[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The acting minister of defense Gen. Tariq Shah Bahrami rejected the alleged remarks by the leader of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil... regarding the ethnic war.
Speaking to news hounds in Kabul, Gen. Bahrami said the ongoing war in the country is being waged for the defense of the country and against the terrorist groups.
He insisted that the conflict certainly has not links with the ethnic violence and war.
This comes as reports emerged few days earlier quoting Hekmatyar as saying that the ongoing conflict in the country has links with the ethnic violence.
However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... the party in a statement said the remarks of Hekmatyar have been amended and wrongly reported by the media outlets.
The statement further added that Hekmatyar in his speech at the central council meeting of the party had pointed out towards the conflict in Ghor province and had stated that the war in the province is between the two ethnic groups.
Hekmatyar had also added that the more than two thousand families were forced to flee the area in Teyora district belonging to a specific ethnic group led by a local elder loyal to Hezb-e-Islami, according to Hezb-e-Islami statement.
The leader of Hezb-e-Islami had also claimed that the opposite side belongs to another party and was misusing the government facilities.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Hizb-i-Islami-Hekmatyar
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The leader of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... who used to be known in intelligence circles as The Most Evil Man in the World but who now seems merely run-of-the-mill evil... once again slammed the parties involved in the conflict calling them as humiliated warmongers waging insurgency and violence based on the missions of the foreigners.
Hekmatyar made the remarks during a meeting with the Jihadi leaders and tribal elders of northern Kunduz province.
He said those who are seeking their interests based on a mission given to them are waging war and violence in Kunduz and other parts of the country.
The leader of Hezb-e-Islami further added that the warmongers have lost their status and support among the people and the nation will not stand behind them after this.
He did not disclose further information regarding the groups or individuals sparking violence but in the past Hekmatyar has strongly condemned the insurgency led by the Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... , other Death Eater groups and irresponsible armed individuals.
Hekmatyar joined grinding of the peace processor in September last year after months of negotiations with the Afghan high peace council.
The peace agreement with Hezb-e-Islami was signed amid optimisms the agreement will pave the way and encourage other groups to join grinding of the peace processor, specifically the Taliban group.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... the ongoing efforts by the Afghan government and the international community to end the violence through reconciliation have not yielded any positive results so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Hizb-i-Islami-Hekmatyar
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. .. says the Afghan national defense and security forces will adopt an offfensive approach to defend the country against the imposed war.
Speaking during a gathering of the Attorney Generals, President Ghani said the country is facing an imposed war and the Afghan forces have no option othan than to defend the country.
He said the Afghan cops will adopt an offensive approach next year, apparently gesturing towards the next fighting season.
In other parts of his speech, President Ghani said people are frustrated with the lack of justice and the nation is prepared to support the judiciary institutions with the reforms being implemented.
President Ghani insisted that he will never interfere in the work of the judiciary institutions and will not anyone to interfere.
He also added that the activities of the irresponsible armed individuals are no more acceptable and threats will responded with the threats.
The Afghanistan's Caped President also added that the notion of those having more weapons is more powerful should end and the law should be imposed on all citizens of the country equally.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A Pak Senator Farhatullah Babar has said the supporters of the ex-Taliban ...Arabic for students... chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor have been shielded by certain circles in the government.
Babar who is also the secretary general of the People’s Party of Pakistain (PPP) has told Dawn News "Those who aided Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour secure a Pak identity card and passport are shielded as is obvious from the replies given to questions asked in the Senate recently."
Senator Babar made the remarks amid reports suggesting that efforts are underway to mainstream the Islamist groups including the Taliban into the politics with the revival of the defunct six-party religio-political alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).
The alliance will also include Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman who is well recognized for his support to the Afghan Taliban.
This comes as reports emerged last week suggesting that the minister of interior of Pakistain in his letter to the Senate had said that contrary to media reports that Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor had been carrying a Pakistain passport and National Identity Card (NIC) ‐ it had emerged that the card had actually been issued to a man named Muhammad Wali, son of Shah Muhammad.
The minister had also added that three officials from National Database and Registration Authority have been handed a major punishment as a departmental inquiry against the officials of the department completed regarding the issuance of the fake cards.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[AnNahar] A group of vulnerable refugees from several African countries, who had been stuck in war-ravaged Libya, have been evacuated to Niger, the U.N. said Sunday.
The U.N. refugee agency said the evacuation of 25 "extremely vulnerable refugees" from Libya Saturday marked the first of its kind.
The chaos-ridden country has long been a major transit hub for migrants colonists trying to reach Europe, and many refugees and migrants colonists have fallen prey to serious abuse there at the hands of human traffickers and others.
"We are taking people out of a very dangerous situation," UNHCR front man William Spindler told AFP.
The group evacuated Saturday was made up of 15 women, six men and four children of Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... n, Æthiopian and Sudanese nationalities, UNHCR said.
So now they'll be even farther from home, but at least they won't be in Libya.
"All of them will be hosted in a guesthouse in Niamey until their resettlement applications are processed," Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean Situation, said in a statement.
Extracting the refugees from Libya should make it easier for possible resettlement countries to evaluate their cases.
Gay Paree for instance said last month it would open centers in Niger and Chad to help identify people who might be granted asylum in La Belle France.
The U.N. agency has called for countries around the world to step up and offer desperately needed resettlement places to refugees stranded in 15 countries along the Central Mediterranean migration route.
It has estimated that 277,000 places are needed for refugees in Algeria, Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... , Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... , Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Æthiopia, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia.
UNHCR in September urgently called for 40,000 resettlement places for refugees in the 15 countries, pointing out that since the beginning of the year, only 6,700 places had been provided.
"We hope to be able to carry out more evacuations in the near future," Cochetel said, stressing though that such evacuations "will remain limited in scale as long as resettlement commitments remain insufficient."
He also reiterated UNHCR's call for the creation of "more regular and safe ways for refugees to find safety and international protection," in a bid to stop them from embarking on perilous journeys across the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea.
So far this year, more than 152,000 people have attempted the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean to Europe, and nearly 3,000 have died trying, according to fresh U.N. numbers.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... said Monday that the Arab coalition fighting the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militia will begin reopening airports and seaports in Yemen, days after temporarily closing them after an Iranian-made missile attack on Riyadh.
"The first step in this process will be taken within 24 hours and involves reopening all the ports in areas controlled by" Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which the coalition backs, the Saudi mission at the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... said.
Those ports are in Aden, Mokha and Mukalla. For ports in rebel-held or disputed territories, like Hodeida, the mission said it had asked the UN to send a team of experts to discuss ways to make sure weapons can’t be smuggled in.
The Saudi-led coalition hopes that will prevent "the smuggling of weapons, ammunitions, missile parts and cash that are regularly being supplied by Iran and Iranian accomplices to the Houthi rebels," the statement said.
Saudi Arabia announced it shut down all ports after a Nov. 4 ballistic missile attack on Riyadh near its international airport by the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia and the United States have accused Iran of supplying the ballistic missile used in that attack, saying the missiles bore "Iranian markings."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Houthis
[RFE/RL] Authorities in the northern Chui region of Kyrgyzstan say they have arrested the leader of a banned Islamic group. Regional police department spokesman Nurbek Toktosunov said on November 13 that a 47-year-old man arrested in late October is "the leader of a religious community that follows the teachings of the Yaqyn Inkar Islamic movement."
Yaqyn Inkar was founded in India. Authorities in Kyrgyzstan consider it an extremist organization and banned it in June.
Toktosunov said that the suspect has two wives, as well as 12 children who have never been officially registered and were not enrolled in school. He the suspect regularly visited India and Bangladesh to participate in Yaqyn Inkar seminars and in 2003 translated several books of the religious group from Urdu into Kyrgyz and Russian.
Members of Yaqyn Inkar try to live as people did when the Prophet Mohammad was alive. They do not use modern technical devices, refuse medical and social services, travel on foot, and wear only traditional white clothes.
Islamish?
Heh heh. Took me a minute to catch that one!
In 2016, before the group was banned, Kyrgyz officials expressed concerns about the religious movement, saying it was propagating its ideas without obtaining legal permission.
[AlAhram] The Gay Paree and Brussels attacks, a botched shooting on a high-speed train and a foiled plot in Belgium may have all been part of one big Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group operation, Belgium's federal prosecutor said Monday.
Speaking on the second anniversary of the November 13 Gay Paree attacks, chief prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw confirmed for the first time what Sherlocks have been saying privately about the possible links.
"We indeed realise that Verviers, Thalys, November 13 and the March 22 attacks may have been one big operation by ISIS," the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, Van Leeuw told Belgian radio.
Verviers is a city in French-speaking Belgium where an armed police raid on January 15, 2015 -- shortly after an attack on the Charlie Hebdo ...A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe... magazine in Gay Paree -- led to the dismantling of a cell suspected of plotting to attack the police.
The investigation found that the Verviers cell was directed from abroad by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Moroccan Belgian who fought for IS in Syria and played a key role in the November 13 Gay Paree attacks before he was killed by a French police raid days later.
Abaaoud is also believed to have ordered the botched attack by Moroccan gunman Ayoub El Khazzani on the high-speed Thalys train from Amsterdam to Gay Paree on August 21, 2015.
Three men linked to Abaaoud were charged in the last few weeks in La Belle France and Belgium in connection with the Thalys attack.
"We have to dig," Van Leeuw said, adding the investigations were getting harder as detectives no longer had access to some telephone data.
Investigators said the November 13 gun and kabooms in Gay Paree showed that they were largely organised from Belgium by Abaaoud's network who were acting on orders from the IS high command in Syria and Iraq.
The attacks cost the lives of 130 people.
Investigators said other members believed to have been from the same Belgian-French cell carried out the March 22, 2016 suicide kabooms in Belgium that killed 32 people.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/14/2017 08:48 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[15 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
The train shooting was "botched" by golly. The perp forgot to find out if there were Americans around.
Never forget to find out it Americans are around.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
11/14/2017 17:37 Comments ||
Top||
#2
As I recall, his gun jammed, Richard. If it hadn't, the Americans would have been a bit bloodied before they subdied him, and others would have died.
[CBSNY] The NYPD will be rolling out additional security around Madison Square Garden and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center as the holidays approach.
The department has trained local officers in the Midtown South and 78th precincts and have armed them with semi-automatic Colt M4 Commando rifles, 1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reported.
The officers are familiar with the venues and the neighborhoods, and are designed to quickly respond to combat a terror threat in the venues.
The officers have already had two weeks of training and would augment the specially earmarked Strategic Response Group that roam the city.
Similar patrols are expected next year at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field and other summer or outdoor venues.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill ordered increased security measures after a jacket wallah killed 22 people at Manchester Arena in England in May, the New York Post reported.
The news comes weeks after eight people were killed and a dozen others injured in a terrorist attack along a bike path in Lower Manhattan. Sayfullo Saipov is accused of driving a rented pickup truck down the West Side bike path, plowing into bicyclists and pedestrians for an entire mile before crashing into a school bus. He is facing terror charges.
#1
Having walked the streets of Manhattan during afternoon rush hours, I think there is no way the police can protect pedestrians against truck drivers, short of barring trucks (or pedestrians, take your pick) from Manhattan.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/14/2017 18:49 Comments ||
Top||
#5
If the NYPD id deploying officers to Madison Square Garden and/or Barclays Center, that would be a major clue that perhaps, just perhaps, it might be a good idea not to go there.
[AnNahar] In the unforgiving deserts of Iraq, there is just one way to deal with defeated members of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group who try to come home -- tribal justice. No pardons are possible among tribes which have agreed among themselves to treat with the utmost severity those members who became jihadists.
As for the families of IS members, many have already fled, fearing reprisals.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/14/2017 04:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
h/t Instapundit
U.S. officials acknowledged Iranian-backed forces in Iraq could be using American-made arms, an admission that comes amid growing concern on Capitol Hill the U.S. government is quietly working with militia fighters in Iraq who are directly tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. No sh*t?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
11/14/2017 03:29 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
This article is from the Free Beacon.
It's biased and the title is out of context
[IsraelTimes] Deployment of missile defenses comes 2 weeks after military destroyed an Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... attack tunnel, leading to death of at least 12 of the group's operatives.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the anti-missile systems had been installed in central Israel, but would not elaborate on their exact location, citing army policy.
[Jpost] Zionist Union leader Avi Gabbay continued his trend of making controversial statements Monday, when he told party activists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba that "the Left forgot what it means to be Jewish."
Gabbay recalled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whispered that statement in the ear of the late Sephardi kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kadourie and was caught on camera. That October 1997 incident caused a major political uproar.
"Do you know what the Left did in response to [what Netanyahu said]?,'' Gabbay asked a questioner at the event. "It forgot what it means to be Jewish. They said 'they say it about us but now we are just liberals' but it is not true. We are Jews, and we must speak about our Jewish values." Labor used to be Israel's biggest party - and then they became EUropean style social democrats.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Kurdish authorities in northern Syria Sunday handed over to Russia Chechen women and kiddies found in Raqqa city which was retaken in October from murderous Moslems, an AFP correspondent said.
Kurdish and Arab fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces alliance announced on October 17 they had regained full control of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the ISIS group in northern Syria.
After its explosive rise in 2014 and conquest of vast swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, ISIS established a "caliphate" that attracted thousands of imported muscle, including from Chechnya.
"We are officially handing over ISIS families to the Russian state," Nuri Mahmud, spokesperson for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the SDF, told news hounds in Qamishli in the northeast province of Hasakeh.
Abdel Karim Amr, an official with the autonomous Kurdish authorities in the area, told AFP: "We have handed over Russian citizens whose hands were not tainted by the blood of Syrians."
He said 13 women and 29 children were transferred to Russian officials.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Israel signaled on Sunday that it would keep up military strikes across its frontier with Syria to prevent any encroachment by Iranian-allied forces, even as the United States and Russia try to build up a ceasefire in the area.
US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... and Russian President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... on Saturday affirmed joint efforts to stabilize Syria as its civil war wanes, including with the expansion of a July 7 truce in the southwestern triangle bordering Israel and Jordan.
A US State Department official said Russia had agreed "to work with the Syrian regime to remove Iranian-backed forces a defined distance" from the Golan Heights frontier with Israel, which captured the plateau in the 1967 Middle East war.
The move, according to one Israeli official briefed on the arrangement, is meant to keep rival factions inside Syria away from each other, but it would effectively keep Iranian-linked forces at various distances from the Israel-held Golan as well.
Those distances would range from as little as 5-7 kms and up to around 30 kms, depending on current rebel positions on the Syrian Golan, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Moscow did not immediately provide details on the deal.
Israel has been lobbying both big powers to deny Iran, Leb’s Hezbollah and other Shi’ite militias any permanent bases in Syria, and to keep them away from the Golan, as they gain ground while helping Damascus beat back Sunni-led rebels.
In televised remarks opening Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not speak about the new US-Russian arrangement for Syria.
His regional cooperation minister, Tzachi Hanegbi, sounded circumspect about the deal, telling news hounds that it "does not meet Israel’s unequivocal demand the there will not be developments that bring the forces of Hezbollah or Iran to the Israel-Syria border in the north".
’Red lines’
"There’s reflection here of the understanding that Israel has set red lines, and will stand firm on this," Hanegbi said.
That was an allusion to Israeli military strikes in Syria, carried out against suspected Hezbollah or Iranian arms depots or in retaliation for attacks from the Syrian-held Golan.
In the latest incident, the Israeli military said it shot down a spy drone on Saturday as it overflew the Golan. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman blamed the drone on the Syrian government. Damascus did not immediately respond.
Repeating Israel’s warnings to Iran and Hezbollah, Lieberman said: "We will not allow the Shi’ite axis to establish Syria as its forefront base".
Russia, which has a long-term military garrison in Syria, has said it wants foreign forces to quit the country eventually.
The US State Department official, who briefed news hounds on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said that goal could be served by Russia’s pledge to remove Iranian-linked fighters from the truce zone in southwestern Syria.
"If this works, this is an auspicious signal, would be an auspicious signal, that our policy objective - the objective that I think so many of us share, of getting these guys out of Syria ultimately - that there’s a path in that direction," the official said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden ... who is no longer with us, and won't be again... did not perceive the Arab uprisings of 2011 as a young democratic spring born on Facebook and Twitter; he rather saw it as an opportunity and a major breakthrough for bully boys.
In his recently published diary, Bin Laden asserts that the uprisings will not stop at its centers, but will expand to include the entire region and the fall of all its regimes. He asserts that he and Al Qaeda and its offshoots, especially the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, must create alliances and coordinate with whoever has the best interest in witnessing the fall of these regimes, especially Iran and Qatar
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/14/2017 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[MIRROR.CO.UK] World conflict and terror predictions
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. ..
Toktosunov said that the suspect has two wives, as well as 12 children who have never been officially registered and were not enrolled in school. He the suspect regularly visited India and Bangladesh to participate in Yaqyn Inkar seminars and in 2003 translated several books of the religious group from Urdu into Kyrgyz and Russian.
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
