posted on July 12, 2002 05:44:00 AM new
The last remaining independent TV station in Russia, which was critical of the Putin presidency was closed and reopened under new management. With the recent interdict to control speech on the internet, opposition to Putin within the country will essentially vanish.
Putin's career before being elected president was a spy and then officer in the KGB. After he announced his candidancy for president several contenders withdrew but he still was elected with only 52% of the vote and charges of voting irregularities.
The odds are that he will win the next election with a landslide.
West soft on Putin, activists charge
By GLEB BRYANSKI
Reuters News Agency
Wednesday, July 10, 2002 – Page A8
MOSCOW -- A Moscow-based human-rights group accused the West yesterday of ignoring rights violations in Russia as a reward to President Vladimir Putin for supporting the U.S. antiterror campaign.
In a 470-page report covering 2001, the Moscow Helsinki Group said breaches of citizens' basic rights, including suppression of free speech and election irregularities, continued unabated in the Russian regions.
"The same violations are repeated each year. . . and unfortunately we cannot say that we are able to radically influence this situation," said Sergei Lukashevsky, one of the report's authors.
Veteran rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva said Western powers -- which had attacked Russia over its rights record, particularly in rebel Chechnya -- softened their criticism after Mr. Putin threw his support behind the U.S. war on terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Participation in the antiterrorist coalition gave Russia absolution on human-rights issues," said Ms. Alexeyeva, who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group.
The report, which looked at human-rights violations in all of Russia's 89 regions including Chechnya, said there had been no marked improvement.
In a special section dedicated to Chechnya, the report tells of numerous rights abuses by the Russian authorities, such as the story of Ruslan Eskarkhanov and his cousin Raslambek, both apprehended by Russian law-enforcement officials.
Their bodies were found later on the outskirts of the settlement where they had lived. Police denied any knowledge of the deaths.
The report also accuses the Russian government of trying to force about 150,000 Chechen refugees settled in neighbouring Ingushetia to return to Chechnya without giving them necessary assistance or security guarantees.
The report describes the state-orchestrated takeover of commercial NTV television last year as "a major loss in the sphere of civil and political rights," adding that media freedom in Russia's regions was more limited than in the centre.
The Moscow Helsinki Group says its 2001 report is the first countrywide attempt to monitor the current state of rights in Russia.
posted on July 12, 2002 01:15:06 PM new
Very interesting articles...
From the article by Bev Conover...
""Ordered liberty." Got it? "Ordered liberty" is having the government—i.e., government run by the Bushistas—spy on your every word and movement, and caution you to "watch what you say and watch what you do" or you will be deemed an enemy of the state and you will disappear into a gulag to do penance or, if you are deemed an incorrigible, be executed at George's whim.
Russian President Vladmir Putin is George's kind of guy. Pooty-Poot, as George calls him, brooks no serious criticism from his subjects. It rather makes you wonder what Pooty-Poot whispers in George's ear, whenever they get together, about how to deal with Americans' "excessive invocation of individual rights" in order to replace a messy democratic society with "ordered liberty."
Declan McCullagh reported in CNet News last week that the Russian Duma voted in favor of Putin's "request" to impose "sweeping restrictions on using the Internet to oppose the government."
A portend of things to come here? After all, George W. has to like that idea and he has the USA PATRIOT Act that was rushed through Congress practically sight unseen—after Tom Daschle's and Patrick Leahy's Senate offices received letters containing anthrax—to wield as his justification. Certainly, shutting down the dissenters is less time consuming than having the FBI pouring through everything on the Net.
posted on July 12, 2002 01:21:13 PM new
I heard that Congress voted on the Patriot act before they could even get a final copy of the bill printed out for them to read.
So many bills are so extensive that I doubt that they are read but it seems a betrayal of trust to vote on something that is unread. If it is too complex and big to read that is enough reason to reject it right there.
posted on July 12, 2002 10:42:05 PM new
We don't seem to get the same sort of coverage of what's happening in Russia under Putin that we used to, only a little over a year ago. This story from CNN is rather chilling.
Russia returns to the anonymous tip
February 19, 2001
Web posted at: 5:21 AM EST (1021 GMT)
By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com writer
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Just when many hoped Russia's spies had come in from the cold, President Vladimir Putin is putting a chill back in the air.
Earlier this month, the KGB's successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), alerted readers in an item in a government newspaper that it would once again consider anonymous tip-offs from citizens to combat subversion.
Until the news was reported last Tuesday, more prominently, in another national paper, Sevodnya, the decision by Russia's spy directorate had garnered about as much notice as if it had been published in invisible ink.
That was probably just as well for a Russian leadership teeming with ex-KGB operatives from Putin's old spy circles.
They know better than most that a renewed reliance on "anonimki" -- which Stalin, especially, used to such brutal effect in rooting out rivals -- might not go down well in a new, ostensibly more democratic, Russia.
For many Russians, the idea of a nameless denouncer stirs dark memories of Soviet days, when an untoward word from a neighbour, friend, or even relative to the state security organs could spell instant disgrace -- or worse -- for the accused.
"A lot of it was based on revenge," said Sergei Brilev, the London Bureau Chief for RTR, a Russian state television network. "You wanted to basically spoil the life of someone you didn't like."
Generations of Soviet schoolchildren were raised on the heroic tale of Pavlik Morozov, a schoolboy who denounced his own father to Stalin's police. The story, recounted in the land of Lenin, became a patriotic allegory to the nobility of placing the collective above the family.
The reversion to the use of anonymous informers comes more than a decade after former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sought to stamp out the practice on the grounds that it lacked any system of accountability in a democratic society.
FSB: Send us an e-mail
A decree passed by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on February 2, 1988 barred Russia's state security bodies from using any information from citizens who do not give a name, address, telephone number and place of work in their submissions.
In a sign of the changing times, the FSB runs a slick Web site on which it invites anyone with information useful to its mission to "please" drop a line to its electronic mail address, [email protected].
Last year, the FSB received thousands of electronic mail submissions from ordinary citizens, according to Sevodnya newspaper.
Under the new decision, the intelligence service said it would consider both those submissions that include names and other contact information, alongside anonymous ones. Submissions can be made by phone, in writing or e-mail -- or in person, at a special round-the-clock reception area at the FSB offices.
Referring to the FSB's pledge to give "objective consideration" to each complaint or tip, Sevodnya commented: "How this 'objective examination' will look in practice is still not clear."
Brilev believes too much has changed in Russia for anonymous informing to become an effective form of counter-espionage again.
"After 10 or 12 years of reforms, there are certain things which cannot be widespread in Russia again. Society has changed … Of course it is easy to remember some of the … old practices … but I can't imagine millions of Russians starting to write anonymous letters."
That is a view echoed by Oksana Antonenko, a Russian specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and a frequent visitor to Russia. Antonenko notes that a spate of recent cases in which Russian authorities have tried to gain the convictions of alleged double agents have all resulted in acquittals for the accused.
Antonenko contends it is simplistic -- and wrong -- to interpret the latest FSB move as a return to the worst abuses of Soviet times.
She says the Russia Putin inherited from Boris Yeltsin is far from the rigid, totalitarian structure over which Soviet leaders presided, and that the KGB itself has undergone tremendous change.
"There's a perception around that in Russia they are turning back to authoritarianism. The problem with Putin is not that he is relying on the security services ... but that he is indecisive and lacking the vision and stamina to put this vision across."
She adds it would be naïve for him to rely on the security services today, given the dramatic changes in the way they are structured and the recent brain drain of talented people. "There was this system of terror and repression, but nowadays that has changed."
Nonetheless, some suggest that the mere fact the FSB has taken this step is like to raise eyebrows among a jittery populace.
"It may be that this decree might be fairly innocuous," said Peter Frank, a Russian studies expert at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.
"On the other hand, the whole idea of 'anonimki' is one that frightens many Russians and the emergence of this decree against the background of what is going on with the media in general ... is bound to cause anxiety."
posted on July 12, 2002 11:25:18 PM new
The world is going Fascist and Freedom and Liberty will soon be only a memory. *THANK YOU* Rerpublican supporters for that! I'll bet that you're just dancing on tippy-toes with Bells on singing "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!" at the loss of our freedoms and rights. What a shame that you exist, to betray all of us that way, to betray all of those who have died to keep liberty and freedom alive. Shame on you for knowingly voting in such bad news. I hope you all end up on the receiving end first of what you unleashed on this planet!
posted on July 12, 2002 11:32:08 PM new
I dont think they need any new powers we survived direct assault by the british empire when we were just a few million,
we survived and won world war one with out these laws.
we survived and won world war two without these laws.
If any elected official cant do the job with in the job description which is the the bill of rights
and the constitution then he or she ought to be impeached.
posted on July 13, 2002 12:55:58 PM new
AN, to Impeach does not mean to correct or to throw out of office. A Recall that some states have works great for that purpose. I can't imagine what any other state can do to remove one of these criminals from office until the next election cycle.
posted on July 13, 2002 03:20:32 PM new
The Honest person fights for bread and family and home then in their spare time they fight corruption. The crook is fighting for their life every day 24 7 .
