Are you kidding me? Just when there were no more independent-minded Russian journalists to slay, no more KGB-affiliated goons to elevate to higher office, no more human rights organizations to harass, no more ways to come off as backward in the eyes of the civilized world, Russia goes out and does the unthinkable. It bars, of all nefarious institutions, the British Council. The British Council! Heavens, where are lost expats going to check their email for free? Where will ESL instructors get their language tapes? Where will all those unruffled-through Economist magazines go? Shutting down the British Council in the country that gave us the Lubyanka prison is a little like closing down a mom-and-pops bookstore in Las Vegas for selling sinful magazines. State officials have begun harassing British Council employees. Russian police in St. Petersburg even detained the Council's director for, of all things, having alcohol on his breath while driving (Insert your own pot-calling-the-kettle-black quip here)--when he hadn't even been drinking, according to coworkers.
Of course, the real reason Russia is trying to shutter the British Council is to protest the expulsion of Russian diplomats from London, better known as Moscow on the Thames. Also, a few Kremlin hardliners suspect the Council of being a front for British intelligence. Relations have been sour since Russia refused to cooperate in the British investigation of the November 2006 poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko--a London-based former KGB operative-turned-Russian dissident.
Good for the British for refusing Moscow's orders to shut down. The rest of the world can only look on with bewilderment at the absurdity of Russia's behavior. When Russia is not banning Georgian spirits, it's blocking access to English-language textbooks. When it's not bullying its neighbors by shutting down their oil supply, it's selling nuclear fuel to Iran. Russia, it would seem, is paranoid about becoming irrelevant on the world stage. It knows that once oil prices go down, its importance abroad will shrink. So to keep itself in the game, as it were, Moscow stirs up trouble from time to time and tries to export its goon-like behavior to the rest of the civilized world--then bristles when other countries don't bend to its will. I guess this is what happens when you give the keys of the Kremlin to former spooks.
Educate Russians i.e. Spread western propaganda to Russians. That is how the 3rd world countries are bought and controlled by gift bearing horses. I guess Russia got smart.
Naomi Klein's latest book, The Shock Doctrine has a whole chapter on the pillage in Russia
the pillage continues:
Kellogg Buys Russian Food Company
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008
http://news.practice.findlaw.com/ap/f/1310//01-17-2008/20080117045011_06.html
Perhaps you're simply unaware of Putin's coup with the littoral nations of the Caspain Sea, negotiating a complete shut out of any Western nations' access to that key geography for the Trans-MiddleEastern oil pipeline. You know, the REAL reason CHeney met with the energy execs right after getting "elected" and for which we went to war with Iraq.
Or that Russia just finished launching the final 3 satellites in its own version of the GPS constellation, GLONASS.
Spectacularly "coincidental" timing considering that over the last year that Russia's top military ally China demonstrated on 3 separate occaisions the ability to neutralise the U.S.'s GPS satellites over Asia. In the event that Bush pushes the U.S. into a hot conflict with Iran (probably in support of an Israeli pre-emptive strike), Russia and China both possess the ability to neutralise a critical mass of the U.S. GPS constellation over Asia. Important because without that data about half our military technologies are impotent, giving the Russians/Chinese/Iranians a HUGE strategic military advantage.
Mr. Beehner, in the future please limit your writings to subjects you have an actual working knowledge of.
Why not just come out and tell us what is really bothering you Mr. Beaner?