Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Russia. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Russia. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, July 6, 2012

Europe’s Missile Shield Conundrum Brings Together Russian and German Foreign Ministers

  RT, Russia Today reported German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, met Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, Thursday, in Moscow, to, as RT notes, discuss NATO and Russia’s role in Europe’s security that depends on every country’s cooperation for protection from weapons that were never very practical in such enormous quantities to begin with. Incredible diplomatic expense spent over a threat that has for all intents and purposes hung over our heads sixty-seven years. Doubling a theoretically less sophisticated era’s fantastically long Thirty Years War? While also fairly deniable, the world has never prospered financially more from war, though entirely debatable as societies have existed for no other reason than war before, while some still, after a fashion, continue now. For most of history territorial conflict was one of few opportunities that afforded a way for people to feed themselves through pillaging or providing monarchs backup stability. But as the world’s still overrun by conflict, our lack of modern progress is mystifying unless it’s realized how much we’ve depended on status quos. So however much negotiations are important, there’s still the earmarks of a complete boondoggle about this issue of nation-states protection from themselves. Fully defensively militarized Europe is too funny to not be extremely hilarious, while too tragic to not be ridiculous. No doubt a lot is at stake both nationally and internationally as RT reiterates the meeting’s necessity was many European officials are silent on US plans to construct a missile defense system in the heart of Eastern Europe.
  Germany’s Foreign Minister offered some candid remarks in an interview published in the Friday issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, saying, “I keep openly stressing time and again that security in Europe can be strengthened only through common efforts, and only together with Russia. I insist on continuing and, if possible, expanding cooperation between Russia and NATO. This concerns a common missile defense system as well.” Uh huh. Handouts wrapped with more ostentatious ribbon.
  The German Foreign Minister said Russia’s concern over being a future target is unwarranted, while pointing to areas of cooperation between Russia and NATO, like terrorism in Afghanistan. “Security of Russia, Europe and the U.S. can be ensured only by joint efforts rather than against each other.” Whether Germany brings Russia on board remains to be seen, but Westerwelle stressed Germany is actively involved in addressing issues of global and European security. While Russia has warned the US and NATO on numerous occasions that unless an agreement is reached on missile defense, the world faces another arms race. But unless fulfilling everything’s destruction, why would anyone want to do that if conscience is any guide? Though the commercialization of war unfortunately in our past has been enough of an incentive to ignore right and wrong.
7/6/2012
---------------------------------------------------------------

Europe's Missile Shield Conundrum Brings Together Russian and German Foreign Ministers
7/6/2012: The German Foreign Minister said Russia’s concern over being a future target is unwarranted, while pointing to areas of cooperation between Russia and NATO, like terrorism in Afghanistan. “Security of Russia, Europe and the U.S. can be ensured only by joint efforts rather than against each other.” Whether Germany brings Russia on board remains to be seen, but Westerwelle stressed Germany is actively involved in addressing issues of global and European security. While Russia has warned the US and NATO on numerous occasions that unless an agreement is reached on missile defense, the world faces another arms race. But unless fulfilling everything’s destruction, why would anyone want to do that if conscience is any guide? Though the commercialization of war unfortunately in our past has been enough of an incentive to ignore right and wrong.

May 4 - 31, 2017
Unfortunately war's commercialization was, from the beginning, the incentive to ignore right and wrong.
This is Allah/God's life everyone should get less awkward

A Grand Parade of Pyrotechnics
  Universally used. Broad essays are a type of calisthenics. Not so craftily carved for broad release, that they specifically cater to various purchasers' griefs. But, while, recognizable, established, stature's how the world turns, an independent siren call is as intimidatingly challenging. As, apparently, once on, there's no taking myself off the soapbox.


ELECTIONS FOR EVERYONE?    
 Receiving THE WOLFIAN MAGAZINE 10
Special Edition: General Election 2017 Submission Request 
  Coinciding with the British General Election of June 8th 2017, I was delighted. Because being from across the, as it werepond. British politics are relatively none of my business, per se. However, I wrote a fairly coherent Cold War satire without ever visiting the Soviet Union or Russia. Just so my American credentials, regarding the blacklistings, etc., are unblemished, so to speak. Bill Clinton visited and became President. Times change. But the basics behind peoples' manipulation hasn't. Personally in Paris when the wall fell.
  Basically, from any view, we’re all victims of history's cobwebs. Just the ability to commercially manipulate the concept there's a left or right political outlook, confines the public to jargon fueled arenas. Participating in circles without escape? On the, NYC, radio I heard Marine Le Pen referred to as part of the new Populist movement. Deliberately robbing the emphasis on a nasty bigotry that's been nostalgically slipped back out from under humanity's repressive closet door full of ghosts that show up really spooky in the contrived light. 
  Is humility really gone for good? Because it is just political to, understand, develop, and exploit cultural nuances. But unethical to facilitate bigotry's remaining exploited and misunderstood. Commercial reality? Malarky, so-called Modern American Republican Party. Facing history is not shrugging it off. To borrow the phrase, proselytize brother. It's shame. Not arrogance. That's humility before the Lord. Conditioning the public to resent a loyal opposition is, yes, undemocratic. Not only that, the obsessions' benefits of the doubt reach only just so far ... boo. Considering everything's fake? I am, for the moment, the only Republican alive.
  So besides separate political environments being, relatively, the same difference, are manipulative American political perceptions directly applicable to British politics? Certainly the British Conservative train of thought derives from an ethical pursuit of individual independence. Not just the insurement of power's relegation of the individual to submission to the world's vast array of corporate states. and not just purely result from particular political advertising successes that framed the public consciousness to value certain harda__ expressions as more patriotic? Ha!  
  No political entities can really speak independently for any of us, is something to face. Don't Be Anyone's Sycophant isn't just advice. It's a dream. When what's really been understood as a public whole, has been the manipulated approaches to misunderstanding how everything actually is capitalism and how socialism works as well. While both political concepts, as currently pasted, are infamous for sticking it to the consumer where the opportunity's found. 
  There comes a time you hope people listen and at least give, the logic of independence, some skillful thought as to how all our lives actually evolved here from back there. It's not baffling how dogma's unstructured and twisted out of proportion. That slogans still replace the public sphere's coherence with ludicrousness that's preposterous when there's just, only one bottom line. Financial flow. Like Peace, Love and Understanding. What's so funny about vultures deciding who rules? Laying up wealth that has nothing better to do than lounge around with their own crowd, remaining, far and distantly, the crutch stifling "capitalism from the bottom up." 
  Political sophistication replacing dignity and honor through the skill to translate chanting crowds into popular culture has an extremely malignant history. Obviously I'd not brought that up if I thought it would help. But years pass, that become the next, again, hoping the public's too mature for sycophancy. But propaganda is doled out in measures, that rely on amplified awareness when jousting like a demon has the most allure. As these days, that the show's a show's extremely transparent. Such that it's probably impossible for politics to bring people to their senses? Why the cultural revolutions are contrived as threats, when custom's advancement is the real source of social advance. But within the, feeding on itself, big picture? Diplomacy's a retreatment behind power to strike without compromise. That there's ruthless rule, is why there are rules. Pro bono lawyers. Why there's so much smoke and so many mirrors, the public believes anything, as needs be. 
Life's such a grand adventure of discovery, the crying shame's individuals allowing their understanding to be framed.

Between The Lines: Power's nutshell. 

Long-time Iowa farm cartoonist fired after creating this cartoon.

     ... 
  Is a world where a sign of winning is the willingness to manipulate others, avoidable? As for instance, what Robert Ludlum fictionalized in The Chancellor Manuscript, describing a labyrinth-inal conspiracy of conspiracies of individuals. Bold schemes requiring bold victims never gets old and why Shakespeare doesn't die, they'd say.
  Well. Don't underestimate something Kim Jong-un and President Trump have in common. Preserving power while leaving out all the messy stuff involved in capitalism from the bottom up
Power's Before Honor and Ethics Always?
  See, what we're, as yet, really unable to get a handle on is, where does all this ceremonial meaning get us? The redundant pomp and circumstance. Superfluous to the emotionally shattered and shattering dilemmas, and coincidental consequences, that slip past our solving and elude rectification because power's really remote from the collateral damage caused. As a consequence, innocent victims and, where there's no shame, there's no honor. So, for the purpose of pacifying an alliance, once again, an American President put forward the ideal that one side's all the good guys whose obligation is to destroy the other ones. Everyone, apparently, expected to feel lost, and caught up, in this jihad nonsense that's scarred all our lives. Loosely derived from an obsession with enforcing morality every society has room for being far better at. Crime a state enterprise? Violence a religious act. What should end is our being made fools of. 
  Add to this whole load of crap, the literal preposterousness of a couple of American (high school) military school graduates emphasizing military might, when the really righteous goal is settling all this nonsense down. Not reinvigorating the delusion by encouraging jumping further in. It's okay because some have the best lifeboats money can buy and weaponry to protect them? When it's not about misconstruing equality, but a world that's better for everyone. Just what the damned feuds didn't need, was more fuel. 
Case in point, a president's claim God favored retaliation 
caused this appeal - 
  So the current president's arrogant inclusion of this statement, 
while speaking before a partisan Saudi crowd, again emphasizes the revengeful nature of the whole problem. Why the coincidences of humanity's losses aren't just risen from the dark by the alienated, dispirited minds of people used for impractical ends. Flags have been waved for cover many times before throughout history. Also declarations that God willed dominion over humanity by humanity. When we really crafted ourselves this way, and get nowhere free devising the myriad avoidances of direct blame. When each and every one of us not truly facing ourselves, results from others framing our brains to find comfort in the vicious cycle of hatred for others.
  Peace will guide the planets isn't just drivel, made up for a song. Or just another answer blown in the wind, my friend. ... .
  So actualities are on record. The president visited and touched cues while no one involved wants the hint revealed. That alienating and militaristic taunting is what involved all of us in this nonsense, in the first place, ... after all. And don't tell me I don't respect my friends in the military. Nonsense has gone on long enough. No?
  Avenging rivalries is how things are. So much of life consists of lying to each others' faces anyway. No matter how hard it's tried, Life's not a perfect trial in a perfect Court of Law. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
People's ethical lapses are our faults for wanting a pedestal?    
*   Crime, Contagion and Commerce by JoAnne Brown
from Scientific Authority & Twentieth-century America
Soapbox View pursues the Twin Legacies 
Andy Rooney and I.F. Stone?

Friday, August 10, 2012

Politics Makes A Difference, When?

  The RT headline Medvedev calls to purge United Russia of ‘accidental’ members pictures the Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev looking as if contemplating his next moves as head of the parliamentary majorityUnited Russia Party.
  Friday the Presidium of The Party’s General Council was expected to elect the head of the CEC by a direct and secret vote for the first time. Meeting with candidates for the head post of United Russia’s Central Executive Committee (CEC), RT states, the Prime Minister again decided to promote internal democracy and call for a major party renewal, which included purging all those who blacken its image. Which partially brings to mind, a generation back when there were attempts to relieve The Communist Party of their dead-weight.
Medvedev said, “There must be responsibility before the party and this means that there must be responsibility before the people who trust the party.” Was he born yesterday, reviving tired political rhetoric as if running for the President of the United States or something? What happened to becoming the brand new Russia? “Trust the Party?” You have a commission deal, Dimitry, to sell the Brooklyn Bridge and Kremlin wholesale? I know, maybe the Kremlin.
  “Our members and leaders are not at all without sin,” the PM added. “We must make decisions if there are problems. If a certain number of people who got into the party’s ranks by chance are behaving in a way that they blacken everything in the party structures, then we must get rid of them.”
  What? Otherwise the captain goes down with the ship? Come on. There’s no plan in motion for anything similar to a weak party giving up or sharing control, yet. It’s paramount The Party is a well oiled, efficient machine? It’s already majorly greased. You can’t have assorted voices not in complete agreement? What party politics compromising an agreement is all about?
  Is that what was wrong? The Communist Party’s private disagreements before the fatuous announcements kept them from being a smoothly-run KGB machine? So now that problem is fixed from the inside, it might as well be polished from the outside too? Will Russia’s rulers ever tire of flexed muscles in victory?
  Medvedev said the elections to the top posts were a symbol of United Russia’s renewal. Telling party activists, “I have always thought, and this is still my sincere position, that competitiveness is always better than someone’s dominance, even when we understand that the man who is taking the responsibility has good starting opportunities, respect and so on.”
  The United Russia leader also stressed party renewal was not simply to show some movement, but better adjust to the changing world. Dmitry Medvedev became a member of United Russia in May 2012, shortly after freshly-elected President Vladimir Putin appointed him prime minister. Almost immediately after joining, Medvedev was elected party leader, replacing Putin, who is not a member because of his support for the idea of a non-partisan president. What? Like a monarch or just another life-long bureaucrat running a department such as, what, sanitation, for instance, except this one the whole world knows is the kingdom of Russia? Come on Vladimir, as is usual, and always been throughout Russian History. It’s your move. You did so well this week announcing your favoring some amount of compassion from the Court for the Pussy Riot Women. There’s a lot more to do in Russia than leave a democracy, but from where you sit that’s your legacy. Whichever move you choose.
Политика есть разница, когда?
8/10/2012
---------------------------------------------------------------
Politics Makes A Difference, When?
8/10/2012 concluded: The United Russia leader also stressed party renewal was not simply to show some movement, but better adjust to the changing world. Dmitry Medvedev became a member of United Russia in May 2012, shortly after freshly-elected President Vladimir Putin appointed him prime minister. Almost immediately after joining, Medvedev was elected party leader, replacing Putin, who is not a member because of his support for the idea of a non-partisan president. What? Like a monarch or just another life-long bureaucrat running a department such as, what, sanitation, for instance, except this one the whole world knows is the kingdom of Russia? Come on Vladimir, as is usual, and always been throughout Russian History. It’s your move. You did so well this week announcing your favoring some amount of compassion from the Court for the Pussy Riot Women. There’s a lot more to do in Russia than leave a democracy, but from where you sit that’s your legacy. Whichever move you choose.
Dec. 17, 2018 - Jan. 15, 2019
An Address The Nation Speech (1/8/2019)
  Addressing the nation is at the heart of our president's lament. That listeners' non-adherence is just a huge communication gap bridged by repetition. If this first such address weren't so importantly meaningful, the reeking from blind self-promotionalism is more than exposed enough. Maybe our president isn't just pretending our formal stances shield us from every repercussion? It makes sense enough of the country didn't understand a Teflon Don's result. Style mattered over substance after all. Our country's so great, where might brazenness get us after all? A ruthless world requires tough choices. Some down home despotry thrown into a political circus of such astronomical proportions, no satellite'll ever receive the country the complete picture anyway. No how. No way. Yee-haw!
  I wish our president's Tuesday, 9 PM EST, 1/8/2019, strategy was of more substance than just the no shame back-patting that accepts no responsibility for why so many immigrants fled collapsed social structures in the first and second places. All for the glamour of war with ourselves is the history of humankind. Even the police don't need a better run police state that's madness. Whereas only the hugest scapegoat of all is worth your majesty's attention apparently? Crime's Shrine. Amen?
  Symbolism shouldn't be over anyone's head, Mr. President. But reducing the simple to extra-ordinarily simple is too sad. Disparity ruling as, at least, half the time, it's enforced. Upward mobility is supposed to raise everyone up. Not leave the bottom the pits. The wall already up that shouldn't be. Like any other environmental tragedy, just further shame.  
  It's like we're pinching ourselves at a decade's end. Because, as time goes by, the accumulation feels more acute when one's become the next another. 
  Don't Be Anyone's Sycophant is certainly redundant on my part. Like an unswerving political message hardly anything can actually, really, be done about. As noted, in these pages, before, a difficulty in Criminal Enterprise System reform is the strong belief in adhering to an aggressively flawed enforcement strategy that real life can only accept as inevitable. But our adeptness, at financing crime, is put to shame by the result of our not solving it. 
  New York's, once, Governor Gateway, finally, January 17th, announced his legalized marijuana support. Shunting the sign that this will completely undermine the moral fabric of humankind. Of course, not yet, is this an all-out assault on ending a contrived illegal façade that's darkened cultural dignity across the world. Now fronted by the poster person for I'm so good I've never done drugs mantra. What any know-it-all doesn't know could fill the universe. In fact there's evidence the nation's #1 celebrity has never empathized well with all that much, except for the world's ripeness for exploitation? 
  Perspective, Mr. President? Minds need the world's cultures poll-vaulting past our incredible hump of scapegoating happiness, that for some is all too plainly viewed through a big screen of outright denial. Bah. Humbug. Nonsense these idealists are more patriotic than those. The public's sold political checkers, while the performance hoax pretends chess.
  What if Senator Mitch McConnell suddenly, and for a period of time, stopped explaining everything was "for the American people?" Would lives carried along considering those words stamped gospel, also suddenly be more broadly thought out concerning what's fashioned? Rest that whole if you think we represent being too American then you're not American enough attitude?   
  Collusion's beaten to the punch. War, not war, is hardly a question any longer. Too sophisticated for that. Us. The presidents. Whoever, whichever. Modern times has spawned the attitude of our being above sad, bad results. Too smart for their own britches has all of us caught by their own petards. Which includes the President of the United States too. Sir.
  Surviving getting by's pushed to the max. And as long as all the volatility's everyone else's fault, facing anything's just a backhanded slap. Ba dump bump. 
All Is Discombobulated For New Year's Day  
  Christmas has as many different meanings as there are people and interpretations. Dwarfing the martyrdomizing of the US Presidency that's put to further shame in relation to those election campaign boasts about President Obama's wasteful spending playing golf. No one before has so brazenly flaunted the perks of office? Judging by what presidents have done after their terms in office, is the actual plan symbolically representing the richest man on earth, ever? Such a sad reminder that at Christmas-time, something was amiss in River City. Perhaps the ageless musical, Pride Goeth Before A Fall
  Among things to be thankful for are reminders lying well comes with wealth, or at least outright viciousness, through laughter and smiles, or feigned serious expression, is satisfyingly refreshing? 
Happy Christmas and Merry New Year as per usual.

ARROGANCE DOES NOT BECOME US
_________________________________________________________
My 2019 Suggestion For 
New York City's DeBlasio Administration
  Cut this nonsense whereby the ASPCA etc. encourages citizens in all the various neighborhoods to learn how to trap and neuter feral cats. All the while saying the rat problem will be dealt with through better poisons. There should be a city-wide program neutering these cats and providing them with sufficient housing while they perform a community service. All homelessness requires shelter. Period. And cats are good for the environment, but not as scapegoats for our self-centered preoccupations. 
  Also of note, while not perfect everywhere, there's a preponderance of metal grates and plates in the road leveled to the road surface. Well, at least more than there used to be when flat surfaces were much more rare. Some jobs require larger asphalt ridges. But generally I'm noticing more smooth surfaces when they practically didn't use to exist. And while the mayor might not be personally responsible for that specific quality improvement, I appreciate the advance. Now what about all those other rough spots? 
_________________________________________________________
7 Days In, New Year’s Rather Old Already
  Duh. A woman standing at a curb, on her phone, stepped right in front of moving me and sounded her "ooo" alarm as if absolutely none of the fault for the inconvenient passing were her own. Thirty-seven years of experience had me realizing the calculation to swerve was necessary a brief second before it happened. Not a dag-gum bit of evidence indicates the public-at-large is capable of realizing we're just too naive to keep dangerously going on like this where it's ok because, eventually, soon enough, someday, lights, bells and whistles will all go off if anyone's within 2 feet of any one of us. Certainly. There'll be portable ambulances everyone carries so there'll be little excuse for anyone not to fly through the streets because of the long-standing fast as possible tradition our insurance addictively finances.
PAY ATTENTION, the rewards ARE PRICELESS.
_________________________________________________________
preoccupations 
  While what's happening in America's heart is messages' essences aren't really rooted out, when every calculation is outrageous myth built on pat explanations for twisting the political wheels' spokes. Drunk with power's trending and where hope's lost.
_________________________________________________________
  While parallels are discomforting, they're meant to mean how far things haven't gone when it's tremendously bad things got this far at all. Despotry behind Door #3, Monty
What there's little doubt about is we're where we are.
And how seeing things, one way or the other, shrouds the golden opportunity in a gloss of utterly vast showmanship. Ta da! 
  While 

Monday, September 10, 2012

Big Deals Made At ECONOMIC SUMMIT In Russia

Titling their news summary, For Putin, a Flight of Fancy at a Summit Meeting‘s CloseThe New York Times described President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, limping and in pain this weekend, but as the annual Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting wrapped on Sunday, in Vladivostok, the Russian leader showed trademark swagger by hitting back at political opponents who mocked his latest stunt, flying a motorized glider to help lead endangered cranes from Siberia migrating south.
Oh yeah? I bet if Michelle Obama flew that glider we couldn’t hear enough about how significant a journey that was for renewing the public’s involvement in what nature means, now that we’re so inundated by machines.
So the President of Russia has a photo-op helping nature. Fabulous, next he’ll grow a garden in the Kremlin, himself, or at least help during The Photo-Op. As with litter on beaches, or crap blowing in the wind through our parking lots, people have to even be coerced into cooperating with what’s good for them. So this means President Putin is signed up for whatever it takes to get and keep the earth’s atmosphere clean?
Hardly? As The Times states – Seizing on a question at his closing news conference, that may or may not have been planted by aides, Mr. Putin signaled that he was not bothered by jokes and ridicule, including assertions that some cranes, like some Russian voters, opted not to follow him. “Only the weak ones,” Mr. Putin said, after urging the audience to applaud the question, which was asked by a reporter from the tabloid, Komsomolskaya Pravda. “The weak ones didn’t follow me.”
Mr. Putin also made clear his little interest in working with the United States to encourage a political transition in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad’s government continues to cling to power with a violent crackdown on the rebels there.
There it is, isn’t it, Vladimir? No one has bid enough to compensate for Russia’s cooperation. And true, as the Russia’s President has spoken, it’s hard to guess which crew will end up ruling the neighborhood. All President Putin knows for sure is he’s not moving in.
The Times continues, painting President Putin’s picture of the crane episode as a parable about how his tight control and strong leadership keep Russia from descending into chaos.
The New York Times quotes President Putin, thus, “To be frank with you, not all of the cranes flew, and the leader, the pilot, has to be blamed because he was too fast in gaining speed and altitude and they were just lagging behind; they couldn’t catch up. But that is not the whole of the truth: simply during certain circumstances, when there is strong wind and bad weather, the pilot has to lift very speedily or otherwise the flying machine vehicle could overturn and capsize.”
The Times’ DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and STEVEN LEE MYERS maintain – It was a thinly veiled description of his view of himself as Russia’s paramount leader, and it echoed a speech he delivered to lawmakers just days before parliamentary elections in December, in which he urged them to unite behind him “so that the boat really does not turn over.”
Big deal. The Press can tabulate rhetoric. Swaggering President Putin is just playing. How could it matter that The Times can state – Accounts of widespread fraud in those elections led to big protests in Moscow last winter, when tens of thousands took to the streets, often chanting “Russia without Putin!” Because Mr. Putin still went on to easily win election to a third term as president, and, on Sunday, essentially mocked his mockers of his bird adventure, deriding them as out of the mainstream as odd ducks, perhaps, or dodos. “What else can be said? There are certain birds that don’t fly in flocks. They prefer to have their nests separately. But this is a different sort of problem. Even if they are not members of the flock they are members of our population, and they have to be treated very carefully to the extent possible.”
Pawns kept in their place? You’re kidding? Right, President Putin? Maybe? Because public relations is just a toy. Boisterous, public, political theater. A ceremonial backdrop to The Real World point of what Vladivostok was all about.
Even The Times concludes – The jabs at the opposition were bookended by more serious declarations of success about the, held for the first time in Russia, summit meeting. Mr. Putin used the event to underscore his country’s eagerness to sharply increase business and trade ties with the Far East. “We believe we have reached all the goals set for the APEC leaders’ week in Vladivostok,” he declared.
And – In a joint declaration, the leaders of the 21 members of the economic conference, which includes nations from the Asian Pacific and several North and South American countries that border the ocean, applauded efforts to address economic damage in Europe.
In the declaration, the leaders also said they would continue to promote free trade and combat protectionism, particularly in food exports. They announced a new agreement to reduce tariffs on a list of goods identified as beneficial to the environment, and they pledged to combat corruption and protect endangered wildlife.
Platitudes. Yet business moves forward, nonetheless. Numerous important deals were reached, including an accord signed by Japan and Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled natural gas monopoly. A station that will help increase Russian energy exports to Japan, which is in need of alternatives to its largely shuttered nuclear power industry.
The Times prints – Mr. Putin’s swagger could be seen in relations with the United States, too. Only days before the meeting, injecting himself into the American presidential campaign calling President Obama honest and rebuking Mitt Romney. But when it came to Syria and Iran, he rebuffed the Obama administration and its highest representative here, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton met privately with Mr. Putin and sat next to him for 90 minutes at the closing dinner on Saturday night, chatting about wildlife and the Winter Olympics that Russia will host in 2014. But the two failed to bridge the gaps that divided them.
Really? Apart from reporters she grilled him on Olympic wildlife, or more probably spent the dinner exchanging goo-goo eyes with everyone attending they wanted to maintain influence with. For appearances sake, they could have talked about the Vail, Colorado ski season, so the entire room knew who remained the most powerful. As Mrs. Clinton said in Vladivostok before returning to the United States, “We haven’t seen eye to eye with Russia on Syria. That may continue.”
His move, President Putin’s power to decide, is what he’s not giving up.
According to The Times, Russia, along with China, has vetoed three United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Syria. But Mrs. Clinton had hoped Russia would show more flexibility as the violence has worsened. Instead, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, publicly rebuked her on Syria, as well as on Iran.
“Our American partners have a prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more sanctions against Syria and against Iran,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Russia is fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them.” While President Putin, in his news conference, called his discussions with Mrs. Clinton “useful” and said they concerned “primarily economic ties and certain political issues. We touched on hot spots in the Middle East, in Asia. It was a constructive, very businesslike conversation.” But, he added, “no special decisions” were made.
In his summary on Sunday, Mr. Putin expressed condolences to the Chinese, enduring a tragic earthquake, as well as to Ms. Gillard, the Australian prime minister, whose father died unexpectedly.
Mr. Putin also strongly defended the huge expenditures in Vladivostok that were undertaken in preparation for the economic summit meeting. Including money for three new bridges and an entire new campus for Far East Federal University. Two luxury hotels, a theater for opera and ballet and an aquarium are under construction.
Sometimes enterprise is government, right, Vladimir? Certainly economic compromises are made, but, between whom?
The Times prints that Mr. Putin said, “We will certainly continue developing and improving the living conditions in the Far East,” arguing the goal is to “tap the new opportunities that integration and partnership with our Asia-Pacific neighbors opens up.”
And this is what a third elected term is for President Putin? The highest public official in your country micro-manages international business?
The Times said Russia’s president was swaggering. So, without directly saying so, implied how now is the time to let the power trip go. No? What really requires the Russian President’s attention is how far, and well, trickle-down economics permeates your country. Address what is of real consequence, Vladimir. Your legacy is not just how much money Russia made, but what all your fellow Russians are left with today, and tomorrow.