"Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in the Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior. The old Soviet obsession fighting American imperialism remains undiluted. ...
"(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests."
The Times pointed to Putin's snub of Robert Gates and Condi Rice by having them cool their heels for 40 minutes before a meeting. Then came a press briefing where Putin implied Russia may renounce the Reagan-Gorbachev INF treaty, which removed all U.S. and Soviet medium-range missiles from Europe, and threatened to pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, whereby Russia moved its tanks and troops far from the borders of Eastern Europe.
On and on the Times indictment went. Russia was blocking new sanctions on Iran. Russia was selling anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia was selling weapons to Syria that found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. Russia and Iran were talking up an OPEC-style natural gas cartel. All this, said the Times, calls to mind "Soviet-era behavior."
Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War?
To answer that question, let us go back those 16 years.
What happened in 1991 and 1992?
Well, Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done.
Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9/11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion.
What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy?
The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.
In 1999, the United States bombed Serbia, which has long looked to Mother Russia for protection, for 78 days, though the Serbs' sole crime was to fight to hold their cradle province of Kosovo, as President Lincoln fought to hold onto the American South. Now America is supporting the severing of Kosovo from Serbia and creation of a new Islamic state in the Balkans, over Moscow's protest.
While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.
We dissolved the Nixon-Brezhnev ABM treaty and announced we would put a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action.
With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk.
At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred.
We blew it.
We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles.
Who restarted the Cold War? Bush and the braying hegemonists he brought with him to power. Great empires and tiny minds go ill together.
#1
Pat Buchanan sides with the Paleostinians against Israel, with the Islamofascists against the U.S. in Iraq, and, now, with Putin against the U.S. and Poland.
Now can I question his patriotism? Huh? Please! Can I, huh?
Posted by: Mike ||
10/19/2007 15:14 Comments ||
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#2
treated her as a defeated power
Um, that's what she was...
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
10/19/2007 16:22 Comments ||
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#3
The collapse of the 'former' Soviet Union didn't end the 'Cold War'. The Russians simply lacked the means to continue it. That doesn't mean they gave up on it. They just improvised, adapted. So, they bring out their new Gaullism approach; to reform and develop the French Russian economy, and to promote an independent foreign policy and a strong stance on the international stage. This was the politics of grandeur (politique de grandeur).
#4
No Cold War, but "WARM/LUKEWARM WAR" as far as Russian-Chinese ambition is concerned, as per "ANTI-US WAR NOT ONLY POSSIBLE BUT DESIRED" rants [Russia 2016/2018 - 2022, China 2011 or 2014 > after]. The rants of the RADICAL MULLAHS, e.g. where GLOBAL-GEOPOL CHAOS + ANARCHIES IS TO ISLAM's +ISLAMISM'S ADVANTAGE, IS PC BROADLY THE SAME THING. HOT ENUFF TO KILL THE USA BUT COLD ENUFF FOR RUSSIA-CHINA = RADICAL ISLAM TO LIVE AND RULE THE US-ABSENT/SUBORNED "USA MUST BE CONTROLLED/RESTRAINED" FUTURE OWG-NWO/SWO. Communist-Socialist colludes or works wid Islamist-Jihadist. 2015-2020 > ANTI-US GLOBAL NUKE WAR = GLOBAL MUTUAL DESTRUCTION BECOMES A REALISTIC DESIRABLE OPTION. GLOBAL MUTUAL DESTRUCTION > anti-US-WEstern Radicalists, Lefties, etc. rule the World-OWG, OR NOBODY DOES.
#5
Sorry to inform the President, but East Europeans are lukewarm at best on Anti Missile Defense, and cold on Kosovo independence. And watch GOP members of Congress help shoot these down.
Vladimir Putins statement at this weeks Caspian Sea summit that no country in the region should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression has been widely and correctly seen as aimed to deter U.S. military intervention in Iran. But this warning was directed not only at the U.S., but at Azerbaijan, the smallest of the Caspian countries and Americas chief ally in the region and at any plans to establish a permanent U.S. base in Azerbaijan.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan sits on the Caspian Seas western shore, wedged uncomfortably between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, and close to the two other Caspian states, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. That makes it prime real estate for a U.S. military base, and the U.S. has made no secret of such desires. An Azerbaijani base could serve as a staging area if Washington decides to strike Irans nuclear assets, including the Bushehr atomic reactor, which Russia sold to Iran and which is due to come online late this year despite a billing dispute between the two countries.
The Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, has deftly balanced Russian and U.S. interests in his foreign policy, but Iran continues to present a thorny problem for Azerbaijan. Iranian naval vessels and military aircraft have incurred into Azerbaijani territory on a number of occasions, and a sensational trial continues this month in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, where sixteen men have been charged with plotting to overthrow the secular Azerbaijani government and impose an Islamic regime with the assistance of a shadowy unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Azerbaijans geographic location, Shiite Muslim population, and close ties to the US make it vulnerable to internal destabilization sponsored by its southern neighbor, and the past several years have seen the breakup of alleged sleeper cells whose purpose is to disrupt the government when the time is ripe and whom Azerbaijani authorities say are supported by Iran. Even a minimal American military presence in Azerbaijan would therefore be a political powder keg and lead to much more vigorous efforts by Tehran to undermine Azerbaijans security.
President Putins message about non-interference on Tuesday, along with his pledge to bring the Bushehr reactor online, thus had implications for both Washington and Baku. Iran is a huge market for Russian infrastructure investment and arms. In 2005, Russia sold Iran a $700 million surface-to-air missile system, which could be used to protect the Bushehr reactor in the same way that dozens of anti-aircraft batteries already surround Irans Arak heavy water plant. Arak is particularly troubling, giving Iran a potential source of weapons-grade plutonium to complement the uranium enrichment potential at the Natanz plant.
So far, Azerbaijan is resisting American pressure to establish a base on its territory, wary of angering Iran and souring relations with Russia after a spat earlier this year over energy resources. Russia is by far the strongest naval power in the Caspian, the worlds largest inland sea, and it conducted war games in the Caspian as recently as 2002, shortly after the failure of a previous Caspian Summit. Smaller states, such as Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, cannot hope to match Russias or even Irans naval presence.
Russian efforts at the summitthwarted by Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijanto obtain veto power over any new undersea Caspian pipeline are part of a larger agenda of establishing a virtual energy cartel with Iran for nearly all of Eurasias gas and oil. A Russian-Iranian pipeline monopoly would have disturbing implications for Europe, and particularly energy consuming nations with tempestuous ties to Moscow. Countries such as Ukraine and Georgia remember all too well their own difficulties last winter when gas supplies were cut off from Russia, leading to heating crises in both countries.
At his White House news conference on Wednesday, U.S. President George W. Bush warned that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to a third world war, and expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin would soon brief him on his trip to Tehran, where Putin met with the four other leaders of the Caspian Sea countries the day before. That should prove to be an interesting conversation, since Putin made it clear while in Tehran that the United States should severely limit its role Caspian affairs.
For now, the Caspian Summit has both failed to settle the legal issues between the littoral states but succeeded in serving as a stage for larger, global issues. And nowhere are these issues more pronounced than in the Caspian region, where America competes with Russia over influence in Eurasia. A vast region of mostly Muslim former Soviet states - nearly all authoritarian and struggling with occasional wars and revolutions, economic stagnation, and internal unrest - Eurasia straddles the west and east, Christendom and Islam, Europe and Asia. Both Putin and Bush are well aware that it is here where Russian and U.S. interests clash most conspicuously, and Putin, while not completely comfortable with the clerical regime in Tehran, has very publicly taken sides.
#1
RUSSIA PROFILE.org > BATTLE FOR NORTH CAUCASUS. Russia fears growing spread/influence of IRAN + Radical Islamism = militant/armed Islam in the region. Article also indics Russ unstable demographic problems vv local Islam.
#3
Ethnic Russia is dying out. The few who survive will at least have some cash in the bank, assuming they are able to get out before the Chinese & the Muslims take over the premises.
#4
Russia has already demonstrated how extremely **cough** vulnerable **cough** their pipelines are. We could bring them to their knees in short order.
#5
I'm reasonably ok with a long term scenario that sees the Chinese fighting with Islamists over the carcass of Russia.
Posted by: Ulailing Scourge of the Faith3257 ||
10/19/2007 4:01 Comments ||
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#6
Seemed to have lost my cookies... I do think I like the new handle: USOF3257
Fred is betraying his techie roots. 3257 is the RFC for SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol). This suggests to me that Fred is looking for telco grade reliability in getting Rantburg delivered over the inherently unreliable medium of the Internet.
Posted by: Ulailing Scourge of the Faith3257 ||
10/19/2007 4:12 Comments ||
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#7
Our leaders like Saudi "freedom" better than the Russian version.
Why should they? The more trouble in ME, the higher Russia's oil income. Plus, Russia is rebuilding its weapons industry. Plus, sending a message "Respect our sphere of influence, or ...".
#9
newc #1 They have a cash only balance sheet, but that can be eroded quite quickly in knowing what I know. Ditch Iran Russia. Trust me.
pray tell '0 tease please,
and in a while.. plz pass along the pertinent SUPER LOTTO info..
<:)
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
10/19/2007 21:31 Comments ||
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#10
Don't remember his name right now, but didn't somebody famous [NOT below]write a book about Russia's gas fields andor oil running out in
2042???
PRAVDA > IRAN AND JAPAN MOVE TO MAKE DOLLAR DOMINANCE A THING OF THE PAST. And by extens induce decline in US power; + TOPIX/OP-ED NEWS/DESERET > THE FINANCIAL VULNERABILITY AND LOOMING COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISM. USA and espec WALL ST. ABOUT TO $$$ EXPLODE. Euros and Western World to go down afterwards.
ROLLING STONE MAGZ > THE PROPHET OF CLIMATE CHANGE JAMES LOVELOCK - by 2040, Drought, Desertification, Food and water shoratges, + XTREME weather will be commonplace in the world. EUROPE will be SAHARA-LIKE, wid formerly cold regions becoming like torrid ME-AFrica, Southern USA like a KUDZU JUNGLE, London [Scotland-Ireland?] and Miami suffering from rising seas or routine floodings. CHINESE WAR WID RUSSIA INEVITABLE AS CHINA TAKES OVER SIBERIA [RUSS FE].
YEAR 2100 - Earth's population down to circa 500Milyuhn only, wid most moving close to remaining Cold or Coll Areas in Earth's higher Northern Latitudes to escape the heat.
ONLY TOTALITARIANISM + COMMUNISM-SOCIALISM CAN SAVE WORLD + ALL HUMANITY NOW, CAN EVEN SAVE AMERIKA = USSA/United SOcialist Repubs of Amerika from itself.
flame away but we should study how "they" are thinking here. Lots of cock comb showing.
At this weekend's G8 meetings, discussions between finance ministers of industrialized or developed nations will likely ignore the actual issues confronting these countries over the next few years. The following is a letter to the collective group of G8 finance ministers, which we hope does not prove too taxing for their intellects. The grouping includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Dear Dinosaurs,
It is not often that your good selves manage to meet in a nice
waterhole like Washington, so allow me to congratulate you on your choice of venue for this year's conclave. You have made the correct environmental choice by going to Washington, for where else in the world can such a large and important meeting benefit from the ready availability of hot air from a proximate source (Capitol Hill, just behind on your left). Indeed, a friend of mine tells me that hot air emissions from Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would have been sufficient to heat all your hotel rooms, but for the unfortunate departure of the former prematurely which has left you all overly reliant on the latter both for heat and comic relief. Still, it could have been worse - for example. Hillary Clinton as President would have likely melted many a libido before it lands in the United States.
Before we delve into the topics likely to confront you, may I ask each of you to look to your left and right, and ask whether the countries at your table actually mean anything for the global economy any more? Besides the obvious point that three countries that actually make up a bulk of global economic growth - China, Brazil and India if you were not paying attention when your economic consultant was talking - are conspicuously absent at the table, the countries around you by and large represent the most significant economic drag the world has seen in the last few decades. If indeed your idea was to cobble together a group of the world's largest losers, then please discard the previous comment and congratulate yourselves on the stupendous success of the initiative.
If not though, perhaps you have ask yourselves why someone makes it a point to invite France and Italy to this grouping, when neither of them has benefited from a functioning economy in the last five years. The Italian economy shrivels faster than the polar ice caps, and very soon will be reduced to a rump of old factories outside Turin and a couple of tailors in Milan. Then again, you do still have Japan in the mix, so perhaps it would be cruel to eject any of the Europeans who at least show the good grace to allow a reproduction-led takeover of their states by Muslims, a little demographic nicety that the Japanese could easily cobble together by just opening their borders to Filipino maids and nurses. Even if I bring myself to understand all three of these countries, can someone explain what Canada is doing in this grouping? They don't even have the declining factories of Italy or the jaded tourism of France, and as of this summer nor do they have a functioning financial system. Do you really need a member whose raison d Ätre is this meeting?
Financial wobbles
Now that I have cruelly broached the "F" word, ie, financial system, perhaps it is time to look around the table once again. Massive losses have gripped banks in Canada, France, Germany and the United States, while the UK has actually witnessed a bank run (1). As for Japan, improvements to their financial system are slow enough to make snails complain. All that means of course that you will find that the standard-bearers for financial system stability in your grouping are Italy and Russia. Now, think about that for a moment - do you know of any other business in the world where Italy and Russia set the benchmark, other than organized crime?
The crisis is of course entirely of your own making. For years now, you have focused unnecessary energy on getting Asian countries to float their currencies, whilst ignoring your own responsibilities to balance your budgets and reduce dependence on their savings. The arbiters of quality in your bond markets, the rating agencies, were allowed to flourish as corrupt business entities without any oversight whatsoever. Meanwhile, as your citizens splurged on a borrowing binge all of you looked on like proud hippie parents witnessing their kids absorbing their first bong hits (2). Some of you are less culpable than others, to be sure - Russia, for example. Then again, none of you can imagine Russia as an example of anything, so let us move on.
Your central banks have fallen into the trap of unleashing liquidity on an unsuspecting population, who gobble up cheap financing without realizing the inflation sting that lies ahead. Citizens in other countries have smartened to the moral bankruptcy of your central bankers, and taken to purchasing billions of dollars worth of gold, oil and other real assets (3). Indeed my read of The Mogambo Guru tells me that even your own citizens are catching on to your schemes so perhaps there is a much closer day of reckoning than you all imagine (dinosaurs - reckoning - meteorite: get it?). Europeans have not smartened up on the investment side of things, but they have at least taken to their old habits of going on strikes as shown by transport workers across Germany, France and the United Kingdom this week. (Perhaps the Italians don't bother turning up for work anymore and so missed the opportunity to go on strike.)
A number of you around the table may think that TIC (Treasury International Capital) is a horrible louse that infests dogs. It is actually an important statistic that shows how much of American assets are being purchased by non-Americans. For the first time in a long while, this figure was actually negative in August this year - foreigners sold more than they bought in the United States. Others around the table don't necessarily publish these figures, but don't make any mistake, much the same may be happening in places like Italy and the United Kingdom already.
Then there is the ham-handed attempt by the three largest US banks to put together a rescue fund for the SIV (structured investment vehicles) sector. Among all the ideas that involved good money chasing bad, this one takes the cake. To think that none other than the US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson chaired this effort leaves the rest of us with an astoundingly bad taste in the mouth - forgive me for being impertinent, but aren't you guys supposed to be the policemen rather than the thieves?
Xenophobes anonymous
All this talk of money and banking must be making you tired, so perhaps it is time to find an appropriate target for you to lecture and hector in your meetings. Yes, it is understandable that you need to make terrifying sermons from the pew, but this time around you may find the going a bit tougher than usual.
You see, by pulling in the sovereign wealth funds of various countries (China, Korea, Kuwait, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Singapore) for a quiet chat, you intend to signal the need for higher standards of disclosure and prevent backdoor takeovers of your largest companies. Truth is, if only you were so lucky. As I hinted in one of the preceding paragraphs, your economies are in a state of permanent decline, thus making your stock markets prone for long-term downward adjustments. In plain English, that means sell while you still can.
Then again, the presumption of relevance has long been a characteristic of your conclave, so why change it now? You happily lectured the Latin Americans and Asians in the 1990s (4) about the need for structural reforms, open markets et al, and yet when it is your turn to benefit from these innovations, actions no longer reflect the spoken word. You want foreigners to buy your worthless debt but not your brands or your technology? Well, why don't you look around for another group of suckers instead?
Making a symbolic gesture against China has of course always been a standard feature of these meetings, and this time your hosts invited the Dalai Lama for an otherwise-unknown honor just in time for this weekend's meetings. If symbolism was your goal though, perhaps you should have gone for Lee Hun-jai, the courageous head of the Korean restructuring effort post-1998 who actually achieved more in five years than the likes of Japan, Italy, Germany and Russia among you managed in your entire history.
Instead, you will probably choose to listen to the musings of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan who has completed his "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, but Please Buy My Book" tour of world capitals. The gentleman announced that the credit crisis was over a few days back, so I guess all of us can rest easy now. Except of course that banks continue to fail their funding tests, and credit markets still operate within a logjam.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so critical after all. From the vantage point of the countries that will run the world soon enough, such as China, Brazil, India among a host of others, it is good news that your group will choose to ignore the most pressing problems and instead devote all your energies to mundane and useless agenda items. This gives us all the time we need to push you off the economic cliff once and for all. Oops, maybe I shouldn't have just written that.
#1
CHINA > reportedly has roughly ONE TRILLION DOLLARS [more?] worth of NON-PERFORMING LOANS [NPTs], and exclusive of a separate HALF-TRILLION
[$500Bilyuhn] of same which was resolved? few years ago???
#2
Charming. You don't always see asian xenophobia done so openly. Another reminder that countries don't have friends, they have interests.
Of course, Brasil, India and China are growing faster than the G8. They have a lot of catching up to do and now they are turning away from failed socialist policies and to market economies, they are connecting to the global economy and are in a position to grow. The G8 countries have already gone thru that growth spurt that lifts their populations out of abject poverty and have been enjoying the benefits for decades. Welcome aboard.
Some Serbs dream of a Russian alternative to the European Union
DOTTED across the Serbian north of the divided city of Mitrovica are pictures of its hero: Vladimir Putin. Russia, Kosovo's Serbs believe, has saved them from the independence demanded by its Albanians (Kosovars), who make up 90% of Kosovo's 2m people. It is too early to be sure they are right. But Western diplomats are worried by Serbia's dalliance with Russia.
Marko Jaksic, a member of Serbia's Kosovo negotiating team, helps to run northern Kosovo. He is a deputy leader of the party of Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia's prime minister. If America and many European Union countries recognise a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, he expects Serbia to offer Russia military bases in Serbia, and especially on the border of Kosovo. He adds that Serbia should abandon its bid to join the EU, and claims that Mr Kostunica thinks similarly but has less freedom to talk openly.
Such talk is meant to send chills down Western spines. If Serbia gave up trying to join the EU, not only would it return to the isolation of the 1990s but it could also drag the whole region down with it. How serious is the risk? Mr Kostunica's party is aligned with Mr Putin's United Russia party, and its official position is that Serbia should be neutral. Mr Kostunica has disparaged a potentially independent Kosovo as nothing but a NATO state.
A source close to President Boris Tadic, whose party is in uneasy coalition with Mr Kostunica, concedes that, if Kosovo's independence is recognised, it will be hard to instil European values in Serbia. Even Serbs who would secretly like to be shot of their troublesome southern province fear that full independence would be disastrous. They predict that Mr Kostunica would, if not formally end the country's bid for EU membership, at least slow it down, as well as trying to punish countries that recognise Kosovo and companies that trade there and in Serbia.
Yet the Russian alternative does not look appetising. The prospect of Russian bases in Serbia is very unlikely, says Ivan Vejvoda, who heads the Balkan Trust for Democracy, a big regional donor to good causes. Serbia is surrounded by the EU and NATO. The Russian thing is a temporary, opportunistic thing, a balloon which will burst once we are over Kosovo, he says. There is much excitement in Serbia about Russian companies moving in. On the list for privatisations that may interest them are JAT Serbian airlines, Belgrade airport, a mine in Bor and NIS, Serbia's oil company. Alexei Miller, head of Russia's energy giant, Gazprom, met Serbian leaders to discuss potential pipelines on October 9th. But so far Russian companies (except for Lukoil) have been notable by their absence. Russia is only the 18th-biggest investor in Serbia; the country's largest single exporter is owned by US Steel. The EU has poured lots of money into rebuilding Serbia. If Serbia kept on track, a lot more cash could comeand Russia offers little.
On October 15th Montenegro signed a stabilisation and association agreement with the EU, normally a step towards membership. Serbia could soon do the same. But a negative report to the EU from Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor at The Hague war-crimes tribunal, means that it must first be seen to do more to catch the fugitive Ratko Mladic. Ms Del Ponte will visit Serbia soon to check progress (the government has posted a reward for the missing general, 12 years after he was indicted). This suggests that the Russian option is, as one diplomat puts it, loose talkfor now. If many EU countries recognise an independent Kosovo next year, it will be their turn to call Serbia's bluff.
#1
SERBIANS had better bear in mind that even wid the fall of the USSR, the USSR's successor RUSSIA has formally re-iterated the USSR's desire to promote, empower, and entrench SLAVIC CULTURE BEYOND RUSSIA'S BORDERS. RUSSIA > SLAVIC CULTURE IS RUSSIAN CULTURE AND VICE VERSA, NOT SERBIAN etal.
#2
The other thing the Serbs should bare in mind is that Russia's economy is only 6% the size of the US or EU - and that's after the huge increase in the price of oil.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
10/19/2007 19:34 Comments ||
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#2
If the government cannot or will not carry out its duty to defend the citizenry it is only a matter of time before an armed citizenry takes this duty upon itself.
#1
Yeah right, Bush and Mossad did it. It's sad when that unmitigated lie is necessary in comforting the leftist mindset. Alternative reality indeed.
These farleft liberals are in a bubble divorced from reality. We have our own homegrown kooks that believe that 911 was either an inside job by the hated Bush/Zionist entities, or a tragic event that "Amerika" deserved.
#2
These are not far left liberals. This is the German MSM. If you don't visit David's Medienkritik you should. Certainly he's looking for the weird stuff, but there's far too much of it coming from the German MSM. The Germans are all too ready to believe this kind of garbage, especially those from the east. It is going to be a long time before they are integrated into the western world. Until the, we should watch carefully.
#6
Are these not the same lovely folks who brought us the Einsatzgruppe, the Lebensborn project and various other calamitous horrors? Are they not the same folks who tried to take over the world twice in the last century? Like their trains, their psyche is.... auch berechenbar. We should watch these pompus, anal bastards closely.
Innocents were killed at Haditha, as they inevitably are in all wars--though that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or "massacre" that many assumed--though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.
The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.
Most despicably, they created and stoked a political atmosphere that exposes American soldiers in the line of duty, risking and often losing their lives, to criminal liability for the chaos of war. This is the deepest shame of Haditha, and the one for which apologies ought to be made.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/19/2007 06:32 ||
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#1
The WSJ expects an apology?
Those guys used to be smart.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
10/19/2007 7:57 Comments ||
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#2
Fog of war--move on. Get over it. Decorate the Marines for a job well-done.
#1
Such episodes, whether in Somalia, Darfur, or anywhere else, emphasize the need for peaceful Muslims to stand up strongly, in deed as well as word, against global jihadist violence. The sword of takfir ought to cut both ways, with peaceful Muslims willing to distinguish themselves from their bloody-minded coreligionists, and to repudiate their murders not just of fellow Muslims but of non-Muslims also.
Nice thought, but wholly insufficient to the task. Peaceful Muslims are "not Islamic enough" and, therefore, apostates. Muslims who wish to rid their culture of jihadis will have to do so by force. If they do not begin a comprehensive campaign to remove, isolate and kill their jihadist co-religionists, then they will join them in the West's crosshairs.
Time is running out. There can be no waiting for "the strong horse" to emerge. Either Muslims who truly seek to coexist begin taking back their faith by force orthrough their inactionthey become part of the problem.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/19/2007 07:49 ||
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#1
These appeaser-democRATs want to take us down the road that Chamberlain and Daladier took us back in the 1930s. Rush is warning us about the socialist dhimmicRATs duplicity, treachery, and treason. We ignore these modern day Benedict Arnolds at our own peril.
#3
:) LOL. Rush shoves those scoundrels letter down their collective throats. Hah, hah, hah, hah. He must be having lots of fun with this; moreover the Marines benefit.
The usual suspects (and culprits).
Harry Reid Hillary Rodham Clinton Blanche Lincoln
Richard Durbin Kent Conrad Bob Menendez
Charles Schumer Christopher Dodd Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray Byron Dorgan Bill Nelson
Daniel Akaka Dianne Feinstein Barack Obama
Max Baucus Tom Harkin Jack Reed
Joseph Biden Daniel Inouye Jay Rockefeller
Barbara Boxer Edward M. Kennedy Ken Salazar
Sherrod Brown John Kerry Bernie Sanders
Robert Byrd Amy Klobuchar Debbie Stabenow
Benjamin Cardin Mary Landrieu Jon Tester
Tom Carper Frank Lautenberg Jim Webb
Bob Casey Patrick Leahy Sheldon Whitehouse
Carl Levin Ron Wyden
#4
Some liberal with more money than Limbaugh (Soros, Gates, Winfrey?) could pay more than Rush HAS and either bankrupt him or make him a liar. Or maybe they can get a government earmark to do it with, instead of using their own money.
#6
Glenmore: I heard Rush makes 35mil on his salary. I imagine if true it would be hard to bankrupt him without having a paper trail somewhere.
Posted by: Charles ||
10/19/2007 8:53 Comments ||
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#7
Soros, Gates, and Winfrey might have the money but I doubt they will contribute to the Marines--just doesn't sound like their cup of tea--to liberal.
#9
I was in the car the other day and Rush was on the radio. A caller called in and asked Rush point blank: "Whatcha gonna do if the winning bid is $20 million? You gonna match it?"
You had to hear the confidence dripping off of Rush's response: No problem. No problem at all.
Very cool.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
10/19/2007 10:02 Comments ||
Top||
#10
A more important question is will Limbaugh offer up other items for auction? Granted this will be a hard act to follow, but he must have some incredible stuff that would fetch millions more dollars to this worthy charity, and others.
#11
Rush has two more year left (pun intended) on his eight year $285 million contract. It's right about $35 Mil a year. He also sells Rush subscriptions to about ?5 Million? people each for around $35 per year. He also sells Rush merchandise on line (Shirts, gifts, trinkets) which probably brings in another $20 million or so. Throw in some speaking engagements (I am guessing $50k-$100k) and he brings in a tidy sum each year. Did I mention that the Marine Corps charity will make the entire donation a tax write-off? So Rush will get to stick it to Harry and the government at the same time. Someone put this in football terms the other day: This like Rush intercepting a long pass, running it back for a touchdown, whipping out a sharpie, signing it, selling the ball for $2 million, and then mooning the QB from the end zone. GO RUSH GO!
#12
And in addition to a big-ass pile of money going to a good cause, the steadily rising sum keeps this smeary bit of business from disappearing off the news cycle. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that the noble Carl Levin decided to get on this bandwagon.
#13
Now that they've announced who the winning bidder is, I'm afraid that all across the United States, Democrats and their leaders are saying to themselves, "How can we hurt that woman?"
I fear that they will try to destroy her, drag her name through the mud, attack her personally, maybe even use a corrupt government official to attack her, like Ronnie Earl attacked Tom DeLay.
#14
Actually, Harry Reid had the temerity to try to attach himself to this this morning, to take credit as part of "we" for this good turn for charity.
#15
Anonymoose, you may be right. This is from a commenter at HotAir.com
Heres an interesting 1992 WaPo story on Betty Casey:
The strange story of the Casey family of Montgomery County starts with a bomb, a pipe bomb that nearly blew heiress Betty Brown Casey out of her Mercedes and into oblivion in March 1990.
The bombing only slightly injured the widow of multimillionaire landowner Eugene B. Casey, and it has never been solved mainly, investigators say, because Casey and her family have refused to help them.
Now the Potomac socialite, who is 64, is being sued by 10 of her late husbands grandchildren, who say she coerced her dying husband into giving her nearly exclusive control over his $ 100 million fortune.
Sources close to Betty Brown Casey, who declined to be interviewed, say she is a shy, generous woman who has been victimized by a murder attempt and now by greedy, spiteful relatives, angry that Eugene B. Casey left his millions to charity instead of to them.
That is absolutely false, said Eugene S. Casey, of Rockville, a son of Eugene B. Casey. This suit is not about money. Its about the theft of the Casey heritage and name by Betty Brown Casey.
The Casey family tale is filled with the kinds of characters and intrigue, plus a monstrous inheritance, that novelists dream of.
Consider some of the characters: Eugene B. Casey was a farm adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of Montgomery Countys wealthiest landowners. He built hundreds of low-cost houses in the Rockville-Gaithersburg area in the 1950s and 1960s, along with some of Montgomerys first large apartment buildings. A Democratic activist in Maryland, Casey also bought the Marlboro Race Course and became embroiled in the corruption trial of former governor Marvin Mandel.
Caseys six children include Douglas R. Casey, a best-selling author and adventurer whose business interests have run to parts of the globe where, he once said, blood is running in the streets.
Also playing a major role is the suspected bomber: a mysterious man in a black wig, carrying a leather bag, who was seen skulking around the downtown Washington garage where Caseys luxury car was parked.
In the middle of the drama is Betty Brown Casey, who as a young waitress from Sykesville in 1955 married a political and financial powerhouse 24 years her senior and became a prominent figure on the Washington social scene. Family members said she met her husband-to-be when she came to live on his property with her cousin, a Casey employee.
Today Betty Brown Casey controls a foundation that bears her husbands name and distributes some of his millions to charity. She is on the boards of the Washington Opera and her alma mater, Washington College in Chestertown, Md., which has as its centerpiece, thanks to the Caseys philanthropy, the Eugene B. Casey Academic Center.
The Eugene B. Casey Foundation also has given generously to the Patrick Henry Foundation of Brookneal, Va., a group that promotes free enterprise. Betty Brown Casey was the chief organizer of a Washington dinner that raised $ 150,000 for the group in May 1990. The group that night gave its citizenship award to Ross Perot; another guest speaker was President Bush.
Casey has denied all the allegations against her in documents filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, where the case is in preliminary stages.
Ive never met anyone who is so quietly charitable as Betty Casey, said Caseys attorney, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., the Washington luminary who represented Marine Col. Oliver North. She is a quiet, almost shy woman. A lot of her money is given away . . . always on the condition of anonymity.
Sullivan said he cannot think of anyone who would want Casey dead, and investigators said they couldnt either.
After the March 19, 1990, bombing, county police and investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) determined that the device planted in the trunk of her car was a 12-inch piece of galvanized pipe packed full of explosive powder, with a $ 50 garage door opener from Sears taped to its side.
The bomber had used the door openers remote control to detonate the bomb, which blew the back end off Caseys Mercedes-Benz sedan as she was being driven home from a shopping trip to Riziks, a womens clothing store in Northwest Washington.
ATF reports say that Casey told investigators she couldnt think of anyone who might want to kill her, but several family members said she has made many enemies. Who would want her dead? Just open the phone book and start with A, one family member said.
Investigators showed photos of family members to parking garage attendants, with no luck. They tracked bomb components, but couldnt identify where they were purchased. They reviewed Caseys finances and could not determine who would benefit from her death; her will leaves her money to the charitable foundation, the reports say.
Thats where the leads stopped.
That [investigation] ran basically into a dead end because the victim was uncooperative, said David Troy, special agent in charge of ATFs Washington field office. Troy said the investigation is still open, but turned into a real circus when neither Casey nor her family would cooperate.
Sullivan, however, said Casey cooperated fully and agreed to repeated interviews.
Troy said the family seemed to be in some turmoil and to fear extensive publicity. There were a lot of domestic problems within that family involving inheritances, he said.
Those problems surfaced with a roar in April when the grandchildren, who range in age from 16 to 31, filed their suit. In it, they say Caseys estate was worth more than $ 100 million when he died of natural causes in 1986 at 82.
In court papers, Sullivan said Caseys fortune was less than that, but he did not give a figure.
Eugene B. Caseys first two marriages, which produced six children and 11 grandchildren, ended in divorce. When he married Betty Brown Casey, it was her first marriage. They had no children together.
In 1981, Casey signed a will that would have divided his holdings in half at his death. One share was to go to Betty Brown Casey; the other was to be divided into equal trust funds for his six children.
If Caseys estate were worth $ 100 million, as the grandchildren say, Betty Brown Casey would have received $ 50 million and the six children would have received trust funds of about $ 8 million each. As each of those children died, their trusts were to be divided into equal shares among their children.
The suit contends that two changes made to the will in 1985 resulted in half of Caseys assets going to Betty Brown Casey and the other half minus $ 1 million for each of the six children to the foundation, controlled by Betty Brown Casey.
The six children, who live in Florida, Texas, New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Montgomery County, and range in age from 42 to 66, are not plaintiffs in the suit.
But a source close to Betty Brown Casey said she believes at least some of the children are behind the suit because they are angry that their father changed his will and reduced their inheritances. The source also said that Casey, out of her own holdings, gave each of the six children property, cash or trust funds worth $ 1 million on top of the $ 1 million they each got from the estate.
Eugene S. Casey, the son, acknowledged that gift, but said Betty Brown Casey gave the money to be manipulative, to keep the children from complaining about the larger inheritances they did not receive.
Other family members described Casey as greedy, mean and vindictive, despite her effort to appear kind and generous.
But another family member disagreed. As far as Im concerned, shes always been nice to me, said Virginia Casey Visnich, 66, of Coral Gables, Fla., Eugene B. Caseys oldest child.
Visnich said she does not believe Betty Brown Casey coerced her father into changing his will. Betty Brown Caseys friends also said that the allegations against her were hard to believe and that the bombing had left her shaken.
It just scared her to death, wondering who would do that and feeling very distrustful, said Sarah Brady, the gun-control activist and wife of James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt against President Reagan.
The Caseys and the Bradys became friends in the early 1980s because the two men had a common doctor and friend: Arthur Kobrine, one of Washingtons best-known neurosurgeons. Kobrine treated Brady and Reagan on the day of the shooting, and he remains Bradys doctor.
Sarah Brady and Kobrine said Casey was a wonderful person who would not and could not have coerced her husband. Even in the years when he became someone physically less strong, I cant imagine anyone coercing him into anything, Kobrine said.
Douglas Casey, the older of two children from Eugene B. Caseys second marriage, was the child closest to his stepmother, family members said. Douglas Casey, who could not be reached for comment, wrote a 1981 bestseller, Crisis Investing, and told The Washington Post then that his business interests ran from arms factories in Peru to ventures in South Africa. There are always business opportunities when the blood is running in the streets, he said.
Casey family members said that despite Eugene B. Caseys vast wealth, the family never lived lavishly. The lawsuit, they said, is a reluctant step into the limelight to correct what they consider a serious wrong.
One family member said the situation proves only one thing, that money never made anybody happy.
I criticize Islam because Muslims have never admitted their past and will continue to commit atrocities as long as the institution of Jihad is alive. I do not believe in collective responsibility, and I do not think a person should be held responsible for actions made by his ancestors centuries ago.
Jihad, being a central tenet of Islam isn't about to go anywhere.
On the other hand, if I am to take the blame, personally, for every bad act, perceived or real, committed by any white person in the past, it is only fair that I, personally, should also take credit for their achievements. It was peoples of European stock who created the modern world, not anybody else. If I am to be held personally responsible for colonialism, I want personal credit for being a part of the one civilization that has taken the greatest strides for mankind of any civilization that has ever existed on this planet. Im done with apologizing for my existence for the nameless crime of being born white.
Not only that, but if the white race is to be collectively blamed for all of its past sins, how is it that we are somehow not allowed to place collective blame on Muslims for terrorist atrocities? Reciprocity can extend in all sorts of directions, some of them quite nasty.
The solution to this is simply to recognize that Western nations have accepted more immigration from alien cultures in a shorter period of time than any other civilization has done peacefully in history. We have reached our limits and we need a break from mass immigration before our entire political and economic system breaks down.
Yet, despite taking in so many other foreigners, we are all "bigots".
The ongoing immigration is population dumping where less successful cultures dump their population in more successful ones. This is a form of global Communism and will generate the same effects by destroying successful communities and centers of excellence.
#3
The same "pacifists" who made war inevitable by preventing decent men from confronting evil now guarantee more of the same. By demonizing our history, our traditions and our current excellence these same fools guarantee white supremacists will be seen as the only alternatives to madness. That way lies war and genocide. That is our future.
#4
By demonizing our history, our traditions and our current excellence these same fools guarantee white supremacists will be seen as the only alternatives to madness.
Excalibur, I think the aboveand your post in generalapplies better to Europe than America. Regardless, as both Fjordman and yourself note, pacifistic liberals bear the vast majority of responsibility for driving those who wish to survive into the arms of Western extremists.
#5
Good article, but for every well researched report on the Muslim threat, Euro-morons produce 50 shrieks about "Islamophobia." Euro-dhimmism is a cancer on Western Civilization.
#8
Arabs and ME Semitic-Asia Minorian peoples are considered CAUCASOID/CAUCASIAN by most Perts.
* "Less successful cultures [Govts-'Isms/Ideos] dumping their populations on more successful ones" > AS SAID TIMES BEFORE [PRE/POST-9-11], ANTI-US GLOBAL MUTUAL DESTRUCTION + "WAR NOT ONLY POSSIBLE BUT DESIRED" > Failed-Angry Lefties, Commies, Govtists, Spetzlamists, ..@etal have got nothing to lose except the MILYUUUHNS AND ZILYUUHNS OF PEOPLE THEIR IDEOS CAN'T AND COULDN'T TAKE CARE OF ANYWAYS - Better for these masses, i.e. "BLANKS", to die as PC CANNON FODDER DESTROYING THE USA-WEST FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIALISM-ISLAMISM than for the entire World see probs or defects of same, and espec before "the Fodder" recognize whats happening to them and revolt. D *** NG IT, HOW DOES THE GOVT-PARTY MAKE OUR DELICIOUS TASTY SOYLENT GREEN ANYWAY!?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
