Russian Opposition Leaders Jailing Assumed To Be Crackdown

May 10, 2012 & November 17 - 23, 2015 Below - ......

  Reuters et al. reports prominent 35 year old Russian opposition leaders, Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, were jailed, for 15 days for disobeying a police officer at a peaceful protest on Tuesday against President Putin’s gala Monday inauguration. The Guardian cites the protest duos sentence as a sign the authorities’ patience could be running out as their cases are linked to Sunday’s violence. As The New York Times reported, 40 year old art director, Aleksei Yeryomin, saying, “Up until now, all was peaceful.”

  How necessary was it for everyone’s nerves to escalate?

  Times Moscow Bureau Chief ELLEN BARRY and reporter SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY honestly point to Sunday’s violence starting when a group of radical activists apparently tried breaking through a police column to reach the Kremlin. So now the same new president refuses to face criticism for riot police using batons and pepper spray.

  The Times nailed it. The paper quotes Alexander Rahr, a Russia expert with the German Council on Foreign Relations. “He (President Putin) is caught in the understanding that he is the savior of Russia, that everything depends on him. He sees himself as a historical figure already, a man who prevented the collapse of the country. The problem is, now he has to meet the real demands of people who are 30 years younger than him.” 

  For months the conflict of two Russias has been in the media about how Putin made this prosperous generation possible. But the new president should remember and think about how people became impatient with Gorbachev. That’s why when the Soviet reign ended Yeltsin could replace Mikhail. Otherwise deep down everyone loved Gorbachev and probably didn’t want to let him down. That is why Russia is this far today. Maybe the country survived for him and itself and Vladimir Putin still has to prove his legacy can be bigger than himself too for the Fatherland as he says he believes.

  Which would mean cutting out the crap. Such as his officials continuing to downplay the protests. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Russia Today, “I don’t see a link between these incidents and the situation in the country as a whole. What I saw was a bunch of marginal people.”

  So whether you see it now, or not, President Vladimir Putin. Your mandate from this election is to uncorrupt the electoral process. After all a man of your stature doesn’t have to worry much. Your padded Supreme Court could probably give you a free ride through that election too if the results were close.
  But in the meantime with protests, what did John Lennon say Mr. President?

5/10/12

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5/10/12 concluded:

... in the meantime with protests, 
what did John Lennon say Mr. President?

November 17 - 23, 2015
Russian Opposition Leaders Jailing Assumed To Be Crackdown 

random rant 

  Lennon said, "Give peace a chance" that peace never had. All history's fed war. Nourished hostility, explaining war. Generations rebel for nothing else to do. Desperate does what desperate do. While war with hate's only survivor's hate. Moral fabric, no clue? The inhumanity.

President Putin, 

  Left isn't the board being played. It would be insane to think that King wouldn't just lash out indiscriminately. Imagine the tirading Medieval Tyrants chess' evolution parodied? How power's insularity made thrones incessant targets of attack. Hard to believe we've not evolved past that. When apparently, the game's just this. Individual vs. Apparatus.

  Your move, Mr. President. Yes I believe in your help with a better world for more than just friends and influenced people. Why? Because as redundantly repeated. Your legacy, as well as anyone's, is much more critically important than nation-states' reputations already set-in-stone. 

Per Previous Essay

People's legacies are on-the-block, 

Mr. President. Your move. Hollow tradition? Royal authority. Curtain 1.

Removing Curtains Could Fix Façades

Lend A Hand

Dear Presidential Future,

SUITS RULE DOESN'T EXPAND LEGACY

Man. Dude. Geopolitical Chess. 

  Looking trim and in the thick of it, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Don't wait for what happens to your reputation for not making more pragmatic moves. Especially during this time of grand smoke-and-mirrors when your picture with eminent authorities defines your status. Your history written with such broad flowery strokes.

Final Answer?

  Actor as Putin's butler walks into a bar. Orchestrated, but not planned. Nervous laughter becomes deafening until he sits. Then drinking starts again in earnest till the butler screams, "Power's absolutely everyone's" and two orderlies enter taking said patient away as ludicrous idealism has no place here slides down the television screen credits' end. c/o Vocabulary Management. Запас слов Управление 

The Tangled Web's Woven

  When what's really needed is: Humanity Worth Amnesty.

OH, SO SAME OLE NEW SHOW

  Finally a meeting pitching Ed Begley Jr. Moves Next Door. Each month Ed moves into a new home given homeless families after Ed's departs. Ed enlightens neighbors about bicycle life, and how there's so much to gain from safe cycling and trains without auto congestion everywhere. How there's room for everyone. Even safety and Car Culture. Though much spookier now that it's obvious we're in the machines' way.

  Ed starts every episode puttering around the kitchen preparing breakfast. Episode #1 Ed says, "Of course I don't prepare all this myself. I have to get something working union rates." Said to an unseen narrator, embodied by the camera, Ed converses constantly with. He'll answer Ed's wages crack with, "Now don't go all political on us Ed." And Ed will smile and wave a utensil at the screen while the scene dissolves to commercial, but camera remains, as always, incessantly, obsessively focused on Ed. Other actors have to intrude between him and his camera to feel heard. The feeling of invisibility is uncomfortable for everyone, even sympathetic Ed. While the camera/narrator is heard both cracking up and seen bouncing with glee. Ed's wife, Rachelle Carson, has her own narrator, camera, etc. One episode the cameras duel to Dueling Banjos. A knock-off band. Live as the taped show films under the presumption of being alive tracing life. Like Survivor everyone's on Ed's Island. All Begleys have personal camera/narrators. 

  Back from first commercial, Ed's on his bike heading straight over the ground level camera. Bending down to look right into the face of the lens. Ed says, "Let's go." Then he first tours that community's best safe bike lane. Ed goes to one public City Council meeting. Plus whatever captures his curiosity because Ed lives there. Not just visiting for photographs. See the world. Get out of his California cocoon for a while. Do the man good in his un-retiring years and all. Like all agents Ed's is a waiter. But I bet Ed'd go for it. Oprah? Oh? Uh. Meeting's over. On Begley Street exists. And Living with Ed. And, never mind.

  So anyway, Mr. President. Catch the drift's gist? Something like that. Broaden horizons. Make your career more interesting. Not just this sycophantic brazen Chester business. Authoritative chests pushed out to here. The groveling that must go on in mimicking this. It debilitates most countries. Better not be involved? Others responsible? Stalin's style. Except to be more than a celebrity president. A true star. Beyond the manufactured glamorous shine provided by an elitism that's still just as Oblomovianly satisfied with the dirt-poor not belonging. 

Здравствуйте President Putin, 
  Dear Presidential Future. Has a nice sound, no? Legacy. Winners mold history is entirely true. And cock and bull's entirely believed, true too. So where does that leave your standing? Ramrod straight ambivalence. Proud, yes. But boo! Oblomov believed in himself too. While there's much, much, more for you to do. As my mother often admonished, Mr. President. Don't Just Sit On Your Laurels. 

END THE CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE SYSTEM

  Sir. Сэр. Don't just be another Chester, please. Because despite this being our world, it's not the crowd any of us belong in. 

Previous added essay November 2 - 16, 2015 

Tis The Political Season Of “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”.   

For some thinking different's jarred the most.

President Putin Publicly Covets Pawn

  Touring two European capitals, Russia’s president is explaining why he’s not yet endorsing the immediate resignation of President Assad of Syria for that country’s level of violence. President Putin is quoted by The New York Times as not wanting to take sides as Reuters also reports.

  Vladimir is not joking. If President Assad walked right now, where’s his refuge? Would it be as when in 1978 the Shah of Iran was chased off to Hawaii? Assad is most likely unenthused by banishment to Vladivostock nor does President Putin really want to be responsible for a poor persecuted monarch. President Putin has enough grief from other pawns. But what’s done with pawns is you trade. Chechnaya? Any nation-state ready to remedy that area’s tragic territorialism? I bet you solve Chechnaya’s position on President Putin’s chessboard, he lays a red carpet himself for commandos to swoop in and take President Assad for his ride.

  Syria’s Assad’s real problem is where to retire hence his down with the ship mentality. Problem is the country’s management was a toy. Success was doled out by government so it’s also those around Assad who don’t want to give up their nest now. Really there’s only one way out for him, which is of course the best lawyer the world has seen. Except apparently you just can’t buy that result anymore, as Liberia’s Charles Taylor recently found out from a world court that sentenced him to fifty years in Great Britain.

  Ah well, rulers do their best. President Assad never really lived among the people anyway. He was raised a prince and only became President to compromise. Probably has no clue what to do outside his palace. The pleasure dome is collapsing, what the hell. He’s in check and probably mated and doesn’t get it. There’s no return to the better police state. A couple hundred more civilians die and nations are poised as Assad doesn’t realize he’s just taking pawns while lawyers have him cornered. The United States’ Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is practically publicly telling President Putin to do the right thing here. There’s no walking away from this for President Assad.

  Vladimir Putin is not just not taking sides in a civil struggle, he’s also not stepping in to clean up a mess that might eventually be a lot easier than getting this particular fish in the boat at this time. Then again it is a fomenting disaster, who’s call? Assad’s father stifled social progress for decades to live in the cocoon. It’s probably the old man’s fault. But no amount of understanding seems to protect the world’s innocent from the shrewd calculations of the significant players. So what is Putin asking for to trade for Assad after all?

6/1/2012

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George W. Bush Apology Clock

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PRESIDENT PUTIN PUBLICLY COVETS PAWN 

6/1/2012 concluded: But no amount of understanding seems to protect the world’s innocent from the shrewd calculations of the significant players. So what is Putin asking for to trade for Assad after all?

April 21 - May 18, 2016
MOVE

  Well. Time's passed, Mr. President. What's different? What could have changed that would have really leveraged a difference between the world's opponents? While children still suckle on revenge. Still. Modernity's a reward the elite mostly reap an American presidential candidate is portrayed representing. But what's been thought through other than the necessity of bandwagons success to even face the absurd thinking war brings peace? That's actually, even justified, just jousting, for the commercial upper hand, so to speak. This is utopia for some of us alright. Though we're all, more or less, perpetually caught up in the principality feuds that have shadowed human history since the dawn of organized man from which we descend and have yet to thoroughly progress past. No? 

  Now we're even shown, plus told, how there's commercially too much oil. An abundance. Meaning however much else is exploited will be gotten away with if only those pesky people not in on our end of the deal would get out of the way of economic success. A car in every pot? Yes. Saudi Arabia recently announced refocusing their commercial interests on alternate fuels. As Russia will/is. While every country eludes responsibility for the present. 

Inflationary Enterprise System

  So the new Saudi Oil etc. Minister Khaled al-Falih announced their doubling down on their profits from Mother Earth's oil. A business deal as one American presidential candidate proves. They want a bribe just as we've failed to provide for the world's forests that are the backbone of our ability too breathe. 

  Yes, Mr. President. Big Money rules the world and you're no fool either. The only way to stay ahead is more. So important that the world's economic structure's as stuck as ever. Accruing, yet nonetheless stuck. We're lost thinking charity's benevolence. Where it's really just making up for commercial socialism's shortcomings. Donating time when people and work of every kind should be paid for. Wall Street's just a scapegoat when you look deeper and see capitalism's reach not being stretched to the socialism that capitalism either is or has nothing to do with but greed. Which is hardly the case. We're supposed to be better than gouging the customer to the extreme. 

  Capitalism is give and take. But running properly should be a smoother machine than the current lopsided monstrosity. Hey. I get it. No one can just stick in a wrench and tune the world economy so the responsibility's no one's fault. Clear, but not perfectly. 

  Ah, Mr. President. Wasn't that so nice a poll affirmed Russians prefer having been a super power to how the country's identified now? Gorbachev demonstrated super-power. Everything since just affirms leaders capacity for self-aggrandizement.

YOUR MOVE, MR. PRESIDENT?

  In Assad's case check's limits meant lashing out. All too classic if you catch my drift? Мистер Президент, you adroitly blocked pawns. Gaining contemplation time and imagery. Shrouding the contest in patriotic defense wrapped with still more ribbon for appearance's sake in the grand charade.

  My feeling of what's happening is war, and its threat, is an addiction. Sure everyone's offended by senseless dying. Yet here, there we are. Historically built to carry out peace once war's won as Orwell parodied in 1984. Ya know, in America, President Obama is portrayed as too timid. Though convinced to use drones? Give me a break. It's common sense the world's feuds are driven by profit along the bottom line. Pragmatism's not an excuse.

  War is more propaganda than the actual finite movements of chess that obligate both winners and losers to those fates. When there's really just so many more losers in war, the symbolism of victory has yet to realize favorable outcomes. Unless you count the British in the United States, who it's said are still doing quite well I hear. But war's no bargain. Allah/God's people should start realizing revenge isn't holy. 

George W. Bush Apology Clock

  An American Presidential Candidate has boasted of doubling down on the drug war. Intensifying the public relationship with a police state and protecting the profits of the Criminal Enterprise System. No, he didn't say it quite like that. But bending the truth is not this political review's intention. Ultimately the wars will continue as long as the propaganda, huh Mr. President?

May Day's for symbolizing liberation. Not exalting military prowess as the most patriotic thing to feel.

  Ah. Something else that, of course, from your vantage can be shrugged off as Stalin always had since most problems aren't yours to personally solve. Well. So it was a Sunday, Mr. President. May 1st I'm watching New York City's TD FIVE BORO BIKE TOUR where people come from all over the world to ride New York City's streets without car traffic. A nice event. But obviously inconvenient for drivers, hindered by traffic changes, sitting at lights watching bikes go by. Not their fault the augmentations the transportation system should have always had still aren't in place. Drive and ride civilized. 
  But the sight of all the bikes, as happens every year, got me thinking the fee paid to enter and support the tour is the same for both sexes. Now I'm sure Russia has the same problem as the United States, Mr. President. Where women are paid less for doing the same job. Or chauvinistically excluded from the profit chain. So it would be proper for all fees paid by females to be less than those paid by males to at least symbolically offset the actual social disparity.  
  Yeah, yeah, I know. But I've also seen where women are sought out as bargains and whatever equality is demanded in the workplace is dominated by the custom of male hierarchy without the actual proof men are a lick smarter. Reducing women's fees until overall parity is reached would be a start. Hey at least this challenges more than you and your complacent self-re-rewarding elite. Huh Mr. President? 

  Yes I just fill space with content. Basically curious what'll be come up with next. 

  Lunch? Мистер Президент? You name the spot. Havana? Talk about geopolitical quagmire. We could invite Bukharin's ghost for Molotov cocktails and drink to the Possessive Enterprise System's 800 pound gorilla in the room. No one really promises Socialism anymore nor truly faces its capitalist instrumentation. Castro? The Cuban Elite can't prove Cubans in general eat and travel that much better than North Koreans. Stalin's excuse too was that he'd never admit to having anything to do with what went wrong. For which a lot of innocent witnesses were executed/ murdered and punished totally disproportionate to the reality of claiming to end bourgeois abuse with authoritarian. Well. Yes. If we have lunch we should also drink to reality's bad dreams. 

  Ya know. If you, Mr. President, really had any influence with Assad, I think you should talk to him. Sit down over tea and look each other straight in the eyes on your big screens. Right. No public relations cakewalk like speaking to Elton John was. Any news on your taking your shirt off with Bruce Springsteen? Because for things to get better we need huge starts. Ask your Mobile Throne driver to slow down enough for you to look outside to see and think about what having your legacy bought for you really says about you. What your legacy could mean versus someone who really didn't try to make a difference to not just be another czar. 

We know basics but are uncomfortable feeling the truth. That's best done. There's just too much ambivalent destruction in its escaping.

8 Heartbreaking Cases Where Land Was Stolen From Black Americans Through Racism, Violence and Murder 

Holmes County, Mississippi and Sweetwater, Alabama 

The Ocoee, Florida Massacre and Hickman, Kentucky

Birmingham, Kentucky and Pierce City, Missouri

Lincoln and Jasper Counties, Mississippi 

  I'd prefer Eleanor were next to Franklin (FDR) on everything. Ditto Martha. Put Harriet Tubman on the penny and make 1 cent worth what 1 cent says again. We don't even know what minimum wage chases anymore. 

Harriet Tubman: Still the solution.

Russia’s Board Is Set Up To Appear Like Solitaire But Political Chess Never Is

So a New York Times headline, Putin’s Russia Hits the ‘Clear’ Button on the Medvedev Era By ELLEN BARRY insinuates the cat’s out of the bag. Russian co-leadership is being rolled up and put away. Having never had more than symbolic strength for the game anyway, The Scapegoatshould have his place prepared soon.

As Ms. Barry tells it — Lately, it seems, no decree of Dmitri A. Medvedevis too small to overturn. So – Signs have emerged that Dmitri A. Medvedev occasionally acted against the wishes of Vladimir V. Putin. Starting, apparently, right after surrendering the Russian presidency toVladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Putin reversed his predecessor’s decision to decriminalize slander just eight months earlier. He raised the retirement age for top officials to 70, foiling Mr. Medvedev’s attempt to “rejuvenate” Russia’s government by imposing an age limit of 60, or 65 in special cases.

Still, inconsequential. A leader fashions their own stamp as Mr. Medvedev obviously might have also tried himself when figure-head of state. While it has not reached the point where Mr. Medvedev is being airbrushed from photographs, the four and a half months since he left the presidency have brought a pointed departure from his earlier course. The words “reset” or “modernization,” that Mr. Medvedev used, are seldom mentioned. And privatization of state-owned companies is in doubt and the direct gubernatorial elections Mr. Medvedev reinstated as a parting gesture have been weakened by the insertion of a Kremlin-controlled screening process for the candidates.

Still that shouldn’t spell an end to the hope of the good cop/bad cop era. Except there’s speculation – Criticism of Mr. Medvedev has begun to appear in mainstream outlets. Thursday’s news about rescinding Mr. Medvedev’s time change seemed like more of the same. Wrote journalist Mikhail Fishman on Facebook, “So in winter it will not get light an hour later, and in summer it will get dark an hour earlier: all this with only one goal: so that Mr. Medvedev, greeting the early dusk, will remember that he is nobody.”

The political consultant Gleb O. Pavlovsky marked the occasion coining the term “de-Medvedevization.”

But The Times reporter conjectures – It is too early to write off Mr. Medvedev, who recently turned 47. He is now prime minister and remains the leader of the governing United Russia party and the second-most-important politician in the country. A year ago he demonstrated his loyalty to Mr. Putin by walking away from a second term, and Mr. Putin is known to reward loyalty. All in all, this summer felt less like a decisive change of course than a period of frenetic transition, without a clear plan waiting at the end.

And how else would smoke and mirrors appear other than whimsical?

Still, according to The Times, there were unmistakable signs Mr. Medvedev was being cut down to size. On the fourth anniversary of the August 2008 war with Georgia, an event that lifted his popularity, and each anniversary he reminisced on television about the tough, solitary decision he made to send the army into Georgia while Mr. Putin was away in Beijing.

But – This year’s retrospectives were driven by the appearance of an anonymous documentary film in which retired generals excoriated Mr. Medvedev as timorous and cowardly. And when Mr. Putin was asked about the video, he responded by turning Mr. Medvedev’s narrative upside down, telling journalists he had personally approved plans for the assault in advance. That during the crisis he spoke repeatedly by phone to Mr. Medvedev and the Defense Ministry.

Lah de dah. Each man spoke from the point of view of their own political convenience. Name one instance that hasn’t happened?

Another blow that fell on Mr. Medvedev a few weeks later. Still just a public affair but hardly the stuff of all night Kremlin arguments that should bring tyrants to blows. No? well – While still president, Dmitri asked prosecutors to review the case of Taisiya Osipova, an opposition activist who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison on what her supporters said were fabricated drug charges. His complaint led to a reversal and retrial, in which prosecutors sought a more modest sentence of four years. But – In August the judge, in a highly unusual move, sentenced Ms. Osipova to twice that time.

Alexander Rahr, a Russia scholar and biographer of Mr. Putin, said hard-liners around Mr. Putin blamed Mr. Medvedev for the burst of dissent that shook the Kremlin last winter. According to this critique, Mr. Medvedev’s presidency ended the “climate of fear” created during Mr. Putin’s second presidential term. Though Mr. Medvedev did not push through significant structural change, influential insiders contend that he “created an atmosphere” that led to protests, Mr. Rahr said.

Yes, it’s the scapegoat’s fault and certainly not due to a tyrannical image.

“They are furious,” Mr. Rahr said. “They think Medvedev woke up this new Russian revolution.”

At best a vacuum people put some hope in. But certainly not the catalyst enduring tyranny is.

Konstantin Remchukov, the editor in chief of the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, says the political chill that set in this summer is familiar to anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union. He counted 30 months of easing political constraints, starting with the publication of Mr. Medvedev’s essay “Forward, Russia” — in essence, a critique of his predecessor’s record — and ending with Mr. Putin’s inauguration this recent May.

Mr. Remchukov said, “When you have a situation more or less your whole life with very little periods of thaw, you can’t treat it seriously. I remember all these periods of being more warm, cooler, frosty.”

But Ms Barry concludes – In a way, the biggest surprise is that Mr. Putin has found it necessary to roll back Mr. Medvedev’s initiatives in the first place. For the four years of the “tandem” arrangement, the consensus among Western experts was that Mr. Medvedev did not do much without specific approval from Mr. Putin. On the day the two men announced they would switch places, a top Obama administration official shrugged off a query about whether this would herald a change of course in foreign policy: “Everyone knows that Putin runs Russia,” the official said.

Ms Barry – suggests that many of Mr. Medvedev’s initiatives toward the end of his presidency, sporadic and incomplete as they were, were undertaken independently, and in some cases against Mr. Putin’s wishes. Though his talk about change was generally not accompanied by action, the Russian presidency is so powerful that for four years, Mr. Medvedev needed only to speak and the system began to work to promote his ideas. That time, however, is over.

“Even the time change; just everything Medvedev touched,” Mr. Remchukov said. “This is the most sad story now, when I see that even minor things they are trying to eradicate from our reality.”

So it’s official Kremlin insiders are shaking things down and setting up the scapegoat because some people are grunmbling in the streets. That’s timid rule dudes, same bs you’re laying on Mr. Medvedev to scapegoat with him. And yes, Lr. Putin has more power in his sneeze. Nothing will smudge the polish on his authoritarian veneer, unless he has the guts to do it himself. Some day President Putin it won’t all be about shifting a few pawns to the other side of the board. The castles are up, it’s time the people were let in, and just as Mikhail Gorbachev brought the future, this era’s future is up to you.

But, see, here’s the thing, Watching how the Kremlin pretends to rule tends to hide what really goes on in peoples’ lives when government does all the talking and deciding. This Times video series, Above the Law follows the Russian peoples’ realinsists on being detached from normal lives. Apparently the communists superiority complex is what still hasn’t died.