Precisely why Russian action against Saudi Arabia’s proxy militias of fanatics is against western interests is something which nobody in the western elite seems to believe it is necessary to explain. That Russia is bad and evil and must be opposed is another one of those axiomatic beliefs of the governing elite, which they can’t bring themselves to believe the public do not wholeheartedly share. Equally they cannot quite understand why we the people do not see the necessity of backing the Saudi regime.
I am a stern critic of Russia’s democratic deficit, human rights record, and gangster dominated economy and government. But on all these counts it is still a thousand times better than Saudi Arabia, and I am quite certain that 99% of Europeans would be happier living in St Petersburg than Riyadh.
If the Russians turn back CIA and Saudi-backed rebels I for one shall be delighted.
Russian activity in Syria is nothing whatsoever to do with NATO. The Syrian rebels under attack by Russia are not members of NATO. Russia is not attacking Turkey and there is no chance whatsoever that Russia would deliberately attack Turkey. So the suggestion of NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg that NATO will send forces to protect Southern Turkey is absolute madness. In the Iraq War, two of the United States “pinpoint accurate” cruise missiles aimed at Baghdad actually hit Syria. At some stage Russia is going to accidentally hit something in Turkey, it is the nature of war. It is like playing football in the garden – it is inevitable the ball will go over the neighbours’ fence at some stage, however careful you are.
Increasing the amount of military hardware in Turkey – which is already extremely militarised and already full of US forces – just increases the political temperature and chances of something going disastrously wrong, with no possible gain except making the stupid western countries who messed up the Middle East feel less envious of Putin.
NATO countries have caused the crisis in the Middle East through their disastrous and criminal invasions. Russia is not and could never be strong enough to launch an actual attack on western Europe even if Russia wanted to – which Russia most certainly does not. Just like Trident missiles, NATO was no use to the United States on 9/11 and is no use against any actual challenge we face in the world. It exists to perpetuate the dominance of a neo-con elite and ensure massive income to the arms industry.
NATO’s attempts to build up forces around Syria and around the Baltic show that NATO’s over-activity poses the only viable threat of a disastrous world war. Ask yourself this question. Why does the USA, a country which faces no risk of invasion from anybody, account for 44% of the military spending of the whole world? NATO exists solely for client states to assist the projection of US military power abroad. Every decent European should be campaigning for their country to leave NATO.
“Anyhow, what do you think of my little theory that Iraq & Afghanistan, are trying to rid themselves of Western interference, by inviting the Russians in?”
Yes, the middle east might not be as geographically and economically rearranged as the west was hoping when it first set out in helping Israel to change the power structure and create the United States of Israel. I rather wish none of the superpowers got themselves involved in the affairs of other nation states. Look what the US has done, is doing, to Ukraine! Its population is not too pleased, has been protesting again, with more fatalities that centrally-controlled businesses are being hived off through local councils. And Poroshenko is giving himself the power to close down these “equal rights'” councils through his prefects. Some it would appear are more equal than others. Welcome Ukraine to dictatorial capitalism.
“The main advance in political reform in this period came on August 31, when a constitutional package of decentralization measures passed its first reading in the Rada, or parliament, with 265 votes. The package would give local councils the right to establish executive offices, thereby removing an important barrier to decentralization. Other measures include the granting of equal rights to all local communities and a provision for the president, acting through local representatives known as prefects, to dissolve local councils or overrule their decisions.”
Read more at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/10/05/ukraine-reform-monitor-october-2015/iik7
Node @ 1.54pm. Ha ha ha.
Craig, any chance we can see Chris Jones’ deleted sentence about the Ashkenazy to see whether he is being hard done by?
“Menachem Begin in 1978, surely.”
_________________
Yes indeed MJ, alas they’re a few scoundrels who’ve received the prize, decisions that not only seem irrational by the Nobel Chair,but downright surreal.
“My first thought was Russia was demonstrating its capabilities to the West, but then I thought that it was probably a bit early in proceedings to be showboating and that it must primarily have served an operational purpose.”
Testing their efficacy in a live theatre perhaps, but also demonstrating capabilities since these are the fastest cruise missiles on earth. Accurate too. I hate it. All these weapons should be dismantled. Unfortunately they are going the other way. Shenstone UAV Engines which makes drone engines for Israel used to make motor-cycle engines. It makes a mockery of “swords into plough-shares”.
Cameron is schmoozing with Mrs Merkel at Chequers today.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/angela-merkel/11919897/Angela-Merkel-to-press-David-Cameron-for-EU-negotiation-details.html
“these are the fastest cruise missiles on earth”
Are they? That’s interesting. Perhaps quite difficult to detect as well.
Mark Golding
9 Oct, 2015 – 1:44 pm
“Thank you for that excellent demonstration of Russia’s pathetic failure at manufacturing things ouch! – space station? Vostok spacecraft? Soyuz space rocket?”
Mark, quite right to point that out and I was thinking the same. Sadly Rocket-Science do not an economy make. And as the old adage goes, “It is the economy, stupid”
In fact, doesn’t Russia’s capability in rocket-science-technology rather strengthen Craig’s point: Russia is lousy in the manufacturing sector. And: Putin has been a disaster at managing Russia’s manufacturing segments in order to expand the breadth and depth of the Russian (manufacturing) economy. The last nail in the coffin of that very valid observation is that Russia is enriched with natural resources and not short of people/cheap labour either.
It therefore represents an attitude, including plugging into what is a global economy and creating the right ‘soft’ infrastructure for inward investment into Russia. Technology is often tied into capital flows.
I’m not much of a drinker, and definitely NEVER a vodka. But, vodka was first made in Russia in or around the 9th Century.
Today’s list of vodka brands around the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vodkas
And how many of those Russian brands do we know in the West? So, its not *just* cars, laptops and TVs.
^There is included in that list a brand of vodka called Putinka.
How about a brand christened Obomba Cola?
(This one intended to make Mary happy. Just kidding you Mary, and I’m sure you’re still as puzzled as me as to quite what Obama got the Nobel Prize for. Surreal.)
Russia gave us Tetris, a game of construction rather than destruction.
“OldMark. Complete nonsense.”
I thought Craig was being tongue-in-cheek there. OldMark’s error of mistaking Dundee for Glasgow was in reality a minor one.
Thanks MJ- my error was in trusting overly the veracity of Wikipedia.
I was told about the Dundee connection to ‘An Englishman Abroad’ years before Wikipedia existed, and on checking it this morning was actually a bit surprised to see Glasgow locations credited as well. Looking at the article history it appears an editor called ‘Finlay McWalter’ made an edit in 2013 identifying the block of flats as being Glasgow overspill, and not those Craig identifies.
If Craig’s attribution to the Whitfield Flats Dundee is correct (he was there in the early 80s after all) perhaps a more wikipedia competent commenter than me could edit the entry accordingly?
MJ
Thanks – I am pretty sure OldMark probably gathered that was a joke too.
On the cruise missiles, my theory was that they were worried some air defence capability had been put in place or an incident was being manufactured. But the West used precisely the same tactic of a mix of bomber and missile bombardment in Libya and Iraq, where again there was no obvious operational need to deploy missiles, so it seems a pretty standard military gambit.
I also read recently the memories of a Dutch filmmaker who made the film about Joy division and his shock at coming to the UK and seeing what a shitty hole it was in the industrial ‘north’ I actually had had the reverse experience of going to Denmark, West Germany, and Holland and East Germany, Poland and Sweden and being shocked that of all these countries the ones I recognised as most similar to most of Scotland was East Germany and Poland.
Deepgreenpuddock- yes, the great Anton Corbijn repeats that observation here, although by the time he visited NW England to film Joy Division in the late 70s we were actually in the EU, so the poverty he encountered wasn’t (as he suggests) related to our non membership of the then ‘common market’-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/anton-corbijn-the-photographer-and-film-director-on-working-with-philip-seymour-hoffman-and-the-9983826.html
Banal early at 9.24am
“Villager’s observation is irrelevant (as usual), as my point was not that anyone had stopped the Russians from outsourcing, but that the lack of a coherent manufacturing capacity attributed to Russia is something from which the UK also suffers.”
______________
Yet, even today, Britain is probably around the 10th largest manufacturing economy in the world
So, Banal if this is a comparison game, lets go one step at a time, shall we?
I’ll propose you a major British player, you return me the favour on behalf of the Russians and let’s see where we end up.
Here goes: Jaguar Land Rover:
Operations[edit]
Halewood Body & Assembly
Jaguar Land Rover currently has six main facilities for R&D, manufacturing and vehicle assembly, of which five are in the UK and one in India. Jaguar Land Rover invested a total of £1,058 million in research and development in the year ended 31 March 2013.[29]
Jaguar Land Rover has three research and development facilities in the UK:
Gaydon – an engineering and development facility
Whitley – an engineering and development site and headquarters for Jaguar Land Rover
Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick – advanced research and development
Vehicle Assembly plants:
Castle Bromwich Assembly, Birmingham, UK
Jaguar XF, Jaguar XJ, Jaguar F-Type
Halewood Body & Assembly, Halewood, UK
Land Rover Freelander, Land Rover Discovery Sport, Range Rover Evoque
Solihull plant, Solihull, UK
Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Land Rover Discovery, Land Rover Defender, Jaguar XE, Jaguar F-PACE
Pune, India
Land Rover Freelander, Jaguar XF, Jaguar XJ, Range Rover Evoque – assembly of complete knock-down kits only
Chery Jaguar Land Rover, Changsu, China
Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover Discovery Sport
Engine Assembly Plants
Wolverhampton Engine Plant, Wolverhampton, UK
^Btw, Banal Zevul, copy-and-paste, your favourite pastime allowed. 😉
Ooops the source for my copy at ^6.25pm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_Land_Rover
“Jaguar Land Rover”
Ahhh.
That great Indian institution.
Anyone any idea how much investment went into creating the China we know today.
Japan?
Princes of the Yen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY
Perhaps Russia will have to do it all without the funny money.
This probably won’t come a surprise to anyone, but the British government has refused to release legal advice, given to the PM, over his decision to launch RAF drone strikes in Syria, responsible for killing two British citizens.
Both the Cabinet Office and the Attorney General department have rejected FOI requests on the matter.
However, David Cameron gave assurances, not long after the killings of the British citizens on foreign soil, that the strikes were,”entirely lawful” and “an act of self defence.”
Yet now we’ve arrived at the point, where the British government are blocking any attempts to question the legitimacy of the strikes, which killed two UK citizens.
David Cameron, claims he had intelligence to prove the strikes were necessary, if so why not allow access to that very proof, to opposition party members to verify it.
A video about the British automotive manufacturing industry which dispels some of the myths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmcmqTAu6b8
Thank you Fred, top marks. Phenomenal; must watch. I hope Banal will be able to relax after watching this that all is well with the wheels of Britain. 🙂
Herbie
9 Oct, 2015 – 6:33 pm
“Jaguar Land Rover”
Ahhh.
That great Indian institution.
________________
Well, well Herbie, I was wondering who would be the first one to point that out. But tell me comrade, why isn’t it a Russian Institution then? It surely had a head-start?
Anyway Sirs, just for the record JLR is a listed UK plc even though its a subsidiary of Tata Motors.
What did you think of Fred’s video, Herbie?
There is a petition at change.org to prosecute Obama and Cameron for bombing Syria in clear violation of the UN charter.
The use of force against another state is ONLY lawful if it is in self-defence or has been authorised by the UN Security Council. The US and British bombing of Syria is therefore unlawful, for exactly the same reason as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
So far, only 11 people have signed the petition, which is pathetic.
If you want to mention the petition in tweets, the URL for it is
http://chn.ge/1RyhUDB
No worries. The IMF already has World reserve currency waiting in the wings since 2011.
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/10/china-is-dumping-u-s-government-debt-at-an-alarming-rate.html
“lately, China has been dropping US government bonds like hot potatoes. After the Chinese government devalued the yuan in August, their currency experienced a massive sell-off by investors who feared that more devaluations were ahead. To contain the situation, China’s central bank has been buying up their own currency while selling their dollar reserves.
More like one hundred signed now…still pathetic.
The question, Alcyone, is why isn’t it a British institution.
At least in terms of the point you’re trying to make.
Still.
Pehaps you need to acquaint yourself with global capital, rather than slobbering on about national industries.
That’s a bit passe I’m afraid, and the source of many of our problems.
I suggest you watch the vid I referred to earlier. It’s an academic piece.
Explains how it all works.
I won’t bother with the Clarkson bore, if you don’t mind.
He’s an idiot’s idiot, and just as irrelevant.
Britain has been sold off.
Herbie, come on now, I am no fan of Clarkson, but putting him aside for a few minutes, Can you really watch that piece and not be impressed. Can’t force you of course and I’m hardly going to invite you to a duel for it 😉 You know what I mean.
I will return the favour and not bother watching your recommendation as I am fully conversant with how global capital flows occur. Suffice it to say I have seen it up, front and personal over some decades. Does not mean I agree with it all. Btw, I have also seen Tata Motors close up and know exactly what Ratan Tata’s strategy was in terms of its backward integration in the context of the JLR acquisition. We might disagree to the extent that I know for a fact it remains an UK institution.
“Anyhow, what do you think of my little theory that Iraq & Afghanistan, are trying to rid themselves of Western interference, by inviting the Russians in ?” macky
That certainly was the tactic deployed repeatedly by non-aligned states during the Cold War re. the USA-USSR-China. The NATO narrative so screwed-upo and inchoherent it’s laughable – or it would be if it wasn;t so muderously serious.
So, the CIA was training a few ‘moderate rebels’, all of whom were captured/killed/surrendered and yet the CIA also was supplying some less-than-moderate groups in Syria which they say Russia is targeting.
of cours,e the likely truth is that the CIA and its agnets locally – Saudi/UAE/Kuwait/Qatar have been suppling all of the ‘rebel’ armies, especailly the Jihadist ones (since almost all are Jihadist). What’s new. Afghanistan 1980s, redux. Central America 1980s, redux.
KingofWelsnoir said:
“Craig, any chance we can see Chris Jones’ deleted sentence about the Ashkenazy to see whether he is being hard done by?”
It doesn’t seem that Mr Murray is prepared to put it back up so that others can make their own minds up. So far he hasn’t qualified his accusation that my ‘sentence about the Ashkenazy was plainly racist’ either.
Voltaire’s satatement of “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” is very apt here sadly. One is allowed to lay in to all others- the Saudis, the Americans, the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Welsh etc etc but don’t dare to write a factual statement about who is behind the ethnocracy in Israel-such inimaginable heresy must never be tolerated. I hate to have to repeat it – but the Rotchild Zionist owned media (yes it sounds ridcilous and far fetched – that’s because it is) has done a great job of making sure that only certain criticising can be allowed under the rules of political correctness, whilst making sure that anyone criticising the wrong targets are instantly labelled as weicists.
It is a factual statement that it is Khazarian Ashkenazi Jews that largely run the criminal Israeli government. This is what mostly unites the Zionist kabal under the Rothchild banner (literally) Are all Ashkenazi Jews bad – of course not, that would be the same as saying all Saudis are bad or all Germans are bad because of Nazism. But the reason why it is important to mention the Khazarian Ashkenazi label is because the whole premise of the criminal establishment and defence of Zionism worldwide depends on the fact that the native ethinc Jews/Israelites are returning to their homeland. But this is not the case with the Ashkenazi Jews running the regime as both they and the Rothchilds are of Khazarian heritage which is over 800 miles away from Israel – they aren’t ethnically Israelite at all and are simply recent converts to Judaism.
And they aren’t semitic so the tired anti Semitic label is meaningless. The Semite label refers to people of Israel/Palestinian ethnicity who speak or spoke languages relevant to that area such as Hebrew, Arabic. Ashkenazi Jews speak mostly Yiddish and English. So the whole premise of world Zionism and their criminality is all based on lies and deceivement. Even the motto of their security force admits to deceivement “By way of deception, thou shalt do war”. A person’s ethnicity shouldn’t have to determine what nationality they are of course – but the problem for the Askenazi led regime is that this is the whole premise of their justification for their criminal actions.
Alcyone said: “I am no fan of Clarkson, but putting him aside for a few minutes, Can you really watch that piece and not be impressed.”
It looks like some kind of Ruritanian wacko state to me, what with all the flag waving on the driveway of a queen.
All that was missing was fleets of Lancasters and Wellingtons flying over, before dropping tons of bombs on dusky skinned people.