Contradictions

Keiser : Feckless parents vs reckless banks

Putin rattled by 'unprecedented' protests

Troops and riot police clashed with pro-democracy protesters in Moscow for the second night running on Tuesday. But in the wake of allegations of election fraud, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is unlikely to relinquish his grip on power.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s response to the unexpected results of last weekend’s national elections, which saw his United Russia party scrape just enough seats for a majority, was just to shrug his shoulders.

Despite preliminary results revealing his party polled less than 50 percent of the vote, a staggering drop of 15 percent from 2007, Putin simply described the losses as “inevitable for any political force” in the current economic climate.

If his reaction to the election results appeared rather nonchalant, Putin’s response to two days of unprecedented demonstrations by protesters angered by allegations of election fraud was certainly not.

Thousands of Interior Ministry troops and riot police flooded the streets to deal with the protesters and by Tuesday night over 500 had been arrested in Moscow alone. According to Russian news agencies, another 200 pro-democracy protesters were detained in St Petersburg after defying a ban on demonstrating. Activists were given swift justice with one protest organiser Ilya Yashin, a prominent blogger, handed a 15-year jail term.

“Putin will ignore his own advice”

Professor Emeritus Margot Light from the London School of Economics (LSE) believes Putin, rather than bowing to protesters’ demands, will simply tighten his grip in the coming days.

“Putin is likely to ignore the advice he himself gave President Assad in Syria which was that he should work with the opposition,” Prof Light, an expert in Russian politics, told FRANCE 24.

“The protests against him are unprecedented, but he is likely to match it by upping the repression and that will be awful. He has always clamped down on any public protests or demonstrations so these arrests are not uncommon. It’s his style.”

Despite Putin’s stern response, Professor Light believes the strongman has been shaken by the protests which are a clear sign of the first “chink in his armour”.

That chink was first noticed just weeks ago when he was booed by the crowd at a martial arts contest in Moscow in an extraordinary show of public protest. Prominent activist and blogger Alexei Navalny, who was also arrested in Monday’s protests, described the public show of discontent as the “end of an era”.

Putin will stand in the presidential elections next spring after which he is expected to regain a position he held between 2000 and 2008. But even if he has been undermined this week, chances are he won’t be floored by the ongoing protests.

“He is a shoe-in to become the next President of Russia in the elections next year because he is only up against himself,” said FRANCE 24’s international affairs editor Douglas Herbert.

400 papers all marked in the same way

United Russia will only take 238 seats in the 450-seat Russian state Duma. What is perhaps surprising is that United Russia’s poor performance came amid widespread allegations of election fraud aimed at swinging the ballot in their favour.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which was tasked with observing the Russian elections, witnessed a number of irregularities on the day of the election.

Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher, a spokesman for the ODIHR, told FRANCE 24 that “procedures were not followed” during the vote count and there was clear evidence of fake voting papers being stuffed into ballot boxes.

“I spoke to one delegate who said they saw an open ballot box with 400 papers all marked in the same way for one party and they were all folded together in a stack,” he said.

Mr Eschenbaecher said the focus will now be on how Putin and United Russia deal with the allegations of election fraud.

“Our monitors will stay in the country for the next three weeks. We will follow events and how the appeals and complaints process is handled by the authorities and to what extent they are going to investigate them,” he said.

Internet is fuelling the protests

For some observers of Russian politics, irregularities are nothing new. What changed this time is the fact that the public is now armed with new technology and the internet.

Bloggers have openly ridiculed the results and photos claiming to prove voting election fraud emerged on internet sites such as Twitter.

“The internet played a very important and possibly decisive role in changing people’s attitudes towards elections,” independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told the AFP news agency. “The number of actual irregularities may not have grown, but people’s response to them was much stronger”.

According to FRANCE 24's Douglas Herbert, Russia's youth are internet savvy. “They have access to Facebook and Twitter as well as hand-held cameras and smart phones. So the police and Putin’s political machine cannot get away with things anymore,” he said.

But Professor Light of LSE believes Twitter and Facebook could come under Putin’s radar if the protests do not die down.

“The interesting thing is that although there has been a lot of interference on the internet, they have up to now left Facebook and Twitter alone but we are likely to see that changing now as part of his crackdown,” she said.

An Arab Spring inspired regime change is not on the cards in Moscow but if the protests and the crackdown continue Putin could be receiving the same kind of advice he gave to Syria.

Iran's Guards on war footing – London. Spy drone capture is US, Israel setback

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has placed the Revolutionary Guards on a war footing amid fears that the West and Israel are about to attack their nuclear program, the London Telegraph, which has good ties with British intelligence, reported early Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Monday, DEBKAfile reported increasing indications that the Middle East is set for war, including an attack on Iran, between mid-December 2011 and mid-January 2012.
In obedience to Khamenei's directive to take all necessary measures to protect the regime, the Guards chief Gen. Mohammed Ali Jaafari has raised the operational readiness status of the country's forces in preparation for external strikes and covert attacks. He ordered Iran's arsenal of long-range Shahab missiles redistributed to secret sites around the country where they would be safe from enemy attack and could be used to launch retaliatory strikes; Guards units scattered to preset defense lines and air force "rapid reaction units" deployed after carrying out extensive exercises for responding to an enemy air attack on nuclear and strategic military targets.
Saturday, Dec. 3, Israel's defense minister Ehud Barak, when asked about a covert war against Iran, denied it was taking place. Twenty-hours later, this clandestine war peaked in a major coup for Iran, its capture of the sophisticated US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth reconnaissance drone. Tehran reported that, apart from slight damage, the aircraft was shot down complete with all its top-secret electronic systems in working condition.
An American military source confirmed that Iran had the RQ-170, but added there was "absolutely no indication the drone was shot down."

This leads to the conclusion that the Iranians were able to control the drone from a distance (over Afghanistan) and guide it across the border to land to Iran, say DEBKAfile's military sources. The slight damage would then apply to the wings and may have been caused when it was brought in to land by an Iranian crew unused to handling an electronic warfare craft.
Our sources add that possession of the drone is more than just a major intelligence coup for Tehran; it has acquired an important military edge before any overt military operation has been launched. Western and Israeli war planners now have cause to fear that Iran has penetrated the heart of their most secret intelligence and electronic technological hardware for striking its nuclear infrastructure. If Tehran is capable of reaching out and guiding an American stealth drone into landing from a distance, it may also be able to control the systems of other aircraft, manned or unmanned.

This feat recalls Hizballah's surprise attack on an Israeli missile boat  in the 2006 Lebanon war when its Chinese-made shore-to-ship C-802 missile was enabled by Iranian-manned coastal radar interference to override the ship's advanced electronic defense systems and so put the Israeli Navy out of action within range of the Lebanese coast.

According to an expert quoted by the Telegraph's senior military commentator Con Coughlin, the campaign of assassinations, cyber war and sabotage of recent weeks "looks like the 21st century form of war. 

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China tells navy to prepare for combat

AFP

Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged the country's navy to prepare for military combat and advance naval modernisation as part of efforts to safeguard world peace.

The navy should "accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security and world peace", Hu said in a speech on Tuesday that comes amid US and regional concerns over China's naval ambitions.

According to a statement on the government's website, Hu was speaking to the nation's powerful Central Military Commission at a meeting in Beijing focused on military armament and the latest developments in the navy.

"Our work must closely encircle the main theme of national defence and military building," Hu said, according to the statement.

In a translation of Hu's comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China's navy should "make extended preparations for warfare", strengthening the term "junshi douzheng" that can be also translated as "military combat" or "military struggle".

Hu's comments come after China said late last month it would conduct naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean, following a major diplomatic campaign by President Barack Obama to assert the United States as a Pacific power.

The defence ministry said the exercises did not target any particular country, but the announcement comes against a background of growing tensions over maritime disputes in the Asia-Pacific region.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month also warned against interference by "external forces" in regional territorial disputes including in the South China Sea, a strategic and resource-rich area where several nations have overlapping claims.

China claims all of the maritime area, as does Taiwan, while four South-East Asian countries declare ownership of parts of it, with Vietnam and the Philippines accusing Chinese forces of increasing aggression there.

On Wednesday, US undersecretary of defence Michelle Flournoy is slated to hold military-to-military talks with her Chinese counterparts in Beijing, China announced last week.

China's People's Liberation Army, the largest military in the world, is primarily a land force, but its navy is playing an increasingly important role as Beijing grows more assertive about its territorial claims.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon warned that Beijing was increasingly focused on its naval power and had invested in high-tech weaponry that would extend its reach in the Pacific and beyond.

China's first aircraft carrier began its second sea trial last week after undergoing refurbishments and testing, the government said.

The 300-metre ship, a refitted former Soviet carrier, underwent five days of trials in August that sparked international concern about China's widening naval reach.

Beijing only confirmed this year that it was revamping the old Soviet ship and has repeatedly insisted that the carrier poses no threat to its neighbours and will be used mainly for training and research purposes.

But the August sea trials were met with concern from regional powers including Japan and the United States, which called on Beijing to explain why it needs an aircraft carrier.

China, which publicly announced around 50 separate naval exercises in the seas off its coast over the past two years, usually after the event, says its military is only focused on defending the country's territory.

Senator Ran Paul on happening now with Jon Scott