The Kremlin Endorses SWP
I’ve often written about Russia being on Putin’s Hamster Wheel From Hell. From the WSJ, a Kremlin insider concurs:
“We perfectly realize what is going on,” one Kremlin ideologist told me recently. “But it’s too late to jump off the train. The new authorities will come after us and arrest us [if we lose power]. That’s why we have no option but to keep running like a hamster on a wheel.”
Amazing how some people come to revelations about the abuse of police powers for political purposes, and the potential benefits of a rule of law. Mr. Ideologist is projecting/mirror imaging, but sadly, he’s probably right to do so. Because that is a testament to the larger hamster wheel Russia has been on for centuries.
Russia’s reserve fund is disappearing like magic.
http://www.minfin.ru/ru/reservefund/statistics/volume/index.php?id4=5796
Comment by La Russophobe — December 14, 2011 @ 2:15 pm
I’m going out on a limb here and calling it a made-up quote.
(Or perhaps, the Kremlin ideologue in question is SWP himself).
Certainly, the claim of 15-20% fraud is just that.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 14, 2011 @ 3:16 pm
S/O the Professor has been factually challenged of late, particularly with his head stuck in sand move on the NDAA when not only opponents but PROPONENTS of the bill say on the Senate floor it’s about giving the President the power to detain any U.S. citizen accused of terrorism as he sees fit as long as he likes. He flat out ignored the sniveling Lindsey Graham comment about ‘you ain’t gonna get no lawyer if you ask for one’ etc. His conspiratorial claims that ZeroHedge is a Bulgarian KGB plant look ridiculous, especially coming from a guy that has had his own contacts off and on with Demintern guys like Nemtsov and the State Dept since blogging about Russia. As I said, it only took five seconds of Googling to demonstrate that ZH has been covering the Russian protests but since the vast majority of their audience is in the West understandably they’ve been more focused on MF Global and the ongoing EU meltdown.
He mocks Alex Jones as a ‘loser’ while ignoring where Mr. Jones might actually be right now and then, especially at a time when UBS is giving its subscribers the same advice as Brother Alex — buy gold and ammo if the euro collapses! But obviously, SWP believes that Anglo-American hegemony is a sign of Divine favor, while any news that the West has abandoned the Rule of Law in favor of the ‘Natural State’ he decries is simply enemy propaganda.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 3:33 pm
Well unlike SWP I’ve read the Old Testament and it says that God will judge his people just as harshly as He’s dealt with the nations around Israel. If God does not judge America He owes Sodom and Gommorrah and apology.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 3:34 pm
My arguments on the elections and the real level of fraud are here.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 14, 2011 @ 4:19 pm
@S/O. Yeah. SWP=Kremlin ideologist (not ideologue). Uhm, that’s not going out on a limb. That’s going out of your mind. How would that work exactly? Piontkovsky steals the idea from SWP and puts it in the mouth of a fictional Kremlin figure? Or, he and I are just shooting the sh*t the other day, and I say something about hamster wheels and he says “Hey: that’s a great quote. I’ll dummy it up as coming from a Kremlin ideologist”? I can tell you the second alternative lies in a set of measure zero, b/c I have never had any interaction in any form with Piontkovsky. The first one is theoretically possible–but absurd.
And now Mr. X has transformed himself into Old Testament Prophet! So, who are you–the second coming of Jeremiah?
It was humorous more than anything. I doubt you’re quite the first person to compare the Kremlin’s position to a hamster on a hamster wheel, but who knows?
Regardless, the fraud figures Piontkovsky uses are not credible. This does call his integrity into question.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 14, 2011 @ 4:28 pm
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/comment/187278/
Professor, you are contrasted with your fellow Houstonian Leo Linbeck III over at Belmont Club. L3 can handle the coming collapse of Empire, you haven’t quite reconciled yourself to it. Your cheap shot on ZeroHedge was laughably and easily rebutted with a five second Google search, and nothing the likes of rytb or the other trolls can change that fact. Have a nice holiday.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 4:33 pm
S/O, Your integrity is not even in question, it is non-existent. Kremlin stooge.
Comment by voroBey — December 14, 2011 @ 4:37 pm
Nice use of the passive voice there, X man. On the verge of lapsing into the 3d person again?
Well, S/O, google “russia hamster wheel” and two types of things come up: 1. Old SWP posts, and 2. sites devoted to Russian dwarf hamsters. LOL. Add “putin” to the search string and SWP dominates the rankings. A lot of latecomers–2011, including Russia Blog, which is pretty funny.
Lies, lies, lies and getting caught in lies and then spinning it — I’ve been watching Rossiya AND RT covering the protests from last Saturday, and yet they’re clamping down hard. It reminds me of the spin after CNN got caught using footage of Georgian planes bombing Ossetians instead of Russian.
When you have to ignore facts (ZeroHedge did cover the protests) or resort to an incredibly small sample (one, the very first, night, as in the Reuters article below, while ignoring all the subsequent nights when Rossiya did cover the protests for days on end) to maintain your position, you know things are getting desperate. Hell, even the Israelis aren’t buying Hillary’s claims that she has nothing to do with Nemtsov et al:
Not just erroneous Reuters, stuck on stupid. Nobody noticed the palm trees and short sleeves in December in Moscow?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150543?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#.TuhP4rIz2bJ
Arutz Sheva: Clinton admits to meddling in Russian vote
Bye now ya’ll.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 5:02 pm
Who knows? Maybe Kremlin ideologists read SWP after all?
But I’d venture to guess that liberals constitute a far, far bigger share of its Russian audience.
Of course the likeliest version by far is that Piontkovsky pulled this anonymous Kremlin ideologist out of his ass.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — December 14, 2011 @ 5:03 pm
S/O–It’s vast Russian audience, you mean? Said completely in jest. And re googling: SWP dominated the English language references. I have no idea re Russian or other languages.
Mr. X. Let me say thanks again for letting me live in your head rent free.
Just like Zerohedge’s Bulgarian KGB commies who just happen to be out to find out whatever they can about the CME’s possible complicity in MF Global remain in yours.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 5:26 pm
I’ll be LMAO when someone at the CME gets busted for having locked customers out of their accounts for days while Corzine and co looted them. You’ll be ‘shocked, shocked’.
Comment by Mr. X — December 14, 2011 @ 5:30 pm
Thank you SWP , love your spanking of the Putin -mafias henchmen September 23, 2010 Still on the Hamster Wheel from Hell: Protecting Putin’s Purgatory .
The regime’s last resort is to inflate outside threats from Russia’s eternal enemies—NATO, the West and the United States. Mr. Putin recently claimed that Russians demanding his resignation receive instructions directly from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and are funded by U.S. sponsors. Mr. Medvedev has said that the U.S. intends to strip Russia of its nuclear capabilities. And Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, told Russian news agencies last month that “the pro-NATO and anti-Russian policies of the Baltic states and Georgia could lead to local and regional military conflicts including using nuclear weapons.”
These claims of Western threats are primarily intended for domestic use. But there is one threat that the Putin kleptocracy takes very seriously—the threat to its multibillion-dollar bank accounts, assets and real-estate holdings in the West. People in the Kremlin took seriously the list compiled earlier this year by the U.S. State Department barring entry visas for Russian officials allegedly involved in the 2009 death under detention of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970203518404577094780010444466-lMyQjAxMTAxMDEwNDExNDQyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email
Comment by Anders — December 14, 2011 @ 6:53 pm
@Thanks, Anders. In the aftermath of the Georgian War, I wrote that the thing that Putin et al would fear most would be US, etc., letting loose the accountants of war. Like you note, that is still true today. Track down that money . . . or even threaten to do so . . . and you’d put the fear of God into them.
IMO, the “ideologues” fear unemployment more than arrest given their Midas touch. This is what you get for putting loyalty above ability. OTOH, given the money spent, teenage gopniks with drums is all they could master? No-one can be *that* incompetent. Kickback capitalism in all its glory. So corrupt and incompetent, they can’t even steal an election convincingly. They must feel such shame before the real white people.
Can’t even impress the yellow ones:
http://rt.com/news/vladivostok-bridge-construction-fire-681/
Comment by So? — December 14, 2011 @ 11:45 pm
> 1. Old SWP posts, and 2. sites devoted to Russian dwarf hamsters
I.e. thanks to SWP Russian hamster dwarves turn out more popular than Russian dwarf hamsters.
Comment by Ivan — December 15, 2011 @ 1:16 am
Mr.X is playing fast and loose with the facts (as usual).
Listen X, you obviously have a serious case of paranoid mental delusions, I do suggest you get it seen to.
There is medication that can help with that.
BTW, plenty of Georgian civilians got bombed in 2008 by Russian aircraft, I suspect the situation you are talking about was the bombing by Russian aircraft of civilian areas of Gori, where many Georgians, and some ethnic Ossetians (many more Ossetians live in Gori and Tbilisi than in “South Ossetia”) were killed.
@Sublime Oblivion, you are a Kremlin apologist, your figures are laughable, just as those you post about the revival of Russian demographics, when Russian experts working for the UN say exactly the opposite.
Comment by Andrew — December 15, 2011 @ 3:46 am
Fast Andy — I’m not the Professor. I’m not the one who got caught making a blatantly false statement about Zerohedge that could be rebutted with a five second Google search. Nor am I childishly pointing to some limited part of the text, sticking my hands over my ears, and denying what hundreds of distinguished journalists and dozens of legal scholars (including of the type the Prof would pretend to respect, ala posters at the Volokhs’, the Yale law grad Stewart Rhodes) have all said, on top of the bill’s proponents — the NDAA gives the President of the United States (especially this President that the Prof pretends to despise) the power to detain any U.S. citizen captured any time, anywhere, so long as the President can accuse that person of something vaguely terroristic. But the Prof just points to some text, thunders about free association, throwing stuff at a wall until it sticks, the Natural State only existing in Russia but not in the U.S., AND that the CME absolutely positively had NOTHING to do with MF Global looting customer accounts, blah blah blah. He’s entitled to do that, but not entitled not to be ridiculed all over the web for it. Nor should he be spared of the question of motives and why he has such a grudge against Zerohedge, perhaps because they’re suggesting that members of the CME Group were complicit in Corzine’s multi-billion dollar heist. Suddenly Zerohedge is a bunch of KGB plants? Really?
You’ll notice whenever the Prof’s comments are quoted at any other forum nobody rushes to his defense or to agree with him. Nor do they rush to defend Mikhail Saakashvili and the Tie Eater’s long career as a paid Soros protege. It’s only here that when the host gets caught saying something that’s flat out wrong (I’ll give SWP the benefit of the doubt and say he was just to lazy to Google it, when he said it was crickets and not a single mention of the Moscow protests at ZH) that the commenting zombies resort to personal attacks (I’m happily married rytb, and would gladly go back to Moscow to work, but I work in the U.S. for now) that swarms of zombie-like commenters sally forth to defend the host.
And fast Andy, I’d suspect almost as many Georgians choose to live in Moscow than in Gori! Once again, a have no idea why a Kiwi would vociferously embrace the Georgian equivalent of Mexican Reconquista ‘we’re always victims of the p%$#e gringos’ rhetoric. For darn sure none of the Georgians I met in Moscow have such hatred.
And I don’t give a hoot what Putin said today, except for one small part — anybody who’s so naive as to believe the Pentagon denial that Gaddafi would leave his hometown of Sirte under 24/7 drone surveillance without thinking he had a deal with NATO needs to have their head examined. The Prof’s position is basically well the Pentagon said it and they would never lie about that sorta thing, would they? Gaddafi got set up and lynched, plain and simple, and while that means nothing to you and you’ll all imply I have a soft spot for megalomaniacal dictators, the reality is that having seen that Baby Assad will never step down peacefully but will say F— you Saudis and NATO, you can’t be trusted not to kill me, me and my Alawite brothers are gonna fight to the end. Which will only prolong the suffering of civilians in Syria and prevent the emergence of a non-Muslim Brotherhood (i.e. not going to attack Israel), non-French puppet government with at least semi-fair elections.
Comment by Mr. X — December 15, 2011 @ 2:15 pm
I also agree with VVP that McCain is certifiable.
Comment by Mr. X — December 15, 2011 @ 2:17 pm
Here’s the coup de grace on ‘Zerohedge supports Putin’ nonsense:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/america%E2%80%99s-future-russia-and-china-use-copyright-laws-crush-government-criticism
Peace out.
Comment by Mr. X — December 15, 2011 @ 3:37 pm
Mr. X, given what you posted, you probably can’t read, but here it is anyway: that link you posted, it’s about copyright laws and freedom of speech. Says in the title. Not same thing as massive election fraud by government. And not same thing as protests against massive election fraud by government.
Comment by Ivan — December 16, 2011 @ 12:50 am
Not only can Mr.X not read, his cognitive abilities appear to be, at the least, retarded.
Comment by Andrew — December 16, 2011 @ 4:58 am