http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...26/the_billion aire_dissident?page=0,0
Just an interesting read for anyone who cares about Russia.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...26/the_billion aire_dissident?page=0,0
Just an interesting read for anyone who cares about Russia.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
HL Mencken
Interesting I saw something about this on a BBC documentary I think it was Dimblebey across Russia.
Many similarities between Putin and the MRSC top table [img]smileys/lol.gif[/img]
Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2012
Putin is only 3ft tall?
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
He's an idiot. You can't beat the system.
Gorbachev: Russia's stability threatened
Friday, December 10, 2010 - 02:37 PM
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says Russia’s stability is threatened by anti-democratic trends.
The lack of political competition, flawed elections, shrinking media freedom and rampant corruption have slowed Russia’s development, he said said in an article in Novaya Gazeta newspaper today.
Without directly mentioning Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Gorbachev said that negative trends in the nation’s political life became particularly apparent in 2005-2006 – the time when Putin was serving his second presidential term.
Gorbachev said President Dmitry Medvedev correctly warned in his blog last month that the country is facing symptoms of stagnation, but criticised him for failing to propose how to improve the situation.
Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakin...d/gorbachev-ru ssias-stability-threatened-485203.html#ixzz17iiJesNd
4 Feb 2011 - Gilmore on the General Election
"Frankfurts way or Labours way."
28 Feb 2012 - Gilmore on a yes vote for the fiscal treaty
"A vote for economic stability and a vote for economic recovery."
Pussy Riot members jailed for two years for hooliganism
Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, over a protest in a cathedral.
Judge Marina Syrova jailed the three defendants for two years each.
She said the women had "crudely undermined social order" during their action in February.
The women say their "punk prayer" was a political act in protest against the Russian Orthodox Church leader's support of President Vladimir Putin.
Prosecutors had been seeking a three-year jail sentence.
Judge Syrova said Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, had offended the feelings of Orthodox believers and shown a "complete lack of respect".
"Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich committed hooliganism - in other words, a grave violation of public order," she said.
The judge quoted prosecution witnesses as saying the act had been one of blasphemy, not politics.
MORE>>
Tommy O'Donnell - David Wallace Mk. 2.
Between this, the general quashing of dissent and the continued support of Assad, at what point do we stop talking about Putin's Russia "slipping back towards" authoritarianism? It's a fully blown fascist kleptocracy of the worst kind.
I don't think they make anything you could boycott though.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
Drunk politicians and organised crime? Although you'd never get anything done in Ireland by boycotting those.Originally Posted by Balla Boy
Governments don't ask themselves "what can we do that is good for the people?". They ask themselves "how do we persuade people that what we want to do is good for them?".
We've developed the next generation: Drunk disorganised criminal politicians.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
Interesting article in new yYorker online this week on Kasparov and the opposition . It's long but worth a read.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
HL Mencken
Its a very serious subject, and I feel a bit childish, but I can't help but laugh my arse off every time a BBC foreign correspondent says "Pussy Riot" in very stern tones.
“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”
He got roughed up by the Police at the court today.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
I clicked on a link for Free Pussy Riot and my P45 popped out of the printer instantaneously.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
Orthodox Church and Kremlin Separate, Insists Patriarch
14:49 16/08/2012
MOSCOW, August 16 (Marc Bennetts, RIA Novosti)
The head of Russia’s largest religious faith said on Thursday that while the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin shared a “common agenda,” their constitutional separation was not under threat.
“The state, the authorities and the church are autonomous from one another,” Patriarch Kirill told journalists in Poland. “The Russian Orthodox Church values immensely its current freedom and autonomy.”
But the patriarch’s comments at the start of his four-day visit to Poland are unlikely to dampen a debate in Russia about what critics say are the deepening ties between the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin.
Senior Orthodox Church official Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told RIA Novosti last month that Orthodox believers saw nothing wrong in the “close cooperation” of the Church with the authorities. He also told journalists in June that the “Western idea that the state and the church should be slight rivals and slight enemies is both bizarre and incorrect from an Orthodox point of view.”
But Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev denied that the Orthodox Church influences Kremlin policy when he made an unexpected appearance on a popular television talk show this summer.
"Yes, the church occupies a fitting place in the life of our society and government," Medvedev said. "But no one knows better than me that it is separate from decision-making.” Medvedev served as president from 2008 until May of this year.
Patriarch Kirill’s August 16-19 visit to Poland coincides with the verdict in the controversial trial of three members of the all-female group Pussy Riot. Prosecutors have asked for three years each for three suspects charged with hooliganism aimed at “inciting religious hatred” during a February protest in Moscow’s largest cathedral.
Lawyers for the group say their clients were protesting open Church support for Vladimir Putin ahead of the March 4 presidential polls that returned the former KGB officer to the Kremlin. Patriarch Kirill called Putin’s first two presidential terms a “miracle from God” in a televised meeting less than a month before the elections.
The 65-year-old patriarch also said the Orthodox Church was discussing ways to cooperate with the Kremlin in the moral education of the nation.
“The issue of morals is one that no normal state can be indifferent toward,” he said. “A moral person is a law-abiding person – even if he does not know the law.”
He added that the issue was on “the agenda of church-state relations.”
But the Orthodox Church has come under unprecedented criticism in recent months over the perceived luxurious lifestyle of its leading figures.
Patriarch Kirill came under fire in April after he insisted in an interview with a Russian journalist that he had never worn a $30,000 Breguet watch that he received as a gift. He suggested that any photographs of him wearing the watch must have been doctored.
However, attentive bloggers quickly discovered a photograph on the church’s official website of Patriarch Kirill with the expensive watch on his wrist. Less than 24 hours later, the timepiece had been airbrushed out of the photograph. Unfortunately for the church, the inattentive editor left intact the telltale reflection of the luxury wristwatch on a varnished table, sparking weeks of online mockery.
And there was more unwanted publicity for the Orthodox Church this week when the abbot of a downtown Moscow church was accused of being drunk behind the wheel after the Maltese diplomatic vehicle he was driving ploughed into another vehicle.
Witnesses said Hegumen Timofei’s eyes were “glazed and crazy” after the crash, but the abbot refused to take a breathalyzer test, the online Gazeta.ru newspaper reported on Monday.
Patriarch Kirill also hit out at Russia’s “liberal media” over the failure of plans to introduce nationwide religious education lessons. He said the Church had been forced to “compromise” after a media outcry and allow schools to offer a choice between religious instruction and secular ethics.
The patriarch also said that Russia was a “religious society,” citing as evidence the some half a million people who queued day and night late last year at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral to see a reliquary believed to hold the Virgin Mary's belt.
Although some 70 percent of Russians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians, analysts say that many view the Church as a mere extension of the state. A report by the independent, Moscow-based Levada Center pollster indicated this week that 30 percent of those who identified themselves as Orthodox Christians did not, in fact, believe in God. The same report found that only around 10 percent of believers take part in Church life.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20120816/175251495.html
Tommy O'Donnell - David Wallace Mk. 2.
The KGB man moves seamlessly from Communism (state capitalism?) to Religious Conservatism, thereby proving everything that we've ever suspected about all brands of autocratic ideology.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
Pussy Riot should not have protested at the Church they did, it is the Holy of Holies to the ROC and they handed Putin a PR opp to tie himself closer to the ROC as their defender.
Would guess they will be heading for somewhere in Siberia (maybe where Khordokovsy is) and any protests in Moscow will be put down hard, Putin does not give a shlte for Madonna or McCartney or any other celebrities who care to criticise him, the Deputy PM called Madonna an ex whore and said she should pull up her knickers.
Do you mean "should not" tactically or morally?
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
Tactically, it was the wrong building to do it in, it is the most important area/focus of the ROC and a huge symbol of the ROC rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Communism.
This was the Church Stalin flattened because it obscured his view of the river in the mornings from the Kremlin.
That's the line that protest treads, I suppose. If it's not getting up someone's nose you're wasting your time.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men" Edward R Murrow
"Little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to tolerate the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them." - Livy
That was the whole point. The object of their protest was the cozying up of the Orthodox Church to the Kremlin in a supposedly secular state. One would wonder how Patriarch Kirill could afford a a $30,000 Breguet watch and if it were a gift, who was it from?
Tommy O'Donnell - David Wallace Mk. 2.
For some reason wrist watches seem to be very macho amongst Russian men, Putin has several, see below
"The crown jewel appears to be the Tourbograph, a $500,000 masterpiece by German watchmaker A Lange & Sohne. It boasts platinum casing, gold plated arms, sapphire-crystal glass, and a hand-stitched crocodile leather strap. The video shows him wearing the watch on May 12 of this year.
The video also shows Putin wearing a $60,000 Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar (some models are going for even more on eBay), an $18,000 Patek Philippe Calatrava, a Breguet Marine worth $15,000, a $10,000 Blancpain Leman Flyback, and a Blancpain Leman Aqua Lung Grande Date worth around $10,500".
Would be no surprise if Putin gifted the Patriarch a wrist watch, but the ROC like the RC love to earn a few bob and in the early Yeltsin days had a very valuable exemption to import cigarettes and alcohol which had to be eventually taken back from them as they earnt billions.
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