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Quote o' the day

Monday, June 09, 2008
From Russian nationalist Alexander Belov, leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, or DPNI:

"Those who shout 'Heil Hitler' must be gradually isolated".

Shades of that quote from Saint Augustine.

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Headline o' the day

Wednesday, June 04, 2008
From the NATO press office:

"NATO Secretary General’s statement on the Deployment of Russian Railway Troops into Georgia".

Sounds odd, but we have several regiments of Guards.

(Now featuring a pun death match in the comments)

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Steer clear of that midnight train to Georgia

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Because "Georgia is close to an outbreak of hostilities with Russia, but Tbilisi has only itself to blame for the current state of affairs, the Russian envoy to NATO said on Tuesday".

I can't imagine that this would be much less one-sided than the Anglo-Zanzibar war of 1896. We won, by the way. It lasted 38 minutes and we made the defeated foe pay for the munitions used by the Royal Navy.

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A great voice for print journalism

Friday, April 04, 2008
Here is a vid from Novosti, on an airborne training exercise near Pskov. No embedding possible, alas


http://en.rian.ru/video/20080403/102907417.html


Dizz reckons the voice is computer generated, and he may well be right, but it made me snigger and prevented me from taking the content seriously.

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Spot the difference...

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Pictured here are those two peas from the same pod, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin. At least Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, thinks they are: "When I was heading into a meeting with Mr. Medvedev in the Kremlin and at the same time watched [Putin] on television, I was at a loss over who's who," Mubarak said. "In this respect, there's little difference between you two". (The different ties are the giveaway - Medvedev is sporting a burgundy number).

I have long thought that Mubarak looks like a minor thug from The Godfather trilogy, not that that is particularly relevant, but I do wonder whether his faculties are failing that he cannot tell those two apart, and whether he might get Ehud Olmert mixed up with whichever flapjaw is making excuses for Hamas this week, or McCain with whoever gets the nod for the Dems.

Anyway, an antique joke:

The Arab military top brass are discussing their repeated failure to defeat Israel, and are pondering on where they have gone wrong. They decide the Mig 21s were good enough, as were the T72s, and there were no obvious problems with the supply lines or chain of command . But one bright spark suggests it might have been the Russian military manuals: "Retreat into your own territory and wait for the winter snows".




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Headline o' the day

Thursday, March 20, 2008
From the Moscow Times:

"5 Suspected Skinheads Held in Raids"

So, are The Plod going to get out a tape measure to check hair length, or examining medical records for alopecia prior to confirming their suspicions?

(Turns out the arrested had their collars felt for something other than hair length)

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Cleaning up November's party

Monday, February 25, 2008
There are countless odd ways that the state spends our money, and doubtless there is something to offend everyone. I have found something quite remarkable, which the DTI' Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform' is doing on our behalf: it is paying, along with our Norwegian friends, to clear up someone else's mess. In this case an outmoded November-class submarine (hence the headline) once employed by the Krasny Flot:

"The UK and Norway will share the £3.9 million cost to dismantle the decommissioned November Class submarine No291, which will be de-fuelled and then towed to Nerpa Shipyard for dismantling. Once dismantled to a single compartment unit (containing the de-fuelled reactor) the submarine will be transferred to Saida Bay for land-based interim storage. Project management and technical advice for the UK Government will be provided by NUKEM Ltd (yes, it is called that. But one word, not two)".

And this is not the first time - "Through the Global Threat Reduction Programme, the UK has successfully dismantled three nuclear powered submarines: two Oscars (Zvezdochka Shipyard) and a Victor (Nerpa Shipyward) including documentation and infrastructure work at both shipyards. This is the fourth submarine dismantling project the UK has undertaken".

Isn't that kind of us? While the Russian Federation does not rejoice in a Swiss-level of income per head at present, and it might well be little more than Burkina Faso with gas, there is an awful lot of gas over yonder. Presumably Putin has decided that he does not like the polluter pays principle, and has been making menacing noises about scuttling the nuclear powered submarine somewhere between Arkhangelsk and the Shetlands, and therefore has convinced Muggins and Møggins that we should pony up for the privilege of that not happening. Sounds like blackmail to me.

The Russians having established this way of doing business, the scope for shaking down the more gullible governments is endless.

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Caption competition

Monday, January 28, 2008
Crying out for one, isn't it?

(The old man is Mikhail Gorbachev, by the way)

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NATO - "an aggressive imperialist bloc"?

Friday, January 25, 2008
That, apparently is what 51.9% of Ukrainians think. Not that they were asked a question pre-supposing the answer 'yes', I am sure.

I discovered this from a report at Novosti on a demo by all of 1,000 people in the streets of Kiev, opposing NATO membership. They chanted the snappy 'NATO is slavery for Slavs', inter alia.

The organisers look to be Communists and members of the imaginatively named 'Party of Regions'. The latter is more a party of region, singular, given that its support looks to be entirely in the eastern, Russified, part of Ukraine. Said party has a website available in Russian and English, if not in the nation's official language.

I am not entirely sure that the English language site has been written by folk with any great fluency in my language, but it does have a certain surreal poetry:

"We will not allow the thousand year common history with Russia was destroyed by some beekeeper. That’s why NATO membership consequences will be worsening the relations with Russia".

Perhaps one of those leading the demo will do a Solana, and end up leading it.

Meanwhile, some 731 miles from Kiev as the Mig-29 flies, the Macedonians seem oblivious to the prospect of helotry under NATO, as Nikola Gruevski, Macedonian PM (and a chap, by the way) is all for taking his country into the organisation, joining fellow Slavs both next door and those nestled in the Carpathians and further north.

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Great footnotes of our time.

Monday, January 21, 2008
The EU has put out a boilerplate denunciation of Russia's British Council-related shenanigans, which is of limited interest in itself, but the footnote tells quite a story:

"The Candidate Country Croatia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and the EFTA country Norway, member of the European Economic Area, as well as Georgia align themselves with this declaration".

The 'me too' lists are a common feature to EU communiques and so forth, but compare and contrast that with this 'me too' list on Darfur, put out on the 8th:

"The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia align themselves with this declaration".

Serbia, Armenia, Macedonia, Moldova and perhaps Ukraine can be excused for knowing full well which side the bread is buttered, and one would expect Georgia, B&H and Albania to want to stick it to Mother Russia at each and every opportunity, but why are Iceland and Liechtenstein sitting this out? Did nobody bother to ask? As to Turkey and Azerbaijan, who knows?


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It isn't just Dismal Gordon who thinks he's abolished the economic cycle...

Monday, December 24, 2007
"Russia will become the world's fifth largest economy by 2020, if its GDP continues to grow 6-7% per year, the Russian economics minister said on Monday.

"If we maintain GDP growth at 6-7% per year, we'll join the group of the world's five largest economies. We are setting ourselves this goal," Elvira Nabiullina said". Source.


Much though I wish the Rodina and its inhabitants every economic good fortune, it is not going to happen, lady.

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An existential crisis for the Red Army

Friday, December 21, 2007
Or more correctly, the Sukhoputnyye Sily Rossii or Russian Ground Forces. As everyone is all to well aware, the Russians have been engaging in all sorts of shashka-rattling in and around the North and Norwegian Seas by way of bomber flights, naval manoeuvres and so on. Norway has been a particular target.

Presumably the Russians were not doing this for the view or because there was just so much avgas to burn up, but rather to impress upon NATO countries that the Bear was not to be trifled with.

However, "Early this month Russian Defense Chief Yuri Baluyevsky asked for a meeting with Norwegian counterpart Sverre Diesen to clarify Norway's opinion of their northern neighbor....Baluyevsky reportedly wanted to confirm that Russia was not viewed as a threat by Norway".

I do not suppose that the Red Wheel - as was - is likely to be rolling towards Trondheim any time soon, but there is something profoundly silly about a military that has been acting in an intimidating way then getting the jitters lest it has succeeded in being intimidating.

Meandering a bit, I would like to hear the Song of the Soviet Airmen, supposedly written by an American defector / sympathiser / useful idiot and inspired by Harvard gridiron football fight songs, so to speak. The refrain, from memory, goes like this:

"Higher and higher and higher
soars the Soviet star.
And every propeller is roaring
defend the USSR!"

While attempting to pin down the reference, I discovered that some public-spirited individual has a web page with the lyrics to sundry Socialist songs. Quite entertaining, some of them, especially 'Harry was a Bolshie':

"Harry was a Bolshie, one of Stalin's lads
Till he was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads
Counter revolutionary, counter revolutionary cads
He was foully murdered by counter revolutionary cads"

Said Harry was Pollitt, one time GenSec of the CPGB, and according to Wiki died of a brain haemorrhage.

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Offence taking for pleasure and profit

Thursday, December 20, 2007
I imagine that most of us have a visual shorthand for a number of countries and cities - Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Parthenon for Athens, the Little Mermaid for Copenhagen etc etc. Sticking my neck out, I suspect that Moscow would trigger this image:

The above being St Basil's cathedral, and a splendid looking building it is too. Anyway, Coca-Cola has got itself in trouble with adherents to Orthodoxy for "a marketing campaign showing the cross and onion-shaped church domes on outdoor refrigerators", which said orthodox consider blasphemous. C-C is standing firm, but there may well be litigation.

I do wonder quite what manner of visual shorthand the hapless Atlanta fizz merchants are supposed to use to indicate 'Russia' and 'Russian'.

Meanwhile Nizhny Novgorod means either upper - or lower - new town, if memory serves

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Does it do what it says on the tin?

Monday, December 17, 2007
The Union of Right Forces. What might that name suggest? It put me in mind of the Lebanese militia group, Lebanese Forces, and posing the question to Dizzy, he suggested 'some sort of fascist movement?'

I was aware it was a Russian political party, but I had not picked up on its ideological stance, and assumed it was somewhat unpleasant. That's where I was wrong. The URF are very much the good guys out to the east of the Pripet Marshes: "The Party is considered by most western media organs such as The Economist and the BBC to be one of Russia's only parties that support western-style capitalism, society-politically the party is more conservative. Its headquarters are located in Moscow. It is affiliated to the International Democrat Union". Source.

Is this a Russian thing, having names somewhat confusing to outsiders (and Russians, as the URF is mulling a name change), what with Zhirinovsky's neither liberal nor democratic Liberal Democrats? A little sniffing around discloses that the Russian Beer Lovers Party, is in fact, quite keen on the stuff. I rather miss Naš dom – Rossija, (Our House - Russia), although mainly for its name.

Most IDU-affiliated centre right parties go for 'National', 'Conservative', 'Democratic' or 'Republican' in their names, but I would suggest that our Azeri and Mozambican colleagues might be due new names - National Independence Party and Mozambican National Resistance (or Renamo, as was). The Russian group is alone in having 'Right' in its name.

Elsewhere, Socialist International parties are big on using 'Socialist', 'Social Democratic' or 'Labour'. The prize for the most misleading name (to non Spanish speakers at least) is International Democratic Pole, not one man with an ego problem, but rather a Colombian party. Mind you, the Spanish Socialists sound like Trots: 'Spanish Socialist Workers' Party'. Drifting off to the extreme left, Green parties use 'Green', or 'Vert' or 'Verde' a lot.

I think that 'The Free Markets and Liberty Party' might be a more descriptive, if less than elegant name for the URF, so other suggestions are welcome.

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And another quiz...

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

This, as every schoolboy knows, is a B-52. Probably a B-52H. So why has Novosti used it to illustrate a story about Russian bombers etc carrying out patrol flights to test NATO readiness and the like?

For those who did not spend their childhoods poring over Airfix Catalogues, bumper boys' books of war & death and the like, the give away is the lack of a red star on the tail fin.

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Not a leg to stand on

Monday, December 03, 2007
Which friend of liberal democracy had this to say about the election in the Russian Federation?:

"Under Yeltsin, there were only two ways to steal peoples' votes - through intimidation and simply writing in the convenient result. This group has come up with 20 ways of humiliating the people"

These methods, he said, include abolishing the "none of the above" option in voting lists, increasing the election threshold from 5% to 7%, cancelling the minimum voter turnout requirement, and stacking United Russia's candidate list with high-profile figures. (That last one is just shocking, isn't it? C).

The outraged democrat is none other than Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, an organisation very much the heir to the CPSU.

Gennady himself has run for election before, cutting his teeth in the Oryol Oblast (centred on the city I know of as Orel. C) in the mid-late 60s. Orel also gave us 'Iron Feliks' Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka (the forerunner to the KGB) and Artem 'Mig' Mikoyan. Gennady would have benefited from elections where he was able to run unopposed for the thick end of 30 years, so his outrage smacks - ever so slightly - of hypocrisy.

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And why not?

Tuesday, November 06, 2007
The Russians get a tad peeved at being lectured by Brussels on what goes on in the Rodina, and have decided to take the passive aggressive approach:

"A think tank for freedom and democracy proposed by Russia to be set up in one of the European capitals could start work as early as 2008...'The activities of the institute will focus on EU election legislation, the rights of ethnic minorities and immigrants in the European Union, xenophobia, racism and media freedom' an aide to the Russian president said".

Brussels, Paris and Berlin are on the shortlist.

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Yes, it's Socialism 3.0

Monday, September 24, 2007
Not announced by the Lord Protector, but rather that is the distinctly grand aim of Fair Russia / Justice Russia (translations vary).

Anyway, showing an odd understanding of the evolution of socialism, they reckon Bolshevik socialism was the 1.0, Euro socialism the 2.0 and what they are working on as socialism 3.0.

However, the report of the announcement in the Moscow Times is a bit thin on ideological detail:

"Speaking with journalists amid tight security in a hall decorated with Russian flags and Soviet-style displays depicting different moments in the party's brief history, [Party leader and Federation Council Speaker Sergei] Mironov said A Just Russia was not opposed to the market economy. "We just want the government to fulfill its role in the social sphere," Mironov said".

Given that AJR was formed from a three way merger of parties, including the Russian Pensioners' Party, I do not think that it would be too hard to work out what 'fulfilling its role in the social sphere' means. It all sounds a bit like Scandinavian-style welfarism to me.

However, Mironov gets one bullseye: "We already had the first type of socialism -- the Soviet one -- the second was the Western-European kind, but they were both helpless".

UPDATE: I have major IT problems at Croydonian Towers, and doubt I will posting today. Sorry.


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Roll over Amazon.com

Friday, September 21, 2007
Let me present the Nato e-bookshop:

And what a lot of things they've got available for downloading or ordering, and in an awesome array of languages too, ranging from Albanian to Uzbek.

"Helping secure Afghanistan's future" is available in Pashto and Dari, and is doubtless popular fire side reading for the Taliban.

Perhaps more alarming is the range of publications available in Russian, including "Improving capabilities to meet new threats" and "The Nato Handbook". I appreciate that there will be English speakers at the FSB, (the Russian Secret Service) and the effort to translate NATO's opuses is unlikely to bring Mother Russia to her knees, but is this really that good an idea?

Nothing in Arabic or Chinese though, which is a comfort of sorts.



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"The sea coast of Bohemia"

Thursday, September 20, 2007
Almost, but not quite. It is the sea coast of deeply land-locked Afghanistan that is at issue:

"Strongly condemning the violence that continued to destabilize Afghanistan, the Security Council decided this afternoon to extend the authorization of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in that country for another year beyond 13 October 2007.

By resolution 1776 (2007), adopted under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter by a recorded vote of 14 in favour to none against, with 1 abstention (Russian Federation), the Council also called on Member States to contribute personnel, equipment and funding to strengthen the Force and make it more effective.

Speaking before the vote, the representative of the Russian Federation said his country had traditionally supported ISAF and the continuation of its mandate as the Force continued to be important in combating the terrorist threat posed by the Taliban and Al-Qaida. However, the Russian delegation had abstained in the vote because the new issue of maritime interception had yet to be clarified".



Erm.... So nothing to do with asserting Russian interests in the 'near abroad', and nothing to do with being truculent with the US.

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