[Richard]

Have a look at this:[web]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4658848.stm[/web]

[Russian_Cowboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilBurner', 'T')here's a pattern developing now:

...Come to your own conclusions folks!

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Russian_Cowboy', 'T')he countries least friendly to Russia have the gas cut off first.

[Russian_Cowboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Russian_Cowboy', 'T')he countries least friendly to Russia have the gas cut off first.

[OneLoneClone]

Russia resumes Georgia gas flow

Well, just to wrap this up... we have gas restored to Georgia via Iran and Russia, and Putin continues his charm offensive, using the british spyrock row to kick out human rights NGO's

Putin warning over 'puppet' NGOs

and here he goes bragging up his new missile system

Putin boasts of Russia's missile power

PR blunders, nah... Putin's had a good month I think. I guess we may never know if the russians really blew up their own pipes or not... but the story may come out someday...

[shakespear1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'The countries least friendly to Russia have the gas cut off first.')

Yepp, anyone would play it that way and it has been done before. Just look at that Communist State of Cuba. Embargo by US but none for China or other authoritarian states

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leaf', 'W')hat you see in Georgia now you'll be seeing in Italy and Germany next decade...

[Russian_Cowboy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leaf', 'W')hat you see in Georgia now you'll be seeing in Italy and Germany next decade...

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') do not see what this affair has to do with the free market.

[Luckystars]

edit

[OneLoneClone]

Financial Times has an article about how Putin was scheming how to use natural resources to help regain Russian world power since 1999. It also goes on to show a $$ link between loyalty to Russia and gas prices.

Gazprom acts as lever in Putin’s power play

Link - But its behind a paywall

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')onths before the turn of the millennium, an article appeared in an obscure Russian academic journal. Natural resources, the writer passionately argued, offered the key to Russia “regaining its former might”.

“Russia’s natural resource potential defines its special place among industrialised countries,” he wrote. His name – then little known outside his country – was Vladimir Putin, Russia’s future president.

Seven years on, Russia leads the Group of Eight big industrialised nations and energy security heads the agenda for its presidency. Central to Russia’s clout is the state-controlled Gazprom – the world’s largest natural gas producer, the country’s most important energy resource and operator of most pipelines out of the former Soviet Union.

One question has grown in urgency since Russia wielded that clout on New Year’s day by suspending gas supplies to Ukraine: is Gazprom a conventional energy champion or a foreign policy tool second only to a nuclear arsenal in its potency? The question will be uppermost in the mind of José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, as he travels to Moscow on Friday in an attempt to persuade Mr Putin to open Gazprom’s pipeline to Europe’s energy companies.

It is also a question of compelling importance to investors. At the very moment that Russia triggered its gas war with Ukraine – sparking a Europe-wide panic about energy security – the government kept a long-standing promise to lift restrictions on foreign ownership of Gazprom’s shares, turning the company into the largest emerging-market stock in the world.

[HonestPessimist]

Ex-PM warned Russia turning into a dictatorship

I've been saying it for sometimes that Putin has been slowly turning Russia back into a totalitarian system since he became President after Yelstin. Mikhail Kasyanov just confirmed my concerns. I admire Russia for its history, culture and people but Putin worries me more than Bush, being an ex-KGB man with a lot of his ex-KGB loyalists in his ministries.

Chavez is already turning Venezuela toward a total socialist dictatorship under his political moldings in the same fashion that Fidel Castro did for Cuba. I was informed not too long ago that freedom-loving Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela for other countries because of Chavez and his fanatically loyal leftists encroaching their controls on the whole country.

Iran is already an Islamic dictatorship with a limited democratic system under the watchful eyes of the Revolutionary Guards.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HonestPessimist', '[')url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2115049,00.html]Ex-PM warned Russia turning into a dictatorship[/url]

I've been saying it for sometimes that Putin has been slowly turning Russia back into a totalitarian system since he became President after Yelstin. Mikhail Kasyanov just confirmed my concerns. I admire Russia for its history, culture and people but Putin worries me more than Bush, being an ex-KGB man with a lot of his ex-KGB loyalists in his ministries.

Chavez is already turning Venezuela toward a total socialist dictatorship under his political moldings in the same fashion that Fidel Castro did for Cuba. I was informed not too long ago that freedom-loving Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela for other countries because of Chavez and his fanatically loyal leftists encroaching their controls on the whole country.

Iran is already an Islamic dictatorship with a limited democratic system under the watchful eyes of the Revolutionary Guards.

[Eddie_lomax]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')
Please offer some kind of proof that Chavez is turning Venezuela into a dictatorship? He is a freely elected head of state, and fear mongering from free marketeers aside, is doing a wonderful job for his countrymen.

[lutherquick]

Just great...

The new American caveat is that anyone that has something we need to consume must be an evil dictator.
Must be, because Putin and Chavez aren't interested in US citizenship.

Yeltsin must have been a good guy, because he bought the American delusion, hook, line and sinker which dropped the Russian economy down 40%.
Enough with my sarcasm...

Truth is, Russian democracy and US democracy are about equal. Anyone in the US tries to over through the US government, then your in jail.
Anyone in America that does something called TRANSFER PRICING will have the FBI and IRS on their back using the RICO law.
So why is it when Yukos does transfer pricing at the loss of Russia it's bad? Well, maybe because America gained.
Why is it Cindy Sheehan can't protest in DC without getting arrested? Because she didn't get the proper license, and she isn't supporting the US hallucination that Saddam did 9/11, wmd were in Iraq and we are winning the war against the insurgency.

It's all based on double standards and hypocrisy.
And since America has the hegemonic edge, then what she says (not what she does), this goes...

Russian democracy is doing just great.
Kasyonov wants to be like Yeltsin and plunge Russia into another depression.

My guess is he will fail. People in Russia are impressed by a leader that has pledge allegiance to Russia's economy and Russia's more solid hegemony based on energy, not US hegemony based on fairy tales backed by worthless US dollars.

Kasyonov is a loser, he takes bribes and prefers the US dollar, the man is a traitor, he need to be working in the labor camp with the Yukos CxO team.
Poor Kasyonov, the spoiled little brat now wants to destroy the play house because the team caught him with his hands in the cookie jar.

[HonestPessimist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')Please offer some kind of proof that Chavez is turning Venezuela into a dictatorship? He is a freely elected head of state, and fear mongering from free marketeers aside, is doing a wonderful job for his countrymen.

[threadbear]

HP, Bushco supported and sanctioned an illegal coup that threw the guy in jail, until the grassroots support within the military restored democratic power. The reason you are so freaked by what looks like Chavez's weird bellicose posturing is because you only get part of the story in your tawdry, tightly controlled society. I pity your kind.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', 'H')e's not a dictator in the sense of Saddam but yes, Putin will be democratically elected until such time as he decides to step down. It's a peculiar type of democracy that so many nations seem to practice.

[Kingcoal]

Would I want to live in Venuezala? No. Would I want to live in Russia? No. Would I want to live in Iran? No. Do I want to keep living in the USA? Yes. I think it comes down to this.

America is not responsible for any of these country's wows. On the contrary, America pays dearly (as well as the rest of the world) for the oil from these countries.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kingcoal', 'A')merica is not responsible for any of these country's wows.