Russophobes Attack RT and Assange
Russia Profile–a Ria Novosti operation–has a pretty brutal takedown of the RT-Assange menage:
On second thought, however, the selection may be fitting, given the longstanding allegations of RT’s anti-American bent, matched with Assange’s own apparent skepticism of Western politics. What’s more, the shadowy Assange in many ways fits the typical RT bill, as critics say the network has a track record of reporting on a variety of peculiar stories, from conspiracy theories to downright oddball dispatches from Russia and throughout the world.
In a telling sign of the announcement’s impact on the international media scene, many have taken to the Web to either ridicule or voice their concerns over Assange’s new project, which critics deem questionable and believe further fuels RT’s reputation as a disreputable news source. “Shame on you, Mr. Assange! Hard to imagine [a] more miserable final[e] for ‘world order challenger’ than [as an] employee of state-controlled ‘Russia Today,’” tweeted UK-based Russian oligarch and publishing mogul Alexander Lebedev shortly after the news broke.
. . . .
Observers said that Assange’s famously dodgy character would fit right in with a channel long criticized for reporting on a number of dubious themes – and above all, for consistently attacking the United States and its various policies at home and abroad. According to Internet entrepreneur, journalist and media critic Anton Nossik, the channel’s perceived dearth of credibility coincides with Assange’s own questionable integrity, exemplified by his putting scores of lives at risk through publishing sensitive documents.
“No normal actor in the international media, or politics, or public life would associate themselves with Assange after what we have seen and heard about his record,” Nossik said. But, he added, “[RT] is our biggest conspiracy theorist, and it is actually the only government body that openly says the Americans blew themselves up on 9/11, and this is very much what Assange would like to prove – that the United States is behind every crime in the world since Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, including 9/11.”
Exactly as I said in my post: this is just a collaboration between two parties with a common agenda: hatred of the US.
This also rings true:
Other analysts noted that RT has long since cut back on its own efforts to cast itself as an unbiased news source. According to Kommersant FM commentator Konstantin von Eggert, the network has instead shifted its focus toward openly purveying state propaganda that hardly conforms to journalistic standards. And for this reason, he said, Assange will make a perfect addition to the team. “What he does is not journalism at all – you can’t compare it to the Pentagon Papers or to Watergate,” he said. “I’m not at all surprised that he teamed up with Russia Today, and I think no matter how much RT pays him, it’s not a marriage of convenience, it’s one made in heaven – or probably in hell.”
But I guess Russia Profile is just another American, Russophobic conspiracy.
Looool- Thank you –
Former KGB Alexander Lebedev and Independence against the cynical porn-star Margarita Simonyan
She knows what the Kremlin wants — and likes.
When the clean government protests erupted in Moscow and other cities after the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections, Simonyan tweeted that adults encouraging young people to take part should “burn in hell.”
http://blogs.voanews.com/russia-watch/2012/01/27/wikileaks’-julian-assange-and-kremlin-tv-anti-westernism-makes-for-bizarre-bedfellows/
Comment by Anders — January 28, 2012 @ 1:12 pm
RIA *is* a Russophobe operation.
It is controlled by the liberal Medvedev clan and regularly runs articles by the likes of Eggert. It confounds me that the Russian state would pay to smear itself, though it does reveal the claims of state censorship for the laughable tripe it is.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 28, 2012 @ 3:18 pm
I see, S/O. Medvedev is a Russophobe too. Thanks for clearing that up. Putin is the only real Russian. I get it now.
Serious questions:
1. Are you a Neo-Eurasianist (a la Dugin)?
2. Do you think Putin is?
Prove me wrong.
As I said, Eggert is a regular contributor to RIA. Among other things, he supports the handover of the Kurils to Japan, and Russia’s accession to NATO. All issues that are real popular with the average Russian… not.
Hard as it may be for you to believe, but the Russian state does have some pluralistic features, and includes many liberals in positions of influence. RIA Novosti, which editorially is either neutral or if anything supports the West on many issues. Gazprom funds the notoriously anti-Putin Echo of Moscow. Medvedev’s human rights council has spent much of the past year writing a 400-page report on Khodorkovsky’s supposedly unjust imprisonment; obviously, human rights cases that concern ordinary Russians don’t bother them nearly as much (or maybe its the Menatep money talking?).
I did not say that Medvedev is a Russophobe, or even a liberal. Please don’t put words into my mouth.
Yes, I am a Eurasianist (don’t know or care about the -neo) part. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to hide that. Putin is a Eurasianist too, if not in the early 2000’s, then he certainly is today. Ironically, his shifting camp can in large part be attributed to Western actions.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 28, 2012 @ 5:04 pm
And Medvedev has canceled several meetings at which that report on Khodorkovsky is to be presented.
Re putting words in your mouth. In consecutive sentences you say “RIA *is* a Russophobe operation” and “It is controlled by the liberal Medvedev clan.” The implication seems rather clear. Unless the liberal clan attached with Medvedev follows an illiberal person.
Thanks for the confirmation re Eurasianism. Confirms a lot, actually.
Time permitting, that will be the subject of a future post.
And I love the last bit. It’s always the American/Western devil that makes the Russians do it. Where’s Flip Wilson when you really need him?
You know that such claims deny Russians moral agency, don’t you? It makes them merely Pavolovian animals, responding to external stimuli.
“That” being Eurasianism, and Putin’s connection to it. Not yours.
+++Yes, I am a Eurasianist +++
Oh puh-lease. A Communist by any other name…
Comment by LL — January 28, 2012 @ 5:27 pm
And Medvedev has canceled several meetings at which that report on Khodorkovsky is to be presented.
Because Medvedev is fundamentally not a liberal, being closer to Putin on most issues (indeed, being far more hardline than Putin on some issues, e.g. drug freedoms), but a pluralist.
The implication seems rather clear. Unless the liberal clan attached with Medvedev follows an illiberal person.
I am sorry to have created that impression. The constraints of brevity.
Thanks for the confirmation re Eurasianism. Confirms a lot, actually.
Why should it be? Eurasianism is an extremely diverse ideological position, and far more pluralistic than, say, Western-style neoliberal dogma. It ranges the entire gamut from people like Nazarbayev to national communists to socially liberal green leftists to pirates.
You know that such claims deny Russians moral agency, don’t you? It makes them merely Pavolovian animals, responding to external stimuli.
Don’t be silly. Not wishing to be part of a club that despises you however many concessions is not a lack of “moral agency”, it is basic common sense.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 28, 2012 @ 5:30 pm
Hey, S/O-speaking of hit pieces, you were supposed to interview me. For Siberian Light or something. What ever happened to that?
No need to write a hit piece on you btw. You’re self-hitting 🙂
Hmmm….Kathy Bates from Misery? I can think of only two females who frequently post to this board who bear some physical resemblance to that…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYirBMAbaro
Charming, charming lady and those who ended up on her crap list – kid dying of AIDS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akMg6tqv6LU&feature=related
Here ya go, more beaut from Chicago 07′
And SWP, when did you become Cass Sunstein? Are you sure you aren’t part of the MO he suggests here? Or are you just PO’d that you don’t have a half billion YouTube views since 06′?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein#.22Conspiracy_Theories.22_and_government_infiltration
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 6:44 pm
Allow me to repeat, this time in bold:
Sunstein and Vermeule also analyze the practice of recruiting “nongovernmental officials”; they suggest that “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,” further warning that “too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.”[23]
Sure nobody’s prodding you on the anti-RT and Zerohedge jihad of late, SWP? No old State Dept. friends?
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 6:45 pm
@LL – not a communist but a Bolshevist without the bomb making skills – or no money supplied from the German army to get going.
@SO – no need for a hit piece – I am afraid you do it to yourself regularly.
@Prof – Putin, Medvedev, RT, gebists all – a distinction without a difference. What we are seeing is an ideological three card Monte game designed to confuse. Fortunately they are so inept at it that only those who want to be confused, are. Of course RT will criticize something, but their line goes something as follows: “Russia has a spot on its dinner jacket, while Amerikkka is raping all the world’s grannies and their cats.” In other words, their self criticism is the first nano particle fig leaf – a new technical and scientific triumph for the new (post) Soviet man! Look to your laurels, Lysenko.
Comment by sotos — January 28, 2012 @ 6:50 pm
By the way has anyone heard of the new, dynamic RT program concerning Russia’s growing, dynamic male population and its favorite past time? I think the working title is “The Triumph of the Swill”.
Comment by sotos — January 28, 2012 @ 7:14 pm
To sum it up guys and (elderly angry) gals…
SWP, you make a fair point, up to a point, but your site is interesting for what it reveals about what The Man is thinking, and which websites are top on his Majesty the Status Quo’s $hit list. Your arrogant defense of legislation about which you know next to nothing while poo-pooing genuine experts on constitutional law like Stewart Rhodes or others who tell you SOPA or NDAA are blatant, unconstitutional power grabs is awesome to behold.
Plus, you seem to have some shady State Dept. friends and perhaps some buddies at the CME who are still sweating out what Corzine’s gonna say about their complicity in his heist.
Beyond that, this site is mostly just a hardcore Russophobe asylum for people who get some weird pyschological satisfaction from gathering around and telling themselves that no matter how shitty, planned or corporatist and controlled the economy is becoming from Europe to the U.S., somebody somewhere in Russia will hate their life more.
It also creeps me out that a so-called libertarian gets absolutely no heebie jeebies, NONE, from a creepy little homo like Lindsey Graham sneering on CSPAN, “Shut up! You don’t get no lawyer! You’re an enemy combatant!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D53WNf34ZtA&feature=related
I mean for the love of God, do you not care how far the TSA gloves go up your crotch so long as Uncle Sam is doing something to spite the Kremlin? Ah that’s right, rambling about the Kremlins is more important than discussing actual civil liberties and laws in your own country.
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 7:24 pm
And the last, and biggest irony of the situation is that, despite perhaps getting the Rand Paul treatment from the TSA, if you actually came out against them or against Corzine and the banksters on CNBC, Fox Business channel, etc etc, you’d actually be more well known and probably make more money outside of your narrow academic niche. But despite obviously being a high IQ guy like Peter Schiff et al, you won’t go down that path, for fear of professional ostracism and that you’d be lumped in with the growing Counterestablishment — maybe even have your article picked up on the dreaded ZeroHedge!
So you settle for shaking your fist at Putin all day long in a Russophobic circle jerk, having a blog ranked 2,250,000th place web-wide when it could at least crack the top 500 of finance blogs, and feel a big heaping load of smug that occasionally you can out-debate a Berkeley undergrad. But never a mea culpa for when you do get caught saying something stupid about the Northern Supply Route, Zerohedge not covering Russian protests (even though that’s like me complaining you don’t cover organic farming more, not exactly their main subject of expertise) etc etc. In other words, you’re just another La Russophobe, albiet male, hating life slightly less, and better educated.
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 7:36 pm
+++Yes, I am a Eurasianist +++
Oh puh-lease. A Communist by any other name… – LL
@LL – not a communist but a Bolshevist without the bomb making skills – or no money supplied from the German army to get going. – sotos
No offense, but you can’t imagine how ignorant you sound.
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 28, 2012 @ 8:41 pm
@SWP,
Thanks for the reminder.
To be fair, that series – as a regular affair – disintegrated through lack of organization. But now that you mention it, yes, I will be happy to resume it.
Not immediately, as I was ill with flu for the past two weeks (also the reason I’ve been commenting a lot here since mid-January) and need time to catch up with other things. But certainly sometime in February. 🙂
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 28, 2012 @ 8:45 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF-ZwJvKfI8&feature=related
One more shot — you guys really think all those tanks painted green (Syria and most of Iran ain’t very green, but maybe parts of Mexico are?), the military helicopters buzzing downtown LA skyscrapers last week, and all of that is all just about a bunch of guys in turbans who want to attack us? Or the looming Red Dawn Russian/Chinese invasion? You think they’re worried about them, or are they worried about YOU?
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 10:02 pm
…once again, who’s Uncle Sam expecting all this trouble from? And why? Just a routine exercise?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-us-rail-traffic-so-strong
Here’s the brigade-size train movement of Bradleys — notice not too many Hummers or Abrams or MLRS, just Bradley after Bradley
Comment by Mr. X — January 28, 2012 @ 10:06 pm
Mr. X, you are the creepy little homo.
BTW, have you noted the color that most Syrian tanks are painted….
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01974/SyrianTank_1974477c.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jxlS9zvtWSA/TrLRnjao61I/AAAAAAAADE4/HQuGfHomO5Q/s1600/syrian-tank.jpg
http://www.indiavision.com/news/images/articles/2011_05/186293/u8_Syrian-tanks-shell-district.jpg
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/dailystar/Pictures/2012/01/18/45609_mainimg.jpg
http://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer2/13062011/3687147/Untitled-1_wh.jpg
As for the Syrian countryside, well once again you show your ignorance….
http://imageseu.homeaway.com/vd2/files/HR/400×300/9i/1026429/430156_1250084592225.jpg
http://www.tasteoftravelling.com/Crac%20de%20Chevaliers%20and%20the%20Mountainous%20Syrian%20Countryside.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2292/2395830414_4736628ede.jpg
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/6/3753711-Anti_Lebanon_Mountains_bw_Damascus_Homs_Syria.jpg
http://foreverideasforever.blogspot.com/2010/10/syrian-countryside-view.html
Mr.X, your queer ideas about everything are really becoming incredibly pathetic.
Comment by Andrew — January 29, 2012 @ 1:35 am
Meanwhile…
Occupy arrests: At least 6,129 and counting.
http://occupyarrests.moonfruit.com/
Go Western democracy, you’re very effective!
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 29, 2012 @ 2:33 am
300 arrested in Oakland today.
I think they should all be indefinitely detained for our safety. That will show them who’s boss!
Comment by Sublime Oblivion — January 29, 2012 @ 2:45 am
Go away Sublim fascist moron, you’re not very effective!
I find that Mr. X and Sublime Oblivious and other pro-Kremlin ankle-biters always show up to attack anyone who criticizes the Kremlin and the Russian government in any way. They then accuse them of “hating” Russia. Rick Rozoff ,Alex Jones and the Crazy morons sect never loose an enemy . Poor little KGB Vladimis servile servants are are afraid of the expansive and imperialistic Georgia .
How do the sublim morons feel today ? Time for some ranting and spamming ?
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/05-12-2011/119846-Nuclear_war_on_the_horizon-0/
On one side of the struggle is the surviving machinery of old Soviet state: the secret police, the Interior Ministry, the large corporations, and Putin’s controlled media. On the other side we see millions of people who are fed up with arbitrary government power, gangster methods, and who want to see the rule of law. Each side has its own rhetoric, its own philosophy.
Exemplifying the rhetoric of the Russian state, consider a recent Pravda.ru opinion piece titled Nuclear War on the horizon. Here is a view sometimes expressed by operatives of the Kremlin. In fact, something akin to this view was put forward by Vladimir Putin when he spoke to the Russian nation following the Beslan massacre of September 2004. At that time he blamed America for conspiring to murder Russian children, claiming that “someone” wanted to break up Russia and finish off what remained of the Soviet state because Moscow still had nuclear weapons.
In the Pravda.ru column, America is depicted as threatening the entire world with nuclear annihilation. The United States is accused of leading a bloody “genocidal campaign against Libya” and of threatening the same against Iran. No credit is given to U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for publicly speaking out against a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. In fact, the United States is embarking upon a program of spontaneous disarmament. As Congress has been unable to pass the necessary deficit reduction package, the U.S. Defense Department will face what Panetta says are “devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation’s defense.”
The real policy of the United States and the real objectives of the U.S. military are never acknowledged by Putin’s spokesmen. In the Pravda.ru column we read: “The forces of demonic evil now have come nose to nose with the forces of reason.” This was a reference to the Russian fleet stationed near Syria, and the potential for a confrontation with NATO warships. Here the old rhetoric of the Soviet Union appears once more. The war drums are thundering, and the “imperialist aggressor” is called to account. But we cannot take it seriously. For something else has appeared on the horizon, which Putin says was inspired by the CIA: a popular opposition movement against his KGB regime.
Comment by Anders — January 29, 2012 @ 6:38 am
Burn in hell Sublim FASCIST CHAUVENIST the Kremlin’s English-language channel Russia Today is worse –
, which on some topics is freer than its Russian-language equivalent, all the protests have been covered, but the editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan set the tone for the channel’s coverage when she wrote on her Twitter feed that the protest leaders should “burn in hell”.
It also compared the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been attacked by liberals for his strong Russian nationalist views, to Emma West, the British woman recorded making a racist rant on a tram. The channel claimed the two are “made for each other” but are treated differently by a hypocritical Western media.
But even personalities loyal to the Kremlin agree that for a well-educated society with ever-increasing levels of internet access, the stifling propaganda of state television will have to change.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/why-the-russian-revolution-is-being-televised-at-last-6276518.html
Comment by Anders — January 29, 2012 @ 6:54 am
+++Go Western democracy, you’re very effective!+++
It is a peculiar feature of Russian culture and psyche to consider political freedom and democracy to be an opposite of law and order. Never fails. It is the fact of the arrest that indicates lack of freedom – never the circumstances of it.
Some one hundred years ago, a traveler from New Guinea may have commented on things he had seen in London that way.
Comment by LL — January 29, 2012 @ 8:35 am
The NEO-COLONIAL Russia . Russia have always been a imperialist country colonies
http://freedomchannel.blogspot.com/2007/12/milton-friedman-on-slavery.html
So colonialism, well first of all, where is it that you have colonialism today? You have the classic colonialism behind the Iron Curtain. You have Russia, which is a master country. I mean not the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, but Russia which is the master country with the great colony around it within the Soviet Union in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary. That’s the great example today of your classic kind of colonialism. The United States, with trivial exception, has never been a colonial country. It had Philippines for awhile—
(audience comment)
Friedman: Cuba was not a colony of the United States. In any event, you need a sense of proportion. In the period between the revolution in 1776 an 1898 the US had no colonies. And yet that was the period of the greatest growth and the greatest economic development of the United States. Your question.
Comment by Anders — January 29, 2012 @ 8:41 am
Anders-Tsarist Russia was known as “the jailer of nations.” Nicholas I was known as “the Gendarme of Europe” for his, and Russia’s, role in suppressing liberation movements in Europe.
LL-the new book by David Satter emphasizes that Russian thought elevates the collective over the individual: “A Russian lives without freedom but in his own mind he is not a slave. He is a participant in a grand enterprise with which he and his fellow citizens have been entrusted and which requires a sacrifice and a readiness to accept total subordination.” This is an overbroad generalization in many ways, but it clearly does capture a good number of Russians, and certainly it is the mindset of Putin and those who revere him.
Apropos today’s post, and probably some future posts, it is the Eurasian-Spartan collective worldview.
It is also why those who hold this worldview hate (classical) liberals with such a burning passion–especially Russian ones. Their individualism is un-Russian, from this perspective. Hence they are untrustworthy, and actual or potential traitors.
Dear Prof
Spartans were more disciplined than any Russian has been since the end of the Varangian Guard. They also freely admitted to being a slave ( or serf ) holding state: the perverse genius of Russia since 1917 has been to hold their people in bondage, but to deny it. Again a good primer as to how this is possible is “Escape from Freedom”.
Comment by sotos — January 29, 2012 @ 4:34 pm
@sotos-the Spartan discipline is aspirational. I am using the analogy more in the way that the Eurasianists do. A collective-oriented, militarized, traditionalist state/culture that denigrates individualism and the commercial ethos. One defined as much by opposition to another system (“Athenian”) as much as anything.
“Mr.X, your queer ideas about everything are really becoming incredibly pathetic.”
Comment by Andrew — January 29, 2012 @ 1:35 am
Sorry Andy Dzughashvili, the only part of Syria I’ve seen with my own eyes was from the Golani Brigade’s tourist-friendly observation point looking down on the Syrian border from Israel. And it’s pretty damn dry over there. And that of course is exactly the point that would get the $hit shelled or rocketed out of it should Al-Jazeera’s beloved Muslim Brotherhood seize power in Damascus.
I’m well aware that most of Syria’s food is grown up in the northwest closer to the Med and in the Euphrates headwaters area, or has increasingly has to be imported from the EU, Turkey or Iran.
“So colonialism, well first of all, where is it that you have colonialism today? You have the classic colonialism behind the Iron Curtain. You have Russia, which is a master country. I mean not the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, but Russia which is the master country with the great colony around it within the Soviet Union in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary.” Anders, that was always the con. The neocons said their problem was with Russia’s aggressive Soviet world revolution-promoting ideology. Reagan believed them, which is why when he felt that ideology was withering away as early as 1987 he proposed sharing missile defense technology with Moscow, to the horror of many of his aides. But once the USSR and its propaganda machine withered away and died in the 1990s, the neocons pushed an aggressive agenda of turning Eastern Europe into client states. It’s all there in Z. Brzezinski’s mid-1990s book The Grand Chessboard if you care to read it, where he basically says the West must kick Russia while its down and make damn sure she never rises as a Great Power EVER AGAIN, starting with the first task of seizing the output and pipeline routes from the Caspian basin. China at that time, of course, did not figure too much in ole’ Z. Big’s calculations as a potential third party that could come in an outbid the West and Moscow in Ashgabat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=munRZyXLJ0g
An excellent summary of Bzrezinski’s positions from Mike Rupert
They also on rare occasions even prior to 08/08/08 sought deliberate, nasty provocations against Russia, such as Gen. Wesley Clark’s order to Gen. Jackson to fire on the Russian troops headed to the Pristina airport in 1999, an episode that ought to live in infamy as exhibit A of neocon treachery against Russia period, even when Yeltsin had been quite accommodating towards Washington regarding the wildly unpopular (from Russia to Bulgaria to Greece, pretty much in every Orthodox Christian nation) NATO war of aggression against Serbia, after the Serbs had made peace with Bosnia. Yeltsin in fact was the one who persuaded Milosevic to step down and spared NATO the thousands of casulties it would have suffered fighting Serbs armed to the teeth in the mountains (yes, including German casulties, the armchair warriors on CNN were so freakin’ out of touch with reality even at that time I remember them clearly suggesting German divisions would join a NATO invasion, like that would’ve flied once the body bags started coming home to Berlin).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/671495.stm
Senor Equis’ source? Not RT, MiniTrue, aka the BBC quoting Gen. Jackson, “I’m not going to start WWIII for you”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw
Straight from the horse (and Bill Clinton buddy’s) mouth, as told to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
Now whether Wesley Clark giving that order, at least according to Gen. Jackson’s account, should cast doubts on his credibility with respect to the immediate, post 9-11 ‘plan’ to overthrow the govs of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and ultimately, Iran, I leave to your judgement.
I merely present the info here that SWP and all his fan boys would rather not talk about — that there are large numbers of Russians who believe Putin’s message of a perpetually warlike ‘Athens’ (in reality, an Anglo-American bankster/military industrial complex nexus) hellbent on hegemony everywhere rather than living and let live, because there is in fact a permanent anti-Russia lobby in Washington.
If you doubt the EE client states part, look at Latvia’s inability to refuse to accept CIA black hole sites, despite that causing headaches with the European Court of Human Rights and other bodies to which Latvia is a signatory.
Do you remember the climax of Thucydides’ history of the Pelopponesian War Professor? Cuz I seem to remember this little thing called the Melian dialogue, whereby the ‘democratic’ Athenians slaughtered all the men captured and sold all the women and children of Melos into slavery. Remember that? But maybe your classics profs at U of Chicago were less humane than mine.
So yes good sheeple who view Russia as the perpetual aggressor, ignore all these blatant examples of U.S. geopolitical designs to not merely ‘give the post Soviet states their freedom from Moscow’ but to DOMINATE THEM, dating back to the early 1990s (and in the case of Bulgaria with Soros’ foundations, the late 1980s!). Say that Putin is just a paranoid chekist, and ignore that he can size up fellow spooks Kissinger and Bzrezinski quite well as worthy adversaries.
Comment by Mr. X — January 29, 2012 @ 6:56 pm
Moron X -Did you receive the paycheck from Kremlin ?
http://bgdw.wordpress.com/
The hurt feelings of Moron X and his beautiful Orthodox Russian -Serbian Genocide pigs –
Jackson established a working relationship with the Russian general commanding the detachment at Pristina, giving him a bottle of whisky, of which Jackson is known to be fond, and providing the Russians with the protection of a squad of British soldiers, commanded by his son, Mark.
Russia placed several airbases on standby, and prepared battalions of paratroopers to depart for Pristina on Il-76 military transport planes. Fearing that Russian aircraft were heading for the airport, General Clark planned to order British tanks and armored cars to block the runway, and requested American Admiral James O. Ellis for helicopter support. His orders were not carried out, and the United States instead put political pressure on neighboring states not to allow Russia to use their airspace to ferry in the reinforcements. Russia was forced to call off the reinforcements after Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania refused requests by Russia to use their airspace.
Negotiations were conducted throughout the standoff, during which Russia insisted that its troops would only be answerable to Russian commanders, and that it retain an exclusive zone for its own peacekeepers. NATO refused, predicting that it would lead to the partition of Kosovo into an Albanian south and a Serbian north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Pristina
Comment by Anders — January 30, 2012 @ 2:01 am
Gee Mr. Chickenhawk X, thanks for admitting you know nothing about Syria, no surprises there, after all, your knowledge of pretty much any subject you dribble on about is obviously minimal.
And what is wrong with making sure Russia never rises as a great power ever again? After the untold misery that Russian imperialism has caused to it’s subject peoples, pretty much any sane human being would want to ensure that millions are not enslaved by the monster that is the Russian state ever again.
Has it ever occurred to your tiny little and very queer brain, that former soviet states WANT to be closer to the west in general, and the US in particular, precisely because of what they suffered at the hands of the Russians, who under communism were every bit as bad as the nazis?
Oh thats right, you are a Ron Paul supporter…….
Oh and the provocations prior to 08/08/08 were almost uniformly Russian provocations in the Caucasus.
As for your moronic comment that the Russians would have been unable to resist the Georgians in the 90’s, well the Russian Army, Navy, and Air Forces participated on the separatist side in Abkhazia, and took part in ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Georgians in 1992-94, winning the war for the separatists.
You are an ignorant fool X, I would pity you, but your attitude makes you contemptible.
Comment by Andrew — January 30, 2012 @ 6:33 am