MOSCOW, March 6 (RIA Novosti) – The death of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez from cancer may have been part of a plot by the United States to infect its enemies in Latin America with the disease, the leader of Russia’s Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, speculated on Wednesday.

“How did it happen that six leaders of Latin American countries which had criticized US policies and tried to create an influential alliance in order to be independent and sovereign states, fell ill simultaneously with the same disease?” Zyuganov said in comments carried by Russian state television.

“In my view, this was far from a coincidence,” said Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s second-largest political party. He urged an investigation under “international control” into Chavez’s death.

He might also want to ask why the leadership in South America has been so retarded of late.

Vlad the Petulant recently pushed through a law that forbids Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

Why stick these poor kids in a country without a future? That’s what Russia’s 20,000 man march wanted to know.

About 20,000 people marched through Moscow on Sunday to protest Russia’s new law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, a far bigger number than expected in a sign that outrage over the ban has breathed some life into the dispirited anti-Kremlin opposition movement.

Shouting ‘‘shame on the scum,’’ protesters carried posters of President Vladimir Putin and members of Russia’s Parliament who overwhelmingly voted for the law last month.

The adoption ban has stoked the anger of the same middle-class urban professionals who swelled the protest ranks last winter, when more than 100,000 people turned out for rallies to demand free elections and an end to Putin’s 12 years in power.

Since Putin began a third presidential term in May, the protests have flagged as the opposition leaders have struggled to provide direction and capitalize on the broad discontent.

Opponents of the adoption ban say it victimizes children to make a political point.

Walter Russell Mead:

Let’s hope Obama gets his head straight or is voted out before he can do any damage.

The only thing missing from the scene was one of those heroic images of Lenin peering from a shop window, or perhaps a glimpse of the Soviet hammer and sickle fluttering over the nearby Kremlin.

When the new U.S. ambassador to Russia arrived this week for a private meeting with a prominent human rights activist, he was confronted by a crew from a Kremlin-controlledtelevision station that blocked his path and peppered him with questions. Uniformed men, tall wool military hats on their heads, were there too.

And a burly civilian held up a sign with a pointed question for Ambassador Michael McFaul’s host: “What is the price of the motherland today?”

In a week when the leading Republican presidential candidate also termed Russia “our No. 1 geopolitical foe,” the Cold War appeared to be making a bit of a comeback.

No need to pass this news on to Vladimir.

Someone on NPR this morning snickered at Mitt Romney’s contention that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe. It was as if Mitt had not heard the Evil Empire was over, ha ha ha.

One might argue that Iran is #1 and Russia #2, but Romney’s point still holds. The snickering fools fail to have noticed that Putin is leading Russia backward in history. Democracy? Nyet.

Obama’s whispered message was for Putin, who declared the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century was Russia’s loss of its Soviet empire. A seasoned, strategically thinking president might take pause.

But we don’t have one.

Charles Krauthammer

You don’t often hear an American president secretly (he thinks) assuring foreign leaders that concessions are coming their way, but they must wait because he’s seeking reelection and he dares not tell his own people.

Not at all, spun a White House aide in major gaffe-control mode. The president was merely explaining that arms control is too complicated to be dealt with in a year in which both Russia and the United States hold presidential elections.

Rubbish. First of all, to speak of Russian elections in the same breath as ours is a travesty. Theirs was a rigged, predetermined farce. Putin ruled before. Putin rules after.

Obama spoke of the difficulties of the Russian presidential “transition.” What transition? It’s a joke. It had no effect on Putin’s ability to negotiate anything.

As for the U.S. election, the problem is not that the issue is too complicated but that if people knew Obama’s intentions of flexibly caving on missile defense, they might think twice about giving him a second term.

After all, what is Obama doing negotiating on missile defense in the first place? We have no obligation to do so. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a relic of the Cold War, died in 2002.

So why not snicker at Obama for his naivete?

We have an unmatched technological lead in this area. It’s a priceless strategic advantage that for three decades Russia has been trying to get us to yield. Why give any of it away?

To placate Putin, Obama had already in 2009 abruptly canceled the missile-defense system the Poles and Czechs had agreed to host in defiance of Russian threats. Why give away more?

It’s unfathomable. In trying to clean up the gaffe, Obama emphasized his intent to “reduce nuclear stockpiles” and “reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.” In which case, he should want to augment missile defenses, not weaken, dismantle or bargain them away. The fewer nukes you have for deterrence, the more you need nuclear defenses. If your professed goal is nuclear disarmament, as is Obama’s, eliminating defenses is completely illogical.

Mitt Romney referred to Russia as our, “Number 1 geopolitical foe” after hearing Obama whisper sweet nothings to Dmitry Medvedev to pass along to his boss, Putin.

Medvedev responded:

“All U.S. presidential candidates [should] do two things,” he said. “Use their head and consult their reason” and “look at his watch: We are in 2012 and not the mid-1970s.”

Look in the mirror, Dmitry.

Stop whining about the missile defense system the US wants to install in eastern Europe. It’s there to protect Europe from an Iranian nuclear attack, not get Russia.

We don’t want Russia. We just want you to behave like a civilized nation. We’ve been very generous and patient with you since you lost the Cold War.

As Romney noted, Russia has done everything it can to keep the pressure off Iran and Syria. If you coddle tyrants, expect to be regarded with suspicion.

And what are we to make of Putin’s strident anti-American rhetoric?

Anti-Americanism was a central feature of the Russian leader’s presidential campaign, playing on the innate suspicions of Russians raised to think the United States was hostile.

In the run-up to the election, I heard anti-American rhetoric on state TV that was so strident it would have shocked Politburo members in the former Soviet Union.

TV stations also aired documentaries describing U.S. “plots” to attack or dismember Russia – and alleged American schemes to make Putin resign.

With natural gas as a club, Russia has been bullying Ukraine and other former Soviet satellites. That’s why Poland is so delighted to have American energy companies come over and show them how to frack.

That’s more help than they can expect from Obama, self-described practitioner of “smart diplomacy.”

He chose the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, in which the Soviets murdered 20,000 Polish military officers (and then blamed it on the Nazis for a very long time) to cancel plans to station an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Both countries had stuck their neck out as allies of the US.

Finally, Dmitry, as long you’re close to Obama, can you put in a word about all those Czars he keeps appointing?

Reset this, Obama. And by the way, does Putin need more time to get his head straight about Iran and Syria?

What a kiss up.

Transcript:
At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense, but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”

The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.

The exchange:

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

In the Soviet era, no one dared ridicule the leaders.

In a new puppet show satire of Russia’s presidential election, the only competition is in the mind of Vladimir Putin, as he fights the loss of his penis.

The Moscow Museum of Erotic Art’s show, due to premiere on the eve of the election, lampoons the current prime minister’s easy dominance of Russian politics, but also shows the former KGB spy fighting his demons and torn between tyranny and democracy.

“Putin doesn’t compete with anyone but himself so we didn’t have to make puppets of other politicians. They are nothing but a decoration,” said Alexander Donskoy, founder of the museum and former mayor of the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk.

Condi Rice has some interesting thoughts on Russia in the interview we linked to earlier.

Naivete breeds scorn. Washington Post.

MOSCOW — A nasty spate of anti-Americanism set off by Vladimir V. Putin has grown into waves of attacks aimed at the new American ambassador and Russian opposition leaders, raising questions about the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

The attacks started just before the December parliamentary elections and have intensified as the March 4 presidential vote approaches. Although widely viewed as aimed primarily at a domestic audience, they have grown shriller and more aggressive, provoking debate about whether Russia is deliberately giving a cold shoulder to President Obama’s effort to promote more productive relations.

A main target of the attacks is Michael McFaul, the new ambassador, a longtime democracy advocate and Russia expert who as a top aide to Obama has been an architect of what the White House calls a “reset’’ with Moscow.

The anti-American campaign bears trademark Soviet and KGB thinking, reflecting the mindset of many of the high-level officials appointed by Putin as well as their efforts to protect their power and privileges from the gathering opposition.

U.S. officials say that they understand internal politics are behind the fusillade but that the effect remains worrying, raising concern about whether Russia recognizes the extent of the possible damage, simply doesn’t care or is foreshadowing a change in foreign policy. “It’s getting to the point where it’s going to be hard to undo,” said one administration official in Washington who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Putin is taking a trick from Obama: demonize someone to distract from your own failure.

Vlad the Imposter gets caught faking it.

It was just a typical summer outing for Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin: Clad in a wet suit and fitted with an oxygen tank, he dived to the bottom of a bay and retrieved two ceramic jugs that dated to the sixth century A.D.

The scene, captured by a camera crew and broadcast on the nightly news, cast Mr. Putin as a broad-chested Renaissance man, just the thing for his listless approval ratings. Scenes of Mr. Putin braving the elements — tranquilizing a tigress, tenderly feeding sugar to his horse or shooting a dart at a whale from a rubber dinghy — are a staple of political life in Russia.

There have long been suspicions that his exploits were not spontaneous. Still, it was remarkable to see Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, surrounded by a panel of exceedingly skeptical journalists, trying to explain as delicately as possible that Mr. Putin’s much-hyped dive in August had been staged.

A peek inside the mind of Team Obama, courtesy of Peter Orszag:

“During my recent stint in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget, it was clear to me that the country’s political polarization was growing worse—harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing. If you need confirmation of this, look no further than the recent debt-limit debacle, which clearly showed that we are becoming two nations governed by a single Congress—and that paralyzing gridlock is the result.

So what to do? To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”

Then there was the Democrat governor of North Carolina suggesting that elections be suspended so that Congress could do the right thing.

Oh, those bitter clingers who insist on having their voices heard!

Putin doesn’t have to tolerate that crap, no sir.

Life would be so much simpler for Obama, if he could do like Putin.

• Hate billionaires? Don’t just tax ‘em, lock ‘em up and confiscate all their wealth.
• Term limits? Ha ha ha ha!
• Fed up with annoying journalists who don’t adore you? Outlaw them or see them mysteriously murdered.
• An opposition party delivers a shellacking? Give ‘em a whacking..
• Fundamentally transform your nation? Just Do It!
• Czars, czars and more czars.

If only Obama could macho up like Putin.

Oh, I wish I could be just like Putin,

With Vlad, there’s no debate nor disputin’.

What he says goes

Because everyone knows

Talk back too loud and there’ll be shootin’.

Having just watched “My Perestroika” two nights ago, this story has special resonance.

It also recalls the comment from Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional convention.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The Russians briefly had a republic, but they couldn’t keep it.

Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. in the WSJ:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent statements about freedom and political competition have led many Western observers to hope for a new wave of democratic reforms in Russia. The Justice Ministry’s denial of the Popular Freedom Party’s registration papers last week shows that these statements are a fraud.

Since single-member districts were abolished by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2004, only the lists of registered parties are allowed in parliamentary elections. The government’s decision thus means that on December 4, Russian citizens will not have the option of voting for the leading pro-democracy coalition. Before the first vote is cast, the legitimacy of Russia’s election has been put into serious doubt.

Despite Kremlin-mandated blackouts of opposition coverage on national television, a recent poll by the independent Levada Center showed that the Popular Freedom Party, co-founded by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, was well within reach of parliamentary seats. That’s no surprise. The party’s platform supports the reinstatement of gubernatorial elections; judicial independence, media freedom and freedom of assembly; the passage of an amnesty for political prisoners and stronger anti-corruption measures.

The current Putin-Medvedev government survives on its monopoly power, not on the strength of its ideas. The Justice Ministry said the Popular Freedom Party was denied registration because of alleged irregularities in 79 out of 46,148 names on the party’s membership list, including “written statements” from several activists denouncing their affiliation with the party…

President Dmitry Medvedev warned Wednesday Russia could pull out a new nuclear disarmament treaty and enter a new Cold War with the West if the two sides failed to agree on a new missile defence shield.

Medvedev told reporters that the United States’ decision to push ahead with the European shield despite Russia’s objections will force Moscow “to take response measures — something that we would very much rather not do.”

“We would then be talking about developing the offensive potential of our nuclear capabilities. This would be a very bad scenario.”

The Russian leader also reaffirmed any earlier threat to pull out of the new START disarmament agreement that entered into force this year if the missile shield is deployed and operated without the Kremlin’s input.

Russia is a Third World country* with nostalgic delusions of grandeur. Just what they need is to squander money on macho, chest-thumping defense spending.

When Reagan launched the missile shield program, he offered the technology to the Soviets. His objective was to end the threat of thermonuclear war.

But the Soviets couldn’t afford to build it even if we gave them the blueprints.

* Male life expectancy is 59.6 years. Men in Bangladesh can expect to live 68 years.

Ekaterina Loushnikova in oD Russia

…I stood outside the door for a long time. I’d never met a 100-year old before. “He probably doesn’t remember anything,” I thought doubtfully, as I rang the bell. The door opened immediately and before me stood a tall, thin old man with bright, youthful eyes.

Pavel Galitsky has outlived all his tormentors and almost all his contemporaries

“Just wait while I turn off the computer,” he said. “People keep trying to ring me on Skype.”

I was quite taken aback that a man of this age should know how to use the computer and Skype, as by no means everyone knows how to do this in Russia, and not only the elderly. I was even more surprised when we started with a concert: in honour of my visit, Pavel Kalinkovich began to sing the old Russian romance “The chrysanthemums have long since ceased to bloom”. His voice was so deafening that the red needle on my Dictaphone went right over the red line.

“Did you sing in the camp too, Pavel Kalinkovich?”

“I certainly did. For two weeks I was even on the propaganda team, but then I was chucked out because they clocked I was a ‘contra’  – I was sent to prison for ‘Anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation’ (Article 58)”.

“And had you actually been agitating?”

Pavel Kalinkovich bursts out laughing. “I burst out laughing in exactly the same way when the interrogator said this to me. He barked ‘Stand up, you f*****!’  I got up and said ‘Comrade Pozdnyakov, why are you are contravening socialist legality?’ ‘I’m no comrade of yours, you bastard!’  He pressed a button to summon the guard. ‘Search this character!’

“Then they threw me in jail. The cell, a former peasant larder 4 metres long and 2 wide, had 32 people in it. People couldn’t even sit down. They had to stand and take turns to sleep. At that time arresting a man was as easy as falling off a log.”

I remember the story I was told by my grandmother, Valentina Nikolaevna. In 1937 she was working as an agronomist on a collective farm attached to an agricultural institute which studied plant selection. During the day.  But at night it was another “selection” — the selection of people. Every night the huge corridor of the communal flat where the specialists lived rang with the sound of footsteps. Every night each person waited for the knock on his door. Before going to bed they put a little suitcase with essentials by the bed.  My grandmother lived in the furthest room. She was lucky – they never came for her.

But Gorby is a star.

Gorbachev is hailed for doing away with Soviet totalitarianism, yet his predecessor Andropov was the man actually responsible for preparing liberal reform some twenty years earlier. With Gorbachev hopelessly unaware of the forces he was unleashing, failure was inevitable, argues Andrei Konchalovsky

IBD:

A key focus of President Obama’s foreign policy when he came into office was to “reset” our ties to Russia. Well, he tried. But based on what we’ve seen recently, it hasn’t worked too well.

Just last Thursday, Russia announced, apropos of nothing, that if it felt “threatened,” it didn’t feel it had to abide by the New START treaty it has signed with the U.S.

The Russians surely know that Obama spent a great deal of political capital getting START, essentially getting it approved in the dead of night by the Democrat-dominated lame-duck Congress. No matter. They’ve shown they have little interest in the deal — except for the fact that they believe it ties our hands when it comes to missile defense.

Russia’s parliament edged closer this week to approving the New START — a deal that is greatly to Russia’s advantage — by passing amendments to let Moscow withdraw if “threatened” by the West.

That, of course, is a reference to U.S. missile defense in Europe, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said would “force us to use the article of the treaty that provides for the withdrawal of a state that feels violated in terms of security.”

So New START isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Not that it ever was: Russia repeatedly violated the terms of the 1991 START deal, as our own State Department noted in 2005 and just last year, and there’s no reason to believe this time will be any different.

Truth is, we were naive to sign such a treaty in the first place. Russia is rapidly falling back on its old Soviet ways, slowly eradicating the democracy that once held so much promise in favor of a tin-pot dictatorship headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Yesterday at a White House news briefing, a Russian journalist shot off his mouth.

…Gibbs, who’ll leave his spot at the podium next month, found himself in a different sort of debate on Thursday: Was the Tucson shooting rampage an inevitable byproduct of Americans having too much freedom?

Adrei Sitov, a reporter for Russia’s official news agency ITAR-TASS, argued that the “quote-unquote freedom of the deranged mind to react violently—it is also America.”

Gibbs pushed back, telling Sitov—whose country’s government is known for cracking down harshly on the type of personal freedoms Americans value—that he “vehemently” disagreed. “That is not America.”

Russia, a still shabby nation with rampant alcoholism, exposes it’s insecurities regularly. Many Russians no doubt still seethe at losing the Cold War.

Most Russians are unarmed, thus making its autocrats happily autocratic. Russian gangsters have no problem getting and using guns.

So, do Russians with their freedom restricted, live in a safer place? Nope. Here are the top 10 per capita murder rates by nation.

The USA ranks 24th, nothing to be proud of, but good enough to tell Sitov to stuff it.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian tycoon, has lashed out at Vladimir Putin, describing his nemesis as a pitiable but dangerous leader steering his country towards degradation and chaos.

In a newspaper article published on Friday, three days before a judge begins reading the verdict in a fresh trial that could keep him in jail until 2017, Mr Khodorkovsky said the Russian prime minister was trapped in the cynical political establishment he had created, indifferent to the fate of its people.

“I suddenly realised I was sorry for this man – no longer young, but vigorous and horribly lonely in the face of a vast and unsympathetic country,” he said.

Apparently, Khodorkovsky doesn’t expect much mercy from the court.

Russian oil giant LUKOIL has resumed gasoline sales into Iran in partnership with China’s state-run firm Zhuhai Zhenrong, even as the United States urges the international community to be tough with Tehran.

Iran is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter but lacks adequate refining capacity to meet domestic demand for motor fuel, forcing it to import up to 40 percent of its requirements.

Russia and China, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, signed up to the latest round of U.N. sanctions on Iran, but refused to support measures that targeted the Islamic Republic’s oil and gas sector.

The U.S. has since passed additional unilateral sanctions allowing it to penalise fuel suppliers to Iran, measures criticised by both Beijing and Moscow.

Obama and his team pompously decided to “reset” our relationship with Russia, preening as if previous administrations were cloddishly hostile to Russia.

In fact, President George H.W. Bush skillfully brought a smooth end to our Cold War conflicts with careful diplomacy. His son promoted warm relations with Putin from the beginning.

Here’s a BBC story from Nov. 15, 2001

Just before President Vladimir Putin’s arrival here on Wednesday, a large crowd had gathered in the dot on the Texas map known as Crawford.

They were there to catch a glimpse of the Russian’s arrival.

Among them was a tall man with cowboy boots and hat, a real local.

Asked what he thought about the visit he paused for a second and then said he was “real excited” and that the two presidents “seemed like real good buddies”.

Heart and soul

On Thursday as Presidents Putin and George W Bush swapped compliments at Crawford’s – population 705 – only high school, the cowboy’s assessment seemed right on the money.

Certainly they are an odd pairing, the former spy chief and the former baseball team owner. But they do seem to get along.

Using his famous Texan turn of phrase, the US President once again stressed the personal as the pupils looked on.

“The more I get to know President Putin” he said, “the more I get to see his heart and soul …the more I know we can work together in a positive way”.

Though the Russians are known for their soulfullness, President Putin is perhaps less gushing about his American counterpart.

There was no talk of souls from Mr Putin though he did describe Mr Bush as being “right from the heart of Texas”, quite a compliment given the president was born in Connecticut.

Today we have an AP story from Jennifer Loven, one of the many Obama swooners in the media during the 2008 campaign.

She’s gushing again over Obama, that daring man of action, giving away ten Russian spies. Here’s a taste:

…Thirteen days later, he hosted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House for the first time, the two chummy over hamburgers in Arlington, Va., and showing off a rapport to reporters that would have been unthinkable during the nations’ diplomatic low points.

Huh? See above.

But transparency goes only so far. Although preparations for the arrests were moving forward – and the arrests would take place just three days later – Obama kept quiet, the White House officials said.

At that point, White House aides and their counterparts from agencies including the CIA, the FBI, and the Justice and the State Departments were meeting early every morning via secure videoteleconference.

Time to reset things at the AP.

Discover:

This week, the FBI arrested 11 alleged Russian spies living in New Jersey. How did they catch them? By digging through their photos.

These weren’t snapshots of covert meetings or secret handshakes, but–more likely–the quotidian: kittens and ice cream cones. They weren’t hidden in some obscure drop location, but viewable to the public, online. The pictures’ real importance was tucked inside, in encoded messages detailing secret meetings.

We aren’t talking Magic Eye–no mater how long you cross your eyes, staring at these pictures wouldn’t tell you where to drop off money or who to call. The alleged spies reportedly encoded the messages at the pixel level.

Every color on your computer screen is a combination of red, blue, and green–digitally represented as three numeric values. By making subtle changes to these numbers, the Russians hid binary code that someone–with the right software–could recombine into a message.

Applying special software, the government says, they coaxed words from the innocuous imagery, a text file. Moscow was calling. A secret meeting in a suburban New York train station was proposed: … “A and R meet in lower part of staircase, in dead zone. R hands over and A gets pack w/money (A’s BN [Barnes and Noble] bag stays in your hands, A hides pack w/money into his tote).” [Washington Post]

It’s an example of steganography, a field distinct from its better-known cousin cryptography. If cryptography is a hermit, steganography is overly social–to appear like an average (and unimportant) guy. Tal Malkin, an assistant professor in Columbia University’s cryptography laboratory, explains:

“The point of standard encryption is to hide the content of the message…. But even if you are detected sending a message no one can read, you will still be suspected by the authorities for sending a coded message. With steganography, you try to hide the fact that communication is going on at all.” [Live Science]

But hold on a second. Russian spies? Living in New Jersey? Apparently, though the Cold War is long over, there is still a lot of spying going on. According to New York Times op-ed contributor and espionage expert David Wise, Russia likes to send over “illegals”–Russian citizens posing as living or dead Americans to keep tabs on what’s happening. The FBI used the messages hidden in the photos to intertwine American agents into the Russian group’s workings. They arrested the Russians after one of the illegals caught on.

Two brave men risked their lives by copying documents that expose Soviet evil –including Gorbachev — and no one seems to care.

Maybe that’s because many of today’s Europe’s movers and shakers are shown to have been sympathetic to the Soviets.

Claire Berlinski in City-Journal:

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.

…the documents cast Gorbachev in a far darker light than the one in which he is generally regarded. In one document, he laughs with the Politburo about the USSR’s downing of Korean Airlines flight 007 in 1983—a crime that was not only monstrous but brought the world very near to nuclear Armageddon. These minutes from a Politburo meeting on October 4, 1989, are similarly disturbing:

Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.

Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?

And a transcript of Gorbachev’s conversation with Hans-Jochen Vogel, the leader of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party, shows Gorbachev defending Soviet troops’ April 9, 1989, massacre of peaceful protesters in Tbilisi.

Stroilov’s documents also contain transcripts of Gorbachev’s discussions with many Middle Eastern leaders. These suggest interesting connections between Soviet policy and contemporary trends in Russian foreign policy. Here is a fragment from a conversation reported to have taken place with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on April 28, 1990:

H. ASSAD. To put pressure on Israel, Baghdad would need to get closer to Damascus, because Iraq has no common borders with Israel. . . .

M. S. GORBACHEV. I think so, too. . . .

H. ASSAD. Israel’s approach is different, because the Judaic religion itself states: the land of Israel spreads from Nile to Euphrates and its return is a divine predestination.

M. S. GORBACHEV. But this is racism, combined with Messianism!

H. ASSAD. This is the most dangerous form of racism.

One doesn’t need to be a fantasist to wonder whether these discussions might be relevant to our understanding of contemporary Russian policy in a region of some enduring strategic significance.

Keep reading, Joe Biden shows up in the story too, as does Neil Kinnock, the lefty Brit whom Biden plagiarized in his 1988 presidential campaign.

Barry Rubin at Pajamas Media:

The world is getting into the habit of making Obama look inept.

The U.S. sends a delegation to Damascus to wean Syria from Iran, and Syria promptly responds by inviting Iran’s president to the country and tightening the relationship. The U.S. praises Pakistan and sends billions in aid, and Pakistan responds by being less than cooperative in dealing with the Times Square bomber.

Now it’s Russia’s turn. Just hours after the Obama administration praised Russia for allegedly cooperating on sanctions against Iran — to justify pushing forward a bilateral nuclear weapons limitation agreement with Moscow — Russia eagerly responded by subverting U.S. Middle East policy.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev visited Syria and Turkey, taking a very large entourage with him to work on trade and military cooperation agreements. In effect, these meetings marked another step in the creation of an anti-American alliance in the region with Russian backing.

How do we know about this alliance? Because Turkey, Syria, and Iran are openly declaring its existence. How do we know Russia is backing it? Because Medvedev is openly claiming this.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a “friend,” and that Iran is using its nuclear program “for civilian purposes only.” He also said that Israel, not Iran, threatens regional stability.

Syrian government newspaper al-Baa’th declared, in so many words, that the Middle East is coming together in an alliance to reject Westernization, artificial borders, America, and Israel, while embracing various anti-Western conspiracies. What countries are in this new alliance?

Syria, Iran, and Turkey, with their great peoples and their lively peoples and their rejectionist [the Syrian term for radical, anti-Israel, and anti-American] policies are moving toward brotherhood.

The comments from Iran? President Ahmadinejad declared:

[The Americans] are forced to leave the region. … [The U.S.] government has no influence [to stop] … the expansion of Iran-Syria ties, Syria-Turkey ties, and Iran-Turkey ties. God willing, Iraq too will join the circle.

In its own way, Russia is joining the circle as well. Medvedev signed deals suggesting that Russia might help Turkey and Syria build nuclear reactors. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Russian parliamentary foreign liaison committee, called Syria “a strategic partner” with Russia.

Obviously, bringing Hamas into negotiations or melding it together with the existing Palestinian Authority would guarantee the failure of any talks, and possibly result in Hamas takeover of the West Bank, anti-American Palestinian leadership, and the renewal of war with Israel.

Why is Russia doing this? Clearly, there are commercial considerations involved. Russia is desperate for money and export markets, including the ability to sell its weapons which — being inferior to those of the United States — only have a market of countries ineligible to buy American.

Yet commerce is only part of the picture. The current Russian leadership sees the United States as a rival, is jealous of its power, and is angry about losing the Cold War. The shrinking of their country from a mighty superpower to an impoverished wreck makes them steam, and they blame their fall on U.S. machinations. Building up Russian nationalism and returning the United States to enemy status is a way to mobilize popular support for the government.

And finally, there is a genuine ambition to rebuild the old Russian/Soviet empire and spheres of influence.

Arthur Chrenkoff:

It is a damned place,” commented Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former Polish president and communist-turned-social democrat.

It’s difficult to disagree.

Katyn, the forest near the western border of Russia, which in 1940 became a mass grave for some 4,000 Polish Army officers and community leaders out of 20,000 first interned by the Soviet government following the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov carve-up of Poland and then subsequently murdered by the KGB’s predecessor on Stalin’s orders, has tragically claimed more Polish victims almost exactly seventy years later.

In news that sent shockwaves through Poland and the rest of Europe, the plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski, together with 130 (88 according to Polish media) other senior government and military officials as well as family members of original Katyn victims has crashed on approach to the Smolensk airport, according to the latest reports killing everyone onboard.

The Polish delegation was flying in to take part in joint Polish-Russian commemorations of the Katyn Massacre. The visit, together with the participation of Russia’s Prime Minister Putin in an earlier commemorative ceremony, were widely seen as encouraging first signs of a thaw between the two countries, relations strained both by centuries’ worth of bad blood and conflict, as well as more recent determination of post-communist Polish governments to chart a pre-European and pro-American course, outside of Russia’s sphere of influence.

The death of the president, together with so many key officials and guests, is not simply a tragedy in itself, but it throws the whole region into the sea of uncertainty of the kind not experienced since the fall of Communism.

It was under Kaczynski’s tenure as president that the Polish-Russian relations reached freezing temperatures. Putin, the glacial tsar of the new Russia, had found a stubborn match in Kaczynski, a former anti-communist dissident and then a constant fixture of the Polish political scene over the past two decades of independence. In 2001, Kaczynski founded, together with his twin brother Jarsolaw, the Law and Justice Party, a conservative populist platform that allowed Jaroslaw to govern as the prime minister between 2006 and 2007, and Lech to be elected as president in 2005. The influence of Law and Justice on the Polish political scene has been characterized by a mixture of social conservatism with a nationalist-Catholic bent and foreign policy whose three main pillars were pro-Americanism, throwing Poland’s new-found weight around the European Union, and strong anti-Russian sentiments…

The new U.S.-Russian arms control treaty is a much better deal for Russia than its predecessor, but Moscow reserves the right to withdraw from it if a planned U.S. missile defense system grows into a threat, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday.

Sergey Lavrov said Russia will issue a statement outlining the terms for such a withdrawal after President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign the treaty Thursday in Prague. The new accord replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expired in December.

Lavrov has said before that Russia could withdraw from the treaty. But his comments at a briefing Tuesday were his most specific yet on how and why a withdrawal could occur.

“Russia will have the right to opt out of the treaty if … the U.S. strategic missile defense begins to significantly affect the efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces,” he said.

Meanwhile, Putin gets cozy with Hugo:

Russia has offered to help Venezuela set up its own space industry, including a satellite launch site, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the South American country on Friday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the offer by Russia hours before Putin arrived, saying officials would discuss the possibility of setting up a “satellite launcher and a factory.”

“Russia offers help so that Venezuela can have its own industry for the use of its outer space,” Chavez said Thursday night. He didn’t give details or say how much that might cost.

The two countries are also discussing new weapons deals, Chavez said in televised remarks, without giving details.

Chavez’s government has already bought more than $4 billion in Russian weapons since 2005, including helicopters, fighter jets and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. Chavez said last year that Russia agreed to loan Venezuela up to $2.2 billion for additional arms deals.

From Pravda:

USA’s Aerojet, a major rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer, plans to purchase old rocket engines from Russia. The West, particularly the USA, is a civilization of packages. They can give a very good visual presentation of things, but the package does not imply good quality of products. US space products often lagged behind Soviet products especially in the space industry.

Well, we got to the moon and the Russians didn’t.

We, with the Brits and the French, launched Telstar, the first communications satellite.

We Americans enjoyed private automobiles (often two or more per family!) that looked good, came in an astounding variety and could be bought right off the lot — no decade-long waiting list to buy an ugly Soviet rust bucket.* We sang songs about our cars, we liked ‘em so much.

We never had a shortage of toilet paper — we even got around to putting pretty flowers and nice fragrances on ours.

We invented the Internet. They hacked it and spammed it.

We invented nukes: we didn’t  pay spies to steal the design.

We build fences to keep people out, not in.

I could go on and on.

It’s amusing –and revealing of Russia’s pitiful insecurity–that it spins such silly stuff.

Especially from the nation that invented the Potemkin Village — the epitome of “packaging.”

___________________________

* These are Trabant jokes, the East German state-manufactured auto:

Q. How can you make a Trabant disappear?
A. Spray it with rust arrestor.

Q.  What’s the difference between a Trabant and a golf ball?
A. You can drive a golf ball.

Q.  How do you double the value of a Trabant?
A.  Fill up the tank!

Q.  How do you turn a Trabant into a sports car?
A.  Put sneakers in the trunk!

Finally,

A customer walks into a Trabant dealer and says, “I want a Trabi with a two-tone paint job.”

Dealer: Yes, sir! It also comes with a turbocharged engine, anti skid braking, radial tires and a Blaupunkt stereo.

Customer: You’re joking.

Dealer: Well, you started it!

Oh, those were the days!

Hopey changey gone away-ee.

A senior Russian diplomat warned the West on Wednesday against trying to paralyze Iran by targeting the Islamic Republic’s energy and banking sectors with crippling sanctions.

Russia has in recent weeks signaled growing frustration with Iran over its nuclear program, though Moscow has given few indications about what sanctions it might be prepared to sign up to in the United Nations Security Council.

The United States has said it hopes to see sanctions against Iran in a matter of weeks and Israel has pressed Russia to back crippling sanctions, though the Kremlin has steered clear of openly supporting calls for further U.N. sanctions.

Oleg Rozhkov, the deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s security affairs and disarmament department, said Moscow would only consider sanctions aimed at strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime.