How’s That ‘Reset’ with Russia Going? Disastrously, of Course
The results of Barack Obama’s “reset” of U.S. relations with Russia are now in. They are, like the rest of Obama’s foreign policy record, disappointing.
Obama said that in exchange for a reset, Russia would support a new nuclear arms reduction treaty. Russia did, but in name only: the actual reductions to U.S. and Russian missile stockpiles were marginal and insignificant. What really happened is that Obama signed a Potemkin treaty, supplying himself with fodder for his reelection campaign assuming he was willing to lie about the contents of the agreement. No problem there, it seems.
The other major promise Obama made was that Russia would support a new round of sanctions against Iran. Same result: Russia did so, in name only. Russia insisted on a shockingly watered-down agreement which is in no way different than the trio of similar agreements it supported during the Bush years. Russia is exempted from all provisions restricting sales of weapons and nuclear technology to Iran, and there is no threat of military action or any financial sanctions with serious bite. Before the ink was dry, Russia was blustering, threatening “payback” in the event any Russian interests were impaired by the sanctions.
The price that has been paid for these illusory “victories” has been truly extraordinary.
Obama has sold out the people of Georgia and the people of Eastern Europe, all of whom had hoped for something at least a little better from the land of the free and the home of the brave. Worse, Obama has sold out the people of Russia itself. By ignoring events ranging from the brutal arrest and beating of activists trying to hold peaceful public meetings, to the even more horrifying harvesting of vital organs from young draftees induced to commit suicide by barbaric hazing, to the pandemic official corruption that undermines the very foundations of the country, the Obama government has sent a clear message to Vladimir Putin that he may abuse Russia’s population just as he likes so long as he helps Obama win reelection.
“For a man who claimed he’d be radically different than George Bush, Obama is eerily identical.” Considering the context in which this statement is made by the writer, yes, it’s useful. I have trouble grasping, however, how on earth a person is willing to make such a statement anyway. At the very least, it should have some qualifiers: there is NO WAY “obama is eerily identical” to President George W. Bush. Could the same point(s)/parallels not have been made by using the idea of “similarities” (in limited contexts)? Stomach turning. Please don’t hand the opponents of these United States this kind of ammunition. Maybe the writer was born after President (W) Bush left office and didn’t know him. That would explain it, I guess.
In a way, I have precious little sympathy for the Russian people. If they are not willing to fight to uphold their democracy, then why should we do it for them? The United States gave the Russian people the greatest gift in the world. The United States won the Cold War, thereby allowing the Russian people to overthrow Communism and create their own democratic form of government. And what have they done with this golden opportunity? They put in a new Soviet-style dictator in the form of Putin. So much for democracy in Russia.
The world has to understand that you have to work at democracy in order for it to succeed. You cannot just force democracy on a country and expect it to succeed. Democracy is incredibly hard and it only works if people are willing to abide by its rules and constantly defend it. No amount of help from the United States can make a democracy succeed if the people in that country do not want it. That is why a democratic government has not and will never succeed in places like Afghanistan. The people basically don’t trust democracy, they are not willing to defend it, and they seem more comfortable with a dictator, monarch, or some other strong man running the country.
The only reason democracy worked in Germany and Japan after World War II was because those people were actually willing to accept a democratic form of government and then support it on a regular basis. And guess what? Democracy succeeded there. But in countries like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Cuba, all countries invaded by the United States and where it has tried to install a democratic government, we have seen nothing but failure. Those countries have decided that totalitarianism is the way to go. In countries like the Philippines, Germany, and Japan, also countries invaded by our military, those countries remained democratic because the people in those countries decided to embrace democracy and maintain it.
Look, democracy isn’t for everyone. The political elites in this country have to accept that. Countries, like Afghanistan or Russia, that have absolutely no history of ever having a democratic form of government, can’t be expected to suddenly stand up and become thriving democracies. We should have expected the Russian experiment to fail as soon as Putin took over in Russia. Putin is, at heart, an old-style Soviet and has absolutely no desire to allow Russia to have a democratic form of government. None. He’s ex-KGB and he knows how to game to system so that he will always retain his power until another strong man comes around and kills him, just as they did in the old Soviet Union.
Russia has been and always will be a deadly rival to the United States. We may not have another Cold War, but we certainly will not be their ally and they will certainly not help us as friends. They will always, always, resent having lost the Cold War to us and will never forget it. The sooner our State Department, as well as our naiive and incompetent president, understand this, the safer we will be. The Russians DO respect power and as long as we remain strong and show them that they cannot push us around, they will fear and respect us. That’s about the best you can hope for from a country like that.
the reason ms zigfeld is making a career out of badmouthing russia is because, at the time of 9/11, israeli russians of yukos were running most of russia’s oil industry, and they were scheduled, once the 9-11/GWOT operation commenced, to guarantee oil supplies to israeli america as israeli american armies tore up the middle east oil patch and remodeled it to israeli spec.
putin put a kink in that plan by tossing the yukos guys, plus the media guy gusinsky, and berezovsky and others, out of russia… most of them fled to israel, and as the crackdown proceeded, the yukos guys attempted to sell yukos to the AEI/PNAC israeli americans’ ally, exxon.
khordorkovsky, the yukos boss, apparently misjudged his horsepower, stayed behind, got busted and sent to the hoosegow, where one of his fellow inmates apparently gave him a free nose-job with a shiv… khodorkovsky suvived okay, but charges continue to pile up against him… charges that are “politically motivated”, of course, according to our neocon propagandists.
oh well
anyhow, since putin busted the oligarchs, taking potshots at putin as been the neocons’ favorite pastime… that, and funding chechen terrorists, who stage attacks on russia which cause more crackdowns, which gives neocons more ammo to shoot at putin… just another example of neocons “creating their own reality”.
you might remember that boris berezovsky vowed to overthrow putin by force, and, to that end, he’d been supporting the chechen terrorist leader shamil basayev until basayev was wiped out during one of his operations in ingushtia… it seems that being one of berezovsky’s buddies is one of the most hazardous undertakings in the world –polikovskya, litvenenko, one of his business buddies in georgia, another journalist that apparently did a high dive out of his apartment window, and forbes moscow editor paul klebnikov, who’d written an unflattering account of boris’ ascent to power… it’s a pretty long list, but boris had piled up enough loot to buy refuge in the UK.
anyhow, putin’s gonna be in the doghouse until he gives russian oil, gas, and pipelines back to israeli russians allied with the AEI/PNAC project, and the chances of that happening are slim and none, and “none” caught the last train to the coast.
everybody realizes, by now, seeing as how global oil production peaked in 2005, that the 9-11/AEI/PNAC project was motivated by the approach of peak oil, and that neocons’ success in their project –success defined by bill kristol as “benevolent global hegemony”– depends of grabbing control of the remaining oil.
not so pretty hard to figure out.
From start to finish, your post is a lie. Putin killed a score of dissidents – you can check out the list if you so desire. There is little doubt in Russian newspapers that Khodorkovsky was sent to jail because he decided to become a politician and became a threat to Putin. Your “it’s all jewish fault” line is understandable for a left-wing liberal, they are all anti-semites now. Interestingly enough, you said that Putin’s opponents “most of them fled to israel” but you know only of one – Gusinky.
Anyway, comrade, you are on thin ice here, I am Russian, and I read Russian newspapers regurarily. I suggest you change the topic, or I would have to flood this page with original Russian articles discussing this topic.
have you forgotten yukos exec and murderer nevzlin, who fled to israel?
and what about these other guys?
how do you explain these guys attempts to sell yukos to exxon?
how do you explain exxon’s alliance with the guys who hatched the PNAC/AEI plan?
why was the exxon CEO also vice chairman of the board of the AEI, which spawned PNAC, which said they needed “a new pearl harbor” to get their project rolling?
would you like to comment on richard perle, AEI and PNAC member, and his support of chechens?
would you like to comment on berezovsky’s support of basayev, and basayev’s role in the beslen school bombing that killed hundreds of kids?
Lets go one by one…
Your claims:
“most of them fled to israel” -
Yet, you named only one high level guy – Gusinsky. Of course, Berezovsky is in UK, while the owner of Chelsey is alive, well, and independent. Khodorkovsky is in jail. Platon Lebedev is in jail.
“have you forgotten yukos exec and murderer nevzlin, who fled to israel?”
You are seriously trying to convince me that you trust Putin’s courts? Dude, in Russia, there is even a slang term for Putin’s court – Басманное правосудие
You are making a f. joke of yourself if you rely on Putin’s courts for justice.
“and what about these other guys?”
You cannot name any top guys except Gusinsky…
“how do you explain these guys attempts to sell yukos to exxon?”
Easily – they thought if they sell their company to a Western oil conglomerate, then Putin would not be able to nationalize it. Simple enough?
“how do you explain exxon’s alliance with the guys who hatched the PNAC/AEI plan?”
How can you explain BP’s alliance with socialists like Obama? Moreover, how can you explain that Putin’s attacks on BP?
“why was the exxon CEO also vice chairman of the board of the AEI, which spawned PNAC, which said they needed “a new pearl harbor” to get their project rolling?”
Seriously, do I have to answer all of your conspiracy theories?
“would you like to comment on richard perle, AEI and PNAC member, and his support of chechens?”
“would you like to comment on berezovsky’s support of basayev, and basayev’s role in the beslen school bombing that killed hundreds of kids?”
It’s funny, that on one side you support Hamas and hate Israel – but on the other you strongly support Russian genocide of Chechens. Should it amaze me? Not in the least. As for rumors of Berezovsky’s support for Basayev – you should get yourself a better witness than Ramzan Kadyrov – a guy who has less than 0 trustworthyness in Russia. The guy is a Putin’s figure doll to control Chechnya. And all Russians know how Kadyrov kills people – even in Moscow downtown if he so decides.
http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=49D0D9ACE2890
http://www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=496EFE3EAD73C
you think putin doesnt know how neocons operate?
they’re doing the same things in iran and venezuela, they did the same things in the balkans… that’s how they operate, and everybody knows it.
“neocons” – you mean “Jews”, right?
(polite applause)
Flick,
I will start with last one – just because I so wish.
“you think it was okay for europeans jews to terrorize 700,000 muslims from their homes and land as israel was founded”…
Firstly, the number was 400,000 – and 700,000 is the number for the Jews that were terrorized by moslems to flee to Israel. But as for moslem refugees – here is the appropriate quote, and you can read more from where it came from here:http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_refugees_arabs_why.php
Habib Issa said in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951):
The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean….Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
one of your big problems is the fact that you have to support dissident muslims who have oil or land on pipeline routes or land of some other strategic importance, and you have to support them despite the fact that you’re trying to vilify muslims.
some people dont like that kind of doublethink, and they’re suspicious of people who peddle it.
so, you got to support muslims in the balkans if they happen to be against russian ally serbia, you got to support muslims in xiangang, who just might have lots of oil, against china, you got to support dissident muslims in iran… you had this long romance with turkey, which happens to be one of the most important pieces of real estate on earth, and will continue to be so for as long as the oil lasts…
you’ve got to support all these muslims while trying to convince the world that muslims are bloodthirsty brutes… and the turks finally snapped.
meanwhile, you support muslims to stir up trouble in russia, and when putin, predictably, cracks down, you can accuse him of being a fascist… and that’s how you work, and people know it.
so it’s no wonder that the project seems to be falling apart at the seams… it’s just too stupid to work.
and now you’re gonna have to cook up a new new pearl harbor to rejuvenate the project, except this time people know what to expect, and it’s gonna be harder, this time, to get away with another “new pearl harbor”.
which you realize, which is why you need that nuclear primacy, which will enable you to do unanswered nuke first strikes on russia and china, and thus prove, once and for all, how morally superior you are.
and if the quality of democracy is deteriorating as putin cracks down on neocon-inspired terror, well… that’s exactly how you planned it.
“meanwhile, you support muslims to stir up trouble in russia, and when putin, predictably, cracks down, you can accuse him of being a fascist… and that’s how you work, and people know it.”
You sure sound as one of those evil Israel-firsters. You would support anyone if they are against Israel. Hatred of Israel and Jews seems you be your first and only political consideration. Putin slaughters hundreds of thousands of chechen moslems? No problem, it’s neocon fault, Putin did what he had to do. Israel kills 9 moslem terrorists who tried to break through the blockade? Israel is an evil fascist country. Milosevich slaughtered hundreds of thousands of moslems? No problem, it was okay because US was against it. Israel invades Gaza and Lebanon after terrorist attacks? Evil Jews, the world has to stop them.
Is there any limit to your hatred of the Jews?
please post reputable links confirming that putin Putin slaughtered “hundreds of thousands of chechen moslems”.
please post reputable links confirming that Milosevich slaughtered “hundreds of thousands of moslems.”
please explain why, if you’re so concerned about the wellbeing of muslims, you think it was okay for europeans jews to terrorize 700,000 muslims from their homes and land as israel was founded, and why you think it’s okay for present day israel to pen millions of muslims up in open air concentration camps and bomb them with white phosphorus.
Speaking of Russia….
A coupld of stories from my friends who are still in Russia (and have no desire to leave).
Story #1.
Mayor of Moscow finished building another highway around Moscow. Every mile of this highway costs about the same as one mile of the tunnel in the Swiss collider. When I repeat this joke to American Russians, they are skeptical, but when I talk on the phone with my Russian friends in Russia – they say they believe it.
Story #2.
A Western company (I think BP if my memory serves me right) developed a series of oil fields in Russia. After they started giving decent amounts of oil, Russian “enviromentalists” in civil suits started demonstrations against BP. Russian enviromental agency filed multiple suits in Russian courts against BP. After BP gave up their fields to Putin-controlled Gasprom, both the courts and the enviromentalists disappeared.
In short, Russia is pretty corrupt now, and only an imbecile (I am pointing at you, flicker) would think that the court’s decision against Khodorkovsky were not politically motivated. Everyone in Russia is laughing at you.
It’s amazing how anti-semites can find a jew under every bed.
They actually believe that Jews secretely run the world.
Here – let me help you guys out:
once-upon-a-time-in-the-west.blogspot.com
But but, “Russia, China but No Iran at SCO Summit”
“The leaders of Russia and China will discuss global financial markets and tensions on the Korean Peninsula during the annual summit of a regional security grouping on Thursday, a Kremlin source said.
But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hit with new UN sanctions targeting Tehran’s nuclear program, is unlikely to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Uzbekistan
Ahmadinejad on Tuesday warned the Kremlin against siding with “Iran’s enemies” in supporting sanctions. The Kremlin reacted to similar comments in May by telling Iran’s leader to refrain from “political demagoguery.”
so Russia and Russia are in Washington line, though the serious deal is what China and Russia are comploting together, a guess they’ll deal about mineral sources
The most popular Russian newspaper MK says that Iranian is a done deal, and that Obama is simply faking an effort – so that later he could tell everyone that he tried. According to recent treaties, Russia can still sell ground to air missiles (which is what counts). Moreover, a month ago Obama dropped Bush’s embargo against Russian companies that did business with Iran.
In short – Obama’s election promise from 2008 is no longer “operational”. His real target is Israel…
“We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. And so it’s unacceptable. And I will do everything that’s required to prevent it. And we will never take military options off the table.”
Correction: “The most popular Russian newspaper MK says that Iranian nuclear bomb is a done deal…”
The world has to understand that you have to work at democracy in order for it to succeed.
The world does not need such American condescension. In the US you now have a mass democracy, which is anything but responsive to public opinion. Just look at immigration.
Russia suffered horribly during the 1990s. Things have been much better now that they have order rather than anarchy. Besides it was US arrogance (under Bill Clinton) that undermined the pro-Western Russians. The criminal bombing of Serbia, which was merely defending its citizens from Albanian ‘Kosovar’ terrorists and drug kingpins, was the final straw for the Russians.
BTW the pleasing the was one of the main reasons for ganging up on Serbia.
“Things have been much better now that they have order rather than anarchy.”
As I remember correctly, in 1998 one barrel of oil cost about $8. A few years ago it was more than $100.
Do you think that Russia’s better economic situation has something to do with price of oil, and not Putin’s fascism?
do you think the higher price of oil has anything to do with the fact that global oil production, year-on-year, peaked in 2005?
do you think anticipation of peak oil may have had something to do with PNAC’s need for “a new pearl harbor” to kick off their land and oil acquisition project?
Hm. So even with drastic cuts in oil production in Iraq due to war, one of the top oil suppliers, the world oil production did not fall. Hm. And even though Russians are screwing up their oil through corruption and nationalization, and Iran is pathetic, and Venesuela’s leftist government canno run anything, the world oil production continues. Hm.
why did the price of oil climb to $147/barrel as the number of drills doubled, and production remained flat?
why did it become necessary to pop the housing bubble that goldman sachs and GM, through their ditech subsidiary, had so conveniently pumped up in anticipation of out-of-control oil prices?
oil price, production, drills, gold, dollar index
looks like, in the best of all neocon worlds, we would have been able to save that housing crash until the oil price spiked as straits of hormuz were closed in the iran war… but oil peaked a little sooner than expected, and the big boys had to use their price remediation mechanism –destroying demand by destroying the economy– a little sooner than expected.
or maybe the big financial boys thought the PNAC project was nuts, right from the beginnning, and once putin sabotaged the alternate oil supply from russia, the only thing left to do was loot.
or maybe nobody but the neocon crazies believed in the PNAC scheme, or maybe even the neocon crazies never believed in it other than a mechanism to enhance their opportunities to loot.
perle, the main AEI/PNAC salesman, has made millions, so far, on the project.
And then the oil price dropped to about a 1/3. Hm. Also because of Jews?
And why do you ignore the drop of oil production in Iraq due to war, Russian corrupt government taking over oil production, Iranian mullahs and Venesuelan thugs screwing their countries? As any leftie, you don’t understand that supply is not controlled by magic.
if russians are so inept at producing oil, why are they jockeying back and forth with saudia arabia as the world’s biggest producer of oil? table 4.1c
too bad halliburton was chased out of iran in 2005 by US sanctions, isnt it? …but even at that, iran oil production hasnt really declined all that much. table 4.1b
too bad chavez is faced with a neocon campaign to cripple his production, not to mention his aging fields… and even at that, his production has declined only slightly since 2006. table 4.1d
…but thank goodness the big financial boys had the foresight to up that housing bubble and sell all those bogus securities so they could crash the american economy, cause a recession and cripple demand for oil… which became necessary in 2008, after the drill rigs had doubled and the price of oil had increased seven-fold since january, 2002.
and all the while, while the drills were doubling and the price increased by a factor of seven, global oil production remained flat… somebody must have repealed the law of supply and demand.
or maybe the big producers, out of the goodness of their hearts, were reluctant to charge so much for their oil, so they were waiting for the price to come down before they jacked up their production… oh! wait! …that doesnt work, because when the price came down, production stayed flat.
must be peak oil, and thank god somebody had the wisdom to cobble up that housing bubble, so it could be crashed to destroy demand for oil, which would disguise the fact that oil production had peaked, and would in turn obscure the fact that the PNAC project and the 9/11 trigger were motiviated by peak oil.
do you think maybe the neocons were counting on the israeli russians’ oil to tide them over as their neocon armies tore up the middle east to grab the biggest remaining oil deposits on earth?
could putin’s dumping of the israeli russian oil guys have anything to do with neocons’ hostility towards putin?
have the big money guys, who half-heartedly signed onto the PNAC plan in the beginning, given up on that plan since putin reclaimed his oil?
does that explain why the big money guys are now concentrating on looting, even though it damages israel’s protection, which is the american economy that supports the neocons’ armies?
“neocons” – do you mean “Jews”? Can you define the term “neocon”?
if you find a shoe that fits, you’ll have to wear it…
So, why are you afraid to say “Jew” – and instead use the code words? Is the shoe too hot for you?
Normally I don’t answer inane rants like yours, but this time I’ll have a go. You said, coisty, “Russia suffered horribly during the 1990s. Things have been much better now that they have order rather than anarchy.” Yes, the Russians sure do have a grand history of keeping people in power who deliver “order.” You had the czars, then Lenin, Stalin, then a whole host of communist dictators, and now you have Putin. Yes, what a grand history to fall back on when trying to maintain a viable democracy, right? Oh, and did I forget all of the oligarchs that your friend “flickervertigo” mentioned above? Sure, Putin may have gotten rid of a few of them (those that probably refused to pay him off), so, in good KGB form, he got rid of his competition and remained in power. What a swell system you’ve got there. You people are pathetic.
Hey, democracy in the west may not be pretty at times and it may not be perfect, but it sure is better than the dictatorships, monarchies, and oligarchs Russians always seem to come up with. Nope, there is no hope of keeping democracy alive (if, indeed, it ever was) in Russia. The sooner the west realizes that, the better.
Govt causes chaos.
Govt stops causing chaos.
Obviously, only govt is capable of saving the people from chaos, so lets give all power to it.
One could refer to the Ryazan incident, for our siloviki flunky, but that would be a wasted effort, The Second Chechen war worked out well didn’t it, Nord Ost, Beslan, that
recent train station bombing, almost all of the midlevel players in AQ from Zawahiri on, seemed to in someway tied to the Chechen campaign. I reckon an effort to seize the Caucasus like Derbent in 1795 will work out nearly as well
We could include chechens fighting on the side of taliban, arabs fighting in Chechnya and many things like that. And you correctly noted Ryasan case, and many others. But to people who see Jewish conspiracy behind every door, reason and logic are of no use. They need to channel their hate – and no doctor can cure that.
We see from the drivel of Flickering Vertigo and the likes that Jew-hatred, aside from being an inherent, psychotic condition, has many purposes. You can sanitize Vladimir Putin with it. You can blame all Soviet excesses for it. Why, after all Lenin was about 1/4 ethnically Jewish, so…and according to the anti-Communist Jew-haters, as opposed to other kinds, ‘Stalin’s Jewish wives’ made him do what he did to the Ukrainians. At some level, this is Jewish history. For Jews reading this hatred – and my thanks to Hyphenated American for taking on Raging Vertigo – there are many lessons. All the Jewish Marxists in Russia did what they did out of some misguided version of Light unto the Nations, including the hope that if they helped create a perfect social system than all hatred would stop, and all the Russians hating Jews would stop. The lesson is pretty clear: Zionism – not the half-hearted kind but real, full-blown Zionism with Judaism intertwined.
As for Putin and the ‘oligarchs’, well, indeed, he does not like competition. I imagine also – not being any kind of Russia expert – that Vlad has a good idea that going after specifically Jewish oligarchs is going to resonate well with certain segments of the population. They’re all in Israel, wealthy Russians? Hardly. Hardly.
As for the ‘Neocons’, by which Falling Vertigo apparently means the ‘Banksters’ and the ‘Mossad’ and every 3 year old child playing on a kibbutz, being responsible for provoking the Muslim Chechens to war against Moscow, what is there really to say? The troubling part is that many American ‘elites’ or perhaps ‘losers’ are about as anti-Semitic as they, apparently, and help spread rumors about the bloodthirsty Joos.
this appears in an article written by a jewish american, jim lobe…
.
here’s an article from haaretz, the prominent israeli newspaper…
.
the makeup of PNAC gives us another clue: there are the israeli americans mentioned by jim lobe and haaretz, but there are also corporate fascists like cheney and rumsfeld, and deathwish christians like gary bauer.
the main characteristic of all seems to a belief in “might makes right”, but still, they stage false flags to provide pretexts for their “might makes right” actions –which implies they know that normal people will find their actions morally unacceptable– but they are chickenshit enough to stage their “new pearl harbors” when they need them to justify their “might makes right” actions.
they believe they can “create their own reality”, which means they must control peoples’ perception of reality, which means they must control the media, and the information that gets to the media, and the information that gets to the people they’re trying to manipulate… the lies about iraq’s WMDs are an example.
I like your style. You bring two articles from leftists, and believe your task is done. And yet, illogically, on one side you support Russia’s slaughter of moslems in Chechnya – but on the other you claim that evil Jews keep Arabs in concentration camps. Hm. And apparently, you don’t mind Hamas design to finish off all the Jews. But altogether, you are humanist, who cares for human life and liberty and diginity and the nice things.
You are funny. If you did not exist, you had to be invented.
BTW, it was a nice touch for you to warn readers that an article was written by a Jew. I’ve checked some of your links, and they are solid left-wing extremist sites. Sounds like you moved from Leninist internationalist to Stalinist anti-semitism. That’s what I call progress!
I see that your standards for evidence are as low as your IQ.
1982, israeli oded yinon recommends balkanizing muslim states, particularly iraq.
1992, paul WOLFOWITZ and scooter LIBBY, cheney’s convicted ex-chief of staff, produce a defense policy guidance paper. the paper was the first generation of what was to become PNAC and later official US foreign policy, and recommended attacking iraq. the paper was leaked to the new york times, and public outcry was such that wolfowitz’s paper was disowned and revised.
1996, richard PERLE and some of the usual likud israeli american suspects write a paper for bibi NETANYAHU calling for the occupation of iraq. the paper was entitled: “a clean break: securing the realm“… and the “realm” to be “secured” was israel.
1997, PERLE forms PNAC with nominal founders robert KAGAN and bill KRISTOL, and all the usual likud suspects, plus deathwish christian and corporate fascist fellow travelers.
september 2000, PNAC issues a document, “rebuilding america’s defenses”, calling for global military hegemony. the document says that the military transition to enable that hegemony will be slow to materialize without “a new pearl harbor” to mobilize american support.
january 2001: PNAC members are installed into high positions after an election recount in a state governed by another PNAC member… cheney as VP, rumsfeld as SECDEF, and about 20 AEI members were installed in the administration.
september 2001, PNAC’s “new pearl harbor” materializes in the form of four hijacked airliners
PNAC members and fellow travelers are powerful enough to manage the investigation, dictate terms of the investigation, dictate the investigation’s conclusions, and manage the coverup.
september 2002, PNAC’s “rebuilding america’s defenses”, the document that called for the “new pearl harbor”, is adopted by the bunnypants administration as its National Security Strategy, in some cases, verbatim.
Comrade,
You should stop quoting “counterpunch” and Institute for Policy Studies – as well as all ultra-left-wing crap. They have as much authority as North Korean propaganda. Honestly, I’ve read enough soviet crap in my life, I don’t need more of that stuff. My gag reflex is not what it used to be.
or maybe there’s something else at work, here… something that exempts jewish radicals from criticism…
maybe there some enabling myth that’s calculated to generate sympathy for jews in general and israelis in particular.
maybe radical jews have had a free lunch, and have been unable to restrain themselves, and have gone over the edge into brutality.
who could blame kids, turned loose in a candy store, for overindulging themselves and their racist fantasies?
Stop quoting the sources that no reasonable man can rely on, and and bring in some decent sources – and then you could have a case.
mama’s boys
Relying on sources with no credibility is how the haters operate.
ah, well…
that’s how you make your living…
manage the ascent, manage the decline, profit from both sides of the curve.
you’re doomed to be so chickenshit that you ensure you’ll be shat on, so you get shat on, then whine about getting shat on to regain sympathy and the upper hand.
seems like a strange way to make a living, but if your tradition says you gots to be adrenaline junkies, what else can you do?
I am an Electrical Engineer. I make money by designing hardware. Your rant was completely insane.
but i got to admit…
the stress you put on yourselves produces some wonderful music.
What the hell do you mean by this? Honestly, this just does not make any sense.
the american way?
Hm. You listen to weird stuff, dude. I guess it goes hand in hand with your political views and the sources that you link to. As Germans say – Jedem das Seine.
Here is something a tad more conventional and mainstream for you.
One
Two
Three
No doubt you will try to undermine those artists as evil zionists – but I hope most people on this site will like my links.
what was he thinking?
a pocketful of mumbles
mama
Hm. You listen to weird stuff, dude. Really weird. I guess it goes hand in hand with your political views and the sources that you link to. As Germans say – Jedem das Seine.
Here is something a tad more conventional and mainstream for you.
One
Two
Three
No doubt you will try to undermine those artists as evil zionists – but I hope most people on this site will like my links.
you’ve been unable to refute anything i’ve posted, so you have to resort to attacking the messengers instead of the messengers’ arguments.
in the meantime, i guess we’re left with the necessity of judging people by their actions, and the neocons, by any standards of human decency, flunk.
of course, it could be that some people are superhuman, and thus are exempt from being judged by normal human standards.
You cited Putin’s lackey Ramzan Kadyrov (a man who never fails to produce a healthy laughter among Russians of all stripes) as a source of the claim that Berezevsky funded Basaev. Hm.
Anyway, here is one for you to work with…
“you think it was okay for europeans jews to terrorize 700,000 muslims from their homes and land as israel was founded”…
Firstly, the number was 400,000 – and 700,000 is the number for the Jews that were terrorized by moslems to flee to Israel. But as for moslem refugees – here is the appropriate quote, and you can read more from where it came from here:http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_refugees_arabs_why.php
Habib Issa said in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951):
The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade. He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean….Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.
why should you reject your status as losers when you can expoit that status to gain economic adavantage?
And thus you explained why “palestinian refugees” live in UN
“refugee camps” for more than half a century. Thanks for illustrating my point.
it’s not that people are incapable of doublethink… it’s just that it’s so much work.
so they wind up thinking whatever’s easiest and makes the most sense.
why should there be refugees in the first place?
you should embrace your losership, because you’ll be able to exploit it later in your efforts to recover.
good thing so many jews are protesting israel’s treatment of palestinians… they can be cited as evidence that jews are not idiots.
meanwhile, your mama doesnt give a shit… all you have to do is prove you believe.
another mama’s boy?
well… so what? …that’s how it is.
it’s not so surprising that you’re panicking.
I am what? Can you be more specific?
you’re just beginning to realize your mama was haywire.
meanwhile, your mommy aint gonna be able to bail you out of your jewish predicament, because you’re obsolete.
…which is not to say that jews dont have enough horsepower to exterminate humanity, in which case humanity wouldnt have to worry about any kind of religion, at all.
that’s really not something i’d be proud of.
basically, you got to decide: is a world without israel not worth living in?
are you morally obligated, from an israeli viewpoint, to wipe out humanity if israel is a terminally bad idea?
Seems like you are trying to decide: is a world with israel not worth living in?
What’s your answer?
i gotta say that a matriarchy out of control is probably gonnna result in catastrophe.
jewish mothers are no joke.
you’ve tipped over into the “loser” phase.
it’s time to back off, and exploit and exaggerate that phase, so you whine about your losership in the recovery phase.
there’s got to be some new gimmick you can exploit to wipe out the evidence that israel was a bad idea, an idea that has betrayed the best of jewish philosophy.
too bad israel’s behavior, now, is confirming the worst of jewish philosophy.
Why do you worry so much about Israel?
it’s demeaning to be shoved into defending a bad idea when it’s so obvious that it’s a bad idea.
it’s tiresome, being chickenshit in defense of a chickenshit county.
i’m tired of being coerced into participating in a project that confirms the worst stereotypes of jewish behavior.
i’m tired of watching my country defame jews by encouraging israeli behavior that confirms the worst stereotypes of jewish behavior.
the people who unconditionally defend israel seem to be chickenshits and liars.
i dont like chickenshits.
i worry about israel becuase it’s a chickenshit country that’s dragged my country into its chickenshittedness.
it’s depressing that people who are supposed to be so worthy of admiration have turned out to be such shitbags.
i had this girlfriend that drank… and once she crawled across the floor, laid her head on my leg and asked, pleading, “you still believe in the basic decency of humanity, dont you?”
it all makes sense, though, from a global perspective: israel is the instrument of america’s destruction, and america has to be destroyed because it consumes so much more than its share of the world’s resources.
if jews and israel are willing to take the heat, good enough.
Can you provide a calculation on who should have how much share of resources? And don’t forget to define the resources, btw. For examples, Americans produced the knowledge on how to make an airplane. It is not a resource for the whole world. And on and on it goes. Now, what resources has the non-Western world produced in the last 500 years? Not so much, right? Why do they refuse to provide their fair share of resources?
Man, so much hatred, so little brains.
Is there not a moderator in the house?
This “article” is nothing more than an offramp to the author’s personal blog – which is, if anything, more unhinged and loopy than this material. If you stop by, you’ll note it cites this article as “closing in on 100 comments” (comments apparently being sought after more for quantity than quality) without pointing out that at least 70% are from the same two individuals.
Senator “Scoop” Jackson, as one of the originators of the Jackson/Vanick amendment, was concerned about Soviet emigration only insomuch as it restricted the movement of Soviet Jews to Israel. Even that was a bit of a red herring; the primary purpose of the Jackson/Vanick amendment was to derail the Vladivostok negotiations and, later, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Rather than negotiation or compromise, Senator Jackson favoured direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union – another in a long line of American political figures who, despite little or no personal military service (Jackson was a private in the Army for a couple of months), trip over themselves in their haste to send other people’s sons to war. Since there was ample evidence at the time that the Soviet leaders liked their chances of “winning” a nuclear war, I leave you to speculate on the wisdom of that philosophy.
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=henry_jackson
A committed Trotskyite socialist, Jackson was a fervent defender of Israel even when it clearly went against U.S. interests; nowadays, such individuals are called “Israel Firsters”). He was the patron of Richard Perle, who was repeatedly caught passing classified information to Israeli agents, although he evaded prosecution every time. Students of more modern history will recall Perle as a prime mover behind the disastrous, money-sucking and neverending war in Iraq, who memorably predicted in 2001, “…and a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush”. Well, there’s a slime-mold beetle named after him; I guess that’ll have to do, although I suspect Mr. Perle was hoping for something a bit more….imposing.
http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/414051
Anyway, Henry Jackson had all the qualifications for the Hero Against the Soviet Union medal – never met a defense budget he thought was big enough, analyzed all proposed initiatives and actions against the framework of how big a thumb it would stick in the Soviets’ eye and cared for no other considerations, believed that “U.S. Eyes Only” actually had “and Israeli” written in invisible ink between the “S’ and the “Eyes”, and was comfortable with the idea of provoking a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union.
Other than that, he seemed like a great guy.
Well there’s a criminal offense, right there, self promoting one’s own blog, what of the kow towing to the siloviki, the KGB/FSB folks behind Putin, their military industrial
complex, the attempted gobbling up, of independent territories like Georgia and the Ukraine, and Poland, in the same grand style of 18th and 19th century Russian nationalism
I can’t believe you cited “their military industrial complex” as if it should be an area of concern. Surely you know the military budget of the United States (your “military industrial complex”)exceeds that of the next 10 countries combined, and accounts for just under half (48%) of military spending worldwide. Russia’s accounts for 7%. The U.S. outspends Russia better than 100 to 1.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#InContextUSMilitarySpendingVersusRestoftheWorld
When was the last “attempted gobbling up” of the “independent territories” you named above? Are you seriously suggesting that Russia could not have taken Georgia in 2008, if that was its intent? The Georgian army ran like rabbits, and there was nothing whatever to prevent Georgia from being annexed; the attacks within Georgia itself were punitive rather than acquisitive. The Russian government is not so crazy that it wants to take on responsibility for 5 million impoverished Georgians.
That would ignore that the two times they swallowed up Russia, in 1799, and 1922, they didn’t give much care to Ossetians and Abkhasians, that may have been in part because
“Kobs” didn’t have a positive experience in his early days in Batumi, Of course, they
don’t want to deal with Krighizstan either, but they have to
Despite many minor points objected to by many reader’s comments,
overall, the list of problems described is sustantial and worrysome. The biggest objection i see with this post is the standing assumption: ‘obama is working on behalf of America and the free world, and, as consequence, would want to fight Russian neo-soviet trends.” And, since it seems that instead of fighting, Obama’s policies seem to boost the neo-soviet trends and Russia in general, it must be that he is a fool and that he doesn’t know what he is doing, and that his record on that is ‘disappointing’.
What makes you (the author) make that fundmental assumption … ?
I think in domestic policy, and in foreign policy, Obama’s record should stand on itself. And we should draw conclusions about what he WANTS to achieve based on that. I personally think that in view of his anti-america, communist, and ‘global government’ish agenda (which he cried from the rooftop during campaign, and regularly afterwards), he has succeeded SPECTACULARLY. The only miscalculation seems to be that he and his minions did not quite expect the fearce opposition that he has met beginning with Tea Party April 2009 … and even that relative shock he seems to have weathered well. Can you imagine even Clinton or JFK being able to achieve as much (towards the anti-american goals of the Left), as has Obama in mere first year in office?
UNDERESTIMATE YOUR OPPONENT AT YOUR OWN PERIL.
If you want to lament, lament his successes, which are legion—not his alleged ‘foolishness’ or ‘disappointing’ or ‘failures’ …. there ain’t any.
U.S. President Obama extends congratulations on Russia Day
http://en.rian.ru/world/20100612/159396910.html
“Today, our two nations continue in our strong partnership, mutual respect and friendship, and I am proud of the new START Treaty and our joint efforts to reduce our nuclear arsenals. Beyond that, our two nations continue to expand our commercial and economic ties,” he said.