Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, though frequently raising a few eyebrows when he does, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a scrum of French reporters recently that the Western model of democracy simply doesn’t exist.
“Can you tell me what it is—the Western model of democracy? France has one model of democracy, the U.S.A. has another one,” Putin said, then added his own perspective on the current state of American democracy. “A French politician told me once, ‘One cannot do anything at the elections in the U.S.A. without money—whether they are elections to the Senate or Congress, not to mention the presidential elections. There is nothing to do there without a sack of money.’ ”
Putin also took this opportunity to defend Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. “People died as a result of the criminal action launched by President [Mikheil] Saakashvili two years ago. Russia was forced to defend the lives of its peacemakers and the citizens of South Ossetia,” the prime minister declared. “We stopped 15 to 20 km from Tbilisi. We stopped there not because we could not enter Tbilisi—we stopped because we didn’t want to do it. We didn’t want any military action at all....”
"This looks like war to me.... It seems like a matter of timing.... "
yup, about how things felt late summer 2002. that war had already been planned and agreed on long before...
And if we remember, it was just the opening gambit of the Neocon's overall plan for the Middle East. Additional targets (among others) for war or destabilization being Lebanon with the infamous White House Murder INC, with Asef Shawkat starting with January 24th 2002 assassination of Mr. Elie HOBEIKA in Beirut....to all other assassinations and the 2006 war..., Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt....
And of course the Neocons are just one group of willing and able flunkies for the higher circles who have the real power. Many Senators and Congressmen fall into this flunky category as well, as do others in high office.
Rather than adapt to a changing world and international balance of power, the imperial types think they can rearrange the globe through war at this time. The idea is to maintain "dominance" or hegemony rather than adjust to a multipolar situation.
I have noted before that the coming war, if it comes, would be perceived by circles in the US and Europe as a move on the chessboard to maintain "Western" dominance in the face of a rising China, a rising India, an ailing but still not without power Russia and so on.
Russia and China are not in a position yet (yet) to directly oppose the US-NATO machine. They will have to get stronger and the US will have to get weaker. Thus, they can take a pass and let the US bleed for another decade or two while they consolidate and strengthen their positions, if they can.
Some US-EURO circles may well calculate that a war will get us all somehow around the economic and financial mess we are in.
I would not rule out the Israelis taking advantage of a messy Middle East war situation to just expel the Palestinians in an ethnic cleansing operation....
Hagee has his Christian Zionist annual extravaganza in DC late July targeting the Hill.
To monitor the pro-war temperature one can glance at the Congressional Record noting a rising heated pro-Israel anti-Iran rhetoric. The usual media types like Rush and that slut will turn up the volume, some patriotic songs out of Nashville to flood the airwaves, and Hollywood doing its part to "support the war."
And the internal clamp down here will continue step by step against dissenters in the general "Sovietization" of the US polity.
Selections from Solzhenitsyn's two volume set on Russia and the Jews are appearing here and there on the net in English translation these days. Wonder why... preparing for the coming American Gulag....?
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