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POPSBig Taxing, Big Earmarking, Big Congress Grills Big Oil (continued) will Rep. Walden agitate for lower tax rates? What about Walden’s earmarks of over $46 million? Will he think about lowering his earmarks, in light of the federal government’s record profits? * * * * * As Ronald Bailey of Reason writes: “Finally, if Congress wants to blame someone for high oil prices, blame the benighted oil producing countries that have underinvested in oil production for at least a decade. But Congressional grandstanders can’t haul the likes of Venezuela’s Chavez, Russia’s Putin, and Iran’s Ahmadinejad to their hearing rooms.” The spectacle of the House blaming the oil companies in a free market for high prices would be bizarre, if it didn’t happen so often.
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POPSTax Dollars Supporting Countries That Undermine American Ideals And Interests Use the form to e-mail President Bush, demanding that American aid dollars be for countries committed to upholding our democratic and free-market ideals. In addition, the US Trade and Development Agency has recently authorized nearly $400,000 of for a study on a proposed rail line between a coal mine in Southern Mongolia and the railroad. In other words, taxpayer-funded foreign aid to Mongolia is being used to undermine American ideals and interests, and embolden anti-freedom elites not only in Mongolia, but in Moscow as well. Why is Mongolia flouting Western interests and ideals despite our nation’s generosity, you ask? Simply put, the Russians and a few elite Mongolians would benefit if Western firms were forced to stop doing business in Mongolia and the region. This is an outrage that must not go unchecked
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POPSBush's Letter Puts Putin In A Good Mood
Two Cold War-era agreements -- The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which Russia suspended last year, and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires next year -- will also be addressed. A source in the Defense Ministry said progress was only likely if Rice and Gates "bring with them new proposals that take into account Moscow's concerns," Itar-Tass reported. But the Pentagon's Morrell reiterated on the sidelines of Monday's meeting that nothing new was on the table. "We come armed with no new proposals," he said, adding that the purpose of this visit was to demonstrate that the United States planned to "stand by its proposals. We are not going to sweeten them." Putin's guardedly positive statement Monday came in contrast to efforts by both sides ahead of the talks to dampen expectations for any significant progress on the missile-defense issue. U.S. officials stressed that they would not make any new offers, while Moscow said new overtures were necessa
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POPSFrom Russia With Love:Prime Minister Putin Foreign investments, though at record levels, remain less than 3% of GDP, on the whole foreigners remain reluctant - not to say scared stiff - to touch Russia. Worse yet, though foreign investments have grown, they usually go to mineral extraction, not to production of finished goods. During Putin's reign oil and gas production nearly trebled, to nearly a full third of the entire economy, and four-fifths of all exports. Putin initially capped government spending and ended the derelict printing of cash, last year - according to The Economist - the state bureaucracy expanded by more than 50% to 828,000 people, while government spending rose 20%. PUTIN'S MAIN message has been that the demise of communism and the Warsaw Pact, and even the arrival of former communist states in the EU and NATO, don't yet spell freedom's historic victory. The world has been introduced to a new authoritarianism, one which emulates the kind overseen a generation ago by Chile's Augusto Pinochet
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POPSPutin Says Kosovo Independence Is Illegal Indeed, if we attempt to buy peace at the expense of law, we might find out we end up with neither. If the Russians (and possibly the Chinese) oppose revision of Resolution 1244 to grant Kosovo effective independence, and if the United States and its allies ignore these concerns and endorse the Ahtisaari plan , the reverberations will be felt well beyond the Balkans."
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POPS"False hopes?" Obama told a crowd "There's no such thing." Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad's domestic troubles seem to have modified the state's sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur--well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world?
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POPSGeorgian Billionaire Found Dead In Surrey Feared Plots Russian Alexander Litvinenko also had links with the Georgian businessman. Sources in Tbilisi have told The Times that he stayed at Mr Patarkatshvili's residence in Georgia en route to Turkey when he fled Russia to seek asylum in London in 2000. Russian prosecutors claim that Mr Litvinenko also visited Mr Patarkatsishvili as well as Mr Berezovsky in London shortly before he was poisoned. They accuse Mr Berezovsky of involvement in the murder of the former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent as part of a plot to damage President Putin's international image.
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POPS Russia Violates Japanese Airspace The BBC reports that Putin's Kremlin is pressing ahead with its plan to alienate and provoke every single country on the planet, leaving Russia utterly alone in the world Japan responded by scrambling 22 jets and lodging an official protest with the Russian embassy. But a spokesman for the Russian air force denied any incursion into Japanese airspace had occurred. Alexander Drobyshevsky told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency that strategic bomber flights had been "carried out in strict accordance with international rules on flying over neutral waters, without violating the border between the two countries.
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POPSSenator McCain by Mark Steyn January 31, 2008 Primary triumph doesn't seem to be doing anything to mitigate the small and graceless side of McCain. On the other hand, John Hinderaker might be on to something here: "Businessmen, in my experience, are generally more idealistic than politicians. Businessmen really do make deals with a handshake. No one would dream of doing that with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or the Clintons. Turning a businessman loose in the political world is basically a mismatch. That's the sense I get of McCain's reaction to having Romney as his last serious rival. He can't believe his good fortune; Romney is an amateur. McCain can poke him in the eye, knee him in the groin, and the rule-following businessman has no idea how to respond" powerline.com Maybe. But, just because McCain can poke Mitt in the eye is no indication he'll be as effective with Putin, a remarkable number of whose enemies wind up splattered on the sidewalk outside their apartment house after opting for....... http://corner.nationa
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POPS Vladimir Putin '08 For Democratic U.S.President Iowa Activist: I want the strongest candidate on the Democratic ticket in 2008 and Putin is it. I wish any of our Democrats could be half the man he is in dealing with the right-wing media. Most experts agree that if Putin were to run on the Democratic platform, he could easily beat other candidates at their own game by promising the American people a smorgasbord of entitlements. "The values are the same, and so is the shared vision of massive government expansion to save the children from the dangers of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," continues General Yezhov. "And when the product is the same, salesmanship and experience take the priority. That's all what's left for your political observers to talk about - experience. And who's got more experience in expanding the power of the government than Putin? Who I ask?"
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POPS"Man Of The Year" And Master Of The Universe Belkovsky - who published a book about Putin's finances last year, and who is the director of the National Strategic Institute, a Moscow thinktank - claims he is confident of his assessment of Putin's hidden wealth. "It's not a secret among the elites",he said. Belkovsky adds that the west has misunderstood Putin and has been distracted by his "neo-Soviet" image. Putin, Belkovsky claims, is ultimately a "classic" businessman who believes money can solve any problem. In an interview on Wednesday with Time magazine, which named Putin its person of the year, the president vehemently denied that those inside the Kremlin were corrupt. Asked whether "some of the people closest to you are getting rich", Putin said: "Then you know who and how. Write to us, to the foreign ministry, if you are so confident. I presume you know the names, you know the systems and the tools.
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POPS Garry Kasparov's Views On Putin Gigot: I asked him how western leaders should respond to the crack down on free speech in Russia and whether it would matter if they criticized Vladimir Putin. KASPAROV: It matters a lot. But it is not only about criticizing it is about actions. They played into Putin's hands by accepting him as one of the equals. Bringing Putin into the G-7 exclusive club created a democratic aura for Putin in Russia and made it difficult for us to criticize him. GIGOT: He is sitting with all those guys, the other democratic leaders. KASPAROV: Absolutely. And they call him a democrat. So who we are in Russia telling that Putin is wrong in doing certain things in our country. Also, it helps Putin to boost his authority with Russian ruling elite. Money, all money of Russian bureaucracies kept in the free world. They can make friends with China, Iran, whoever but their financial interests are in the free world. So if the Western readers want to look serious they have to follow the money.
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POPS Elections Will Be Free And Fair The Kremlin is planning to rig the results of Russia's parliamentary elections on Sunday by forcing millions of public sector workers across the country to vote, the Guardian has learned. Analysts say the pressure is designed to ensure a resounding win for the United Russia party and for Putin, who heads its party list. The victory would give him a public mandate to maintain ultimate power in the country as "National Leader" despite being unable to stand for a third term as president in March. Anna, 31, a schoolteacher in Ulan Ude, said: "We were called to the staff room in my school about a month ago and asked to sign a formal declaration promising that we would vote for United Russia. I told them that I wanted to vote for another party, but they told me to sign it in such a manner that there was no way to refuse. They hinted I could lose my job."
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POPS "Voting Correctly For Kremlin" Coercion Some complaints came from hospital patients, who said they had been threatened with early discharge if they did not produce absentee ballots Hundreds of people have called an election hot line to complain about the use of absentee ballots, the Central Elections Commission said in a summary of the complaints posted on its Web site Non-governmental organizations and opposition political parties also have reported receiving many complaints. "It is unbelievable. The use of bureaucracy is on an unprecedented scale," said Marina Dashenkova of Golos, an election-monitoring group. "People are complaining that their bosses are forcing them to take absentee ballots and vote for whom they say." The use of absentee ballots in this way is new and kills two birds with one stone for the Kremlin: By getting absentee ballots, people are registered as voting even if the votes are never cast, boosting turnout; and when they vote under the supervision of bosses they are likely to vote "correctly."
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POPSChess Champ Kasparov Arrested At Anti-Kremlin Protest Police have cracked down on Other Russia marches this year, hitting protesters with batons and detaining hundreds, but they recently adopted a softer approach. On Saturday they kept their distance until a squad of riot police blocked the march. Plain clothes police roughly pushed and pulled people into vans and police armed with batons grabbed protest leaders. Kasparov, a leader of Other Russia, was charged with public order offences and police said they would hold him for five days "In a free country you can express your opinions but in Russia you can't," said Alexei Alexeyev, a 26-year-old protester. "The police are very aggressive and I fear them," he said, explaining that police had detained him for 12 hours at an opposition protest in March. "Censorship is all around us and our freedoms have decreased, she said. Putin's way will not mean a better future." (AP Photo/Artyom Korotayev) http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/sp/100206chess;_ylt=ApJPlXncSMwbWVuiQVz4.pGaK8MA&a
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POPS Very Dangerous Months Ahead For Russia Asked when such an underground movement could emerge onto the streets, he added: "I don't think it can work before parliament election, but it can work between parliament elections and presidential election." The tycoon refused to rule out violence, but insisted the Kremlin would be responsible. "It's impossible to exclude (violence) in Russia. But the responsibility for this violence is the responsibility of government, as is all the time when the people go to the streets." "I mean force as what has happened in Ukraine, the Orange revolution, it was force because they pressed government but luckily without blood," he added. Democratic movements staged the Orange Revolution in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine in 2004, a popular uprising that brought pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power.
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POPSDe-Classified If You Hate Putin, You Will Die Early Did you know that the boy whom Putin kissed learned to fly? Or that Putin can browse the Internet with an abacus? Or that on his birthday critics drop dead from thinking bad thoughts about Putin? Each year spent in the Kremlin makes the Motherland's President stronger, endowing him with more superpowers unbeknownst to man. For years, Party-approved rumors about Putin's supernatural abilities have been spreading over the internet in the Mother tongue. To translate them into the language of soulless capitalist oppressors is an idea whose time has come! If not now, when?
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POPS Iran’s Secret Nuclear Arms Activities The White House hopes thereby to compel Tehran to level on its military nuclear program, whose existence it has so far denied, and demonstrate the failure of the international nuclear watchdog’s director, Mohammed ElBaradei and his vast inspection organization, to uncover the underhand nuclear activities in progress in Iran and Syria. Washington hopes that once the real facts are in the open, Russia and China, which back ElBaradei, will endorse a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, tough enough to progressively place Iran under economic siege. European companies, especially in Germany, fear that their economic boycott of trade with Iran will create a gap into which Russia and China will eagerly step. The failure of the Russian president’s talks in Tehran last month left him more amenable to an accommodation with Bush than before. His cooperation in the Bush strategy would leave China as the only standout DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
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POPS The Oil Hydra by Victor Davis Hanson The nearly half-trillion dollars we will soon pay for imported oil does a lot more than prop up Russia's Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The petrodollar drain also contributes to our trade deficits, falling dollar and a general demoralization of the American people. Our oil habit not only makes us dependent on some creepy suppliers, but we look like fools as we work nonstop to hand over our earnings to those who are rich by an accident of sitting atop oil someone else found and developed.
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POPS President Putin:: Found Iran's Leaders 'Bizarre' "This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way," says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. "The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own." Ahmadinejad gave the impression he sought neither advice nor support from the Russians. All he wanted was to project the Islamic Republic as the regional superpower and invite Putin to acknowledge its new status. "It was as if Russia needed Iran, not the other way round," says the Russian source. "Putin was taken aback. He had not expected what he heard." "The Iranians think they have already won," reports one Russian source who witnessed the visit. "So intoxicated they appeared with hubris that they did not even ask Putin to help them ward off further United Nations sanctions."
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POPS News Corp Quells Unrest In Pro-Western Georgia The US and its Coalition allies can ill-afford to ignore this week's developments in the small but geo-strategically significant Caucasus nation of Georgia. Major outside players including Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch are involved in a story involving media and politics. The events in Georgia, including unrest involving some 50,000 people and President Mikhail Saakashvili's crackdown, are not just a political fight between the ruling government and the opposition. It is part of a complex struggle involving the old Russian guard, business oligarchs, and a media outlet in the continuing battle with leftist tyrants masquerading as "progressives." The opposition parties are trying to rearrange political alliances to effectively counter Shaakashvili's National Movement bloc, and are scrambling to find a replacement leader to salvage what turned out to be a politically suicidal week of demonstrations.
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POPS The Restoration of King Dollar Every time an international terrorist event occurs, like the al-Qaeda assassination attempt on former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the dollar falls. When the Turks threaten military action in Kurdistan, Iraq, with speculation that they might march toward the Kirkuk oilfields, the dollar falls. When comrade Vladimir Putin shows up in Iran, with mischief-making statements that support trade and nuclear partnerships with that terrorist government, the dollar falls. It seems as though any nasty international event leads to a dollar decline. This is not good. The dollar needs some propping up. Oil prices are rising. Gold prices are rising. And currency traders around the world have set up huge short-selling positions in the greenback. But a few strong words from Mr. Paulson, coupled with a few well-timed rounds of dollar-buying, could turn the U.S. currency story around
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POPS Saakashvili Declares State of Emergency Violence erupted in the capital, Tbilisi, where anti- government demonstrations have been staged daily in almost a week. Emergency rule will run for 15 days, restricting public gatherings and closing all television channels except the state broadcaster, Agence France-Presse reported. Georgia's government and opposition should ``refrain from violence'' and engage in a ``constructive dialog,'' Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in Washington yesterday. Thousands of protesters skirmished with police in an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the square in front of Parliament where rallies have been held daily since Nov. 2. Riot police held protesters at bay using water cannons and tear gas before dispersing the crowd with rubber bullets and nightsticks. Many protesters fought back.
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POPSState Duma Suspends Arms Control Treaty Compliance Russia's lower house of Parliament has voted unanimously to suspend the country's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, considered to be a major element of European security. VOA Moscow Correspondent Peter Fedynsky reports. The unanimous decision confirms a suspension plan announced in July by President Vladimir Putin in response to a U.S. proposal to build a missile defense system in Central Europe. Washington says the system is designed as a defense against Iran, but Moscow views it as a threat to Russian security. The CFE treaty was adopted in 1990 by NATO and the Soviet Union to set limits on conventional weapons such as tanks and aircraft. But the Soviet collapse changed Europe's military equation and Russia now wants to amend the treaty to correspond with its current security needs.
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POPS The Tsar’s Opponent Kasparov is also popular among the American right. In 1991, he won the Keeper of the Flame Award from the Center for Security Policy, another neocon think tank. The award, which is given to “individuals for devoting their public careers to the defense of the United States and American values around the world,” has also gone to Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. Such an award does Kasparov no good at home. There is a centuries-long tradition in Russia of xenophobia. In the Soviet era, Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, and hundreds of others were accused in the pages of Pravda of working for the C.I.A., M.I.6, or the Mossad. Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was the head of the K.G.B. under Gorbachev and directed the August, 1991, coup, was constantly trying to convince Gorbachev that his most liberal adviser, Alexander Yakovlev, was acting as a covert “agent of imperialist intelligence agencies.” Kasparov’s business-class ease abroad might be appealing to Americans,,,,,
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POPS Assassination Plot In Tehran Mr. Putin, in the first visit by a Russian leader to Iran since Josef Stalin met with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Tehran in 1943, has cast himself as the go-between, siding with America until now in an effort to bring Iran into line with the demands of the U.N. Security Council. In his final months as president, Mr. Putin is seeking to pull off a diplomatic coup in Tehran that would settle the Caspian dispute in Iran's favor in exchange for Iran being more open to the world about its nuclear plants. Mr. Putin appears to be hoping that a pacified Iran might allow NATO to postpone or even abandon its plan to site missile shield technology in European states bordering Russia, ostensibly to intercept an Iranian missile attack on Europe, an issue that has angered him. Iran is relying on the Russian leader, in concert with the Chinese communist leadership, to prevent the adoption of sterner American proposals.
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POPS Iran 'Lying' About Nukes Says Rice "There is an Iranian history of obfuscation and, indeed, lying to the IAEA," she said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. U.S. officials have long accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of a civil atomic energy program, charges that Tehran denies. But Rice's strong words, including the blunt reference to Iranian "lying," come at a critical time in dealing with the matter. She also noted that Russia had in the past demonstrated its concern about Iran's program by limiting its cooperation to prevent Tehran from acquiring a full nuclear fuel cycle that could be used to produce weapons-grade material. "That concern was seen very clearly in Russia's offer to Iran to enrich and reprocess in a joint venture and to bring back any spent fuel so that the fuel cycle wouldn't be available to Iran," she said. "I think there is a reason for that and that is suspicion about Iran's intentions."
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POPS Strike On Iran? The Khorramshar News Agency, which is published by the ethnic Arab underground of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan, reported early Oct. 1 that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr had abruptly packed their bags Friday, Sept. 28, and flew back to Russia. The agency’s one-liner offers no source or explanation. DEBKAfile have obtained no corroboration of its report from any other source
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