The US Must Be Stopped in Venezuela

Western tyranny has been tried and found hideously wanting, i’m afraid. Time for change whether or not suckers like you are ready for it or not. Clearly you drank deeply from the kool-aid urn and are not ready at all..

you’ll need to go and live in the USSA if you want to continue to get ass-fucked whilst your tormentors are smiling at you from their private jets, whilst counting the money they’ve stolen from your grandchildren

OMG Bernard RG, which stone have you crawled out from under. The world has changed so much since you fought in the first world war.

Russia is now THE NO 1 place on earth that actually CARES about ALL PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. Unllike the hegemony and Imperialism of the US. I’m guessing you have never ever watched Putin’s open debates with the world’s press? I don’t mean the ones produced by CNN or VOX….
This is a True Leader. Who speaks honestly from a place of knowledge, without a tele prompter….Makes Chris Wallace the interviewer look a proper dick.

Because you are incapable of doing research for yourself, I have spent the day doing it for you. Please have the courtesy to read it before offering any more stupid comments about Russia….
I apologise for it’s length but this subject is over 70 years old,

Communism died the day Yeltsin became President, and Russia became a Socialist country.
Yes Putin became a KGB INTELLIGENCE Officer after completing a University degree to become a Lawyer.
A KGB SECURITY officer is a member of a legal KGB Residency who is appointed as assistant to the ambassador on matters of security. His functional duties include defining and executing measures to protect the premises of Soviet representations in the targeted country and their official duties, and the organization of work to ensure the security of Soviet citizens stationed abroad and their families. The security officer is entrusted to maintain official contacts with the special services of the host country in certain situations.
A KGB INTELLIGENCE Officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile and/or analyse information – known as intelligence. Putin worked in Dresden from 1975 – 1991 gathering information connected with Russia’s strategic adversary, NATO. Putin says his job was pretty routine, recruiting informants, information gathering and transferring all received data to Moscow. https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2017/08/08/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-putins-work-in-east-germany_818928

When the communists assumed power across Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII, their stated intention was to create a new, more democratic and egalitarian society..
It was soon widely recognised that membership of the communist party didn’t just give you political standing, but also provided access to numerous socio-economic advantages. Possession of a party card opened the door to numerous ‘perks’, including the allocation of a superior standard of accommodation, access to special shops (containing domestically produced goods in short supply and imported luxury items from the West) and holidays in special health resorts. Little wonder then, that many people have subsequently justified their decision to join the East European communist parties, as motivated not by any genuine ideological or political commitment, but simply to ‘get along in life’. The higher up the power structure you climbed, the more levels of privilege reached ridiculous proportions. While official salary levels among the nomenklatura (communist-era Bureaucrats) remained relatively low in monetary terms, in practice communist officials could supplement their basic income through corruption, bribery, and they also enjoyed a whole range of other ‘perks’.
Following STALIN’s death in 1953, the extensive privileges enjoyed by the East European political elite became even more apparent.
1958 to 1964. KHRUSHCHEV denounced Stalin, and was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev’s party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid BREZHNEV , who combined the positions of General Secretary and chairman of the Presidium, and came into power at a time where the USSR had managed to industrialise, increase its arms and develop new technology however – it had failed in the production of consumer goods and agriculture
Standards of living which had previously been increasing were starting to decrease again. A lot of money was being spent on the military and the space programme
Brezhnev wanted to increase consumer goods and agriculture by putting in place reforms that would use the ‘market force’ to increase these, however he was prevented from doing so, as some feared that these would lead to a tendency towards ‘capitalism’.
However he allowed farmers to work on state owned plots which gave them the motivation to produce more as they could keep or sell the surplus.
Previously Collectivization had been the policy in which individual landholders had to give up their land ownership and combine this land with those of other landholders to create large farms
However when living standards did not change, even though Brezhnev did try to increase production in the ninth and tenth five year plan, this was not a success and production decreased.
Consumer goods were only largely available on the black market,
In the 1970s the rest of the world was suffering from a petroleum shortage but due to the focus on consumer goods and agriculture the USSR did not manage to increase its production of petroleum and so failed to benefit from the high demand
In 1975 the USSR suffered from another poor harvest and so Brezhnev had to increase agricultural imports to keep the citizens fed.
The people started to criticise the government.
The USSR went into Afghanistan in December 1979 and cited the Brezhnev Doctrine as a reason, but the official reason was that the PDPA ”asked for support” from the USSR to stop the Mujahideen from taking power
The KGB were in favour of a limited operation which would stabilise the situation and prevent it from spreading into surrounding countries
The defence ministry wanted to overthrow the PDPA to prevent Pakistan or Iran from invading Afghanistan, because there was worry that Amin and Taraki had been involved in pro-US activities and that this would lead to the end of socialism in Afghanistan.
There was 70000 Soviet Troops in Afghanistan by the 27th of December with still no clear objectives on how to proceed . The Soviet position was weak because even though they controlled the cities, the ”rebels” (terrorists al Qaida) which were being supported by the US controlled the countryside
This was the start of a ten year intervention in Afghanistan which cost the USSR many lives and billions of dollars
The Soviet citizens where totally against this intervention which resulted in international condemnation. So the US imposed sanctions, limiting grain sales to the USSR and also boycotted the 1980 summer Olympics which were due to be held in Moscow

1982 Brezchnev died of a heart attack? and was succeeded by Yuri ANDROPOV who wanted to change the USSR’s economic stagnation by putting in place policies criminalizing truancy in the workplace. And sought to eliminate corruption and inefficiency within the Soviet system by investigating long-time officials for violations of party discipline. He also closed down most of the Soviet space program in 1983 to try and cut down expenses
He tried to get rid of Brezhnev’s and Chernenko’s followers and replace them with political elites who were loyal to him and were willing to encourage change within the economy, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev
The situation in Afghanistan started in the Brezhnev era worsened
The relation between the US and the USSR was already bad but it was made worse when in September 1983 the Soviets were accused of shooting down a Korean Airlines flight that had strayed into Soviet airspace
In February 1983 Andropov’s health deteriorated and he stopped appearing in public, and his health deteriorated rapidly. On February 9, 1984, he died of total renal failure.
He wanted Gorbachev to succeed him however when he died in he was succeeded by CHEMENKO who didn’t change any foreign or domestic policies. Chernenko’s health also ‘deteriorated quite fast’ and he needed to rely more and more on his deputy Gorbachev, and he died of Emphysema and heart failure in 1985.
GORBACHOV (Of whom Margaret Thatcher said ”I like this man, we can do business together.”) was a reformer, whose efforts it was hoped would succeed in shifting the USSR toward a democratic system and a market oriented economy, and his decision to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a PRESIDENCY for the Soviet Union began a slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s leadership style differed from that of his predecessors. He would stop to talk to civilians on the street, forbade the display of his portrait at the 1985 Red Square holiday celebrations, and encouraged frank and open discussions at Politburo meetings. To the West, Gorbachev was seen as a more moderate and less threatening Soviet leader; some Western commentators (MSM) however believed this an act to lull Western governments into a false sense of security. Gorbachev was aware that the Politburo could remove him from office, and that he could not pursue more radical reform without a majority of supporters in the Politburo. So he sought to remove several older member and replace them with more liberal men like Boris Yeltsin, who was made a Secretary of the Central Committee in July 1985. Most of these appointees were from a new generation of well-educated officials who had been frustrated during the Brezhnev era. In his first year, 14 of the 23 heads of department in the secretariat were replaced. In doing so, Gorbachev secured dominance in the Politburo within a year, faster than either Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev had achieved. The first stage of Gorbachev’s perestroika was uskorenie (“acceleration”), a term he used regularly in the first two years of his leadership. The Soviet Union was behind the United States in many areas of production, but Gorbachev claimed that it would accelerate industrial output to match that of the U.S. by 2000. .By the 1980s, drunkenness was a major social problem and Andropov had planned a major campaign to limit alcohol consumption. Alcohol production was reduced by around 40 percent, the legal drinking age rose from 18 to 21, alcohol prices were increased, stores were banned from selling it before 2pm, and tougher penalties were introduced for workplace or public drunkenness and home production of alcohol. However, moonshine production rose considerably, and the reform had significant costs to the Soviet economy, resulting in losses of up to US$100 billion between 1985 and 1990. Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been a mistake and it was terminated in October 1988.
In April 1986, he introduced an agrarian reform which linked salaries to output and allowed collective farms to sell 30% of their produce directly to shops or co-operatives rather than giving it all to the state for distribution
Gorbachev began speaking of glasnost 9opemess0 as a necessary measure to ensure perestroika by alerting the Soviet populace to the nature of the country’s problems in the hope that they would support his efforts to fix them. For many Soviet citizens, this newfound level of freedom of speech and press—and its accompanying revelations about the country’s past—was uncomfortable. Though some in the party thought Gorbachev was not going far enough in his reforms; a prominent liberal critic was Yeltsin. He had risen rapidly since 1985, attaining the role of Moscow city boss. Like many members of the government, Gorbachev was sceptical of Yeltsin, believing that he engaged in too much self-promotion. In early 1986, Yeltsin began sniping at Gorbachev in Politburo meetings,calling for more far-reaching reforms than Gorbachev was initiating. The two men became in opposition and Yeltsin then resigned as both Moscow boss and as a member of the Politburo. From this point, tensions between the two men developed into a mutual hatred.
In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred. In the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident.
As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated from the area around Chernobyl and the disaster marked “a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime”. Several days after it occurred, he gave a televised report to the nation and cited the disaster as evidence for what he regarded as widespread problems in Soviet society, such as shoddy workmanship and workplace inertia… and later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union.From April to the end of the year, Gorbachev became increasingly open in his criticism of the Soviet system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military draft, and the excessive size of the prison population. The major issue concerning him was Soviet involvement in Afghanistan where 12.000 young Russian men had died. On becoming leader, Gorbachev saw withdrawal from the war as a key priority. In October 1985, he met with Afghan Marxist leader Karmal, urging him to acknowledge the lack of public support for his government and pursue a power sharing agreement with the opposition. That month, the Politburo approved Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan, although the last troops did not leave until February 1989.
He had inherited the high tension pf the Cold War and believed strongly in the need to sharply improve relations with the United States; he was appalled at the prospect of nuclear war, was focussed on the fact that high military spending was detrimental to his desire for domestic reform. Although’ privately’ also appalled at the prospect of nuclear war, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ‘publicly’ appeared to not want a de-escalation of tensions, having scrapped détente and arms controls, initiating a military build-up, and calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire”.
At the Geneva summit, discussions between Gorbachev and Reagan were sometimes heated, and Gorbachev was initially frustrated that his U.S. counterpart “Does not seem to hear what I am trying to say”. The summit ended with a joint commitment to avoiding nuclear war and to meet for two further summits: in Washington D.C. in 1986 and in Moscow in 1987. Following the conference, Gorbachev travelled to Prague to inform other Warsaw Pact leaders of developments.
In January 1986, Gorbachev publicly proposed a three-stage program for abolishing the world’s nuclear weapons by the end of the 20th century.] An agreement was then reached to meet with Reagan at Reykjavík, Iceland in October. Gorbachev wanted to secure guarantees that SDI would not be implemented, and in return was willing to offer concessions, including a 50% reduction in Soviet long range nuclear missiles.
Both leaders agreed with the shared goal of abolishing nuclear weapons, but Reagan refused to terminate the SDI program and no deal was reached.
After the summit, many of Reagan’s allies criticised him for going along with the idea of abolishing nuclear weapons….. Gorbachev meanwhile told the Politburo that Reagan was “An extraordinarily primitive troglodyte, and intellectually feeble”. (THAT IS BECAUSE HE WAS AN ACTOR PLAYING A PART??)
He sought improved relations with China, who had split with the soviets.
In June 1985 he signed a US$14 billion five-year trade agreement with the country and in July 1986, he proposed troop reductions along the Soviet-Chinese border, hailing China as “a great socialist country”. He made clear his desire for Soviet membership of the Asian Development Bank and for greater ties to Pacific countries, especially China and Japan
Following the failures of earlier talks with the U.S., in February 1987, Gorbachev held a conference in Moscow, titled “For a World without Nuclear Weapons, for Mankind’s Survival”, which was attended by various international celebrities and politicians. By publicly pushing for nuclear disarmament, Gorbachev sought to give the Soviet Union the moral high ground and weaken the West’s self-perception of moral superiority. Aware that Reagan would not budge on SDI, Gorbachev focused on reducing “Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces”, to which Reagan was receptive.
On 9 November 1989, people in East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, GDR) were suddenly allowed to cross through the Berlin Wall into West Berlin, following a peaceful protest against the country’s dictatorial administration, including a demonstration by some one million people in East Berlin on 4 November.
On 15 March 1990, Gorbachev was elected as the first executive President of the Soviet Union with 59% of the Deputies’ votes. He was the sole candidate on the ballot.
Following the elections, Gorbachev faced conflicting internal political pressures: Boris Yeltsin and the pluralist movement advocated democratization and rapid economic reforms while the hard-line ”Communist elite” wanted to thwart Gorbachev’s reform agenda. More significantly for Gorbachev’s position, Boris Yeltsin reached a new level of prominence, as he was elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR in May, effectively making him the de jure leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.In October 1990, DemRossiya, a Russian pro-reform coalition, was founded; a few days later, both Ukraine and Russia declared their laws completely sovereign over Soviet laws. The ‘war of laws’ had become an open battle, with the Supreme Soviet refusing to recognise the actions of the two republics. Gorbachev published the draft of a new union treaty in November, which envisioned a continued union called the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, but in 1991, Gorbachev’s actions were steadily overpowered by secessionism. On the eve of the treaty’s signing, hard-line Soviet leaders, calling themselves the ‘State Committee on the State of Emergency’, launched the August coup in an attempt to remove Gorbachev from power and prevent the signing of the new union treaty.
Under the pretence that Gorbachev was ill, his vice president, Yanayev, took over as president. Gorbachev spent three days (19, 20, and 21 August) under house arrest at his dacha in the Crimea before being freed and restored to power. However, upon his return, Gorbachev found that neither Union nor Russian power structures heeded his commands, as support had swung over to Yeltsin, whose defiance had led to the coup’s
collapse.
For all intents and purposes, the coup destroyed Gorbachev politically. On 24 August, he advised the Central Committee to dissolve, resigned as general secretary and dissolved all party units within the government. Shortly afterward, the Supreme Soviet suspended all Party activities on Soviet territory. In effect, Communist rule in the Soviet Union had ended. The Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed during the latter part of 1991, as one republic after another declared independence. By the autumn, Gorbachev could no longer influence events outside Moscow, and he was challenged even there by Yeltsin. Following the coup, Yeltsin suspended all CPSU activities on Russian territory and closed the Central Committee building at Staraya Square. He also ordered the Russian flag raised alongside the Soviet flag at the Kremlin. In the waning months of 1991, Russia began taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin.
The presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in Belovezha Forest, near Brest, Belarus, on 8 December and signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States as its successor. Gorbachev initially denounced this move as illegal.[275] Nonetheless, there was no longer any doubt that the Soviet Union, in the words of the Accords’ preamble, no longer existed “as a subject of international law or geopolitical reality.”
Dec 25 Gorbachov televised his resignation,
The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred on December 26, 1991, officially granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Soviet Union. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.
Two days after Gorbachev left office, on 27 December 1991, Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev’s old office.
Gorbachev had aimed to maintain the CPSU as a united party but move it in the direction of Scandinavian-style social democracy. But when the CPSU was proscribed after the August coup, Gorbachev was left with no effective power base beyond the armed forces. In the aftermath of the coup, his rival YELTSIN quickly worked to consolidate his hold on the Russian government as well as the remnants of the Soviet armed forces, paving the way for Gorbachev’s downfall.
The Yeltsin era effectively began in August 1991, when he clambered atop a tank to rally Muscovites to put down a right-wing coup against Mr. Gorbachev, a heroic moment etched in the minds of the Russian people and television viewers around the world; it ended with his electrifying resignation speech on New Year’s Eve 1999.
In office less than nine years, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and plagued by severe health problems and an excessive fondness for alcohol, Mr. Yeltsin added a final chapter to his historical record when, in 1999, he stunned Russians and the world by announcing his resignation, becoming the first Russian leader to give up power on his own in accordance with constitutional processes. He then turned over the reins of office to Mr. Putin on New Year’s Eve 1999, and after that was out of the public eye. Mr. Yeltsin was the most populist of politicians. He rejected the notion of forming a political party, insisting that he was elected by “ALL OF THE PEOPLE” But it was a position that left him weak at the task of building coalitions to further necessary reforms. He sometimes ‘played with the truth and surrounded himself with cronies’.
Then, in failing health and under suspicion of enriching himself and his inner circle at the expense of the state.. he resigned. In a speech that surprised the world, he asked ‘forgiveness for his mistakes’ and turned over the government to Mr. Putin. In return, Mr. Yeltsin — and, it was rumoured, his family — received a grant of immunity from criminal prosecution and ‘credit for leaving the Kremlin voluntarily’.
Mr. Yeltsin left with his fondest wish for the Russian people only partly fulfilled.
“I want their lives to improve before my own eyes,” he once said, remembering growing up in a single room in a cold, communal hut.
In fact, in the chaos that accompanied the transition from the centralized economy he had inherited from the old Soviet Union, most people saw their circumstances deteriorate. Inflation became rampant, the poor became poorer, profiteers grew rich, the military and many state employees went unpaid, and criminality flourished. Nevertheless, Mr. Yeltsin brought about fundamental economic change: a market economy, however distorted and corrupt; an emerging younger class of business executives; and, in the last years of his presidency, a gradual reduction in crime.
Politically, too, his reforms had impact. The legislature began to shape politics, the news media kept most of their newly acquired freedoms, and political rivals competed openly in elections.
In his lifetime, the worst that many in Russia and the West had feared — a Communist revival or new fascism built on chaos — never materialized. However: although the Russian constitution provides for freedom of speech and press; the government application of law, bureaucratic regulation, and politically motivated criminal investigations have forced the press to exercise self-censorship constraining its coverage of certain controversial issues, resulting in infringements of these rights. (SO in line with the BBC then?)

In August 1999, Yeltsin resigned and was succeeded by his deputy, Vladimir PUTIN, who then won the March 2000 presidential election. Gorbachev attended Putin’s inauguration ceremony in May, the first time he had entered the Kremlin since 1991. Gorbachev initially welcomed Putin’s rise, seeing him as an anti-Yeltsin figure. Although he spoke out against some of the Putin government’s actions, Gorbachev also had praise for the new regime; in 2002 he said that “I’ve been in the same skin. That’s what allows me to say what Putin’s done is in the interest if the majority”.
At the time, he believed Putin to be a committed democrat who nevertheless had to use “a certain dose of authoritarianism” to stabilize the economy and rebuild the state after the Yeltsin era. At Putin’s request, Gorbachev became co-chair of the “Petersburg Dialogue” project between high-ranking Russians and Germans.
In 2000, Gorbachev helped form the Russian United Social Democratic Party.[329] In June 2002 he had a meeting with Putin in which the latter praised the venture, suggesting that a centre-left party could be good for Russia and that he would be open to working with it.

Russia has gone from strength since then, despite US sanctions….
He asked the billionaire businessmen to move their business from being registered abroad and paying taxes to other countries, to being registered in Russia and paying Russian taxes.

27th January 2018
Vladimir Putin was first elected as Russian President in 2000. Here’s how the Russian economy has transformed in the intervening years by numbers.
QUALITY OF LIFE:
Before Putin’s election, Russia had a $9,889 GDP per capita by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). The figure had almost tripled by 2017, and has now reached $27,900. Russia has the highest GDP per capita among its fellow BRICS countries, with the next-highest, China, having just $16,624. The PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of countries in order to compare living standards in different nations.
The average nominal monthly wage has grown almost 11-fold from $61 to $652. Unemployment has contracted from 13 percent to 5.2 percent. Pensions have grown over 1,000 percent in the same period from $20 to $221.
ECONOMY PERFORMANCE:
Russia is the sixth-largest economy in the world by PPP, with a $4-trillion GDP. PwC has predicted that, by 2050, the country will become the largest economy in Europe by this measure, leaving behind Germany and the United Kingdom.
Back in 1999, the Russian economy by PPP was worth only $620 billion. So, in the last 18 years, Russian economic output in these terms has increased by 600 %.
Inflation rates have decreased from 36.5 % to 2.5 % by the end of 2017. The total value of assets of the Russian banking system has risen 24-fold to $1.43 trillion. Capitalization of the Russian Stock Market has grown more than 15-fold to $621 billion.
PUBLIC DEBT & FOREIGN RESERVES:
When Putin was elected in 2000, Russia had just $12 billion in reserves, accompanied by a public debt, which was almost equal to the country’s economic output at 92.1 percent.
Things have changed markedly in 18 years, as Russia’s public debt has now shrunk to 17.4 percent of GDP and reserves have increased to $356 billion. Low debt and growing reserves helped the country to live through the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession of 2014-2016, caused by a fall in oil prices and Western sanctions. Russian gold reserves have increased by more than 500 % since 2000. The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) added 9.3 tons of gold to its reserves in December, bringing the total yearly holdings to a record 1,838.211 tons – worth over $76 billion in monetary terms.
The World Gold Council shows that Russia is the largest buyer of gold and is the world’s third-biggest producer, with the Central Bank purchasing from domestic miners through commercial banks.
AGRICULTURE.
While the Russian economy remains dominated by oil and gas revenues, its agriculture sector has boomed in recent years. Russian farmers produced their largest ever crop in the 2017 agricultural year, breaking the 40-year-old Soviet record, and harvesting more than 130 million tons.
In 2016, Russia became the world’s leader in wheat exports. Since the early 2000s, the Russian share of the world wheat market has quadrupled, from four to 16 %.
Although agriculture still remains far behind the energy sector, it ‘surpassed arms sales’ and became the country’s second-largest export.
Russia started exporting grain in 2002, selling a little over seven million tons. In 2017, Russia wanted to sell 45 million tons – an increase of more than 600 %.

THIS IS WHY RUSSIA IS SEEN AS SUCH A THREAT TO AMERICANS!

Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities.
Britain has 16… France has 9, and Russia have 9… Germany has 3, Australia has 2, China has 1.