President Putin Cements Russia's Alliance with Animal Kingdom

MOSCOW-- In a surprise announcement this morning, President Vladimir Putin announced the signing of a binding alliance between Russia and the entire animal kingdom. Al Fin was able to interview the Russian president shortly after he made his announcement.

Al Fin: President Putin, what do you hope to gain from this alliance, and how much of the animal kingdom is involved?

President Putin: Yes, I know what you western media people will say, that this just involves sheep and horses, and baby goats. But you are in for a big surprise. We are now allied with the entire animal kingdom, from the smallest to the largest, and the most deadly.

AF: But what do you hope to prove with all of this?

Putin: Have you ever ridden on a shark's back, whatever your name is?

AF: Well, no. But what benefit will the Russian people obtain from an alliance with the animal kingdom?

Putin: Finally we have found a way to force you all to do whatever we want you to do!

AF: What do you mean?

Putin: Let us say that we give you an ultimatum to abandon all your military installations. You cannot refuse. If you do, all of your animals will revolt and kill you in your sleep!

AF: But what if we don't sleep with animals?

Putin: Stupid fool whoever you are! We will send mosquitoes, flies, ticks, fleas, tiny animals too small to see. All of them carry deadly diseases that will wipe the smirks off your complacent western faces.

AF: Yes, I see. But what can you offer the animal kingdom in return for its willingness to turn against your enemies?

Putin: We have agreed to sign on to the great green global human dieoff, to reduce the non-Russian population of Earth to around 100 million, mostly in South Africa, Patagonia, and Newfoundland.

AF: Do the animals truly want to do away with almost all humans? What about domestic dogs and cats, wouldn't they object to your plan?

Putin: We had some trouble with those, but the bears, wolves, tigers, and lions soon got them back in line with the rest.

AF: What about your allies in China and India? You seem to be implying that most of their populations will have to die off.

Putin: Implying? No, you idiot! I am telling you that we and the animal kingdom have come to an agreement that leaves everyone else very little choice.

AF: Are you quite certain that the animal kingdom will do all of these things that you claim?

Putin: Do you truly wish to take that chance, whatever your name is, western propagandist?

AF: Well. Thank you very much for your time, President Putin. [Putin stomps off and mounts a crane for a publicity flight over Moscow]

Image Credits: TNR

Putin's Desire: To Lock These Petulant Pussies Where the Sun Don't Shine

Update: The Russian court has just sentenced the pussy riot to 2 years in a Russian prison.

A man in the courtroom shouted "Shame!" and hundreds of protesters outside the Moscow courthouse repeated that chant and whistled when news of the sentence came.

"They are in jail because it is Putin's personal revenge," opposition leader Alexei Navalny said in the courtroom. "This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin."

Their crime: Staging a 40 second anti-Putin "punk prayer" inside Moscow's Church of Christ the Savior. Their punishment: A likely minimum sentence of 3 2 years behind bars.

Image Source

“There’s no true freedom of assembly in Russia, fines for protesting ‘illegally’ have just gone up exponentially, and Putin just passed a law that will enable Russian government to censor the Internet,” Lev said in an e-mail interview. “They want to make an example of Pussy Riot, which is why they didn’t care to give this trial even the faintest semblance of fairness.”

...if [Putin] backs down and lets them out, he’ll look like a loser, especially after a tremendous noisy international campaign,” Goldfarb said. “It’ll look like he’s defeated by the likes of Madonna and Björk, and that’s extremely humiliating — especially for a macho type like Putin.

“On the other hand, it’s extremely clear that if he sends them to prison, the protests will mount, the pressure will mount,” he said. _Wired

In the Soviet days, enemies of the state were sent to the Gulags, locked away in mental asylums, or summarily shot after providing a confession-under-duress. Under Putin, enemies of Putin are sent to prison, their assets stripped and appropriated by the inner circle.

For Putin, who has always styled himself as something of a "pussy magnet," being defied by a gentle pussy riot must be all the more galling.

Will Putin Risk a Pre-Emptive Strike on China's Megacities?

NextBigFuture
As China's population and infrastructure huddles ever closer together along the eastern rim, and concentrates into a few dense megacities, will the temptation to take out the ages-old southern enemy prove too much for Russian dictator Putin?

The demographic handwriting is on the wall. East Siberia will be ceded to China without a fight, without an invasion. Putin cannot afford to allow the wealth of his corrupt mafiacracy to slip through his fingers, but what can he do? Russians are disappearing at the same time that China is reaching out -- all over the globe -- for resources.

Energy, minerals, timber -- Siberia has it all in abundance. That wealth is the guarantor of Russia's continued existence as an empire, as a world power. The same wealth is a purloined promise to China for a future of superpowerdom.

Why is China making it easy for Russia to target its population centers and infrastructure?

"Laying the foundation year, three years paid off, five major development" is established in Yantai Hi-tech Zone Development Goals. According to the latest master plan introduced to Yantai Hi-tech Zone of the CBD as the leading technology driven, together with efforts to build high-end services, intensive with high-end manufacturing, leisure and tourism with coastal resort, riverside high-end scientific and cultural tourism zone, "as one four with "high-tech zones will hold up the layout of new industrial space; 10 km along the road on both sides of technology, planning and construction of 100 more than the roughly 30 stories about the amount of construction, building skyscrapers, modern style, the magnificent iconic urban landscape Boulevard... _NextBigFuture

Apparently the intent is toward greater industrial and commercial efficiency, and more services and conveniences closer at hand. Of course it will also mean more concentrated effluents of waste and toxic by-products of modern life, concentrated into even smaller spaces. Fortunately, most toxic and nontoxic waste can be disposed of with plasma gasification plants -- perhaps a good investment for the China to come?

China's next decade is not likely to be an unmitigated success, however. There are many things about China's real economy which even CCP economists do not understand -- much less outside western observers. Here are six predictions from one China watcher, Gordon Orr:

1. Inflation in food prices will take longer than expected to control.

Chinese consumption patterns are shifting as people become wealthier—more meat eating requires more cereals to feed the animals. The food supply chain, running at the limit, is close to breaking, and the pressures this problem creates will lead to further food quality crises. A major second- or third-tier Chinese city will see demonstrations over food price rises, unemployment, or both, on a much larger scale than anything that has occurred in recent years.

2. Middle-class bankruptcies will expand dramatically.

All that is needed for a wave of bankruptcies is further interest rate rises (targeting inflation) that result in a blip down in house prices just as mortgage payments rise. We have seen this before across major cities in Asia.

3. Minimum wages will rise, but productivity gains will outstrip labor costs. The profitability of industrial enterprises remained high at the end of 2010—indeed, higher, in many cases, than it had been a year earlier, despite the minimum-wage increases rolled out in 2010—and will probably remain high. Yet a government seeking to enhance its stature with lower-income workers will find that increasing minimum wages, perhaps by 15 to 20 percent, is an easy lever to pull.

4. China’s economic growth will be lower than expected.

5. China will step up its “invest out” program in the new five-year plan. The government may well seek to double the country’s cumulative outbound investment within the next five years.

6. The state will again try to reduce its ownership role in business. If the government relaunches its program to sell off more of its stake in companies, domestic share prices will probably decline or at least remain flat. The program will also soak up much of the liquidity currently supporting Chinese IPOs, thus reducing the ability of entrepreneurs to cash out quickly through them _from_NextBigFuture

Not particularly rosy, but not catastrophic either. But Orr was only looking at the next year, which is much safer than looking a decade or two ahead. China is leaping into a highly complex, even chaotic future, without a guidebook. China -- like Russia -- has strategic alliances, but no genuine friends on any side.

China's fate is inextricably tied to that of its northern neighbor, Russia. The relationship between the two countries has been strained for ages, and often at the brink of open war. Demographic strains and transitions affecting Russia's main source of wealth may prove the breaking point.

Putin Tightens Noose on Russia, Pleased With Election of Obama

Vladimir Putin's Russia bears the imprint of the former KGB functionary more clearly every day.

...as suicides among the economically depressed increase, Russia responds not with counselors but by reportedly [7] moving Internal Forces troops to cities hit hardest by layoffs, and thus more likely to demonstrate. Though Gennady Gudkov, the deputy chair of the State Duma Security Committee, told newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, “It could happen that no amount of Internal Forces will be enough.” _PJM

Evidence about Putin's complicity in the ongoing murders of Russian journalists continues to accumulate.

As the murders of Russian journalists go unsolved, there are increasing signs that the impunity of Russia's contract killers is not accidental. One reason for the lack of progress may be that the law enforcement organs that are responsible for investigating the murders of Russian journalists are actually involved in carrying them out. _Forbes

Putin appears to have reason to believe that Obama will be easier to "do business with" than his predecessor has been. Putin can see in Obama exactly what any other person of experience can see: lack of experience, lack of qualifications, lack of competence.

While Putin's Russia displays all of the advanced characteristics of "Animal Farm", Obama's US is just passing through the earlier stages. First the animals must be trained properly. To do that, one must have a firm control over the media and educational establishment (animal trainers).

Obama has achieved that critical goalpost. The media and academia are largely in his pocket. Without control of the media, a budding president-for-life is always in danger of having his propaganda contradicted in a much-too-public manner. Without control of academia, the would-be dictator cannot be sure of the future allegiances of his subjects.

Putin makes fascism seem so easy. Obama will learn that it takes a lot of work. So be a good little animal, stop reading this cognitive dissonance, and go back and listen to your trainers.

Russia's President Predicted an Imminent American Calamity -- Now He Wishes to Cash In On the Enormous Opportunity He Sees

In the great game of international dominance, the leading contenders always look for opportunities and openings, to make a move. Russia's president Medvedev--just before the Russian invasion and ethnic cleansing of Georgia this past summer--predicted an imminent calamity for the US. Now, Medvedev hopes to seize the opportunity he perceives in the recent credit crunch and congressional bailout, to move Russia's interests to the forefront. Europe and the rest of the world doesn't seem to mind in the slightest.

President Dmitri Medvedev said Thursday that the U.S. crisis showed that "the times when one economy and one country dominated are gone for good." Speaking of the United States, Medvedev said the world no longer needed a "megaregulator."

Russia has argued that the freewheeling Anglo-American style of capitalism is to blame for the crisis, a position echoed by Germany and other Continental European nations. Medvedev even called it financial "egoism."

A drumbeat of similar pronouncements has been heard in Russia in recent days. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a major speech Wednesday on U.S. financial "irresponsibility," blaming the plunge of more than 50 percent in the Russian stock market on the global economic slowdown and U.S. financial turmoil, rather than on any troubles endemic to Russia. _IHT

So Putin is blaming the US for Russian economic problems? Convenient. And Medvedev is asserting that the days of one-country dominance are over permanently? What a charming ignorance of history. Or is Russia secretly harbouring a desire for its own dysfunctional and demographically shrinking nation to take over from the US, as international hegemon? That appears more likely, than the literal interpretation of Medvedev's words.

It is true that the US dominance of international financial, political, and military affairs that began after WWII, is unlikely to last forever. China is leveraging its economic success into a rapidly expanding military strength on land, sea, air and space, which guarantees dangerous conflicts in the future.

Although Russia is shrinking in population and ability to mount a serious conventional military threat, its nuclear weapons technology and ICBM capability is being modernised just enough to keep Armageddon on the table. Russia's fossil fuel wealth--although incompetently managed--is sufficient to finance Russian belligerence and financing of proxy terror for many years yet.

The proximate and ultimate threat to US dominance, however, is US politics. If the US Democratic Party comes to total dominance over the US government--not just corrupt control of congress--several hugely destructive statist policies that have been smoldering relatively quietly, will burst into full flaming consumption of US reserve capacity to bounce back from adversity. It is not the large strike from the outside that will bring the US--and the entire western world as well--to its knees. It is the death from a thousand cuts, self inflicted, that weakens the nation to the point that it lacks the capacity--and eventually the desire--to get back up.

All of this is expected. It has always been expected. It is only a matter of timing. Everything changes, and it is up to the wise person to prepare himself for that change.

A few years ago, the Bush administration along with a number of Republican legislators (including Sen. McCain), tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies in order to preven exactly the credit crunch that we see today. They were blocked in that attempted reform by the same people who larded up the recent porky-pig bailout. One thing leads to another.

The credit problem is not actually a calamity for the US. It is how the credit problem was allowed to happen by those who are likely to be setting US policy for the next several years that is a calamity. The bailout did not reform the underlying problems. The bailout is a very expensive bandaid that papers over the problem--temporarily. There are much worse problems in the pipeline for the US, due to pop up from time to time.

After watching the way this problem was handled, we can fully expect that the next, larger crises will be handled similarly, with a resultant amping up of the underlying unsoundness of the foundations of the US hybrid economy and the US government's ability to affect national and international affairs in a constructive way.

Think of it as a nation-wide Hurricane Katrina on steroids and crystal meth. Think of the coming US governmental regime as Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco writ large. Think of all the corrupt DP political machines in the history of the US, all combined for one large cannibalistic glutton-fest at the public trough. At least, that is what the porky bailout combined with opinion polls suggests for the future.

Obama has charmed many US voters, and is the preferred candidate of most journalists, foreign leaders, and Hamas. Obama promises change, and change is one thing you can be sure of.

Is it Truly Megalomania When You are Europe's Richest Man and Can Destroy the World at Will?

Vladimir Putin is not only Time's Man of the Year. He has accumulated a personal wealth of over US $40 Billion, which makes him Europe's wealthiest person. He is also the man who controls a huge arsenal of nuclear tipped missiles aimed at western Europe and North America. His domestic enemies end up dead, in a mental hospital, or in prison. The jury is still out on what happens to his foreign enemies.

The claims over the president's assets surfaced last month when the Russian political expert Stanislav Belkovsky gave an interview to the German newspaper Die Welt...Citing sources inside the president's administration, Belkovsky claims that after eight years in power Putin has secretly accumulated more than $40bn (£20bn). The sum would make him Russia's - and Europe's - richest man....Putin "effectively" controls 37% of the shares of Surgutneftegaz, an oil exploration company and Russia's third biggest oil producer, worth $20bn, he says. He also owns 4.5% of Gazprom, and "at least 75%" of Gunvor, a mysterious Swiss-based oil trader, founded by Gennady Timchenko, a friend of the president's...Asked how much Putin was worth, Belkovsky said: "At least $40bn. Maximum we cannot know. I suspect there are some businesses I know nothing about." He added: "It may be more. It may be much more.

"Putin's name doesn't appear on any shareholders' register, of course. There is a non-transparent scheme of successive ownership of offshore companies and funds. The final point is in Zug [in Switzerland] and Liechtenstein....Putin has created a new, more streamlined oligarchy, his critics say. "The crown jewels of the country's wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin's inner circle," Vladimir Rzyhkov - a former independent MP - wrote in Monday's Moscow Times....

Guardian

Putin seems to have consolidated his power within Russia quite well. High oil and gas prices have helped considerably, and add significant clout to Russia's non-nuclear threat. Consider Putin a financially savvy and well placed "mafia don." A very wealthy don with the power to destroy the world.