Aftermath News

Washington Post | May 1, 2008

By Joby Warrick

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday.

The population surge could undermine the stability of some of the world’s most fragile states, especially in Africa, while in the West, governments will be forced to grapple with ever larger immigrant communities and deepening divisions over ethnicity and race, Hayden said.

Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said.

“Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it, a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism, both in those countries and beyond,” Hayden said.

With the population of countries such as Niger and Liberia projected to triple in size in 40 years, regional governments will be forced to rapidly find food, shelter and jobs for millions, or deal with restive populations that “could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, or extremism,” he said.

European countries, many of which already have large immigrant communities, will see particular growth in their Muslim populations while the number of non-Muslims will shrink as birthrates fall. “Social integration of immigrants will pose a significant challenge to many host nations — again boosting the potential for unrest and extremism,” Hayden said.

The CIA director also predicted a widening gulf between Europe and North America on how to deal with security threats, including terrorism. While U.S. and European officials agree on the urgency of the terrorism threat, there is a fundamental difference — a “transatlantic divide” — over the solution, he said.

While the United States sees the fight against terrorism as a global war, European nations perceive the terrorist threat as a law enforcement problem, he said.

“They tend not to view terrorism as we do, as an overwhelming international challenge. Or if they do, we often differ on what would be effective and appropriate to counter it,” Hayden said. He added that he could not predict “when or if” the two sides could forge a common approach to security.

A third security trend highlighted by Hayden was the emergence of China as a global economic and military powerhouse, pursuing its narrow strategic and political interests. But Hayden said China’s increasing prominence need not be perceived as a direct challenge to the United States.

“If Beijing begins to accept greater responsibility for the health of the international system, as all global powers should, we will remain on a constructive, even if competitive, path,” he said. “If not, the rise of China begins to look more adversarial.”

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UPI | Apr 27, 2008

WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) — Campaign officials for U.S. Democratic presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said Sunday their party will unite against the GOP this fall.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Howard Wolfson of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign said he thinks the primary season battle between Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama “has been great” for the party.

Regardless of the outcome, he said, “we’re going to come together as a party, we’re going to go behind whoever is the nominee, and we’re going to do everything we can to elect that person because the stakes are that high.”

David Axelrod of the Obama campaign agreed.

“We understand that the continuation of these Republican policies would be disastrous for people across Indiana, across North Carolina, who are sitting there this morning, watching this program and going through their bills and wondering how they’re going to pay them and know that we can’t afford more of the same Bush economic policies,” Axelrod said.

Both said they will tout the qualities they believe make their candidate the stronger of the two Democrats against the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Associated Press | Apr 20, 2008

By BETH FOUHY

PHILADELPHIA - Could it be the “vast right wing conspiracy” is having second thoughts? Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.

It was one of a handful of endorsements the New York senator has received from Pennsylvania newspapers before the state’s primary Tuesday. Most of the state’s major papers have endorsed Barack Obama.

In its endorsement, Tribune-Review editors said Obama is too inexperienced to be president and that his recent comments about bitter voters living in small towns showed a lack of respect for middle-class values.

“In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government — as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right,” the paper said. “She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.”

Clinton met with the Tribune-Review’s editorial board, including Scaife, last month. Afterward, Scaife wrote an editorial titled “Hillary, Reassessed,” declaring how impressed he had been by the former first lady.

“Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her,” Scaife wrote.

In the 1990s, Scaife helped support conservative groups and publications investigating Bill Clinton’s financial dealings and sex life.

Scaife spent $2.3 million to fund a series of articles by The American Spectator magazine that dug into Bill Clinton’s behavior as governor of Arkansas.

The magazine reported that Clinton had asked state troopers to help procure women for him and that he had sexually harassed a state worker named Paula Jones. Jones’s legal case against Clinton helped launch an independent counsel investigation that eventually exposed his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Hillary Clinton famously defended her husband at the time, saying the allegations were part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” heavily funded by Scaife.

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San Francisco Chronicle | Apr 18, 2008

The political odd couple of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich has teamed up to film a new TV ad urging U.S. leaders — yes, that’s aimed at you, President Bush — to take immediate action on climate change.

It’s the second of the “Unlikely Alliances” spots filmed as part of former Vice President Al Gore’s $300 million “We” advertising and online activism campaign designed to get the American public to pressure their elected officials to address global warming.

The first ad featured left-leaning Rev. Al Sharpton and conservative Rev. Pat Robertson sitting on a couch on a beach in Virginia. The couch has been recycled in the latest ad, where Pelosi and Gingrich sit side-by-side before the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol.

“We don’t always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?” Pelosi asks.

“No,” Gingrich replies. “But we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.”

Pelosi and Gingrich have their bipartisan act down, but the acting is pretty stiff. They should have taken their cues from Sharpton and Robertson, who appeared to be having much more fun in their ad. Of course, they were at the beach. (Both the ads were produced by the Martin Agency, a Richmond, Virginia-based advertising firm.)

Bush made a Rose Garden speech this week on climate change, calling for a halt in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. Critics lambasted his comments as a stalling tactic. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said emissions worldwide must start dropping by 2015 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Despite sitting side-by-side on the couch, Pelosi and Gingrich don’t share identical views on climate change. Pelosi is backing a mandatory cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions, while Gingrich would rather use tax credits and other incentives to get industry to switch to low-carbon technologies.

Gingrich made his views clear during a debate last year on climate change with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., where they agreed the problem is real, but differed on solutions.

But Cathy Zoi, CEO of Gore’s Palo Alto-based Alliance for Climate Protection, said the ad reminds people that climate change is not a partisan issue. “By bringing together top Republicans and Democrats, we are demonstrating both to the American public and to lawmakers that we can and must overcome partisan differences to solve the climate crisis,” she said.

NY Times | January 6, 2008

by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.

Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.

Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.

The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf. Early in his career, General Kayani was an aide to Ms. Bhutto while she was prime minister and later led the Pakistani intelligence service.

But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country. “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself,” one senior official said.

The new options for expanded covert operations include loosening restrictions on the C.I.A. to strike selected targets in Pakistan, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani sources, officials said. Most counterterrorism operations in Pakistan have been conducted by the C.I.A.; in Afghanistan, where military operations are under way, including some with NATO forces, the military can take the lead.

The legal status would not change if the administration decided to act more aggressively. However, if the C.I.A. were given broader authority, it could call for help from the military or deputize some forces of the Special Operations Command to act under the authority of the agency.

The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan. Any expanded operations using C.I.A. operatives or Special Operations forces, like the Navy Seals, would be small and tailored to specific missions, military officials said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was on vacation last week and did not attend the White House meeting, said in late December that “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people.”

In the past, the administration has largely stayed out of the tribal areas, in part for fear that exposure of any American-led operations there would so embarrass the Musharraf government that it could further empower his critics, who have declared he was too close to Washington.

Even now, officials say, some American diplomats and military officials, as well as outside experts, argue that American-led military operations on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan could result in a tremendous backlash and ultimately do more harm than good. That is particularly true, they say, if Americans were captured or killed in the territory.

In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Currently, C.I.A. operatives and Special Operations forces have limited authority to conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan based on specific intelligence about the whereabouts of those two men, who have eluded the Bush administration for more than six years, or of other members of their terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, hiding in or near the tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village. But that apparently was the last real evidence American officials had about the whereabouts of their chief targets.

Critics said more direct American military action would be ineffective, anger the Pakistani Army and increase support for the militants. “I’m not arguing that you leave Al Qaeda and the Taliban unmolested, but I’d be very, very cautious about approaches that could play into hands of enemies and be counterproductive,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Some American diplomats and military officials have also issued strong warnings against expanded direct American action, officials said.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military and political analyst, said raids by American troops would prompt a powerful popular backlash against Mr. Musharraf and the United States.

Full Story

Dynasty? What dynasty? I don’t see no dynasty. Do you see a dynasty Georgie?

Nope, I don’t see no dynasty. Must be one of them outrageous conspiracy theories. Heh-heh-heh.

NY Post | Dec 5, 2007

HILLARY: WHAT DYNASTY?

By GEOFF EARLE

DES MOINES, Iowa - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday rejected the idea of a Clinton “dynasty” - confronting head-on the criticism that only people named Bush or Clinton have sat in the White House since 1989.

“There is no dynasty. There is no determination from on high. People get to vote for whoever they want. People get to vote against whoever they want,” Clinton told National Public Radio after a Democratic debate yesterday.

The former first lady also said she advised her husband on foreign policy when she took trips abroad and she invoked the Clinton name as a Bush-slayer.

“I was deeply involved in being part of the Clinton team during the first Clinton administration,” she said.

And, she added, “It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush.”

Mo Rocca on The Bushes and Clintons

Clinton, who has been slashing Sen. Barack Obama for two days, yesterday slammed John Edwards for attacking her vote for a resolution deeming Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

“I understand politics, and I understand making outlandish political charges, but this really goes way too far,” she said.

Edwards had challenged her vote for the resolution, saying: “Declaring a military group sponsored by the state of Iran a terrorist organization, that’s supposed to be diplomacy?”

Clinton said the resolution may have helped convince Iran to change its behavior, but Sen. Joe Biden shot back that there was “no evidence, none, zero” that it had.

Clinton has been bombarding Obama since Sunday, when a Des Moines Register poll showed him ahead.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen just an indiscriminate sort of spray we’ve seen since Sunday,” said Obama’s chief adviser, David Axelrod.

Bill Clinton, speaking in New Hampshire, complained that reporters were ignoring substantive issues - such as his wife’s record of public service.

“One percent of the press coverage was devoted to their record in public life. No wonder people think experience is irrelevant,” he said.

“Sixty-seven percent of the coverage is pure politics. That stuff has a half-life of about 15 seconds. It won’t matter tomorrow. It is very vulnerable to being slanted and rude. And it won’t affect your life.”

. . .

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Bill, like his wife, supported giving President Bush the authority needed to launch an attack in 2002.

Raw Story | Nov 27, 2007

by Adam Doster

On the stump for his wife in Iowa, former President Bill Clinton voiced his long-felt displeasure for the war in Iraq. “Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning,” said Clinton, “I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.”

But the tapes show a history entirely different. While Clinton has been critical of the U.S.-led invasion as far back as 2005, even calling it a “big mistake,” ABC News reports that Bill, like his wife, supported giving President Bush the authority needed to launch an attack in 2002.

To prove Clinton’s past support, ABC News dug up a transcript from remarks he delivered during 2003 commencement at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. “I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” he said.

Bill Clinton’s spokesperson attempted to explain the discrepancy by distinguishing between the authority to go to war — which both Clintons supported — and President Bush’s decision to use that authority when he did.

“As he said from the beginning and many times since,” said Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson, “President Clinton disagreed with taking the country to war in Iraq without allowing the weapons inspectors to finish their jobs.”

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. . .

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“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.”

“Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”

- Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, 1953

Yomiuri Shimbun | Nov 1, 2007

Two groups of Japanese researchers have discovered how the prescription flu drug Tamiflu reaches the brain through animal testing, they said on Wednesday.

A large number of people are reported to have behaved abnormally after taking Tamiflu, with some cases resulting in sudden deaths.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s working group has denied a causal relationship between the drug and abnormal behavior because the brain has a defense system, called the blood-brain barrier, which attempts to prevent drugs and other foreign substances from entering the brain.

The new finding, however, may reverse the ministry’s views.

After entering the body, Tamiflu takes an active form, mainly due to enzymes in the liver, preventing viruses from multiplying.

However, at the blood-brain barrier, a substance called P-glycoprotein works to remove foreign substances that try to enter the brain.

A group of researchers led by Prof. Takuo Ogihara at Takasaki University of Health and Welfare in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, compared ordinary mice with mice incapable of producing P-glycoprotein, administering them with the drug.

The group’s study showed that Tamiflu’s blood concentration went up to 65 to 85 percent in mice without P-glycoprotein, whereas the level was 14 to 17 percent in ordinary mice.

When the mice were given Tamiflu in its active form, the blood concentration in the brain remained at about 1 percent for both types of mice, proving that Tamiflu reaches the brain more easily when it has yet to be activated, according to the researchers.

In the case of humans, the amount of enzymes in the liver and the amount of P-glycoprotein differs from person to person.

If the result of the animal experiments can be applied to humans, it suggests that Tamiflu may reach the brain of certain types of people, become activated there and adversely affect their behavior, according to the researchers.

Profs. Yuichi Sugiyama and Masakatsu Shibasaki of Tokyo University reached the same conclusion in a similar experiment.

Research by the Tokyo University group also showed that when Tamiflu was given to laboratory mice three to 42 days old, the blood concentration of Tamiflu in mice up to six days old was six times higher than that in mice 21 days old or older.

The study also showed that the amount of P-glycoprotein was small when the mice were still premature, but it increased drastically once they reached the age of 11 days.

…

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“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…The real enemy, then, is humanity itself….Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…”

- The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome

Times of India | Nov 20, 2007

LONDON: A new study has for the first time suggested that global warming might lead to war like situations in the world.

The study points out that current and future climate change may result in widespread global unrest and conflict.

A clear example of this new link between war and changing global temperatures, was put forward by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently, when he referred to the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan. According to him, “This conflict grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation, and a scarcity of resources.”

For the new study, Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, and colleagues in Hong Kong, China, and the UK scanned worldwide historical records on food prices, population levels and conflicts dating back to 1400 and compared this data with long-term temperature records.

“We found that anecdotes of climate changes leading to conflict seem to fit a broader pattern,” said Brecke.

“Our basic model is that deviations in temperature can hamper crop production, which in turn, has three effects: increasing food prices, a greater risk of death from starvation, and increased social tension, which leads to violent conflict,” said Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US.

Though the research team acknowledges that temperature is not the only factor that causes wars, they believe that it can certainly aggravate the conditions.

For example, cooler temperatures during the Little Ice Age caused a drop in crop yields which intensified conflicts.

Although the world is now predicted to get warmer, not cooler, the researchers point out that forecasts suggest global warming will lead to long-term food shortages much as cooling did during the Little Ice Age, by disrupting global water cycles.

Brecke cautions that though modern societies have more mechanisms to cope with these problems, they might fail if society is forced to cope with a whole slew of environmental problems at the same time, as is predicted by several major environmental reports.

“If other problems emerge that impede our ability to address food shortages, we may well see warfare erupt, and it should not be that big a surprise,” New Scientist quoted Brecke as saying.

“The Soviet strategy of ‘perestroika’ must be exposed because it is deceptive, aggressive and dangerous. Gorbachev and ‘glastnost’ have failed to reveal that ‘perestroika’ is a world-wide political assault against the Western democracies…. It must be revealed that ‘perestroika’ is … not just Soviet domestic renewal but a strategy for ‘restructuring’ the whole world…. Gorbachev’s renunciation of ideological orthodoxy is not sincere or lasting, but a tactical manoeuvre in the cause of the strategy. The Soviets are not striving for genuine, lasting accommodation with the Western democracies but for the final world victory of Communism…”

- Anatoliy Golitsyn, The Perestroika Deception 1990

Restrictive new electoral rules could mean only two parties in the new Duma

Guardian | Nov 19, 2007

by Luke Harding in Korolyov

Gennady Zyuganov grinned at his wrinkled audience as a voice boomed out: “Comrades, let us salute the heroes of the revolution!” A procession of rather ancient men shuffled forward. Zyuganov gave them each a medal.

One 94-year-old hero - born under the tsar - had problems mounting the wooden stairs of the theatre where the election rally was being held. Zygunov bounded down from the stage. “Ninety-four,” he exclaimed, pinning on a medal for long service. “Amazing,” he said.

Ninety years after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, Russia’s Communist party is still alive and well, if rather long in the tooth.

Lenin may have been dead for 83 years, the Soviet Union may have disappeared, and the prospects for world revolution look dim. But as Russia prepares for a parliamentary election next month, the Communists are enjoying a revival.

Opinion polls suggest the party will finish second in the December 2 poll with 15% of the vote - behind President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. With Russia’s liberal opposition in a state of disarray, the Communists are the last democratic force left. Even Lenin might have appreciated the irony.

Zyuganov, the party’s long-standing leader, was campaigning in the grim concrete town of Korolyov, 15 miles outside Moscow. It was once famous for its cosmonauts. Now, though, its engineers and rocket designers are among capitalist Russia’s many losers.

Speaking beneath a faded Soviet era stucco ceiling, Zyuganov said that the Communists were the only party in Russia to care about social justice. “If all of Russia’s resources were divided fairly you’d have $160,000 [£80,000] each,” he told his supporters.

Instead pensioners survive on just barely 3,000 roubles (£60) a month. “When Putin came to power there were seven oligarchs. Now there are 61″, he said. It wasn’t Stalin’s fault that Hitler invaded Russia, he added, in response to a note passed from the floor.

Zyuganov told a Roman Abramovich joke. Roman arrives in heaven only to find his way blocked by St Paul. St Paul asks Abramovich: “Do you own Chelsea, five yachts, and a 5km stretch of beach in the south of France?” Abramovich replies: “Yes”. St Paul replies: “I’m not sure you’re going to like it in here.”

Zyuganov’s message is a seductive one for the vast majority of Russia’s 142 million inhabitants - and, in particular, its 38 million pensioners. They have failed to benefit from the country’s enormous oil wealth, he says, while a kleptocratic Kremlin clique has grown prodigiously rich.

“We are the only party stopping Russia from descending into full-blown corruption,” he told the Guardian. Is Russia a democracy? “Not really,” he admitted.

Russia’s Communists still enjoy widespread support despite serial attempts by Kremlin technologists to kill them off. The 90th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution this month drew some 20,000 on to the streets of Moscow. Steered away from Red Square they ended up outside Moscow’s new £500 a night Ritz-Carlton hotel, where young Communist pioneers danced and waved red pom-poms while men in cloth caps sang patriotic songs with the eyebrow-raising words: “For motherland and for Stalin.”

“Life was much better under communism,” Pavel Kotov, 16, said. How would he know? ‘”My parents are both Communists. I started to support them two years ago”.

Other protesters said they were fed up with bureaucratic corruption, which had grown rampant under Putin. “Some aspects of life are better. But in many ways we’re worse off. You can travel abroad now but only 10-15% of the population has enough money to do so,” said Oleg Nevsky a retired physicist.

Some were angry. “Putin is worse than Hitler,” one man said, waving a homemade banner showing Russia’s leader disappearing down a toilet. “Eight million men have died,” - a reference to Russia’s spectacular population decline under Putin, especially among Russian men, who on average are dead by 58. “Russia now has 9,000 villages where there are only old ladies.”

United Russia already dominates Russia’s sycophantic State Duma. But early last month Putin announced he was putting his name at the top of the United Russia party list, a move that boosted its poll ratings from 47% to 56%.

Under Russia’s constitution, Putin is obliged to step down as president next May. But most observers believe he will carry on in power, either as prime minister, president or in a new role.

New electoral rules raising the threshold for getting into parliament from 5% to 7% will make it hard for any opposition party to win seats.

This means that the party that once believed in proletarian dictatorship is now Russia’s last democratic option - and the only thing preventing the country from becoming a one-party state. The Communists and United Russia could well be the only two parties in the new Duma, analysts say.

“The others have been excluded from the parliamentary sphere. The Communists will be the only oppositional force. This means voters who want to retain opposition in any form have to vote for the Communists,” said Leonid Sedov, of the Levada Centre.

Sedov said that after seven years of Putin most Russians no longer believed their country was a democracy. They also felt the Kremlin would probably tweak the election result. “I think at the stage of counting the vote it will be done somehow by giving fake details of turnout,” he predicted.

He added: “I don’t think the Kremlin cares very much about its image in the west any more.”

Zyuganov, who nearly beat Boris Yeltsin in Russia’s 1996 presidential election, is accused by some of secretly conspiring with the Kremlin. In 2004 he mysteriously dropped plans to run against Putin. Zyuganov rejects such claims as smear stories.

“There are no completely independent actors in Russian politics,” said Grigorii V Golosov, a professor in the faculty of political sciences and sociology at St Petersburg’s European University. “But I would still say that the Communists are relatively autonomous among Russia’s not completely autonomous political parties.”

At the theatre Tatiana Viktorovana, an engineer, said she was impressed by Zyuganov. She thought he was a strong leader. “Putin doesn’t think about the needs of ordinary people. Zyuganov does”.

The State Duma

Russia’s December 2 elections may well return only two parties to parliament - Putin’s United Russia and Zyuganov’s Communist party - thanks to new electoral rules that penalise small blocs. The Kremlin raised the threshold for getting into the State Duma from 5% to 7%, meaning that western-orientated reform parties like Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces are unlikely to muster the necessary votes to get in. The Kremlin has also abolished first-past-the-post constituencies, meaning independents will lose their seats, and only 11 out of 85 parties have been allowed to register.