* Thousands have protested against the takeover in the biggest street protests of Putin's presidency.
Especially, when airline tickets bite, and more affordable train tickets are, still, not worth the shouting. Who paid?;o)

Touchez monsieur Volk!

(My surprise was that he managed to get himself into the observer!- albeit under the Comments section.)

Hello Fred, where've you been?

* Thousands have protested against the takeover in the biggest street protests of Putin's presidency.


What is "ten thousands" in Moscow?
On the Red Square, it would look like a larger tourist group.
I guess they were mostly housekeepers who feared they won't be able to watch theyr favorite soap opera or fortune wheel games.

They would come just for that.

Poeple who are in debt should clear or step down.

Hello! Kim!
e-caly, these last months, I have been on several -HOO-HAA!- tech stock msg boards and more recently at a board at Y! on the destroyed giant Buddahs. But this board seems to be already deserted.
Now the Nasdaq is death, you know, and I lost interest in stocks board for a while so I come back here.

Physicaly, I'm still in Lithuania. I'v brought my furnitures from Belgium to my new house here. (not finished yet.)
I'v seen there is a lithuanian at the Serbian café.

I was just dreaming of this board going back to politic again...

What about you?
Did you buy this killer car in the parking in Geneva

The question is Fred - Where are u Mentaly?

LMAO...

Get interested in investing in the NASDAQ just when it's pulling a Mir station-like free fall... so ur losing interest eh?

Chump! LMOA...

then asking about the S4 almost a year after it was sold...

Always behind the 8 ball eh Fred?

guess u lituanians ???? (lol) are a little behind on the whole information thingy...

Let me give u a little tip freddy... take ur life savings out of the lousy online broker & go buy urself a little bmx. You stand ZERO chance of making a PENNY in the stock markets.

CHUMP.

WHO OWES WHOM Moscow has entered a new stage of negotiations with the West, including the Paris Club of creditors, on resolving the problem of Russia's debt inherited from the Soviet Union.
President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov have explained the situation with the Russian debt. Russia will continue paying off its debt. It wants only to postpone the time of payments. This year more funds than originally planned will be spent on the social sphere. One of the main problems is the failure of the central heating systems in a number of regions from St Petersburg to Vladivostok because of severe frost. There is no heating, hot water or electricity in houses, enterprises and hospitals.
Russia will itself resolve the problem by intensive efforts. There is no more hope for understanding and support of London, Paris, Berlin and Washington. The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, during his visit to Moscow on the 6th of January gave it to be understood that postponing the debt payment was unlikely.
Honesty and attention to detail is paramount. The financial issues in question have roots in the early 20th century. About ten years ago Elizabeth Heres, an Austrian writer, began her own investigation to determine how much the Bolshevik coup in Russia in October 1917 cost to Germany. The aim of the German command was to use the Bolsheviks to weaken the Russian army and to guarantee the success for Germany on the eastern front. The so-called Russian Bolsheviks travelled in sealed train carriages across Germany, which at that time was at war with Russia. The Bolsheviks had the ideology that originated in Germany.
In December 1917 it became known that Germany had sent the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, at least 50 million German gold marks to destabilize the eastern front and to organize a revolution in Russia. Elizabeth Heres, who got access to the archives of the German Foreign Ministry, includes in her book the following telegram:
"The German General Staff, April 21, 1917. To the Foreign Ministry. A dispatch from the politics department of the general staff in Berlin: Steinwachs sends a telegram from Stockholm: "Lenin managed to arrive in Russia. He works fully in line with our wish. The German government is satisfied with Lenin's work."
The German government was also satisfied with the situation in March 1918 when a peace treaty was signed with Germany in Brest under Lenin's pressure. Under the treaty Germany received a huge part of Russian territory with a population of some 50 million. Moreover, under the treaty tons of gold bullion, coal, oil, non-ferrous metals, textile and food were sent from Russia to Germany. Germany tried to take as much as it could. By that time the allies betrayed Russia and the Russian army was demoralized. Germany did not capture Moscow merely because the Bolshevik regime suited the German government.
Other democratic countries also plundered Russia, which was weakened by the war. The Far East looked attractive to the United States, Siberia - for Japan. Britain and France captured port-cities in Russia's European parts and seized ships of the Russian Navy and merchant ships.
During World War Two 80 per cent of the cultural values plundered by Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union were later found in the United States. We are speaking, first of all, of regimes in various countries not of people. There are honest people in every country. Among the journalists, too. We have in our archives an article published in The Washington Post on the 17th of February 1996 about Russian organized crime. The paper writes that it is not a secret that mafia and corruption do serious harm to the Russian economy. According to various estimates, the paper writes, people of that category have illegally transferred since 1990 to foreign banks nearly 100 billion dollars. As a result, the Russian economy has lost much more hard currency than it has received in foreign assistance for the same period.
Hence the question: advisors from what countries after the turbulent events in Russia in August 1991 and October 1993 helped it form such officials and businessmen? How much capital has been transferred to the West from Russia by now: 200 billion, 300 billion or 500 billion dollars? Or more?
Professor Vladlen Sirotkin of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry has been studying the problem of the Russian values abroad for a long time. Having studied various documents, including documents in Russia, he says that Russia was the owner of gold reserves at 178 billion dollars in a number of countries. Professor Sirotkin said that: "In December 1915 the government of Emperor Nicholas II sent to the United States gold to buy weapons which never arrived in Russia. Russian gold in the United States is estimated at 23 billion dollars including the interest rate. Russian gold at 50 billion dollars has been kept in Britain since 1914. Britain also failed to fulfil its obligations on weapons supplies to Russia. Claims can also be made to France."
One might say that it is a matter of the past, the Russian Empire ceased to exist long ago and therefore no country has a debt to Russia today. The Soviet Union has also ceased to exist. But modern Russia has taken upon itself the Soviet debt and the Russian debt of the beginning of the 20th century.
There are also other arguments. Russia should have made a precedent of debt refusal. But there may be objections here, too. For example, in 1955 the Soviet Union returned to East Germany restored pictures of the Dresden Gallery and one million and five hundred thousand cultural values. How can these values be measured in money? That was a gift to the friendly people of the German Democratic Republic.
Here is another example. Under the Potsdam Accords of 1945 Germany was to pay the Soviet Union reparations at 10 billion dollars. In August 1953 the Soviet Union wrote off reparation payments of East Germany at 5.7 billion dollars. The older generation in former East Germany remember how important Moscow's decision was for the republic's economic development.
In conclusion here are the words of wisdom from the Gospel: "Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew, 7-12)

Hum, and how important was the continued existence of the GDR-economic-showpiece to the Soviet Union.
Selective memory?

AllAmerican:
LOL.
When you see your savings getting halved, generaly you take a closer look.
LOL
In fact it was quite interresting to look at the mood of the online brokerage community in such a very special situation.
Now the debate is over, sort of.

Where is all the Tsar gold now?
Or it's still there. Then it belongs to the actual Russia.
Or the money has been long deduced from the debt and nothing is left and Russia still ows to the west.

How much is the value of foreign investments sized by the bolsheviks in Russia?

On the other hand, it's true that Russia has been plundered hundreds of billions of $ from 1993.
The problem is that it's not precisely the creditors who benefited of the loot. It was individuals, both russian and western. No states or institution.
Then the debt is still owed. If the honest poeple of Russia lost all what they had by leting dishonest poeple steal them, or if the Putin administration wear the burden of the Yelstsin years of corruption and embezzelment, it's none of theyr business.
As the russians are saying: "eta uzhe ne nashe problem".
The reality is that indirectely the west and then the creditors or some of them profited It should weight in understanding of the russian financial problems.

I'm sick to see a Berezovsky lending no-problem one and half billion dollards to save a tv chanel and at the same time the population of siberia without heating system.

Fred, part of the problem in the early nineties was the Western investors put up these loans, when Russia didn't even have a financial-legal structure in place. Something that was insisted on in countries such as Poland and Lithuania before they saw a penny!
The Russian government had no way of controlling or limiting the activities of these "individuals".
Putin is now trying to rectify the situation, but you get the feeling that the cash is long gone!
Western investors should bear some responsibility for their lack of judgement, as should the politicians who wanted to appear like Santa Clause to the Russians.

Delenne,
everything OK?

Konichiwa, Kisako!
Afternoon, Mum!
1231edt
===
Kim, thanks for the hug!
===

{+3sk}

http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/101125 Sample of a real dumb muslim fanatic named Assmanli.Check out how he answers himself and edits posts to say something else.also he bans you from there if you post something he doesn't agree with,which is everything. LOLOLOL

Anyone home?

Good weekend?/bad weekend?

'The night the tanks took my home'

Sunday April 15, 2001
The Observer

You hear them coming before you see them. A ragged volley of shots, then a
ragged running file of young men, automatic rifles held high, the name of God on
a black bandanna around foreheads.

They are Islamic Jihad, one of the most extreme groups fighting the 'intifada'
(uprising or, literally, shaking off) in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of
the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Here in the city of Rafah - a grey sprawl of
crumbling concrete tenements and squalid, potholed roads hard against Gaza's
southernmost frontier - they are the nearest to heroes anyone has.

None is older than 18. They scramble on to a makeshift stage, form a line and
fire another fusillade into the air. Their shouted hopes for martyrdom in the
struggle against their 'oppressors' crash out through the loudspeakers' static into
the city's sabbath evening calm.

The rally - to commemorate an Islamic Jihad fighter killed in Rafah by rockets
fired from an Israeli helicopter gunship 10 days before - goes on until dark.
Later two gun battles break out in the city between locals and the Israeli settlers
who live on the choice coastal land to its west.

Elsewhere in Gaza, an Israeli civilian is shot and injured, two bombs are
defused, a mortar is fired into a Jewish settlement and seven Palestinians are
hurt when Israeli troops open fire on stone-throwers. It has, all agree, been a
quiet day.

Since this intifada started seven months ago 469 people - including 386
Palestinians - have died. For once that total has not been added to.

But, despite the occasional hiatus in the violence, few believe peace will come
soon. In Gaza - where more than a million Palestinians are crammed into a
stretch of parched land 30 miles long and five wide - they talk of a 'summer of
blood'.

Only 10 miles from Rafah, hard by the brilliant blue Mediterranean, 25
Palestinian families are living in tents. Last week their homes were bulldozed by
the Israeli army. In the firefight that followed, two people were killed and dozens
injured.

For the first time the Israelis had launched a ground attack deep inside territory
that, according to agreements signed in the ailing peace process, is under the
authority of President Yasser Arafat's government. The demolition was the
strongest signal yet from Ariel Sharon - the hawkish former general elected as
Israeli Prime Minister in February - that he will not moderate the hardline stance
that brought him to power. On election, he pledged to use language 'the Arabs
would understand'. At 1am last Wednesday, the people of Khan Yunis found out
what that meant.

Noor Abu Lous, a pretty, bright-eyed, seven-year-old girl, stood among the
rubble of her home and told The Observer how the helicopters had woken her.

'I heard them and stopped sleeping, and when the shooting started my mummy
and daddy told me not to be scared, so I wasn't because they were looking after
me and there is always shooting here,' she said. 'But then the tanks came and
we had to run away, and then I was frightened and when we came back our
house had gone.'

The Israelis claimed Arafat's forces were using the houses as cover to fire on a
settlement and army bunkers less than 500 metres away.

'Of course people were shooting. This is our land, our children,' said Majid
Abdallah, 37. 'The Israelis have destroyed some houses, so now we will shoot
from a new front line. Will they come and flatten that? Will they demolish the
whole city?'

The answer from Israeli hardliners would be 'yes'. Last week the leader of the
ultra-religious Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, called for Arabs to be killed with
missiles. After the demolition in Khan Yunis, Sharon said the Palestinians were
responsible for the violence, and there could be no negotiations until they ended
it. He could accept a Palestinian state on a maximum of 42 per cent of the West
Bank, but would not withdraw from any settlements or make concessions on
Jerusalem or other key biblical sites.

No one, least of all Sharon, believes Arafat could accept such a deal. The
Palestinian leader rejected far more generous terms from Sharon's
predecessor, Ehud Barak, last summer. For Sharon, every day that Israel
continues to exist and thrive - however threatened - is a small victory. And he
knows that for Arafat time is running out. Ask the people of Khan Yunis about the
intifada and they - like the Islamic Jihad zealots in Rafah - will swear their
readiness to die. Ask them about their support for Arafat, and the response is
different. 'He is far away from his people now,' said Abdallah Abu Ahmed, 45.
'He is now a high jet-setter, not with us here in the dirt.'

Such sentiments are growing. The al-Aqsa intifada - named after the
seventh-century mosque in Jerusalem that was the focus for the revolt - is
reaching a critical point and manyquestion its direction and purpose.

Partly this is due to the economic suffering the intifada has brought. A blockade
imposed by the Israelis has caused massive unemployment, inflation and
shortages. The Israelis are also withholding crucial tax receipts. As a result,
Arafat's fledgling Palestinian Authority is in dire difficulties.

'The public sector and the authority itself is on the verge of collapse. The intifada
has been like an earthquake shattering the whole economic structure,' said Arie
Arnon, professor of economics at Ben Gurion University.

One thing Arafat still shares with his people is a sense of betrayal. Though the
Arab world has pledged financial support for the intifada, only a trickle has got
through. Though they expect little, they also feel betrayed by the West. The new
administration in Washington has made it clear it wants to stay out of the conflict.

Noor Abu Lous, standing in the rubble in her pink plastic sandals, sings to music
booming from a loudspeaker set up by Hamas, one of the most radical
Palestinian groups. Her father translates the lyrics: 'We are alone, we are alone,
we will fight on because we are alone.