The Cold War, Part 2 ... Putin Rising

Jason P
Jason P Posts: 19,295
in A Moving Train
Well, it's officially on. Even if no one else really wants to play.

Russians warned if they go abroad, US might snatch them

US secret services are actively 'hunting' and jailing Russians in revenge for the annexation of Crimea – or so a warning by the Russian Foreign Ministry says.

It's not your typical travel advisory.

Russia's Foreign Ministry is warning that Russians should refrain from traveling abroad because they could be entrapped by US secret services who are actively "hunting" for Russians to persecute in punishment for Moscow's recent annexation of Crimea, according to an official notice published on the Ministry's website.

The message seems directed at the approximately 15 million Russians, most of them middle-class, who leave the country each year for tourism.

.....

news.yahoo.com/russians-warned-abroad-us-might-snatch-them-162100712.html
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«13

Comments

  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    I feel like Putin should have grabbed the mic after the closing ceremonies and yelled, "fooled you!" and then laughed maniacally like Mr. Burns as his 35,000 security force locked the city down.
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,662
    Jason P said:

    I feel like Putin should have grabbed the mic after the closing ceremonies and yelled, "fooled you!" and then laughed maniacally like Mr. Burns as his 35,000 security force locked the city down.



    :)) He may well be laughing behind our backs.

    Oh, and Putin as Mr. Burns. Outrageous! :))
    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • Annafalk
    Annafalk Sweden Posts: 4,004
    What is Putin planning to do?
    He scares people that's living around the boarders.
    It wasn't very nice of him to fly with bomb planes against our capital as happened last year..
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,662
    Annafalk said:

    What is Putin planning to do?
    He scares people that's living around the boarders.
    It wasn't very nice of him to fly with bomb planes against our capital as happened last year..

    Very sorry to hear that! I don't remember hearing about that. Why was he doing that?

    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • Annafalk
    Annafalk Sweden Posts: 4,004
    edited April 2014
    brianlux said:

    Annafalk said:

    What is Putin planning to do?
    He scares people that's living around the boarders.
    It wasn't very nice of him to fly with bomb planes against our capital as happened last year..

    Very sorry to hear that! I don't remember hearing about that. Why was he doing that?

    Thank you Brianlux!
    I don't know..to practis?
    The embarrassing part is that the military in my nation didn't even do anything, the only reaction was from a NATO plane observing this.
    (We aren't even in NATO)
    Post edited by Annafalk on
  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    edited April 2014
    Annafalk said:

    What is Putin planning to do?
    He scares people that's living around the boarders.
    It wasn't very nice of him to fly with bomb planes against our capital as happened last year..

    I'm sure Finland is a little concerned. I'm sure somewhere in Putin's ego that he would like to make reparations for the Winter War.

    Oh, plus the Fins beat them in hockey ...
    Post edited by Jason P on
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • Annafalk
    Annafalk Sweden Posts: 4,004
    edited April 2014
    Jason P said:

    Annafalk said:

    What is Putin planning to do?
    He scares people that's living around the boarders.
    It wasn't very nice of him to fly with bomb planes against our capital as happened last year..

    I'm sure Finland is a little concerned. I'm sure somewhere in Putin's ego that he would like to make reparations for the Winter War.

    Oh, plus the Fins beat them in hockey ...
    Yep, that must have pissed him off..
    Post edited by Annafalk on
  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,369
    are we on the brink? Ukrainian forces have fired on prorussian miltias that have taken over Gov buildings. Putin has said russia would protect those citizens AND/OR russian interests with military force. Guess we'll see if he blinks.
    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    Interesting chess move by the Ukraine ... if they sit back Putin will systematically and politically pick off piece by piece of their nation and the rest of the world will sit back and watch. But if they fight back and start killing the "pro russian" militias, it may force Putin's hand to blatently attack ... which may be a situation where the world doesn't sit back and watch.

    In either situation, Russia is going to take what they want. But fighting now may give them a fighter's chance.
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • hedonist
    hedonist Posts: 24,524
    Looks like Vlad's controlling, restricting and taking down social media sites and news outlets.

    Scary shit.
  • Guitar92player
    Guitar92player Posts: 664
    edited April 2014
    Here's my take on this whole subject:

    Being a history major and knowing bits of info on that area, I understand why he is doing this. In the past (and currently still), there were/are not many natural borders in Eastern Europe. People moved about freely and established themselves where they wanted. Generations have lived in the same land and created their identity. The people of Poland have lived in the land that is now Poland for centuries, despite it being under the control of various countries at certain points in time. When Russia controlled parts of Poland, they were never really Russian; instead, they were still ethnically Polish.

    Many of the former Russian countries are still ethnically Russian. Many people in Ukraine are still technically "Russian." They have lived there forever, and have been under control under a few different people, mainly Russia. So, I get Putin's argument.

    However, if he plans to re-establish the USSR as it was, including bringing back communism, then he is dumb.

    I am not saying he should take back those former countries, so don't get that idea. My point is I get what the situation is, even though is intentions are not so great.



    Post edited by Guitar92player on
    ~Carter~

    You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
    or you can come to terms and realize
    you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
    makes much more sense to live in the present tense     - Present Tense
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,662
    Guitar92player said:

    Here's my take on this whole subject:

    Being a history major and knowing bits of info on that area, I understand why he is doing this. In the past (and currently still), there were/are not many natural borders in Eastern Europe. People moved about freely and established themselves where they wanted. Generations have lived in the same land and created their identity. The people of Poland have lived in the land that is now Poland for centuries, despite it being under the control of various countries at certain points in time. When Russia controlled parts of Poland, they were never really Russian; instead, they were still ethnically Polish.

    Many of the former Russian countries are still ethnically Russian. Many people in Ukraine are still technically "Russian." They have lived there forever, and have been under control under a few different people, mainly Russia. So, I get Putin's argument.

    However, if he plans to re-establish the USSR as it was, including bringing back communism, then he is dumb.

    I am not saying he should take back those former countries, so don't get that idea. My point is I get what the situation is, even though is intentions are not so great.



    Interesting perspective and good points. Putin no doubt knows well what he's doing.

    Like so many big issues, the whole thing is complicated and convoluted. It's too bad we don't still have (or maybe we do and I don't know about them) people like Ryszard Kapuściński (the great Polish reporter/journalist) and Vaclav Havel (even though the Czech Republic was never really a part of the USSR). They said a lot of things that made sense.

    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    We are edging closer to a new Cold War. The administration better figure a way to avoid it or it will be their everlasting legacy. Four years ago I thought it would be impossible, that even though countries talked the talk, they would never walk the walk.

    Now US fighter jets are intercepting spy planes in the Baltics, Russian jets are invading airspace and doing fly-overs within a few thousand yards of US destroyers ... and Putin's ego is at an all-time high with the way he handed the US their ass in Syria and post Olympic glory.

    I don't think Putin respects Obama.
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • Drowned Out
    Drowned Out Posts: 6,056
    Does anyone really believe this is all caused by Russian aggression/intervention in some internal struggle?
    NATO has been pushing to Russia's borders since 94, and has considered Ukraine a candidate for membership since 2008 (unsurprisingly, the same time Shell, Chevron and Exxon tendered agreements to 'develop' the Black Sea). Polls have repeatedly shown overwhelming opposition to NATO amongst the Ukranian people.
    The Ukraine is the main corridor thru which Russian natural gas reaches Europe (40% of the EU's gas comes from Russia). It is also the 'breadbasket' of Eastern Europe (more US corp interest - Monsanto...) Both countries are trying to protect their interests, with the people of the Ukraine caught in the middle. Pretty much every conflict in Eurasia, Central Asia, and North Africa, in the past 25 years (including both Iraq and Afghanistan), has been tied to the same problems. Pipelines, currency, and expansion of trade/military blocs. It's to the point that you have to assume any kind of popular revolution was co-opted from the start, then read between the lines asking who benefits...in the case of the Ukraine, it's long been established that the coup was US financed - openly admitted on CNN, and caught on tape (remember the 'fuck the EU' recording?)...it wasn't so long ago the Ukrainian Orange Revolution attempted the same things - the US, thru NGO's financed that as well...their boy Yushenko (sp?) was pushing for NATO membership, and severing ties with Russia....now the Ukraine was about to cozy up to Russia and the EU, and the US couldn't let that happen.

  • Drowned Out
    Drowned Out Posts: 6,056
    edited April 2014
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-global-financial-tsunami-end-game-the-petro-dollar-regime-is-finished/5376779

    In the last few months, we have witnessed a variation of the nuclear M.A.D. Doctrine and for which I have been warning for as long as I can remember but my ringing of the alarm bells have fell on deaf ears.

    The “Financial Nuclear Weapon” (the sale of oil in a currency other than the US dollar) which was previously deployed by Saddam Hussein resulted in the total destruction of Iraq, but it failed to deter other countries pissed off with the highhandedness of the Global Policeman.

    Libya made another attempt and it resulted in the destruction of the country and the brutal murder of its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Next was Iran. The US and the global financial war party found it much more difficult to isolate and annihilate Iran, even when she was threatened with outright nuclear attack by US and the rabid Israel. And in spite of unprecedented sanctions against Iran (which constitute economic warfare and are war crimes in itself), Iran stood defiant.

    The leading members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Russia and China restrained themselves so as to preserve global stability. However, the war party faction of the Obama regime (the leftovers of the Bush regime) took such restraint as weakness and went on a spree of regime change throughout the world to undermine the growing strength of BRICS.

    The straw that broke the camels’ back was the unbridled and reckless coup against the elected President of Ukraine by US and NATO and orchestrated by the US State Department and led by the war-monger Victoria Nuland. She openly admitted on CNN that the US had disbursed through such organisations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) over US$ 5 Billion to facilitate the coup with the support of the oil giant Chevron.

    This was an unprecedented treachery as a few weeks before the bloody coup, the relevant stakeholders entered an agreement to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine brokered by Russia and endorsed by the EU. Victoria Nuland could not and would not accept the check-mate and so she launched the bloody coup giving no choice to Russia to support the self-determination of Crimea where the majority of the citizens were Russians and where Russia’s Black Sea fleet was located.

    The US blatantly threatened Russia in her own backyard. The rest as they say is history.

    (..............................)
    The existence of “petrodollars” is one of the pillars of America’s economic might because it creates a significant external demand for American currency, allowing the US to accumulate enormous debts without defaulting. If a Japanese buyer want to buy a barrel of Saudi oil, he has to pay in dollars even if no American oil company ever touches the said barrel. Dollar has held a dominant position in global trading for such a long time that even Gazprom’s natural gas contracts for Europe are priced and paid for in US dollars. Until recently, a significant part of EU-China trade had been priced in dollars.

    Lately, China has led the BRICS efforts to dislodge the dollar from its position as the main global currency, but the “sanctions war” between Washington and Moscow gave an impetus to the long-awaited scheme to launch the petroruble and switch all Russian energy exports away from the US currency.

    The main supporters of this plan are Sergey Glaziev, the economic aide of the Russian President and Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the biggest Russian oil company and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Both have been very vocal in their quest to replace the dollar with the Russian ruble. Now, several top Russian officials are pushing the plan forward.

    First, it was the Minister of Economy, Alexei Ulyukaev who told Russia 24 news channel that the Russian energy companies must ditch the dollar. “They must be braver in signing contracts in rubles and the currencies of partnercountries,” he said.

    Then, on March 2, Andrei Kostin, the CEO of state-owned VTB bank, told the press that Gazprom, Rosneft and Rosoboronexport, state company specialized in weapon exports, can start trading in rubles. “I’ve spoken to Gazprom, to Rosneft and Rosoboronexport management and they don’t mind switching their exports to rubles. They only need a mechanism to do that”, Kostin told the attendees of the annual Russian Bank Association meeting.

    Judging by the statement made at the same meeting by Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, it is safe to assume that no resources will be spared to create such a mechanism. “ Some ‘hot headed’ decision-makers have already forgotten that the global economic crisis of 2008 – which is still taking its toll on the world – started with a collapse of certain credit institutions in the US, Great Britain and other countries. This is why we believe that any hostile financial actions are a double-edged sword and even the slightest error will send the boomerang back to the aborigines,” she said. It seems that Moscow has decided who will be in charge of the “boomerang”. Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, has been nominated to chair the board of directors of Saint-Petersburg Commodity Exchange, a specialized commodity exchange.

    In October 2013, speaking at the World Energy Congress in Korea, Sechin called for a “global mechanism to trade natural gas” and went on suggesting that ” it was advisable to create an international exchange for the participating countries, where transactions could be registered with the use of regional currencies “. Now, one of the most influential leaders of the global energy trading community has the perfect instrument to make this plan a reality. A Russian commodity exchange where reference prices for Russian oil and natural gas will be set in rubles instead of dollars will be a strong blow to the petrodollar.

    Rosneft has recently signed a series of big contracts for oil exports to China and is close to signing a “jumbo deal” with Indian companies. In both deals, there are no US dollars involved. Reuters reports, that Russia is close to entering a goods-for-oil swap transaction with Iran that will give Rosneft around 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day to sell in the global market. The White House and the russophobes in the Senate are livid and are trying to block the transaction because it opens up some very serious and nasty scenarios for the petrodollar. If Sechin decides to sell this Iranian oil for rubles, through a Russian exchange, such move will boost the chances of the “petroruble” and will hurt the petrodollar.

    It can be said that the US sanctions have opened a Pandora’s box of troubles for the American currency. The Russian retaliation will surely be unpleasant for Washington, but what happens if other oil producers and consumers decide to follow the example set by Russia? During the last month, China opened two centers to process yuan-denominated trade flows, one in London and one in Frankfurt. Are the Chinese preparing a similar move against the greenback? We’ll soon find out.
  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    Ukraine president admitted that they have lost the entire eastern portion of the country to Russian forces.

    businessinsider.com/ukrainian-president-admits-loss-to-russia-2014-5

    No wonder Putin would get a bug in his butt in past years over the Europe missile sheild ...
    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • Drowned Out
    Drowned Out Posts: 6,056
    Jason P said:



    No wonder Putin would get a bug in his butt in past years over the Europe missile sheild ...

    Whatcha mean by this?
    No wonder - any state would want to keep it's 'enemies' away from it's borders.
    or
    No wonder - Putin has resisted the missile shield because he had expansionist aspirations?

  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    Putin played in a hockey game where his team won 21 - 4 and he scored 6 goals and 5 assists!

    thewire.com/global/2014/05/vladimir-putin-scores-six-goals-in-amateur-hockey-game/362045/

    Be Excellent To Each Other
    Party On, Dudes!
  • cincybearcat
    cincybearcat Posts: 16,830
    Hopefully we can elect a president and congress that can actually handle this guy.

    We haven't had a president that I feel could for about 14 years. As for congress, they seem to be a lost cause anyhow. So Putin smells blood.

    Will be interesting to see who leads the way.
    hippiemom = goodness
  • Jason P
    Jason P Posts: 19,295
    image
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    Party On, Dudes!

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