Geopolitical Mosaic: Jesse Ventura will become US President in 2016, and Putin will turn Europe into Rusrop
Dresden remembers February of 1945. - “If there is no water in the tap ...” - Bombs by mail. - In Italy, there was another government crisis. - Slate zilch. - About the "g" and a grenade launcher. - Admit with comments. - Baltic nationalists decided to help their ideological brothers from Kiev. - Mr. Yanukovych, take an example from Hollande. - “Spot visits”. - Digital filibuster. - Remove shoulder straps and go with Tolokonnikova. - The Western media campaign against the Olympics in Sochi has failed. - The degradation of the American press. “We know the measure, but will you drink it?” - The inappropriate was fired. - Obama - in Guantanamo! - Jesse Ventura vs. Hillary Clinton? - Choose one of fifty floors. - Putin's century.
Dresden remembers February of 1945. Last night in the center of Dresden about 11 thousands of people joined hands. People organized a live chain in memory of the victims of the war and the February 1945 bombing of the year, which razed the city to the ground. The protest was also expressed by neo-Nazis who each year try to use this date to promote their ideology. Write about it "Vesti" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
The correspondent recalls that the bombing of Dresden was carried out by the Air Force of Great Britain and the United States on February 13-15, 1945. Was completely destroyed historical city center. According to some estimates, the number of victims was 25 thousand. Some historians write about 100 thousand dead.
"If there is no water in the tap ..." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the European Parliament’s speaker Martin Schulz in the Knesset. He writes about it "Lenta.ru" with reference to Ha'aretz.
As the head of the Israeli government believes, the European politician led the unfounded accusations against Israel. Netanhu did not like Herr Schulz’s remark that the Israelis used four times more water than the Palestinians. The prime minister told the Knesset that the data received from the Palestinian authorities indicate a significantly smaller difference in water consumption.
Knesset Speaker Julius Edelstein in a personal conversation with Schulz also pointed out that he was misinformed.
Schultz's words also angered members of the Knesset from the right-wing Jewish House party. Some of them, led by party leader and economy minister Naftali Bennett, even left the meeting during a speech by the European Parliament speaker. Naphtali Bennett stated that he was not going to listen to such criticism from a European and "especially from a German."
Schulz himself said that he was obliged to express the point of view of the European Parliament. “I can’t only say something that everyone will like,” said Schultz in an interview with Die Welt.
"Tape" recalls that the European Parliament Speaker made a speech at the February 12 Knesset. During his visit to Palestinian territory, local residents told him that their access to water was more limited than that of the Israelis. Schultz cited this information in the Knesset, noting that he had not personally checked them. At the same time, Schulz criticized the "blockade" of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s actions, he said, are explainable from the point of view of concern for the security of its population, but they are ineffective because they lead to the radicalization of Palestinian youth. Also, a European politician condemned the construction of new Jewish settlements.
Bombs in the mail. At least six points recruiting volunteers in the British Army yesterday received suspicious parcels, writes "Lenta.ru" with reference to France-Presse.
Mine clearance experts were called. According to preliminary data, in two of the six parcels, the bomb technicians found small but workable explosive devices.
Now warnings about the danger sent to other units of the British army and post offices. The investigation of the mass distribution of packages to the military is engaged in the police.
In Italy, there was another government crisis. Prime Minister Enrico Letta said he intends to submit his resignation letter to the country's president on Friday. The decision was made after a meeting of the largest ruling Democratic Party, which was held under the chairmanship of its leader, Matteo Renzi, RIA "Novosti" Elizaveta Isakova.
It is expected that Renzi will take the premiership and form a new government.
Slate zilch. The European Union should not rely on shale gas. This conclusion was made by the French Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), reports "RT".
In the document quoted by France-Press, it is noted that shale oil and gas bring only a limited gain to the American economy, and their benefits for Europe will be even less.
The US shale gas exploitation boom had a minimal impact on the country's economic growth. The “revolution” of shale gas in the United States was the result of several decades of geological surveys. In 2000-2010, more than 17 thousand wells were drilled. And in the European Union shale gas wells total 50. We need huge investments that can not be justified. According to IDDRI, by the 2030-2035 years, the EU will be able to provide only from 3 to 10% of its gas needs at the expense of shale deposits. Energy problems can hardly be solved in this way.
Earlier, researchers at the Hamburg Institute of World Economy, recalls "RT", concluded that shale gas production by hydraulic fracturing in the United States and Europe will lead to the most serious environmental consequences: from groundwater pollution to earthquakes in earthquake-prone areas.
About the "g" and a grenade launcher. President of Belarus insulted live on state television. The incident occurred 10 February, but it became known only today, writes Marina Ilyina (Utro.ru).
A TV viewer who introduced himself as Sergei phoned to the program “Belarusian Times” and said: “I want to tell you that Lukashenko is r ...!” As “Salidarnasts” writes, then the connection with him was interrupted.
According to the publication, this is not the first time that TV viewers express discontent with the head of state. In 2008, in the same program, the viewer told about his dream: “... to have a grenade launcher in hand and meet the president.”
Admit with the comments. The Latvian security police conceptually supported the plans of the Seimas to introduce criminal liability for the justification of the Nazi occupation, as well as the “Soviet occupation” of the republic. Reports about it "Lenta.ru" About the reference to the "DELFI".
However, the security service pointed to the “weaknesses” of this bill. The security police criticized the circulation of “offensive doubts” used by the authors of the document: “Similar phrases in the theory of criminal law have not yet been considered and have not been used in this combination. Taking into account the experience, we can already assume that the assessments of linguists will be contradictory, which will make it possible to doubt the guilt of a possible violator. ”
At the same time, the Latvian security officials noted that the introduction of criminal liability for doubts in certain historical facts can be considered by international law as an inadequate restriction of freedom of speech.
"Lenta" reminds that Russia rejects the idea of the Soviet "occupation" of Latvia. Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Pushkov said that the bill was directed against the Russian Federation. According to the deputy, the recognition of the Soviet "occupation" will lead to the political rehabilitation of Nazism and to the criminal prosecution of former soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Baltic nationalists decided to help their ideological brothers from Kiev. Nationalist parties originally from the Baltic countries initiated the creation of the International Committee for Aid to Ukraine. This was announced by the coordinator of the new committee, Sergey Vysotsky. According to him, the task of the committee is to provide the European community with accurate information about the situation in Ukraine. This is reported by the channel "RT".
Vysotsky's words are quoted by UNN: “In fact, in Ukraine, the fate of Europe and its democratic values are now being decided. The committee turned to related parties in Europe with information about the Ukrainian situation and a proposal to influence the authorities in Kiev so that it does not use force and repression against its own people. ”
Representatives of the committee, reportedly, also contribute to the removal of affected opposition supporters from Ukraine for treatment in the Baltic countries.
The founders of the committee included the National Alliance from Latvia, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union and the Sajudis movement and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia. According to the agency, the Belarusian Freedom Party also became a co-founder.
Mr. Yanukovych, take an example from Hollande. “The assertion that the US government is funding the protests is nonsense. I did not see any facts that would prove this, ”said former US Ambassador to Ukraine Stephen Peifer. His words are given by V. B. ("Controversy").
However, the needs of the Maidan every day goes (by the most conservative estimates) 300 thousand hryvnia. This is what commandant Andrii Paruby said in January:
The controversy analyst estimated and counted that since December 1 only about food and livelihoods of maydanschikov was spent (only Parubiy) about 3 million dollars. But there is not only his militants and the environment is, the author notes.
"Oh, guys!" - add on my own. Whatever wrote about Obama or, say, about Hollande, but it would be enough for a couple of hours, on the strength of one night, to disperse this kind of "maydanschikov." Hollande recently broke up a protest against the government in Paris. The Interior Ministry authorities arrested a 262 man. And that's all - no more protests. And the American executive, fighting Occupy Wall Street, took the sites and “sewed” the affairs of more than 6 to thousands of activists of the named movement. Both the United States and France, by the way, consider themselves to be advanced democratic countries, and Obama has not so long ago said that unrest and rallies mean nothing more than a manifestation of democratic processes. To the extent to which words and deeds in the West diverge, all have long been accustomed. It's about something else: if the people of the "eastern democracies" were born to Europe and were drawn to the EU, then their rulers should not listen to the false talk of the West, but be judged "by his deeds." The main thing, should follow an example from the West.
In short, Yanukovych must act in a European or American way and publicly declare: "I am learning from French democracy." And I must learn! I dispersed the maydanschikov - and said on TV: “There is even more democracy in Kiev. Passed another rally. He was democratically suppressed by democratic means: tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Two hundred people were arrested, including opposition leaders. They are suspected of rape, murder, arson, robbery, extortion, Nazi propaganda, treason, and petty hooliganism. The prosecutor will demand 25 years for them for the camps. Monsieur Hollande, thanks for the recipe. ” After these words, the EU will not give Yanukovych a loan in the same way as it will not give it without these words.
"Point visits". In March and April, State Duma deputies can go to Ukraine. This was announced at a meeting of the Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, said its chairman Leonid Slutsky. According to him that transmits ITAR-TASSIn April “there are good chances” to hold in Dnepropetrovsk a meeting of the Large Inter-Parliamentary Commission for Cooperation in the Space and Atomic Spheres, which was postponed several times, and in March “point visits” of Russian deputies to Ukraine can take place.
“2014 will be a key year in determining the future of Ukraine in terms of geopolitical choice,” Slutsky stressed.
Digital filibuster. The US Trade Representation Office (USTR) has added the social network VKontakte and the tracker RuTracker.org to the list of violators of intellectual property rights. In total, the published USTR list includes 23 site around the world. VKontakte is on the list of violators for the fourth time in a row. Reports about it Interfax.
Social networks can work for charitable purposes, and the VKontakte business model is actually designed for pirated purposes, the authors of the document say. “VKontakte” is based solely on cold calculation, using license waiver and access to illegal music as a business decision, ”said Neil Turkewitz, executive vice president for international affairs of the American Recording Industry Association (RIAA).
As Anton Blagoveshchensky writes ("Russian newspaper"), in addition to VKontakte and Rutracker, the Ukrainian resource Ex.ua, Rapidshare.com and Uploaded.net file storage, KickassTorrents.com, Extratorrent.cc, ThePirateBay.se, Torrentz.eu torrent trackers were included in the list of the largest pirates. and etc.
USTR emphasizes that Rutracker.org can be excluded from the list of pirates: the number of pirated materials it distributes is steadily decreasing due to sanctions from the Russian authorities, acting on the basis of anti-piracy law, which entered into force last August.
The list of offline pirates does not mention Russian retail outlets (the reports of previous years included the Savyolovsky market and Gorbushka).
USTR has placed on the Petrovka Kiev market a list of more than 300 stores and trays selling pirated products, as well as the Seventh Kilometer market in Odessa.
The majority of offline pirates, according to the version of the Trade Mission, are located in China, India, Indonesia, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Thailand, Ecuador.
Remove shoulder straps and go with Tolokonnikova. The newspaper "Le Monde" published an article by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova "The Common People" (a source of short translation. - "Inopressa").
N. Tolokonnikova writes: “Being imprisoned, I intersected many times with the so-called“ simple people ”, which, as we have been told more than once, are ready to kiss Vladimir Putin in the navel and to hate Pussy Riot and other sodomites. It turned out that the love for Vladimir Putin was invented in the apparatus of Vladimir Putin, as well as the hatred of “Pussy Riot”.
The article further states: “Russia has far less exalted Stalinists than is commonly thought. The Russians want to be respected as an individual, so that their needs and their values are listened to. And this “simple people,” entirely created by federal television, is soberly and ironically judging Putin’s rule. ”
“People live in anticipation of a political apocalypse,” said a Pussy Riot participant.
“One day we may end up on one side of the barricades,” the guard of one of the Mordovian colonies told me. “It’s curious how: you have uniform on your uniform,” I tried to joke. “Very simple,” replied the guard. - I did not swear to the state. Take off my shoulder straps and go with you. When? When will the rebellion. Merciless Russian revolt.
The Western media campaign against the Olympics in Sochi has failed. This topic is devoted to a new review of Western newspapers from "Foreign Press".
“Russian critics of the Olympics are jubilant with everyone,” reports The New York Times correspondents Andrew Kramer and Stephen Lee Myers.
If someone has the right to resent the Sochi Olympics, then Andrei Martynov: his house was confiscated by the Russian authorities, and then demolished without compensation (due to problems with registration in the property), to make way for the hockey arena. Martynov temporarily lives in a shelter. At the same time, he expresses the same feeling that has spread throughout Russia since the start of the Olympics: reckless pride for his country. “This happens once in a lifetime,” says Martynov. - When the Russian team comes out on the ice, I will be sick. I do not have another team, for whom I still have to root? "
“Even more than the discovery itself, I like that everyone in the tape writes“ what a cool discovery ”. This is so cute and unifying, ”Alexey Navalny wrote on Twitter.
The warm reception of the Olympiad gave a political result. VTsIOM recorded a jump in Putin’s personal approval rating. As the authors of the article note, “this has irritated some critics of Putin.” For example, Viktor Shenderovich compared the figure skaters' patriotic glorifications that followed Julia Lipnitskaya’s victory to the glorifications of German athletes at the 1936 Olympiad of the Year in Berlin.
Simon Shuster from Time interviewed Andrey Tanichev, the owner of the Sochi gay club Mayak.
Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov invited Tanichev one month before the Olympics opened. "It was strange," recalls the owner of the club. “He was very nice, really very kind.”
The mayor asked if Mayak had any problems. Tanichev complained of mountains of waste from the construction of a hotel near the club. And the problem was solved!
With gay rights in Sochi, everything is fine. This is the position of Tanichev, which he repeats for several months to foreign journalists.
But the authorities of Nizhny Tagil took advantage of the law banning gay propaganda to close the only organization in the country that provides psychological counseling for LGBT adolescents, “Children-404”, further writes Mr. Schuster.
According to the channel "RT"On the eve of the Winter Olympics, the cover of the Western media and posters of human rights organizations were full of vivid images that criticized the Games or called for their boycott. Many of the images used were borrowed from the campaign against the Olympics-80.
For example, these include multicolored barbed wire instead of five rings. That’s how Time magazine decided to illustrate the increased security measures at the Olympics. In 1980, the French Committee for the International Boycott of the Olympic Games used this idea.
Outrage at biased coverage in the Danish press of the Olympic Games in Sochi was expressed by Russia's ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin. He sent an open letter to the chief editors of several leading newspapers in the kingdom, including Berlingsk, Jyllands-Posten and Politiken, reports "RT" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
The diplomat was bewildered that the opening of the Games with the participation of the stars of the Russian ballet and opera diva Anna Netrebko seemed to other journalists to be vulgar. Mikhail Vanin suggested that Danish journalists apparently lacked “bears in hats with red stars who drink vodka from a samovar.”
The Russian diplomat noted that the Danes do not trust the biased opinion of journalists and share with him enthusiastic assessments of the opening ceremony.
“The record price of President Vladimir Putin’s Winter Olympics will continue to grow long after the athletes have gone home and the Olympic flame in Sochi goes out,” writes Bloomberg’s special correspondent Yevgenia Pismennaya (the source for the translation is "Inopressa").
Russia, which spent 44 billion dollars on organizing the first Winter Games, may have to spend at least 7 billion more over the next three years to maintain facilities and other new infrastructure around Sochi, the journalist reports two officials involved in the development of this project. "No one knows what the final bill will look like, because the government has not yet decided what to do with the objects, officials said they asked for anonymity due to the confidentiality of budget discussions," the article says.
The government will continue to invest in maintaining the new infrastructure and refurbishing a number of facilities, at least until 2016, trying to avoid the problems that Athens and other cities that hosted the Olympics have encountered, officials said. Estimated costs range from 60 to 80 billion rubles per year (34 times the amount budgeted at the moment).
According to Karen Vartapetov, deputy director of Standard & Poor in Moscow, over the past 50-60 years, only a few host cities, including Los Angeles and Barcelona, have improved their economies as a result of the Olympics.
It was decided to turn two hockey stadiums into sports centers for children, and the main media center into a shopping and entertainment complex. However, it remains to be determined how this conversion will be financed.
“For Putin, the transformation to Sochi, where he spends most of the summer, is not only associated with the Olympics and the demonstration of Russia's achievements,” continues Yevgenia Pismennaya. “This is part of a larger attempt to raise the economy of the entire North Caucasus region, one of the poorest and most affected by violence in Europe.” To ensure a steady flow of tourism revenues, Putin organized a series of events that will support attention to the renewed Sochi. ”
“In June, the G-8 summit will take place in Sochi, at which President Barack Obama and other world leaders are planning to attend, and in four months the Russian stage of the Formula 1 Grand Prix will take place. Sochi is also among the 11 Russian cities where the football matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held, ”the journalist said.
“All investments will pay off,” said the first deputy chairman of the Russian government, Dmitry Kozak.
On the topic of the anti-Olympic campaign, Lee Rogers, author of "Blacklisted News". Online Mixednews.ru translation of his article into Russian.
One of the stories circulated in the media, the author writes, is connected with the imaginary notification by the US Department of Homeland Security that terrorists heading to Sochi can hide explosives in tubes of toothpaste. There was no evidence of this. It seems that the whole story is simply fictitious. There is no such information on the website of the Ministry of Internal Security. A warning has already been issued about possible bombs in breast implants.
Erin Barnett's CNN talked about the threat to the Olympics from suicide bombers. There was a rather strange definition: “The black widow of the 2.0 version.” No evidence. This is just a plantation of a regular conspiracy theory, launched by the US government and thoughtlessly picked up by the media, the author believes.
In an effort to make this nonsense plausible, Barnett interviewed the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, "the puppet Congressman Mike Rogers." The latter, the journalist points out, became famous for his idle talk in the news about all kinds of senseless terrorist threats. Sadly, he still continues to do this. "
Fictional terrorist threats to the media complement stories about unfinished hotels and other imaginary problems in Sochi. Val negative information from the American media, the author writes, resembles a mixture of senseless lies with whining.
Here is the propaganda story from NBC: tourists' electronic devices are allegedly undergoing hacker attacks immediately upon arrival in Sochi. Experts have already called this passage unreliable.
On the topic of general degradation of the American media - in the next episode of "Mosaic".
The degradation of the American press. In the article “Lies about Russia” published in “The Nation” (USA; translation source - "InoSMI") Stephen Cohen said that coverage of events in Russia by the leading American press has been degrading for many years. The degradation is demonstrated by the current “tsunami” of “shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles”. A vicious practice in the media, the journalist believes, has become the norm.
Further, the author makes a historical insight, showing how American journalism has degraded:
A person relying on the media from the American mainstream, the journalist writes, will not find there any root causes of the existing Russian problems, nor the legacy inherited from both Yeltsin’s Russia and the US 1990 provocative policies. Today, no one credits Putin with the fact that he stabilized the decaying nuclear power, that he helped America with security issues, starting with Afghanistan and ending with Syria and Iran.
"Irresponsible flogging" Putin is satisfied with centrist, liberal and progressive media - from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New Republic to CNN, MSNBC and HBO. On the last channel in the “Real Time With Bill Maher” program, Howard Dean, who had no previous deep knowledge of Russia, said to the approving sounds of the participants: “Vladimir Putin is a gangster.”
For many weeks, poisonous materials were devoted to the Sochi Olympics. Before the start of the games, the New York Times declared a new sports complex in Sochi “dystopia in the Soviet style” and stated in the title: “Terrorism and tensions, not sport and joy”.
On the opening day of the Olympics, the same newspaper found a place for three anti-Putin articles and editorials. Only the Washington Post was able to make up for it in this competition. Facts, notes Comrade Cohen, had no meaning for the editorial board.
The American leading media have exploited the threat of terrorism in Sochi so immorally that it "looked like pornography." The Washington Post, which for its attitude towards Russia received the nickname Pravda on Potomac, became the personification of such media habits, the author writes. One sports commentator even managed to turn the Olympiad into a "contest of willpower" between the despicable Putin's "gangster" and the terrorist "rebels." In the eyes of the media, the two “warring parties” became so similar to each other that the reader had doubts: for whom should he hurt? .. And American journalists in advance awarded the victory to the terrorists.
Another topic for the political denigration of Russia is Ukrainian. Here, the most important “media omission” here, Comrade Cohen, considers Moscow's reasonable confidence that “the struggle for Ukraine is the next stage of the continuing offensive of the West under the command of the United States in the direction of post-Soviet Russia, which began in the eastward direction of NATO and continued when the United States began to finance the political activities of NGOs in Russia, when the United States and NATO opened a military outpost in Georgia and anti-missile defense facilities near Russia. ” The author calls the policy of Washington and Brussels deceitful - in contrast to Putin’s December proposal for saving the crashing Ukrainian economy. The “civilizational” proposal of the EU, reminds the journalist, includes provisions on “security policy”, which put Ukraine in a subordinate position in relation to NATO.
Further Stephen Cohen writes:
And another quote:
“We know the measure, but will you drink it?” Published World Press Freedom Index - 2014. Russia in the ranking took as much 148-place. In the first place - Finland. USA - on 46. Ahead of a democratic and freedom-loving America are countries such as Romania, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Botswana and others. China is on the 175 location. Eritrea closes the rating (180-place).
“In terms of media freedom, at first glance it seems that democratic powers are leading here. And for the most part it is. But, as the press freedom index of 2014's Reporters Without Borders organization shows, their high rating is accompanied by important reservations, ”says Anna Kordunski (“ The Christian Science Monitor ”; the source of short translation is "Inopressa").
The authors of the ranking moved the US to 13 points down compared to last year. This is due to the prosecution of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Britain's position has weakened (albeit only on the 3 point) due to the oppression of the newspaper The Guardian.
Violent conflicts put a number of states at the end of the list: Syria (177-th place), Democratic Republic of Congo (151-th place) and Mali (122-th place).
Other forms of violence endanger journalists outside of war zones. One such force is organized crime. Brazil is named one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the South American continent.
In Russia, which occupies the 148-place, increased prosecution of bloggers. This happened on the eve of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Bloggers are harassed in China and Egypt.
But here it seems to us, let us add from ourselves that journalists, while composing their annual ratings, simply drink and snack. And the second they clearly prefer the first. "Reporters Without Borders," say? Exactly. “We know the measure, but will you drink it?”
Inappropriate fired. Edward Snowden, who handed over secret documents to journalists, got access to many of them with the help of his colleague's password, US media reports referring to the NSA report to the congress, reports RIA "News" Peter Martynychev.
An NSA civil servant entered his password on Snowden's computer at his request. The latter saved this password, which gave him even greater access to sensitive information.
The investigation believes that Snowden's colleague did not know that he was going to reveal secret information. However, the erroneous employee was dismissed for not complying with the safety requirements.
Obama - in Guantanamo! Republican senator Rand Paul intends in court to prove the illegality of the American intelligence services on wiretapping. It became known that the congressman filed a lawsuit not only against Barack Obama, but also against the head of national intelligence, James Clapper, NSA director Keith Alexander and the FBI head James Komi. Write about it "Vesti" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
Rand Paul is convinced that collecting data on citizens' telephone calls is contrary to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
“I expect that this case will reach the US Supreme Court, and I predict that the American people will win,” said the senator, who intends to receive the Bill of Rights interpretation from the highest court in the United States.
That's all, Mr. Obama, add on my own, dry crackers. Rand Paul will put you right in Guantanamo, where the methods of George W. Bush's inquiry are still used. There you quickly confess that you were a convinced communist from the moment you were born, you were spying from the student's seat at the Kremlin, and in the Oval Office you received cipher programs from Cuba, addressed to Eustace and signed by Alex.
In fact, everything will be like this: Obama will give another talk on NSA reform, and the judge will explain to comrade Paul that the NSA does not follow citizens at all.
Rand Paul, of course, is unpleasant that all his opposition conversations on his cell phone are printed on the table to Obama.
Jesse Ventura vs. Hillary Clinton? Jesse Ventura announced his intention to take the place of Barack Obama in 2016. This writes Ivan Yakovina ("Lenta.ru").
Ventura served in the US Navy Special Forces, traveled the world with “The Rolling Stones” as a bodyguard, visited the “villain” in professional wrestling, managed to star in several Hollywood films (including “Predator” and “Running Man”), worked on television and commentator.
As governor, Ventura achieved a high-speed tram line in Minneapolis, which became a popular form of transport. He reduced taxes, managing to withdraw the state budget to a plus. The profit of the treasury of Minnesota, by his decision, was returned to the residents of the state: once a year each of them received a check with his “share”. Finally, Comrade Ventura refused to live in the governor’s residence. This allowed to save on its content.
In one of his speeches, Ventura called journalists who cannot forgive him critics of Republicans and Democrats "media shakers." As for local legislators, the governor did not have a deal with them: he vetoed bills passed by dozens of them. Ventura did not go to the second governor’s term: he stated that he could not withstand the attacks of the press on his relatives. “If I were a bachelor without children, the decision would be different,” he explained.
At the end of gubernatorial activities, Ventura received an offer to release his own show on the liberal television channel NBC. But soon NBC ceased production of the show, citing the high cost of its production. According to Ventura, the liberal TV channel was frightened by the radicalism of his opinions on various issues, including the war in Iraq. When almost all Americans supported the invasion, Ventura also criticized President Bush.
After a short work on the TV channel, Ventura plunged into the study of political theory, wrote several books, and in 2004 he lectured at the School of Public Administration at Harvard University.
The same “wrong” candidates, says Ventura, are also helped by the fact that the mainstream media in the United States is owned by the same large corporations.
Ivan Yakovina also cites Ventura’s claims to the US economic system.
The United States must disband the Federal Reserve System, return to the gold standard, drastically reduce spending on national security and defense, withdraw troops from other countries of the world, and stop spending fabulous money on the military-industrial complex. The complex of such measures will release funds for education and medicine and will improve the image of the United States in the world.
Well, the state, the future presidential candidate believes, needs to completely abandon interference with the privacy of citizens and become as open as possible.
Future participation in the presidential race 2016, Ventura announced back in 2013 year. According to him, he expects to take the place of Barack Obama, "who differs only in skin color from George Bush."
Ventura promised that he would be pardoned by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden if he came to power.
Choose one of fifty floors. Facebook announced that users in the US, citing personal information, will now be able to choose the gender from the 50 options. Reports about it «Associated Press» with reference to the administration of a social network, writes "Lenta.ru".
The list includes definitions: “androgynous”, “biggender”, “intersexual”, “gender church”, “transsexual”. The programmer (programmer) Briel Harrison, who worked (worked) on the project and is currently (being) in the process of changing sex from male to female, says that for most users, nothing will change, but for a small part it will be of great importance.
“Often, transgender people like me and other non-standard people are given a choice of two options: do you want to be a man or a woman? What is your gender? And this is depressing because none of the options explain to others who we really are, ”explained Harrison. On her page, she plans to point out that she is a “trans woman”.
Putin's century. “In fact, I was driving in Berlinale, but during the trip I suddenly fell asleep, and when I woke up and opened my eyes, I saw that we were arriving in Sochi and not George Clooney was sitting in front of me, but Putin with a bare torso,” describes his fictional dream Erik Hansen, a journalist for the German newspaper Die Zeit (source of abbr. translation - "Inopressa"). “In a panic, I shouted that I got on the wrong bus, but the Russian president took me by the hand and asked why I reacted in this way, because it was also good here.”
“But you are a half-dictator,” said Hansen in a dream. “You infringe on the freedom of speech and the rights of sexual minorities, and besides, there are no normal toilets in Sochi.” Smiling Putin said that "you took all this from the newspapers," and advised you to think about how often semi-truthful news is found in foreign media.
True, the journalist notes, Putin is right: “The worse the journalists write about any country, the more successful things are going there.”
Putin told the journalist how he “walked along the opposition with an iron fist, just like a king,” adding that, in addition to this, “there are also successes.” After the collapse of the USSR, all of Russia lay in ruins. Who restored it? That's right, Vladimir Putin. This Putin managed to achieve that in the West again began to respect the "Russian bear".
And V. V.P. said something else, playing with a massive silver ring with a seal made of molten silver spoons of the enemies: “Now look at Europe. How many politicians do you respect there? ”
“And then I realized where the prankster was going,” says Hansen. “You can - and you should - hate Putin, but now he really is the most interesting politician in the world.”
As for Europe, Putin knows everything about its future. “By the middle of the century, only Rusrop and a couple of small countries like Germany, Switzerland and, probably, Holland will remain in Europe, who will constantly chase after three world leaders - China, the United States and, of course, Russia,” Putin said. “I will no longer be alive, but this will be my creation, the world that I created, the Putin century.”
Well, add to this, the United States by this time will not fizzle out only if in the 2016 year, the power in the White House will be taken by Jesse Ventura. If Hillary Clinton wins the election, then the United States will either recognize the revolutionary fire of purification, or will finally turn into a totalitarian state with a corporate-prison economy.
Dresden remembers February of 1945. Last night in the center of Dresden about 11 thousands of people joined hands. People organized a live chain in memory of the victims of the war and the February 1945 bombing of the year, which razed the city to the ground. The protest was also expressed by neo-Nazis who each year try to use this date to promote their ideology. Write about it "Vesti" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
The correspondent recalls that the bombing of Dresden was carried out by the Air Force of Great Britain and the United States on February 13-15, 1945. Was completely destroyed historical city center. According to some estimates, the number of victims was 25 thousand. Some historians write about 100 thousand dead.
"If there is no water in the tap ..." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the European Parliament’s speaker Martin Schulz in the Knesset. He writes about it "Lenta.ru" with reference to Ha'aretz.
As the head of the Israeli government believes, the European politician led the unfounded accusations against Israel. Netanhu did not like Herr Schulz’s remark that the Israelis used four times more water than the Palestinians. The prime minister told the Knesset that the data received from the Palestinian authorities indicate a significantly smaller difference in water consumption.
Knesset Speaker Julius Edelstein in a personal conversation with Schulz also pointed out that he was misinformed.
Schultz's words also angered members of the Knesset from the right-wing Jewish House party. Some of them, led by party leader and economy minister Naftali Bennett, even left the meeting during a speech by the European Parliament speaker. Naphtali Bennett stated that he was not going to listen to such criticism from a European and "especially from a German."
Schulz himself said that he was obliged to express the point of view of the European Parliament. “I can’t only say something that everyone will like,” said Schultz in an interview with Die Welt.
"Tape" recalls that the European Parliament Speaker made a speech at the February 12 Knesset. During his visit to Palestinian territory, local residents told him that their access to water was more limited than that of the Israelis. Schultz cited this information in the Knesset, noting that he had not personally checked them. At the same time, Schulz criticized the "blockade" of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s actions, he said, are explainable from the point of view of concern for the security of its population, but they are ineffective because they lead to the radicalization of Palestinian youth. Also, a European politician condemned the construction of new Jewish settlements.
Bombs in the mail. At least six points recruiting volunteers in the British Army yesterday received suspicious parcels, writes "Lenta.ru" with reference to France-Presse.
Mine clearance experts were called. According to preliminary data, in two of the six parcels, the bomb technicians found small but workable explosive devices.
Now warnings about the danger sent to other units of the British army and post offices. The investigation of the mass distribution of packages to the military is engaged in the police.
In Italy, there was another government crisis. Prime Minister Enrico Letta said he intends to submit his resignation letter to the country's president on Friday. The decision was made after a meeting of the largest ruling Democratic Party, which was held under the chairmanship of its leader, Matteo Renzi, RIA "Novosti" Elizaveta Isakova.
It is expected that Renzi will take the premiership and form a new government.
Slate zilch. The European Union should not rely on shale gas. This conclusion was made by the French Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), reports "RT".
In the document quoted by France-Press, it is noted that shale oil and gas bring only a limited gain to the American economy, and their benefits for Europe will be even less.
The US shale gas exploitation boom had a minimal impact on the country's economic growth. The “revolution” of shale gas in the United States was the result of several decades of geological surveys. In 2000-2010, more than 17 thousand wells were drilled. And in the European Union shale gas wells total 50. We need huge investments that can not be justified. According to IDDRI, by the 2030-2035 years, the EU will be able to provide only from 3 to 10% of its gas needs at the expense of shale deposits. Energy problems can hardly be solved in this way.
Earlier, researchers at the Hamburg Institute of World Economy, recalls "RT", concluded that shale gas production by hydraulic fracturing in the United States and Europe will lead to the most serious environmental consequences: from groundwater pollution to earthquakes in earthquake-prone areas.
About the "g" and a grenade launcher. President of Belarus insulted live on state television. The incident occurred 10 February, but it became known only today, writes Marina Ilyina (Utro.ru).
A TV viewer who introduced himself as Sergei phoned to the program “Belarusian Times” and said: “I want to tell you that Lukashenko is r ...!” As “Salidarnasts” writes, then the connection with him was interrupted.
According to the publication, this is not the first time that TV viewers express discontent with the head of state. In 2008, in the same program, the viewer told about his dream: “... to have a grenade launcher in hand and meet the president.”
Admit with the comments. The Latvian security police conceptually supported the plans of the Seimas to introduce criminal liability for the justification of the Nazi occupation, as well as the “Soviet occupation” of the republic. Reports about it "Lenta.ru" About the reference to the "DELFI".
However, the security service pointed to the “weaknesses” of this bill. The security police criticized the circulation of “offensive doubts” used by the authors of the document: “Similar phrases in the theory of criminal law have not yet been considered and have not been used in this combination. Taking into account the experience, we can already assume that the assessments of linguists will be contradictory, which will make it possible to doubt the guilt of a possible violator. ”
At the same time, the Latvian security officials noted that the introduction of criminal liability for doubts in certain historical facts can be considered by international law as an inadequate restriction of freedom of speech.
"Lenta" reminds that Russia rejects the idea of the Soviet "occupation" of Latvia. Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Alexei Pushkov said that the bill was directed against the Russian Federation. According to the deputy, the recognition of the Soviet "occupation" will lead to the political rehabilitation of Nazism and to the criminal prosecution of former soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Baltic nationalists decided to help their ideological brothers from Kiev. Nationalist parties originally from the Baltic countries initiated the creation of the International Committee for Aid to Ukraine. This was announced by the coordinator of the new committee, Sergey Vysotsky. According to him, the task of the committee is to provide the European community with accurate information about the situation in Ukraine. This is reported by the channel "RT".
Vysotsky's words are quoted by UNN: “In fact, in Ukraine, the fate of Europe and its democratic values are now being decided. The committee turned to related parties in Europe with information about the Ukrainian situation and a proposal to influence the authorities in Kiev so that it does not use force and repression against its own people. ”
Representatives of the committee, reportedly, also contribute to the removal of affected opposition supporters from Ukraine for treatment in the Baltic countries.
The founders of the committee included the National Alliance from Latvia, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union and the Sajudis movement and the Conservative People's Party of Estonia. According to the agency, the Belarusian Freedom Party also became a co-founder.
Mr. Yanukovych, take an example from Hollande. “The assertion that the US government is funding the protests is nonsense. I did not see any facts that would prove this, ”said former US Ambassador to Ukraine Stephen Peifer. His words are given by V. B. ("Controversy").
However, the needs of the Maidan every day goes (by the most conservative estimates) 300 thousand hryvnia. This is what commandant Andrii Paruby said in January:
“Unfortunately, today the funds raised by the Maidan do not cover even a third of the needs. Every day, about 300 thousand hryvnia is spent on the needs of Maidan. There was a day when we collected only 40 thousands. ”
The controversy analyst estimated and counted that since December 1 only about food and livelihoods of maydanschikov was spent (only Parubiy) about 3 million dollars. But there is not only his militants and the environment is, the author notes.
"Oh, guys!" - add on my own. Whatever wrote about Obama or, say, about Hollande, but it would be enough for a couple of hours, on the strength of one night, to disperse this kind of "maydanschikov." Hollande recently broke up a protest against the government in Paris. The Interior Ministry authorities arrested a 262 man. And that's all - no more protests. And the American executive, fighting Occupy Wall Street, took the sites and “sewed” the affairs of more than 6 to thousands of activists of the named movement. Both the United States and France, by the way, consider themselves to be advanced democratic countries, and Obama has not so long ago said that unrest and rallies mean nothing more than a manifestation of democratic processes. To the extent to which words and deeds in the West diverge, all have long been accustomed. It's about something else: if the people of the "eastern democracies" were born to Europe and were drawn to the EU, then their rulers should not listen to the false talk of the West, but be judged "by his deeds." The main thing, should follow an example from the West.
In short, Yanukovych must act in a European or American way and publicly declare: "I am learning from French democracy." And I must learn! I dispersed the maydanschikov - and said on TV: “There is even more democracy in Kiev. Passed another rally. He was democratically suppressed by democratic means: tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Two hundred people were arrested, including opposition leaders. They are suspected of rape, murder, arson, robbery, extortion, Nazi propaganda, treason, and petty hooliganism. The prosecutor will demand 25 years for them for the camps. Monsieur Hollande, thanks for the recipe. ” After these words, the EU will not give Yanukovych a loan in the same way as it will not give it without these words.
"Point visits". In March and April, State Duma deputies can go to Ukraine. This was announced at a meeting of the Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, said its chairman Leonid Slutsky. According to him that transmits ITAR-TASSIn April “there are good chances” to hold in Dnepropetrovsk a meeting of the Large Inter-Parliamentary Commission for Cooperation in the Space and Atomic Spheres, which was postponed several times, and in March “point visits” of Russian deputies to Ukraine can take place.
“2014 will be a key year in determining the future of Ukraine in terms of geopolitical choice,” Slutsky stressed.
Digital filibuster. The US Trade Representation Office (USTR) has added the social network VKontakte and the tracker RuTracker.org to the list of violators of intellectual property rights. In total, the published USTR list includes 23 site around the world. VKontakte is on the list of violators for the fourth time in a row. Reports about it Interfax.
Social networks can work for charitable purposes, and the VKontakte business model is actually designed for pirated purposes, the authors of the document say. “VKontakte” is based solely on cold calculation, using license waiver and access to illegal music as a business decision, ”said Neil Turkewitz, executive vice president for international affairs of the American Recording Industry Association (RIAA).
As Anton Blagoveshchensky writes ("Russian newspaper"), in addition to VKontakte and Rutracker, the Ukrainian resource Ex.ua, Rapidshare.com and Uploaded.net file storage, KickassTorrents.com, Extratorrent.cc, ThePirateBay.se, Torrentz.eu torrent trackers were included in the list of the largest pirates. and etc.
USTR emphasizes that Rutracker.org can be excluded from the list of pirates: the number of pirated materials it distributes is steadily decreasing due to sanctions from the Russian authorities, acting on the basis of anti-piracy law, which entered into force last August.
The list of offline pirates does not mention Russian retail outlets (the reports of previous years included the Savyolovsky market and Gorbushka).
USTR has placed on the Petrovka Kiev market a list of more than 300 stores and trays selling pirated products, as well as the Seventh Kilometer market in Odessa.
The majority of offline pirates, according to the version of the Trade Mission, are located in China, India, Indonesia, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Thailand, Ecuador.
Remove shoulder straps and go with Tolokonnikova. The newspaper "Le Monde" published an article by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova "The Common People" (a source of short translation. - "Inopressa").
N. Tolokonnikova writes: “Being imprisoned, I intersected many times with the so-called“ simple people ”, which, as we have been told more than once, are ready to kiss Vladimir Putin in the navel and to hate Pussy Riot and other sodomites. It turned out that the love for Vladimir Putin was invented in the apparatus of Vladimir Putin, as well as the hatred of “Pussy Riot”.
The article further states: “Russia has far less exalted Stalinists than is commonly thought. The Russians want to be respected as an individual, so that their needs and their values are listened to. And this “simple people,” entirely created by federal television, is soberly and ironically judging Putin’s rule. ”
“People live in anticipation of a political apocalypse,” said a Pussy Riot participant.
“One day we may end up on one side of the barricades,” the guard of one of the Mordovian colonies told me. “It’s curious how: you have uniform on your uniform,” I tried to joke. “Very simple,” replied the guard. - I did not swear to the state. Take off my shoulder straps and go with you. When? When will the rebellion. Merciless Russian revolt.
The Western media campaign against the Olympics in Sochi has failed. This topic is devoted to a new review of Western newspapers from "Foreign Press".
“Russian critics of the Olympics are jubilant with everyone,” reports The New York Times correspondents Andrew Kramer and Stephen Lee Myers.
If someone has the right to resent the Sochi Olympics, then Andrei Martynov: his house was confiscated by the Russian authorities, and then demolished without compensation (due to problems with registration in the property), to make way for the hockey arena. Martynov temporarily lives in a shelter. At the same time, he expresses the same feeling that has spread throughout Russia since the start of the Olympics: reckless pride for his country. “This happens once in a lifetime,” says Martynov. - When the Russian team comes out on the ice, I will be sick. I do not have another team, for whom I still have to root? "
“Even more than the discovery itself, I like that everyone in the tape writes“ what a cool discovery ”. This is so cute and unifying, ”Alexey Navalny wrote on Twitter.
The warm reception of the Olympiad gave a political result. VTsIOM recorded a jump in Putin’s personal approval rating. As the authors of the article note, “this has irritated some critics of Putin.” For example, Viktor Shenderovich compared the figure skaters' patriotic glorifications that followed Julia Lipnitskaya’s victory to the glorifications of German athletes at the 1936 Olympiad of the Year in Berlin.
Simon Shuster from Time interviewed Andrey Tanichev, the owner of the Sochi gay club Mayak.
Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov invited Tanichev one month before the Olympics opened. "It was strange," recalls the owner of the club. “He was very nice, really very kind.”
The mayor asked if Mayak had any problems. Tanichev complained of mountains of waste from the construction of a hotel near the club. And the problem was solved!
With gay rights in Sochi, everything is fine. This is the position of Tanichev, which he repeats for several months to foreign journalists.
But the authorities of Nizhny Tagil took advantage of the law banning gay propaganda to close the only organization in the country that provides psychological counseling for LGBT adolescents, “Children-404”, further writes Mr. Schuster.
According to the channel "RT"On the eve of the Winter Olympics, the cover of the Western media and posters of human rights organizations were full of vivid images that criticized the Games or called for their boycott. Many of the images used were borrowed from the campaign against the Olympics-80.
For example, these include multicolored barbed wire instead of five rings. That’s how Time magazine decided to illustrate the increased security measures at the Olympics. In 1980, the French Committee for the International Boycott of the Olympic Games used this idea.
“Most of the materials of foreign journalists about Russia are not complete without the image of a bear. The same happened with the talismans of the Moscow and Sochi Games: the artist's talent turned them from good animals into deliberately aggressive ones. But if the hero of the “Time” 1980 cover of the year is thoughtfully chewing one of the Olympic rings, his “friend” from 2014 is painted with even greater contempt: he is hung with medals, and in the claws he holds a suitcase full of money. ”
Outrage at biased coverage in the Danish press of the Olympic Games in Sochi was expressed by Russia's ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin. He sent an open letter to the chief editors of several leading newspapers in the kingdom, including Berlingsk, Jyllands-Posten and Politiken, reports "RT" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
The diplomat was bewildered that the opening of the Games with the participation of the stars of the Russian ballet and opera diva Anna Netrebko seemed to other journalists to be vulgar. Mikhail Vanin suggested that Danish journalists apparently lacked “bears in hats with red stars who drink vodka from a samovar.”
The Russian diplomat noted that the Danes do not trust the biased opinion of journalists and share with him enthusiastic assessments of the opening ceremony.
“The record price of President Vladimir Putin’s Winter Olympics will continue to grow long after the athletes have gone home and the Olympic flame in Sochi goes out,” writes Bloomberg’s special correspondent Yevgenia Pismennaya (the source for the translation is "Inopressa").
Russia, which spent 44 billion dollars on organizing the first Winter Games, may have to spend at least 7 billion more over the next three years to maintain facilities and other new infrastructure around Sochi, the journalist reports two officials involved in the development of this project. "No one knows what the final bill will look like, because the government has not yet decided what to do with the objects, officials said they asked for anonymity due to the confidentiality of budget discussions," the article says.
The government will continue to invest in maintaining the new infrastructure and refurbishing a number of facilities, at least until 2016, trying to avoid the problems that Athens and other cities that hosted the Olympics have encountered, officials said. Estimated costs range from 60 to 80 billion rubles per year (34 times the amount budgeted at the moment).
According to Karen Vartapetov, deputy director of Standard & Poor in Moscow, over the past 50-60 years, only a few host cities, including Los Angeles and Barcelona, have improved their economies as a result of the Olympics.
It was decided to turn two hockey stadiums into sports centers for children, and the main media center into a shopping and entertainment complex. However, it remains to be determined how this conversion will be financed.
“For Putin, the transformation to Sochi, where he spends most of the summer, is not only associated with the Olympics and the demonstration of Russia's achievements,” continues Yevgenia Pismennaya. “This is part of a larger attempt to raise the economy of the entire North Caucasus region, one of the poorest and most affected by violence in Europe.” To ensure a steady flow of tourism revenues, Putin organized a series of events that will support attention to the renewed Sochi. ”
“In June, the G-8 summit will take place in Sochi, at which President Barack Obama and other world leaders are planning to attend, and in four months the Russian stage of the Formula 1 Grand Prix will take place. Sochi is also among the 11 Russian cities where the football matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held, ”the journalist said.
“All investments will pay off,” said the first deputy chairman of the Russian government, Dmitry Kozak.
On the topic of the anti-Olympic campaign, Lee Rogers, author of "Blacklisted News". Online Mixednews.ru translation of his article into Russian.
One of the stories circulated in the media, the author writes, is connected with the imaginary notification by the US Department of Homeland Security that terrorists heading to Sochi can hide explosives in tubes of toothpaste. There was no evidence of this. It seems that the whole story is simply fictitious. There is no such information on the website of the Ministry of Internal Security. A warning has already been issued about possible bombs in breast implants.
Erin Barnett's CNN talked about the threat to the Olympics from suicide bombers. There was a rather strange definition: “The black widow of the 2.0 version.” No evidence. This is just a plantation of a regular conspiracy theory, launched by the US government and thoughtlessly picked up by the media, the author believes.
In an effort to make this nonsense plausible, Barnett interviewed the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, "the puppet Congressman Mike Rogers." The latter, the journalist points out, became famous for his idle talk in the news about all kinds of senseless terrorist threats. Sadly, he still continues to do this. "
Fictional terrorist threats to the media complement stories about unfinished hotels and other imaginary problems in Sochi. Val negative information from the American media, the author writes, resembles a mixture of senseless lies with whining.
Here is the propaganda story from NBC: tourists' electronic devices are allegedly undergoing hacker attacks immediately upon arrival in Sochi. Experts have already called this passage unreliable.
On the topic of general degradation of the American media - in the next episode of "Mosaic".
The degradation of the American press. In the article “Lies about Russia” published in “The Nation” (USA; translation source - "InoSMI") Stephen Cohen said that coverage of events in Russia by the leading American press has been degrading for many years. The degradation is demonstrated by the current “tsunami” of “shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles”. A vicious practice in the media, the journalist believes, has become the norm.
“Notable exceptions exist, but there is a common pattern. Even in the venerable editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post, the authors of informational messages, editorials and comments no longer follow traditional standards of journalism, often do not communicate important facts, do not describe the context, do not make a clear difference between reports and analytical articles, give at least two different political and expert points of view on major events and do not publish opposing opinions in the columns of commentators. As a result, the American media today are writing about Russia less objectively, less balanced, with more conformism. And the ideologies in them today are only slightly less than during the times of Soviet Russia and the Cold War. ”
Further, the author makes a historical insight, showing how American journalism has degraded:
“The history of this degradation is quite understandable. It all began in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the American media adopted the storyline of Washington that almost all of President Boris Yeltsin’s actions represent a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus correspond to American interests. These actions included shock therapy in the economy; the pillage by oligarchs of important state property, which led to the death of tens of millions of people; the destruction of the popularly elected parliament and the introduction of a “presidential constitution”, which dealt a powerful blow to democratization, and today gives great powers to Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave impetus to increased terrorism in the North Caucasus. In addition, Yeltsin falsified the election results for the purpose of his own re-election in 1996, which is why his rating in 1999 fell below 10%, and in a country with a huge arsenal weapons mass destruction began the process of disintegration. However, most American journalists still have the impression that Yeltsin was the perfect Russian leader.
Since the beginning of 2000, the media has followed a different narrative storyline, talking about another leader, which is also in line with American politics. A multifaceted analysis in it was sacrificed to the ruthless demonization of Putin, and at the same time very few people pay attention to the facts. (Did any of the Soviet communist leaders after Stalin have been so heavily defamed?) Under Yeltsin, Russia was represented as a country with legitimate political and national interests, now we are convinced that Putin’s Russia has no interests at all, neither at home nor abroad, and even on its own frontiers, say, in Ukraine. ”
Since the beginning of 2000, the media has followed a different narrative storyline, talking about another leader, which is also in line with American politics. A multifaceted analysis in it was sacrificed to the ruthless demonization of Putin, and at the same time very few people pay attention to the facts. (Did any of the Soviet communist leaders after Stalin have been so heavily defamed?) Under Yeltsin, Russia was represented as a country with legitimate political and national interests, now we are convinced that Putin’s Russia has no interests at all, neither at home nor abroad, and even on its own frontiers, say, in Ukraine. ”
A person relying on the media from the American mainstream, the journalist writes, will not find there any root causes of the existing Russian problems, nor the legacy inherited from both Yeltsin’s Russia and the US 1990 provocative policies. Today, no one credits Putin with the fact that he stabilized the decaying nuclear power, that he helped America with security issues, starting with Afghanistan and ending with Syria and Iran.
"Irresponsible flogging" Putin is satisfied with centrist, liberal and progressive media - from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New Republic to CNN, MSNBC and HBO. On the last channel in the “Real Time With Bill Maher” program, Howard Dean, who had no previous deep knowledge of Russia, said to the approving sounds of the participants: “Vladimir Putin is a gangster.”
For many weeks, poisonous materials were devoted to the Sochi Olympics. Before the start of the games, the New York Times declared a new sports complex in Sochi “dystopia in the Soviet style” and stated in the title: “Terrorism and tensions, not sport and joy”.
On the opening day of the Olympics, the same newspaper found a place for three anti-Putin articles and editorials. Only the Washington Post was able to make up for it in this competition. Facts, notes Comrade Cohen, had no meaning for the editorial board.
The American leading media have exploited the threat of terrorism in Sochi so immorally that it "looked like pornography." The Washington Post, which for its attitude towards Russia received the nickname Pravda on Potomac, became the personification of such media habits, the author writes. One sports commentator even managed to turn the Olympiad into a "contest of willpower" between the despicable Putin's "gangster" and the terrorist "rebels." In the eyes of the media, the two “warring parties” became so similar to each other that the reader had doubts: for whom should he hurt? .. And American journalists in advance awarded the victory to the terrorists.
Another topic for the political denigration of Russia is Ukrainian. Here, the most important “media omission” here, Comrade Cohen, considers Moscow's reasonable confidence that “the struggle for Ukraine is the next stage of the continuing offensive of the West under the command of the United States in the direction of post-Soviet Russia, which began in the eastward direction of NATO and continued when the United States began to finance the political activities of NGOs in Russia, when the United States and NATO opened a military outpost in Georgia and anti-missile defense facilities near Russia. ” The author calls the policy of Washington and Brussels deceitful - in contrast to Putin’s December proposal for saving the crashing Ukrainian economy. The “civilizational” proposal of the EU, reminds the journalist, includes provisions on “security policy”, which put Ukraine in a subordinate position in relation to NATO.
Further Stephen Cohen writes:
“Any doubts about the true intentions of the Obama administration in Ukraine should have been dispelled recently published telephone conversations between Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leakage” and on the verbal “blooper” Nuland “to… eat this EU”. But the most important thing in this disclosure is that senior American leaders are conspiring, acting as the midwife of the new, anti-Russian government in Ukraine, and trying to overthrow or neutralize its democratically elected president. That is, they carry out a coup. "
And another quote:
“What about the decision of Barack Obama to send a low-level delegation to Sochi, including retired homosexual athletes? In August, Putin literally saved Obama as president by convincing Bashar Assad to destroy his chemical weapons. Then Putin contributed to Obama’s widely advertised approach to Iran. Wasn’t Obama supposed to go personally to Sochi, either as a sign of gratitude to Putin or as a sign of solidarity with the Russian leader in the fight against international terrorism, which strikes at our countries? Why he did not go, because he was trapped in his short-sighted policy towards Russia, or because the American media misrepresented the various reasons given: the granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, disagreements over the Middle East, encroachment on the rights of gays in Russia Ukraine? Whatever the explanation, as Russian intellectuals say, when faced with two bad alternatives, “both are the worst.”
“We know the measure, but will you drink it?” Published World Press Freedom Index - 2014. Russia in the ranking took as much 148-place. In the first place - Finland. USA - on 46. Ahead of a democratic and freedom-loving America are countries such as Romania, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Botswana and others. China is on the 175 location. Eritrea closes the rating (180-place).
“In terms of media freedom, at first glance it seems that democratic powers are leading here. And for the most part it is. But, as the press freedom index of 2014's Reporters Without Borders organization shows, their high rating is accompanied by important reservations, ”says Anna Kordunski (“ The Christian Science Monitor ”; the source of short translation is "Inopressa").
The authors of the ranking moved the US to 13 points down compared to last year. This is due to the prosecution of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. Britain's position has weakened (albeit only on the 3 point) due to the oppression of the newspaper The Guardian.
Violent conflicts put a number of states at the end of the list: Syria (177-th place), Democratic Republic of Congo (151-th place) and Mali (122-th place).
Other forms of violence endanger journalists outside of war zones. One such force is organized crime. Brazil is named one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the South American continent.
In Russia, which occupies the 148-place, increased prosecution of bloggers. This happened on the eve of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Bloggers are harassed in China and Egypt.
But here it seems to us, let us add from ourselves that journalists, while composing their annual ratings, simply drink and snack. And the second they clearly prefer the first. "Reporters Without Borders," say? Exactly. “We know the measure, but will you drink it?”
Inappropriate fired. Edward Snowden, who handed over secret documents to journalists, got access to many of them with the help of his colleague's password, US media reports referring to the NSA report to the congress, reports RIA "News" Peter Martynychev.
An NSA civil servant entered his password on Snowden's computer at his request. The latter saved this password, which gave him even greater access to sensitive information.
The investigation believes that Snowden's colleague did not know that he was going to reveal secret information. However, the erroneous employee was dismissed for not complying with the safety requirements.
Obama - in Guantanamo! Republican senator Rand Paul intends in court to prove the illegality of the American intelligence services on wiretapping. It became known that the congressman filed a lawsuit not only against Barack Obama, but also against the head of national intelligence, James Clapper, NSA director Keith Alexander and the FBI head James Komi. Write about it "Vesti" with reference to ITAR-TASS.
Rand Paul is convinced that collecting data on citizens' telephone calls is contrary to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.
“I expect that this case will reach the US Supreme Court, and I predict that the American people will win,” said the senator, who intends to receive the Bill of Rights interpretation from the highest court in the United States.
That's all, Mr. Obama, add on my own, dry crackers. Rand Paul will put you right in Guantanamo, where the methods of George W. Bush's inquiry are still used. There you quickly confess that you were a convinced communist from the moment you were born, you were spying from the student's seat at the Kremlin, and in the Oval Office you received cipher programs from Cuba, addressed to Eustace and signed by Alex.
In fact, everything will be like this: Obama will give another talk on NSA reform, and the judge will explain to comrade Paul that the NSA does not follow citizens at all.
Rand Paul, of course, is unpleasant that all his opposition conversations on his cell phone are printed on the table to Obama.
Jesse Ventura vs. Hillary Clinton? Jesse Ventura announced his intention to take the place of Barack Obama in 2016. This writes Ivan Yakovina ("Lenta.ru").
Ventura served in the US Navy Special Forces, traveled the world with “The Rolling Stones” as a bodyguard, visited the “villain” in professional wrestling, managed to star in several Hollywood films (including “Predator” and “Running Man”), worked on television and commentator.
“By 1990, Ventura bored with such a life. On the advice of his school teacher, he took part in the election of the mayor of a small town of Brooklyn Park (Minnesota). To the surprise of most observers, Ventura defeated the acting mayor, who by that time had headed the city 25 for years. Apparently he liked being a politician to a film actor (he didn’t give up shooting). In 1995, he left the post of mayor, deciding to concentrate on a more ambitious task.
In 1998, Ventura moved to the governors of Minnesota from a little-known Reform Party. Candidates from Democrats and Republicans did not pay much attention to a rival, who was known to the general public by the unsuccessful hunt for an alien “predator”. While they were competing with each other for the largest electoral budget, Ventura went on a state tour, speaking to voters almost “from the stool”. The speeches of an extravagant actor and a wrestler who became a politician were popular: Ventura convincingly smashed "two-party dictatorship," "the power of the establishment and corporations," and also promised that he would be "for the people." In addition, he was one of the first in the United States to develop vigorous activity on the Internet, then ignored by other candidates.
This tactic has borne fruit: Ventura's rating has risen to ten percent, allowing him to take part in televised debates. The actor utterly broke the boring rivals, who unsuccessfully tried to put him no more than a curiosity. A few weeks later, Ventura, who had gathered less than 400 thousand dollars in the election campaign, became the governor, even though he had millions of dollars, both main parties and almost all local media. ”
In 1998, Ventura moved to the governors of Minnesota from a little-known Reform Party. Candidates from Democrats and Republicans did not pay much attention to a rival, who was known to the general public by the unsuccessful hunt for an alien “predator”. While they were competing with each other for the largest electoral budget, Ventura went on a state tour, speaking to voters almost “from the stool”. The speeches of an extravagant actor and a wrestler who became a politician were popular: Ventura convincingly smashed "two-party dictatorship," "the power of the establishment and corporations," and also promised that he would be "for the people." In addition, he was one of the first in the United States to develop vigorous activity on the Internet, then ignored by other candidates.
This tactic has borne fruit: Ventura's rating has risen to ten percent, allowing him to take part in televised debates. The actor utterly broke the boring rivals, who unsuccessfully tried to put him no more than a curiosity. A few weeks later, Ventura, who had gathered less than 400 thousand dollars in the election campaign, became the governor, even though he had millions of dollars, both main parties and almost all local media. ”
As governor, Ventura achieved a high-speed tram line in Minneapolis, which became a popular form of transport. He reduced taxes, managing to withdraw the state budget to a plus. The profit of the treasury of Minnesota, by his decision, was returned to the residents of the state: once a year each of them received a check with his “share”. Finally, Comrade Ventura refused to live in the governor’s residence. This allowed to save on its content.
In one of his speeches, Ventura called journalists who cannot forgive him critics of Republicans and Democrats "media shakers." As for local legislators, the governor did not have a deal with them: he vetoed bills passed by dozens of them. Ventura did not go to the second governor’s term: he stated that he could not withstand the attacks of the press on his relatives. “If I were a bachelor without children, the decision would be different,” he explained.
At the end of gubernatorial activities, Ventura received an offer to release his own show on the liberal television channel NBC. But soon NBC ceased production of the show, citing the high cost of its production. According to Ventura, the liberal TV channel was frightened by the radicalism of his opinions on various issues, including the war in Iraq. When almost all Americans supported the invasion, Ventura also criticized President Bush.
After a short work on the TV channel, Ventura plunged into the study of political theory, wrote several books, and in 2004 he lectured at the School of Public Administration at Harvard University.
“The list of Ventura’s claims to the current state of affairs in the United States is extensive. The main one is that “the American people, by and large, no longer elect or control power.” According to the ex-governor's firm conviction, a situation exists in the country when large corporations nominate winners in elections at various levels behind closed doors. The presence of two parties should only create the illusion of choice. As proof of his innocence, he cites several arguments.
First, the former governor says, it’s no secret that American corporations often simultaneously sponsor both Republicans and Democrats. Without a lot of money, winning elections in the United States is almost impossible (Ventura itself is the rarest exception). A person holding an elective office for any wrongdoing against the system may be deprived of funding, which would put his re-election in question.
According to Ventura, in such a situation, lawmakers are simply forced to do everything possible and impossible to help corporations to profit uncontrollably from ordinary citizens. In support of this thesis, he cites the 2008 crisis of the year, when the government at the expense of taxpayers rescued large banks and companies, and no high-ranking banker or stock speculator was held accountable for the actions that led to the collapse on Wall Street.
Secondly, in the American political system, Ventura is sure, there is a “fuse” against the victory of a popular politician in the people who did not deserve the favor of corporations - a special decision of the US Supreme Court, known as Citizens United. In short, it is precisely this that allows corporations to anonymously inject unlimited amounts into the campaign of a candidate. According to Ventura, this allows you to simply buy the elections, sifting out candidates unsuitable to big business. No matter how popular the claimant is “from the people,” corporations will still donate immeasurably more money to the campaign of his rival than ordinary citizens. ”
First, the former governor says, it’s no secret that American corporations often simultaneously sponsor both Republicans and Democrats. Without a lot of money, winning elections in the United States is almost impossible (Ventura itself is the rarest exception). A person holding an elective office for any wrongdoing against the system may be deprived of funding, which would put his re-election in question.
According to Ventura, in such a situation, lawmakers are simply forced to do everything possible and impossible to help corporations to profit uncontrollably from ordinary citizens. In support of this thesis, he cites the 2008 crisis of the year, when the government at the expense of taxpayers rescued large banks and companies, and no high-ranking banker or stock speculator was held accountable for the actions that led to the collapse on Wall Street.
Secondly, in the American political system, Ventura is sure, there is a “fuse” against the victory of a popular politician in the people who did not deserve the favor of corporations - a special decision of the US Supreme Court, known as Citizens United. In short, it is precisely this that allows corporations to anonymously inject unlimited amounts into the campaign of a candidate. According to Ventura, this allows you to simply buy the elections, sifting out candidates unsuitable to big business. No matter how popular the claimant is “from the people,” corporations will still donate immeasurably more money to the campaign of his rival than ordinary citizens. ”
The same “wrong” candidates, says Ventura, are also helped by the fact that the mainstream media in the United States is owned by the same large corporations.
Ivan Yakovina also cites Ventura’s claims to the US economic system.
The United States must disband the Federal Reserve System, return to the gold standard, drastically reduce spending on national security and defense, withdraw troops from other countries of the world, and stop spending fabulous money on the military-industrial complex. The complex of such measures will release funds for education and medicine and will improve the image of the United States in the world.
Well, the state, the future presidential candidate believes, needs to completely abandon interference with the privacy of citizens and become as open as possible.
Future participation in the presidential race 2016, Ventura announced back in 2013 year. According to him, he expects to take the place of Barack Obama, "who differs only in skin color from George Bush."
Ventura promised that he would be pardoned by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden if he came to power.
Choose one of fifty floors. Facebook announced that users in the US, citing personal information, will now be able to choose the gender from the 50 options. Reports about it «Associated Press» with reference to the administration of a social network, writes "Lenta.ru".
The list includes definitions: “androgynous”, “biggender”, “intersexual”, “gender church”, “transsexual”. The programmer (programmer) Briel Harrison, who worked (worked) on the project and is currently (being) in the process of changing sex from male to female, says that for most users, nothing will change, but for a small part it will be of great importance.
“Often, transgender people like me and other non-standard people are given a choice of two options: do you want to be a man or a woman? What is your gender? And this is depressing because none of the options explain to others who we really are, ”explained Harrison. On her page, she plans to point out that she is a “trans woman”.
Putin's century. “In fact, I was driving in Berlinale, but during the trip I suddenly fell asleep, and when I woke up and opened my eyes, I saw that we were arriving in Sochi and not George Clooney was sitting in front of me, but Putin with a bare torso,” describes his fictional dream Erik Hansen, a journalist for the German newspaper Die Zeit (source of abbr. translation - "Inopressa"). “In a panic, I shouted that I got on the wrong bus, but the Russian president took me by the hand and asked why I reacted in this way, because it was also good here.”
“But you are a half-dictator,” said Hansen in a dream. “You infringe on the freedom of speech and the rights of sexual minorities, and besides, there are no normal toilets in Sochi.” Smiling Putin said that "you took all this from the newspapers," and advised you to think about how often semi-truthful news is found in foreign media.
True, the journalist notes, Putin is right: “The worse the journalists write about any country, the more successful things are going there.”
Putin told the journalist how he “walked along the opposition with an iron fist, just like a king,” adding that, in addition to this, “there are also successes.” After the collapse of the USSR, all of Russia lay in ruins. Who restored it? That's right, Vladimir Putin. This Putin managed to achieve that in the West again began to respect the "Russian bear".
And V. V.P. said something else, playing with a massive silver ring with a seal made of molten silver spoons of the enemies: “Now look at Europe. How many politicians do you respect there? ”
“And then I realized where the prankster was going,” says Hansen. “You can - and you should - hate Putin, but now he really is the most interesting politician in the world.”
As for Europe, Putin knows everything about its future. “By the middle of the century, only Rusrop and a couple of small countries like Germany, Switzerland and, probably, Holland will remain in Europe, who will constantly chase after three world leaders - China, the United States and, of course, Russia,” Putin said. “I will no longer be alive, but this will be my creation, the world that I created, the Putin century.”
Well, add to this, the United States by this time will not fizzle out only if in the 2016 year, the power in the White House will be taken by Jesse Ventura. If Hillary Clinton wins the election, then the United States will either recognize the revolutionary fire of purification, or will finally turn into a totalitarian state with a corporate-prison economy.
Observed and commented on Oleg Chuvakin
- especially for topwar.ru
- especially for topwar.ru
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