Tag Archive for Russia

Russian spies awarded Kremlin’s highest honor

October 18, 2010 World No comments

Think the Cold War is over? Think again.

President Dmitry Medvedev bestowed the country’s highest state honor Monday on the Russian sleeper agents deported from the United States as part of the countries’ biggest spy swap since the Cold War, the Interfax news agency reported.

The awards were handed out at a Kremlin ceremony less than four months after the exchange, the agency quoted Medvedev spokeswoman Natalya Timakova as saying. No other details on the ceremony were available, and Kremlin spokespeople were not immediately reachable.

Obama severely limits use of nukes, weakening America further

April 6, 2010 Government, Military, Policy, War, World 3 comments

Our preparedness for war should be the measure for our desire for peace.

–Gen. Curtis LeMay

Clearly President Obama doesn’t share the national defense and security philosophy of WWII and Cold War hero, General Curtis LeMay. He doesn’t believe in “peace through strength.” In fact, he is taking the opposite approach: inviting war and destruction as a result of vulnerability and weakness.

Our world is growing exponentially more dangerous with rogue nuclear states and terrorists hell-bent on destroying America by all necessary means, including using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. How does our president, Barack Obama, plan to deter and prevent America’s enemies from harming her? Answer: By limiting the use of what’s left of our nuclear arsenal after he gets done cutting it.

President Obama is committing not to use our nuclear weapons even in response to a chemical or biological attack so long as the attacking country is abiding by treaty agreements.

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

This announcement of a new national security philosophy comes on the heels of President Obama agreeing to cut our nuclear arsenal by one-third in order to placate the Russians, who, by the way, can opt out of the new nuclear weapons treaty if they feel threatened by America.

To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A few good men: you just weakened a nation today, President Obama. Sleep tight. I know you will because this is what you want. You want a weakened, impotent America because you’re not a citizen of America. No, you’re a citizen of the world.

Terrorists should be “destroyed;” America’s incivility will be its downfall; The Report from Washington with Ellis Washington

March 29, 2010 Culture, Interviews, Podcast, War, World No comments

Vladimir Putin is actually right about something: Terrorists should be “destroyed.” That should be our goal in the War on Terror. Could you imagine one of our politicians saying the the “terrorists will be destroyed?” That level of candor would be refreshing and inspiring. Instead, our leaders more concerned with the number of civilian casualties than they are with the number of deaths of our own troops. That’s the upside down world we live in, folks.

The intensity and magnitude of incivility in this country is staggering. Everywhere you go you encounter a level and scope of rudeness and inconsiderateness that, dare I say, we’ve never seen before. Memo to liberals: It’s incivility that’s going to destroy America, not global warming.

On this week’s edition of The Report from Washington, Ellis Washington discusses his latest column, I blame Bush for Stalincare, and The White House’s shunning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Listen to the podcast below:

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Obama weakens U.S., finalizes reduction of nuclear weapons treaty with Russia

March 26, 2010 Policy, World 2 comments

President Obama is one step closer to realizing his naive vision for a world without nuclear weapons.

Climaxing months of hard negotiations, President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed on Friday to sharp cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both nations in the most comprehensive arms control treaty in two decades. “We have turned words into action,” Obama declared.

The agreement would require both sides to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons by about a third, from 2,200 now to 1,550 each.

While it is true that we still have plenty of nuclear weapons, make no mistake, all this does is weaken America.

Dems strategy for selling Obamacare: Paint opposition as racist, violent extremists

March 25, 2010 Elections, Government, Podcast, World No comments

The Democrats know that a significant majority of Americans loathe Obamacare. They also know that they are losing the debate on the merits of Obamacare because there aren’t any merits. As a result, the Democrats are attempting to divert attention away from the actual debate by branding Obamacare’s opposition as violent extremists who are threatening the lives of congressional Democrats.

But there is good news for President Obama: not everyone hates Obamacare. In fact, Obamacare received Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s seal of approval earlier today. Apparently it’s just us non-socialists who oppose Obamacare.

While Obama dictates and bullies domestically, he’s getting bullied on the international front. He is softening the new proposed sanctions against Iran in order to win the support of Russia and China at the U.N.

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Vladimir Putin praises Stalin, signals return to Russian presidency

December 3, 2009 War No comments

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s post-Soviet dictator, praised Joseph Stalin for industrializing the former Soviet Union and lobbied for a fair assessment of Stalin’s overall impact on Russia.

Putin might just turn out to be the Stalin of our time. I’m not ready to compare hime to Stalin yet but he apparently idolizes the man and is determined to rewrite Stalin’s history. This is not for the first account of Putin’s obsession with re-branding Stalin’s image. Remember this story I wrote about a couple of months ago?

It’s a pattern, folks. The world–including Russian citizens–should be frightened if Putin returns to the presidency. I fear that that’s when he’ll turn into the reincarnation of his idol–Stalin.

Russians Violating Current Nuclear Arms Treaty

October 22, 2009 Government, Policy, World One comment

Chairman Obama and his Secretary of State Hilary Clinton are in the process of negotiating (to characterize it charitably) a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia.

The U.S. has already agree to further cut its nuclear arsenal and taken the unprecedented step of allowing the Russians access to its nuclear sites for inspection and inventory calculations. Russia has yet to agree to reciprocate.

I wrote last week that it was a mistake for the Obama administration to make such concessions without securing something similar from the Russians. Now we find out that the Russians have violated the arms agreement that’s already in place.

Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and No. 2 Republican Senate leader, recently identified a key issue that is likely to complicate the administration’s plan: Russia for years has been violating the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which is set to expire Dec. 5.

Mr. Kyl said in a Senate floor speech Oct. 19 that Russia’s development of a new multiple-warhead RS-24 missile that was tested as recently as May 2007 violates the current treaty.

“That would be illegal for the Russians to deploy under START. So why are they testing it?” Mr. Kyl asked.

“In this case, it appears the Russians have cheated – if not in the letter of the START agreement, at least in its spirit – by converting one of their existing missiles, the Topol-M, to this new multiple-warhead variant,” he said. The new missile is also known as the SS-27 by the Pentagon.

The argument of Mr. Kyl and others concerned with the administration’s rush to conclude a new treaty is over how a new agreement can be reached when there is evidence that the Russians failed to abide by the old one.

What’s the Obama administration’s response to Senator Kyl?

However, Richard R. Verma, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, stated in a Oct. 5 letter to Mr. Kyl that he could not answer many questions posed by the senator because of ongoing negotiations in Geneva. (My emphasis)

Let’s flashback to what Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said with respect to Russian inquiries about the new agreement:

We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered.”

Why is the Obama administration deeply committed to answering “every” question the Russians ask yet they essentially blow of a United States senator who asks an entirely appropriate question that might disprove the Russians’ trustworthiness?

Russia to Gain Access to America’s Nuclear Arsenal?

October 14, 2009 Government, World One comment

Yes, at least if the current tentative agreement Secretary of State Hilary Clinton reached with her Russian counterpart is accepted.

Under the agreement, the Russians would have unprecedented access to our nuclear arsenal under the auspices of taking inventory. Right.

Secretary Clinton secured didn’t receive a reciprocal agreement from the Russians, mind you, just like Chairman Obama didn’t receive a reciprocal agreement of Dmitry Medvedev when he agreed to reduce our nuclear arsenal.

Read what Clinton had to say:

“We want to ensure that every question that the Russian military or Russian government asks is answered,” she said, calling missile defense “another area for deep cooperation between our countries.”

The Obama administration if more concerned with acceding to every Russian demand than with the security of America, in my opinion. This administration is like the high school kid who’s concerned about what everyone else thinks about him.

Who cares what the world thinks? We have no control over what the rest of the world thinks or does. But we do have control over our interests and security.

Whether Chairman Obama is naive or a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he’s weakening America and creating security vulnerabilities left and right. He’s being taken advantage of by the world he so adores.

What’s going on with the Russians shouldn’t be characterized as “negotiations” because that would imply concessions on the part of both parties. That’s not happening here. This is Obama conceding and Medvedev/Putin taking.

Obama is not protecting this country.

Why is Russia Concerned with Rehabilitating Stalin’s Image?

September 25, 2009 World 2 comments

Most of you won’t care (but you should) about this story, but some will, and so do I.

Two sentences inscribed above the refurbished entrance hall of Moscow’s Kurskaya metro station are causing great agitation for survivors of Russian labor camps.Yuri Fidelgoldsh, who had five ribs removed after imprisonment six decades ago, is one of the offended survivors.

“Stalin reared us on loyalty to the people,” says the inscription above the pristine marble floors of the metro station. “He inspired us to labor and to heroism.”

The phrase at the metro station came from the original Soviet national anthem, written in 1944 by Sergey Mikhalkov. During the de-Stalinization process that began under Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin’s death in 1953, statues and other vestiges of his immense cult of personality were removed. In 1977, Mikhalkov rewrote the anthem to delete references to Stalin, and the metro station removed the original inscription of his words.

The entrance hall to the station underwent extensive renovation over the past year, complete with new columns and polished marble floors. It’s located on the main metro line around the city’s center, through which tens of thousands of commuters pass every day.

Some Russians are none too pleased about this image restoration project, particularly the ones old or studios enough to know the horror and regression Stalin inflicted upon the former Soviet Union.

Fidelgoldsh, now 82, doesn’t use the metro station much, but he has been there to see the restoration. When he invokes the name “Stalin,” he gets angry. “For people who were imprisoned, punished and whose parents were killed, this is still in their hearts,” Fidelgoldsh says.

Kremlin critics are outraged by the restored motto at the station. They say it’s the latest attempt by the government to rehabilitate the image of Joseph Stalin, the late Soviet leader largely responsible for the division of Europe, the deaths of nearly 20 million people and the creator of the Eastern Bloc.

“I have no positive emotions towards Stalin,” Fidelgoldsh adds. “He’s a college dropout who went into politics and became a leader of a party which fit his needs. He didn’t exactly impress me with his ‘great’ mind.”

“This metro station was built by prisoners of gulags who were in there for no reason, just because. They were the ones building this station. I think all of this is simply wrong,” says Valeri M. Shevchenko, a musician, whose father suffered at the hands of Stalin’s regime.

“They came in the morning, Stalin’s police, took everyone outside and shot my grandfather in front of his family. My grandmother and her eight children, including my father who was 8 at the time, were sent to work camps. Only three children survived.”

As Shevchenko looks around the metro station today, he shakes his head.

Why are Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, and the rest of the current crop of Kremlin officials concerned with restoring the reputation of a murderer of some 40,000,000 Russians? Could it be that they (Putin in particular) idolize Stalin?

Obama, Gates Make Cuts to U.S. Defense Weapons as Russia Rearms

March 18, 2009 War No comments

President Obama and Sec. of Defense Robert Gates are apparently ready to undertake massive cuts to American weapons, systems and military vehicles:

As the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Robert M. Gates, whose two years as defense secretary had been devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt compelled to warn his successor of a crisis closer to home.

The United States “cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything,” Gates said. The next defense secretary, he warned, would have to eliminate some costly hardware and invest in new tools for fighting insurgents.

Of course Robert Gates has continued to be defense secretary, and I suppose he and Obama share the same position on defense spending and armament. 

Some of the items reportedly on the chopping block are the Air Force’s F-22s, a new Navy Destroyer and Army ground-combat vehicles. I don’t particularly have any concerns over the cutting of the F-22s, but if recent events near China and those of the past near Iran are signs of events to come, we could certainly use a new Naval destroyer. I also don’t understand why some Army ground-combat vehicles would be cut when we’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and, to an extent, Pakistan.

What is troubling, however, is that at the same time Gates and Obama are planning to cut our weapons Russia, through Medvedev and Putin, is announcing a rearmament plan:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev said Tuesday that Russia would begin a “large-scale rearming” in 2011 in response to what he described as threats to the country’s security.

In a speech before generals in Moscow, Mr. Medvedev cited encroachment by NATO as a primary reason for bolstering the military, including nuclear forces.

That’s very comforting. I understand we’re aren’t at war with Russia, but we here in America have to understand that while in the near term terrorism is our biggest threat, we can’t dismiss or ignore the very real possibility that countries like Russia and China won’t become physical threats in the not-to-distant future. So, maybe we shouldn’t be cutting defense spending and weapons systems that might seem needless in the present.

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