Former Ukrainian President Yushchenko Pledges to Set Up Right-Wing Party

This is an impious pseudo-icon painted by the Galician Uniates… don’t be angry, they’re on the way DOWN. History’s on our side…

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Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said that he’d establish a right-wing political movement that’d win the upcoming parliamentary election slated for 28 October, saying, “We’ll gain not only five percent, but more”, referring to the five-percent threshold needed for his party to enter the Verkhovna Rada (the unicameral Ukrainian parliament). The ex-president said his new political force would unite over 30 parties and organizations, including The Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists and Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine), headed by Yushchenko. According to a recent opinion poll held in Ukraine, the Yushchenko-led Nasha Ukraina only has the support of about one percent of the respondents.

26 June 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20120626/174256876.html

26 June 2012. Video. Putin’s Mideast Tour… Goes on Otpust to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Gives Respects at the Wailing Wall

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NB:

Click on the URL below for the webpage containing the video.

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This is video from President Putin‘s current Mideast trip. He made otpust to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to Bethlehem, and paid his respects at the Wailing Wall. When he was at the Wall, Rav Berel Lazar, the Chief Rabbi of Russia accompanied him. This is proof that all of the GOP fulminations about VVP are wrong. VVP is a sincerely-religious man (unlike Willard Romney, who used his “faith” as a draft-dodging ploy) and his visit to the Wailing Wall proves that’s he no anti-Semite. You can believe the lies of the Republican Party (and of its lackeys like Fox News and the American Enterprise Institute), or you can see the truth in this video. It’s up to you…

Archbishop Mark Golovkov accompanied VVP on this trip, as the video proves. To speak plainly, to have Mark instead of the Blunder on this trip is telling. The Blunder’s in the doghouse for certain… are his days as one of the high n’ mighty numbered? Look for great things from Mark Anatolyevich… rumour has it that he’s in line for a white hat soon… with a new responsibility to clean up one of the messes in the Church. I believe that Mark is our next patriarch… and I’m not alone in thinking that…

BMD

26 June 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/video/20120626/174255478.html

Russia and the USA: A Precarious Balance

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The joint statement released by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama after their meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, is a masterpiece of diplomatic correctness. Perfectly neutral and entirely constructive in tone, it sounds as if leaders trying not to say nor do anything that could set off an avalanche made it. In short, they followed the first rule of medicine, “Do no harm”. Putin hasn’t met with a US president for nearly three years, since early 2009, when Obama first came to Moscow and Putin was prime minister. It was a remarkable meeting. In response to Obama’s polite greeting, Putin delivered a very emotional speech lasting 45 minutes, addressing the Kremlin’s complaints against Washington. Putin last spoke with Obama’s predecessor, George W Bush, during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, although not about sports. He demanded that Bush stop Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who had launched a war against South Ossetia that day. Bush didn’t cooperate on this.

The last time Putin as president held full-scale talks with his American counterpart was in Sochi in April 2008, when Putin and Bush adopted a framework declaration on US-Russian relations. It was a balanced and positive document, which included the agenda for the future reset policy. The collapse of bilateral relations later that summer was largely due to the fact that practical policy, in particular US policy, veered dramatically away from the partners’ constructive plans. In other words, Moscow decided that Washington had deceived it. Unfortunately, for bilateral relations, two of the strategic priorities that the Bush Administration saw as part of its foreign policy legacy had a direct bearing on Russian interests… drawing Georgia and the Ukraine into the NATO orbit and deploying missile defence systems in Eastern Europe. The August 2008 war in South Ossetia was a logical consequence of the attempts to translate these priorities to reality. Russian-US relations under Putin and Bush culminated in a fatal loss of Russian trust in the USA, which has continued to affect bilateral relations to this day. Putin’s convinced that no gentlemanly agreements or heart-to-heart talks are possible with Americans, only tough and lengthy bargaining for legally-binding agreements.

On the other hand, the reset policy launched in 2009 became possible only when Moscow decided that Obama, unlike his predecessor, would keep his word. Obama promised to review Bush’s missile defence plans for Poland and Czechia, and he has done so. Moscow’s shown that it’s always willing to reciprocate. Then-President Dmitri Medvedev stated that Russia would look into approving sanctions against Iran the very next day after Obama buried Bush’s missile defence initiative in Eastern Europe. However, the US-Russian relationship is now strained and the fruits of the reset policy have spoilt. Putin refused to attend the G8 summit at Camp David after Obama said he would not attend APEC Leaders’ Week in Vladivostok. Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov never tire of exchanging words over Syria. US senators accused Rosoboronexport of aiding the Iranian missile programme.

The US Congress will likely approve legislation to normalise trade relations with Russia by repealing the obsolete Jackson-Vanik Amendment. However, the new legislation is to be accompanied by the passage of the Magnitsky Act allowing sanctions against individuals who were allegedly involved in the death of a lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in 2009 and similar crimes. Given the US criticism of Russia over the new Assembly Law and the police searches of the homes of several opposition leaders, the missile defence dead-end and the now customary diplomatic scandals involving Ambassador Michael McFaul, the general picture of US-Russian relations looks gloomy. However, in fact, it’s better than it seems, as the meeting in Mexico has shown. Tough bargaining with elements of propaganda warfare aimed at forcing the opponent to compromise is normal practice in relations between great powers. As they say, “Nothing personal”. Nevertheless, differences over Syria and Iran are important, as the situation in these countries is approaching a showdown. Although US-Russian relations are far from friendly, they aren’t unusually hostile either.

The important thing is what the US administration does to minimise damage from its political sorties. The State Department and the White House have publicly supported the Republican advocates of the Magnitsky Act, whilst at the same time trying to limit its negative effect. The State Department adopted its own, reportedly short, Magnitsky list last year to prevent Congress from denying entry visas to Russians indiscriminately. The Pentagon, where Russian complaints over Syria and Iran are directed, hasn’t rushed to punish Russia and has officially dissociated itself from Clinton’s accusations. It hasn’t the time for political games because it needs Russia’s sustained cooperation in Afghanistan (equipment, cargo, transit, routes, and other technical matters).

When you consider the complex multilayered relations between these two countries that were just recently mortal enemies, you should expect to see some clouds. What matters is whether they are set for conflict, or whether tensions are the result of objective structural factors. The USA and Russia are currently not set for confrontation, at least not at the highest level. There’s no friendship or sympathy between Putin and Obama, and there’s unlikely to be any in the future. However, it’s more important that they see each other as trustworthy partners. Their latest joint statement indicates that this is possible.

21 June 2012

Fyodor Lukianov

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20120621/174162747.html

Smile Like You Mean It

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You can not only accurately judge a person’s cultural level by the language they use, but also the level of their civic responsibility.

Konstantin Paustovsky

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Foreign visitors to Russia tend to complain about the same things… bureaucracy, bad roads, and a conspicuous lack of smiling faces. The Russian media address the first two topics regularly. Normal folk going about their day also routinely moan and scream about them. However, the third topic? Not so much. I spent most of my life in North Carolina… a place where smiles are a kind of social currency. Even as someone who speaks Russian fluently and generally feels as though she “fits in” in Moscow to a great extent, I’m still taken aback by the fact that Muscovites don’t smile when they greet you (hosts at hugely expensive restaurants notwithstanding… and anyway, I’m a real person living on a real income, I can never afford those places anyway). I’m not used to it, and perhaps I’ll never get used to it. It feels like a slight… if you’re used to the fact that smiling is the polite thing to do.

Still, I can’t help but chortle inwardly whenever I see visitors to Russia trying to “explain” this phenomenon away. “Russians had 70 years of communism! They dealt with Stalin’s terror! They lost millions of people in World War II! Of course they aren’t going to smile for you!” The implicit idea is that the lack of smiles is tied to depression over historic events. Whilst this may be true for some people, the overwhelming majority are just going along with a social custom, and the roots of that social custom are more complicated than “communism” and “ZOMG Stalin”.

An old Russian saying goes like this, “Laughter without cause is a sign of foolishness”. It sounds better in Russian, obviously, mainly, because it rhymes. In order to understand what this truly means for Russian society… you have to go back to the origins of the word “fool”. The word, in context, doesn’t just mean a silly person. It means someone who’s outside the mainstream… either someone who’s very eccentric, or someone who’s mentally ill. The history of the Russian smile would certainly make for an interesting book topic. For now, my own research suggests that connecting smiles with mental illness may have something to do with the role of medieval jesters in Russian history. Jesters were both entertaining and ominous figures… and their work employed a great deal of “abnormal” behaviour. Jesters commented on current events and politics via an exaggerated, often obscene, manner. Another Russian tradition involves holy fools, of course, or “blessed fools”… people whose intense commitment to the Christian religion crossed out all or most social norms. They were both revered and feared…  and their presence remains visible in Russia today. When these people smile, it’s interpreted as a reflex caused by their close connection to heaven.

Outside the historic and religious context, the Russian smile is a rare, but genuine phenomenon. It’s meant to be sincere, regardless of the social situation at hand (whether you’re smiling to express warmth and affection, or smiling sardonically, or smiling bittersweetly… you do it in a way that shows you mean it) and an insincere smile is derisively labelled as a dezhurnaya… AKA dutiful… smile. In one of the greatest memoirs of the 20th century, The Story of a Life, Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovsky once noted the practice of “smiling only with [your] eyes” in reference to the captain of a doomed vessel he met on the Black Sea coast during World War I. Although people very rarely talk about this practise, I can attest to the fact that it is very widespread in modern-day Russia. You just have to pay attention… and not rely on whatever social norms you may have learned elsewhere.

22 June 2012

Natalia Antonova

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20120622/174192101.html

Editor’s Note:

I’ve a reason for including the Paustovsky quotation. You see, people who smile overly much are fond of “therapeutic” language that hides rather than communicates. Often, it’s known as the California New Age attitude. We’ve all seen it… “Have a nice day” (accompanied by a large insincere “sincere” smile), when the person involved doesn’t give a damn for you one way or the other… smiling official portraits (shades of James Paffhausen, wot?)… and flowery commitment to vacuous ideology whilst screwing people right, left, and all around.

Americans want to prove that they “like” you… Russians want to prove that they “respect” you… there’s nothing similar in the attitudes at all. It’s why Russian Orthodoxy in the USA is at such a low point at present. There are too many smiles, too many outré statements of “what the Church teaches”, and too many green-as-grass clergy and monastics pretending to be elders. The Anglo-Saxon converts are trying to remodel Russian Orthodoxy in their own image… a smiling hypocritical smarmy nasty simulacrum of the real thing.

At my age (I’m in the latter stages of my sixth decade, nearing retirement), I trust NO ONE who smiles overly much. NO ONE. I’ve found that those who “smile” are often the worst sorts out there. That’s one of the reasons I find Paffhausen a joke… to have released an official portrait with a durak’s grin on his face was telling. The sooner he’s gone, the better… who shall be our Bennigsen?

BMD