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Roundtable Reveals Continued Split in Opposition
An opposition roundtable intended to unite opponents of President Vladimir Putin went largely ignored by the younger leaders of the protest movement, evidence that the protest camp is still in disarray, insiders and opponents said.
Friday's roundtable, presided over by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, the leaders of the newly merged RPR-PARNAS liberal party, was one of the many attempts to call for unity in the opposition movement.
"We are sure that only peaceful methods can be used to change the regime," Kasyanov said at the roundtable at the Ararat Hotel on Friday.
But Kasyanov's calls for unity, supported by some political dissidents, including Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairman of the Moscow Helsinki human rights group, were ignored by more popular leaders of the protest movement, includingAlexei Navalny, leftist politician Sergei Udaltsov and liberal Ilya Yashin.
All of them, including seasoned liberal politicianBoris Nemtsov, skipped the meeting, despite being invited by the organizers.
"Many of those who didn't come did it for ideological reasons," Yabloko party co-chairman Sergei Ivanenko said.
"Younger leaders don't want to unite, since they see many of the elder politicians as 'old guys' from the '90s," a senior political strategist who helped organize the roundtable said.
She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak with the press.
The absence of young leaders, including Navalny, who is seen by many as a rising star of the protest movement, was clear evidence of a divide in the opposition as it looks for a way to harness the protest sentiment in the country.
"The main way to force authorities to take part in a roundtable should be large-scale peaceful protests based on democratic values," the roundtable's mission statement said.
But opposition leaders who did attend the roundtable acknowledged that their powers to reach a broad Russian audience are limited because their slogans do not appeal to a mass audience of Russians who would rather support forces on the left.
"The problem with democratic forces can be described as a problem with the second word: 'forces,'" liberal Yabloko party deputy Sergei Ivanenko said.
"Nothing changes from our talks, things change only when people get on the street," leftwing Just Russia deputy Gennady Gudkov said during the roundtable.
The opposition's inability to unite around a political program is noticed by political opponents as well.
"Those December protests could have been turned into a real asset, but they were not," a United Russia State Duma deputy told The Moscow Times last week.
The deputy, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Putin might take advantage of the situation in the opposition camp by dissolving the United Russia-dominated Duma and calling for early elections.
His statement was echoed by prominent sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who resigned from the United Russia party in the summer.
"The feeling of a historical end and danger for a system can stimulate unexpected steps," Kryshtanovskaya told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, citing a dissolution of the parliament and an early appearance of a Kremlin-backed candidate as some of those steps.
Clinton Confirms Chance of Trade Deal This Month
The U.S. Congress may upgrade trade relations with Russia this month, a key part of the Obama administration's effort to bolster ties with Moscow and open the Russian market to more U.S. companies, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday.
Clinton, addressing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vladivostok, said the Obama administration was working closely with Congress on lifting the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, Cold War-era legislation that has blocked normal trade privileges for Russia.
"To make sure our companies get to compete here in Russia, we are working closely with the United States Congress to terminate the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia and grant Russia permanent normalized trade relations," Clinton said. "We hope that the Congress will act on this important piece of legislation this month."
Congress is under pressure to approve the trade bill because of Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization last month, a move the United States strongly supported.
U.S. business groups hope the House of Representatives and Senate will pass the legislation in September, before lawmakers return home to campaign. Businesses worry that without it U.S. firms may not get access to newly opened services markets and be subject to potential arbitrary Russian trade reprisals.
But with concerns in Congress about Moscow's support for Iran and Syria, as well as its broader human rights record, the timing of a vote remains unclear.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment tied normal tariff treatment for goods from the former Soviet Union to the rights of Jews to emigrate.
Russia has been deemed in compliance for nearly two decades, but the law nevertheless remains on the books despite WTO rules that require members to provide normal trade relations to one another on an unconditional basis.
Congress may add conditions to any PNTR legislation, including a measure known as the "Magnitsky bill" to punish Russian officials for alleged human rights violations.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who has called Russia the "No. 1 geopolitical foe" of the United States, has said he would support PNTR for Russia only if it is accompanied by a measure to target Russian human rights violations.
U.S. officials said Clinton raised the broad question of human rights in her talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Clinton is standing in at the Vladivostok summit for President Barack Obama, who is preparing for the November presidential election. She met Lavrov on Saturday and was due to see President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. officials say Clinton's trip is partially aimed at assessing Russia's push to expand engagement in Asia, which parallels the Obama administration's "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region following years of entanglement in military campaigns in Iraq and .
Clinton intended to stress to Putin that the United States welcomed a bigger Russian role in the region and was seeking to build more cooperation, the officials also said.
Clinton and Lavrov signed deals pledging to work together both in the Antarctic and in the fragile region of the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska.
Kremlin Aspires to Greater Role in Asia-Pacific
Top government figures and delegates at an Asia-Pacific forum in this formerly backwater naval outpost found "Spartan but commendable" conditions at an island venue here that wasn't their usual five-star hotels, President Vladimir Putin said Sunday.
In addition to the formal agenda, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which wrapped up Sunday, presented a chance for Russia to stake a claim to a greater role in Asia. The country put a lot of effort into showing that it cares for its vast, scarcely populated and underdeveloped East — and Putin said the attendees took note.
The forum of 21 economies, including the United States, China and Indonesia, took place on a scenic island just off Vladivostok, at the campus of a just-completed state university, with green parks, seafront alleys and a view of a giant bridge that the government ordered be built in time for the meeting. Many of the guests lived at the campus premises, in buildings that will later house student dormitories.
"Our guests appreciated the idea of not conducting the meetings in five-star hotels," Putin said at the closing news conference. "They were happy that they were the first to walk on this territory and these premises. The conditions were somewhat Spartan, but absolutely commendable."
Room prices, however, were about as merciless as at five-star hotels. Including three meals and non-alcoholic beverages, they ranged from 14,400 rubles for a single to 29,400 rubles for a presidential suite, according to President-Servis, the company that ran the accommodations during the event.
Some of the deals and ceremonies on the sidelines of the forum, which Russia is hosting for the first time, may have reinforced the idea that the government is really into shaping a brighter future for the region.
Gazprom chiefAlexei Millerand Ichiro Takahara, director-general of Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, on Saturday signed a tentative agreement to cooperate in financing the planned construction of a liquefied natural gas, or LNG, plant near Vladivostok. The agreement, signed as Putin and Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda looked on, also calls for Japan's assistance in marketing the gas. With the construction costs estimated at $7 billion, the facility will likely have an initial capacity of 10 million metric tons, and it could expand.
"This project could grow into a very large one by international standards," Putin said at the news conference.
When it starts operating, perhaps in 2016 or 2017, it could ship most of its fuel to Japan, which needs increasing supplies to power its electricity stations after last year's nuclear-reactor disaster triggered shutdowns of similar plants across the country.
The stoves that cooks used to prepare meals for the guests operated on natural gas that came all the way from offshore Sakhalin, an island to the north, in a pipeline thatcompleted as part of preparations for the forum. The same pipeline would feed the plant.
Putin also attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony for Rosneft's petrochemical plant outside of Vladivostok. Earlier last week, he opened a $300 million joint venture between Russian carmakerand Japan's Mazda to assemble Japanese cars in Vladivostok.
During a forum speech and at the news conference, Putin also pointed to some other cash-intensive projects that the government aims to carry out in the region, such as the Vostochny launch pad. Russia and China are hoping to develop a wide-body jet to compete with Boeings and Airbuses, and they could place some production of the future aircraft in Russia's Far East, he said.
According to the U.S. State Department, the last time Russia articulated its desire to raise its profile in the Asia-Pacific region happened under Soviet PresidentMikhail Gorbachevin 1986. Gorbachev then gave a "famous speech in Vladivostok about Russia wanting to play a more purposeful role," a senior State Department official said in a special briefing for U.S. reporters Friday, a transcript of which is available on the agency's site. "In fact, they have not played a very active role to date."
KUDOS, JABS
In a compliment to APEC, Putin said the future lied with regional, rather than global, integration. In this regard, he also mentioned Russia's latest effort to create a trade bloc: the customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Putin also took a jab at the WTO, saying it was unheard of for the WTO to move as quickly on an issue as the Asia-Pacific forum did in agreeing on a list of 50-odd green technologies that the countries want to have more accessible by slashing import duties on them by 2015. It took the forum members only several months to come up with a decision after declaring the plan at the last meeting in Honolulu.
On another WTO-related topic, Putin said Russia would push for changes in the organization's rules to allow member countries to protect their vulnerable industries at times of global instability.
"As a full-fledged member of this organization, we intend to get rigorously involved in the process of shaping fair rules of international trade," he said in a keynote speech to APEC chief executives Friday.
Putin also proposed that Asian economies consider the Russia-led customs union as a transportation bridge to Europe.
"If you look at the territory of the three countries, it will be clear that we do have something to offer," he said.
The customs union is sandwiched between China and the EU.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who stood in for President Barack Obama at the forum, called for the removal of protectionism and other measures in order to promote free trade.
A U.S. business executive said he was skeptical that the governments would raze their trade barriers any time soon.
"Leaders echo the same message that we need an open market," he said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press, adding that governments do introduce new trade hurdles anyway. "Maybe we need more action and less talking."
BEAUTIFUL SCENERY
Some of the forum's delegates were put up onboard the Legend of the Seas, a huge white cruise ship anchored in the harbor for the occasion. A free bus trip from the ship to the forum's venue took about an hour, taking participants from the heart of the city — close to its sea terminal and tsarist-era railway station at the end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad — across the high suspended bridges and along the sea coast.
"It's a long bus ride, but when you have scenery like that it's beautiful," said Alexandra Ho, a project manager at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada think tank, on one such ride.
Many Soviet-era apartment buildings along the route wrapped themselves in fresh canary-colored paint.
Ho was appreciative of Russia's effort to use the APEC forum to win a greater role in Asian trade.
"A lot of countries, especially non-Asian ones, want to increase their presence in Asia," Ho said. "The key part of this is infrastructure — and that is what Russia has done here. It shows its shift toward Asia."
Besides the bridge to the forum's venue, Russky Island, the government bankrolled a shorter bridge to connect two city districts and ease traffic congestion. A new airport terminal, funded by state-controlled Sheremetyevo Airport, and a recently completed road from the facility are also part of the construction effort for the APEC forum.
The government and state-controlled companies ploughed about $20 billion into various construction projects over the last five years to make Vladivostok worthy of hosting the international summit.
But the seamy side of Vladivostok was sometimes just a stone's throw from the parade of spotless motorways and fresh paint. One of the free buses, in an apparent bid to cut corners, steered off the track and took the riders through a rough patch of bumps on a road that apparently suffered damage from the region's frequent rainfalls, known to crack and wash away chunks of asphalt.
Putin said at the news conference that work would go on to improve living conditions in the city.
"What has been done is just the first steps," he said. "We practically operated on a site for construction that hasn't ended. And it's OK, given the magnitude of the construction."
View from US: Back on mommy daddy track
Mom and Dad were married 64 years. And if you wondered what their secret was, you could have asked the local florist — because every day Dad gave Mom a rose, which he put on her bedside table. That’s how she found out what happened on the day my father died — she went looking for him because that morning, there was no rose.
Mitt Romney, 65, stood erect at the podium and shed a tear or two when he related this story to the audience of thousands gathered to celebrate Romney’s bid for the White House coming November. The stiff, coldly calculating capitalist was actually tearing up. And crying with him were the suckers in the hall salivating for such soapy stuff.
My mom and dad gave their kids the greatest gift of all — the gift of unconditional love. They cared deeply about who we would BE, and much less about what we would DO.
Unconditional love is a gift that Ann and I have tried to pass on to our sons and now to our grandchildren. All the laws and legislation in the world will never heal this world like the loving hearts and arms of mothers and fathers. If every child could drift to sleep feeling wrapped in the love of their family — and God’s love — this world would be a far more gentle and better place.
Enough of over sentimentalism lathered in pastoral drama, you would say. But not the American media and the voter. They love to hear personal fairy tales from their leaders. TV anchors and commentators were going bananas over Romney’s romanticism. Many after the speech declared Romney the winner of the White House. By delivering the above lines, Romney was converted, in the eyes of the media, from a hardened businessman lacking a heart, to a fantabulous, fun loving human being!
Wait till you hear Ann’s personal story. It’s even more frothy and phantasmagoric.
Radiant in red taffeta dress and dazzling gold earrings with matching bracelet, the mother of five handsome young men and their kids totaling 18, Ann Romney, according to the many media, stole the show.
Tonight, I want to talk to you about love. I want to talk to you about the deep and abiding love I have for a man I met at a dance many years ago. And the profound love I have and I know we share for this country. I want to talk to you about that love so deep, only a mother can fathom it. The love that we have for our children and our children’s children.
Women wept openly as Ann continued: It’s the moms who have always had to work a little harder to make everything right. It’s the mom’s of this nation, single, married, widowed, who really hold the country together. We’re the mothers. We’re the wives.
We’re the grandmothers. We’re the big sisters. We’re the little sisters and we are the daughters.
We’re the grandmothers. We’re the big sisters. We’re the little sisters and we are the daughters.
Blah, blah, blah.
Ann, who drives a “couple of Cadillacs” according to her husband with a whopping $250m bank account, partly hidden in Swiss banks and the Cayman Islands, tried selling her personal story as a young bride: We got married and moved into a basement apartment… ate a lot of pasta and Tuna fish (ordinary people’s food)… our dining room table was a fold down ironing board in the kitchen.
Each sentence that followed had people and the media rhapsodising about Ann.
Unbelievable, but true. How, you may well wonder, can the most powerful nation in the world turn into pulp the minute it hears anecdotal accounts that tell of courage, adversity, poverty, love and sacrifice of parents.
“Here’s a word I’d like to see banned from future speeches at national political conventions: ‘Mom.’ Here’s another: ‘Dad,’” writes H. Hertzberg in the New Yorker. Going down the mommy and poppy gauzy route, he lists all the presidents, past and present, who have “lurched” down this track while accepting a major-party nomination for President of the United States. This is “less than ideal venue for a person who stands an even chance of becoming (or remaining) the most powerful human being on earth to go all teary about how much he loves his parents and his children and his spouse and how much they love him.”
Instead Hertzberg wishes the political speakers would get themselves a bit more “Roman grit and cut down on the chin-trembling about mommy and daddy.”
The keynote speaker at the recent Tampa, Florida, convention was Governor Christie of New Jersey. He too dwelt upon length at what a great woman his mom was. Who cares? I said out aloud while listening to his ‘chin-trembling’ tribute to his late mother. Don’t we all love our mothers? Don’t we all sing their praise testifying to their greatness as our mentors?
The soapiest speech of all came from the vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. With his puppy-blue droopy eyes and a widow’s peak V-shaped hairline, the young 42-year old congressman, openly and quite fulsomely cried when he mentioned his mom, sitting in the audience.
My Mom started a small business, and I’ve seen what it takes. Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business… Her work gave her hope. It made our family proud. And to this day, my Mom is my role model.
Tears, more tears and more chin trembling!
The three-day Republican national convention had a pack of speakers who openly and blatantly bored us with their personal life stories. There was President Bush’s secretary of state Condi Rice telling us about a little girl growing up in racist Jim Crow’s Birmingham, the segregated city of the south where her parents couldn’t take her to a movie theater or to restaurants, but they had her convinced that even if she could not have a hamburger at all-white Woolworths, she can be the president of the United States if she wanted to be, and she becomes the secretary of state.
Claps and more claps for a black woman denouncing fellow-black Obama as a loser, so vote for the white Romney.
Earlier Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley opened up her speech with: I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants who reminded my brothers, my sister and me every single day how blessed we were to live in this country. They loved the fact that only in America, we could be as successful as we wanted to be and nothing would stand in our way. My parents started a business out of the living room of our home and, 30-plus years later, it was a multimillion-dollar company.
Finally Marco Rubio, the Cuban-origin senator from Florida said of his father: He stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years, so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.
Once again, the crowd went bananas.
Every four years America falls in love with the person with the most heart wrenching life story. That’s why it elected Barack Obama, his colour, name and Kenyan roots notwithstanding.
Americans can be summed up in one sentence: sickeningly sentimental, politically naïve, callously ignorant of world beyond their borders, and selfishly individualistic. Russian-born Ayn Rand is vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s priestess of a good life: the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.
Next week you will hear Obama re-tell his story at the Democratic National Convention.
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