Russia vs West

[Chris Coles]

Re: Russia vs West

You're a stand-up guy Chris. I'll gladly buy you a beer any time.

I prefer bitters myself, but if you chance to be over here on that occasion it will be one of our "gnats-piss-Budweiser-specials" - the secret we have with this beer is to chill it so thoroughly that the taste is erased out of it entirely. Zap the taste buds with an instant freeze and your hapless American beer drinker wouldn't know if he was drinking radiator fluid instead. Or maybe formaldehyde.

Anyway, from an American "I'd buy ya a beer anytime" is an unqualified endorsement, so you'll have to just overlook the quality of the suds, which is a minor detail among our many other glorious cultural achievements.

Same goes for Vitaly. I'll buy him a Budweiser anytime too (whereupon Vitaly attempts fearfully to hide from view under his desk to avoid that invitation). Actually I'm thinking both of you guys would turn up your noses at having to "actually drink a Budweiser" but hey, we Americans "are what we are" (gives a big toothy grin). America is all about that wonderful rayon and polyester ethic. If you don't like it, go buy yer button-down drip dry shirts someplace else guys. What? You don't own a button-down drip dry poly-cotton blend shirt yet?

Ooooooo!!!! What do I say?

For a start, I happen to like Budweiser , but it is expensive here in the UK and right at the moment I am poor, specifically because, having written a book about gravity, all bar one scientist has decided to laugh at my ideas and thus I am unable to fund the book launch. (If I prove to be correct, I have re-written the physics and cosmology text books and as such, the book is very valuable. Ergo, I can base a completely new publishing company upon it as well as another business manufacturing the many new science experiments and yet another as an independent research institute), so I am not about to give this to some existing outfit.

But that is beside the point, I have to admit, I could not afford to return the kind compliment, (well certainly not a full evening at the bar), but I do thank you for the kindness.

Chris.

You forget that rayon and polyester shirts were a British invention, by a company called Courtaulds, if I remember correctly.:rolleyes: And no, I do not have a button down shirt. Prefer loose cotton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtaulds

[Shakespear]

Re: Russia vs West

Promises, promises

Bush and Rasputin Dick Cheney have broken a 1991 pledge made by President Bush Senior to Soviet chairman Michael Gorbachev. In exchange for Gorby’s not using the Red Army to crush spreading revolts in East Germany and across the dying Soviet Union, Washington agreed not to advance NATO eastward toward Russia or into the old USSR. Gorbachev’s courageous, humane concession averted a crisis that could have led to a nuclear war.

Looking at the other promises made with regard to disarmament etc. it looks like confidence building is out the window.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis116.html

How about the following analysis I happened to stumble upon with regard to NATO enlargement, which was made in the calmer days (1999).

By its actions over the past several years, NATO is changing focus from a defensive military alliance to a peacekeeping organization intent on enhancing overall European security. There is no question NATO needs to re-think its traditional collective defense mission and that it should look at the strategic shift from a single-threat situation during the Cold War to a multilateral one now requiring a more capabilities-based approach.1 However, although NATO may be a Cold War relic, further expansion into Central and Eastern Europe is not an appropriate response to the new international environment.2 With another round of expansion, NATO would be taking on even greater commitments than it had during the Cold War when it had significantly more resources than it does today.

http://www.fas.org/man/nato/99-082.pdf

[Chris Coles]

Re: Russia vs West

Many people in Russia would love to see oil prices go down. This will help the real development. What is scared me your mode: this seems to be a war mode. Again instead of mutual cooperation which would help ALL people we are trying to decide how to fight each other: military, financial, energy etc.

Again, you see everything is black or white, war or cooperation, nothing in between. Russia demands respect from its strong actions. To gain mutual respect, we have to appear as strong. You expect war, I say we can teach respect from other actions than simply running up with a gun in hand. Have you ever heard of the British concept of sending to Coventry?

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/s...-coventry.html

To be ignored or shunned.

We turn our backs and refuse to communicate in any way.

Again, we are clearly threatened by the possibility of the energy from Russia being turned off. I say, show we can do without it. Please, how on earth is that something to do with promoting a war? Shunning someone we do not like has nothing to do with war. It has everything to do with gaining respect so I am sorry, but I do not buy your argument. As for mutual cooperation? The only answer is to remind you that much of this current crisis stems from a firm belief that several hundred Russian Citizens were killed by the FSB who placed and then detonated large quantities of military explosives in the basements of apartment blocks in Moscow as a way of promoting the idea of a war against Chechnya. It all started to unwind when the Russian Police came across one such bomb before it exploded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings

It is very difficult indeed to even consider cooperation with anyone that will kill their own citizens to gain political power. As you yourself said; life is cheap in Russia.

I am neither religious nor am I an American, but of the one place I have felt at home, it was the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. I commend the writing on the wall of that great building.

Fellow Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

When Russia has a leader that can write inspiring speeches instead of bluster, show common sense instead of threats to "crush" - you will see much cooperation. No one in their right mind seeks war; and I for one certainly do not.

[Supercilious]

Re: Russia vs West

It is very difficult indeed to even consider cooperation with anyone that will kill their own citizens to gain political power. As you yourself said; life is cheap in Russia.

Exactly! The west doesn't have anything against russians.... but the west has a problem with the neo-Czarist mentality regardless if it's stalinism, breshnevism or, currently, Putinism.

The ball is in the russian corner now. If the russian people will continue to support Putin and his dangerous game of rebuilding the old soviet sphere of influence a new Cold War will follow.

[c1ue]

Re: Russia vs West

I am neither religious nor am I an American, but of the one place I have felt at home, it was the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. I commend the writing on the wall of that great building.

More irony:

A quote from a President who fought a (civil) war in which 180000 soldiers died in order to prevent a territory from seceding from the Union.

Who unilaterally advocated confiscating private property by freeing the slaves, but only in the South (Northern slaves were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation)

And who did all manner of undemocratic things like suspending habeas corpus while in office

2 out of the 3 above describe Bush, the third could be substituted for by reinstating slavery (debt) in America - although the 3rd one is definitely not his personal doing.

[VIT]

Re: Russia vs West

To Chris Coles:

Idea that FSB organized the explosion of buildings is a conspiracy theory. Although I think FSB members could participate in this crime. It is really hard to reveal the truth today since too many parties with their own interests are involved.

I do not want to argue if it is real or not. We do not know. So everybody can have the opinion but its better not to use it as argument.

White-black vision. I can say the same for you since you blame only Russia. My idea it should be 2 way dialog or no dialog at all (Coventry). The problem West blames Putin but he turns everything back Georgia - Kosovo - Iraq. Blaming each other would not help.

Again, I am not adept of Putin.

[VIT]

Re: Russia vs West

You're a stand-up guy Chris. I'll gladly buy you a beer any time.
-------
Same goes for Vitaly. I'll buy him a Budweiser anytime too (whereupon Vitaly attempts fearfully to hide from view under his desk to avoid that invitation). Actually I'm thinking both of you guys would turn up your noses at having to "actually drink a Budweiser" but hey, we Americans "are what we are" (gives a big toothy grin). America is all about that wonderful rayon and polyester ethic. If you don't like it, go buy yer button-down drip dry shirts someplace else guys. What? You don't own a button-down drip dry poly-cotton blend shirt yet?

I prefer German or Czech beer But can drink Budweiser too with American friend

[marvenger]

Re: Russia vs West

I haven't been able to read most of this thread so forgive me if what's in the following article has already been covered. I thought it was pretty good though.

The Daily Reckoning Presents: The feeble American response to Russia's assertion of power in the Caucasus of Central Asia was appropriate, since, according to James Howard Kunstler, the United States' claims of influence in that part of the world are laughable. Read on...

REALITY BITES AGAIN
by James Howard Kunstler

The U.S. had taken advantage of temporary confusion in Russia, during the ten-year-long post-Soviet-collapse interval, and set up a client government in Georgia, complete with military advisors, sales of weapons, and even the promise of club membership in the Western alliance known as NATO. These blandishments were all in the service of the Baku-to-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was designed specifically to drain the oil region around the Caspian Basin with an outlet on the Mediterranean, avoiding unfriendly nations all along the way.

At the time this gambit was first set up, in the early 1990s, there was some notion (or wish, really) among the so-called western powers that the Caspian would provide an end-run around OPEC and the Arabs, as well as the Persians, and deliver all the oil that the US and Europe would ever need - a foolish wish and a dumb gambit, as things have turned out.

For one thing, the latterly explorations of this very old oil region - first opened to drilling in the 19th century - proved somewhat disappointing. U.S. officials had been touting it as like unto "another Saudi Arabia" but the oil actually produced from the new drilling areas of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the other Stans turned out to be preponderantly heavy-and-sour crudes, in smaller quantities than previously dreamed-of, and harder to transport across the extremely challenging terrain to even get to the pipeline head in Baku.

Meanwhile, Russia got its house in order under the non-senile, non- alcoholic Vladimir Putin, and woke up along about 2007 to find itself the leading oil and natural gas producer in the world. Among the various consequences of this was Russia's reemergence as a new kind of world power - an energy resource power, with the energy destiny of Europe pretty much in its hands. Also, meanwhile, the USA had set up other client states in the ring of former Soviet republics along Russia's southern underbelly, complete with U.S. military bases, while fighting active engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, if this wasn't the dumbest, vainest move in modern geopolitical history!

It's one thing that U.S. foreign policy wonks imagined that Russia would remain in a coma forever, but the idea that we could encircle Russia strategically with defensible bases in landlocked mountainous countries halfway around the world...? You have to ask what were they smoking over at the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSC?

So, this asinine policy has now come to grief. Not only does Russia stand to gain control over the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline, but we now have every indication that they will bring the states on its southern flank back into an active sphere of influence, and there is really not a damn thing that the U.S. can pretend to do about it.

We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order - waking up to the obsolescence of our suburban life-style, scaling back on the Happy Motoring, reconnecting our cities with world-class passenger rail, creating wealth by producing things of value (instead of resorting to financial racketeering), protecting our borders, and taking the necessary measures to defend and update our own industries. Instead, we pissed our time and resources away. Nations do make tragic errors of the collective will. The cluelessness of George Bush is nothing less than a perfect metaphor for the failure of a whole generation. The Boomers will be identified as the generation that wrecked America.

So, as the vacation season winds down, this country greets a new reality. We miscalculated in Western and Central Asia. Russia still "owns" that part of the world. Are we going to extend our current land wars there into the even more distant and landlocked Stan-nations? At some point, as we face financial and military exhaustion, we have to ask ourselves if we can even successfully evacuate our personnel from the far-flung bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

This must be an equally sobering moment for Europe, and an additional reason for the recent plunge in the relative value of the Euro, for Europe is now at the mercy of Russia in terms of staying warm in the winter, running their kitchen stoves, and keeping the lights on. Russia also exerts substantial financial leverage over the U.S. in all the dollars and securitised U.S. debt paper it holds. In effect, Russia can shake the U.S. banking system at will now by threatening to dump its dollar holdings.

The American banking system may not need a shove from Russia to fall on its face. It's effectively dead now, just lurching around zombie-like from one loan "window" to the next pretending to "borrow" capital - while handing over shreds of its moldy clothing as "collateral" to the Federal Reserve. The entire US, beyond the banks, is becoming a land of the walking dead. Business is dying, home-ownership has become a death dance, whole regions are turning into wastelands of "for sale" signs, empty parking lots, vacant buildings, and dashed hopes. And all this beats a path directly to a failure of collective national imagination. We really don't know what's going on.

The fantasy that we can sustain our influence nine thousand miles away, when we can't even get our act together in Ohio is just a dark joke. One might state categorically that it would be a salubrious thing for America to knock off all its vaunted "dreaming" and just wake up.

Until next time,

James Howard Kunstler
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

[metalman]

Re: Russia vs West

what's here we haven't heard 1000 times? bush is an idiot. the boomers are fat dumb and happy. their kids are fat uneducated morons. mistakes were made by the stupid gov't they hired to ensure they'd never have to do anything besides enjoy themselves. the suburbs suck, the cars too big, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. like a kid with sores in his mouth running his tongue over them again and again... ouch, ouch, ouch ! they keep going over the same stuff over and over.

kuntsler, and reckoning... continuous articulate whining.

ask them... what caused the problems? what the fuck are we going to DO about it?

kuntster/reckoning response

useless.

[VIT]

Re: Russia vs West

Do not consider these as propaganda. But I am interested why American nation do not vote for people like Ron Paul.

It seems to me the elections 2008 is about who is the worse instead of selecting who is better. And why democrats instead of trying to win republicans on military field like Russia confrontation do not rise the real problems of US and overcame republicans on their field.

Sorry for off topic. But it can be connected.

[marvenger]

Re: Russia vs West

yeah, I'm starting to look into all this New World Order stuff, where if you believe what the activists against it are saying the whole mainstream political system has been bought by the banks so there's no point trying to differentiate between democrates and republicans. Ron Paul is part of the republican party but he says he is old schol consitutional/libertarian republican, nothing like the current breed. So he gets laughed at by interviewers in maintsream press and presented very negatively. But if you actually listen to him he makes a thousand times more sense than anyone else.

New World Order activists reckon 911 was an inside job. Check out this site Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, i don't think they're offically linked with anti new world order activists but they go through physics of why the collapses of the towers make no sense from the physics of a plane impact and fire compared with controled demolition.

the scary implication being the whole thing was staged to allow afghan iraq war further budget blowouts and centralisation of power in the fed and banking industry.

Hopefully some engineer itulip contributors can shed their opinion on this site.

Way off topic....

[metalman]

Re: Russia vs West

yeah, I'm starting to look into all this New World Order stuff, where if you believe what the activists against it are saying the whole mainstream political system has been bought by the banks so there's no point trying to differentiate between democrates and republicans. Ron Paul is part of the republican party but he says he is old schol consitutional/libertarian republican, nothing like the current breed. So he gets laughed at by interviewers in maintsream press and presented very negatively. But if you actually listen to him he makes a thousand times more sense than anyone else.

New World Order activists reckon 911 was an inside job. Check out this site Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, i don't think they're offically linked with anti new world order activists but they go through physics of why the collapses of the towers make no sense from the physics of a plane impact and fire compared with controled demolition.

the scary implication being the whole thing was staged to allow afghan iraq war further budget blowouts and centralisation of power in the fed and banking industry.

Hopefully some engineer itulip contributors can shed their opinion on this site.

Way off topic....

you're kidding, right? first ufos now 9/11 truth? no, no, no. :eek:

[marvenger]

Re: Russia vs West

don't think I've posted anything on ufo's, but if a lot of engineers don't buy the offical story 911 story i'd like to know why, or if some other engineers can say why these guys are idiots, that would be good too.

[Supercilious]

Re: Russia vs West

you're kidding, right? first ufos now 9/11 truth? no, no, no. :eek:

It gets even better than this. Probably you don't read the prestigious Worldnetdaily ... You can read there not only Pat Buchanan's prophecies but also other interesting prophecies...

Look here:

Surprise! Russia not about to invade Mideast, says new prophecy theory
But an unexpected war is imminent, according to best-selling new biblical analysis

---

Posted: August 19, 2008
9:59 pm Eastern

WASHINGTON – Even though Russia has advanced south into Georgia, a best-selling new Bible prophecy book says suggestions this signals an imminent march into the [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]Middle [COLOR=blue ! important]East[/color][/color][/color] are mistaken. Instead, says Bill Salus, author of "Isralestine," the world is about to be surprised by a different kind of devastating regional war involving [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]Israel[/color][/color] and its Arab neighbors.
"Isralestine: The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East," currently rising to the top of the prophecy charts, says scholars have missed a significant piece of what the Bible reveals about the future of the region. And it has many of them reconsidering their prophetic model for the near future.
"You can set Russia's recent invasion of Georgia and Israel's concern over Iran's nuclear aspirations on the back burner, not that these topics lack importance," says Salus. "The stage is not adequately set for the highly publicized Ezekiel 38 and 39 Russian-Iranian nuclear-equipped consortia of nations to invade Israel. Psalm 83 comes first, and then Ezekiel 38 follows on its heels like a Goliath shadow. There are two distinct invasions of Israel, one building upon the other, with both occurring sequentially in the Middle East."
According to Salus, the next war in the Middle East will involve Israel's closest Arab neighbors – not faraway Iran or Russia, the re-emerging military power to the north. He says a sometimes overlooked or misinterpreted passage in Psalm 83 is the key to understand the next major prophetic development. He says it suggests Palestinians, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syrians, Saudis, [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]Egyptians[/color][/color] and Jordanians will confederate and launch an all-out war against Israel before what has been called the "battle of Armageddon" involving another alliance of Iran, Russia and [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]Turkey[/color][/color]. "Indeed something is very near, but it is not Armageddon," says Salus.
The theory has many long-time students of Bible prophecy sitting up and taking notice.

If you interpret correctly a certain passage in Psalm 83 and combine that with Ezekiel 38 and 39 you will find also that the 911 was an inside job, the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile launched from an UFO and many many other interesting things ...

[metalman]

Re: Russia vs West

It gets even better than this. Probably you don't read the prestigious Worldnetdaily ... You can read there not only Pat Buchanan's prophecies but also other interesting prophecies...

Look here:

If you interpret correctly a certain passage in Psalm 83 and combine that with Ezekiel 38 and 39 you will find also that the 911 was an inside job, the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile launched from an UFO and many many other interesting things ...

who wrote that, gary north?