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Editor’s Note:
American Teabaggers praised Putin’s speech… for its moral tone. That’s as good as it goes, but do note that they failed to notice that his foreign policy and economic remarks were in absolute opposition to the shit peddled by the Tea Party… indeed, they’re an adamant declaration of war on the pseudo-intellectual foundations of the TPers. Note well that Wet Willy Romney, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz wouldn’t like VVP’s statist solutions… nor would any of their supporters. Putin wants to chase down those with offshore millions… the GOP praises them. Putin wants to end all military adventuring in foreign parts… the GOP presses for it. Putin supports a robust state-run healthcare and social welfare apparat… the GOP hates it.
The Tea Party sucks up to the rich… VVP stands up to them. I know whom I prefer! Russia jailed Khodorkovsky and the USA lauds Willard Romney… for doing the same thing! One of these things is NOT like the other! You can have VVP’s straight talk or you can have the political porno handed out by the rightwing commentariat (I note overlap between Fox News fans and hardcore porno fans… it’s not minor… shitbirds of a feather DO flock together). Putin ain’t perfect… but he’s far preferable to any of the present lunks in the GOP. You have a choice to make… I made mine. Kaufft nicht bei Limbaugh und O’Reilley. “This substance may be dangerous to your mental health”… ‘nuff said!
BMD
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President Vladimir Putin blamed the country’s economic problems on unresolved issues at home, rather than external circumstances, the first such admission he’s given since the Russian economy began to slow down. In this year’s annual address to the Federal Assembly on 12 December, Putin proposed a stricter system to repatriate Russian money in offshore havens. He said that reducing the Russian economy’s reliance on offshore havens was one of the central aims of the government’s economic policy, along with such traditional elements as improving productivity and fostering innovation, saying, “We must tax the profits of companies belonging to Russian owners and beneficiaries registered in offshore havens under our own tax code, and they must pay tax revenues to the Russian treasury. We must come up with a system for getting hold of that money”. He added that we must strip companies registered in foreign jurisdictions of their right to receive government support and bid for government contracts.
Putin began his annual speech by criticising… without naming any names… poor implementation of a series of his social policy decrees issued when he began his current term of office on 7 May 2012, noting, “It’s been a year and a half since those decrees came out, but do you know what I see? Either they’re implemented in a way angers the public, or, they’re not being implemented at all”. Andrei Chernyavsky, a senior fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said that the president’s initiative is sound in theory, but he doesn’t quite see how we can carry it out in practise, observing, “To understand the context of this initiative, we must remember that we’ve entered a period of stagnation. The federal and regional treasuries are struggling, and they need all the help they can get. This is one of the possible mechanisms. We don’t want to raise taxes here in Russia, but we want to increase tax revenues from companies that are part-owned by the state or receive government guarantees”. Putin also called for “a turn towards the Pacific”. His proposals include establishing a network of special economic zones in the Russian Far East and eastern Siberia, with incentives for new businesses that don’t merely exploit Russia’s natural resources.
He stated that Russia also needs tighter controls on immigration, speaking of possible new legislation under which companies and individual entrepreneurs would need to buy special permits to hire foreigners. The regional issuing authority would determine the price of these permits, and the permit would only be valid in the region of issue. Putin’s speech contained strong words about what he called “so-called tolerance, genderless and barren” in the West, and about the erosion of traditional values. In his opinion, now, in many foreign countries there’s a compulsory requirement for the public “to pretend that there is no difference at all between good and evil.” He described the erosion of traditional values as an anti-democratic process pressed on the public against the will of the majority of the people. Boris Makarenko {this snake studied at Princeton in the 90’s… caveat lector: editor}, the head of the Centre for Political Technologies, said that Putin’s remarks about values, which preceded the foreign-policy section of the address, dismayed him, commenting, “These remarks used the kind of language that people in the West stopped using several decades ago”.
Outlining the challenges facing Russia on the international arena, Putin emphasised that the global military-political, economic and information competition is becoming ever more fierce. He said that he believes that Russia must claim leadership to defend international law and uphold respect for national sovereignty. In reference to recent events in the Middle East and North Africa, he stated, “In recent years, we’ve seen several examples of attempts to impose an ostensibly more progressive development model on other countries. In practise, these attempts have led to regressive barbarian outcomes and bloodshed. In Syria, the international community had to make a fateful choice… either we slide towards further erosion of the foundations of the international system, into the principle of ‘might makes right’ and to the proliferation of chaos, or, we make responsible collective decisions”.
From Syria, he moved on to Iran, stressing that it has an inalienable right to develop nuclear energy. However, he added that all the Middle Eastern states must have guaranteed security, saying, “Incidentally, then, some used the Iranian nuclear programme as the main argument in favour of deploying a missile defence system. Now, the Iranian nuclear problem is receding, but the missile defence system remains. In fact, that system is being strengthened even further”. He added that the development of new weapons systems worried Moscow, “Foreign countries’ efforts to increase the capability of strategic high-precision weapons, combined with the growing ability of missile defence systems, could bring to naught all previously-reached agreements on strategic nuclear arms reductions”.
13 December 2013
Yuliya Ponomareva
Russia Behind the Headlines
Voices from Russia 
ROK President Moon to Visit Russia This week
Tags: Democratic People's Republic of Korea, diplomacy, diplomatic relations, Dmitri Medvedev, DPRK, Federal Assembly of Russia, North Korea, North Korean nuclear program, political commentary, politics, Republic of Korea, RF Gosduma, ROK, Russia, Russian, South Korea, Vladimir Putin, war and conflict
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Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an anonymous presidential administration official, that ROK President Moon Jae-in will pay a three-day state visit to Russia later this week to meet President Putin. The two presidents will meet on Thursday, shortly after the ROK leader’s arrival in Moscow. This’ll be Moon’s first visit to the Russian capital since his election in May 2017 and the first state visit by a ROK President to Russia since 1999. Most expect Moon and Putin to pay special attention to the DPRK nuclear issue during the summit. Yonhap quoted the anonymous official:
Whilst in Moscow, Moon will also meet with Chairman of the RF Government D A Medvedev and other high-ranking officials. He’ll also be the first ROK President to address the RF Gosduma (lower house of the RF Federal Assembly). Later on, Moon will travel to Rostov-on-Don to attend the FIFA World Cup match between the ROK and Mexico before returning home on Saturday.
18 June 2018
TASS
http://tass.com/world/1009968