-Caveat Lector-
..............................................................
Forwarded from the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]:
From: Bard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Who is Vladimir Putin?
Date: Friday, December 31, 1999 12:42 PM
Friday, December 31 6:28 PM SGT
Putin rocked Russians with ruthlessness
MOSCOW, Dec 31 (AFP) -
Vladimir Putin, the poker-faced ex-KGB spy, once tried to westernize a
crumbling Soviet Union but has since galvanized a new Russia and is
vowing to annihilate the
rebels of Chechnya.
"We'll get them anywhere -- if we find terrorists sitting in the
outhouse, then we will piss on them there. That's it. The matter is
settled," barked Putin shortly after
Russia launched its Chechen war in September.
Such talk could have cost his predecessors their job. But it boosted
Putin's career.
He became acting president Friday when Boris Yeltsin suddenly announced
he was stepping down, and is likely to retain the Kremlin hot seat for
years to come.
Yeltsin, ailing and being edged out of power by his closest advisers,
named the then virtually unknown security chief as prime minister last
August.
He had been running the secretive but omnipotent Security Council.
He has since turned into one of the most admired figures Russia has seen
this decade, even his opponents singing his praises.
"Putin has enchanted Russia," wrote Vyacheslav Kostikov, a former
Kremlin spokesman and current board member of a Media-MOST empire that
has campaigned
heavily against the government.
"I honestly believe that Putin is capable of heroic deeds in the name of
our humiliated Russia," Kostikov said.
Yet the 47-year-old prime minister and acting president remains a
political enigma.
He helped found a new party, Unity, which rode into the State Duma (the
lower house of parliament) on the back of his popularity in December 19
elections.
The party is described as "centrist." But the respected Moscow Times
said in an editorial: "There is no particular reason to believe that
Unity is 'centrist,' unless
'centrist' is another word for 'unknown.'"
The English-language newspaper added: "But what seems clear is that the
Kremlin has been dealt a winning hand -- or the Kremlin has dealt itself
a winning hand,
depending on one's point of view."
What can be gleamed from Putin's bare biography suggests that he is
intelligent and cunning, trusted enough by peers to be handed some of
the most sensitive
assignments.
Putin "was shaped by the single greatest mission in the history of the
KGB," wrote the US-based private global intelligence firm Stratfor.
That mission was the "systematic restructuring of the Soviet economy,
Soviet society and Soviet relations with the West in the hope of
preserving the state and the
regime."
Putin spent the 1980s in Berlin, where intelligence observers believe he
slipped into West Germany to learn trade secrets of such companies as US
computer giant
IBM.
Observers believe KGB officers knew the Soviet Union was in ruins and
could be preserved only by revolutionising its lagging technology and
attracting investors
from the West.
It remains unclear how successful Putin was. But he became the chief
liaison for foreign investors after joining the pro-reform team of Saint
Petersburg Mayor
Anatoly Sabchak in 1994.
Local journalists report that it was impossible to make foreign
investments in Russia's second city without first contacting Putin.
He then also became a trusted ally of economics chief Anatoly Chubais,
who brought Putin to Moscow in 1996 and made him responsible for
monitoring regional
leaders who were seeking greater independence from Moscow.
One political analyst reported that Putin was told to collect so-called
"compromising material" on governors which could then be used as an
"incentive" for them to
toe the Kremlin line.
Analysts suggest the Kremlin is now repaying Putin by making him the
star of a well orchestrated media public relations campaign, one which
has put his presidential
rating at an unheralded 46 percent.
The latest Public Opinion Foundation poll said Russians were three times
as likely to vote for Putin in presidential election due in June than
his nearest rival,
Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov.
"Russia was and will remain a great country," Putin wrote in a 14-page
essay entitled "Russia on the Threshold of a New Millenium" published
this week on the
government's Internet web site.
The message, at once an outline of policy objectives and a philosophical
expose, was striking both in its relaxed tone and a novel content that
mixed Western
democratic and market ideals with traditional Russian mores.
"Russia is never going to be another USA or England, where liberal
values have deep historic roots," Putin asserted.
"It is a fact that in Russia the attraction to a collective way of life
has always been stronger than the desire for individualism."
At the same time, though, the country and its people understand better
than many the dangers that a government -- particularly an executive
branch -- endowed with
excessive power can pose to people's freedom, he said.
"The global experience prompts the conclusion that the main threat to
human rights and freedoms, to democracy as such, emanates from the
executive authority,"
Putin wrote.
"The state must be where and as needed; freedom must be where and as
required."
Copyright © 1994-2000 Yahoo!
Inc. All rights reserved.
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/991231/world/afp/Putin_rocked_Russians_with_ruthlessness.html
Bard
Democide versus Genocide
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/GENOCIDE.HTM
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court.
----Shakespeare King Richard III, ii, 152
We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth
----Voltaire. Eouvres Vol. I, p. 15n
At the extremes of Power2, totalitarian communist
governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions, while many
democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial
murderers.
Shop for Cars On-Line: http://a-albionic.com/ads/srch.html
Forwarded for info and discussion from the New Paradigms Discussion List,
not necessarily endorsed by:
***********************************
Lloyd Miller, Research Director for A-albionic Research (POB 20273,
Ferndale, MI 48220), a ruling class/conspiracy research resource for the
entire political-ideological spectrum. Quarterly journal, book sales,
rare/out-of-print searches, New Paradigms Discussion List, Weekly Up-date
Lists & E-text Archive of research, intelligence, catalogs, & resources.
To Discuss Ideas:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://msen.com/~lloyd/
For Ordering Info & Free Catalog:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://a-albionic.com/formaddress.html
For Discussion List:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
text in body: subscribe prj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
**FREE RARE BOOK SEARCH: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> **
Explore Our Archive: <http://a-albionic.com/a-albionic.html>
Every Diet Has Failed! What Can I do?
Click Below to "Ask Dr. Kathleen"!
http://www.radiantdiet.com/cgi-bin/slim/deliver.cgi?ask-1364
***********************************
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
