Tag Archives: Russia

News

Russian immigrants alarmed by the Soviet-style policies of the Democrats

1 Comment
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?

Here’s the story from SILive.com. (H/T Red State via Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

Businessman Arkadiy Fridman said that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses here and in Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club (MRC) in an effort to increase the Russian community’s political and economic clout.

“We decided we had to support this club,” said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. “They are very close to our political and business vision.”

[…]Fridman said that the Democrats “are going in an absolutely different direction,” focusing on “income redistribution” and rich-versus-poor “class war.”“It’s too socialistic,” said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. “It’s very painful for us to see.”

[…]The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union.

“It’s the same rule like it was there,” said Fridman, who estimates there are around 55,000 Russian immigrants here.

Michael Petrov of the Digital Edge data management firm in Bloomfield, said that he objects to the “micro-managing of the economy” he’s seen from city as well as federal officials.

“Government is affecting small business more and more,” said Petrov, who came to the United States in 1994. “It’s the same as what’s happening in Russia.”

We really need to be looking at how these Democrat policies work out in other countries. The Democrats think that with enough money they can succeed at socialism where other countries have failed. But the United States isn’t any different from Russia or any other country once Democrats elect legislators and appoint judges who will disregard the Constitution. We’re all just peasants without the Constitution – we have no rights at all. And without the rule of law, private property, federalism, and so on, the free market is not going to be able to keep producing the tax revenues that the Democrats are so anxious to spend.

Commentary

Navy vice admiral assesses the nuclear arms treaty signed by Obama

1 Comment

Story here from the U.S. Naval Institute web site.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama was outmaneuvered by the Russians and should have abandoned the New START negotiations instead of seeking a political victory, says former nuclear plans monitor Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, USN (Ret).

“The Obama administration is continuing a dated policy in which we cannot even unilaterally reduce our own inventory of weapons and delivery systems without being on parity with the Russians,” Miller told the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. “We could give up plenty of deployed delivery systems and not adversely affect our national security one bit, but New START prohibits such action – so we are now stuck with some outmoded and useless elements in our nuke force.”

After meeting resistance from several Republicans, the U.S. Senate ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia by a vote of 71-26 on Wednesday.

“The Soviets/Russians were done in by Reagan and our missile defense program because they cannot afford to build such a system,” said Miller. “They instead try to counter our program with rhetoric at the bargaining table. And they won by outmaneuvering Obama.  START plays right into their hands.”

Former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is often credited with bankrupting the U.S.S.R. because the Soviets were unable to keep pace with the technology being developed by the United States.

“We have always been superior in quality of our nuclear force, so we did not have to negotiate with a party we do not trust,” said Miller. “If Obama wanted to save some money and improve national defense, he should have gotten out of the nuke negations and acted unilaterally. START is simply a political victory for Obama.”

Miller, who helped prepare the National Strategic Target List and Single Integrated Operational Plan for waging nuclear war and later participated in arms control meetings with the Soviet government, expressed concern that START could leave the United States vulnerable to other emerging threats.

“The treaty prohibits the conversion of an existing ballistic missile system into a missile defense system,” said Miller. “We might want to do that with a Trident or an ICBM sometime in the future, particularly if the Chinese alleged threat materializes.”

Obama put short-term political gain over long-term national security. He gave away the store. He was outmaneuvered because Democrats are not serious or competent on national security issues.

Commentary

Who is on the political left in America and what are their goals?

Leave a comment
Walter Williams

From Investors Business Daily – economist Walter Williams explains the political left.

Excerpt:

One of the greatest sources of confusion and deception is the difference between leftists, progressives, socialists, communists and fascists.

I thought about this as I caught a glimpse of the Oct. 2 “One Nation” march on Washington.

[…]The gathering had the support of the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, stalwarts of the Democratic Party such as Al Sharpton and organizations such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, Green for All, the Sierra Club and the Children’s Defense Fund.

Let’s look at some of the history of socialism and communism.

Nazism is a form of socialism. In fact, Nazi stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Nazis murdered 20 million of their own people and in nations they captured.

The unspeakable acts of Adolf Hitler’s Socialist Workers’ Party pale in comparison to the horrors committed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Between 1917 and 1987, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and their successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people.

Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Tse-tung and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese. The most authoritative tally of history’s most murderous regimes is in a book by University of Hawaii’s Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, “Death by Government.” A wealth of information is provided at his website.

[…]When Hitler, Stalin and Mao were campaigning for political power, you can bet they didn’t campaign on the promise to murder millions of their own people, and probably the thought of doing so never crossed their minds. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.”

It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, Russians and Chinese, like many of today’s Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for a Hitler, a Stalin or Mao to take over.

[…]The primary goal of communism and socialism is government ownership or control over the means of production. In the U.S., only a few people call for outright government ownership of the means of production. They might have learned that government ownership would mess things up.

Instead, they’ve increasingly called for quasi-ownership through various forms of government regulation, oversight, taxation and subsidies. After all, if someone has the power to tell you how you may use your property, it’s tantamount to his owing it.

These are important things to understand about socialists/progressives/leftists/communists.

When you allow someone else to control the means by which you earn your living – by taxing you or by regulating your employer, for example – then you are giving up your freedom to earn your own money and to spend it as you see fit. Socialist dictators always get elected by people who have been duped into exchanging their liberty for the promise of “social justice” – equal life outcomes regardless of your free decisions. But the end is always the same – violence and poverty. To avoid mass murder, it makes sense to decentralize power over many individuals and businesses. And that’s why conservatives favor the free market and limited government.