Editorials and foreign policy: what a difference four years makes (not exactly)
The NY Times is having one of its rare intermittent lapses into (relatively mild) sanity. Don’t worry; it’s unlikely to last long. But, like it or hate it, the Times still moves a great many liberal Democrats, who still consider it the paper of record:
The Obama administration’s $500 million initiative to train and arm so-called moderate rebels to take on the Islamic State never seemed promising when it was rolled out last year. Having acknowledged that this plan has failed ”” largely because Syrian opposition groups are more interested in taking on President Bashar al-Assad ”” the White House on Friday unveiled a plan that is even more incoherent and fraught with risk.
The Pentagon will stop putting rebel fighters through training in neighboring countries, a program that was designed to ensure that fighters were properly vetted before they could get their hands on American weapons and ammunition. The new plan will simply funnel weapons through rebel leaders who are already in the fight and appear to be making some headway.
The initial plan was dubious. The new one is hallucinatory, and it is being rolled out as the war enters a more perilous phase now that Russia has significantly stepped up its military support of Mr. Assad’s forces.
From “dubious” to “hallucinatory”; those are pretty strong words for the Times re Obama. Why now? What about Syria has got the Times’ goat, as compared to the thousands of other dubious and hallucinatory (and worse) things this administration has done?
Note how the Times just sneaks in a word or two about that pesky Russia stuff right at the very end there. I wonder whether the editors remember their own words from just four and half years ago:
Two decades after the end of the cold war, Mitt Romney still considers Russia to be America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.
The Times gets to throw around a lot of words and a lot of adjectives; that’s what the Times is good at. But when does the Times have to answer for its own dubious, hallucinatory, reckless, and unworthy editorial stances? Some of you might say they already have gotten their comeuppance, in their sinking revenues. Ah, but but I think you might misunderstand their aim. They’re business people and would like to make some money, to be sure; but far more important is the way they serve the liberal/leftist cause as its principal and hoary propaganda organ.
That, they have done quite nicely. And, despite temporary glitches such as today’s editorial criticizing Obama, that status is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Sitting in the bankrupt ashes of their building, they will blame racism and the Republican Party for the apocalypse they march toward. Step by step. Inch by inch.
I’d score the post as 2 — nil, advantage NYT. There’s no rhyme or reason for Russia being #1. Even a Rube Goldberg contraption could not be nobbled to come to that conclusion. It would have to somehow bypass the axes of evil, the ME, and China.
Russia’s activity in Syria show it is number one.
Likewise its invasions of Georgia and Crimea.
The NY Times is STILL burying the lede:
0bama’s first attempt to train a proxy army to attack Assad goes way back.
Somehow the UK, US (CIA), Jordanian effort to boot up a proxy army is vectored down the memory hole.
It HAS to be the world’s worst kept secret.
The $500,000,000 program was the DoD’s attempt to build a proxy army. That’s why its funding was ‘of record.’
The CIA funded project was ‘black’ — like the anti-Castro Cuban brigade — and just as secret. (NEITHER!)
[ The Cuban project was a circus — having no operational security at all.
The Jordanian project was no secret at all — in Jordan. ]
You just can’t recruit for an army and yet keep it a secret.
Doh !
The decision to just hand the weapons over — has been taken a LONG time ago. For it has been happening now for years.
Barry is sustaining al Nusrah — the al Qaeda front — in wartime.
This is out and out treason.
Relabelling al Nusrah as the Free Syrian Army — are we all stupid children ?
As for optics: al Nusrah is uploading the combat results of Barry’s TOW missile ‘gifts’ time and again to YouTube.
Drop on over and see countless Assad military assets being blown to pieces with American TOW missiles in the hands of AQ fanatics.
!!!
That al Nusrah is an AQ front — is on the open record.
Heck, they are still in constant correspondence with Dr. Zawahiri.
BOTH al Nusrah and IS fly the black banner of jihad — of AQ.
BTW, did you know that Mercer purchased his own black flag of jihad ?
Yes, he was in constant touch with his anti-Christian pals in the Middle East.
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2015/10/05/well-well-apparently-the-oregon-mass-murderer-chris-harper-mercer-was-also-a-fan-of-the-islamic-state-isis/
Check out the photo Mercer uploaded.
As my reckoning has it, neither Syria, Georgia, or the Crimea make up any part of America. America’s interests? Sphere of influence? Perhaps in one of those numberless universes that make up the Multiverse.
George Pal:
Syria is part of the balance of power in the Middle East, where the US has interests financial, political, and moral. Russia is (as Romney said) a geopolitical foe trying to thwart the US’s interests in many ways and places large and small; it’s an effort at a long accruing of greater and greater power (as was the Cold War). Syria is also one of ISIS’s birthplaces, and of course ISIS is an enemy with plans to operate here as well (and thus the two sides in Syria are BOTH bad sides, which presents a dilemma but doesn’t mean we don’t have interests there and that what happens there does not affect us).
Other than that, no problem.
Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are surely watching with interest. They know sooner or later their day will come. Of course, ClownDeceptor will be long gone from office when their days arrive. Jordan, ha! Theirs is coming sooner, and doesn’t Israel know it.
I think the “knave v. fool” debate has bearing here. In many ways Obama is intelligent, practical, ruthless, and calculating. That shows in how he has been successful in destroying the US at home and abroad. He has been very successful in vilifying his domestic enemies (let’s not use euphemisms; he hates conservatives), rendering Congress impotent, and ruling by decree.
But this didn’t take any great ability on Obama’s part. He just needed to understand how the administrative state would rule over the peasantry if he signaled they were off the leash entirely. There won’t be any smoking gun, for instance, linking Barack Obama to the IRS persecution of conservative groups. Lois Lerner’s, as well as the emails of other IRS officials, show that they already viewed small government conservatives as their natural enemies. They naturally wanted to destroy anyone who would stand in their way as they expand the size and power of their bureaucracy. Similarly, career DoJ bureaucrats never wanted justice to be blind. FOIA requests show, in the Noxubee Mississippi and Black Panther cases, that careerists in the Voting Rights Division saw it as their job to prosecute whites for violating the rights of minorities. Not to prosecute blacks for suppressing the vote, particularly in Mississippi where it was black county officials depriving whites of their voting rights. The acts of those county officials was retributive justice, as far as the DoJ was concerned. The EPA always wanted to regulate private property to the point where it was the EPA’s property, no longer yours, and if that meant declaring a puddle in your yard part of the navigable waters of the US they’d do it. Then there’s this (you really have to watch the video and see the petty tyrant revel in her tyranny):
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/09/26/the-doe-office-of-civil-rights-gone-rogue/
“While it’s clear to those who labor under the limitations of law that colleges and universities adoption of the “guidance” of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights’ “dear colleague” letters is not a legal mandate, but rather cowardly acquiescence, a video, via FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff at Instapundit, of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) questioning Deputy Education Assistant Secretary Amy McIntosh drives the point home as clearly as possible.
Even McIntosh, despite her dodging and weaving, concedes that Catherine E. Lhamon, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and head of the DoE Office of Civil Rights has gone off the reservation. She has no lawful authority to mandate colleges and universities adhere to her political whims, as reflected in her “guidance,” upon pain of losing federal funds.*
When asked (see 1:37 in the video) who gave Lhamon the authority to impose her personal will upon the nation’s colleges and universities, she responded, “with gratitude, you did when I was confirmed.”
The United States of America did not confer upon a person named Lhamon the authority to recreate Title IX in her image…”
All Obama really needed to understand was that, when left to its own devices, the administrative state would run the country as an insane asylum/prison entirely to the benefit of the keepers (themselves). See California for a practical example.
He also needed to understand that’s how the leftists MSM (but I repeat myself) supports that vision, and that they would attack anyone who opposed him as a racist.
Again, I think he demonstrated ability and his malevolent intent. But it didn’t take as much ability as he’s given credit for.
My “self-aware” laptop decided it’s best to split my comment in two parts. I have to go along with the judgement of the gremlins that operate my optical mouse on this.
We see hints of Obama the fool when it comes to domestic policy. I think he’s genuinely confused when people don’t like the s**t sandwich he’s served up. For instance, when Bobby Jindal tried to persuade Obama to permit off shore drilling following the BP spill as people were upset at losing their jobs he kept repeating, “But I gave them welfare.” He thinks if he keeps talking about Obamacare, people will like it. He thinks everyone should just naturally like what he likes, and he’s confused and “disappointed” when people don’t.
But the fact that among his many other character flaws and personality/mental disorders he suffers from solipsism syndrome really becomes glaringly obvious in the area of foreign policy, where he doesn’t have some like-minded bureaucracy forcing his alternative-universe vision on a recalcitrant world. And the press can’t always cover it up. Even the NYT sometimes has to let reality seep into the bubble they and their readers inhabit. And I understand Obama’s recent 60 Minutes interview was a disaster.
http://twitchy.com/2015/10/09/what-pres-obama-said-about-putin-in-his-60-minutes-interview-with-leave-you-literally-speechless/
“Thomas S. Ballard @alphainparis
3 times In interview today, CBS’ Steve Kroft interrupted a stuttering Obama: “Putin’s challenging your leadership.” #EvenLibsSeeCoward
In a preview of an interview that airs on “60 Minutes” this Sunday, President Obama told Steve Kroft that he doesn’t know “in what way” Russia’s Vladimir Putin is challenging America’s leadership in the world. Oh really, Mr. President? Ground troops in Ukraine and Syria don’t count as a challenge?
Apparently not. Here’s the transcript:”
The preview really is as delusional and self-unaware as described. Leading to comments such as “My God. It takes Steve Kroft to try and get through but nope. He’s impervious,” “Oh my…delusional. Our Dear Leader is plain delusional,” “Literally and probably diagnosably crazy.”
Admittedly I’m biased. I’ve always viewed him as a mix of knave and fool, with more fool in the mix than neo. Because quite often he makes public comments which indicates, to me, that he’s genuinely confused that the world doesn’t work the way he decided it ought to work back when he was a freshman at Occidental college.
But I’ve also thought he was mentally unstable. My first hint was when people I’ve always considered wrong about everything declared he had a “first class temperament.” So naturally the opposite must be the case. And there have been flashes of teh crazy over the years, which are becoming more frequent now. Or at least the MSM isn’t covering for him as they once did. And I’ve been saying for years that the only effective policy for the GOP was to show this man a great deal of disrespect. For the good of the country. Drive him around the bend and show just how unhinged he is to stop the bleeding.
I understand that his foreign policy vision was intended to destroy this nation’s alliances, our military, and our reputation. But I’m convinced he expected to keep getting Nobel Prizes and accolades for it. And he isn’t, and this is driving him batty.
Some patriot should have done this first. We shouldn’t have allowed Putin and the Mullahs to do it.
Neo-neocon:
Surely you meant to say the balance of chaos. It could just as easily be said the US has financial, political, and moral(?) interest throughout the world — judging by the number of American bases and deployments. But the world is not our oyster and not all the oysters in the world belong to us.
Russia, it may be said in any fair analysis, thwarts US interests because US interests had insinuated themselves on Russia’s doorstep. NATO’s (the US) and its new member’s, (formerly Warsaw Pact countries), border proximity with Russia are meant to do what? Is it entirely beyond the pale for Russia to think the presence menacing, intimidating? Had not the US aggravated Russian consciousness and suspicion by contributing to the overthrow of a duly elected government in Ukraine? Had Russia done as much to the US in its sphere, would there not be justifiable objections, suspicions?
I should hate it for the US to teach ISIS the lessons it had taught Afghanistan’s Taliban. Russia, in that respect, is the better instructor. If both sides in Syria are bad have we not the option to choose the lesser evil? It’s a notion that has often been promoted as worthy of our considerations in our elections.
What happens there surely will affect us but the butterfly effect does not always result in large differences let alone man made cataclysms. Sometimes a flutter is nothing more than a flutter as a cigar is most times only a cigar.
George Pal said:
“Russia, it may be said in any fair analysis, thwarts US interests because US interests had insinuated themselves on Russia’s doorstep. NATO’s (the US) and its new member’s, (formerly Warsaw Pact countries), border proximity with Russia are meant to do what? Is it entirely beyond the pale for Russia to think the presence menacing, intimidating?”
Oh, are those Warsaw Pact countries Russian property? The Poles, Estonians, Czechs, et al, don’t get a vote in this?
Steve 57,
Are you practicing logical non-sequiturs or suggesting they be taken seriously?
Read slowly.
No the countries are not the property of Russia. But when they align themselves with NATO — an entity that had been made necessary by the USSR, which no longer exists, then Russia is well within the bounds of any country’s sovereign self-interest to be attentive, suspicious, wary, conscientious — and reactive, even to the point of being proactive. I would, under more normal circumstances, expect as much from my country and would not deny it to any other country.
Russia is well within the bounds of any country’s sovereign self-interest to be attentive, suspicious, wary, conscientious — and reactive, even to the point of being proactive.
NATO BASES SURROUND RUSSIA
Yo!
http://www.shoah.org.uk/2015/07/02/russia-tit-for-tat/
G6loq,
As providential a link as it had ever been my pleasure to be introduced to. Thank you.
G6loq Says:
October 10th, 2015 at 6:45 pm
That’s a screwy graphic.
It omits the Baltics.
It conflates American bases as being, per se, NATO bases.
There is no ‘NATO’ base in east Asia.
And, of course, NATO — ex-America — is TOOTHLESS.
Moscow’s real peril is the USN up in the Arctic. Yes, they’ve long figured that out. They even screened Kubrick’s opus, Dr. Strangelove.
For a nation on the defensive — Russia is gaining a lot of turf.
Not that it’s a co-incidence with Barry, the golf warrior.
George Pal Says:
October 10th, 2015 at 6:00 pm
To see what’s playing out…
Putin has forced his way into Belarus, compelling Minsk to accept a Russian military base.
Alexander Lukashenko, his buddy, has been on record that he’d never permit such a travesty of Belarus’ sovereignty.
Yet, now he’s been forced to kowtow. Putin has him by the scrotum.
Is it ANY wonder the Baltics are in a panic. THEY are the ones who are surrounded.
Putin does puzzle me WRT his Muslim problem. Moscow has a sea of military aged Muslim males — at the same time Putin — the hyper nationalist — is trying to remake Russia White.
No matter where Muslims are, they are uniquely unproductive citizens — on the whole.
The latest wave into Germany is a tad reluctant to go through the ropes to become legally employed.
See: Geller.
http://pamelageller.com/2015/10/germany-fewer-than-1-in-10-migrants-apply-for-work.html/
No matter where Muslims are, they are uniquely unproductive citizens – on the whole.
Yes!
Food for thoughts:
Phones thrown away by migrants shows disturbing footage’s…
Hiraj! [insert demented laughter]
Blert,
“To see what’s playing out…”
Putin has forced his way into Belarus, compelling Minsk to accept a Russian military base.
Alexander Lukashenko, his buddy, has been on record that he’d never permit such a travesty of Belarus’ sovereignty.
Yet, now he’s been forced to kowtow. Putin has him by the scrotum.
Consider:
1. “compelling Minsk to accept a Russian military base”
Why not? Quick! Put in a military base before the US does.
2. Belarus is included in the European Union’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer.
Perhaps the scrotum crunch is Putin’s way of dissuading Belarus from any further ententes with the EU (or NATO)
3. In testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeled Belarus as one of the world’s six “outposts of tyranny”
Perhaps the scrotum crunch is Putin’s way of persuading Lukashenko to ease up on the tyranny. There’s pressure and there’s pressure and each is applied as circumstances warrant.
Steve57
One of the reasons why I said that there would come a time when America would beg to solve the problems by merely executing 50% of the bureaucracy. That date has long since passed however, since now it requires 100%, not merely 50%, to solve the issue.
But it didn’t take as much ability as he’s given credit for.
The Leftist alliance and their resources far outstrip whatever Hussein O has had. Hussein O is merely one of thousands of the Left’s tyrants. They got plenty more if they need them.
I would, under more normal circumstances, expect as much from my country and would not deny it to any other country.
That’s the opposite of what Pal here expected out of Bush II leading the country, dealing with terrorists coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reality vs the illusion is stark.
Putin does puzzle me WRT his Muslim problem. Moscow has a sea of military aged Muslim males – at the same time Putin – the hyper nationalist – is trying to remake Russia White.
Well one way to deal with them would be to start a war and send them to die.
Perhaps that was what Putin was trying to do in Georgia and when Bush II stopped him, he got really really angry.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dfe1547ba36f4f968deee227d467dc08/officials-russian-bombs-cia-rebels-had-syrian-gains
Neo…
I’ve been ranting about the misbegotten CIA proxy army trained in the northern Jordanian desert for some time now.
FINALLY the AP is letting some of the truth see ink.
“The CIA began a covert operation in 2013 [ try 2012 ] to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. Over that time, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters,[ low balled ] although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. [ The answer from the DoD… Zero. All of this is covered in brutal detail over at the Long War Journal. Bill Riggio]
The effort was separate from the one run by the military, which trained militants willing to promise to take on IS exclusively. [ It was a ‘black’ program. ] That program {DoD’s latest fiasco] was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS. [ Giving up and letting al Nusrah take American military aid with the pretext of a soi-disant FSA.]
For years, the CIA effort had foundered – so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups.[ They all defected.] The secret CIA program is the only way the U.S. is taking on Assad militarily. In public, the United States has focused its efforts on fighting IS and urging Assad to leave office voluntarily.
“Probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.” [ He knows that the truth is that 100% went to al Nusrah. Video on YouTube uploaded to prove just this point.]
BHO has treasonously enabled al Nusrah with advanced American TOW missiles. It’s these missiles that caused Assad to lose his fights.
It’s these missiles that have caused Putin to flip the script. Early in, ISIS lost a huge ammo bunker. It’s a pretty good bet that Putin knew that the TOW missiles were stashed there.
The morale effect on al Nusrah has been immediate.
American TOW missiles had been their ace weapon.
You might note that the Russians aren’t committing any of their own gear to the fight until they’ve zapped al Nusrah’s TOW stockpile.
Barry is not going to use the USAF to frustrate Putin. Duh !
George Pal Says:
October 10th, 2015 at 8:33 pm
I don’t know what planet your are typing from, but Belarus is now, and has ever been, deep, deep, into Putin’s orbit.
There was NEVER any prospect of NATO accepting that dictatorship into its fold.
It was also widely understood that Moscow would flip out if its land bridge to Kalingrad were severed.
NATO doesn’t even place active military formations in the Baltics or within Poland — except for show and on rotation.
And in very limited numbers, too. Like four (4) Dutch F-16s into Estonia for a couple of weeks. Yes, not an American in sight.
NATO military bases are still WEST of the old Iron Curtain. Even Germany does not station significant military forces in the former East Germany — yet that’s where Berlin lies.
Europe just figures that the Cold War is over. Let’s do business.
Germany, in particular, does a phenomenal amount of industrial business in Russia. You see Siemens electrical products embedded in every manner of Russian industrial production.
Putin is as addicted to German industrial products as Germany is addicted to Russian energy exports. They simply can’t resist each other.
Those same lucrative items just scarcely sell in America. They don’t conform to NEMA standards. ( They are IEC, instead )
It’s France that has the big footprint in America. ( Square D — it’s a colossus. ) Naturally, France scarcely imports any Russian natural gas. It’s atomics — all the way — for Paris.
It’s atomics – all the way – for Paris.
Will be interesting to see what Islam does with those uranium enrichment facilities. Maybe they’ll call them ‘Arabic nuclear power’ the same way they stole the Indian numerals by relabeling it.
George Pal said:
“Steve 57,
Are you practicing logical non-sequiturs or suggesting they be taken seriously?
Read slowly.
No the countries are not the property of Russia. But when they align themselves with NATO — an entity that had been made necessary by the USSR, which no longer exists, then Russia is well within the bounds of any country’s sovereign self-interest to be attentive, suspicious, wary, conscientious — and reactive, even to the point of being proactive. I would, under more normal circumstances, expect as much from my country and would not deny it to any other country.”
I would have responded earlier but I couldn’t stop laughing.
If I were you I wouldn’t worry about advising other people to worry about being taken seriously.
The “US interests had insinuated themselves on Russia’s doorstep.”
There was no Warsaw “pact,” as if there was an agreement between equal nations. As soon as Eastern European nations freed themselves from Russan slavery they ran as fast as they could into NATO’s arms to make sure that wouldn’t happen again.
Notice I said Russian, not Soviet. Wh cares what name Russian imperialists operate under? The Eastern Europeans don’t. The Baltic states don’t. Neither do most of the Central Asians.
But for some strange reason you do.
Blert gets it. Why can’t you grasp the reality of the situation?
I was referring specifically to blert’s post @ October 10th, 2015 at 7:47 pm.
“Is it ANY wonder the Baltics are in a panic. THEY are the ones who are surrounded.”
And then George Pal goes on to write:
“Consider:
1. “compelling Minsk to accept a Russian military base”
Why not? Quick! Put in a military base before the US does.
2. Belarus is included in the European Union’s European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer.
Perhaps the scrotum crunch is Putin’s way of dissuading Belarus from any further ententes with the EU (or NATO)”
Yeah, that’s Putin’s way alright:
http://estonianworld.com/security/russia-kidnapping-estonians-nothing-new-46-abducted-thirties/
“In light of the recent kidnapping of an Estonian security police officer by the Russian FSB, it may be worthwhile to take a look in the past. We may be shocked at the course of events in the last few days — and we may be especially astonished at the egregious disregard for a NATO member’s sovereignty — but the fact is, kidnapping Estonian citizens on Estonian soil is nothing new for the Russian authorities. In fact, back in the thirties, Soviet Russia kidnapped altogether 46 Estonian citizens, and brutally murdered border guards who were performing their duties, defending the Estonian border.”
But, hey! Putin is just being proactive, right George? When he had his forces cross into Estonia and kidnap Estonian security official Eston Kohver, and then had the sense of humor to charge him with illegally crossing the border and smuggling weapons (As if Mr. Kohver had any choice in the matter, since he was dragged against his will across the border from Estonia where he was legally armed at the time that’s just Putin playing the great game.
Exactly the same as us.
Only on Planet Moral Relativism in system Twisted Logic in a galaxy far, far away. Where you live apparently, George.
I’m glad I don’t make sense in your world, George.
Note again, I am not drawing any distinction between the USSR and Russia. And neither are the Estonians. This is how Russians behave, no matter what name their country goes by. Every one of their neighbors know that. Which is why they want to be in our sphere of influence, and they have to be kidnapped into Putin’s.
That makes no difference on your planet, does it George?
“…Russia is well within the bounds of any country’s sovereign self-interest to be attentive, suspicious, wary, conscientious — and reactive, even to the point of being proactive. I would, under more normal circumstances, expect as much from my country and would not deny it to any other country.”
You have a lot of euphemisms for committing acts of war on your planet, George.
Mother Russia has been ruled by dictators for one thousand (plus) years. The degree of repression varies from time to time, but still the iron fist no matter the glove is an iron fist. Russian geography makes it open to invasion from time to time, that makes it a nation understandably paranoid and that paranoia results in a desire for large buffer zones.
After the brief, drunken soft hand of the Yeltsin era; Putin is just the same old same old. The adventure in Syria may produce a bolstering of Russia’s presence in the ME. OTOH, it may cost Russia more blood, treasure, and prestige than Putin can survive. Its interesting, dangerous geopolitical theater.
Steve 57,
I take it you believe Ukrainians, Estonians, Belarus(sians?) et, al have not a devil among them, glad to hear it. All the devils are in Russia.
You make no distinction between the USSR and Russia? Prior to the Revolution or after the dissolution- really? You have so high an opinion of the USSR? My planet had not that experience. I can’t attest to what, apparently, had not happened on yours.
How had you come to make sovereign self-interest a euphemism for war? Does the sovereign self-interest of the US make us war mongers? Does it do so for Canada, Australia, and so on?
Blert,
You say:
“I don’t know what planet your are typing from, but Belarus is now, and has ever been, deep, deep, into Putin’s orbit.”
So to what do I account your consternation over Putin building a military base there and having Lukashenko by the scrotum. Seems like status quo is in order.
Ymarsakar, @8:51
Had I known you had such a man-crush on Bush II I would not have agitated your neurasthenia. I haven’t a cruel streak, honest. Nevertheless, I should let Mr Bush go. He’s off somewhere painting, making like Churchill.
Note though that my defense of Putin and expectations for my country dealt with border intimidation and legitimate reactions to it. Mr Bush is altogether a different matter. I have a legitimate objection, I believe, with “war on terror”. It is meaningless — much as saying war on attacks, war on beheadings, war on flying airplanes into buildings. Worse than the clever meaninglessness was the pusillanimity. I had not then, and have not now, any problem with this country or any president retaliating against acts of war. Retribution fits well with my disposition; if anything I think our responses have been too measured, too restrained.
My objection to Mr Bush was that he had become inspired to ‘nation build’ — the very thing he’d promised, during his first campaign, this country was not in the business of undertaking. It was as great and stupid a miscalculation as I ever I had witnessed and hope never to witness again. Then he doubled down and undertook the same enterprise in Iraq. There’s no making democracies or silk purses of hell-holes for obvious reasons — hell has no need of democracy, and a purse of any kind is not a purse if it is a hole.
In our endeavors to do the nigh on impossible, we’d paid too high a price — our soldier’s lives and limbs and depression. You, and others, will counter, “but… but… Obama”. But what had Bush II expected? That he would be president for life? That he could build two nations in the course of a second term? That the man to succeed him would continue his (Bush’s) democracy evangelism? We are not made for the long haul. Because of that, we ought not scheme to undertake it.
I hope this comment allays any doubts you have about my purpose. My purpose has never been anything more than advancing the notion that our foreign adventures are ill considered. You may, of course, disagree. But you may not assume that I hate this country, or Bush II. Saying someone had been monstrously wrong is not the same as saying he was a monster.
Russia was Saddam’s ally.
Iraq Survey Group:
I understand where GP is coming from and I understand the POV of his critics. IMO, GP is not recognizing the importance (indeed the necessity) of the USA asserting influence, backed by a robust military, all across the geopolitical stage. Otherwise, very bad things happen. OTOH, asserting influence without a steadfast commentment is a waste of blood and treasure. However, there is no will to wage total war. Therefore, why wage half assed war?
I am not an isolantionist; but unless we possess the will to wage total, no quater given, war where the defeated are told, under the muzzle, that we dictate their future; then stay home and admire the world of kardashian buttocks.
@George Pal
“I take it you believe Ukrainians, Estonians, Belarus(sians?) et, al have not a devil among them, glad to hear it. All the devils are in Russia.”
Every country has its share of devils, but it’s the Russians invading – or finding a pretext to threaten to invade – not the other way around. As for the the USSR and today’s Russia, Putin has used to great advantage the USSR’s attempts to Russify non-Russian Soviet republics. His attack on the Ukraine and threats to the Ests, etc. is always based on protecting the Russian population living in those areas.
George Pal: “Then he doubled down and undertook the same enterprise in Iraq”
Actually, President Bush inherited that piece with the law and policy for enforcement of Iraq’s compliance with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire, ie, the UNSCR 660-series resolutions.
See section 7 of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (PL 105-338).
In the event that Iraq failed to comply with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire in Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441), then regime change and peace operations were the mechanism to “bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations” (PL 105-235). See this.
The Operation Iraqi Freedom regime change and peace operations were triggered by Iraq’s failure to prove compliance with the disarmament mandates of UNSCR 687 under the UNSCR 1441 inspections, as well as Iraq’s wider breach of the Gulf War ceasefire, especially the terrorism mandates of UNSCR 687 and humanitarian mandates of UNSCR 688.
Only on Planet Moral Relativism in system Twisted Logic in a galaxy far, far away. Where you live apparently, George.
I’m glad I don’t make sense in your world, George.
Pal was anti Iraq in 2003-2008 and probably anti Afghanistan war as well. That in itself doesn’t say much, but Pal was also anti Bush II, which means he bought the Left’s propaganda illusion hook, line and sinker. Plus some ignorance of how foreign nations work outside the American bubble, contributes to the rest as you can see.
I’ve been noticing a lot of so called anti Leftists usually, but because they woke up post 2008, the Left’s propaganda pre 2008 is still stuck in their operating systems. And they don’t care to purge it, they just sort of meld it all together and justify it as why they are fighting Leftists.
They weren’t fighting Leftists in 2006 by trying to help sabotage Petraeus and Bush II, I can easily conclude, especially now.
The reason why Demoncrats sabotaged the Iraq conflict by helping Islamos and getting more Americans killed so the MSM can report on it, is because they needed their allies in a strategically more useful location. America, not the ME. They needed their allies here. I don’t suppose an explanation of why is needed at this point.
If you don’t want to fight them in Iraq… guess what.
As for Pal, I hate Leftists and anyone who supports them. I don’t care who you think you are. I will never forget what anyone has done to support Leftists. I will never forgive them.
Anything more I can say about that beyond this, would be legally actionable.
George Pal Says:
October 11th, 2015 at 12:25 am
Blert,
You say:
“I don’t know what planet your are typing from, but Belarus is now, and has ever been, deep, deep, into Putin’s orbit.”
So to what do I account your consternation over Putin building a military base there and having Lukashenko by the scrotum. Seems like status quo is in order.
Lukashenko was openly on the record as being FIRMLY against any such idea — which would be TOTALLY unacceptable to him.
He said it. No-one else.
But now, with Barry to not back him up even orally, Lukashenko has had to eat his words. He’s NOT a happy camper. He’s just that dependent upon Putin — who is — defacto — taking over his military assets — trivial as they are.
The impact on the Baltic states is intense. Estonia is on edge.
She can’t be defended with conventional military means.
And even a school child can see that Barry wouldn’t lift a finger to save the Baltics — because he’s “got more flexibility now.”
Right.
It’s mostly an academic exercise for people who think humans overseas are merely abstract numbers for them to crunch, as a self benefit.
It’ll be different when the Left slams their head into the ground. Islamic Jihad is just waiting for the Left to open the gates in the US. Perhaps it already has and the sleeper cells are waiting.
Let us see if the Left will protect all of you who ever supported it or believed in the righteousness of the Left’s sabotage and treason. The looks on your faces will be a sight to behold.
Abstract humans burning overseas is merely entertainment on tv for most humans, it means nothing, less than nothing. When you and yours are burned right here at home, it will feel very very different. Then and only then, will you understand what True Hate for the Leftist alliance means.
Pingback:Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove
Irene,
He’d taken advantage of a situation he’d not fabricated! How awful. Pretext! We would never stoop to pretext to bomb, invade, occupy or overthrow a government. At least Putin had a pretext worthy of consideration — Russians. Ukraine had elected a president disposed to Russian interests. That government was overthrown with the help of the US — on the pretext of Russia bad, Ukranian president bad. I demand quid pro quo from the new President of Ukraine. We overthrew your bad guy now you overthrow our bad guy. You know, like in the Hitchcock movie Strangers On A Train.
Eric,
“Then he doubled down and undertook the same enterprise in Iraq”
That enterprise was a reference to Bush undertaking not a war but ‘nation building’ after the war.
Ymarsakar,
“As for Pal, I hate Leftists and anyone who supports them. I don’t care who you think you are. I will never forget what anyone has done to support Leftists. I will never forgive them.
Anything more I can say about that beyond this, would be legally actionable.
I was wrong. It’s not general neurasthenia that ails you. You are bat-guano crazy.
Blert,
And even a school child can see that Barry wouldn’t lift a finger to save the Baltics – because he’s “got more flexibility now.”
Right.
I might lift a finger, attempt to influence, express diplomatic anger, to save the Baltics — but not one American would I put in jeopardy to save the Baltics.
George…
With Barry one can only hope that he doesn’t even say a word.
Because his pontifications bait Putin into making Barry look the fool.
A project that Putin finds immensely satisfying in and of itself.
I was wrong. It’s not general neurasthenia that ails you. You are bat-guano crazy.
You don’t know much about the world if you think I’m the crazy one here.
Pathetic wannabe pacifists are a dime a dozen.
As for the long run, US troops are still keeping the peace in Germany, Europe, South Korea, and Okinawa. Any normal patriotic American would have expected the same long term foreign policy maintenance that FDR and Truman expected of their loyal opposition, which they got. Democrats being the party of treason, though, they tend to sacrifice people overseas for domestic power. And with Planned Profit, that has escalated to sacrificing domestic human lives for power as well.
If you plan on being with the side of Evil, Pal, I won’t stop you. Being crazy is a virtue compared to the rest of the human trash anyways.
Ymarsakar Says:
October 10th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
Steve57
One of the reasons why I said that there would come a time when America would beg to solve the problems by merely executing 50% of the bureaucracy. That date has long since passed however, since now it requires 100%, not merely 50%, to solve the issue.
Government Workers Make 78 Percent More Than Private Sector
Closed loop self-feedback system. What could possibly go wrong?
Sheep have been known to get lost, simply while nibbling on the grass — and never looking up.
“the Times still moves a great many liberal Democrats”
The Times instructs the religious faithful as to what is moral and what is not — in the Church of the Left.
Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are horrific. But if the Times passes along the judgment of the Church that it is acceptable if the perp is Bill Clinton, then it is moral. And believers must agree.
Chopping up babies is bad. But if the Times indicates that the Church says it is fine, then it is fine and moral. And believers agree.
The examples are endless. For liberals, morality is determined solely by affirming the beliefs taught by the Church of the Left. Adopting the politics of the Left and affirming a belief in whatever the Church declares is how one becomes a good and moral person. The most heinous behavior is cleansed if one simply affirms belief in the Left and acknowledges whatever is instructed by the Times on behalf of the Church. And if the Church beliefs on some subject are changed 180 degrees, liberal morality requires that the believer change accordingly.
The only moral absolute is belief in the liberal church. Sins, crimes, atrocities are all negotiable depending on the political convenience of the cause. A person is moral simply by believing, regardless of behavior. And a person is immoral and beyond redemption, if they don’t no matter their behavior.
Ymarsakar,
“US troops are still keeping the peace in Germany, Europe, South Korea, and Okinawa.”
They’re all wealthy countries and one expansive Union. How long do we subsidize first world countries by providing for their defense? It’s been well over fifty years now. Another fifty? Per temporalium aeternum — through temporal eternity?
We’ve done more than our bit, carried more than our share of the load, borne most all of the responsibility, than any country had ever before. Time to kick the parasitic kinder out of the house. Time for tough love. Time they fended for themselves.
How had you calculated that a desire for a strong country, unencumbered by parasites, foreign and domestic, is siding with evil? I had never had the benefit of mathematics so new, or so high.
Chopping up babies is bad. But if the Times indicates that the Church says it is fine, then it is fine and moral. And believers agree.
That is how they work, if one can see past the propaganda about them being rational, scientific, or secular.
Many people here have many methods and points of view, like Neo Neo or Eric or Steven or Art or Blert, and so on.
Only you, Pal, have the benefit of the Left’s pride in being vindicated by the methods and successes of the Party of Treason and the Alliance of Evil. You can feel good about yourself living amongst the Sin of Superbia, Pal, but it won’t make you any better than the Left.
Unless you were trying to claim you have a Foreign Policy education here, that you were against HRC’s body armor policy in Iraq that was designed by HRC to sabotage Bush II’s war in Iraq, unless you supported Bush II in order to save Americans irregardless of your political difference… Unless you can claim that, your lack of foreign policy competence here against the others here, becomes too obvious to ignore.
As Ayers and other Leftists boasted about their personal accomplishments post Vietnam, so you follow in the grand tradition, Pal, with your pride. You actually feel superior about yourself because you “one upped” your opponents over the bodies of the American dead, and you think I’m crazy… hah.
Wow, this thread has really ranged far and wide. I’m a little late but I wanted to say Steve57, your comments on Obama at 4:08pm and 4:39pm yesterday capture very much my views on “fool vs knave” wrt Obama. He is smart but he is shallow. He is calculating but he is not brilliant. And he gets away with a lot because of the MFM.
I don’t think my views on Obama are really all that much different than neo’s. Interesting topic for discussion, though :).
George Pal: “That enterprise was a reference to Bush undertaking not a war but ‘nation building’ after the war.”
Again, see section 7 of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (PL 105-338), which was also raised in section 4 of the 2002 AUMF against Iraq (PL 107-243).
Under the law and policy for enforcement of Iraq’s compliance with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire, regime change and peace operations – in other words, nation-building – were the set mechanism to “bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations” (PL 105-235) in the event that Iraq failed to comply with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire in Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441).
That wasn’t new policy by Bush. He inherited the enforcement procedure for Iraq. By the time Bush was elected President, the enforcement of the Gulf War ceasefire had progressed for a decade against Saddam’s steadfast noncompliance.
Before the 9/11 attacks compelled him to revaluate US foreign policy, Bush certainly did not advocate for a blanket rejection of principal US missions such as enforcing Iraq’s compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire.
George Pal Says:
October 11th, 2015 at 1:03 pm
Ymarsakar,
“US troops are still keeping the peace in Germany, Europe, South Korea, and Okinawa.”
They’re all wealthy countries and one expansive Union. How long do we subsidize first world countries by providing for their defense? It’s been well over fifty years now. Another fifty? Per temporalium aeternum — through temporal eternity?
%%%
You’ve got everything turned around and upside down.
The European nations are PAYING US to protect them.
The mechanism is loopy, but fully understood by the top players.
1) The US dollar is International Money. ( Bretton Woods)
2) Instead of mining for metal (gold, silver) the dependent powers accept at full value fiat money that America cranks out digitally at zero cost to itself.
3) America permits the dependent powers to export into her domestic markets all manner of trade goods. ( America is a net exporter of Services, too.)
4) The trade imbalance causes hyper competition in America’s domestic manufactures and other trade goods. ( Pelts, foods, crude oil, etc. ) This causes rising unemployment,
5) Which causes the central government to print yet more fiat money (digital ciphers, actually) to hand out as welfare balm.
A) So America’s primary export product is Peace delivered by the DoD and Deep State.
B) America’s secondary export product is Financial liquidity and solvency — delivered by the Federal Reserve and our Big Banks and the SWIFT system.
[ Great Britain is our co-partners in most of the above. But that’s another story. ]
Without the above mechanism America could not possibly field the massive military that she has.
The World LOVES a Hyper-Power. Inside her embrace, all is peaceful. Outside, the feral barbarians roam.
Iran
North Korea
ISIS
Assad
Putin & Gang
Our sage President has all of his polarities backwards. So progress is running in reverse.
Read Wretchard’s pithy blog posts if you want to get up to speed.
American is absolutely not paying for Europe’s defense. The wealth flow is from Europe to America to pay for said mutual defense.
This hugely explains why European powers can never stump up big defense budgets. The funds are already spoken for. They are required to purchase ever more US dollars to back stop their own currencies.
America — itself — has become a ‘gold mine.’
And you never noticed. Only the few do. ( All central bankers.)
Eric,
compliance with the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire, regime change and peace operations — in other words, nation-building
That’s about as dangerous a stretch to get to nation building as could be made. And what warrant had he In Afghanistan?
Ymarsakar,
Twice in this thread, in addressing you specifically, I’d made reasoned arguments to which a reasonable person might agree; to which another reasonable person might disagree and put forward an argument why. Your utter failure to do, even attempt, the latter, persuades me you are incapable of reasoned argument. Your responses have had nothing of reason in them and all of piffling squawk and limited vocabulary – Bush, hate, Left.
You may count on it. Your remarks in the future will have the all the attention I would afford a differently-abled parrot.
blert,
They’re not paying enough — not by a long shot.
“The World LOVES a Hyper-Power. Inside her embrace, all is peaceful. Outside, the feral barbarians roam.”
You are kidding. The hyper power had welcomed the feral barbarian Saudis to its bosom and they’d made two towers topple. Peacefulness such as that Americans can do without.
For TRUE chaos you have to enter the ummah.
http://pamelageller.com/2015/10/shocking-videos-and-photos-found-on-phones-left-by-muslim-migrants.html/
The links take you to a European broadcast that shows selfies that the authorities find bizarre in the extreme.
Chaos, indeed.
On the question of financial support sufficiency … the math works out such that the dependent powers pay ALL of America’s DoD budget on average — and has remained at that level since the Truman administration.
It’s an astonishing co-relation.
As America’s DoD budget ramps up — the dependent powers suddenly develop a tremendous thirst for US dollars.
It just keeps happening, over and over and over.
It’s yet to be explained.
Without this infusion, the US government would’ve financially collapsed decades ago.
!!!! Amazing.
George Pal said:
“…I might lift a finger, attempt to influence, express diplomatic anger, to save the Baltics — but not one American would I put in jeopardy to save the Baltics.”
Empty talk isn’t lifting a finger. You simply wouldn’t live up to your treaty obligations as a NATO member. You’d bluff, and you’re telling the world that’s all it would ever be, a bluff with nothing behind it.
In other words, you’d be even more feckless than our current disaster.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no point paying any attention to this craven George Pal individual. Having established he is both a knave and a fool, we can now return to more serious issues rather than bandy words with someone we can all thank the Lord will never, ever be of any consequence.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it moral relativism being shown here or what the Left showed us in 2003-2007 Iraq.
It was more like superbia, the sin of being too proud to recognize that the Left and Islam were allies, so people thought they were being righteous, anti war, patriotic, or whatever when it came to fighting Bush II and thus Bush II’s decision to carry out war in Iraq. Which was a greater investment of resources than Clinton’s bombing campaigns. Many of such campaigns are run by Democrat air generals like Wesley Clark. And they tend to create enemies of America in Libya and Syria, merely because the Democrats are traitors and they like to make more enemies for Americans to take on.
The other side of it was what Chesterton wrote about (if I recall correctly). He stated that European Christian humility was erased and then replaced with a kind of secular humility where people became so humble that they would listen to any Authority or Expert Witness, instead of trusting in their own judgment. That kind of secular humility, the inability to make your own judgments, thus warps into modern moral relativism. People don’t want to decide, so they leave it up to their leaders and the Left to decide, with predictable consequences. The “generals” under Bush II would know better how to win Iraq, right. Well, there’s a difference between Diversity Casey and COIN Petraeus on that mark.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/10/11/restarting-the-engines/#comments
Subotai Bahadur
Ferguson partakes of the common Western inability to take the next logical step if it is unpleasant. In his discussion of Obama’s policies, he “discovers” that he has been deceived in the past and that Steps “A” and “B” of Obama’s plans were really something very different than advertised and deliberately malevolent. But somehow, he concludes that despite the previous deliberate deception, by some means the nasty result “C” is somehow inadvertent. Because if he admits that this is what Obama really was after all along, then it has implications for future actions that he does not want to face.
May I toss in an implication “D”? The political “opposition” party, the media, and hordes of public and private institutions in this country not only are paid to ferret out the bad things the regime is doing, but it would be in their institutional and personal interests to do so.
Yet their reaction to the actions of The Emperor can best be categorized as “helpmate”, “collaborator”, or “co-conspirator”. To use the SS El Faro metaphor, it is as if the US Coast Guard was deliberately giving guidance to the navigator to send it into the center of the storm, with demolition charges to destroy the engines at a critical moment, in order to defraud the insurance company.
and there is an implication there that most people will not want to face.
That it is not going to take the end of the Emperor and his governmental regime to attempt to restore the Constitutional American norm. The removal, rehabilitation, restoration, or replacement of vast swathes of what used to be central to America will have to be done. It will not be easy. It will not be bloodless. And success and/or survival [as a nation or as individuals] are low probability outcomes.
Be Thou then truly Resolved; That Duty is as heavy as a Mountain. And Death is as light as a Feather.
Subotai Bahadur
Steve 57,
NATO is bluff and pretense. The premise for it had expired 25 years ago.
“no point paying any attention to this craven George Pal individual. Having established he is both a knave and a fool, we can now return to more serious issues rather than bandy words with someone we can all thank the Lord will never, ever be of any consequence.”
It’s good to know you and Ymarsakar are the measure of right thinking, i.e. the ‘echo chamber’. I shall avoid like it like the plague and the NYT.
This hugely explains why European powers can never stump up big defense budgets. The funds are already spoken for. They are required to purchase ever more US dollars to back stop their own currencies.
The socialist budget for the US and Europeans explains that better than merely the fiat currency, which does contribute as the Deep State thesis states.
In terms of bulk of fiat currency being expended, socialist policies take up the vast majority, far beyond the 5-10% that the US spends on the military.
Generally that’s because socialism uses money to buy votes which transfers into power. Generally in the past, military power was useful for getting power, but the US has put a stasis block on this planet for expansionary powers, so the military “leverage” became grossly under valued as a result, promoting buying dole for your slave farms, a much better livestock farming strategy than upping the military to gain territory and colonies.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/the-true-nature-of-islam/
In order to fully comprehend where some of us come form, our pov, it would be necessary to share our experiences, background, and methodologies. But that’s not feasible, so we have to use open sources to educate people.
If you watch the video I posted, you will see why defeating Islam in the ME isn’t about American power or luxuries or “nation building”. And why the Left’s alliance with Islam is not merely about American patriots complaining about lacking domestic power or leverage.
This is a war in which humanity is against the enemies of humanity. If you want to pick your side based on Bush II and Iraq politics, there will be consequences. It will never, ever, stop there.
George Pal Says: the USSR, which no longer exists
So you believe the collapse was a change to the state when a number of defectors and others have said it was a re-organization and re-positioning of their image which was making things harder to accomplish goals, and that once they did that, they could get all kinds of freebies, which they did.
what changed? did ANY communist party members end up in jail? were any exiled? was communist party forbidden like the nazi party in germany? was there a decommunization? did the KGB end or make another of its dozens of name changes in which nothing changes? is there a KGB man running the country under the new name FSB? doesnt the GRU still exist? Kamera still exists. they are still spying. the various organizations exist, and nothing has much changed other than they can easily enter the country and manipulate our businesses markets and steal technology. they still have the same organs, the men who were part of that criminal regime are still in the state, they are still grabbingt land, they are friends not enemies with communist china, etc. etc. etc.
so how did this mythincal state change?
here is the easiest way for you to know that they havent changed. their economics are moribund the same way, they still create no products, and they never ever recalled their spies or operatives from prior regimes. why should they? they are the same people who were running things before, they only gave it a new coat of paint, limited their use of that funny marxist language, and thats about it.
ever read New Lies for Old?
ever read the predictions of golytsin which had a over 90% correct rate?
Page 262: “One of the objectives [of Euro-Communism] was to prepare the ground, in coordination with Bloc policy in general, for an eventual ‘liberalization’ in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and a major drive to promote the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the withdrawal of the American military presence from a neutral, socialist Europe.”
it worked didnt it? and that was from 35-40 plus years ago…
Page 323: “The Western strategy of a mildly activist approach to Eastern Europe, with emphasis on human rights, is doomed to failure because it is based on misconceptions and will lead ultimately into a trap when a further spurious liberalization takes place in Eastern Europe in the final phase of the long-range Communist policy. Not the least disturbing aspect of the present crisis in Western assessments and policy is that, if it is recognized at all, its causes are misunderstood. As matters stand the West is acutely vulnerable to the coming major shift in Communist tactics in the final phase of their policy.
hows that big dose of liberalism your discussing working out?
remember, he was talking more than 10-15 years BEFORE the soviet union “Fell”
there is so much more, neo would shoot me herself if i put up too much
not bad for 1980s… describing what is going on in the 1990s, and leading up to the 2015…
people can spend 300 years building a church, but cant spend similar building up a change to the globe with billions at their disposal, a population imprisoned by econmics, and their own people in france, uk, usa, and more..
if you only knew the prior history and could follow it to the current history, you would not think so… but most people here, neo included, didnt wake up this stuff back before the internet existed!!!!
some of us actuall did given familial expeirene and study
Some of these are very interesting now that we are decades ahead of the predictions.
new lies for old was published: 1984
Its contents were revealed years before
it details stuff that happened later.
like the fall of the berlin wall, before it happened.
Destruction date: November 9, 1989
the destruction of the wall and the collapse was completely missed by our spy organizations and the state – but was put in the book…
this is a good one
Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Golitsyn a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. He is an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire and, as late as 1984, was an American citizen. Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB in the rank of Major. In 1961 under the name “Ivan Klimov” he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, Finland as vice counsel and attache. He defected with his wife and daughter to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via Helsinki on December 15, 1961 taking a train to Haaparanta on the Finnish-Swedish border, where he was flown to the United States via Stockholm
yes. these predictions were only published nearly 30 years after his defection and detailing them because post defection there was no more information for him to get.
so think this way..
he is wriging with an over 90% success rate in detailing huge changes, from 50 years ago…
and we dont listen to him cause we want to believe its changed so bad, that we wont.
For those not in the know, we are one step away from the end of NATO… if russia moves into a NATO country, like latvia, and we deem it not worth starting a large european war over estonia, then NATO is dead.
cool… you could have known about it 30 years ago!!!
right now, all this stuff with russia has to do with preventing new oil and gas finds from getting to europe and screwing their near monopoly and control of the continent through that
duh, duh, duh
look where the pipelines go that started all this… and look who gets to tax the pipelines now they have to move if thy can at all…
and what about the huge gas and oil finds in the levant? what about the humongous finds of oil in the Golan heights.
for people up on politics your pretty good at being distracted by the words and dont look at maps and economics much… (just my stupid opinion)
Israel makes massive discovery of oil in the Golan Heights
right now the religious extreme has more information than this blog does on whats happening, though they are trying to prove the end of days, and the war of gog and magog..
fraking awesome, eh?
how would you keep the oil from israel from getting to the market and destroying your raw materials based market?
start wars in the middle east?
get a proxy to be in place so if nukes are used they get the blame?
what about moving yrou actual troops into the area where the pipelines go and are right next to the fields?
here is a google map of the main drilling area in question.. http://tinyurl.com/oapw9lg
now, isnt it interesting that its surrounded by Lebenon to the north, Syria to the northeast, and Jordan to the southeast..
Israel would have to fight three countries from a surrounded position to hold on to it, and lateral drilling from syria could steal the oil the way Cuba is currently stealing US oil
the Ny times is not going to tell you any of this. they been assisting the soviets since Holodomar and the lies of the period that won them awards and have never done anything else.
in fact, a lot of the social opinion today of russia being a failed state is from what paper explaining that before its complicity was so commonly known we dont listen to it much?
the super high area of oil is completely surrounded, and with a dead nato, and the left liberals in place in the US… maybe its time for the end of israel… after all, ever notice how many russians moved from russia to israel post collapse Just as golitsyn reported decades earlier?
even more interesting..
once the idea of burying operatives in mass immigration moves and refugees, what are you seeing now there?
still expect the NY times to wake up and report?
sorry, the wont do that, not since that meeting they had and agreed that molding society was more important than the news and coordinated that. (or did you guys forget that?)
“the Russians are using scorched earth policy and they are hitting the targets very accurately”
“The coming battles are going to be ferocious, the Russians are using scorched earth policy and they are hitting the targets very accurately but this is a battle of destiny,” said Abu Hamed, the head of the military bureau of Jabhat Sham, an insurgent group that operates mainly in Hama province. The Syrian army made advances from the towns of Mourek and Atshan in Hama province using tanks, heavy artillery and new surface-to-surface missiles, he said
Artfldgr,
Western acceptance of the new ‘liberalization’ as genuine would create favorable conditions for the fulfillment of Communist strategy for the United States, Western Europe
I’m well aware that some people can’t shake free of the evil empire, the great Soviet success story. It frightens them from under the bed or in the closet.
The Communist strategy for the United States and Western Europe had been laid down not by the apparatchiks, the KGB, Putin, or anyone or anything of that defunct good and dead Soviet that had engendered no great plot, scheme, or strategy but only booga-booga stories.
The Communist strategy for the US and Western Europe had not been a Soviet strategy, it was a Frankfurt School strategy of infiltration into Western organizations and it happened fifty years before Golytsin. The Soviets could not think outside the box that contained hobnailed jack boots, the gulags, and party liaisons with others of their sort — think Cuba.
Its the Frankfurt School strategy that is the great success. Stop fighting the last war of tanks and NATO, and the KGB, and Lubyanka, and all the other bs. Start fighting the very organizations that had been beguiled by the intellectuals and whose halls are patrolled by social justice brown shirts.
And hadn’t you noticed who our President is? You think he’d gotten their by some Grand Soviet Strategy?
Its the Frankfurt School strategy that is the great success. Stop fighting the last war of tanks and NATO, and the KGB, and Lubyanka, and all the other bs. Start fighting the very organizations that had been beguiled by the intellectuals and whose halls are patrolled by social justice brown shirts.
And hadn’t you noticed who our President is? You think he’d gotten their by some Grand Soviet Strategy?
Exactly!
There are other shady characters at work….
A French vocal group called Les Brigandes featured below (with English subtitles) uses the Rabbi’s menacing words as the basis of their song The Great Replacement. …
Useful helpers …. WCPGW?
There are other shoddy characters at work….
U.S. DELIVERS 50 TONS OF AMMUNITION TO SYRIA REBEL GROUPS
WCPGW?
George Pal Says:
October 12th, 2015 at 8:42 am
“…It’s good to know you and Ymarsakar are the measure of right thinking, i.e. the ‘echo chamber’. I shall avoid like it like the plague and the NYT.”
Right thinking? You’ve avoided thinking entirely. And don’t think we haven’t noticed.
October 10th, 2015 at 4:56 pm
“Russia, it may be said in any fair analysis, thwarts US interests because US interests had insinuated themselves on Russia’s doorstep. NATO’s (the US) and its new member’s, (formerly Warsaw Pact countries), border proximity with Russia are meant to do what? ”
One moment we’re talking about nefarious US interests creeping up to the Russian border, threatening the poor Russians.
October 11th, 2015 at 10:05 am
“…I might lift a finger, attempt to influence, express diplomatic anger, to save the Baltics — but not one American would I put in jeopardy to save the Baltics.”
The next, hey! They’re just former Warsaw Pact countries. Not a US interest in sight. Certainly none worth fighting over.
So, what, again was Putin supposed to be threatened by? You certainly can’t explain it now. But then what you try to pass off as thinking never contemplates going beyond empty bluster.
Cognitive dissonance, that’s the plague you can’t avoid.
Artfldgr said:
October 12th, 2015 at 12:10 pm
“George Pal Says: the USSR, which no longer exists
So you believe the collapse was a change to the state when a number of defectors and others have said it was a re-organization and re-positioning of their image which was making things harder to accomplish goals, and that once they did that, they could get all kinds of freebies, which they did.
what changed?”
George Pal, among his many other personal failings, is shallow and a historical illiterate.
He should avoid the NYT like the plague. But a discerning reader can still separate the wheat from the chaff. For instance this guest piece by Cambridge-educated historian Dr. Simon Sebag Montefiore:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/opinion/putins-imperial-adventure-in-syria.html?_r=0
“IN June 1772, Russian forces bombarded, stormed and captured Beirut, a fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria. The Russians were backing their ally, a ruthless Arab despot. When they returned the next year, they occupied Beirut for almost six months. Then as now, they found Syrian politics a boiling cauldron of factional-ethnic strife, which they tried to simplify with cannonades and gunpowder.
Today, President Vladimir V. Putin has many motives in Syria, but we should keep in mind Russia’s vision of its traditional mission in the Middle East…
…Russia’s ties to the region are rooted in its self-assigned role as the defender of Orthodox Christianity, which it claimed to inherit from the Byzantine Caesars after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – hence “czars.” The czars presented Moscow not just as a Third Rome, but also as a New Jerusalem, and protector of Christians in the Balkans and the Arab world, which, including the Holy Places of Jerusalem, were ruled by the Ottomans after 1517.”
Shallow thinker Barack Obama thinks some switch got flicked on 12:01 am 2001 and now, all of a sudden, power politics don’t work the same way in the 21st century as they did throughout all prior human history.
Shallow thinker George Pal thinks that when the USSR collapsed some switch got flicked and now all of a sudden the Soviet
…the Soviet imperial ambitions have evaporated. When the only broad policy area the Soviets shared with the Czars, where they expressed real admiration, was their foreign policy and imperial ambitions.
To understand Putin you have to go back to Ivan the Great, the 15th century Prince of Moscow whs the Soviet Union in the same light, hence his desire not just to thwart the US but to humiliate us) and the first Russian ruler to adopt the titles Czar, Ruler of all the Russians, and was also known as the Gatherer of the Russian Lands.
The Russian have used their Orthodox religion to interfere in the Balkans prior to WWI to interfere in NATO affairs as recently as Greek default crisis. Unless it has slipped by anyone that the Greeks, too, are Orthodox.
The fact that there isn’t an iota of difference between Soviet Russian ambitions and Czarist Russian ambitions, and now Putin’s ambitions, should give a thinking person pause.
But then, we’re talking about George Pal.
*the 15th century Prince of Moscow whs the Soviet Union in the same light, hence his desire not just to thwart the US but to humiliate us)*
My next laptop will not have an optical mouse, which cuts, deletes, and pastes on its own, sometimes to quickly for the human eye to follow.
Ivan the Great threw off the humiliating foreign yoke of of the Mongol Khans. Putin views the American destruction of the Soviet Union as a similar humiliation of Mother Russia.
All in all, it isn’t hard to discern a valid US interest in all of this.
Steve57,
I take no-one seriously who could not discern the difference between pre/post Revolutionary Russia and the interim’s Soviet Union. It has all the cleverness of insisting there is no difference between night and day as both are a part of the 24 hours to a day cycle.
You sir, haven’t the gray matter necessary to think for yourself, you rely on such as Dr. Simon Sebag Montefiore. Putin’s imperial adventures conjure nothing of similar, familiar adventures? American imperial adventures perhaps? Let us, no, why don’t you — I have a good idea of the answer — tally the bases of each around the world. Tally the troop deployments of each around the world. Tally the number of American protectorates around the world versus Russia’s ONE — Syria.
Then, President Vladimir V. Putin has many motives in Syria, but we should keep in mind Russia’s vision of its traditional mission in the Middle East…
…Russia’s ties to the region are rooted in its self-assigned role as the defender of Orthodox Christianity
Well goddammit, no-one else is a defender of Christianity — not even Christians. In how many papal bulls, encyclicals, or sermons had just the Pope made an issue of Christian being martyred around the ME?
Come to think of it, don’t think for yourself. I would not have you strain your synapses in the attempt. You might end up entirely a vegetable.
G6loq Says:
October 12th, 2015 at 7:39 pm
There are other shoddy characters at work….
U.S. DELIVERS 50 TONS OF AMMUNITION TO SYRIA REBEL GROUPS
WCPGW?
&&&
Check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/no6vby9
Hasakah province is where the Kurds predominate. (Northeast)
Indeed, anything south of the Kurdish populated area is nothing but sand.
&&&
It occurs to me that Barry has entirely flip-flopped WRT arming the Kurds — directly.
For this C-17 para-drop operation side steps all Arabs.
I’d say that Putin has been making a ‘play’ for Kurdish hearts and minds.
Which as alarmed the brighter brains in the Pentagon.
For it’d be all too easy for Putin to reignite the Kurdish-Turkish civil war and really put the hurt on Erdogan.
His cruise missile shots must have opened many eyes as to the long reach of the Soviet navy — excuse me — the Russian navy.
I thought that it would be Putin that began para-dropping arms to the Kurds — rather like Zardoz. ( Sean Connery, 1974 )
I’d go so far as to say that Putin is aiming to ‘take out Erdogan.’
After all, this Syrian conflict has been Erdogan’s pet project.
He’s up past his eyeballs.
I had missed the Kurdish angle of that air drop.
[coffee:sip]
Some of the players are not smart enough for that game.
I think the Saudi are going to get crushed in the end.
Businessinsider.com and others report Erdogan saying he no longer talks to Obama.
My next laptop will not have an optical mouse, which cuts, deletes, and pastes on its own, sometimes to quickly for the human eye to follow.
Generally the newer chipsets on optical mouse have a lift off switch which auto tracks and adjusts for the surface below the optical sensor.
But if it is a button issue, that would be beyond fixing other than manual disassembly and cleaning.
I shall avoid like it like the plague and the NYT
Someone who shared the NYT’s foreign policy position in 2005, isn’t someone who can boast that they avoided the NYT like the plague. Because that’s not how it works in that case.
The Soviets kind of collapsed but did reform a bit, as in form a better way of keeping the same people in charge, at least. Similar to why East Germany is so socialist and communist, SDP wise, because the Stasi were never hunted down and eliminated from the circles of power. They just became East germany’s power and were adopted or assimilated into the West Germany’s economic and political sphere. That’s why Merkel has a “grand coalition” which consists of the Christian Democrat party and the SDP, the socialist/communist/fascist rooted party.
A lot of the contradictions in Western countries are due to dualism. The ability to have two competing mutually exclusive factions with mutually exclusive ideologies, that nevertheless both work together and the people both think are legitimate or true. Just as Islam has the Medina Koran and the Meccan Koran, one focuses on jihad the other focuses on non jihad. Both are true, since Mohammed tried both ways. Jihad worked better though for conversion and taking sex slaves, so they focused more on that later on.
…Russia’s ties to the region are rooted in its self-assigned role as the defender of Orthodox Christianity, which it claimed to inherit from the Byzantine Caesars after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – hence “czars.” The czars presented Moscow not just as a Third Rome, but also as a New Jerusalem, and protector of Christians in the Balkans and the Arab world, which, including the Holy Places of Jerusalem, were ruled by the Ottomans after 1517.”
It is true that Islam and the Ottomans (Turks or Turkey) hammered the Roman Orthodox Church into non existence over many centuries. It is also true that the Orthodox church spread to Russia. It is also true that many of the ethnicities, religions, or nationalities that has had the most contact with Islamic jihad, tend to be the most aggressive and/or paranoid around. They had to be, since all the pacifists and weaklings got raided and taken as slaves. Entire tribes were de populated in this way by Islam.
If Russia truly believes they are “Strong” men now, hammering Syria or Constantinople now occupied by Muslims, would be a good start. Then again, if they weren’t doing it, the Good American Empire or the Evil American slave Empire, would have done it for them in time.
There were about 30 Christian churches or cathedrals in the classical world, as mentioned in the bible. None of them exist in Anatolia or Turkey now. Because under Sharia law, the mosque is always higher than the churches of other religions. So they had to build Christian churches underground. And the remaining ones were taken over, the Hagia Sophia, as mosques or merely bulldozed over.
The Roman Catholics behave like a beaten dog or a abused/raped wife would, vs their fellows in former Anatolia, Byzantium, i.e. Eastern Roman Empire. They don’t want to look at them, they want to appease the conquerors.
The only reason why the ME looks weak compared to the West now, is because Western colonial powers finally broke the military power and corrupt decadence of the Islamic caliphates, both Shia and Sunni, in one century. After 1300 years of being the slave fodder for Islamic conquerors and raiders, the West finally had a counter offensive that reached deep into the heart of Islamic caliphate territory and smoked them.
But not permanently, Europeans as usual, didn’t finish the job.
Now it’s up to somebody else’s gen to finish the job.
My next laptop
Also, be sure to disable the pad on the laptop, otherwise typing the keys may trigger it.
George Pal said:
October 13th, 2015 at 1:10 am
“Steve57,
I take no-one seriously who could not discern the difference between pre/post Revolutionary Russia and the interim’s Soviet Union…”
I encourage everyone to read it all. His entire spew. If one enjoys reading high school newspaper editorials published without the benefit of a faculty adviser. Throughout I’ve been saying:
“Shallow thinker George Pal thinks that when the USSR collapsed some switch got flicked and now all of a sudden…the Soviet imperial ambitions have evaporated. When the only broad policy area the Soviets shared with the Czars, where they expressed real admiration, was their foreign policy and imperial ambitions.”
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you; if I am discussing the ONLY broad policy area in which the Soviet Russians and Czarist Russians were in agreement, the ONE broad policy area where the Soviet Russians expressed admiration for their predecessors, would that not tell anyone with any sense whatsoever that I know of other policy areas where they did not agree?
Yet George Pal from the kiddie table of policy analysis accuses me of being someone “who could not discern the difference between pre/post Revolutionary Russia and the interim’s Soviet Union.”
Really? I discuss the ONE policy area that continued almost entirely unchanged, the one relevant to this discussion, and that means I can’t tell any difference at all? A sane, rational person would gather that I can tell the difference, and am prepared to discuss the differences in detail. But also that in many ways Soviet Russia remained Russian. And when we are talking about Putin’s moves in Syria we are discussing one thread in the history of Russia that has remained very Russian through the centuries. How Soviet Russia differed from Russia under the Czars is not relevant to the discussion.
However when we are talking sane and rational we are not talking George Pal.
I’ll throw Georgie into a further tizzy by noting that Lenin and Dzerzhinsky modeled their secret police, the Cheka, on the Czarist OKhrana. Because, what other model did they have to go on?
OMFG!!! STEVE57 CAN’T DISCERN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRE/POST REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA AND THE INTERIM SOVIET UNION!!
I wish to note that Georgie’s venom was in response to me pointing out (October 12th, 2015 at 11:28 pm) that he was on both sides of an issue in less than 24 hours. I asked him a question that I knew he couldn’t answer, noting his cognitive dissonance, the “plague” he can’t avoid, and I received this juvenile incoherence in reaction.
If they have casinos on Georgie’s planet of Moral Relativism in the universe of Twisted Logic, then I hope to travel there one day because apparently I’ll be able to take everyone’s money in just a short stay.
But until then I recommend not paying much attention to George Pal and his planet and his high school newspaper articles on foreign policy.
Ymarsakar said:
October 13th, 2015 at 9:53 am
“…The Roman Catholics behave like a beaten dog or a abused/raped wife would, vs their fellows in former Anatolia, Byzantium, i.e. Eastern Roman Empire. They don’t want to look at them, they want to appease the conquerors…”
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were blunt about Islam. At least as blunt as they could be in their office. Which is about as tough as Popes can get these days as they can’t send armies into the Middle East anymore.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/regensburg-redux-was-pope-benedict-xvi-right-about-islam-analysis/2014/09/10/d14f0080-391c-11e4-a023-1d61f7f31a05_story.html
“Eight years ago this Friday, Sept. 12, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria in which he seemed to diagnose Islam as a religion inherently flawed by fanaticism.
It was an undiplomatic assertion, to say the least – especially coming a day after the 9/11 anniversary – and it sparked an enormous outcry among Muslims and came to be seen as one of a series of missteps that would plague Benedict’s papacy until he resigned last year.
Now, with the Islamic State on the march in the Middle East, leaving a trail of horrifying brutality and bloodshed that has shocked the world, some of Benedict’s allies on the Catholic right are saying, in effect, “He told you so.”
‘Regensburg was not so much the work of a professor or even a pope,’ wrote the Rev. Raymond de Souza in a column for the National Catholic Register, a conservative publication. ‘It was the work of a prophet.’
Eight years later ‘we have ISIS’ – an acronym for the Islamic State – ‘And beheadings. And persecution. And hatred. And war,’ added Elise Hilton in a blog post for the Acton Institute, a libertarian Catholic think tank.
‘It appears that the world owes Pope Benedict an apology,’ she wrote.”
OK, so Benedict maybe isn’t a good example as he went beyond polite diplomatic language. John Paul II was just as clear-eyed about the threat of Islam, but stayed within the bounds of diplomacy. From his 1994 best seller :
From his 1994 international best seller Crossing the Threshold of Hope:
“Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam, all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.
Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God with us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad. There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity.”
What Pope John Paul II was saying, in more polite but no less clear language, was that the Allah of Islam is a remote dictator capable of commanding his adherents to commit the vilest of crimes. In that sense, there was no difference between the two.
This pope represents a break with the past. Covering for and making excuses for Islam is a new thing.
Steve57,
“…if I am discussing the ONLY broad policy area in which the Soviet Russians and Czarist Russians were in agreement, the ONE broad policy area where the Soviet Russians expressed admiration for their predecessors, would that not tell anyone with any sense whatsoever that I know of other policy areas where they did not agree?… I discuss the ONE policy area that continued almost entirely unchanged, the one relevant to this discussion, and that means I can’t tell any difference at all?… OMFG!!! STEVE57 CAN’T DISCERN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRE/POST REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA AND THE INTERIM SOVIET UNION!!”
My apologies Steve, you are a master of discerning the obvious.
First, you had made a link between Putin and some 15th or 16th century tsar expounding that both had similar geopolitical aspirations. You then double down on the most insignificant factoid I’d come across in… ever. That
Soviet Russia and Czarist Russia also shared geopolitical aspirations. And this is your EUREKA! moment. You’d finally found a pearl in your oyster.
Most twelve year olds had learned it in their first introduction to world history — that throughout time and place, countries, whether led by kings or warlords, had been acquisitive of power and territory. And you had discovered this only now? Expand your horizons Steve.
Of
“this craven George Pal individual. Having established he is both a knave and a fool”
along with your childish condescension:
Nothing is so indicative of surrender to a better point than an attack against the one who had made it. Twice you have descended to this level of personal attack in the form of ad hominem, hyperbole, hysteria. For your own sake, for the sake of not being dismissed out of hand as a large tantrum in a child’s mind, acknowledge that mine was the superior point. Otherwise, slink away with your nub of an intellectual tail between your legs and lick your wounds. Or you may make another inconsequential point and marvel at your discovery of what had been known since the advent of organized societies. Or you might have a go at yet another strongly worded ad hominem argumentum.
Or you might have a go at yet another strongly worded ad hominem argumentum.
I am quite unsure whether someone going around calling people crazy because they don’t understand and cannot agree with the utmost differences of this world at large, should be going around talking about ad hominem arguments as well.
Your powder isn’t dry.
http://oathkeepers.org/oktester/declaration-of-orders-we-will-not-obey/
This subject has been in various para military, police, and warrior sub cultures for quite some time now. I want to say around 2009 but cannot recall exactly when they got up to official status.
But generally, when Civil War II happens, there will be a way to change the ROE to recognize A and B types, so you don’t get them mixed up.
George Pal said:
October 13th, 2015 at 3:08 pm
Perhaps you should have taken that advice rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks right out of the gate.
October 10th, 2015 at 6:00 pm
“Steve 57,
Are you practicing logical non-sequiturs or suggesting they be taken seriously?”
Ymarsakar,
I had not called people crazy, I called you crazy.
“As for Pal, I hate Leftists and anyone who supports them. I don’t care who you think you are. I will never forget what anyone has done to support Leftists. I will never forgive them.
Anything more I can say about that beyond this, would be legally actionable.
I respond as I am addressed. Crazy was befitting Leftist.
“Steve 57,
“Are you practicing logical non-sequiturs or suggesting they be taken seriously?”
That is not ad hominem that is astonishment. I had made the point of countries bordering on Russia and Russian concern with their NATO alliance, you responded “Oh, are those Warsaw Pact countries Russian property?” Your response to my point was unresolvable — so I asked.
George Pal Says:
October 13th, 2015 at 5:19 pm…
Riiiight, George.
Well, George, looking back over it you certainly have all the bases covered.
Starting off you said Putin’s Russia was acting aggressively to its neighbors because of the US insinuating its evil and nefarious national interests on Russia’s doorstep. And finally you assert that they need no such provocation; ALL countries (a sophomoric generalization; get a faculty adviser for your high school paper) are naturally acquisitive of power and territory.
Is NATO a threat or a joke? Both, depending on what you need it to be at the moment.
You’re the old lawyer joke.
1. My dog doesn’t bite.
2. My dog couldn’t have bitten you; he was locked in the house.
3. I don’t have a dog.
I also enjoyed how, when I insisted on pointing out that the Soviet Russians pursued the foreign policy of Czarist Russia effectively unchanged, I lacked the “grey matter” to “discern the difference between pre/post Revolutionary Russia and the interim’s Soviet Union.”
Until the weight of the evidence sufficiently embarrassed you, George. Then you did an about face and all of a sudden I was Captain Obvious.
“‘this craven George Pal individual. Having established he is both a knave and a fool’
along with your childish condescension…”
What do you mean, condescension? That is not
ad hominemcondescension that is astonishment.Steve57
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Hamlet’s mum, essentially about herself.
I had not called people crazy, I called you crazy.
After admitting to the use of ad hominem arguments, one has to wonder why Pal thinks he has a place to stand on calling others to account for ad hominem arguments.
Just because you know how to use them, you get to decide when others are using them as well, is that how it is with middle levels now a days.
Ymarsakar,
”Pal thinks he has a place to stand on calling others to account for ad hominem arguments.”
I most certainly do, when warranted. I called out the other for having initiated ad hominem argumentum. In your case I answered in kind to your ad hominem argumentum. In neither case had I taken to the low road first. If you would not have it applied to you then relent in applying it to others. Surely you see the principle involved. Yes?