Window On Eurasia: ‘TV Party’ Losing Out To ‘Internet Party’ In Russia, Moscow Paper Says
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posted by eagle on December, 2010 as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: ‘TV Party’ Losing Out to ‘Internet Party’ in Russia, Moscow Paper SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, December 22 – Russia currently has only "two real mass parties, the party of the television and the party of the Internet,” the editors of Gazeta.ru say, and declines in the influence of the former relative to the latter should be a matter of greater concern to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin than the results of any poll about trust in the tandem.
That is because, the editors say, "it is not a secret for anyone” that the TV party overwhelmingly "votes for Putin and Medvedev and any United Russia” candidate, while "the second” has various and often "diametrically opposed positions” but relates to the powers that be in "a sharply critical way” (www.gazeta.ru/comments/2010/12/21_e_3473009.shtml#).
The occasion for these reflections, "Gazeta” continues, is the sharp decline in the number of television viewers who tuned in to Prime Minister Putin’s recent public press conference, declines that suggest that "the influence ...
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Window On Eurasia: Russian Stability Is ‘Largest Potemkin Village Of All,’ Commentator Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Russian Stability is ‘Largest Potemkin Village of All,’ Commentator SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, December 23 – The Russian powers that be have built "the largest Potemkin village” ever with their largely successful effort to promote the notion that their country is "politically stable,” but while they may have fooled others and themselves, the reality behind this façade, a Russian analyst says, is that today’s Russia is "unstable and unpredictable.”
In a commentary on Vlasti.net yesterday, Olesya Yakhno says that this becomes obvious if one compares the actual events on the Manezh Square with the entirely inadequate responses of Russia’s senior leaders, responses that show they are almost completely out of touch with Russian realities (vlasti.net/news/113094).
If one considers "objective realities, she says, it is difficult to insist that the Manezh clashes were something "unpredictable.” Football fanatics had organized a protest earlier on the same issue; the family and friends of Yegor Sviridov had held a meeting in his honor. And, she points out, ...
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Nzherald.co: Russian Corruption's A Hurdle For Trade Alliance
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Russian corruption a hurdle for trade alliance
By Peter Huck 5:30 AM Wednesday Dec 22, 2010 Protesters demonstrate against Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, seen by US ambassador John Beyrle as at the heart of corruption in Moscow. Photo / AP
In Russia the slang word for protection is krysha, literally "the roof". According to testimony from a Russian mobster at United States Senate hearings in 1996, krysha is a a basic business expense in modern Russia. Without krysha there is no business. Take Moscow, the capital and the nation's business hub. It is also, according to a cable written by John Beyrle, the US ambassador, and subsequently made public by WikiLeaks, Russia's biggest business scam. The February 2010 cable alleges the figure at the top of Moscow's krysha pyramid was the former mayor Yuriy Luzhkov - a "trusted deliverer of votes and influence for the ruling party and its leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin" - who presided over a hierarchy of corrupt officials. Beyrle said Luzhkov's links to criminals had made government in Europe's ...
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Window On Eurasia: Disorders Prompting Moscow Patriarchate To Distance Itself From Regime
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: Disorders Prompting Moscow Patriarchate to Distance Itself from RegimePaul Goble
Staunton, December 19 – The disorders in the streets of Moscow and other cities of the Russian Federation are calling into question the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian regime, with the church distancing itself from the state and the state no longer able to count on the unquestioned obedience of the church.
Yesterday, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department on Relations between the Church and Society and a protégé of Patriarch Kirill, made a remarkable declaration to a Moscow roundtable on recent developments of inter-ethnic relations in the Russian Federation (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=38770).
Specifically, he said, "it is evident that the majority of the population of the country is dissatisfied with the existing social distortions, the actions of particular representatives of diasporas, the gap between the people and the taking of decisions, corruption, illegality, and the total lawlessness of local powers that be.”
"If the powers that be ...
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Window On Eurasia: National-Democrats’ Plan ‘Beginning Of The End’ Of Russian Federation, Kalashnikov Says
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posted by eagle on as ANALYSIS / OPINION
Window on Eurasia: National-Democrats’ Plan ‘Beginning of the End’ of Russian Federation, Kalashnikov SaysPaul Goble
Staunton, December 19 – The program of the National Democratic Alliance, which calls for the immediate separation of the North Caucasus from the rest of the country and the division of the federation into seven "ethnic Russian republics” is "the beginning of the end of the Russian Federation,” according to a Moscow commentator.
In an article on Forum-MSK.ru yesterday, Maksim Kalashnikov says that the new union’s idea, which he says "corresponds completely with the plans of INSOR,” the liberal think tank that has provided ideas for President Dmitry Medvedev, represents "the confederalization of the country, a CIS-2, and a new 1991” (forum-msk.org/material/politic/4984630.html).
Moreover, the Russian commentator says, this plan will lead to "the complete destruction of hopes for the conversation of the Russian Federation into a full-blooded unitary ethnic Russian state,” all in order to permit "the current ‘elite’ to remain unpunished and hide abroad” with "the trillions of dollars” ...
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