TODAY: Opposition activist torture claims; Miliband leaves with no breakthrough regarding diplomatic concerns; meets with rights activists; Putin and Medvedev popularity waning?; President in need of own power structure to realize reforms; Stalin resurrection an identity issue; Gorbachev on Russophobia; alcohol; jokes; artThe Other Russia reports that Konstantin Makarov, a member of the outlawed National Bolshevik Party, and organizer of an opposition rally planned for the 31st October in Voronezh, was detained and beaten by two policeman, one of whom was S. Yemkov of the notorious Interior Ministry's Center for Extremism Prevention.  According to Makarov, his torturers told him that he would face similar treatment after each rally held by the National Bolsheviks.  Foreign Minister Sergei ...

The words "missiles" and "friendly" don't often go together, but the people at Boeing have sensed an opportunity for such semantic innovation - conveniently they could also make a lot of money from the silly imaginary missile games being played between Washington and Moscow over proposed defensive sites to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic.  According to this report over at EurActiv, the Boeing brass unveiled a new proposal today which they think should calm any fears in Moscow:  no need to dig permanent silos and bases, when you can just your a ground-based interceptor (GBI) which can be flown in and out of any given country on a C130.Interesting idea, but the Kremlin is ...

One drugmaker has figured out how to pull down $2.52 billion over the next six months off a single disease – here’s how to get your piece of the action.

It could easily have been a headline from the 19th century. “Plague Ship Docks at Marseille: The arrival of the Norwegian flagged “Voyager of the Seas” caused much concern today, as 60 of its crew were found to be suffering from the new influenza virus that is spreading rapidly in Europe, Asia and the Americas. An additional 60 crew members are thought to be showing nascent symptoms of the potentially fatal disease.”

Problem is, this is no historical episode. Last Friday afternoon, when the Royal Caribbean Lines cruise ship destined for Marseille arrived dockside at Villefranche, French officials in masks and gloves scurried aboard and quarantined the entire 1,500-member crew.

Currently, France has some 1,000 confirmed cases of the H1N1 “Swine Flu” virus, …

Total Fed Credit went down by $9.6 billion last week, which is, in comparison to their wild excesses of late, not that much, and certainly nothing to get excited about. Sort of like how my boss is unimpressed that she only got one letter last week, instead of the usual five, from disgruntled customers complaining about how I called them “morons” because they were not buying gold and silver in response to the government acting like monetary and fiscal idiots.

And if you are wondering, “Like what kind of monetary idiocy, Magnificent Manly Mogambo (MMM)?” then all I have to do is smile enigmatically and silently point to where it shows that the Fed used some of the money that they created to buy up another whopping $9.3 billion in Treasury debt, agency debt and miscellaneous other worthless debt from banks last week. Last week!

The surprising thing to me about last

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Today a former KGB spy, living in Canada since 1997, has taken refuge inside a church in Vancouver in a desperate move to avoid deportation of himself and his family.  The Canadian authorities are seeking to send Mikhail Lennikov, his wife Irina, and 17-year-old son Dmitri, back to Russia for having engaged in acts of espionage and subversion against democratic governments under the Soviet Union (though Lennikov insists that he was a low level translator).  To wit, a Federal Court rejected pleas from Lennikov's lawyers to suspend this deportation.Lennikov has rallied a staggering amount of political support, which may not be surprising for Canada given the country's traditionally forgiving stance toward refugees.  Over the past six months, the Lennikov case has become a media ...

I've always liked Transitions Online, but found this opinion column by Jeremy Druker a little confusing.  Druker is looking to give some balance to Russia's vocal opposition to the EU's Eastern Partnership initiative, and looking hard.  I appreciate this, and think that everybody writing about Russia should work harder to understand their perspective.  With regard to the Eastern Partnership, I am sure that somewhere in all this there could be a legitimate grievance on behalf of Moscow, but I don't really see what is so threatening about having stronger democracies and economies on your borders - in fact that would be very good for Russia.  As it stands, this would be like Washington complaining about Chinese investment in Mexico and Brazil, or France getting angry at Spain for signing business cooperation agreements with Portugal.  At the end of the day, these ...

What’s the true cause of inflation? Jimmy Carter underrated? Really? And what makes Von Mises right after all these years? Read on to find out…Thank you (once again) for all your excellent responses on the Obama-Carter connection. When your thoughts and comments roll in, my only lament is a lack of space in which to reply.

Well, that and one other small quibble. Where are all the haters? Surely more of you must think I’m off my rocker, or otherwise dead wrong somehow. Let’s start off with a rare bit of snark just for sport…

The lessons learned from the past…8 years of taking us down…and now a dynamic leader trying to pull it together…and presenting a better picture of America to the world…now, can you or Rush Bimbo do that?

– TD reader NB

Rush who? I’m not up on the guy, as I haven’t paid attention to him since the early ’90s.

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In what may be the understatement of the year, Mikhail Gorbachev complains that Europe misunderstands Russia: Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev says Western portrayals of Russia as an aggressive, imperialist nation are "nonsense."Gorbachev said Wednesday that Europe misunderstands Russia and stressed that his country does not want military confrontation with anyone.It's not difficult to see where these portrayals of Russia come from.  Earlier in the day, a Kremlin policy paper signed by the president struck a much different tone, warning that armed conflict may break out at its borders over energy resources.

"The international policy in the long run will be focused on getting hold of energy sources, including in the Middle East, the Barents Sea shelf and other Arctic regions, the Caspian and

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Just when I thought I was all done posting video interviews from my last trip to Washington, I saw Bob's post today about the Gary Hart and Dmitri Simes article about realism, interests, and the prospects for cooperation between the Obama Administration and Russia.  In response, I have gathered together some of the last scraps of the interview I shot with David Satter from the cutting room floor, as his comments strangely seem to engage almost in a direct dialogue with the Hart and Simes piece, especially in terms of debating realism (though the interview occured a month before this article was published).  Some of my questions to Satter stemmed from an article he published in Forbes in November 2008 containing advice for Obama on Russia, including the point to "ignore the realists."  Taken together, the video ...

People of good intentions and progressive predilection are scratching their heads wondering just how President Barack Obama managed to turn himself into George W. Bush Lite with sugar-on-top just twelve weeks after that fateful walk down the US Capitol’s east stairway to the waiting helicopter. I’m hardly the first observer to note that Mr. Obama’s actions in the face of an epochal finance fiasco and economic collapse are a mere extension of the pre-January-20 policies, carried out by much the same cast of characters.

The assumption up until now was something about the reassuring value of continuity — if we could just prop up an ailing set of banks for a little while, the US public could resume a revolving credit way-of-life within an economy dedicated to building more suburban houses and selling all the needed accessories from supersized “family” cars to cappuccino machines. This would keep everyone employed at the

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