Windows to Russia

Sipping that cup of coffee and looking out the window on this bitter cold (-8) and snowy Sunday. In fact maybe I should say bitter cold and a blizzard outside to be truthful. Middle of March almost and it is still a Winter wonderland. Visibility is about 25 meters at the best and Boza turned white during our walk. I know I was covered in snow also and had to take off the coat at the back porch and shake it. Boza decided to wait until we got in the door and then shook his coat out. 🙂

You can tell it is Spring because the days have gotten very long but someone has forgotten to tell Old Man Winter that he is not wanted around right now. Miss Spring is still sleeping and refuses to wake up…

So I decided to drink two cups of chicory (coffee) and work on my android phone today. It seems that there is an update and I have to figure out how to get it downloaded and installed. I have a Huawei U8860 Honor and it was just a month ago that it was updated to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0. It was the second phone brand in the world to get the ICS 4.0. I have had two updates since and it just gets better every time. So I am looking forward to this new update…

Messing with the Android Phone is the perfect thing to do on a cold and snowy day in Russia…

Have a great weekend everyone…

Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia!

“Most financial institutions don’t consider the social and environmental consequences of their investments. Unless members speak up and take action, they’re unlikely to take ethical considerations into account. Our research shows that teachers’ pension funds in the United States, Canada and Britain invest heavily in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry. Yet polls show that teachers — the guardians of our future, in many ways — are overwhelmingly opposed to nuclear weapons. Through their daily work, teachers promote understanding, tolerance and cooperation. Nuclear weapons are the very antithesis of these virtues. Teachers should refuse to have their retirement savings invested in this horrible industry.” Daniela Varano International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

“TIAA-CREF declines to comment.”

The most open and forthright firm on this matter has been TIAA-CREF. Though they will be in the firing line they have tried to make decent investments.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons released an eye-popping report on 5 March 2012 titled Don’t Bank on the Bomb. In that report are listings of banks, financial institutions and funds that, in some form, fund the research, design, development, production, deployment and maintenance of nuclear weapons.

Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu penned the introduction to the report. He indicated that battling against the entrenched interests (government/military and banks/financial firms) that sustain nuclear weapons and fund their modernization will be a long and arduous struggle. But he points to the model of boycott and disinvestment used to pressure the apartheid government of South Africa as both inspiring and successful.

“Banks and other financial institutions should be called upon to do the right thing and assist, rather than impede, efforts to eliminate the threat of radioactive incineration by divesting from the immoral nuclear arms industry. In the long struggle to end racial segregation in South Africa, our freedom was won with the help of concerned individuals around the world who pressured their leaders and corporate actors to stop funding the racist regime. To those who invested in our country, we said: you are doing us no favor; you are buttressing one of the most vicious systems. Divestment was vital in the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa. Today, the same tactic can – and must – be employed to challenge man’s most evil creation: the nuclear bomb. No one should be profiting from this terrible industry of death, which threatens us all.”

Teach Your Children Well

Don’t Bank on the Bomb offers a treasure trove of data on the financial institutions that invest either directly or tangentially in the nuclear weapons industry. Some financial entities referenced are surprising. One of those is TIAA-CREF which the report describes as “TIAA-CREF: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association,  College  Retirement Equities Fund is a financial services organization that is the leading retirement provider for people who work in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields. It has US$453 billion in combined assets under management, reported revenue of US$32.22 billion in 2010 and employs 7,200 people. It has major offices in Denver, Charlotte and Dallas as well as 70 local offices throughout the United States. It invests in: Alliant Tech Systems, Babcock & Wilcox, BAE Systems, Boeing, General Dynamics, Finmeccanica, GenCorp, Honeywell International, Jacobs Engineering, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.”

TIAA-CREF manages the funds for thousands of K-12, college and graduate school educators in public and private/parochial-religious educational institutions across the United States. Arguably ironic, and certainly contradictory,  is that religious affiliated schools, whose leadership preaches peace and cultural unity at home and abroad, find that their retirement funds depend, in part, on the financial performance of the nuclear weapons industry and military strategists in Washington, DC, Moscow, Beijing, Tel Aviv, London, Delhi and Islamabad.

Landmines and Nukes

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) recently celebrated its 13th Anniversary in March 2012. Next to Bishop Tutu’s South Africa boycott and disinvestment model stands the ICBL’s tireless effort to ban the use of landmines around the world. The grassroots organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work which culminated in the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty in “Ottawa, Canada, on 3 December 1997. It entered into force less than two years later, more quickly than any treaty of its kind in history.”

Unfortunately, the flaw in ICBL’s model is that the United States of America and 36 other countries refuse to become parties to the treaty. The USA has splendid company that includes Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. Coincidently, these are the same countries that hold the world’s largest arsenals of nuclear weapons (the UK has signed the Ban Mine Treaty). If these countries are not willing to forsake the use of landmines, then the prospects for eliminating nuclear weapons seems dismal.

At the moment, President Obama has requested $11.5 billion for the FY2013 budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration. Only $2.5 billion of that amount is directed to nonproliferation with the remainder to be funneled to national security purposes.

Religion’s Role

For FY2012, according to the Arms Control Association, the situation was this: “The United States military maintains a modern arsenal of 1,790 deployed strategic nuclear warheads, according to the September 2011 accounting under the New START treaty. These warheads are deployed on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), and Strategic Bombers. The Departments of Defense and Energy currently spend approximately $31 billion per year to maintain and upgrade these systems. For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the Obama administration is requesting $7.6 billion in funding for weapons activities in the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile and production complex, a 10 percent increase over the FY 2011 appropriation of $6.9 billion.

In the next four years NNSA plans to spend $9.6 billion on maintaining, securing, and modernizing the nuclear stockpile, and $34 billion on all of its weapons activities programs.  The U.S. military is in the process of modernizing all of its existing strategic delivery systems and refurbishing the warheads they carry to last for the next 20-30 years or more. These systems are in many cases being completely rebuilt with essentially all new parts.”

And that’s big business.

Perhaps some flavor of religion as a stimulant to mobilize a campaign against nuclear weapons development and their haunting presence is necessary. Bishop Tutu is correct, of course. And so is the Ayatollah Khamenei, “…the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

The views of the above author are not strictly the views of Windows to Russia. They are an independent view from an outside source and country that brings a better light on the world in general and Windows to Russia is pleased to have John Stanton’s article on its pages today. It is hoped that we will have many more of his writings in the future…

Windows to Russia!

Forget the past (Saddam, Osama, Gaddafi) and the present (Assad, Ahmadinejad). A bet can be made over a bottle of Petrus 1989 (the problem is waiting the next six years to collect); for the foreseeable future, Washington’s top bogeyman — and also for its rogue North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners and assorted media shills — will be none other than back-to-the-future Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And make no mistake; Vlad the Putinator will relish it. He’s back exactly where he wants to be: as Russia’s commander-in-chief, in charge of the military, foreign policy and all national security matters.

Anglo-American elites still squirm at the mention of his now legendary Munich 2007 speech, when he blasted the then George W Bush administration for its obsessively unipolar imperial agenda “through a system which has nothing to do with democracy” and non-stop overstepping of its “national borders in almost all spheres.”

So Washington and its minions have been warned. Before last Sunday’s election, Putin even advertised his road map. The essentials; no war on Syria; no war on Iran; no “humanitarian bombing” or fomenting “color revolutions” — all bundled into a new concept, “illegal instruments of soft power.” For Putin, a Washington-engineered New World Order is a no-go. What rules is “the time-honored principle of state sovereignty.”

No wonder. When Putin looks at Libya, he sees the graphic, regressive consequences of NATO’s “liberation” through “humanitarian bombing”; a fragmented country controlled by al-Qaeda-linked militias; backward Cyrenaica splitting from more developed Tripolitania; and a relative of the last king brought in to rule the new “emirate” — to the delight of those model democrats of the House of Saud.

More key essentials: no US bases encircling Russia; no US missile defense without strict admission, in writing, that the system will never target Russia; and increasingly close cooperation among the BRICS group of emerging powers.

Most of this was already implied in Putin’s previous road map — his paper A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making. That was Putin’s ippon — he loves judo — against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund and hardcore neo-liberalism. He sees a Eurasian Union as a “modern economic and currency union” stretching all across Central Asia.

For Putin, Syria is an important detail (not least because of Russia’s naval base in the Mediterranean port of Tartus, which NATO would love to abolish). But the meat of the matter is Eurasia integration. Atlanticists will freak out en masse as he puts all his efforts into coordinating “a powerful supranational union that can become one of the poles of today’s world while being an efficient connecting link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region.”

The opposite roadmap will be Obama and Hillary’s Pacific doctrine. Now how exciting is that?

Putin plays Pipelineistan

It was Putin who almost single-handedly spearheaded the resurgence of Russia as a mega energy superpower (oil and gas accounts for two-thirds of Russia’s exports, half of the federal budget and 20% of gross domestic product). So expect Pipelineistan to remain key.

And it will be mostly centered on gas; although Russia holds no less than 30% of global gas supplies, its liquid natural gas (LNG) production is less than 5% of the global market share. It’s not even among the top ten producers.

Putin knows that Russia will need buckets of foreign investment in the Arctic — from the West and especially Asia — to keep its oil production above 10 million barrels a day. And it needs to strike a complex, comprehensive, trillion-dollar deal with China centered on Eastern Siberia gas fields; the oil angle has been already taken care of via the East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Putin knows that for China — in terms of securing energy — this deal is a vital counterpunch against Washington’s shady “pivoting” towards Asia.

Putin will also do everything to consolidate the South Stream pipeline, which may end up costing a staggering $22 billion (the shareholder agreement is already signed between Russia, Germany, France and Italy. South Stream is Russian gas delivered under the Black Sea to the southern part of the EU, through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia). If South Stream is a go, rival pipeline Nabucco is checkmated, a major Russian victory against Washington pressure and Brussels bureaucrats.

Everything is still up for grabs at the crucial intersection of hardcore geopolitics and Pipelineistan. Once again Putin will be facing yet another Washington road map — the not exactly successful New Silk Road (See US’s post-2014 Afghan agenda falters, Asia Times Online, Nov 4, 2011.)

Ant then there’s the joker in the pack: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Putin will want Pakistan to become a full member as much as China is interested in incorporating Iran. The repercussions would be ground-breaking — as in Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran coordinating not only their economic integration but their mutual security inside a strengthened SCO, whose motto is “non-alignment, non-confrontation, and non-interference in the affairs of other countries.

Putin sees that with Russia, Central Asia, and Iran controlling no less than 50% of world’s gas reserves, and with Iran and Pakistan as virtual SCO members, the name of the game becomes Asia integration — if not Eurasia’s. The SCO develops as an economic/security powerhouse, while, in parallel, Pipelineistan accelerates the full integration of the SCO as a counterpunch to NATO. The regional players themselves will decide what makes more sense: this or a New Silk Road invented in Washington.

Make no mistake. Behind the relentless demonization of Putin and the myriad attempts to delegitimize Russia’s presidential elections, lie some very angry and powerful sections of Washington and Anglo-American elites.

They know Putin will be an ultra tough negotiator on all fronts. They know Moscow will apply increasingly closer coordination with China, on thwarting permanent NATO bases in Afghanistan, on facilitating Pakistan’s strategic autonomy, on opposing missile defense, on ensuring Iran is not attacked.

He will be the devil of choice because there could not be a more formidable opponent in the world stage to Washington’s plans — be they coded as Greater Middle East, New Silk Road, Full Spectrum Dominance, or America’s Pacific Century. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumble.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

The views of the above author are not strictly the views of Windows to Russia. They are an independent view from an outside source and country that brings a better light on the world in general and Windows to Russia is pleased to have Pepe Escobar’s article on its pages today. It is hoped that we will have many more of his writings in the future…

Windows to Russia!

The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State:

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Because of a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture, and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf autocratic dictators crushed their respective uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries thereby destroying Libya’s economy and civil society. The unleashing of armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside. The NATO powers eliminated the secular government of Colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. Nato oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture, and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. NATO backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry as well a sub-Sahara African immigrant workers – groups who had benefited from Gaddafi’s generous social programs. The imperial policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as “the model” for Syria: Creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf State mercenaries.

The Bloody Road From Damascus to Tehran

According to the State Department ‘The road to Teheran passes through Damascus’: The strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran’s principal ally in the Middle East; for the Gulf absolutist monarchies the purpose is to replace a secular republic with a vassal theocratic dictatorship; for the Turkish government the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara’s version of Islamic capitalism; for Al Qaeda and allied Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis, and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world; and for Israel a blood-drenched divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony. It was not without prophetic foresight that the über-Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the ‘Al Qaeda’ attack of September 11, 2001: “First we must go after Iran, Iraq, and Syria” before considering the actual authors of the deed.

The armed anti-Syrian forces reflect a variety of conflicting political perspectives united only by their common hatred of the independent secular, nationalist regime which has governed the complex, multi-ethnic Syrian society for decades. The war against Syria is the principle launching pad for a further resurgence of Western militarism extending from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, buttressed by a systematic propaganda campaign proclaiming NATO’s democratic, humanitarian and ‘civilizing’ mission on behalf of the Syrian people.

The Road to Damascus is Paved with Lies

An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies. The West, after having foisted a brutal gangster regime on the people of Libya, can make no claim of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people. One of their main propaganda mills is located in the heart of London, the so-called “Syrian Human Rights Observatory” where it coordinates closely with British intelligence turning out lurid atrocity stories to whip up sentiment in favor of a NATO intervention. The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict. This is no “civil war”. This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots, and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, ‘multi-national’ character of the conflict. Ultimately the violent uprising against the Syrian state represents a systematic imperialist campaign to overthrow an ally of Iran, Russia, and China, even at the cost of destroying Syria’s economy and civil society, fragmenting the country and unleashing enduring sectarian wars of extermination against the Alevi and Christian minorities, as well as secular government supporters.

The killings and mass flight of refugees is not the result of gratuitous violence committed by a blood thirsty Syrian state. The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this “humanitarian disaster”, (which their imperial allies and UN officials blame on Syrian security and armed forces). The Syrian security forces are fighting to preserve the national independence of a secular state, while the armed opposition commits violence on behalf of their foreign pay-masters – in Washington, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Ankara, and London.

Conclusions

The Assad regime’s referendum last month drew millions of Syrian voters in defiance of Western imperialist threats and terrorist calls for a boycott. This clearly indicated that a majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed “Free Syrian Army” flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime has accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent “regime change”, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies. In a repeat of the Libya scenario, NATO proposes to “liberate” the Syrian people by destroying their economy, civil society and secular state.

A Western military victory in Syria will merely feed the rising frenzy of militarism. It will encourage the West, Riyadh and Israel to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon. After demolishing Syria, the Washington-EU-Riyadh-Tel Aviv axes will move on to a far bloodier confrontation with Iran.

The horrific destruction of Iraq, followed by Libya’s post-war collapse provides a terrifying template of what is in store for the people of Syria: A precipitous collapse of their living standards, the fragmentation of their country, ethnic cleansing, rule by sectarian and fundamentalist gangs, and total insecurity of life and property.

Just as the “left” and “progressives” declared the brutal savaging of Libya to be the “revolutionary struggle of insurgent democrats” and then walked away, washing their hands of the bloody aftermath of ethnic violence against black Libyans, they repeat the same calls for military intervention against
Syria. The same liberals, progressives, socialists and Marxists who are calling on the West to intervene in Syria’s “humanitarian crises” from their cafes and offices in Manhattan and Paris, will lose all interest in the bloody orgy of their victorious mercenaries after Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities have been bombed by NATO into submission.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). Petras’ most recent book is The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack. He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James’s website.

The views of the above author are not strictly the views of Windows to Russia. They are an independent view from an outside source and country that brings a better light on the world in general and Windows to Russia is pleased to have James Petras’s article on its pages today. It is hoped that we will have many more of his writings in the future…

Windows to Russia!

Russia and China are correct and maybe it is a sign of the times or not, but Russia and China are the ones showing the world the correct path to a proper international policy to help the world. This is the thinking’s over a wonderful cup of coffee this morning…

I remember the time that I would have expected Russia and China to be the bad guys and the ones to want to cause a one sided destruction of a country. It seems that now the tide has turned in the world. As we watch the financial world shift like the flowing sands in a desert, we watch the morals, liberties, freedoms and rights shift like waves on an ocean…

Russia and China both say they will not vote for a UN Security Council resolution that allows outside forces to enter against Syria, in any manner and a resolution that takes one side over an other. Everyone must be impartial and treat all the same…

Deputy FM Gennady Gatilov said in New York on Thursday that the Russian delegation was holding a series of tense consultations on the draft resolution, and that Russia was holding out for one containing equal demands to all conflicting sides.

It seems that our Western Empire is gun-ho on supporting a terrorist rebel group in Syria and that is leading to complications with a goodly portion of the world. It is pointing to a Libyan scenario all over again…

Russia and China both have the same saying as America:

‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’

This means that you should learn from your mistakes and not allow people to take advantage of you repeatedly…

The issues that happened in Libya and the issues that are being instigated in Syria and Iran, show me/you that we need to sit down and rethink the process of life as it has been presented to us over all these years. In fact we need to rethink the many ways that our kids are being twisted by the falsification of information in this world…

It is not enough just to say, “Oh I see through that and who cares?” for many people take what is being fed to them as equivalent to the Bible (gospel) and that is the scary part of what is happening in the world. Just because you see that it is false, does not mean that your neighbor sees that it is false and he may lap it up like a puppy at a water bowl…

Without a doubt the happenings against Syria, Russia, China, Iran and multiples of other countries over the last year is strictly a Western Empire instigation. It has been proven (Even by the Wests own accord!) without a doubt that Libya was instigated by the West and has failed miserably…

Now these same morally indecent and warmongering instigators want to attack Syria and Iran in that order. We watch on a daily bases Israel scream about wanting to attack Iran and it is a daily talk from America about attacking Syria…

There is two sane voices in this world  (Russia and China) and that are just big enough to keep the “jackals at bay” But just verily. How long that will last is anyone’s guess, but I suspect that the West is already sending much in the way of arms and mercenaries into Syria, just like they did in Libya…

Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia!

This is about an hour long video that Sveta and I made of us just surfing the webcams that were used to observe the Russian presidential election. I won’t go into details because it is so long and will be boring to many, but it is a uncut video of Svet and I looking for problems and or looking for interesting things to watch…

You will see cleaning ladies doing their job, people counting votes, people observing the count process, people falling asleep, people eating, people talking people working and people just being people. Most of the cams are in schools and that alone gives you the ability to see many Russian schools from the inside. You will spot foreign observers and many other things. The one thing that you will see is that people try to do what is correct and follow rules and regulations. People work together and communicate as a group…

I was impressed by what I saw and the video goes from the polling station in Moscow that Sveta voted at to Siberia to Kaliningrad and much more…

What the video does not show is an attempt at trying to defraud the system. I see a whole lot of honest people that deserve to be commended for working hard and diligently. Instead it seems to me that these good people are being slandered by the Western media as cheaters, scum and falsifiers…

That is just wrong and if you watch the video you will see. It has no sound and is boring because Sveta and I are jumping around the Russian country looking at various polling stations at random for the most part. You will see where we are at by the map that we use…

Russia deserves respect for making such an open election and people who try to degrade such an attempt are more guilty of the crime than Russia ever is…

Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia!

PS: The video is located on our personal server because I do not trust YouTube to not block it. YouTube has destroyed lots of our videos. It will be a fast or slow loading according to how many people are trying to watch it. We do not have unlimited bandwidth so it is restricted somewhat. The start of the video is Sveta’s polling station and they are getting ready to start the count. The video freezes because the webcams freeze a lot, as webcams do all the time…

Since I always update as I find new information on past articles. So this morning with a cup of coffee lets talk about a Russian adoption that failed many moons ago:

Former foster mother of Russian boy Artem Savelyev – US citizen Torry Hansen who sent him back to his homeland, will have to pay him maintenance. This decision was made by Judge in Lynchburg (Tennessee) Lee Russell at a court hearing in Hansen’s case on Wednesday. Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell in Tennessee ruled that she must pay child support for the boy whom she sent back to Russia alone in April 2010.

Thus, the judge granted the request of the World Association of Children and Parents (WACAP) – one of the two US agencies that filed a lawsuit against Hansen demanding to make a decision on this case in their favour because of the defendant’s absence in court.

Torry Hansen, who has repeatedly ignored court summons, also failed to appear at the court meeting on Wednesday, when the last hearing was held. In a letter sent to the court on Tuesday Hansen explained this by the fact that she no longer lives in Tennessee and moved to California.

In April 2010, Artem Savelyev, 7, arrived in Moscow by plane from Washington. The boy, who arrived alone, had only a backpack with clothes, a Russian passport with a US visa and a letter to the RF Ministry of Education with the notice of the adoption’s cancellation. The foster mother – American Torry Hansen, said in the letter that “no longer wished to parent this child.” She claimed the child was “mentally unstable” and that his problems were hidden from her by Russian orphanage officials before she adopted him.

“He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviour. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability,” Hansen wrote.

The adoption agency, World Association for Children and Parents, had sued Hansen for breach of contract and child support for the boy.

Windows to Russia!

MOSCOW, March 7 (Itar-Tass) —— Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he would not object to making public service in Russia off-limits to persons with dual citizenship.

“Let’s consult the people and make this decision. I have no objections,” Putin said on Wednesday, March 7.

He said, smilingly, at the same time that a similar ban should be introduced for Russian mass media. “That’s a good idea to forbid all foreigners to work in public service completely,” Putin said, responding to a suggestion made by one of the journalists on Wednesday, March 7.

“But let’s take the next step then. Let’s forbid people with foreign passports or dual citizenship to work in national mass media. If we act consistently and logically, that’s should the next step,” Putin said, with a smile.

He noted, however that there are national mass media in Russia where only foreigners work. “In fact there are no mass media employing predominantly Russian citizens in the United States, for example, and it’s hard to imagine such a situation there,” the prime minister said.

“You see, it’s impossible: they will get killed administratively and financially. But unlike them, we are a democratic country,” he said, with a smile.

Hmm, That got me thinking…

Windows to Russia!

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were not the only international observers at the 2012 Russian Federation Presidential Elections on March 4. And despite the OSCE’s claims that the election was unfairly biased towards one candidate, a separate contingent of independent international observers, who viewed the ballot process in cities across Russia, from Nizhny Novgorod to Chelyabinsk, have said that in general there were “few violations” in Sunday’s vote.

The increased media and public attention on the election was as a direct result of significant political activity in Russia in the last 3 months, including mass protests both in support and opposition to Vladimir Putin, and his candidacy. As a result there were greater numbers of international observers present at the March 4 vote than at the parliamentary elections in December.

After visiting different parts of the country they shared their observations.

A member of the Senate of France European affairs committee Joel Guerriau, who observed the voting in St. Petersburg, was surprised by the Russian tradition of voting in pairs and families. The senator also pointed out that not all voters voted in booths: “The transparent ballot box allows you to see the choice made, and that doesn’t fully meet the procedure of the private expression of will.” However, he and his colleagues, paying respect to the transparency of the election and to Russian traditions, did not consider this to be a violation.

Observers from Spain,Madrid’s Mayor Councilor David Ergido and the member of the Board of the Spanish People’s Party Pedro Mourinho, who observed the elections in Mordovia, were surprised by the high turn-out of voters despite the bad weather. “In Spain a snowfall would have significantly hindered the expression of will among citizens” – Mourinho told reporters. In general, according to Spain’s representatives,Russia left Europe behind in matters of “public control and transparency of elections.”

Web cameras at all polling stations meant that the election process in Chechnya’s auls to the towns lost in the hills of Kamchatkacould be observed from any place in the world.

Anthony Salvia, Director of American Institute in Ukraine, who visited elections in Nizhny Novgorod, and fellow American James George Jatras, a policy expert and political scientist, who observed the elections in Chelyabinsk, also expressed their surprise. Jatras said that the election met all international standards: “I didn’t notice a single violation at any of the seven polling stations I visited.”

According to Jatras, this opinion is shared not only by observers of the presidential candidates, but also by ordinary voters with whom he managed to speak with. He also expressed confidence that his colleagues who came to the Southern Urals from other countries would agree with him, but stressed that he does not represent any position of the U.S.government, who has their own officials present at the election.

The transparent ballot boxes, according to Mr. Jatras, were a “very interesting phenomena of the election.” While in the United States such boxes aren’t used a special device for counting ballots similar to the Russian COIBs (Complex Processing of Ballots) is applied. As a result paper ballots are not saved, only electronic records are left. In this regard, as the observer noted, many American voters do not trust the results.

“Following our visit to the polling stations we can state that the Russian system of surveillance has surpassed all world’s standards,” an independent observer from Italy, a member of the City Council of Venice, Alessandro Musolino, who observed the elections in Moscow said.

“The elections took place as should be expected, without any violations. It’s amazing how such a complex electoral mechanism works so well.” An observer from the Czech Republic, Jan Mladek, agreed with him saying that Russia“left many countries behind” in this matter.

Mikhail Plisyuk is a Director of the Institute of International Integration Studies, Moscow…

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Today marks the 75th anniversary of the first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. In June, 1963, she embarked on her three-day flight, which carried her call sign “Chaika,” or “Seagull,” to the farthest corners of the world.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and PM Vladimir Putin congratulated Valentina Tereshkova on her jubilee, the press office reported Tuesday.

Earlier today, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia announced his decision to award Russian State Duma MP Tereshkova with the Order of Glory and Honor 1rd Rank.

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