MOSCOW, June 7, 2005 – Russia will retaliate against any country who puts weapons into space, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov made clear last week.
Ivanov didn’t say which country with three names starting with “The” is arrogant enough, insane enough, and so drunk with power that it would try to use space as a launching pad to attack its enemies on earth, but three guesses ought to be enough.
If you still can’t guess, here’s a clue: It’s the same country that has already invaded Iraq and is now mumbling ominously about Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.
None other than neocon Christian standard bearer Donny Rumsfeld himself, as the newly nominated Defense Secretary, first recommended such a policy in Jan. 2001. The military, he declared, should "ensure that the president will have the option to deploy weapons in space."
Based on the report, the Bushmeister in 2002 withdrew from the 30-year-old Antiballistic Missile Treaty banning weapons in space, an international agreement which up to that time had been considered sacrosanct. And now, according to The New York Times, the Air Force is asking for Bush’s approval of a new national security direction leading specifically to space weaponization.
Golly, I wonder if he’ll give it!
“It's the American way of fighting,” declared Gen. Lance Lord, commander of the Air Force Space Command. And sadly enough, it is. Virtually every country in the world opposes putting weapons in space. So it stands to reason that the U.S. should get the jump on them all so we can “toast,” in one air force general’s words, the country of our choice.
In case you doubt our moral right to be there, "Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny," the general – apparently confusing Lord with God – has pronounced.
The European Union, China, Canada, and Russia have already openly opposed U.S. threats to use space as a weapons platform, and Ivanov simply reiterated that opposition:
“If some state begins to realize such plans,” he said during a visit to the Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan, “then we doubtless will take adequate retaliatory measures.”
So you might say that the new arms race which many warn would take place if the U.S. followed through on its insane plan, has already begun.
The only thing that might yet save us is that the U.S. is already so overcommitted that it can’t afford the $ 220 billion to $ 3 trillion it would take to build a space-based system that could defend against an attack by a handful of missiles, the NYT reported, quoting a top weapons expert. The price tag on a space-based laser, e.g., is estimated at $ 100 million per target.
Of course, the fact that the United States can’t afford such a grandiose piece of holocaustian mischief doesn’t mean we won’t buy it. We can’t afford the Iraq war or an Iran War or a Syrian war or a Venezuelan war. But that hasn’t kept and won’t keep the Christians in the White House from embarking on one or more of them anyway. After all, nothing less than “the Rapture” is at stake here!
Now that the Kremlin controls all TV in Russia, Putin is aiming at the next tier of media. Gazprom, the government-owned natural gas monopoly which already owns NTV and Echo Moskvy radio, has announced it is buying Izvestia, probably the most respected and widely read general circulation newspaper in Russia.
The newspaper, the former print media flagship of the Soviet regime, is now owned by another oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, who also happens to be the chief owner of Lukoil, the largest oil company in Russia now that the Kremlin has obliterated Yukos.
Potanin could hardly ignore the precedent. “The Kremlin made Potanin a deal he couldn’t refuse,” confirmed Radio Free Europe media analyst Anna Kachkayeva. The Kremlin decided that he had to sell, and Gasprom is executing the order.
“No doubt it was done at the request of the Kremlin,” agreed Yuri Korgunyuk, editor of the political weekly “Part-info.”
Analysts are pointing out the obvious: Under Gazprom the newspaper will become another loyal sycophant of Tsar/Commisar Putin. There will be no more criticism of the Kremlin..
The state gas monopoly was handed TV station NTV when the Kremlin confiscated it shortly after Putin came to power. NTV had been a constant critic of Putin and his Chechen policy. No longer is Chechnya, unquestionably the most sensational news story in Russia, even mentioned – on NTV or any TV channel.
Ironically, the same day the deal was announced, Hermitage Capital, one of the country’s leading foreign investment funds, released a report charging Gazprom with wasting money on non-oil ventures. The Moscow Times noted that Gazprom paid non-oil salaries last year of $ 1.5 billion, “which the report said brought the gas giant losses of $ 276 million.”
Izvestia lost money last year. And the day before the deal was announced, Gazprom said its losses on gas sales in Russia would reach $ 1 billion this year. So there’s not even a pretense that Gazprom wanted Izvestia as a cash cow or that money was even a factor.
That Putin is aiming at nothing less than the re-Stalinization of Russia was made frighteningly clear in a Moscow Times analysis – based on a newly-published Scribner book, Kremlin Rising -- of Putin’s appointment by former Pres. Boris Yeltsin as his successor. Putin was picked as heir-apparent because he could be trusted to grant the Yeltsin family immunity from prosecution. It was his first official act after taking office the last day of 1999.
The former KGB colonel was incensed by TV criticism of the Kremlin’s slow response and lying explanations after the sinking of the submarine Kursk in August, 2000, just a few months after he came to power. Channel 1, even then a state-controlled channel, but owned by Boris Berezovsky -- then still in favor with the new tsar/kommissar -- interviewed two widows of officers who had died in the submarine. Here’s what the Times reports:
Outraged, Putin called personally to rail about the report and accuse the journalists of faking it. “You hired two whores…in order to push me down,” Putin exclaimed, as former anchor Sergei Dorenko remembered it. Dorenko was taken about: “They were officers’ widows,” he said. “But Putin was convinced that the truth, the reality, did not actually exist. He only believes in (political) technologies.”
Putin’s anger boiled over at a closed-door meeting with relatives of the crew six days after the submarine sank. When fuming relatives shouted him down, saying they knew from television that the Russian government had initially turned down foreign assistance, Putin bristled.
“Television?” he exclaimed. “They’re lying, lying, lying.”
After that the die was cast.
Putin forced Berezovsky and Vladimir Guzinsky, owner of NTV Channel 4, out of the country and the Kremlin took control of the two channels.
They began holding weekly meetings to issue instructions about what should be covered and how, and more importantly, what should not be mentioned, including Chechnya.
Khodorkovsky’s serious problems began when he began openly opposing Putin. Again, the Times:
By funding opposition parties and nongovernmental organizations, cutting a deal with China for a new pipeline, negotiating a partnership with a U.S. oil giant and trying to extend his sway in parliament, Khodorkovsky had outraged the siloviki (the growing group of ex-KGB officers brought by Putin into the Kremlin to help set and administer policy).
The tension came to a head during a meeting between Putin and the country’s…oligarchs, when Khodorkovsky challenged the president about the corrupt sale of a state oil field. Putin responded sharply, reminding Khodorkovsky that he had obtained his own company, Yukos, through manipulated government auctions in the 1990s.
….Even some Putin aides were surprised at the president’s outburst. “Putin just exploded,” one said later. “I didn’t expect such a reaction. He was just out of control.
It was not long after that Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint and taken off in handcuffs during a dawn refueling of his airplane at a distant airfield. The rest, as they say, is history.
But the most telling incident occurred a few months into his first term when he told 300 former KBG generals gathered to celebrate the anniversary of Stalin’s creation of the secret police, the Chekists:
“Instruction number one for obtaining full power has been completed.”
The few civilians in the hall thought it was a joke. Only later, one recalled, would they realize how serious he was.
So what has been increasingly apparent, and what Putin has persistently denied -- that he is moving toward complete dictatorial control of Russia -- is a matter of record.
You can still smell the stench of burning gunpowder from the smoking gun.
But few will know it, because Putin will not let this information appear on Russian TV, radio, or newspapers. It appeared in the Moscow Times because it is an English language newspaper which only ex-pats read, and therefore no danger to his regime.
How far will this go? Where will it end?
A slight hint came on the front page of the same issue of the Moscow Times. Putin’s growing fear of public protests has brought the issuance of a new set of secret rules for the already-brutal police that allows them to use deadly force to deal with protests.
“This is a part of meticulous planning to quash any public protest…,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki human rights group. The amount of brutality used is left to the discretion of the uniformed bandit dealing with it. There are no limits placed on him by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of the U.S. Justice Dept.
“Under this instruction,” she said, “a pensioners’ protest” against reduced state assistance, for instance, “would free the police’s hands to act in the same way they would in a hostage-freeing operation.”
The revelation of the secret police directive came through documents filed in a suit by citizens of Blagoveshchensk over alleged police abuse and brutality in connection with an incident late last year after some 50 local citizens attacked police over their attempts to arrest several local citizens on minor offenses.
The police brutality started two days later, court documents reported. According to the Moscow Times, “hundreds of people were detained at random on streets, in cafes, and in their homes. More than 100 said they had been beaten and abused by police officers during the raid, which local authorities have defended as an urgent measure to restore order.”
Alexeyeva and other civil rights spokesmen said the secret directive “appeared to be just one of many secretive ministry edicts that trample citizens’ rights.”
Human rights organizations have sent a letter to the federal prosecutor demanding an investigation of these documents, “and we are demanding that all secret instructions be revoked. They deal with us, not just with policemen,” Alexeyeva was quoted as saying.
And if the prosecutor doesn’t respond, she says she, as a member of the presidential Council for Civil Society, will take it up with Putin himself, where she can get a real run-around, since the secret directives were probably issued at his instructions as part of his plan to gain “total control.”
It is a basic operating principle of Putin, as an ex-KBG operative, that nothing be left to chance. The crackdown is beginning in earnest. The 2008 election preliminaries are starting.
To Stavropol with Zhorik next week? Or not? That is the question. Sergei called and said they were very busy and could I come down at the end of July? Zhorik wants me to go anyway. He isn’t going to get here until day after tomorrow, the 10th, at least. We could leave here Saturday, get there Sunday; I could spend five days and come back next weekend.
But I calculated this morning that I stand to lose as much as $ 700 in missed classes if I go. That’s a lot of money. I’m inclined not to go, but rather send Zhorik to get his passport and return when he gets it.
I realized yesterday that, even after giving Zhorik my last $ 200 week before last, I now have nearly four grand in the bank. Of course, there’s at least $ 300 coming out for Zhorik and another $ 300 for Denis, and $ 700 for the rent; but over the next two weeks, I should easily replace that, and over the following two weeks, pile up a total of at least $ 5,000. Maybe.
The long-term question still arises: Move to Stavropol or not. Zhorik wants me to stay here, but Bill Skyrme said things are looking weird, and he’d get out of Moscow if he were I.
Well, I still have a year to decide.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #133 - Khodorkovsky: “Beginning of the end? A lot more cuckoos
