"What we are risking is a great power confrontation. The various Russian strategic thinkers have already said that NATO bases in Ukraine would be a serious strategic threat to the existence of an independent Russia. So, if Ukraine moves into the EU and then NATO bases are on their way, there's no doubt whatsoever that southern and eastern Ukraine are going to split off, and I just don't believe the Russians are going to give up their naval base on the Black Sea. So, if the Americans push too hard, and by Americans I mean Washington, of course, it's going to be a great power confrontation. Very, very serious thing… I mean what in the world do you think Washington cares about democracy in Ukraine? They don't even have any in the United States! We have a police state that spies on everybody, the whole world. The media is a propaganda ministry. It's worse than it ever was in the Soviet Union. People have no idea of what's going on and what they're told about the Ukraine is a fabrication." Paul Craig Roberts quoted in the Voice of Russia
————————————-
If you are Russian, it is very easy to see what has happened in Kiev as a neocon inspired US plot for which the "second act" will be an attempt to foment a similar uprising in Russia itself. This belief is reflected in the article quoted above.
Paul Craig Roberts and Phil Geraldi make strong cases for the continued influence of the neocnservatives. As a conspiratorial "vanguard" the neocons think nothing of changing their official party identity in pursuit of power.
Americans should ask themselves if people like Victoria Nuland and Michael Rubin are dragging the United States toward a crisis and possible conflict with Russia.
The neocons gave us the Iraq war. What a triumph that has proven to be. What new mischief will they heap upon the heads of the American people? pl
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2014/02/17/diplomacy-is-a-four-letter-word/
“If you are Russian, it is very easy to see what has happened in Kiev as a neocon inspired US plot”
That is right, but it is even worse. They used fascist front troops. All the violent fights with the police and the current out-of-control mess were caused by these. The Russians lost 20 million fighting fascism and now the U.S. is threatening them with it?
Do the neocons believe they can control those fascists? Just like they can (not!) control those Jihadists in Syria. Or do they only care about delivering destruction?
If I were Russian I would be fuming.
Putin’s response will be well measured but delivered with cold wrath? U.S. beware.
why not drop the -conservative and -liberal figleaves and call them nihilists – or neonihilists (if there is something new about this latest manifestation of id as ideology).
When the shoe is on the other foot I imagine the US is going to be pretty pissed off when Russia starts supplying secessionist movements in the US in the name of “Freedom”.
I often believe that full disclosure of the financial interests and earned and passive income of MSM commenters from all sources might tend to allow others to weigh their credibility and conflicts.
One example from the academic world also. Economists!
P.L. dislikes the Political Scientists. I dislike Economists. Almost every academic economist who speaks on the record [and even in academic literature] has outside income greater than their salary from someone who has the proverbial axe to grind. The Elinor Ostrom’s an exception.
And BTW the economists [always right in their opinions] in D.C. outnumber the lawyers [hired guns also]!
The Russians delivered perfect Olympic games. The won the most medals. The message of the closing ceremony was “Russia is great” and that message is believed and correct.
I am afraid that The U.S. is underestimating Russia. Therein lies the possibility of serious miscalculations.
Colonel,
Exactly! Thank God for your continued frontline service for us.
Ukraine could be a repeat of the USA backing down from the Syrian bombing campaign under Russian pressure. However, the slightest miscalculation or a prolonged civil war could escalate into World War III. Russia will invade to preserve their control the Russian speaking areas of the Ukraine and their bases in the Crimea, just like they did in 2008 in Georgia. This is an incredibly risky business.
WRC
I agree with you that conflicts of interest abound.
Just like the political scientists, academic economists have no sense of history. They have become so deluded by their mathematics that they have convinced themselves that the global economy is some kind of machine, that they (so called “technocrats”) can turn the knobs just right. They place no weight on the capriciousness of human behavior. And they take no responsibility for their actions. Each time when the tide recedes they claim it was unknowable. The transcripts of the Fed meetings in 2008 is an excellent example of how clueless these people are yet their belief in their own capabilities are unmatched.
It’s a tragedy that so much incompetence is allowed to be at the wheel. Maybe it’s just a reflection of our society at large.
Extract from wili:
“Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and was noted as a co-founder of Reaganomics. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy.
During the 21st century, Roberts has frequently published in Counterpunch, writing extensively about the effects of the Bush (and later Obama) administrations related to the War on Terror, which he says have destroyed the US Constitution’s protections of Americans’ civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process. He has taken positions different from former Republican allies, opposing the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, and criticizing Israel’s policies and actions against the Palestinians.”
For supposed amateurs, giving the Russians a new Chechnya-lite would seem to be a reasonable price for their meddling in the Syria Project.
Can’t be distracted from the Pacific Pivot.
Wonder what Ms. Merkel and Mr. Putin discussed? Germany is lot closer to the possible trouble spot, never mind gas deliveries.
oth
the danger is that the amateurs might get us sucked into supporting Ukrainian resistance to the Russians. pl
A footnote with no statistical significance. I seldom travel often anymore to the DC area but do visit my married sons, their wives and my three granddaughters!
Over the years have met many Russians and Russian-Americans. Some came up to me on the street as paid pamphlet distributors. Minimum wage I am sure. I also know many distinguished Soviet scientists were discriminated against and prevented from joining US faculty ranks after the Berlin Wall came down.
How does it relate to this post? Oddly many I met thinking at first were Russian were actually born and raised in the Ukraine. It would be of interest to know whether there are actually more Ukrainians resident or citizens of the US than ethnic Great Russians?
TTG and David H. addressed my earlier question as to the birthplace of Nikita Kruschev [sic]! Was he not the “ruthless” Commissar of the Ukraine during WWII?
I am not buying the “it’s all a plot” idea.
Are there plots? Did radical groups participate in Ukraine? Well, yeah.
But that’s a minor point.
The major point, it seems to me, is that the elites around the world have been very successful over the past few decades in walling themselves behind various barriers (mostly not physical) from which they have directed wealth from the people — as consumers and taxpayers — to themselves.
Given the numerous provocations, the people’s response has been almost nonexistent.
For a whole host of reasons, I think that the passivity and despondency that led to inaction will not go on for much longer. For one thing, given the outlook for most of today’s young people, they have every reason to refuse the crappy future that’s being pushed on them.
They don’t want a lifetime of being broke and ignored, and they will start fighting back.
Their future really will depend on saying no.
So while I fully expect we will see that social unrest will bring out the radical but mostly obscure groups that were already present in many places and that they may be a big presence in the street fighting, I am not going to just assume that most of protesters are as bad or worse as the people they are protesting against.
If the elites don’t want protesters, then they should start about giving people fewer reasons to protest.
jcj
Naive, Did Egypt work out well for you? How about Iraq and Afghanistan? How about Yemen? Was Salih really that bad or did the MSM idiots paint him as being that bad? pl
The trouble is that a lot of “other” elites in Ukraine, those who stand to benefit by ditching Russia and hooking up with the West, are supporting the protests. (while other elites, invested in maintaining close relationship with Russia, are backing Yanukovich) This is hardly a clash between “the people” and “the money.” The more I look at the situation, the more the protesters remind me of the Tea Partiers in US.
oth,
Yes, what city will be next to be “Boston Strong” because of some Ukrainian living in the US thinks we American’s aren’t helping enough?
Personally, I think its a little too complex in the Ukraine to be slapping labels (communist/fascist/etc) on the sides, other than I doubt the men who make up the Eastern Ukrainian side are going to take kindly to orders from the banker & technocrat class.
The funny part is the NYT and the other house organs of the WH trying to convince themselves and others that these Eastern Ukrainians are somehow fighting against Putin because of gay rights. Ahahaha, how much longer before we get into a war for LBGTBBQ rights, like how Afghanistan became about woman’s rights or some nonsense because of these same nanny state IDIOTS.
Reasonable, like shelling Belgrade in 1914?
Remember… Soviets did it first in Afghanistan! 😛
Of course, these same people (or their fathers) thought anti-communist Russian nationalists were supporters of Western-style “democracy”…..
Tyler stated:
‘The funny part is the NYT and the other house organs of the WH trying to convince themselves and others ‘
Were you referring to the NYT this way when they were cheerleading for Bush and the Iraq debacle?
kao_hsien_chih said:
‘The more I look at the situation, the more the protesters remind me of the Tea Partiers in US.’
Exactly. If Hillary beats them in 2016 this country will basically become ungovernable.
People have long memories in the region, and Lviv had a lot of enthusiastic Ukrainians who were all too happy to assist the third reich in rounding up Jews. What would you call the descendants of these people, particularly when they reportedly turn up for battle with the authorities with EU flags and Nazi insignia? Uncomfortable stuff for the Germans Im sure!
b is correct. Putin’s response will be measured and delivered with cold wrath, Divine Wrath. What is not noted is that today’s Russia is a Christian nation and the cornerstone of Russian foreign policy is protection of persecuted Christians. Obama chiseled out of the DC WWII Memorial FDR’s Christian prayer after Pearl Harbor. The Russian navy incorporated the Orthodox Cross of St.George into its insignia. Who has God’s protection? The dark Godless American Empire spreading death and destruction worldwide or Christian Russia? Putin is the leader of the truly free world. The likes of McCain is nothing but the treasonous traitor of Hanoi Hilton and a madman. As for revanchists like Brzezynski and neocon Polish(-American) Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski remember this: the descendants of the Bolsheviks came to America and took over. Beware of their allies posing as diplomats.
I do not support every uprising or group that uprises.
There are many uprisings recently that have succeeded on a superficial level but have turned out not to be victories for the groups that carried them out, or for people in the West who would like more democracy and less income inequality.
But I expect more social unrest around the world.
I just don’t see how we can pin what happened in Ukraine on far right groups, any more than we can pin things in the Middle East on the radical Islamists.
If the last 10 years have just been the start of decades of shifting and changing of power and alliances around the world, we’d need to be thinking about the implications of a world in a higher state of instability and uproar than we are used to, and how we will respond. We ourselves may well be entering a period of higher state of instablility and uproar too, that’s another factor to consider.
Supply political groups (politicians) money to get elected? That would sure give AIPAC and the Koch brothers (amongst many others) a run for the money.
Colonel Lang, you once said, and I am paraphrasing here, “if you pull a lever here, there’s an reaction over there…”
I think the coup in Kiev further ensures Assad’s place in Damascus. Moscow now has even more incentive to play spoiler than in the past and I expect we will see this elsewhere.
Upon further reflection, on this sort of revolutions, I’ve noticed, it’s almost always rightwing chaps who are pushed into power; why is that?
Is it that economic asset stripping is easier post revolution?
A few other disjointed observations that I see from the news here and the BBC.
The destruction of Syria’s antique and historical sites. Right or wrong, the evidence of Xianity/Greek/Roman foray into the ME will go away from the pages of time. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone,reduced to rubble. Only photos will remain, soon to be dismissed as fake. I hope whoever is thinking of the Syrian escapade realises that you’ve wiped Western influences clean out of Syria; the irony is hopefully not lost on people who were responsible.
History, it seems is not quite what it is.
From Poland, Hungary and now Ukraine, I’ve never seen so many Jewish communities in mortal danger through the slow creep of fascism. Paul Krugman was shitting himself over the right wing nature of Poland/Hungary politics last year on his blog. b on his site mentioned Kiev’s Jews made to move.
Lastly, Europe is headed for a major skirmish within its own borders. And the Germans will pay monetarily for the rashness of one its fellow EU members. Literally, the world will ask Germany to pay for something that is 100% not their fault. because the German guilt and politeness will be imposed on them by the Anglo Saxon press.
I just hope that they won’t swing rightwing internally.
BTW, Russia too is going to do the left wing revolutions in EU too. It’s not like the job situation is great in EU is it?
Wladyslaw, b,
One way for Putin to cripple the Ukraine leadership and its support infrastructure’s ‘hooligans’ are their ‘natural deaths’ of its key players.
Putin is a ‘nationalist’ and will work in what he sees as in the ‘national interests’ of the Russian Federation.
Cold wrath will be putting it mildly when it is all said and done.
Putin is clear headed, unlike the Ukraine and their EU/D.C. NEOCON ‘hooligans’.
GulfCoastPirate,
I don’t think the country would become
ungovernable at all with a Hillary Clinton victory, at least in the sense that the US government would continue to be at the beck and call of financial, and other elites. The Obama administration has been very successful in promoting their interests which in retrospect appears to have been his goal all along.
The tea party has been Obama’s perfect foil.
As cover for his essential support for a rapine oligarchy, dems can always say, “See how progressive and reasonable we are? Just look at that crazy Michelle Bachman over there!”
I wouldn’t see that changing much under a Hillary presidency.
Hey its one of the Obama True Beliebers. Wondering when you guys would show up and defend your guy.
I know I have to go over this constantly with you because you can’t wrap your paradigm around anything but a Team Red/Team Blue narrative, but I wasn’t a fan of Bush and thought the NYT was a bunch of bootlickers then. Friedman’s constant trumpeting of “turning the corner” is a laughable tragedy to those of us who dealt with the results of him and the other NYT idiots thinking they knew so much.
Harry, if we’re going to talk about long memories you’d need to go back further to when the Jews were put in charge by the Polish who took over the region and cracked the whip over the residents of Ukraine, as it were. Memories ran deep on both sides.
The Jewish narrative is one of the eternal victim, when the reality is a bit more nuanced.
If we can deal with Obama’s wholesale disregard of the Constitution and acting like a king, I don’t think Hildog 2016 is going to be the sole catalyst that makes the country ungovernable.
A Ukrainian rabbi has called for Jews to leave Kiev. If he is not spooked by fascist elements among the rebels, exactly what would he be be afraid of? Western R2Pers who have no problem with the killing of Christians in Syria, Iraq and Israel?
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.575732
Here is an interesting blogpost about recent and real-time Ukraine by a lay observer in Kiev with an introduction by blogger Dmitri Orlov. Dmitri Orlov came from Russia and lives in America now. He asked for news and views from people living there and got one he felt was good enough to translate and post.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/02/shock-over-ukraine.html#more
The Svoboda party is not only anti-Russian but also anti-EU. They are not going to help turn Ukraine towards the West.
Let’s wait and see. I doubt the new rulers are unified enough to maintain a common goal. They will likely have a good election this time but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Party of Regions will come back strongly in a few years.
As far as the Likudniks are concerned, if Jews flee Ukraine, have to – what could be a greater gift than the chance to finally make Aliya? Is that not good for Israel?
And maybe this is the secret behind the creative destruction illustrated so well by Mr. Polk with the cautionary tale of Humpty Dumpty:
Put in neoconservative Hegelian dialectiv – let’s assume that what they want really want is to create an antithesis (destruction) to a thesis (egg) to create a synthesis (omlet) – i.e. you can’t make an omlet without cracking some eggs.
Of course, the doability rests upon the ability to (a) have a frying pan, (b) lard, (c) an ability to control both the heat and the duration of frying and (d) the skill to properly flip it.
Naturally, without (a) to (d) the result will be a mess.
Just like the ability to master (a) to (d) is beyond doubt, the egg’s conset is assumed.
Though bystanders get may get hit by spilled yolk, or may complain about the stench of the burnt egg, well – who doesn’t like omlet? If the eggs knew what’s good for them, they’d agree too.
JCJ,
My take is ‘we’, particularly the types that have the highest profile in US foreign policy should spend a hell of a lot less time “thinking about the implications of a world in a high state of instability…” and a great deal more time thinking about ‘instability’ within the boundaries, and at the boundaries, of the US. They/we may be in for some very unpleasant surprises right in our backyards. But I doubt my desire will be fulfilled. There is more money and fame ‘overseas’. Nothing primes the fed spigot like foreign adventures.
Thanks Different Clue, that was one of the best reads on the topic, IMO. His take that this was only a conspiracy of incompetence rings true to me. My thought: Obama will go truly grey over this mess that he tossed kindling on. I presume Nuland was channeling his righteous wrath at Putin for saving the day durng his I-Want-To-Bomb-Syria constitutional crisis/Loss-of-Face crisis.
Tyler: I see China will also join in supporting US separationists, too. From their view, if the US had its own internal civil war going, we would spend less time trying to forment them around the planet.
So why do I constantly feel that adults are missing from the house? Probably too late for campaign finance reform.
Pretty much agree with your comment!
Here is another link about the geopolitics of the Ukraine:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-geopolitics-of-ukrainian-conflict.html
The simple breakdown: the two key players are the US and Russia. Russia wants stability along its borders; therefore, the US wants instability. Instability wins.
Bring in Gene Sharp from the Albert Einstein Institute. Spread these operatives around the world. Think the color revolutions; think the Arab Spring; think Syria; think Venezuela; throw in Thailand.
This is the Hegelian dialectic on the march.
PL, I am glad you have included Paul Craig Roberts into the mix. He is certainly on the fringe. But he is on the fringe only because agreeing with him takes one to a very dark place that we would rather not be. It is easier to continue to hope that a) there actually are adults, and b) they will come back into influence again.
The Hegelians run the show. The only question is: for how long?
LJ
I am not interested in Roberts, but the mention of his article in the Russian media is important. pl
Over the last few days, I have detected sheepishness in the media and in the words of politicians over what has gone on in Ukraine. I think they really did learn a lesson from what happened in Georgia after their irresponsible talk-talk about NATO membership for that country. But events in Ukraine completely overtook them. They didn’t realize that Yanukovich was so weak, corrupt, and incompetent, the institutions of law and order so flimsy, and the far-right opposition so strong and waiting for this chance to seize power.
So it is just possible that this crisis can pass without danger of splitting up the country or seriously damaging Russian interests in that country. The US-EU really were not angling for this kind of confrontation.
If Europe needs to learn something from this revolution/coup it’s that, with their horrid neo-liberal economic policies, they are playing with fire in Greece, Hungary, Spain and other European peripheral countries with 40% unemployment. While lighting up those tinderboxes due to sheer neglect is possible, Europe doesn’t want to goad Russia into lighting a match and tossing it blindly over its shoulder either.
All pointless if one cannot digest one’s meal in peace.
I suppose this would be a nice rant were I defending Obama but since I wasn’t it makes your little rant mostly irrelevant.
Of course that has been his goal. Some of us made that call a long time ago when he brought in Sumners and Rahm. That’s what made all the tea party talk about socialist and communist so funny. Those folks had no idea what was going on.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on their response to Hillary.
Hildog?
crf,
It is questionable whether anything very much was learnt from the Georgian fiasco.
What might have been learned is that, inevitably, both current events and history look very different to different people in the post-Soviet space. So, for instance, for many Georgian nationalists, South Ossetia is historic Georgian territory, which Saakashvili was right to try to prevent escaping back into Russian control.
If however you are an Ossete, then the Russian army are your friends, who after your brave young men in the militia prevented the American-trained Georgian army closing the Roki tunnel, delivered you from the ‘ethnic cleansing’ that which Saakashvili had in mind for you.
If you don’t believe me, have a look at the videos of the concert which probably the most famous contemporary Russian conductor, Valery Gergiev – who we all thought was Russian but turned out to be an Ossete – gave in Tskinvali after the Georgian defeat. If, incidentally, Gergiev blurs the distinction between ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’, he is hardly the only one.
Of course he was involved in a Kremlin-encouraged propaganda operation: but anyone who thinks that because there is some cynical manipulation in what Gergiev had to say, he is not also saying what he deeply believes, is a fool or a knave.
In the second half, Gergiev played the ‘Leningrad’ symphony of Shostakovich, against a backdrop of the lighted up town hall of Tskinvali. It seems to me likely that this was an allusion to an evening in August 1942, when Lieutenant-General Govorov unleashed an artillery barrage on the German positions who were – at that time rather successfully – attempting to starve the city’s people into extinction, so that the hall could be lighted up where Karl Eliasberg managed to get his half-starved orchestra through a performance of the symphony.
However, the most important thing for people in the West to listen to is what Gergiev had to say at the opening of the concert – in particular, his remarks in English.
(See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoZ06uBE4rQ )
This does not mean that people in the United States, or the United Kingdom, should simply swallow what Gergiev says, rather than what Saakashvili had to say. What they might perhaps start to get into their thick heads is that the immense complexities of the history of Eurasia in the twentieth century cannot be reduced to a simple story of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’, ‘white hats’ and ‘black hats’.
People who want to see this, and other histories – and here, people like Nuland and Obama are among the most salient examples – are not simply cruel and heartless, but in the end as much a danger to themselves and those they profess to love, as to others.
Agree.
There are scores of true Ukrainian intelligentsia risking – and some of them loosing – their lives for democracy. Accusing them of joining a fringe group of neofascist is the same as accusing Occupy Wall Street for willingly joining a violent mob. The Ukrainians fight for human dignity.
They resent this: http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/serhij-leschenko/yanukovych-luxury-residence-and-money-trail-that-leads-to-london
and this: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mt_profile/viktor_yanukovych/433767.html
and more.
Note that Yanukovich was twice convicted of violent crimes.
Funny thing Mr. Habakkuk; Georgia, Armenia, Ossetia, Talesh, Azerbaijan Republic, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Bokhara, Samarghand, Dagestan, Chechniya, Bahrain are all historical Iranian territories – as late as 1823.
It is only a twist of history – clearly gone awry – that Joseph Stalin was not an Iranian.
Joan,
Popular protests calling for action on legitimate concerns can be usurped by ruthlessly effective operators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik_Revolution
Prior to the fire igniting, the Ukrainian opposition leaders were offered posts in the government and turned it down.
David,
I don’t think Obama is a true believer, but when you are sitting in the chair and the enemy is not only in the gate but at your cabinet meeting then one is effed.
And the Trotsky Tribe is not done yet!
“Addressed to “The Honorable Barack Obama,” the letter starts with “Dear Mr. President,” and the following introductory paragraph sums up the rest of the three paragraphs:
“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is increasingly undermining a central pillar of the decades-long, strategic US-Turkish partnership: Turkey’s growing democracy. We are writing because of our deep dismay at this development and to urge you to make clear to the Turkish public America’s concern about Turkey’s current path. Silence will only encourage Prime Minister Erdogan to diminish the rule of law in the country even further.”
Eighty-four signatures under the letter are important. Among them are well-known names in Washington’s media and intellectual circles, such as famous neocons Elliott Abrams, William Kristol, Reuel Marc Gerecht, John Bolton, Mort Zuckerman, Martin Peretz, Leon Wieseltier; also, Tom Dine, Joshua Muravchik, John Podhoretz and Danielle Pletka, as well as influential names such as Dennis Ross, Dov Zakheim, Paul Bremer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Paula Dobriansky, Dan Senor, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and, most importantly, former Sen. Joseph Lieberman — who all have served in the US government. Add to them two former US ambassadors to Turkey, Morton Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, …”
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/02/officials-urge-obama-speak-out-erdogan-anti-democratic.html#ixzz2uHBDJfGA
A whole world to be conquered and so little time.
And I wasn’t talking about Bush so I guess you get to continue your run of being totally irrelevant around here.
Start?
They could be already for all you know.
MM, so that’s where all those “hope and change” donations came from.
Agree with you 1000%
Thomas,
You are right of course about usurpation.
But were the Ukrainian opposition people wrong to reject government posts?
I do not know. Do you?
Would they have had an influence on future policy, or would they simply have gained a salary, an office and a share of the payola rolling in?
If they resisted being bought off, then they were right to say no, weren’t they?
One wonders whether the neocons are in love with their own brilliance above everything else. Do they regard America, Israel, everything else . . as a stage upon which to strut their intellectual superiority stuff?
Joan,
Yes they were wrong, because by working in a unity government everyone’s concerns could have been addressed for a win-win situation for the massive economic reforms needed.
In our times it appears many just want to get revenge on their opponents and not address the underlining causes provoking the crisis.
No matter how power is attained, the ability to functionally administer the state apparatus is the key to success or failure.
Fred, I was making more of a comment on the lack of transparency. I don’t like to peddle conspiracy theories but I do wonder to what extent Citizens United has facilitated the sale of US policy-making.
Tyler’s hypothesizing tweaked me because I realized how the Tea Party could be a sound investment for foreign powers who don’t want US interference; the hope and change platform seems more geared towards getting needs met.
I was thinking more shipping AKs across the border to Arizona style of things.
Different Clue,
The Idol of the Intellect is their god.
I would say they regard the US and Israel as powerful instruments for implementing a New World Imperium and protection from retribution for their failures. So far.
With all the fires burning in the world , a whirlwind could becoming to engulf them. Unfortunately, we will have to suffer it too.
Well MM, you’ve got the Tea Party to thank for us not getting an amnesty treason shoved down our throats, so if someone is financing them from the outside they just helped save us from our ‘elites’.
“As for revanchists like Brzezynski and neocon Polish(-American) Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski remember this: the descendants of the Bolsheviks came to America and took over. Beware of their allies posing as diplomats”
Wladyslaw,I agree with most of your comment but -the last paragraph I have difficulty with:
I do not follow your logic – why would Zbigniew Brzezinski (not to be confused with his nephew with the same last name !) and Radek Sikorski be on the same side of this issue? Neocons would love a neo-con Ukraine, and Z. Brzezinski is not from the same school of thought, knowing his CV as pointed out by Mr Habakkuk somewhere else in SST. Please elaborate. To have traditionally polonophobe neo-cons gain control over Ukraine should be contrary to Z.B.’s picture of good outcome for Poland.
My understanding ( perhaps wrong) is that Brzezynski the Elder is somewhat anti-Russianitic and would welcome a bad outcome for Russia. Hopefully he would consider this particular area too high-risk a place to pursue a bad outcome for Russia.
different clue is correct in response to fanto’s comment. It is said that the history of Eastern Europe is the history of Polish imperialism versus Russian imperialism, a history over a millenia long. In the late first millenium and early second millenium, Polish princesses were married off to princes of Muscovy and Kiev. An aristocratic blood bond exists. But then the northern Ukranians rebelled against Polish rule, and with Russian help (and then the Swedes), began a long century of Polish decline with only Sobieski’s Relief of Vienna and defeat of the Turks as the bright spot. Muscovy ascended. Brzesynski’s eyes betray his Mongol blood from the early 13th century invasion. My late father’s longtime friend and fellow veteran of Sept’39 , an officer, was also of Mongol blood. They are warriors, and very astute. Brzezynski is a revanchist but also a realpolitik, unlike Sikorski who now has to walk a fine line or he’s out. I have always been against Polish membership in the EU, prefering instead a neutral resurrection of the First Commonwealth as a buffer between Russia and Western Europe. NATO and its puppets have different ideas as do the Byelorus (Belarus). Much cooperation between the Lithuanians, Poles, and Ukranians has developed, including a unified command Polish-Ukranian peacekeeping brigade. But old attitudes die hard. Ukranian fascists closed the Polish/Ukranian border. And in response to Moscow’s move, Warsawa moves Polish troops to the border to show the Ukranians who their real friends are. This has a very long history my friends. There is a developing number of Poles like myself who feel that revanchism must be put aside, a distancing from the American Empire and the IMF crew ensued, and a concordat with fellow Christian Russia made. Or do you prefer war? It is most revealing that the Ukranian flagship hoisted the flag of St.Andrew on its way back to Sevastopol. It was the Ukranian Admiral (and Chief of Staff) telling the Russians. “We are God brothers.”
Poland too will soon have its moment of truth. Note who is behind the recent destruction of Orthodox churches in Ukraine as hundreds of thousands of refugees flee east: shades of Syria where it is said that when the American flag goes up Christians disappear. Pray tell, who is behind all this.