations."

- NYT

It was standard Soviet practice to blame any problems that occur within its borders on foreign influences in the past. The press brief went on to state the murders were designed to destabilize the political situation in Russia and blame the Kremlin for it. This is totally ridiculous considering that the only people to benefit from her death was the Kremlin and specifically Putin himself.

Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-FSB Lt.Col and dissident accused Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. He himself was poisoned on November 1st of 2006, via lethal dose of polonium-210. As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.

"The Kremlin press pool is a handpicked group of reporters, most of whom work for the state and the rest selected for their fidelity to the Kremlin's rules of the game. Helpful questions are often planted. Unwelcome questions are not allowed. And anyone who gets out of line can get out of the pool.

The Kremlin press pool is like so many institutions in Russia that have the trappings of a Western-style pluralistic society but operate under a different set of understandings, part of what analyst Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center calls "the illusion of democracy." Television channels air newscasts with fancy graphics but follow scripts approved by the Kremlin. Elections are held, but candidates out of favor with the Kremlin are often knocked off the ballot. Courts conduct trials, but the state almost never loses. Parliament meets but only to rubber-stamp Kremlin legislation.

Putin offered an example of that at the news conference when defending his decision last fall to abolish elections of regional governors. "The leaders of the regions of the Russian Federation will not be appointed by the president," he said. They will be approved by "regional parliaments, which are directly chosen by secret ballot." Putin compared this to the Electoral College, which selects U.S. presidents. "It is not considered undemocratic, is it?"

In fact, under the new system, Putin will appoint governors. His selections have to be ratified by regional legislatures, but if such a legislature rejects his choice twice, it will be dissolved. As for secret ballots, Russian regional leaders have proved adept at generating the outcomes they wish.

Anna Politkovskaya was just one of the dozens of reporters to meet their end during the reign of Putin, yet the press which is 80% state controlled dare not question the official line from Kremlin. She was murdered on October 7th 2006, which also happened to be Putin's birthday.

"Russia is yet another country where a free press is upheld in the language of the constitution, but the reality is one of state control of expression, concentration of media in the hands of the very few and very rich, and violence against journalists who report on crime and corruption.

Vladimir Putin's tenure has been marked by firm and incremental moves by the state against press freedom and independence. In some cases, the Putin government's strategies are relatively direct, such as strict controls on reporting in Chechnya. Other approaches -- such as the targeting of journalists with politically-motivated libel suits, or hostile takeovers of key media outlets by businessmen with close ties to Putin himself -- are more subtle, yet consistent and effective strategies for ensuring that the state influence permeates the media at all levels.

The strategy has resulted in the takeover of a prominent and outspoken, independent, national television station and the consolidation of newspaper and magazine ownership under a handful of powerful oligarchs. While an independent press does exist in Russia, the overall effect has been to stifle criticism of Putin and his regime on key issues like government corruption and abuses in Chechnya. Media support for the Putin government was particularly evident in the parliamentary elections in spring of 2004, during which Russian press groups complained of state-dominated television's promotion of the pro-Kremlin parties.

The right to free expression is more flagrantly violated at the local level, where journalists who report on corrupt politicians and organized crime are routinely harassed, attacked, and sometimes murdered, with generally only a perfunctory and thoroughly flawed prosecution to follow. A noteworthy case is the murder of the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper in Togliatti, an industrial city in the Volga River region, in October of 2003. It was the second murder of the editor of the very same publication in less than two years. The following investigation has been denounced as a sham."

- Source http://www.pbs.org/

I watched the main prosecutors briefing on PTP Planet in Russian that morning. The rhetoric, method of presentation, hostile opposition to any questions by the press left no doubt in my mind that it was simply a political ploy to ease criticism of the Putin government with regards to the murders. Suddenly after years of inaction not one, but several murders are explained away neatly, however neither actual motives, names of other suspects nor any concrete evidence backing up the claims were presented.

For more on Russian subversion of democracy I recommend you check out my sift - http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Rise-of-Pro-Putin-Youth

Garry Kasparov formed the United Civil Front, which is a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the elected government of Vladimir Putin.

United Russia, Putin's political party in conjunction with its youth division Nashi, is vehemently opposed to Kasparov, criticisms range from calling him mildly a capitalist foreign proxy to outlandish ones citing his movement as akin to fascism. In fact to join Nashi, youth candidates under go a screening process where they have to state why they hate the US and why Kasparov is dangerous. Nashi's most popular slogan is "No to Fascism!"

The facism claim tickles me, while Putin rides out the economical revival after several years of turmoil under Yeltsin, he is also cementing all goverment control under him. Electoral laws have been changed to centralize government power in Moscow, odd for a nation that stretches from the Finnish border to Siberia. But it's all due to the threat of terrorism you see. The upcoming December election is nothing but window dressing, analysts unanimously agree that Putin will hold power even if a new president is elected perhaps staying as a Prime Minister, until he can run again in 4 years for President again.

Many Russians don't seem to mind as they have equated democracy with chaos, and don't realize the various political, social and press freedoms they are losing. Russia is sliding slowly backwards into authoritarian state control.

I personally blame misguided nostalgia for Soviet prestige and power that the country enjoyed previously, that is slowly developing into nationalism centered under one ruler.

Check this related sift - Nashi : The Rise of Pro-Putin Youth.

Gracias, Grubert

In reply to your comment:
“Whoever's going to search for a video related to Vladimir Nabokov will never find this one!”

Whoever's going to search for a video related to Vladimir Nabokov will never find this one!

rough translation:

"And now, I can't resist the desire to show you the beginning of the press conference by the new French president Nicholas Sarkozy at the G8 Summit. He's leaving his meeting with his Russian colleague, Vladimir Putin, and apparently he didn't drink a lot of water."

"Ladies and Gentleman, I would like to apologize for my tardiness which was caused by the length of my meeting with Mr. Putin. What would you prefer, that I respond to questions? Sooo...<shrug> Are there questions <snicker>? One here..."

Anti-semitism is a big problem in the Islamic world. I have experienced it myself first hand. There are three major causes of this anti-semitism. Firstly, many corrupt rulers indulge and often encourage hatred of the Jews and Israel in order to deflect criticism away from their own corrupt and cruel regimes. Secondly, in many countries the relevant areas of history and politics are excluded from the educational syllabuses, and the public debate of important and contentious political issues is restricted. Thirdly, the single greatest factor contributing to anti-semitism is that for over fifty years we have seen the Israelis oppress the Palestinians - including daily humiliation, terrorism and murder and a concerted effort to steal Palestinian land and annex Jerusalem. People need to learn that they can be strong supporters of Palestinian independence and strong critics of Israeli government policy without resorting to anti-semitism or calling for the destruction of Israel. Criticising Israeli government policy is NOT anti-semitic.

MEMRI TV - A WARNING:

In my daily trawl through YouTube I have encountered many videos from the following site: Memri TV This website only shows the very worst of the Islamic world - radical fringe preachers with little or no public support, unobjective critics of America and Israel, anti-semites, holocaust deniers, misogynists, etc. However, it presents these opinions as if they are widely held, rarely questioned, and representative of the Islamic world. Further more - and this is particularly worrying - the site often mistranslates, or takes out of context, what major Islamic leaders are saying in order to make them seem more extreme and bigotted. The site uses an Arabic title and icon in order to try and disguise its real agenda.

Who are Memri? They send out their videos to all senators and congressmen, and all mainstream media, so we should really know something about them!

MEMRI was founded in 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. Meyrav Wurmser and her husband David Wurmser were both co authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel) which was the precursor for the Wolfowitz doctrine- which led to PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Dr. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Her husband David Wurmser works directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It was David Wurmser that told Dick Cheney that Wilson's wife Plame was the one that sent Wilson to Niger.

MEMRI's headquarters are in Washington DC. It is a non-profit organization, exempt from taxation, that has private donors. MEMRI's largest donor is The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has also provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy.

MEMRI TV - A WARNING:

In my daily trawl through YouTube I have encountered many videos from Memri TV. This website only shows the very worst of the Islamic world - radical fringe preachers with little or no public support, unobjective critics of America and Israel, anti-semites, holocaust deniers, misogynists, etc. However, it presents these opinions as if they are widely held, rarely questioned, and representative of the Islamic world. Further more - and this is particularly worrying - the site often mistranslates, or takes out of context, what major Islamic leaders are saying in order to make them seem more extreme and bigotted. The site uses an Arabic title and icon in order to try and disguise its real agenda.

Who are Memri? They send out their videos to all senators and congressmen, and all mainstream media, so we should really know something about them!

MEMRI was founded in 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel from Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. Meyrav Wurmser and her husband David Wurmser were both co authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Israel) which was the precursor for the Wolfowitz doctrine- which led to PNAC - Project for the New American Century. Dr. Meyrav Wurmser received her doctorate at George Washington University, by researching the life and works of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Her husband David Wurmser works directly under Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. It was David Wurmser that told Dick Cheney that Wilson's wife Plame was the one that sent Wilson to Niger.

MEMRI's headquarters are in Washington DC. It is a non-profit organization, exempt from taxation, that has private donors. MEMRI's largest donor is The Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation has also provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy.