Windows to Russia

Amateur shooter kills friend at Moscow firearms club:
A university worker has fatally wounded a colleague at a shooting range in Moscow. The owner of the club may be charged with criminal negligence…

Supreme Court rules earlier extension of Khodorkovsky arrest illegal:
Russia’s Supreme Court has ruled that the latest extension of arrest for ex-Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Menatep head Platon Lebedev was illegal…

UN resolution must not be artistically interpreted – Russian envoy to NATO:
Russia’s permanent representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin has said that free interpretation of the UN resolution on Libya by the NATO-led coalition is bringing the country to the verge of humanitarian disaster…

UN resolution lacks provision on ‘Gaddafi’s future’ – French minister:
The intentions of U.S., French and British leaders to carry on military operations in Libya until Muammar Gaddafi steps down are not covered by the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the operation, the French defense minister said on Friday…

Aeroflot asks government to fine Sukhoi over Superjet delay:
Russia’s flagship airline Aeroflot is preparing a proposal for the government to fine the country’s leading aircraft producer Sukhoi for a delay in delivering Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliners, Aeroflot Chairman and Transport Minister Igor Levitin said on Friday…

BP given more time to resolve dispute:
BP gets one more month to find a way through the impasse with its Russian partners…

Palestine wants UN to recognize its independence:
Palestine is going to ask the UN General Assembly in September to recognize it as an independent state if there is no progress in the talks on a settlement with Israel by then. This came in a statement by the Palestinian Ambassador to Moscow Fayed Mustafa…

Fukushima operator to start compensation payouts with $600 million:
TEPCO will pay up to $12,000 to each of over 50,000 families residing in the 30km evacuation zone around the disaster-stricken nuclear plant.The company has also decided to dispense a radiation absorbing mineral along…

Suspected car thief steals his own criminal case:
A man suspected of stealing cars managed to spirit away ten files containing all documentary evidence against him, during his interrogation, while the police investigator was distracted…

MPs may strike back over Russophobia in ex-USSR republics:
The Russian State Duma Committee on Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Affairs suggests issuing a statement warning former Soviet states against stirring up Russophobia and re-writing history…

Medvedev calls for reform of global financial system:
There is a need for the democratization of international relations, believes President Dmitry Medvedev, which could be achieved through the reform of the world financial system…

IMF and World Bank’s aid tightens noose around poor nations:
The help provided by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to debt-stricken countries is aimed at aiding their recovery, but it seems to be dragging them deeper into trouble…

Russia to introduce non-smoking prison cells:
The country’s prisoners will soon get more choice when it comes to the cells in which they have to serve their terms…

Finnish pastor defrocked for speaking out against terrorists:
A Finnish Priest has been defrocked for openly speaking out against a terrorist website hosted in the country…

Windows to Russia!

It looks like Medvedev showed a touch of bitterness over the abuse of the UN mandate on Libya. He interprets the mandate as he sees it and expects it to be fulfilled. But there is a problem with that…

As much as Medvedev wants to believe that the West is paved in good intentions and they are good friends and allies, it just isn’t gonna happen…

Loyalty from the West changes like the wind and when opportunity knocks to destroy your friend, be he an opponent or not, then that is priority in life. Morals and ethics aside…

For the first time since this started Medvedev made a statement about the falsification of actions by the West on the UN document. Medvedev said that, “The resolution is normal, but the resolution should be fulfilled, not seeking to abuse its mandate.” Then he added, “We have serious questions to the UN leadership,” he then pointed out. “The situation in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire showed that a dangerous tendency is taking shape.” Hummm…

It is important to understand that Medvedev stuck his neck out against the Russian people thinking’s on the UN mandate and fell hook line and sinker for the Wests tactics… (Medvedev believed in the West and her goals…)

I asked Sveta last night, “Do you think Medvedev has a advisory panel for Western idiosyncrasies?” She said, “I doubt it, he probably just makes the decision himself…”

That made me think and over that cup of coffee this morning, I am contemplating that very thought…

Does Medvedev have an adviser on what the West will do in certain circumstances? Mainly issues of moral, ethics, corruption, vanity, backstabbing, trust, faith, reliability and any other issue that has to do with betrayal…

It seems that he does not…

I learned the hard way in America. America has lots of beliefs in sayings that people in other countries should take to heart…

• “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.” Arie de Geus
• “A competitor will find a way to win. Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up. It’s all a matter of pride.” Nancy Lopez
• “A competitive world offers two possibilities. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change.” ??
• “You can’t just beat a team, you have to leave a lasting impression in their minds so they never want to see you again” Mia Hamm
• “The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.” Jack Welch
• “The competition’s tough, and it requires us to be tougher.” Senator John Kerry
• “If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth” Ray Kroc
• “Agility means that you are faster than your competition. Agile time frames are measured in weeks and months, not years.” Michael Hugos
• “Many Americans are driven from birth to succeed and if we allow that desire to fail to intervene, then we have lost our edge.” Kyle

I could go on a thousand fold on quotes about competition and “When the Going gets Tough, The Tough get Going.” I taught many classes on such things in my past. What look like a betrayal of morals and structure to the world, is just common business procedures in the West. (As the winds change, be the first to catch the wind in your sails. For those who hesitate fail…) What many people in the world do not realize is that we (Americans) are formed from the beginning to feel that we can do what we feel like to accomplish our goals. Even if that means that we step on someone in the process…

So Medvedev learned another lesson about the West. He got stung by the facade of a friends face over top the true intentions. Now we are looking at a strong possibility of ground troops going into Libya…

Yesterday Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as British Prime Minister David Cameron laid the ground work for the next line of the Libya invasion. They posted a joint article that has been published in leading newspapers in the three countries. This article makes it clear that they will do what ever they have to to get Qaddafi out of power in Libya…

Medvedev really needs an adviser on the Western world. Hindsight is always better than foresight. Now Medvedev has begun to see the folly of the situation and Russia definitely sees that 90% of the information coming out of Libya is a fabricated lie. Hence, a No vote at the UN mandate would have caused a huge attitude adjustment and made it look really bad for the West to play shenanigans…

Windows to Russia!

SANYA (Hainan province, China), April 14 (Itar-Tass) — Russia is strongly concerned over an abused mandate under the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters here on Thursday.

Commenting on the current situation in Libya the president noted that “the UN Security Council resolution should be fulfilled in compliance with its letter and spirit and should not be misinterpreted.” “The NATO forces engaged in the operation,” he recalled.

“The resolution is normal, but the resolution should be fulfilled, not seeking to abuse its mandate,” Medvedev noted.

“We have serious questions to the UN leadership,” he pointed out. “The situation in Libya and Cote d’Ivoire showed that a dangerous tendency is taking shape,” the Russian president underlined.

Windows to Russia!

I was sipping that wonderful cup of coffee this morning in Moscow, Russia and doing some thinking’s that involved businesses that fail…

You see in America for 10 years I was a trouble shooter for ServiceMaster Inc. during the era that they had a huge Food Service business that they acquired by buying out American Foods. They were involved in the hospital and college food service contract business…

ServiceMaster no longer has this part of their business and I left ServiceMaster behind when they sold the collegiate food service part to DAKA. It was a French based company that I always said stood for, “Does Anyone Know Anything?” (DAKA)…

The one thing I knew how to do was make money on the corporate level. I was a bottom line person and that is what the corporate demands, a good solid bottom line. That shows profit. How you obtain that bottom line is done in varying ways some legal and some not legal. I know them all…

So lets get on to what this article is about. Now that you have some background in what I am really good at. Making Money…

Today I watched the doors on a business shut forever. It was my favorite store to buy food at. I have been a faithful customer and probably the last customer that they had. It was a thriving business and had huge potential. I also saw that it could be a gold mine. But I watched the under lining issue of a cheat of a owner and that would be the undoing of a good solid business…

In Russia as in America you have lots of thieves in the service and food industry. Thieves from the owners on down to the workers. Everyone wants that quick buck and they want it now. Long term viability is not in the picture. In fact I am not sure that most humans have the business sense to contemplate long term viability…

I use to teach classes on business and I taught how to stop thieves, how to make a profit, how to expand that business and twenty other related topics. My favorite was quantitative management and I have a secondary degree in that particular subject…

I study businesses in Russia and have found that there is no difference from Russia and America in business. The same bribes happen, the same cheating happens, the same failures happen and the same customer dissatisfaction happens…

But after I have done some studying of business in Russia. I have come to the conclusion that the potential in Russia is vastly higher to obtain profit levels than in Western world. The overhead that is demanded of your business is in essence nil in Russia compared to other parts of the world…

It is a shame because Russia is a paradise for ideas and businesses. Many Russians fail at business because they do not have the mind set to think long term or any term for that matter. I see business after business set up for the quick dollar and then they sell as fast as they can. Then they open another business and sell it as fast as they can. That first selling of a business creates a flood of similar businesses and the market becomes saturated in a finite area. Other words Russians all do what the other one does. That goes on whether you are in Moscow or a village…

Now remember that not all Russians are this way and the ones tat are not this way are billionaires and Russia has her fair share of billionaires…

Try this link: You drive through a town and you see a fruit stand that sells pears. Then you look around and see that there are 20 stands that sell pears. Nothing but pears and lots of pears. Then you travel to the next town & they sell potatoes. Then the next town sells home canned goods. The next town sells mushrooms. The next town sells stuffed animals. The next town sells kites….. (I think you get my point!)

So as I stated at the beginning I watched this little grocery store fail. It took off with a bang and then they tried to sell it. It failed to sell and by that time it was stripped of assets and it was too late to save it and make a respectable business out of it. Timing is everything when selling a business. Most likely they did not even know what to do to make it a viable business in the first place…

You gotta love these Russians. They are some of the greatest people on earth but when it comes to capitalistic viciousness they do not hold a candle to Americans…

For that, the average entrepreneur Russian will fail at business. Not because he does not have ample opportunity to succeed…

Windows to Russia!

QUESTION: Mr President, the member states of what has now become the “Five” are all very different, with a mass of mutual contradictions, directly competing for global investment. Is there anything that really unites the BRICS states apart from high growth rates and the aspiration to increase their weight in the world? And the second question: how do you assess Russia’s investment attractiveness compared to the other members of the group?

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: It is obvious that at present our countries are united not only because they are all emerging economies: some have more rapid growth, in others it is slower, some have been affected by the global economic crisis to a greater extent, some less, but there is no doubt whatsoever that our countries are rapidly developing and are attractive markets.

But apart from that, now that the forum has been joined by South Africa, the BRICS states are also united by shared views on development of international affairs, the world economy and political processes. The positions of our countries on key issues are very similar.

Let me remind you that at present the BRICS states are all members of the UN Security Council. China and Russia are its permanent members, as you know, while the others are non-permanent members. Despite some differences in the voting, for example, on the Libyan resolution, on the whole we hold very similar views. This shows that apart from economic factors, there is a bigger similarity between our nations, and that is the fundamental outlook on the future of global development, international cooperation, world economic system, and in general the way life should develop on our planet.

Now about Russia’s investment attractiveness: I would not want my comments today to be at odds with what I recently said about the investment climate. In general, there is no doubt that Russia is a very attractive country, because we have huge opportunities, an immense territory and an equally enormous market, great reserves of mineral resources, a growing economy and economic institutions. But we have also a lot of problems – I do not want to say that we are worse than other countries, that would be absolutely wrong, but our investment climate still requires a cardinal change, it must become a priority for the government, and a number of institutions have to be refined, there is no doubt about that. In this sense, our competitiveness is somewhat low compared to other BRICS countries. We must focus on the investment climate, which is what I did not so long ago.

QUESTION: A question about Libya. Have the BRICS countries agreed a position on Libya that they can present at the UN Security Council? And did you discuss at the bilateral meeting with the President of South Africa the reasons why the African Union’s initiative failed?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Let me just say that the BRICS states have very close positions: four countries abstained from voting on Resolution 1973, and South Africa voted in favour, but not because its views on this resolution were fundamentally different (we were fully aware what we were voting for and what the resolution signified), but rather out of solidarity, because that was the position of the African Union. I spoke about this issue with President of China Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Singh, as well as with President of South Africa Jacob Zuma, and in addition all of us discussed it with President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff.

Our views are very similar, and they are as follows. We believe that the Security Council resolution must be executed regardless of whether we voted for it, like South Africa, or abstained. It must be executed in accordance with its spirit and the letter, and not in accordance with the arbitrary interpretations which have been made by several states.

Ultimately, what did we concede to or vote for? A resolution imposing a no-fly zone, which would stop the conflict from escalating and break up the warring parties. And what have we got as a result? We have what is in fact a military operation, which is not taking place on the ground but it is happening in the air, an operation in which a number of states are taking part and which was joined by NATO as a military bloc. The resolution has no mention of this. So when I hear that the resolution is at fault, that’s wrong. The resolution is absolutely adequate, but it must be implemented as it is, instead of trying to exceed the mandate that is laid down in it. This is a very dangerous trend in international relations. In fact, what we see is the misuse of powers laid down in Resolution 1973, which is a very broad interpretation of the resolution.

For example, the resolution on the developments in Ivory Coast, Resolution 1975, if I remember correctly, talks about using United Nations agencies, but not about supporting one of the sides in the conflict. The UN generally cannot support any side, but in fact that is what we have in Ivory Coast. To be honest, we have some very serious questions to the leadership of the United Nations because it is a very dangerous trend. The UN certainly should make an effort to separate conflicting parties, but it must never help one of the parties, even if we believe that it is in the right. If we talk about the events in Ivory Coast, we’ve seen atrocities and murders committed by both sides. Therefore, the resolutions must be implemented and enforced in accordance with their content, in accordance with their spirit and letter, and the BRICS states are in absolute agreement about this.

Link to this page: http://eng.news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/2076

www.kremlin.ru

Windows to Russia!

Obviously, the main goal of this decision (reforming of international monetary and financial system by the BRICS countries) is to boost the international importance of the national currencies of the BRICS countries, but basically the greater usage of the national currencies in international settlement and international transactions will clearly increase the demand for these currencies and, possibly, at the expense of the global reserve currency which is the USD.

So I guess one of the targets of this decision is to replace dollar as a settlement currency between these countries. This idea is not new I would say we had similar initiatives on bilateral basis between Russia and China for example or China and other countries.

This decision is a continuation of earlier efforts. Why not? I don’t see any reasons why it shouldn’t be successful, for example the yuan and Russian ruble is already actively used for the international trade between these two countries, Russia and China, and respective currencies of other BRICS can be used in international settlements between other countries as well.

One of the constraining reasons could be that the trade flows between BRICS countries, that happen between China and Brazil or Brazil and India something like that, are not that significant at the moment. I think this decision might, actually, support the extension of international trade between these countries.

WtR

Moscow police have uncovered an “underground town” housing more than 100 illegal migrants from Central Asia in the capital’s east, a Moscow criminal police officer said on Thursday.

Police officers together with security and migration officials have raided a factory near the Mozhaiskoye highway following a report about a large illegal settlement in its territory, Andrei Mishel said.

“A total of 110 men and women were living in an underground bomb shelter behind a 4-meter high concrete fence with a barbed wire,” he said, adding that there were even bathrooms and praying rooms organized in the “underground town.”

Most of the uncovered illegal migrants were employees of the factory involved in producing parts of sewing machines, Mishel said. The majority of them will be extradited from the country, and 16 people suspected to have been involved in criminal activity will be questioned by investigators, the police officer added.

Police are considering opening a criminal case against the factory’s director, he said.

Windows to Russia!

It has been a back and forth issue. One minute the sale of the Mistral is final and the next minute the sale of the Mistral has failed. Then the cycle starts all over again… (Link to our articles on the Mistral)

So today the news is full of the report: France and Russia have agreed that the Mistral-class helicopter carriers France will build for Russia will be fully equipped with the communication and control systems, a senior official in Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. “Russia has reached an agreement with France that meets the Defense Ministry’s demand to provide Mistral with the communications and other systems that would satisfy the requirements of the Navy,” the source said…

It looks like this is official this time and it looks like Russia got what they wanted on these ships: The purchase of two Mistral ships including the delivery of the helicopter carriers with the Zenith 9 communication and control system as well as the spare parts for the ships and technical documentation. The weapon systems will be Russian home grown and made…

It seems that four ships will be built. Two in France and the next two in Russia. That is according to the agreement. France will help build the ones in Russia just as Russia will help build the ones in France…

I know that the Russian Navy is excited, they get new toys to play with… (Link)

I guess we will wait and see if this information changes again… 🙂

Windows to Russia!

The leaders of the BRICS nations – Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa – believe the situation in Libya should be resolved through diplomatic means, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

“Like the other BRICS nations, Russia is deeply concerned by events in Libya and the civilian deaths there,” Medvedev said after a BRICS summit in the southern China resort of Sanya.

“Our shared opinion is that the problem should be resolved by political and diplomatic efforts, not through the use of force,” he added.

A statement after Thursday’s summit said the BRICS member states were united in the desire for “peace, stability and progress” in the countries of the Middle East and Africa hit by recent violence that “the use of force should be avoided” in resolving the conflicts.

“We intend to continue our cooperation with the UN Security Council on Libya,” the statement went on. It also praised the African Union mission – headed by South African leader Jacob Zuma – to Libya.

Russia and China – the only BRICS nations with permanent seats on the Security Council – also called for a greater UN role for Brazil, India and South Africa.

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya on March 17, paving the way for a military operation against embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi which began two days later. The command of the operation was shifted from a U.S.-led international coalition to NATO in late March.

Despite dozens of sorties carried out by NATO aircraft against Gaddafi’s forces, the government troops maintain their combat capability and continue to pound poorly-equipped rebels with heavy artillery and rocket fire.

France and the U.K. said on Tuesday that the allies should intensify their efforts to cripple Gaddafi’s war machine.

Gaddafi has accepted an African Union road map to ending the civil war in the North African country, but rebels says they will not back down on their demand that Gaddafi must go.

SANYA (CHINA), April 14 (RIA Novosti)

Windows to Russia!