Head of Russian rocket maker resigns following launch failures

MOSCOW, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A senior official at Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos had resigned after the country's string of launch failures, Roscosmos said Thursday.

Vladimir Nesterov, head of the Khrunichev Space Research and Production Center, had submitted his resignation to the government, Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said.
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Analysts believe Nesterov's resignation was the first but may not be the last casualty following sharp criticism from the federal government.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that hardships the space industry had been experiencing could not justify the string of failures in recent years and warned he was going to make some decisions on those responsible for the failures.

On Aug. 6, a Proton-M carrier rocket failed to put two telecommunications satellites into the correct orbit.

Authorities Face Hard Choice in Pussy Riot Verdict

MOSCOW, August 16 (Dan Peleschuk, RIA Novosti)

And the decision, experts say, is a difficult one for the authorities to make – no matter the outcome.

If the women are released, it sends a signal to critics that open protest will now be tolerated, and the Kremlin has grown hesitant to continue its crackdown on dissent, analysts predict. If they are jailed, however, it may only intensify the simmering public discontent with the government.

Since the end of the trial last week, in which prosecutors asked the court for a three-year prison sentence for the three women – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30 – speculation over their fate has only grown. They have already spent five months in custody, and two of the women have small children with whom they have been deprived of contact since their incarceration.

Debate has raged in recent weeks over how – or even whether – to punish the women for their brief “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in February. The case has come to represent the greater clash between conservatism and liberalism in Russia, dividing almost evenly people who support Pussy Riot and criticize the authorities, and those who have called for a swift punishment and who support the Putin regime.

How NATO Expansion Makes America Less Safe

The “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization was formed in the aftermath of World War II to protect war-torn and disunited Western Europe from the Soviet Union as well as reintegrate defeated Germany into Western Europe. Americans believed it was in their interest to defend Europe in order to prevent the U.S.S.R. from dominating Eurasia.

With the end of the Cold War the justification for NATO disappeared. The Soviet Union split, the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the global communist menace vanished. There no longer was any there there, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland.

President Putin is no friend of liberty, but he evidences no design—and possesses no capability—to recreate a global empire. Under him Russia has reverted to a pre-World War I great power, focused on winning respect and protecting its borders. A Russian invasion of Eastern Europe, let alone the core western members of NATO, is but a paranoid fantasy.
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Attempting to establish friendly, democratic regimes along Russia’s borders, and turn them into military outposts as members of the historic American-led, anti-Soviet alliance, is geopolitically aggressive. As America developed, Washington demonstrated little patience for European “meddling” in Central and even South America, which it considered to be America’s backyard. Perhaps U.S. intentions were better, though the Latin Americans might not agree. Nevertheless, European security guarantees for America’s neighbors would have made Washington less rather than more tractable.

Worse, NATO expansion brings the political and territorial disputes of new members with each other and Russia into the alliance. The organization then threatens to act as a transmission belt of rather than firebreak to war.

Countries reliant on their own resources are more likely to compromise. In contrast, having a superpower in their corner makes them more likely to be intransigent. Although most of the new NATO members, and especially the most recent additions like Albania and Croatia, are money pits for American aid, at least these nations are geopolitically irrelevant. Moscow has no reason to pay them any mind.

Georgia, bordering Russia and home to the independence-minded provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, matters much more to Moscow. While renewed conflict is unlikely, it is possible. If Tbilisi was a NATO member, the U.S. would be obligated to come to Georgia’s defense. The result would be a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia over issues of negligible importance to America. Such a policy would be madness.

Turkey builds significant ties with Asia

Since its days as the capital of the Eastern Roman, Latin and Ottoman empires, Constantinople has historically been known as the “gateway to the east.”

Centuries later, modern-day Turkey is building significant bridges with Asia, most recently by joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as a dialogue partner.
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In sharp contrast to its rocky EU bid, Turkey’s admission into the SCO as a dialogue partner has been smooth.

Now a high-profile regional group covering about three-fifths of the Eurasia land mass, the SCO has served as a pivotal mechanism for regional security cooperation since it was established 10 years ago.

From primarily focusing on regional security, the inter-governmental organization, formed in 1996, has of late expanded into law enforcement and economic cooperation.

This is particularly enticing for Turkey as it tries to offset dwindling trade with debt crisis-hit Europe by making inroads into rising Asian markets.

“Turkey’s location at the crossroads of Asia, Caucas, the Black Sea, Europe and the Middle East means Turkish foreign policy has always been multi-dimensional,” said Murat Bilhan, a former Turkish ambassador and professor of international relations at Istanbul’s Kultur University.

“With Asia emerging, it is very important for Turkey to cooperate with nations like China, India and Russia,” he added.

Russian Warships Head to Mediterranean

The group of Russian warships and support ships from Russia’s Northern, Baltic and Black Sea fleets was to have made a call in the port of Novorossiisk on Sunday.

“At present, vessels from the group have sailed past the Italian coast and are now headed westward,” the source said without explaining why the route had been changed.

The ships are currently performing combat training exercises in the central Mediterranean Sea, the source added.

The task force comprises three large amphibious assault ships, two Neustrashimy class frigates, an Udaloy class destroyer and two support ships from Russia’s Northern, Baltic and Black Sea Fleets.

Late last week, the joint naval task force conducted two-day tactical exercises with live-firing in the Mediterranean.

Russia furiously preparing for Sochi Games

The rest of the world might still be thinking warm thoughts, but for the organizers of the next Olympic Games - the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics - there is a massive project underway to build a resort city on the Black Sea almost from scratch, and with it, the center of the universe for sports played on ice and snow.

"We are building an Olympic structure in the middle of nowhere," said Dmitry Chernyshenko, president of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee. "It's like a painter with a blank canvas painting a masterpiece. We are building a new city with more than 100,000 hotel beds. It's the biggest construction project in the world."

There's nothing quite like trying to build an all-new Olympic site at break-neck speed in the midst of a bad economy in a volatile part of the world. Sochi is right next to Russia's border with Georgia, nearer to Turkey than it is to Moscow.
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Sochi will have a compact Games - far different than the far-flung London Olympics, for instance - with two venue clusters linked by high-speed trains, one by the Black Sea and the other in the mountains, just 22 miles away. Unburdened by having to use existing structures, organizers have been able to create a city built specifically for the Olympics.

Construction is almost complete. Officials report that all the "mountain cluster" venues held pre-Olympic test events during the last winter sports season. All the other venues - the "coastal cluster" - will be tested by the end of 2012. The only venue to be completed in 2013 is the stadium that will host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
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"It's like Cannes and Davos all in one," Chernyshenko said. "A Mediterranean climate with palm trees, but you drive 30 minutes and you are in the mountains. It's really a unique location. We are building the Olympic site, but the future of the city is to be a year-round resort. "

Pussy Riot's Closing Statement

The trial for three members of Pussy Riot, a Russian punk band that got in a lot of trouble for a prank/protest event where they crashed the altar of Moscow's largest Orthodox Church to play a single anti-Putin song, concluded this week. The members gave closing statements, which they used to reassert their objections to the authoritarian state and the way that religious faith is being hijacked to garner support for government oppression. Business Insider ran a video and a translation of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's closing statement, where she clearly laid out the case for breaking the back of all oppressive institutions and linked her ordeal with that of many historical figures who have faced similar censorship efforts from social and governmental authorities.

"Essentially, it is not three singers from Pussy Riot who are on trial here. If that were the case, what’s happening would be totally insignificant. It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial and which, unfortunately for itself, thoroughly enjoys quoting its cruelty towards human beings, its indifference to their honor and dignity, the very worst that has happened in Russian history to date. To my deepest regret, this mock trial is close to the standards of the Stalinist troikas. Thus, we have our investigator, lawyer and judge. And then, what’s more, what all three of them do and say and decide is determined by a political demand for repression. Who is to blame for the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and for our being put on trial after the concert? The authoritarian political system is to blame. What Pussy Riot does is oppositional art or politics that draws upon the forms art has established. In any event, it is a form of civil action in circumstances where basic human rights, civil and political freedoms are suppressed by the corporate state system."

Pussy Riot set out to draw attention to the link between sexist, corporate, religious, and state oppression. Whether or not these three women go to jail, it can safely be said that they succeeded in their mission. As Jos Truitt of Feministing, who was raised Russian Orthodox, explained, decades of being stifled under the Soviets can make it easy for some of the faithful to convince themselves these women were doing something oppressive themselves by holding a harmless protest, but the way that everything has played out has made it all too clear that the church authorities pushing for punishment are drunk on their own power.