There is currently a major propaganda blitz by arms and security industries to convince us was are in a “new cold war”, and therefore should be spending even more ludicrous sums of money on weapons of mass destruction. Here are a few simple facts.
a) Russia is not a great power. Its total GDP is about the same as Spain’s – and Spain is pretty knackered. Russia has even less economic clout as a basis for world domination than the UK.
b) Russia’s economy is not diversified. It is over-dependent on raw commodity production and export. Its distribution of wealth is even worse than ours, although the Tories are doing their best to catch up. We have a totally false popular impression of Russian wealth because a few oligarchs have most of the money – and export it straight to the West. Capital flight is a huge problem for the Russian economy.
c) Russia is no threat to the UK and never has been. Centuries of Russophobia are entirely baseless. The idea of a defensive posture against Russia is ludicrous as there is no threat. Churchill, incidentally, asked Truman to nuke Moscow. A nuclear attack would be the only realistic way Russia could attack the UK – and the only thing that could make that possible are the mad calls for cold war and more weapons currently being heard in the West. None of which is to say it would be militarily sensible to attack Russia, as history shows. But Russia’s aggressive potential is very limited indeed. It will not be long before Poland plus the Baltic states are economically stronger than Russia.
None of this is to say Russia cannot continue to bully those very weak states which neighbour it. I have no time for Putin’s aggressive nationalism. But his position is fundamentally weak and his powerbase very limited. Neither the left nor the right in the UK (and in this comments section) want to hear this. The right constantly exaggerate Russia as a threat to boost their political interests and military funding. The left want desperately to believe in Putin as a strong counter to the West, as indicated by the ludicrous analyses that the Syria conflict was all about Russia’s decrepit and worthless Black Sea Fleet.
How to handle relations with Russia is not quite as much of a conundrum as it sounds, as Putin’s vaulting ambition is severely limited by his economic constraints. He is feeling that severely now, and it is nothing to do with the token and pointless economic sanctions. Russia desperately needs economic and political form – but Putin’s hand is only strengthened by the bellicose nonsense which enables him to appeal to the powerful atavistic strand in modern Russian social culture. I remain of the view that internationally supervised, genuinely fair referenda in Eastern Ukraine should be the way forward. That should include a new and properly conducted referendum in the Crimea, including free campaigns. It should be made plain that there will be a fast track into the EU for the Ukraine at the end of that process, after the secession of any districts that wish to join Russia.
Tony_M @11:05 pm,
Brilliant analysis, even of Craig, written exceedingly well.
Tony
Yossi, this was the Orlov link you meant to post.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/putin-to-western-elites-play-time-is.html
Thank-you John – brilliant. Let’s summarize again the most salient points from Putin speech as follows:
1. Russia will no longer play games and engage in back-room negotiations over trifles. But Russia is prepared for serious conversations and agreements, if these are conducive to collective security, are based on fairness and take into account the interests of each side.
2. All systems of global collective security now lie in ruins. There are no longer any international security guarantees at all. And the entity that destroyed them has a name: The United States of America.
3. The builders of the New World Order have failed, having built a sand castle. Whether or not a new world order of any sort is to be built is not just Russia’s decision, but it is a decision that will not be made without Russia.
4. Russia favors a conservative approach to introducing innovations into the social order, but is not opposed to investigating and discussing such innovations, to see if introducing any of them might be justified.
5. Russia has no intention of going fishing in the murky waters created by America’s ever-expanding “empire of chaos,” and has no interest in building a new empire of her own (this is unnecessary; Russia’s challenges lie in developing her already vast territory). Neither is Russia willing to act as a savior of the world, as she had in the past.
6. Russia will not attempt to reformat the world in her own image, but neither will she allow anyone to reformat her in their image. Russia will not close herself off from the world, but anyone who tries to close her off from the world will be sure to reap a whirlwind.
7. Russia does not wish for the chaos to spread, does not want war, and has no intention of starting one. However, today Russia sees the outbreak of global war as almost inevitable, is prepared for it, and is continuing to prepare for it. Russia does not war—nor does she fear it.
8. Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order—until their efforts start to impinge on Russia’s key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain.
9. In her external, and, even more so, internal politics, Russia’s power will rely not on the elites and their back-room dealing, but on the will of the people.
To these nine points I would like to add a tenth:
10. There is still a chance to construct a new world order that will avoid a world war. This new world order must of necessity include the United States—but can only do so on the same terms as everyone else: subject to international law and international agreements; refraining from all unilateral action; in full respect of the sovereignty of other nations.
To sum it all up: play-time is over. Children, put away your toys. Now is the time for the adults to make decisions. Russia is ready for this; is the world?
A Russian friendly, piece by the BBC !!;
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29950844
Contains some interesting home truths that counter the normal demonising.
Thanks for the summary Mark. I think Craig, so good on other issues most of the time, is way off with his assessment of Putin and Russia.
Why is it taking the Inquiry into the shooting down of MH17 so long. Anybody who has seen photographs of the fuselage knows full well that it was shot down by fighter jets. So why is it taking so long? And why have the fascists in Kiev had an escape clause written into the investigation if the inquiry finds them the perpetrators it cannot be published?
The US blames Russia and the rebels but will not release any evidence. Why not? The German secret services (who wrongly blamed Assad for chemical weapons in Syria) also claim the rebels shot down MH17 but will not release any evidence. They make it up as they go along. The only evidence is that of Russian radar which picked up a fighter jet alongside the plane. This evidence appears to have been discarded. Why?
http://nsnbc.me/2014/11/05/west-touting-classified-evidence-avoid-impartial-mh17-investigation/
Russia has the largest retail market in the world
MWL are in all their glory I see. And nobody has noticed Putinista’s pressure on so called (because it has very little if any relevance to Russian politics) opposition. 4 people have recently (in the last 2 weeks) been arrested of whom 2 disappeared. No problems in KGB run gansta state.
Day will come and we will learn that it was putin whose hands pushed the land to air missile and brought down hundreds of people over Ukraine. KGB is good covering up their shit just like they did for 50 years over Katin massacre. MWL of that time were so convinced that it was Nazis who shot Polish solders into back of their head.
Day will come and we will learn that it was putin whose hands pushed the land to air missile and brought down hundreds of people over Ukraine.
Yeah, well like, um, any evidence?
No?
Oh, OK, just a nasty little outburst of Russophobia.
@JG:
I think Craig, so good on other issues most of the time, is way off with his assessment of Putin and Russia.
Actually, John, Craig Murray’s position on Russia is quite consistent with his general view of the world. He is relentless in seeking the break up of the UK, the bits to be fed into the undemocratic EU superstate. Likewise he wants to see Russia broken up and the pieces fed into the EU (Gorbachev had pretty much the same idea, but he was booted before he was able to usher the Soviets into “our common European home”). Then the New World Order will be truly on its way: power to the bureaucracy, assets to the oligarchy and a fake democratic government subordinate to the oligarchic interest.
Demeaning Russia is necessary to dispel the panic that would otherwise be evoked by the ongoing effort to destroy Russia, the world’s other nuclear super power, a country with ten thousand nukes and the means to deliver them worldwide — one of them likely targeted on Edinburgh.
@CM:
There is absolutely no significant proportion of the Ukrainian population which wishes to “rejoin Hungary” which has a totally different language.
There are 156,600 Hungarian speakers in Transcarpathia (according to the Ukraine census of 2001) of whom a significant proportion would most likely prefer to see their region returned to Hungary, where it belonged prior to WW1.
Ho ho ho and here is something for the nationalists. We don’t like Putins dirty nationalism siphoning of Russia’s wealth for his supporting clan, BUT
” It should be made plain that there will be a fast track into the EU for the Ukraine at the end of that process, after the secession of any districts that wish to join Russia”
Now how you would prevent the fervent fascism engrained in Svoboda and right sector, so encouraged by his eminence CIA assets Yatseniuk, Obama Nuland and her ilk?
Sorry, the succession of a Nazi sympathetic/worshipping regime should not be decided by those who have already led the EU up the garden path, turned it into an unaccountable unwieldy conglomerate, with economically two tiers that have left the southern states in limbo, it needs reforming not expanding adding more and more of your kind of nationalists.
I do not agree at all on this drive to turn the EU into America’s fascist arm, a throwaway comment from a past time, when the cold war raged supreme.
Heil Svoboda, we don’t mind you celebrating Hitler’s birthday, you are all good ol’ boys, just our kind of nationalists.
CanSpeccy
Why is there no other phobias but Russophobia? There is no Americanophobia or Germanophobia, or even Chinaphobia but there is still one old good very well propagandised (by Russians since Peter the Great) Russophobia? Why every time anyone points onto wrongdoings of Russian Czars/Vozjds/Presidents one is immediately called Russophob?
Russian Menace made even simpler:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFjX0cOh1dg
@CanSpeccy. Thank you.
Ukraine seems to be in even more trouble now with its currency falling massively overnight:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-11/ukraine-currency-crashes-after-senior-eu-official-says-ukrainians-are-manipulating-u
Just look at these strapping young blue eyed boys from Ukraine in their big boots, lets all quickly melt like butter and give them every EU support they want, never mind need, it is our destiny, according to all those who believe the Asian continent has been stolen.
Just imagine they would not have sold Alaska, what a multi ethnic bliss that would be now, Canadians learning Russian to get married, Russians learning how to race huskies, aaaahhh.
We need more nationalism undoubtedly, cause there’s Scotland, so lets not be too choosy when it comes to our elite’s needs for fossil/ any fuel/Gold/ Diamonds/ just about any coal you need and much more, then we do not mind the Nazi style fascism, after all we, the west is in control and we have to our rich mouth to feed, so lets sanitise nationalism a bit shall we.
http://www.dw.de/ukrainians-veer-toward-right-wing-nationalism/a-16446159
Russia may not be a match for US and NATO, but it do scares the organized Jewry even though many Russian writers have claimed that Putin is very popular among Russian Jewish establishment.
On October 20, 2013, one of America’s top Muslim hater Dr. Daniel Pipes, claimed in Washington Post that Muslims would become a majority in Russia in the near future. However, this is not the first time Pipes cooked-up his Israeli propaganda. He made a similar claim at his personal website on August 6, 2005.
“Alcoholism-plagued ethnic Russians are said to have European birthrates and African death rates. Their women have on average 1.4 children, and their men have a life expectancy of 60 years. In Moscow, ethnic Christian women have 1.1 child. In contrast, Muslim women bear 2.3 children on average and have fewer abortions than their Russian counterparts. In Moscow, Tatar women have six children and Chechen and Ingush women have 10,” Pipes based his prediction over the above half-cooked lies.
http://rehmat1.com/2013/12/06/daniel-pipes-russia-turning-islamic/
There is no Americanophobia or Germanophobia, or even Chinaphobia
And there is no Israelophobia, but there is anti-Semitism. Likewise there is no Americanophobia but there is anti-Americanism, which is different from, but not unrelated to, un-Americanism; and there is no Chinaphobia, but Sinophobia gives you sixty thousand hits in Google.
As for the Germans, their fundamental Hitlerian evil is so ineradicable that to many, no amount of anti-Teutonic hate is worthy of note; although Google yields almost five and a half million hits for “anti-Teutonic,” which gives you an idea how much worse it is to be associated with Hitler than Mao Tse Tung, notwithstanding that Mao murdered many more people than Hitler.
But then the Chinese don’t get off so lightly in their Communist phase, as there are over eight million Google hits for “anti-Communist.”
Craig is right that Russia’s Navy is crap, but its opponents are greatly overrated. If the USN ever goes up against a competent regional power – and Russia is one, notwithstanding their resource constraints – their rustbuckets will make an aquatic wonderland of artificial reefs.
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2014/11/marcus-aurelius-us-pacific-fleet-n-2-intelligence-boss-relieved-under-white-house-pressure-for-speaking-openly-about-chinese-military-plans-and-activities/
Any armed conflict with Russia will take an invariant course: rapid attrition to stalemate, with a US option of resort to strategic nukes. The US will have liberally deployed tactical enhanced-radiation nukes, as they did in Iraq, so the NCA may think the step up to WMDs is no big deal. Russia is counting on a modicum of sanity in the US government, and that is far from assured.
You do not fuck with Russia. This is a people that lost 20 million but won the war. This is a people that nuked themselves with 50 MT just to see what would happen. I know which side I’ll pick when the balloon goes up.
Can’t disagree with much of that, Craig.
As I’ve said before, however, Russian boats are old but the missiles are the best. It’s all about how you deliver an explosive charge – by super-carrier or Yakhont. There’s no contest.
The new Borei-class subs are pretty special too; as are the Su-34 fighter-bombers.
GDP of Spain, yes. But Spain with lots of first-rate missile technology. If it’s a straight fight between large stationary targets, such as armies and navies, I’ll take the Bear any day of the week.
Latest on Ukraine’s most westerly provinces and Hungary. Needless to say, the mighty US is not amused by Hungarian actions:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/transcarpathia-transnistria-and.html
Hooray, somebody else (apart from Enoch Powell, who said it a few years ago and Hitchens who says it now and again) has said “Russia is no threat to the UK and never has been. Centuries of Russophobia are entirely baseless.” No, it isn’t a threat, and I really do wish the kidults who run this poor, benighted land would stop trying to tell us that it is.
However, perhaps it is a bit restrictive to base an argument that Russia isn’t a great power simply on economic statistics which can, for a variety of reasons, be massively misleading. Its enormous land mass, its vast natural resources, ‘black earth’ etc., its seemingly indomitable people, its fascinating and (in the West, at least) shamefully ignored history, its centre of gravity at the threshold of Europe and Asia and its world-class literature among other things put her fairly and squarely on the map as an important country of historical and contemporary moment.
http://www.rorystewart.co.uk/worried-putins-russia/
Re: Fool’s link
… Then Russia took Crimea, and Russian backed separatists shot down a passenger plane and killed hundreds. Again the West predicted that Russia would apologise and pull back.
I guess a fool might believe such assertions without the slightest evidence or argument to support them, but anyone else would be wasting time even to read such stuff.
Concerning the Crimean referendum on independence, Ewald Stadler, member of the European Parliament who was an observer of the vote, said “I haven’t seen anything even resembling pressure, … People themselves want to have their say.” And Bulgarian parliament member Pavel Chernev, another observer, said: “Organization and procedures are 100 percent in line with the European standards.”
True, despite appearances, the vote may have somehow been faked, but then there are probably better reasons to suspect fraud in recent US Presidential elections than in the Crimea vote.
So what is Fool and his friend trying to tell us? That only a US supervised election is valid? Or that, like Craig Murray, he thinks the Crimean referendum should be done over and over until the people vote the right way, as is the EU tradition? Or what?
As for the shoot down of MH-17 only an ignoramus, a fool or a liar thinks the balance of evidence points to Russian responsibility, and the failure of the official inquiry to report anything after months of supposed investigation, suggest that nothing ever will be reported, because the findings would embarrass America’s Nazi friends in Kiev.
Ukraine’s currency plunges as ceasefire fears grow By Natalia Zinets and Anton Zverev November 10, 2014
KIEV/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukraine’s currency lost nearly 5 percent of its value on Monday
Moscow is obviously lying on that last point, whilst the west is lying about nearly everything else!, but the good news, for the military industrial complex at least, is that
the New US Congress [is likely] to Pursue Lethal Military Aid to Ukraine,
and a last point from on Why a “frozen conflict” in eastern Ukraine is unlikely
news just in, Henry warns us of a dangerous situation, as if we couldn’t see that already!
But what have the CIA got to say?
November 9, 2014
Fall of Berlin Wall Began Eastern Expansion of NATO
Former US Central Intelligence Agency analyst Ray McGovern says the fall of the Berlin wall should have been an opportunity to create a constructive alliance with Russia, but instead, it became an opportunity to contain and isolate it
Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern now works for a Church.
MCGOVERN: Well, the Soviet Union in truth was falling apart. Its economic difficulties were huge. And it was losing its satellites in Eastern Europe one by one. When the wall came down and East Germany was freed, so to speak, that was an opportunity that really was squandered. What we had was a confluence of enlightened leadership in the Soviet Union–Gorbachev and Forward Minister Shevardnadze–who were persuaded not to use–not to use–the 24–count them–24 Soviet divisions in East Germany to do what the Soviets had done in Hungary in ’56 and in Czechoslovakia in ’68.
A deal was made. George H. W. Bush, to his credit, immediately called up Gorbachev and said, look, sorry, Mikhail, sorry for your troubles, but rest assured I’m not going to dance on the wall. Whoa. Let’s meet together, quickly. Three weeks later, three weeks after the wall fell, they met in Malta–a summit. How do we know it happened there? Ambassador Jack Matlock has told that story. A deal was reached. Look, you Soviets, you don’t use force, okay? And we, we won’t take advantage of your difficulties.
Now, two months later, James Baker, the secretary of state for Bush and Reagan, he goes to Moscow and he deals with Shevardnadze, his opposite number, and with Gorbachev. And the quid that we wanted was a reunified Germany. Now, when I say that, Paul, I spent five years in Germany; it still puts hairs on the back of my neck here. I didn’t want a reunified Germany. And the Soviets, who lost 25 million people in World War II, they were duly afraid of reunited Germany. And yet they acquiesced in that because the quo, the quid pro quo, the quo on this was that we would not move NATO, in James Baker’s words, one inch eastward toward the Soviet Union.
Fast-forward to President Clinton at the end of the campaign with Bob [Dole]. He decided that he would welcome Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland into NATO, and that built up his defense credentials. And sure enough, in ’99 they were admitted. And then, one decade later, 12 new members of NATO faced–faced what? The Warsaw Pact, the counterweight to NATO, had disappeared. And so NATO did encroach on Russia.
And that’s where the story of Ukraine starts, because after those 12, the Ukraine and Georgia were slated to become members of NATO. And this is a very interesting story. We know about it through WikiLeaks, okay? What happened? Well, we have a WikiLeaks cable from Moscow, from Bill Burns, who is the ambassador there. The date is 1 February 2008, so during the Bush-Cheney administration. What does Burns say? I was called by Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister then (and now), and he read me the riot act. He said, look, you’re thinking about–the rumors are saying you’re thinking about Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. Forget about it. Nyet means nyet. And that’s how Bill Burns titled the cable that he sent back from Moscow to Washington. He said, these people are very serious. What Lavrov says: if you do this, the Ukraine’s going to be split and there will be a civil war, and we’ll have to decide whether we’re going to intervene or not. Don’t do it. Okay. That’s 1 February, 2008.
The next month, Bill Bradley gets up and says, my God, this is a terrible, terrible mistake (Bill Bradley being the senator from New Jersey and the specialist on the Soviet Union). A month later–we’re talking April 3–NATO at a summit in Bucharest decides, Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. That was the kernel of it. In other words, we thumbed our nose at the Soviet Union–at Russia at this point, and said, we’re going to make Ukraine a member of NATO.
Now, that was ’08. Fast-forward, what, six years here, and we have a situation where people like Victoria Nuland want to stir up the kind of unrest that worked so well in Tehran in 1953 or in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973. And sure enough, there’s a coup, a coup, on 22 February in Kiev.
MCGOVERN: … in Kiev, in the Ukraine. And so the duly elected [Yanukovych] is knocked out, and in comes a fellow named Yatsenyuk, who, quite oddly–I’ve never seen the likes of it, Paul–he’s mentioned in an intercepted telephone conversation between the assistant secretary of state for European affairs, Victoria Nuland, and the ambassador, our ambassador in Kiev. And what does she say? She says, Yats is our guy. Yats is the man. The other guys can wait in the wings, but we need Yats because he knows about the IMF, he’s not afraid of imposing his austerity measures. Yats is the man. Now, that appeared three weeks before the coup. In other words, that was posted on YouTube at the end of January. And all of a sudden, on 23 February, the day after the coup, I wake up, and who’s the new prime minister? Yats! I wrote a piece that day and said, yikes! It’s Yats!
So what am I saying? I’m saying that there was not even a decent respect for [the opinions of your (?)] [incompr.] to coin a phrase. Yats was the guy. They were unabashedly doing a coup.
And happened next with respect to the seizure or the annexation of Crimea by Russia? Well, people start–they like to start history there, Paul. But the history starts on 22 February with the coup against the duly elected government in Kiev. And there is not one scintilla of evidence that Putin nor any of his advisers ever even thought that they would be honoring a plebiscite in Crimea, reincorporating Crimea into Russia proper before the coup a month before. So the story starts there.
JAY: …Why?
MCGOVERN: Well, Paul, that’s the question, okay? The reality is that it was an incredibly terrible missed opportunity to change things. Bush, George H. W. Bush, in a major speech in Mainz in May 1989, before the wall fell, talked about a Europe “whole and free.” So did Gorbachev. And that chance was there.
Now, why was it squandered? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. We had people working in the Bush administration, like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, at kind of middle-high levels of the administration, who were saying, look, we want the Cold War. We don’t have to kowtow to anyone. Our policy should be to prevent, to deliberately prevent any state from challenging our preeminent position. And that means that the Soviet Union has to be–it’s Russia now–has to be kept in place, and it means also that we have to really enhance our ability to manufacture and sell arms to various and sundry.
So I see it as a combination of kind of kind of liberalism run amok, where we thought we could implant our brand on the whole world, including Russia, but also a need to make sure that there was an enemy that we could rally against, that we could build more weapons to defend against, and more NATO members to sell these weapons to. So I do see the military-industrial complex, so-called, as a major factor in this, because you can’t build a common European battle tank Leopard 2 with a consortium of French and German really high-tech and really wealthy arms manufacturers unless you have something that is portrayed as an enemy. And that, of course, is Russia. And Putin, of course, is elected as the eminence grace, the bête noire, the fellow that has evil intentions and has to be guarded against. It’s all a crock, Paul. It’s all a crock. And what has surprised me in this whole Ukrainian deal is the patience and, I would say, the statesmanship with which Putin and his advisers have conducted themselves in sharp contrast to his counterparts in Washington.
MCGOVERN: Yeah. Well, again, it was in my view this overweening desire to act like the sole remaining superpower in the world and keep everyone else down. Meanwhile–and it was Yeltsin who was the real bête noire here–it was Yeltsin who was really the person at fault for inviting all the oligarchs in and turning what had been a reasonably decent economic situation–in shambles, but at least able to function–into the property of the oligarchs. Now, Putin is not quite that way. He’s stopped some of those oligarchs, and he’s not their favorite, except for some of his closest friends.
So all I’m saying here is that the chance was missed. Exactly why it was missed? I think it was due to a combination of the Madeleine Albrights of this world, who famously said, we are the sole indispensable country in the world–and if people remember what antonyms are, the antonym for indispensable is dispensable. And that means all the other countries in the world by definition are dispensable, and that included, of course, Russia. And so the economic outreach there to Western Europe and Western Europe trying to garner more cheap labor, like in Greece, trying to get Ukrainians into their economic system, they reached too far. Putin was not about–and none of the Russians were about to allow Ukraine to be embedded in an economic and a military system that would be the E.U. and NATO, in which the prospect of U.S. ships sailing into Sevastopol in the Crimea, the primary Russian naval base since Catherine the Great, their only warm-water port–Putin said that explicitly; he said, you know, we don’t want Ukraine in NATO, but even more and what weighed even more heavily in our decision to reincorporate Crimea was the notion that U.S. or NATO ships would be sailing into Sevastopol, that missile-defense systems would be emplaced in the Black Sea. And then he sort of jocularly said, you know, I’m sure that the sailors of NATO and the U.S. are swell fellas, he says, but I’d really like it not to be that we would have to visit them at their port, at their base in Sevastopol; I really much prefer to have it the way it is now, where they’re free to visit us in our base in Sevastopol. These are strategic considerations. They weighed heavily.
And how Victoria Nuland and those sophomores in the White House thought they could ever get away with it is–well, it’s not beyond my ken. They just don’t have much experience.
“As for the shoot down of MH-17 only an ignoramus, a fool or a liar thinks the balance of evidence points to Russian responsibility, and the failure of the official inquiry to report anything after months of supposed investigation, suggest that nothing ever will be reported, because the findings would embarrass America’s Nazi friends in Kiev.”
Yes. Craig wants to believe that the government of Kiev is all right and a suitable partner for the west. That presupposes that the west comprises straight dealers. Ukraine, if its economy was stable, would be a very suitable country to do business with because it is laced with corruption (Timoshenko springs to mind) and the west itself is not an honest broker. Craig really does not like Russia or Putin and it is not long since he wrote a piece about the downing of MH17 which on reflection he may wish he had not jumped to such a hasty conclusion.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/07/mh17-downed-by-elite-collusion/
jaw war
Jacob Kipp, (previously of Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas) comments
To imagine the the US military is a match for Russia’s is silly. Russia can destroy every major city in the US in 45 minutes and is the world’s biggest arms exporter (or weapons superior to America’s) is enough to make it a military superpower. And the idea that the US military – the worst on earth (never won a war, lost the last 4 straight) – could handle the Russian Army is preposterous. Incidentally, hydrocarbon exports make up only 17% of the Russian GDP.
anti-putin propaganda has never been CRAZIER!!!
THIS IS AUSTRALIANN MEDIA TODAY, WITH THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT DUE FOR THE G20 SUMMIT IN BRISBANE!!!
Russian warships bearing down on Australia
Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s threat to shirtfront Russian President Vladimir Putin is escalating dramatically.
7News can reveal a fleet of Russian warships is steaming towards Australia – a defiant show of force from the super power, ahead of this weekend’s G20 meeting of world leaders…
7News has been told four Russian warships are bearing down on Australian waters, led by the guided missile Cruiser, Varyag, the flag ship of Russia’s Pacific fleet.
Also heading south is the destroyer, Marshal Shaposhnikov – it’s not short of firepower either
The task group is in the Coral Sea South of Bougainville and appear on course for waters off Australia’s east coast.
All four could be sitting off Brisbane by Saturday, a prospect that has so stirred the government….
https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/25496667/russian-warships-bearing-down-on-australia/
do note near the end of the piece:
Defence Force: “The movements of these vessels in entirely consistent with provisions under international law for military vessels to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters.”
channel 7 news is not the only MSM pushing this scare today and it is beyond shameful.
YKMN has it in my opinion, we have made a mistake in Europe to offer Ukraine a market and relevance, when they were just about to tear each others heart out.
Diplomacy seemingly has been replaced by doublespeak and armed conflict. Today Ukraine is seen as another cold war proxy to test out NATO’s new weapon system. NATO has become leviathan.
We have to get used to the fact that the Crimea walked away, as we would like to see Scotland/Catalonia walk away, free to make their own decisions.
The Crimea choose a Russian overlord, and they did not have much choice being faced with threats from Kiev and the West.#
Offering ex USSR states NATO membership was a ploy to aggressively expand into eastern Europe’s perceived power vacuum.