Russia - USA Relations

Palestinian wrote:Satanic in the sense that these books like the jewish talmud show total hostility and malice towards non-jews. They feel themselves superior to all others.

GarryB wrote:They are not secret.

The U.S. Justice agrees with the position of Moscow, but District of Columbia Judge Royce Lamberth, who took the decision, rejected the objections of the Justice Ministry.

The litigation on the Schneerson Library continues for several years in U.S. courts. In early August 2010, Judge Lamberth said that books and manuscripts were kept in the Russian State Library and Russian military archives “illegally,” and that the Hasidim had all rights for them.

Russia’s reaction was tough. Russian Foreign Ministry officials clearly stated that there would be no return made at all.

Amusing really... and a very dangerous precedent... how many objects are there in western museums that were stolen or looted from their rightful owners and displayed... worse, how many are sitting in the basements of those museums because there is not enough space to display their entire collection.

The article clearly says the US Justice ministry agrees with the Russian government, so this is one US judge overstepping his authority.

R. James Woolsey Jr., director of central intelligence during the Clinton administration, said that the United States’ failure to deal strongly with Russia and President Putin is setting an example for other countries in the Edward Snowden leak escapade.

“Hong Kong and Ecuador are learning from Russia, which is that if you insult the United States and don’t follow international norms with respect to it, nothing happens,” Mr. Woolsey said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And so they’re behaving appropriately. Nothing’s happening.”

“His general attitude is don’t be weak, and that’s fine, but he’s not really doing anything else except avoiding being weak, simply trying to throw his weight around with respect to the United States,” Mr. Woolsey said. “He’s not cooperating, really, on anything substantial, and there’s no risk in it for him. He doesn’t have anything negative happen when he behaves that way with us, so the kind of cooperative relationship we had from time to time in the past, say with [Mikhail] Gorbachev, is just not here … he’s almost impossible to work with.”

Mr. Snowden, a 30-year-old who had top-secret clearance and disclosed the government’s collection of phone records and a program that tracks some foreigners’ Internet activity, revealed his plans through a statement from WikiLeaks — founded by leaker Julian Assange — after reports he departed from Hong Kong bound for Moscow and then a new haven from American authorities seeking his arrest.

 Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino confirmed on Twitter that his government had received an asylum request from Mr. Snowden, who landed in Moscow on Sunday and planned to travel to South America through Cuba, The Associated Press reported, citing Russian news agencies.
Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_06_24/Russia-s-insulting-U-S-has-set-example-for-Hong-Kong-and-Ecuador-2259/

GarryB wrote:It is a great way to turn everyones attention away from the fact that the US was and is breaking international law and their attempts to hunt down the whistleblower is just an attempt to hide or gloss over their guilt... what they should be doing is giving this guy a ticker tape parade, but instead he is going to prison while the people responsible for breaking international law walk free.

TR1 wrote:The US is itself not the world leader on following international norms.

WASHINGTON, June 25 (RIA Novosti) – US lawmaker and former presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a KGB “apparatchik” and suggested Moscow is deliberately impeding the United States’ attempts to detain fugitive former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

“We’ve got to start dealing with Vladimir Putin in a realistic fashion for what he is,” McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, said in an interview with CNN. “He’s an old KGB Colonel apparatchik that dreams of the days of the Russian Empire, and he continues to stick his thumb in our eye in a broad variety of ways.”

McCain dismissed an assertion by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday that Snowden, who leaked details of a US surveillance program to newspapers in the US and UK earlier this month, was not in Russia following his reported flight to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong on Sunday.

A consistently vocal Putin critic, McCain said Russia’s handling of the Snowden affair would negatively impact bilateral relations between the two countries.

“[Putin] has to understand, and we have to be serious, that this will affect our relations with Russia in a broad variety of ways and that does not mean a return to the Cold War, but it means a very realistic approach to our relations,” McCain said.
Snowden was being kept out of public view at the airport’s transit area, according to an airport source who spoke to RIA Novosti on Monday after he failed to get on a Cuba-bound plane that he had reportedly been checked in for.

A White House spokesman said on Monday that Washington believes that Snowden remains in Russia, and called on Moscow to assess “the options available” to expel him back to the United States to face criminal charges.

In his interview with CNN on Tuesday, McCain also accused Putin of having a “disdain for democracy and the things we stand for and believe in” and referenced allegations last week that the Russian president had stolen a Super Bowl championship ring from the owner of the New England Patriots of the US National Football League.

“If he sees a situation he'll take advantage of it. Anybody that takes somebody's Super Bowl ring has got to be not exactly like us,” McCain told CNN.

The American football team’s billionaire owner, Robert Kraft, said in 2005 that he handed Putin the 124-diamond ring as gift. But at an awards ceremony in New York City this month, Kraft said the ring was not a gift and he would like to have it back. The next day, a Patriots spokesman said Kraft’s new statement was a joke.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said last week that he had personally witnessed Kraft willingly give the ring to Putin, adding that the ring was being stored in the Kremlin’s library.

GarryB wrote:The US does not understand international law... or more accurately thinks they are above the law.

GarryB wrote:International law includes laws on privacy, which US programs of electronic surveillance are violating.

GarryB wrote:the programs seem to be geared for industrial espionage.

GarryB wrote:BTW I guess the US is in real trouble now because they don't negotiate with terrorists yet they are holding talks with the Taleban...  

Hypocrite says what...

GarryB wrote:The NSA had regular (Monthly) meetings with the heads of major US companies... can you guess why?