From Communist Gold To Kremlin Power: Spanish Prosecutors Outline Russia's Captive State

"According to the Washington Free Beacon, Russia's nuclear arsenal how has over 100 nuclear warheads above the limit set by the treaty.

Since the treaty was launched, Russia has deployed 111 new nuclear warheads, bringing its total number of deployed warheads to 1,648. That treaty limit is 1,550 warheads - a number that must be reached in 2018.

Comparatively, the numbers of U.S. nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers have fallen dramatically and are already below the limits set by the treaty. Additionally, the United States has decreased the number of warheads in its deployed nuclear arsenal by 250.

While the United States intends to eliminate heavy bombers and launchers, Russia has launched a strategic nuclear force expansion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently announced a new doctrine that placed priority on nuclear forces.

If this raises concern for you, you are not alone.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said Russia "is in the business of violating treaties."

Rogers said Putin has violated several agreements and treaties in the past, and he simply "violates any treaty or agreement that puts limits on capabilities that Mr. Putin and his cronies desire."

"Russia's arguable adherence to the New START Treaty just indicates how bad a deal it is for the United States," he said.

Adm. William Gortney, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, said Wednesday that Russia has read our play book and is "fielding cruise missiles that are very, very accurate, very long range."

Gortney said these missiles have the ability to reach targets in Canada and the United States. He added that Russia has been participating in war game scenarios recently that simulate cruise missile strikes in Alaska.

This news is serious because it appears Russia has no intention of abiding by New START or any other treaty. We should therefore be building up our military and our arsenals instead of depleting them.

source:
http://theminorityreportblog.com/2015/10/11/red-alert-russia-just-did-this-to-its-nuclear-arsenal-and-it-should-put-us-on-high-alert/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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From the FreeBeacon:

Russia Adds 111 Warheads Under Arms Treaty
Moscow warheads above New START treaty limit

By: Bill Gertz
October 9, 2015

Russia has now deployed more than 100 nuclear warheads in its strategic arsenal above the limits set by the New START arms treaty limits, two years before it must meet treaty arms reduction goals.

"New START nuclear warhead and delivery system numbers made public Oct. 1 reveal that since the 2010 arms accord went into force, Moscow increased the number of deployed nuclear warheads by a total of 111 weapons for a total of 1,648 deployed warheads. That number is 98 warheads above the treaty limit of 1,550 warheads that must be reached by the 2018 deadline of the treaty.

At the same time, U.S. nuclear warheads, missiles, and bombers have fallen sharply and remain below the required levels under the New START pact.

The United States during the same period of the Russian increases cut its deployed nuclear arsenal by 250 warheads. ..."

(more...)

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-adds-111-warheads-under-arms-treaty/

Ted Cruz on ISIS, Russia, Obama, missile defense, and the New START Treaty with Russia...

"If we want to actually dismantle ISIS, we need to dramatically change course. We need a real, robust campaign that maximizes our overwhelming air advantage.

We need to focus our efforts not on trying to create friends, but on supporting our real ones, especially the Kurds in Iraq and Syria who have actually had success against ISIS."

-snip-

"We can redouble our efforts to develop the defensive weapons that neutralized the offensive Soviet threat -- particularly missile defense, which has seen a 25% budget reduction under Obama, according to an analysis from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and has been constrained by bad arms deals like New START.

We should not only move quickly to install the canceled interceptor sites Putin opposed in Poland and the Czech Republic, but also to develop the next generation of systems that will only increase his discomfiture.

These options do not entail a ground war in Syria, yet would effectively shake us free from the failed policies that have brought us to our current impasse.

These options set us on a new path that puts Putin on notice that the United States is reclaiming our traditional role as leader of the free world."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/09/opinions/cruz-syria-putin/index.html

**********************************************************

"I think it would be a mistake to get involved in the Syrian civil war. There have been voices in Washington eager for us to send our sons and daughters over to fight that civil war for some time. I haven't been one of them. I think the touchstone of U.S. military policy should be protecting the national security of this country."

"What we're seeing Putin in Russia do is a direct response to the profound weakness of Obama over six and a half years.

Putin views Obama as weak, as ineffective, and frankly, as a laughingstock. And, as a result, he is moving in, he is invading his neighbors, like Ukraine, he's kidnapping Estonians, and he's moving into Syria to gain a stronger foothold in the Middle East."

https://www.tedcruz.org/news/icymi-cruz-we-have-no-business-getting-in-the-middle-of-the-syrian-civil-war-goal-should-be-to-defeat-isis/

**********************************************************

Ted Cruz:
"We need a coherent plan to address both the specific crisis in Syria and the challenge posed more broadly by Putin's resurgent Russia.

The good news is that America still has options, if our leaders can summon the will to exercise them.

For starters, in Syria we can't double down on the failed strategies that have given Putin his opportunity to intervene.

We are now two years out from President Obama's proposed intervention after al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. ..."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/09/opinions/cruz-syria-putin/index.html

Benito Mussolini, now there's a guy.

According to KGB/FSB Putin, Stalin was quite a guy too.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
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"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...

"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."

"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.

If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
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Photobucket

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"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
______________________________________

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

Putin, once critical of Stalin, now embraces Soviet dictator's tactics

Carol J. Williams, reporting from Moscow
June 11, 2015

Only six years ago, President Vladimir Putin visited the Polish port of Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that threw off Soviet domination, and reassured his Eastern European neighbors that Russia had only friendly intentions.

Putin spoke harshly that day of the notorious World War II-era pact that former Soviet leader Josef Stalin had signed with Adolf Hitler -- an agreement that cleared the way for the Nazi occupation of Poland and Soviet domination of the Baltics -- calling it a "collusion to solve one's problems at others' expense."

But Putin's view of history appears to have undergone a startling transformation. Last month, the Russian leader praised the 1939 nonaggression accord with Hitler as a clever maneuver that forestalled war with Germany. Stalin's 29-year reign, generally seen by Russians in recent years as a dark and bloody chapter in the nation's history, has lately been applauded by Putin and his supporters as the foundation on which the great Soviet superpower was built.

Across a resurgent Russia, Stalin lives again, at least in the minds and hearts of Russian nationalists who see Putin as heir to the former dictator's model of iron-fisted rule.

Recent tributes celebrate Stalin's military command acumen and geopolitical prowess. His ruthless repression of enemies, real and imagined, has been brushed aside by today's Kremlin leader as the cost to be paid for defeating the Nazis.

As Putin has sought to recover territory lost in the 1991 Soviet breakup, his Stalinesque claim to a right to a "sphere of influence" has allowed him to legitimize the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and declare an obligation to defend Russians and Russian speakers beyond his nation's borders.

On May 9, the 70th anniversary of the Allied war victory was marked and Stalin's image was put on display with glorifying war films, T-shirts, billboards and posters. Framed portraits of the mustachioed generalissimo were carried by marchers in Red Square's Victory Day parade and in the million-strong civic procession that followed to honor all who fell in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

Putin's embrace of Stalin's power-play tactics is applauded by many Russians and other former Soviet citizens as the sort of decisive leadership they longed for while watching communism collapse around them. To the proponents of a reinvigorated Russia, reformist Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, are seen as having submitted Russia to Western domination.

Over the last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented dictator Josef Stalin's bloody 29-year reign as the foundation on which the Soviet superpower was built.

Stalin lives again, at least in minds and hearts.

Stalin "kept us all together, there was a friendship of nations, and without him everything fell apart," said Suliko Megrelidze, a 79-year-old native of Stalin's Georgian birthplace who sells dried fruit and spices at a farmers market. "We need someone like him if we want peace and freedom from those fascists in Europe and America."

Such sentiments are no longer confined to those with actual memories of the Stalin era. A poll this spring by the independent Levada Center found 39% of respondents had a positive opinion of Stalin. As to the millions killed, 45% of those surveyed agreed that the deaths could be justified for the greater accomplishments of winning the war, building modern industries and growing to eventually give their U.S. nemesis a battle for supremacy in the arms race and conquering outer space.

The share of Russians who look back approvingly has been increasing steadily in recent years, and the segment of those who tell pollsters they have no opinion on his place in their history has shot up even more sharply, said Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center.

He points to this year's massive Victory Day events as the Kremlin's message to ungrateful neighbors that they owe their peace and prosperity to the wartime deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens.

"The figure of Stalin is being justified through the war," Volkov said. "There is an attitude now that, yes, there were repressions and, yes, there were huge losses, but we won the war after all."

Victory exonerated Stalin's excesses, just as it does Putin's "strongman" posture toward neighbors and former Soviet subjects now outside the Russian Federation's borders, Volkov said.

Stalin's standing among his countrymen has waxed and waned with the political upheavals that have wracked the Soviet Union and Russia. He was so dominant a figure in Soviet citizens' lives by the time of his death on March 5, 1953, that hundreds of thousands poured into the streets of Moscow in a chaotic outbreak of mourning when word of his passing reached a public taught to believe that life was impossible without Stalin -- the Bolshevik nom de guerre he adopted, signifying "man of steel."

Nikita Khrushchev, who finally prevailed in attaining the leadership after five years of Kremlin infighting, began a campaign of de-Stalinization in 1961, moving Stalin's embalmed remains from public display next to Vladimir Lenin's to a less prominent grave near the Kremlin wall. Stalingrad, the hero city that symbolized the Soviets' watershed battle to turn back the Nazis, was renamed Volgograd, and statues and busts were removed, and streets, institutes and schools were renamed.

But the erasure of Stalin's name and likeness served also to stifle discussion of his vast crimes: Siberian exile or death sentences for political opponents, collectivization of agriculture during which millions starved, deportation of minorities and property seizures that impoverished generations. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power in 1985 that a candid recounting of his era was attempted.

Even Putin, earlier in his presidency, fell in line with the collective spirit of criticism of Stalinâ€™s errors. During the visit to Poland in 2009, a year after he had sent troops to seize territory in sovereign Georgia, Putin appeared to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the nonaggression pact that paved the way for war and division 70 years earlier was to be remembered as immoral.

The Aug. 23, 1939, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact's secret protocols doomed Poland to Nazi occupation a week later and gave the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania to the Soviet Union. Millions of citizens of those betrayed territories died at Stalin's hand, in political purges, summary executions and slave labor camps.

The scope of Stalin's brutality remains a topic of heated debate. Late Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn once claimed in an interview that as many as 110 million died from the dictator's vast array of repressions between 1921 and 1959, including prisoners who succumbed long after Stalin's reign. Historian Viktor Zemkov, at the other extreme, puts the number of deaths attributable to Stalin at 1.4 million.

"The estimates of 110 million to 1.4 million speak for themselves -- a hundredfold disagreement," said Dmitry Lyskov, a state television talk-show host who mounted a failed campaign four years ago to put Stalin's visage on city buses to commemorate Victory Day.

The Russian Military-Historical Society, established by Putin in 2012, announced this year that a new Stalin museum was to open in May in the village of Khoroshevo, 140 miles northeast of Moscow. Stalin spent the night of Aug. 4, 1943, in a small wooden home there, the closest he came to visiting frontline Soviet troops during the four-year fight to defeat Germany.

The sanitized exhibits recounting Stalin's contributions to the war effort and postwar recovery were ready by the planned May 9 holiday. But the opening was postponed amid local opposition led by the Tver regional leader of Memorial, a group dedicated to shedding light on Russia's totalitarian era.

Yan Rachinsky, a leader of Memorial's Moscow chapter, calls the museum "ridiculous," and Stalin's single night there irrelevant to the war victory two years later.

The stillborn museum was one of several official efforts to honor Stalin this year: A statue was erected in the southern city of Lipetsk, and splashed with red paint the night it was unveiled. A bronze likeness of the dictator was put up to mark the February anniversary of his 1945 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta, a Black Sea resort now inaccessible to most of the world as only Russian aviation serves the contested Crimean peninsula.

Stalin has weathered more than six decades of historical revisions to maintain his standing as a rival to the West, "which is the context in which he interests Putin," said Nikolai Svanidze, a writer and historian whose grandfathers died in Stalinâ€™s political purges.

"Just as Stalin defeated the West 70 years ago by capturing half of Europe," Svanidze said, "we are defeating the West again today. Crimea is our Berlin, our Reichstag, and there is no way it will be restored to Ukraine in the foreseeable future."

Svanidze also predicts there will be no more credible elections as long as Putin chooses to stay in power. That, he said, is another parallel with Stalin's lifetime sinecure as Soviet leader.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-stalin-model-20150611-story.html

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