Russia's Putin selling out to terrorists

Following recent terror attacks in Russia, Valdimir Putim vowed he would eradicate the terrorists.

Evidently that was just posturing and a lie. What he is in fact doing is negotiating a deal to provide billions of dollars each year to the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism:

LONDON/ANKARA, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran and Russia are negotiating an oil-for-goods swap worth $1.5 billion a month that would let Iran lift oil exports substantially, in defiance of Western sanctions that helped force Tehran to agree a preliminary deal to end its nuclear programme.

Vladimir Putin is outflanking the west at every turn

Nick Cohen in The Guardian:

This has been the year of Vladimir Putin's ascendancy. The Russian president has made Barack Obama look like a conman's stooge – a lame duck president so weak that he can barely waddle to the pond. Putin has managed to protect his client dictatorship in Syria – even after it broke one of the few taboos limiting man's inhumanity to man by using chemical weapons. He has Edward Snowden, perhaps the most damaging leaker in recent history, under the vigilant eyes of his secret police in Moscow. He has out-manoeuvred the pro-European demonstrators in Kiev and bought off the Ukrainian government.

At home, his control over the state and civil society is so complete that he can afford to play the merciful tsar and release dissidents and his former rival Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Forbes magazine was not making a mistake when it called Putin the world's most powerful person in 2013....

More at The Guardian 

h/t Terry Glavin

The emasculation of the American Presidency: Syria hails 'victory' in chemical arms deal, Assad forces attack in Damascus

Syria's government hailed as a "victory" a Russian-brokered deal that has averted U.S. strikes. President Barack Obama, meanhwile, defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.

More HERE 

and as a special bonus, a recap of  the trailer for "President Flexible":

Housewives' advocacy group mad at Canadian Foreign Minister speaking out about about Gay Rights

John Baird

REAL Women of Canada  is essentially a housewives' advocacy group that's view of women appears to have been frozen in time somewhere around 1958. The group's spokeswoman is upset that Canada's Foreign Minister John Baird is an outspoken advocate for Gay Rights abroad.

Gays face persecution in countries like Iran and most of the Muslim Middle East as well as in Uganda and Russia. That persecution often comes in the form of physical violence and imprisonment and torture.

I met John Baird a couple of years ago at the Munk Debates; he's a very decent guy. Under Baird's leadership, Canada has become a leader in global human rights advocacy. But for REAL Women, some humans aren't particularly important.

One of the commonly stated objections I've noted from some hard-core social conservatives to Baird's forthright condemnation of  mistreatment of Gays in Russia is that "we have no right to tell another country what is should do within its own borders."

Funnily, I've never heard a conservative of any sort make the same complaint when Baird (very commendably)  has forcefully spoken out about the mistreatment of Christians in Muslim countries including Pakistan and Egypt.

This is what REAL Women want to do, 

 and those damn Gays aren't going to pay for them to do it!

Many, many dear friends of mine are conservatives.  This attention-seeking ploy by REAL Women is something they should shun like the plague. REAL Women's attack on Baird makes them look every bit the caricature of the narrow-minded, hypocritical bigots that the far left would like to deceitfully tar everyone who thinks a 98% tax rate is unreasonable.

From the perspective of REAL Women, it's understandable they are distraught about homosexuals and Gay Rights. After all, if men can marry each other, who is going to pay for REAL Women to sit around the house eating bon bons and popping out children?

Looks like REAL Women will have to up their game and make sure they can pull in husbands who can keep them in the style to which they hope to become accustomed. Or they could stop being idiots and get a job.

Whatever...

Russian phone thief messes with wrong woman

This footage from a Russian subway shows a thief attempting to rob a woman of her iPhone.

The creep picked the wrong woman - what she does is amazing:

Communism Kills

Former UN Ambassador Bolton warns of American decline under a 2nd Obama term

On a mini tour of Canadian cities Calgary and Toronto last Wednesday and Thursday, John Bolton, America's former Ambassador to the UN spoke of dire consequences for America's position in the world if Barack Obama is elected to a second term.

"It's not American strength but American weakness that our enemies find provocative," warned Bolton, a current adviser to Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Barack Obama is the first US president in history to effectively renounce American exceptionalism, a term first described by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. The desire to be liked seems foremost in Obama's foreign policy goals, but Bolton observed it's easy to get one's adversaries to like you if you make concessions to them. Obama is a president who is happy to make concessions to Russia and China who have both stymied American interests repeatedly under his presidency. They have blocked sanctions against Iran and Syria and have provided diplomatic cover for North Korea.

Regarding the Iranian push to acquire a nuclear weapon, were Obama to be reelected, that would be a near certainty. Sanctions may be hurting Iran`s economy, but they are having no affect on its nuclear program and military action or regime change there is the only way of preventing their getting a nuclear bomb.

Iran`s largest embassy in the world is in Venezuela, not because of long-standing cultural ties, as Bolton noted, but because the authoritarian regime of Iranian ally Hugo Chavez is helping Iran launder oil money to circumvent international banking sanctions.

American military strength is at its weakest since Jimmy Carter, whose policies Obama has been increasingly replicating. If Bolton is correct, an unhindered Obama, who was disclosed to have promised Russian President Medvedev that he would have ` more flexibility` to make further concessions and weaken American missile defenses in a second term, would lead the United States down a disastrous path given the opportunity.

Obama gets Putin endorsement..guess why!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has endorsed Barack Obama's re-election bid for the US Presidency.

Now there's a shock, eh?

Islamic sect in Russia discovered living in catacombs

Some of the children, including babies aged one, are said to have spent their entire lives underground and never seen daylight.

The subterranean sect was discovered by police and security forces in the village of Torfyanoy near Kazan in the republic of Tatarstan, the biggest majority-Muslim region in Russia, 500 miles east of Moscow.

Officers were carrying out a routine check of conservative Islamic groups after a twin attack last month in which the moderate Mufti of the republic was injured in a car bomb and his deputy was shot dead.

A strict community led by Fayzrakhman Sattarov, 83, a self-claimed "emissary of Allah", had been known to be living at the property for up to a decade, ..

North Korean slaves held in Russian gulag labor camps

Vice TV did this expose on the shocking, ongoing use of North Korean slaves in Russia.

Secret Agent Obama to Russia: "After the election, I'll bend over and take it up the butt for America"

Actually, Obama told the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that after his presumed reelection, he'll have more flexibility. I assume the headline is what he plans on doing with that flexibility.

Iran's Chernobyl on the way

The Stuxnet computer worm that attacked computer systems in Iranian nuclear facilities last November has destroyed about 20% of Iran's nuclear centrifuges, according to The New York Times.

The Times speculates that the worm was devised by a joint US-Israeli intelligence program and, if reports are true, was one of the most advanced, ingenious spy devices ever used.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

In addition to delaying Iran's nuclear program, the worm may have created the seeds of a disaster that could devestate Iran if its mullah-controlled government continues to ferverently persue nuclear technology as a point of hubris.

Britain's The Telegraph reports that Russian scientists working in Iran's nuclear program have alerted the Kremlin that, in the wake of the damage, an "Iranian Chernobyl" will happen if they are forced to comply with Iran's deadline for completing the project.

The Telegraph's story stated:

Russian scientists working at the plant have become so concerned by Iran's apparent disregard for nuclear safety issues that they have lobbied the Kremlin directly to postpone activation until at least the end of the year, so that a proper assessment can be made of the damage caused to its computer operations by Stuxnet.

The Iranian government is bitterly opposed to any further delay, which it would regard as another blow to national pride on a project that is more than a decade behind schedule. While Western intelligence officials believe Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Iran insists the project's goals are peaceful.

The Russian scientists' report to the Kremlin, a copy of which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, concludes that, despite "performing simple, basic tests" on the Bushehr reactor, the Russian team "cannot guarantee safe activation of the reactor".

It also accuses the Iranian management team, which is under intense political pressure to stick to the deadline, of "not exhibiting the professional and moral responsibility" that is normally required. They accuse the Iranians of having "disregard for human life" and warn that Russia could find itself blamed for "another Chernobyl" if it allows Bushehr to go ahead.

"The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart."