A declaration of defeat by NATO…

Geidar Jemal, chairman of the Islamic Council of Russia:

First, I think that the NATO declaration about its readiness to prolong the bombings of Libya for some 90 days is a sign of weakness, because previously I remember they were telling us about their readiness to bomb as long as necessary.

Now limiting the bombings by a certain period of time, by 90 days, surely marks transformation of a very hard policy into something more rational. 90 days is not as long as necessary, because nobody understands what time is necessary. So, 90 days is a sign of unstableness, of certain confusion, because they were certainly expecting Gaddafi to cry ‘Uncle!’ after the first 3 days of bombing, maybe a week of bombing.

But we’ve been witnessing several months of severe punishment, which is given to Libya, to its civil population – because we should take into account the information coming from the Libyan government about more than 7,000 of civil victims of these bombings. This has been going on and on, and nobody sees any end to it. So, 90 days is a manifestation of confusion among European Union’s political and military leaders. It’s absolutely obvious that they are losing the war.

And the European Parliament is divided into factions. There’s a faction advocating peace, which is going to take some measures against Berlusconi and Sarkozy. And the public opinion is also divided. People know there are civil casualties in Libya, and no one believes in humanitarian goals of the European Union. So, 90 days may be a shadow of defeat looming over political leaders.

And certainly this is not helping Sarkozy in his campaign for presidency, same as it is not helping him down his rival Strauss-Kahn, who was charged with sexual harassment. Everybody understands that it was the actual French president who initiated the case. And it didn’t help Sarkozy to remove his adversary from the political scene. Libya is much the same case. He thought it would be a short victorious war with declared humanitarian rules. But everyone understands now Sarkozy proved to be just a fool, who put himself into a very uncomfortable situation – himself and Europe too.

I think Gaddafi is playing very cleverly, that times works for him. And even if he doesn’t manage to keep his post and leaves the country, he’s done the European Union so much harm – not by himself, but the European Union, through him, has done so much harm to itself, it is European Union’s guilt – that this harm with stay with the Europeans. Nobody will ever say that the European Union helps peoples to do away with totalitarian regimes.

Everybody understands that it is an absolutely inhuman intrusion into the interior life of peoples and so below the European morality that it had been hardly imaginable before all this happened. Now we see that Europe is absolutely hypocritical, that it thinks in double standards. And 90 days is, I think, a declaration of defeat.

Geidar Jemal

Original Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/06/02/51200012.html

Took a Trip to the Village: Gas Prices in Russia… (06/02/2011)

We took a pleasant journey this weekend to our village home. Thought you might be interested in what we pay for gasoline and propane here in Russia…

Filled up the tank with petrol (gasoline) this week – 21 rubles a liter…
Filled up the LPG (propane) tank this week – 14 rubles a liter…

3.78541178 liters = 1 gallon…

79.5 rubles per gallon for petrol (gasoline) = $2.84 an American gallon for gasoline
53 rubles per gallon for LPG (propane) = $1.89 per American gallon for propane

Our trip we just took was just a few km short of a 1000km and we drove all but about 10km on propane. No issues on getting fuel at any time and no waiting lines for fuel anywhere…

Gotta love that LPG…

Windows to Russia!

PS: I keep seeing the medias in the West proclaim that Russia is collapsing from Fuel shortage.  I have yet to see a gasoline issue in Russia. Lines at the Moscow stations are normal for the 5 years that I have lived here. Propane is not an issue. Moscow is the only place that seems to have high prices but that is easy to get around, just look at the prices before you buy. There can be as much as 5 or 6 rubles difference in price per liter and the stations are right next to each other… 🙂

Coffee and Russia and China and Energy…

I was sipping that great cup of coffee this morning and doing some thinking’s on what I have watched developed during the last year between Russia and China. It has been a low key development and the Russian news has been giving tidbits of information about the energy plans being geared toward China by Russia. Low key on the news front but huge on the energy front…

An example of this information is this : Russian Deputy Prime-Minister Igor Sechin said on Tuesday following the seventh round of the China-Russia energy negotiators’ meeting that Russia will finalize a 30-year deal with China by the 10th of June to supply a total of 68 billion cubic meters of gas annually… (Read More >>>)

Now my thoughts over that morning cup of coffee were about all the new pipelines for oil and gas lines, that have been built or being built to China. This weekend I watched trains with oil tank and coal cars going toward China. The trains had hundreds of cars attached full of oil and coal. I am here to tell you that China is taking all the oil and gas that Russia will give to her and if China could get all of Europe’s oil and gas they would take that also. The only thing that has stemmed the flow of gas is a price haggling between Russia and China for now and that will soon be overcome…

I did an article a year or so ago about how all oil was transported to China by train car from Russia. Then Russia opened a oil pipeline. The pipeline is flowing and the train cars are still rolling… (That should tell you something!)

Russia and China are also close to an agreement to build a joint oil refinery and that will signal a beginning of a new market era in oil byproducts between Russia and China…

China is an energy consumer and Russia is an energy supplier. That alone ensures that they will be in bed together and they live right next door to each other to boot…

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The Grain Game Continues as Russia Re-enters the Market…

Russia Profile06/01/2011On July 1 Russia will not renew its export ban on grain products that has been in place since August 2010, Vladimir Putin told reporters on May 28. The possibility of an additional 15 million tons of grain for the world market, as some have projected, would come at an important moment when American and European countries are facing poor harvests and the world market is looking for additional supplies. While analysts are optimistic about grain exporters’ reentry into foreign markets, obstacles include possible future tariffs and export quotas, as well as questions about Russia’s future reliability as a grain exporter.

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The Broken Reset and Russia…

Obama’s Russia ‘Reset’: Another Lost Opportunity?
By Stephen F. Cohen

Obama’s decision to base his Russia policy on a partnership with the presumed “liberal” Medvedev, in the hope of promoting his political fortunes over Putin’s, has further limited support for the reset in Moscow. (Like the US media, Obama and his advisers continue to denigrate Putin as a leader with “one foot in the old ways” and even one who, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once remarked, “doesn’t have a soul.”) This political wager on Medvedev repeats the longstanding White House practice of mistaking a personal friend in the Kremlin—“my friend Dmitri,” Obama calls Medvedev—for broad support in the Russian policy class. Indeed, openly backing Medvedev for the Russian presidency in 2012, as Biden did so improperly while in Moscow in March, has revived the Russian elite’s resentment over US interference in its internal affairs and reinforced the view that only Putin can be trusted not to “sell out Russia to the West.”…

Article source: http://www.thenation.com/article/161063/obamas-russia-reset-another-lost-opportunity

Oops – You should have a good read on this article. It is what I have been saying for over a year now about what is happening in Russia and the American reset farce…

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PS: Our Search Reset Link – http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-6949949917702753%3Aqac5zxa3urv&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=reset&sa=Search

Libya is not Enough for the West, looks like Yemen is Next…

The news media is working up the frenzy against Yemen. This change in tactics came about on the heels of China telling the dogs to back down over Pakistan and Russia telling the same dogs to go home over Syria…

Fighting continues in Yemen capital: (Link)
Days of armed clashes between tribal fighters and government troops have turned Sanaa into a battleground…

Yemen Worse Than Libya: (Link)
Diplomats describe Yemen as “worse than Libya” as dozens die in clashes…

Plus hundreds more links of total disparage and death in Yemen…

Maybe the West can do a humanitarian (war) mission in Yemen also. I am sure the people deserve to be saved and murdered just like the people in Libya are being saved and murdered by NATO…

Wow – maybe we can get into another short war. Like Libya…

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Coffee and Our Village – Sunrise to Freedom…

Sveta and I just had a wonderful long weekend at our village that is called Sunrise to Freedom. I have written many articles about this village. This is a link to our articles on Sunrise to Freedom… (Read More >>>)

So this morning as I was drinking that wonderful cup of coffee. I was thinking about the village and how nice it would be to live there. It is so much the same as when I grew up in America that it really makes me homesick for the old days…

We have electricity in the village house, but that is where the niceties stop. You walk to the well and fill up buckets with water and wood is the fuel of choice to heat water, unless you are fancy like us and have propane. But propane is in small tanks and you have to haul those tanks yourself. Also finding propane is easy but finding someone with enough energy to fill it is another story all together. You also have the modern convenience of outhouses to let you know that you are in the modern world…

Speaking of outhouse ours survived the winter. Sveta and I rebuilt the outhouse and after the tons of snow that fell this last winter, I was sure that it would be crushed into the ground. But it was not! We also had re-supported our back overhang on the house and Sveta was sure that that would be on the ground. But it looks like Sveta and I are pretty good at “Jury rigging” because it all still stood strong and solid… 🙂

I realized that one of the attractions of the village is the fact that what you do is up to you and know one is there to tell you that you can not build that, or cut that, or smash that and or eat that…

Another true pleasure in the village is fresh goats milk. Our neighbor almost always supplies us with goats milk. That is as long as she has extra. This year momma goat has had four kids and by that fact she is producing a ton of milk. The kids are eating solids now and so momma goat is a milk producing machine at this particular moment. Sveta and I got several liters of goats milk while we were there this time and that makes for a perfect weekend. Raw goats milk is the best bar none. Real cream for the coffee and just shake the rest up good for the best glass of milk that you can find…

Our village is located near a fish farm that produces literally tons of farm raised carp. Carp is a delicacy in Russia. So there is always people coming and going taking care of the fish. Several of the men that still live in our village work on the fish farm…

This is the lake (below) near the village. It seems that there is about 40 ponds and or lakes in all..

Water being pumped to pond from river near by.

Our – Village on the lake bank.

Big lake on road to Village.

Looks like a good place for Bass to me!!!

So Sveta and I had a wonderful weekend and when we got home I realized that it was Memorial day weekend in America. But for Sveta and I, it was a weekend full of special memories and fun. For me it was also another trip back down memory lane to a time that was definitely cleaner, better and more fun than what the world has turned into…

Windows to Russia!

PS: Sveta and I will make several more trips to the village this year. We have lots of work to do on the old village home and we need to make sure that she will be a good village home for years to come…

Russia and Growth…

Something that is very interesting while traveling Russia is the unheard of growth everywhere that you see while traveling. I mean unbelievable growth of businesses. Businesses from all over the world…

The real interest in this growth for me started the last train trip to Ukraine. I was on a day time train and had a good window seat. I was stunned at the factories being built and warehouses being built. There had to have been at one point 50 km of nothing but newly built warehouses in various stages of completion. I recognized many German names among the companies and one of the biggest warehouses that I have ever seen in my life belonged to the Broen company of Denmark. I quit counting at a hundred docks for big tractor trailer rigs in a row…

This interest that I filed away in my head, extended over into this latest trip that Sveta and I just took to our village. I spent the driving part of the trip studying the changes in business along the way to our village. Now we travel about 400 km on way so we get a good look at what is happening way down south of Moscow…

Sveta and I saw many upon many new warehouses being built and all kinds of new economic growth happening on our excursion to our village. One thing that was a pleasant surprise was the amounts of new roads being built and the highways that we traveled this time were tip top modern highways. Road construction everywhere…

One village near the little village that we go to had a huge chicken farm. It was brand smacking new. I saw it last year when the beginnings of the farm was being started and I had no idea at that time what it was. But now it is clear that it is a chicken farm. It looks like a modern American chicken farm in America. They have neglected to put up a sign telling us who owns this farm. But it is fenced and guarded and I know what a modern Chicken farm looks like. This is in fact a antibiotics fed chicken farm for mass produced very fat unhealthy chicken meat. Looks like someone has figured out how to get by the Russian rules on chicken. And I will lay money on the fact that an American company is behind it… 🙁

The plain fact is that everywhere Sveta and I went this weekend we saw new buildings, new businesses, new construction and thriving older businesses. I saw lots of new tractors in the fields and a whole bunch more old fields opened up and planted this year. In fact Sveta and I saw hundreds of new farm trucks running the roads from farm to farm. They are Russian made (KAMAZ) and orange in color. There also is four new John Deere dealers and two new Cummins dealers (Plus a Cummins factory) in the various small towns. If that tells you anything at all. (It tells me something!) It is strange to see John Deere green in the Russian fields…

I have a head for noticing things and that is what insured my survival in many past situations and excelled my business escapades. I can assure you that lots of money is being circulated in the farm arena in Russia…

On top of the money being circulated. Sveta and I noticed this time that there is kids everywhere. We are out in the middle of nowhere and we see 4 or 5, (around 8 to 12 year old) boys fishing and shooting BB guns. The classic moment was seeing three boys sitting on a creek bank with fishing poles and a little Dachshund dog protecting them and telling them how to fish… 🙂 They were 10 km from the nearest village…

That is what I call fishing…

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Libya it is Just a Game to the West – A game of Death…

NATO said on Wednesday it had extended its Libyan mission for a further 90 days, after Muammar Qaddafi made it clear he would not step down, dashing hopes of a negotiated end to the uprising against his rule…

Of course we will only be there for a few days at most…

Libya: NATO bombings killed 718 civilians “718 people have been killed and another 4,067 injured since NATO Alliance started bombing Libya on March 19. 433 people are still in hospitals, with their conditions described as critical, said Mussa Ibrahim, an official spokesperson of the Libyan government at a news conference, citing data from local medical services.” For its part, NATO stressed that it had targeted only military objects and equipment. Ibrahim added that Qaddafi’s ousting, which, the international community is pushing for, would be “the worst possible scenario for Libya.” NATO has a proven history of killing civilians and now it is insisting its prerogative to keep on killing civilians in Libya…

Sounds a lot like what I insisted would happen. Lets rejoice and party over our humanitarian help for the Libyan people. For without our help they would have never had this war to their deaths in the name of HELP…

I don’t blame Libya for fighting. The West is trying to control the country…

CAIRO — Al Qaeda’s likely next leader says NATO’s operations in Libya are meant to topple Moammar Qaddafi so the West can install a puppet government and control the country’s oil wealth…

So that short war of humanitarian help, that control of just the airspace over Libya has turned into a slaughter of innocents trying to kill Qaddafi. Most people in Libya do not want him dead, except after NATO kills thousands and thousands over many months. The Libyans then will want Qaddafi gone. The bombings have extended to the seas and all over the Libyan lands. The very thing that Obama and others said we would not do, has happened. We opened mouth and stuck foot into it and then realized that Libya does not really want Qaddafi gone. So we are bombing Libya to get the results that we want the people of Libya to accept. Qaddafi out of power…

I will say that the West has lying down to an art…

Windows to Russia!

PS: Nato aircraft have flown more than 5,300 bombing runs Sorties since the no-fly zone was put in place in March…

Data summary
Nato operations in Libya by country (May 22nd, 2011)

Country
no. of personnel
No. of air- craft
Est no. of sorties flown, from beg of war until 5 May 2011
no. of cruise missiles fired
Main air base
Belgium 170 6 60 Araxos base in south-western greece
Bulgaria 160 0 0
Canada 560 11 358 Trapani-Birgi and Sigonella
Denmark 120 4 161 0 Sigonella, Sicily
France 800 29 1,200 currently operating from French Air Bases of Avord, Nancy, St Dizier, Dijon and Istres, as well as Evreux and Orléans for planes engaged in logistics.
Greece 0 0 0 Aktion and Andravida military air fields in Crete
Italy 12 600 Gioia del Colle, Trapani, Sigonella, Decimomannu, Amendola, Aviano, Pantelleria
Jordan 30 12 Cerenecia, Libya
Netherlands 200 7 sardinian base, decimomannu
Norway 140 6 100 Souda Bay, Crete
Qatar 60 8 Souda Bay, Crete
Romania 205
Spain 500 7
Sweden 122 8 78 0 Sigonella
Turkey 6 Sigonella Air Base in Italy
UAE 35 12 Decimomannu, Sardinia
UK 1300 28 1,300 18 Gioia del Colle, Italy and RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus
US 8507 153 2,000 228
TOTALS 12,909 309 5,857 246

It is interesting that Canada is all over the news because they have had to order more bombs. America and Britain have resupplied numerous times already and it is looking like hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on this short war…

We are bombing the Hell out of the Libyan people…

After what I have seen in my lifetime I realize that we never learn and people are so happy to follow as we kill and kill and kill…

Windows to Russia!

Fridays Expert Panel From Russia Profile… (05/27/2011)

Russia Profile Experts Panel: Has Medvedev Become a Lame Duck?Introduced by Vladimir FrolovRussia Profile05/27/2011

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has been savaged by the Russian and Western media for breaking little new ground and failing to announce his presidential bid during a lackluster press-conference last week. It is true that the event was overhyped by the Kremlin’s press service which sought, strangely enough, to fuel all sorts of wild expectations for the conference, from a presidential bid announcement to the possible firing of Vladimir Putin. Are such harsh assessments justified? Was Medvedev’s performance really that pathetic? Did he really turn into a lame duck by not challenging Putin directly and by failing to appeal to the nation to back him for president?

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