“Windows to Russia” is now fully under the domain http://www.windowstorussia.com. The old domain has been turned into a new blog called “Kyle Keeton Talks About Russia” This title is on http://kylekeeton.com. All 1800 articles are located only under Windows to Russia and the old blog has a clean slate so to speak. It will take Google months to get it all in line again and links are broken everywhere.
I will be posting on the old domain within a week and start separating the two blogs as per purpose.
The “Windows to Russia” will become just that a Windows to Russia that only concentrates on things that affect Russia and or everyday life in Russia! The path will be narrower and more defined. Much more Russian orientated…
The “Kyle Keeton Talks About Russia” will encompass issues that are very much just my opinion and or other opinions that I either disagree or agree with. I will be expressing my viewpoint in various formats – including podcast and video blogging! This blog will have a broader base and will take up amongst other things, the thoughts I have about America and her interference on this side of the world…
Kyle Keeton Talks About Russia: Will be an open comment blog that invites you to express your self and will not be censored. Windows to Russia ended up being shown in many schools across America and I had to keep the cuss words out of the blog. Windows to Russia is a G rated blog and I want it to stay that way.
So that is all for now and hope to see some of you on the new blog under the old domain in the next few weeks.
Update: Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday personally filed a lawsuit at Ukraine’s Supreme Administrative Court contesting Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in the country’s presidential elections. (Link)
On Monday, February 15 2010, Yulia Timoshenko,Prime Minister of Ukraine, announced she would challenge the results of the Ukraine Presidential election in court on Tuesday, February 16 2010.
She has until February 19 2010 in which to file a challenge to the election that was just held in Ukraine. I wrote an article about how this election is not over until Yulia says it is…
I noticed that Obama has already confirmed that Viktor Yanukovich is the new Ukraine President. If you remember that back in 2004 Putin made the mistake of confirming that Viktor Yanukovich was president then also. (Ouch that bit Putin in the butt…)
This time Russia has been very careful not to say the victory word in conjunction with Viktor Yanukovich. Because Russia knows Yulia and Yulia is going to go down fighting…
Lets hope that someone talks some sense into her and gets her to let Ukraine settle down!
Not very many someone’s, big enough to do that with Yulia – maybe Putin?
The president of the unrecognized republic of Transdniester said they never asked for, but would not mind hosting, Russian Iskander missile complexes to counterbalance US ABMs in Romania.
“In fact we never requested anything as our armed forces are sufficient,” said Transdniester’s President Igor Smirnov on Monday during his visit to Moscow for talks on bilateral relations.
At the same he mentioned that the unrecognized republic would not mind hosting Russia’s Iskander operational-tactical missile complexes (SS-26 by NATO classification) as a response to the US plans to deploy components of their ballistic missile defense in Eastern Europe.
Looks like an interesting thought and counter balance to Romanian missiles…
I do not see much headway happening on America and Russia missiles talks! Except if you count putting defense missiles in little countries around Russia…
Russia Today did an interview with Jacque Fresco: It was a good interview.
Jacque Fresco is a self-educated social engineer, industrial designer, author, lecturer, futurist, inventor, and the creator of The Venus Project. Fresco has worked as both designer and inventor in a wide range of fields spanning biomedical innovations and integrated social systems. He believes his ideas would maximally benefit the greatest number of people and he states some of his influence stems from his formative years during the Great Depression.
The Venus Project was started in the mid-1970s by Fresco and his partner, Roxanne Meadows. The film Future by Design was produced in 2006 describing his life and work. Fresco writes and lectures extensively on subjects ranging from the holistic design of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, natural resource management and advanced automation, focusing on the benefits it will bring to society.
This man is correct on what he says. Somethings sound a little strange to many people but once you really listen to what he says you realize that he is hitting it on the nail head and what we are is really a mess…
“Democracy is a con game, it is a word invented to outplay people, to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing ‘we are free’. The minute you hear ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ – watch out, because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you that you’re free,” Fresco said.
He believes “It is not that people are good or bad, they are raised in an aberrant or twisted environment.”
“Social change cannot come above the intellect,” said Fresco answering a question about the current economic crisis in the US, “it comes about by people suffering. And the more people are related to that, the more they lose respect for an existing government. They will seek another direction. If there are too many people who seek a new direction, then the existing government calls upon the army and police to manage society – that is called fascism.”
Finland gave final approval and it is full speed ahead for the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany along the Baltic Sea bed.
Putin said, “This April we are starting work on the sea part of the pipeline. Everything should be completed in May 2011 – both on the sea and land sections. The first deliveries are to start as early as September 2011.”
Nord Stream for those who do not know what it is about.(Link) This is a major bypass rout for those pesky transport countries that always seem to put their interests before the customer…
Oops – Do we have a problem in Sassy Land? I really like articles like this:
Runaway journalist gathered shocking videos about South Ossetia: “Vakhtang Komakhidze, a well-known Georgian journalist, who requested political asylum in Switzerland, has shocking materials about South Ossetia, received in the course of his journey to the region in December 2009.
He managed to record ‘scandalous interviews, videos that can shake’, and the government of Georgia doesn’t want these to be published, said Nana Kakabadze, the human rights activist, in her interview to the Alia newspaper.”
“What would have happened if the company had not found a new investor? Bankruptcy, with the layoff of thousands of workers. What, other than a well-prepared takeover by a company like Spyker, could have been the solution?
Yet, just in time, someone noticed that 29.9 percent of Spyker’s shares belonged to my company. Surreal allegations of alleged “economic crimes,” “money laundering” and other false horror stories about my business emerged. The main aim of those who should have been worried about Saab’s survival now moved to ensure the exclusion of this “evil” Russian investor.
On Dec. 18, the deal between G.M. and Spyker was suspended. I was forced to give up my investment in Spyker because the Swedish government had threatened to veto the deal, insinuating that I had ties with criminal organizations. There was no proof, but rumors were spread in the media.
On Jan. 27, the takeover was concluded in a new format. G.M. representatives said they were glad to see that the Russian investor had abandoned the deal. As a result, Swedish taxpayers will take on a large burden because their government became the guarantor of a credit of €400 million granted to Spyker by the European Investment Bank.”
Want a good read and see a little more of what it is to be Russian in the business world? (Link)
Watch the video! No really watch the video then come back…
This really is an unbelievable video and is chocked full of surprises for NATO lovers! NATO has done a 180 degree turn around on Russia…
Now is it a real stance? Or is it a face of a dying organization that really needs Russia to become part of the game so that it can prolong NATO’s viability in the worlds eyes?
Madeleine Albright does help give it some credibility and her speech was very good and sounded sincere. Does she have the power to really make it happen?
Remember Russia has a different plan for European security and that is a major threat to NATO. As Medvedev has said, NATO is not Russia’s friend and is a threat to Russian security.
Time will tell and we shall see what happens. Right now this is either an historic event or…
Sometimes you have to tell it like it is and this is one of those times. The article mentioned above got slammed and a news site printed it also, called Mizozo. I also sent emails to anyone that I could to express my dissatisfaction to as a American reader in Russia. This combination gave me a flurry of e-mails that seemed to all have a general sense of we are sorry but we had you blocked because of bad IP activity on your IP! (But they never really say they are sorry)
Here is one of the emails:
Dear peppy200,
It was brought to our attention that we had inadvertently blocked IP’s from certain Russian sections of Russia Moscow.
It was a non intentional default of protection software.
This e-mail is in response to an inquiry that directed our attention to our error and hope that this opens up ability to view said content.
This is a non reply e-mail
This e-mail was sent to peppy200@gmail.com, based on initial correspondence.
Please note that you must use this e-mail address to any future correspondence.
To manage your e-mail preferences, update your account settings.
Message Category: Miscellaneous
I like the fact that I become peppy200 instead of Kyle as is how I signed each letter. Then they say this is a non reply email but down farther they say use this email address to contact them, if any more questions. But that is OK. At first I thought is this an automated response, then after I saw that access was opening back up to certain sites, I knew that humans were involved somewhere.
So what is blocking an IP about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_blocking This article will tell you and it seems that I was on a area specific type of IP ban. That means that I was banned by the area I live in. Usually banned due to country web style attacks. Other words I was not blocked because of who I am. I was blocked because of were I live. 🙁
I definitely stirred up the DC crowd again and this time instead of comments. I got emails! (To comment on Windows to Russia now asks for positive ID and if you do not have a verifiable email then your comment never appears. This has saved me tons of issues lately. Anyone say Censor?) These emails were in the same wonderful format that their comment would be but at least I am the only one who has to see such statements. 🙂 (Yes one of them even threatened to come to Moscow and ****** slap me silly!)
I will never be able to get everywhere that I want, but my only goal was to get to news sites unrestricted. You Tube will be a censored nightmare because individuals make up a decision as to what countries they want to view their videos and most people are prejudice even though they will not admit it. I succeeded in what I want to do…
So to summarize all this: Censorship is here to stay. It seems that censorship is in all forms. We censor comments, we censor countries, we censor areas, we censor cities and we censor individuals. (So on and so on) I understand certain restrictions because some humans seem to be unable to control their outbursts of rage without using vulgarity and threats. These same humans have forced me to control comments beyond the point I want to. But I have many school children that use the website and the last thing I need is the comment section having cuss words and death threats. Yes – because of a handful of “rotten eggs”…
I was censored because of being part of a perceived bigger problem. It is called blacklisting! Because you are on a blacklist does not mean that you can not be put on a white list. At least I will see less of the picture above!
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I visited the Best of Russia 2009 photo exhibition. Given my personal interest in the subject, I wanted to say a few words about photography.
In historical terms, photography is a relatively young art, only a little more than 150 years old. All art forms share the common function of helping to represent the surrounding world, see something new in it, something we hadn’t noticed previously, learn something we hadn’t known earlier.
Photography also has a specific function of its own. Whether daguerreotype or digital, taking photos is a fairly straightforward procedure and photography can therefore seem a simple affair, just a form of amusement that gives us all the chance to snap away on anything from the best camera to the most basic model. But as the years pass, each negative created, or each digital file, takes on special significance in that it remains an exact copy of a particular moment in life, and in this sense creates a particular atmosphere for the photographer, for those in the photo, if it is a photo of people, and for those simply viewing the photo.
I think that the main sense of photography, of photos as an art, lies in that they capture the special sadness of moments already gone and never to be returned. This is photography’s real meaning, I think.
People often ask me how long I’ve been interested in photography. My interest dates back a long time. I first got into it probably almost 35 years ago, as a child, when I spent time at the Pioneers’ Palace. I had a marvellous camera – a Smena 8M. Anyone involved in photography back then will know that this was the cheapest, most basic model of Soviet camera, with the worst optics – well, with the most ordinary optics, shall we say – and probably the most difficult to use. It was hard to use because there was no range finder. You had to do everything by eye, decide on the exposure. The camera had none of the features needed for taking good quality photos.
But this very lack of features was a good thing really because it meant you had to put effort into taking photos, learn to judge the exposure, the light, the contrast. It meant learning by trial and error. Then there was working with the negatives, the whole process of developing, fixing, printing, repeating these procedures, drying the photo, and this is all a part of my life that I will never forget. Perhaps it is for this reason that photography still interests me so.
True, there was a long period when I stopped taking photos, and then I started again, as an adult this time, probably after 30, and I got really interested in it once more after it became possible to buy modern cameras.
What to take photos of? Anyone who picks up a camera asks themselves this question. I like to photograph nature, architecture, and of course, people. Though, to be honest, photographing people is no easy task for me because, given my job, it would look a bit strange if I were to suddenly turn up with a camera in my hand and start taking photos of people. I’m afraid it would make people wonder what on earth I think I’m up to. But I enjoy photographing all other kinds of objects. Of course, the results vary, as is the case for anyone taking photos.
As far as technology goes, people also often ask me in blogs what kind of camera I use. These days we are lucky in having such a big range to choose from. Around ten years ago, I bought several decent Canon cameras, the ones that use film. These days, I mostly use digital technology, but sometimes I still like to use film. It is more complicated, true, but it has its own special appeal.
I like to use different kinds of cameras. Here is one of them, one that your average person would find rather complicated to use. This is a Leica, a classical Leica, and this is the new M9 digital version. I use other cameras too – Canon and Nikon, for example, good digital wide-lens cameras. I recently got the chance to try out the new Leica, and I must say that this is a good camera, and I notice that photographers have praised it. It is quite a complicated camera, but has high resolution capability and a very good matrix – in other words, it has a large number of pixels.
When I get a free moment I try to take some photos. I don’t just take photos at home, but take my camera with me on practically every trip. To tell the truth, I often don’t end up getting the chance to actually use it, and if I do, I usually end up photographing mostly the views from the residences or hotels I stay at, or even out the car window, but when I do get the chance the resulting photos have an interest for me as memories of the places I’ve visited, and I travel a lot.
That is about all I wanted to say about my interest in photography. I hope that this art will continue to develop. This excellent exhibition that I just visited presents a picture of our country, a picture of the specific moment in time that was 2009. These photos represent photography at its highest, when each photo is a work of art in itself. These are random shots, but what is most important is that they are all little pieces of our country and our life in 2009. I think these exhibitions are of interest for everyone and they attract all kinds of people, from masters in the art with years of experience to those taking their first shots on an inexpensive camera. Here, they are all equals and this is really good to see.
I wish you all good luck with your photos. I think this is a fine art and also a fine way to pass the time.
