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New Civilization News: The Republic Of Georgia: Hypocrisy |
Category: Globalization 25 comments
14 Aug 2008 @ 14:22 by a-d : Click on this..... 14 Aug 2008 @ 15:07 by jazzolog : Expansion If you mean Israel, it's true I did not go into that connection. I prefer not to assume I know what you're talking about though. Would you care to tell us more or refer us to articles you've found? 14 Aug 2008 @ 18:34 by quinty : We are also hearing pronouncements about proper behavior in “the beginning of the twenty first century,” from the likes of Madeleine Albright and other Americans. As if we had suddenly refound our innocence, opening the century with the Iraq war. I never heard of South Ossetia until a week ago. Ellen, who has read up on this stuff, does not believe the Georgians are as innocent as they portray themselves. And reminds us that the South Ossetians want to rejoin their Ossetian neighbors in the north, in Russia. Watching and listening to politicians lie, and our TVs have been flooded with that, can be somewhat mind boggling. Since if a used car dealer tried the same tactics you would instantly be off the lot. 14 Aug 2008 @ 20:45 by a-d : If I remeber correct.... ...Jazzo, you received the same article by e-mail as I did from one of our friends here on NCN : [link] and you thanked her for the article.... which I did too!... And then I went on rense and it is FULL of FACTS : NAMES w/ Citizenships (= loyalties) /other CONNECTION Refferals!.... Here is something entirely different subject I was just going to send you in a private e-mail. but I change my mind and let all NCN people read this.... somehow this feels as a grotesque violence on Humanity as any waged "War" or( so called pre-emptive attack under the guise of )"protection" of our Sovereignty --or so they say/pretend=, the Crooks; the guys who violate us/Humanity the most!!! [ [link] ....On top of it all: US is planning on punishing Russia! [ [link] ] ...and, now while we're at it; lets' see how Life is "evolving" with these stooges at the Wheel: [ [link] ] 15 Aug 2008 @ 10:55 by jazzolog : The End Of Pax Americana I thanked her for the site a-d, not particularly that article. As for the US "punishing" anybody anymore---except for small, weak flunkies we like to shove around---Paul Krugman points out this morning those days are gone fortunately. [link] Juan Cole went over the same ground yesterday, and some of the points I tried to raise---but of course he does it better---at Salon. [link] Katrina Vanden Heuvel also took on the misconceived neocon view of the world at The Nation in an editorial she appears to have revised last night, given Mikhail Gorbachev's appearance on Larry King. [link] AP's Pete Yost picked up on the McCain Georgia ties. [link] 15 Aug 2008 @ 13:14 by a-d : Yeah... ...I think this "Georgia -Thannngggg" really will be the MAGNIFYING -GLASS that shows all those "Delicate" Aspects, that the Blind Sheeples have over looked so far -or not not being able to see 'cause they were (deemed) so in-consequential!... like Little W's Selfrightousness!... imagine; "W" "punishing Putin for "invading a Sovereign Free Country".... That MUST be thee most bizarre scenes the Planet has ever witnessed! 15 Aug 2008 @ 16:25 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : More.... Here some pieces Ellen found in the Nation and the Guardian on the conflict.... For those of you (like me) who never heard of South Ossetia a week ago these may be helpful..... [link] [link] [link] ()()()()()()()()()()()()()())()()()()()()() Paul's second link is same Nation editorial I reference in my comment just above. ---jazz 15 Aug 2008 @ 18:39 by jazzolog : Another View From The UK NCN member dempstress, formerly with the BBC, referred me to this Independent opinion from this morning. It also questions US framing of this whole deal. [link] Looks like Bush no longer can move any cars off the lot. 15 Aug 2008 @ 20:12 by a-d : Oooops ("...I thanked her for the site a-d, not particularly that article." )... In that case... I apologize,Jazzo. Hopefully my sloppy running into incorrect conclusions haven't crushed you too bad --or slandered your Good Name too much!.... I'm truly sorry!... (and yes, I did thank KB for the article!... another ooops, maybe, is in place!... ) Just read the article demptress sent you, and ... I want to puke!... does righteousness and JUSTICE never gain any true ground anywhere?! "... Why was it so difficult for outsiders to believe that Moscow wanted precisely what its leaders said they wanted: a return to the situation that had pertained before Georgia's incursion into South Ossetia – and does it matter that its intentions were so appallingly misread? Yes it does. If outsiders impute to Moscow motives and objectives it does not have, they alienate Russia even further, and make a long-term solution of many international problems that more difficult. It is high time we treated Russia's post-Soviet leaders as responsible adults representing a legitimate national interest, rather than assuming the stereotypical worst...." This is exactly what is sooo wrong with the evil ones!..though HOW that happens, I do understand: we judge others from ourselves and trust them the way we trust oureselves -until proven different. And in seriously mentally/emotionally ILL creatures/humans(???) this is the part, that is so damaged: they can't see themselves AND others, they ONLY judge others as being all those things they cannot accept in themselves!... PROJECTION, I think Freud et Al called it. How to deal with the horrific feelings of the seemingly never ending IN-Justice, that always make the EVIL somehow more right???? Now, HOW EVIL IS THAT?!How can we just flog the EVIL-doers, of the last 6000years,(alive, that would of course not measure more than to only a fraction of a drop of all the pain, they caused on Humanity, not to mention the rest of God's Creation, suffering from these Evil Creatures' actions ) USA /GEORGE BUSH is INDEED the INITIATOR AND ACTIVE WAR PROVOKER, using the Georgian Puppet-"prsident to do the dirty job!... [ [link] ] [ [link] } [link] ] [link] GEORGE )or whom ever he works for... INVADED South Ossetia from GEORGIA, pretending they did "Something Good", JUST LIKE THEY DID in IRAQ! and that invasion started months ago: water supply shut off and all the rest of the infrastructure interfered with and then came the outright war attack on the Olympic Opening Ceremony time schedule!.... [link] http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oLoBckWl-dg&feature=related ********************* OK, Night, between Sat & Sund... Now that I have had a chance to chill out my outrage about the UN-fairness of it all, I don't have the need to flog anybody any longer!... : )... I leave "The Revenge" to God, "who" is The ONLY ONE" to whom "Revenge" belongs!... and all I "need" to do, is to send ALL people (involved ) LOVE & Light!... & the rest will be handled by Universe. 17 Aug 2008 @ 23:20 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : More.... Is this pretty close to the truth? From the Washington Post [link] "We Are All Georgians"? Not So Fast Sunday 17 August 2008 » by: Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post It didn't take long for the "Putin is Hitler" analogies to start following the eruption of the ugly little war between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Neoconservative commentator Robert Kagan compared the Russian attack on Georgia with the Nazi grab of the Sudetenland in 1938. President Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that the Russian leader was following a course "horrifyingly similar to that taken by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s." Others invoked the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, under which Soviet leaders claimed the right to intervene militarily in Eastern Europe in order to prop up their crumbling imperium. "We've seen this movie before, in Prague and Budapest," said John McCain, referring to the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in 1956. According to the Republican presidential candidate,"today we are all Georgians." Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better understood against the backdrop of the complica ted ethnic politics of the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye. Unlike most of the armchair generals now posing as experts on the Caucasus, I have actually visited Tskhinvali, a sleepy provincial town in the shadow of the mountains that rise along Russia's southern border. I was there in March 1991, shortly after the city was occupied by Georgian militia units loyal to Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first freely elected leader of Georgia in seven decades. One of Gamsakhurdia's first acts as Georgian president was to cancel the political autonomy that the Stalinist constitution had granted the republic's 90,000-strong Ossetian minority. After negotiating safe passage with Soviet interior ministry troops who had stationed themselves between the Georgians and the Ossetians, I discovered that the town had been ransacked by Gamsakhurdia's militia. The Georgians had trashed the Ossetian national theater, decapitated the statue of an Ossetian poet and pulled down monuments to Ossetians who had fought with Soviet troops in World War II. The Ossetians were responding in kind, firing on Georgian villages and forcing Georgian residents of Tskhinvali to flee their homes. It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me then. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time." When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited. Let us examine the role played by the three main parties. Georgia. Saakashvili's image in the West, and particularly in the United States, is that of the great "democrat," the leader of the "Rose Revolution" who spearheaded a popular uprising against former American favorite Eduard Shevardnadze in November 2003. It is true that he has won two reasonably free elections, but he has also displayed some autocratic tendencies: He sent riot police to crush an opposition protest in Tbilisi last November and shuttered an opposition television station. While the United States views Saakashvili as a pro-Western modernizer, a large part of his political appeal in Georgia has stemmed from his promise to reunify Georgia by bringing the secessionist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under central control. He has presented himself as the successor to the medieval Georgian king David the Builder and promised that the country will regain its lost territories by the time he leaves office, by one means or another. American commentators tend to overlook the fact that Georgian democracy is inextricably intertwined with Georgian nationalism. The restoration of Georgia's traditional borders is an understandable goal for a Georgian leader, but it is a much lower priority for the West, particularly if it involves armed conflict with Russia. Based on their previous experience with Georgian rule, Ossetians and Abkhazians have perfectly valid reasons to oppose reunification with Georgia, even if it means throwing in their lot with the Russians. It is unclear how the simmering tensions between Georgia and South Ossetia came to the boil this month. The Georgians say that they were provoked by the shelling of Georgian villages from Ossetian-controlled territory. While this may well be the case, the Georgian response was disproportionate. On the night of Aug. 7 and into Aug. 8, Saakashvili ordered an artillery barrage against Tskhinvali and sent an armored column to occupy the town. He apparently hoped that Western support would protect Georgia from major Russian retaliation, even though Russian "peacekeepers" were almost certainly killed or wounded in the Georgian assault. It was a huge miscalculation. Russian Prime minister Vladimir Putin (and let there be no doubt that he is calling the shots in Moscow despite having handed over the presidency to his protege, Dmitri Medvedev) now had the ideal pretext for settling scores with the uppity Georgians. Rather than simply restoring the status quo ante, Russian troops moved into Georgia proper, cutting the main east-west highway at Gori and attacking various military bases. Saakashvili's decision to gamble everything on a lightning grab for Tskhinvali brings to mind the comment of the 19th-century French statesman Talleyrand: "It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake." Russia. Putin and Medvedev have defended their incursion into Georgia as motivated by a desire to stop the "genocide" of Ossetians by Georgians. It is difficult to take their moral outrage very seriously. There is a striking contrast between Russian support for the right of Ossetian self-determination in Georgia and the brutal suppression of Chechens who were trying to exercise that very same right within the boundaries of Russia. Playing one ethnic group against another in the Caucasus has been standard Russian policy ever since czarist times. It is the ideal wedge issue for the Kremlin, particularly in the case of a state such as Georgia, which is made up of several different nationalities. It would be virtually impossible for South Ossetia to survive as an autonomous entity without Russian support. Putin's government has issued passports to Ossetians and secured the appointment of Russians to key positions in Tskhinvali. The Russian incursion into Georgia proper has been even more "disproportionate" - in President Bush's phrase - than the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali. The Russians have made no secret of their wish to replace Saakashvili with a more compliant leader. Russian military targets included the Black Sea port of Poti - more than 100 miles from South Ossetia. The real goal of Kremlin strategy is to reassert Russian influence in a part of the world that has been regarded, by czars and commissars alike, as Russia's backyard. Russian leaders bitterly resented the eastward expansion of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic states - with Ukraine and Georgia next on the list - but were unable to do very much about it as long as America was strong and Russia was weak. Now the tables are turning for the first time since the collapse of communism in 1991, and Putin is seizing the moment. If Putin is smart, he will refrain from occupying Georgia proper, a step that would further alarm the West and unite Georgians against Russia. A better tactic would be to wait for Georgians themselves to turn against Saakashvili. The precedent here is what happened to Gamsakhurdia, who was overthrown in January 1992 by the same militia forces he had sent into South Ossetia a year earlier. The United States. The Bush administration has been sending mixed messages to its Georgian friends. U.S. officials insist that they did not give the green light to Saakashvili for his attack on South Ossetia. At the same time, however, the United States has championed NATO membership for Georgia, sent military advisers to bolster the Georgian army and demanded the restoration of Georgian territorial integrity. American support might well have emboldened Saakashvili as he was considering how to respond to the "provocations" from South Ossetia. Now the United States has ended up in a situation in the Caucasus where the Georgian tail is wagging the NATO dog. We were unable to control Saakashvili or to lend him effective assistance when his country was invaded. One lesson is that we need to be very careful in extending NATO membership, or even the promise of membership, to countries that we have neither the will nor the ability to defend. In the meantime, American leaders have paid little attention to Russian diplomatic concerns, both inside the former borders of the Soviet Union and farther abroad. The Bush administration unilaterally abrogated the 1972 anti-missile defense treaty and ignored Putin when he objected to Kosovo independence on the grounds that it would set a dangerous precedent. It is difficult to explain why Kosovo should have the right to unilaterally declare its independence from Serbia, while the same right should be denied to places such as South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The bottom line is that the United States is overextended militarily, diplomatically and economically. Even hawks such as Vice President Cheney, who have been vociferously denouncing Putin's actions in Georgia, have no stomach for a military conflict with Moscow. The United States is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and needs Russian support in the coming trial of strength with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Instead of speaking softly and wielding a big stick, as Teddy Roosevelt recommended, the American policeman has been loudly lecturing the rest of the world while waving an increasingly unimpressive baton. The events of the past few days serve as a reminder that our ideological ambitions have greatly exceeded our military reach, particularly in areas such as the Caucasus, which is of only peripheral importance to the United States but of vital interest to Russia. ---------- Michael Dobbs covered the collapse of the Soviet Union for The Washington Post. His latest book is "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War." 20 Aug 2008 @ 11:21 by jazzolog : Marching Through Georgia 
I've been enjoying some family time these last couple days...just prior to students and us school workers returning to our desks next week. I see in the meantime peace has not broken out. To the contrary, while the conflict in the Caucasus has not increased casualties considerably, Russian troops have captured some US Humvees and 20 mercenaries---er, contract workers---all wearing Georgian army uniforms. There had been a meeting planned between Russia and NATO, but Russia called it off yesterday. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he wasn't in the mood to go to a lecture. [link] Not to be outdone, at the same time NATO declared it has frozen all contact with Russia for the immediate future. [link] Over the weekend it was the United States getting the lecture. The Sunday New York Times published the most complete analysis and history I've seen of the situation. It's not perfect I'm sure, but if you missed it it's still available [link] . The UK seemed particularly dismayed with recent Bush foreign policy toward Georgia and the Ukraine. In The Herald Iain MacWhirter wonders why we got it so wrong over there [link] . Even before Pat Buchanan came up with it yesterday, MacWhirter reminded his readers that if Bush had succeeded in getting Georgia into NATO this year, all the countries of the alliance would be at war right now. The Bush view of things, however, is that were Georgia in NATO Russia never would have dared send in troops. Matthew Bryza, identified as a special envoy, was quoted in The Independent's Sunday comment entitled Why Are We Pretending We Would Fight For Georgia? [link] . Another report yesterday contends Saakashvili is not allowing the Red Cross into South Ossetia. Well-argued Russian viewpoints have been available in the Western press. The International Herald Tribune gave us Dmitry Rogozin's opinion of Washington's Hypocrisy. He is, or was, Russia's ambassador to NATO. [link] Former USSR Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev writes in this morning's New York Times. Through it all Americans seem to continue beaming positive, happy smiles at each other as if there were no great problems any of us can do anything about. The temperature and prices are soaring...well, maybe there is something we can do about that: Americans want to drill, drill, drill. So it was something of a relief to hear about a book that's out, written by an English teacher wouldn't-you-know, called Against Happiness. Here's a sample~~~ "At the behest of well-meaning friends, I have purchased books on how to be happy. I have tried to turn my chronic scowl into a bright smile. I have attempted to become more active, to get out of my dark house and away from my somber books and participate in the world of meaningful action. I have taken up jogging, the Latin language, and the chair of a university English department. I have fostered the drive to succeed in my career. I have bought an insurance policy, a PalmPilot, and a cellphone. I have taken an interest in Thanksgiving and Christmas, in keeping my hair trimmed short, and in meticulously ironing my clothes. I have viewed Doris Day and Frank Capra movies. I have feigned interest in the health of others. I have dropped into the habit of saying 'great' and 'wonderful' as much as possible. I have pretended to take seriously certain good causes designed to make the world a better place. I have contemplated getting a dog. I have started eating salads. I have tried to discipline myself in nodding knowingly. I have tried to be mindful of others but ended up pissed as hell. I have written a book on the hard-earned optimism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have undertaken yoga. I have stopped yoga and gone into tai chi. I have thought of going to psychiatrists and getting some drugs. I have quit all of this and then started again and then once more quit. Now I plan to stay quit. The road to hell is paved with happy plans. "My basic instinct is toward melancholia — a state I must nourish. In fostering my essential nature, I'm trying to live according to what I see as my deep calling. Granted, it's difficult at times to hold hard to this vocation, this labor in the fields of sadness. But I realize somewhere in the core of my bones that I was born to the blues." Eric G. Wilson explained himself further in an article last January for the Chronicle of Higher Education. In his Defense of Melancholy he reminds us Keats thought along similar lines. [link] Give it a try, you might end up feeling a lot better actually. 20 Aug 2008 @ 14:58 by a-d : How was Life before there was oil? Well...in Georgia-Israel connected Hearts Life looked like this: [ [link] ]. Could any of these old Strings still have a pull? 20 Aug 2008 @ 21:00 by quinty : The Creatures of the Night have begun to sing a torch song for Georgia. Laura Ingraham couldn't hold back a couple of nights ago from repeatedly calling Russia the "Soviet Union." It felt nice on her tongue, perhaps like a bon bon. And Putin is our latest Hitler. (A curious juxtaposition that.) When someone gets out of line, the Neocons and McCain tell us, get tough! Knock a few heads together. Show them who’s boss. The far right has a tendency to project. They claim Putin is nostalgic for the old Russian empire. Or could the truth be our rightwing is nostalgic for the old American empire? Back when rattling an American saber really meant something. Now, Putin pretty much can tell us to get lost, and humiliate us too by highlighting NATO's weakness. He does have a point, after all. Georgia and Poland and the Ukraine et al are in Russia's backyard. I know the comparison is trite, but it has to be made. How would we feel..... in Cuba, even in South and Central America? Or Canada? Most of which is much further away from us than Georgia is from.... Why, just the other day I heard a Republican Congressman talk about Venezuela as if it were our property. Maybe he wants to grow tomatoes there? There are some things we shouldn't get mixed up in. Or we should at least follow that basic admonition of the medical profession: first do no harm. This is another case where the locals have been at it for hundreds of years. Until a couple of weeks ago I never heard of Ossetia. Unless what I’ve read is all wrong the Ossetians do not particularly like the Georgians and see them as overbearing bullies. They would far prefer go their own way with the Russians joining North Ossetia. And the feeling is mutual. But the Georgians also see the Russians as bullies. Respectable cases can be made for each side of this since each has history to back it up. And in the recent conflict the Georgians over reacted to the Ossetians’ violence, killing some Russians. Then the Russians over reacted. Bringing Georgia into NATO seems foolish to me, since NATO will gain nothing and Georgia will obtain the military support it wants. And, yes, if history is any warning the Georgians may get tough with the Ossetians again. Is this something we really want to become mixed up in? Taking sides? Getting tough? And McCain is now ahead of Obama in the polls? 22 Aug 2008 @ 11:28 by jazzolog : It Pays To Be Ignorant Some of you pre-1950 kids may remember that radio show. We loved quiz shows maybe more then because Mom still could do the ironing while you colored in your Red Ryder coloring book. This was a spoof on the more learned quiz shows, and featured dumber-than-a-post panelists who nevertheless gave hilarious answers to real questions. ("Do married men live longer than single men?" "No, it only seems longer.") You can hear the shows free at a number of sites, including this one. [link] I doubt the quiz show creators ever thought "It Pays To Be Ignorant" would replace "In God We Trust" on our currency, but perhaps we're ready for a new motto. By now hopefully you've read Terrence MacNally's (I believe the famous playwright's name is spelled "Terrance") interview at AlterNet with Susan Jacoby, author of The Age Of American Unreason. [link] It starts out with Barack Obama's comment, "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." OK, at first it was nice to have all this information available to us average guys 24/7 at the click of a button. Add "spin" to it though, and I suppose the Rovians have succeeded in burning a lot of us out. Some guys have jumped on it as a way to brag that they don't read anything or know anything. I think we've been having a President like that---but of course the rich know better than to read their own press. Others walk around frustrated and dazed because they just can't keep up. I was at a church meeting last night where a man of my own generation (so he should have known better) requested we pray for Russia to stop all it's doing in recreating the Cold War. When met with a chorus of groans, he looked like he didn't know where he had gone wrong. If you, dear reader, still are a lifelong learner---and relieved you don't know everything yet---you may find valuable a few reviews and articles that have shown up since this Georgian crisis erupted during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. The (London) Times Literary Supplement carried an excellent review last week of a new book over there entitled The Ghost Of Freedom: A History Of The Caucasus. On a single page, quite simply, one at least can discover why things are so complicated in the region---and have been for 2000 years. [link] Then there's F. William Engdahl's The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia President Saakashvili, at his website also from last week. The article takes us back to how Saakashvili came to power. Guess whose hand is showing more and more obviously. Mr. Engdahl has written about energy, politics and economics, particularly surrounding oil, for more than 30 years. That would take us back to the 1973 oil embargo by OPEC, when they declared they wouldn't sell oil anymore to backers of Israel during the Yom Kippur War against Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, he's been watching Zbigniew Brzezinski for a long time, and certainly knows whereof he speaks. [link] Think all that's too radical? OK, how about a solid member of the Wall Street Journal's Digital Network, good ol' MarketWatch.com ? Forbes lists it as one of the best stock trackers on the web for your portfolio. [link] One of the analysts there, Paul B. Farrell, posted a bombshell on Monday entitled "America's Outrageous War Economy! Pentagon can't find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on 'national defense'". I think maybe I want to preserve this one~~~ ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, America's economy is a war economy. Not a "manufacturing" economy. Not an "agricultural" economy. Nor a "service" economy. Not even a "consumer" economy. Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let's get honest and officially call it "America's Outrageous War Economy." Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that's the answer to Jim Grant's thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal -- "Why No Outrage?" There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love "America's Outrageous War Economy." Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart's dark comedic news and Ben Stiller's new war spoof "Tropic Thunder" ... all the while silently, by default, we're cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand "America's Outrageous War Economy," a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction. Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world's total military budgets? Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily? Why do we shake our collective heads "yes" when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a "war president;" and his party's presidential candidate chants "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as if "war" is a celebrity hit song? Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky "supplemental appropriations" that are more crooked than Enron's off-balance-sheet deals? Why have Washington's 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists? And why earlier this year did our "support-our-troops" "war president" resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon's warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding "America's Outrageous War Economy?" Why? Because we secretly love war! We've lost our moral compass: The contrast between today's leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both. Today it's the opposite: Too often our leaders' main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new "America's Outrageous War Economy," often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist. Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips' warning in "Wealth and Democracy:" "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out." 'National defense' a propaganda slogan selling a war economy? But wait, you ask: Isn't our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for "national defense" and "homeland security?" Don't we have to protect ourselves? Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They're little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in "America's Outrageous War Economy." America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance "America's Outrageous War Economy," the ultimate "black hole" of corruption and trickle-up economics. You think I'm kidding? I'm maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America's soul. 1. Our toxic 'war within' is threatening America's soul How powerful is the Pentagon's war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America's soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism," a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days "war of civilizations" predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago. In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger's "American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America -- and Still Imperil Our Future." Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as "all in our minds" nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing "America's Outrageous War Economy." Yes, they really love war, but that "love" is toxic for America's soul. 2. America's war economy financed on blank checks to greedy Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes' "$3 Trillion War." They show how our government's deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues. But add in all the lifetime veterans' health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab! 3. America's war economy has no idea where its money goes Read Portfolio magazine's special report "The Pentagon's $1 Trillion Problem." The Pentagon's 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately "the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems [but] still has no idea where its money goes." And it gets worse: Back "in 2000, Defense's inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries." Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say? 4. America's war economy is totally 'unmanageable' For decades Washington has been waving that "national defense" flag, to force the public into supporting "America's Outrageous War Economy." Read John Alic's "Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much." A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, "why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don't work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars," and how "the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable." Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance. Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at "America's Outrageous War Economy?" Why don't you rebel? Will the outrage come too late ... after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces? [link] Nine hundred and sixty-four comments so far. Hopefully you're not sorry you still aren't ignorant. Peace. 22 Aug 2008 @ 13:00 by martha : Ignorance What amazes me Richard is the number of Americans that are in denial. I agree with all the above you have posted (and quinty). I feel like we have thugs running our country just like in Russia. Bush rules and the hell with Democracy. As an American i feel I contribute to the disfunction with my tax dollars. While I don't advocate not paying taxes, it sure is a wake up call to know most of the taxes go to MIC. That means killing and power over others around the world. sigh How arrogant our nation has become. And quite frankly I have no confidence in either party. There are no innocents. They all contribute to this philosophy of hate and evil. What happened to LOVE? 22 Aug 2008 @ 16:16 by quinty : They do take pride in being ignorant. And a basic truth emerged through Obama’s words. Here’s another difference between us and Europe. (France?) Intellectuals are revered there whereas here they are suspect. (“French” perhaps? “Elitist?”) According to European polls the most respected profession in France (and the rest of Europe?) is the teaching profession. Being a professor in a university is the most admired profession. Here, any lunk thinks he knows as much as anyone else. A working man in Europe will readily admit he knows less about things in general than someone who’s well educated. Nor does he suffer any loss of pride. I recall entering a small provincial art museum when I was last in Spain and going up to a Goya. A portrait of an aristocrat it was the only truly good thing the museum had on display, though my guide book greatly disparaged it. I commented on this saying it was actually very good. Several Spanish workingmen were eagerly looking at this Goya, proud, perhaps, of their national heritage. And when I complimented the Goya their interest greatly intensified, and they became more excited. Okay, you know that my opinion is perhaps as good as anyone else’s. But the point is that these men had the humility, without any loss of pride, to defer to someone they considered more knowledgeable and understanding about art. Americans, in general, would rarely react in this same manner. Language and slang continuously evolve, and the current use of the term “elitism” reflects, I think, this accentuated “pride in ignorance.” A term which readily reflects back on any form of superior intelligence or knowledge. Already the level of the national debate between the two candidates has sunk to something almost subhumanly superficial, McCain taking the lead. (Though Obama has begun to wade in the same waters, perhaps to keep up?) We may all suffer to one degree or another with a variety of delusions but I do think the rightwing truly excels at self delusion. Drilling offshore and in ANWR will fix our immediate energy needs? The “Surge” justifies the Iraq war? And then, of course, there are all the staples of the far Christian right. And this is where we are. “The rich know better than to read their own press,” do they? And of course the press is free for anyone who owns one. What’s more, the rich make the news. But I like that phrase. 750 billion dollars for “defense.” Really? It costs that much to defend this country? We should cut it by at least 500 billion. Bush has more than doubled it, and no one can even be quite sure what the true figure is, since “defense” dollars appear here and there, everywhere, in the US budget. 22 Aug 2008 @ 17:35 by quinty : It's hard not to agree with Farrell's piece. Either many Americans are so befuddled, asleep at the wheel, that these huge "defense" expenditures have crept up on them in the middle of the night, or America truly "loves" war? Or perhaps war, to many Americans, is some sort of spectator sport, like the Olympics? Maybe a new event should be added to the Olympics, such as war. In miniature, after all the other events take place, the differing teams could come out into the Olympic stadium and start blasting away? "USA! USA! USA!” all the pro Americans in the stands can roar. And the spectators at home, Buds in hand, can sense the national pride. But then why limit it when we can have the real, cross-continental, multibillion dollar thing with genuine collateral damage, precision pin point bombing, huge fireworks displays at night, and a powerful patriotic, built up sense of moral outrage at the “brutality” of the enemy? Why, we have to have a Hitler every once in a while, don’t we? And a nice little war against a small, backward savage enemy is good for the nations’ soul and morale. What's the sense being Number One if we don't behave it? I do have a couple of minor quibbles with the piece, though. Left wing extremists, today? Who! Where? Was this author mindful of his WSJ readership when he nodded in this manner to be “fair?” Also, I thought we spent more than twice the rest of the world put together on defense? But the black hand is at work here...... Who knows? Does Bush care? Cheney? The only truly important figures are among the small print of the stock prices, after all. “What me worry?” 22 Aug 2008 @ 19:04 by a-d : Qunity, ANY Competition taken as bloody seriously as SPORTS (...not just the Olympics!.... ) are...--RITUALIZED-- War... and are the SOCIAL steady preparedness of "your" Mind to accept the WITH Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction-"PLAYED" War! ...and TOTALLY BASED on the CULTIVATION of accepting ("loving") ONLY "Your Own" group/s of People and abhore the rest of Humanity/Persons/Leagues...and that is exactly what we are witnessing non-stop on this Planet...witnessing some groups just being so much more than others , so concequently they have to fight Everybody else after stealing their possessions and indeed their very LIVES first!.... Now, let's always make sure we have a GOOD JUSTIFICATION that SMEARS the ones we want to destroy and make it THEIR FAULT that we HAVE to do this awful thing of destroying them!.... ("I HAVE to destroy you, because you're not me" /"How cruel of you to force me to destroy you, because you're not me...not even on of my own group!" ... ) This is just some BASIC PSYCHOLOGY of the people who at any time WAR another!... in other words; not (a question of ) "just" this Georgia Incident. I just found what I was hoping to find: more of such PSYCHOLOGY by someone else ...and here it is: (of course, this is not just about the lunetic-AGGRESSORS ( and yes, there ARE Aggressors!.... To (have the audacity to ) say that ALL "involved" are to share the burden of murder/War can only be the ideology of some one with own "HIDDEN" --psycho/logic/al-- AGENDAS!.... ) "Twilight Of The Psychopaths By Dr. Kevin Barrett 8-21-8 /// from: [http://www.rense.com/general83/twi.htm ] "Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing. Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the leisure to develop arts and sciences. And while that would be a good idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years. Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and "warfare." Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder. The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple: 1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers; 2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits); 3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers- was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non- psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military hierarchies. Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers - unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths. In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true "Revolution in Military Affairs" was not Donald Rumsfeld's move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: "Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges" (Grossman, p. 4). Marshall's discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers - the 5% who are natural- born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators-did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for humanity's genetic endowment!) Marshall's work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science. In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane majority, would rather die than fight. The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers' behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that psychopaths were in control of society's perception of military affairs. Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly sane, normal society. How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non- violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers, Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history, doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world. As a leading "conspiracy theorist" according to Wikipedia, I feel eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate than the prevailing wisdom: The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us. Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld-the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or "endgame" (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists-in short, the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so- called civilization. And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public. Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, "If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us." Given that Bush is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement to McClendon should be taken seriously. Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others' emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals. Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being - a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish - militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible. Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths co-opt and corrupt normal human beings. One way they do this, is by manipulating shame and denial - emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced among normals. Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths' guilds in disguise) recruit new members. Some criminal gangs and satanist covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to "earn their stripes." Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in front of older members while reciting the candidate's entire sexual history. By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths' guild destroys the candidate's normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place, and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of his former self - a manufactured psychopath or psychopath's apprentice. This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society. Despite easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld. Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone, Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic leaders. They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust. They refuse to see the evidence that the psychopaths' guilds running America's most powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes, Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys. And of course they refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that their own psychopath- dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades. All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view. If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens' wilful blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench. But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere are waking up. The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either party with significant grassroots support. If "love" is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul - a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies - implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath's tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together. The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the people's growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation since the dawn of so-called civilization). Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism - ritualized mass slaughter - is increasingly unavailable. And if war was the great human tragedy, the pathocrats' pathetic attempt at a war- substitute - the transparently phoney "war on terror" - is repeating it as sheerest farce. Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths. Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating." ...and THIS line is the at very core of it all ... " The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out" AGGRESSORS HATE to be seen for what they are!.... that's why always this HYPE, that "All Parties (are ) "involved" hence SHARING the BURDEN of this Pathology of of the Soul. NOT SO!!!... NOT TRUE AT ALL and ONLY ALWAYS SAID by THE SICKOS!... You NEVER hear a TRULY INNOCENT say : "Oh, BTW, it's my own fault that I was MURDERED by the PSYCHOS...HAPPY TO TAKE/CARRY MY SHARE of the (bad-)CONSCIENCE burden!"... if they did say that, then they would be as insane! 22 Aug 2008 @ 20:58 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : Well, let's hope the psychopaths slip in the bathtub soon. Though I really do think it's more of a collective thing than anyone pulling the strings behind the scenes. Chaos more often than not rules. But let's be careful about the Libertarians. They have their share of psychopaths too..... 23 Aug 2008 @ 05:36 by a-d : Funny....co-incidence.... as I logged in a minute ago, the Proverb on NCN was: " Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together. --Goethe" The article I used here as a comment mentions: "... If "love" is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul - a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies - implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath's tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together...." yeahhh.... 23 Aug 2008 @ 11:14 by jazzolog : Quinty's Opinion Paul Quintanilla, son of sublime Spanish painter Luis Quintanilla, has been "appraising" paintings and artwork all his life. His opinion therefore of a Goya portrait certainly may be the equal of some guidebook author. His good ol' Yankee humility, which turned on its head by a typical neocon ignoramus becomes belligerent bravado, does not serve his argument well---which after all is that an educated opinion is worth evaluating with care and respect. 23 Aug 2008 @ 14:23 by a-d : "You" gotta love this one, Everyone! : ) [ [link] ] 28 Aug 2008 @ 09:49 by jazzolog : Priorities A story is stirring this morning about a chief aide to Dick Cheney, who's been louder than any other sword-rattler, being in Georgia just before the attack on the "breakaways." Despite the glitter of the campaigns, this situation is not going away! Friedman's fine column yesterday mentions it and reminds us of UDS priorities~~~ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Times August 27, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist A Biblical Seven Years By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Beijing After attending the spectacular closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics and feeling the vibrations from hundreds of Chinese drummers pulsating in my own chest, I was tempted to conclude two things: “Holy mackerel, the energy coming out of this country is unrivaled.” And, two: “We are so cooked. Start teaching your kids Mandarin.” However, I’ve learned over the years not to over-interpret any two-week event. Olympics don’t change history. They are mere snapshots — a country posing in its Sunday bests for all the world too see. But, as snapshots go, the one China presented through the Olympics was enormously powerful — and it’s one that Americans need to reflect upon this election season. China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work. Seven years ... Seven years ... Oh, that’s right. China was awarded these Olympic Games on July 13, 2001 — just two months before 9/11. As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones. The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink. Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country? Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves. I realize the differences: We were attacked on 9/11; they were not. We have real enemies; theirs are small and mostly domestic. We had to respond to 9/11 at least by eliminating the Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan and investing in tighter homeland security. They could avoid foreign entanglements. Trying to build democracy in Iraq, though, which I supported, was a war of choice and is unlikely to ever produce anything equal to its huge price tag. But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America. We need to finish our business in Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible, which is why it is a travesty that the Iraqi Parliament has gone on vacation while 130,000 U.S. troops are standing guard. We can no longer afford to postpone our nation-building while Iraqis squabble over whether to do theirs. A lot of people are now advising Barack Obama to get dirty with John McCain. Sure, fight fire with fire. That’s necessary, but it is not sufficient. Obama got this far because many voters projected onto him that he could be the leader of an American renewal. They know we need nation-building at home now — not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Georgia, but in America. Obama cannot lose that theme. He cannot let Republicans make this election about who is tough enough to stand up to Russia or bin Laden. It has to be about who is strong enough, focused enough, creative enough and unifying enough to get Americans to rebuild America. The next president can have all the foreign affairs experience in the world, but it will be useless, utterly useless, if we, as a country, are weak. Obama is more right than he knows when he proclaims that this is “our” moment, this is “our” time. But it is our time to get back to work on the only home we have, our time for nation-building in America. I never want to tell my girls — and I’m sure Obama feels the same about his — that they have to go to China to see the future. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company [link] 29 Aug 2008 @ 23:37 by a-d : "Countdown To Looking Glass".... one more really sharp analysis-article by Karl Schwarz on this W (& his Henchemen)and the Zionists' Georgia Fiasco! [ [link] ] 2 Sep 2008 @ 20:56 by Quinty @68.9.133.5 : Michael Klare on Georgia Michael Klare, professor at Hampshire college, has long been a contributor to KPFA in Berkeley and it was through Klare that I first heard of the Neocons, and what they were up to - many years ago. I've never known him to be a bad source for both analysis and information. Here he takes what may be a little different tack on George...... Quinty [link] The Bush Administration Falters in a Geopolitical Chess Match by Michael T. Klare Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores. Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin -- with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best. The ultimate prize in this contest is control over the flow of oil and natural gas from the energy-rich Caspian basin to eager markets in Europe and Asia. According to the most recent tally by oil giant BP, the Caspian's leading energy producers, all former "socialist republics" of the Soviet Union -- notably Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- together possess approximately 48 billion barrels in proven oil reserves (roughly equivalent to those left in the U.S. and Canada) and 268 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (essentially equivalent to what Saudi Arabia possesses). During the Soviet era, the oil and gas output of these nations was, of course, controlled by officials in Moscow and largely allocated to Russia and other Soviet republics. After the breakup of the USSR in 1991, however, Western oil companies began to participate in the hydrocarbon equivalent of a gold rush to exploit Caspian energy reservoirs, while plans were being made to channel the region's oil and gas to markets across the world. Rush to the Caspian In the 1990s, the Caspian Sea basin was viewed as the world's most promising new source of oil and gas, and so the major Western energy firms -- Chevron, BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil, among others -- rushed into the region to take advantage of what seemed a golden opportunity. For these firms, persuading the governments of the newly independent Caspian states to sign deals proved to be no great hassle. They were eager to attract Western investment -- and the bribes that often came with it -- and to free themselves from Moscow's economic domination. But there turned out to be a major catch: It was neither obvious nor easy to figure out how to move all the new oil and gas to markets in the West. After all, the Caspian is landlocked, so tankers cannot get near it, while all existing pipelines passed through Russia and were hooked into Soviet-era supply systems. While many in Washington were eager to assist U.S. firms in their drive to gain access to Caspian energy, they did not want to see the resulting oil and gas flow through Russia -- until recently, the country's leading adversary -- before reaching Western markets. What, then, to do? Looking at the Caspian chessboard in the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton conceived the striking notion of converting the newly independent, energy-poor Republic of Georgia into an "energy corridor" for the export of Caspian basin oil and gas to the West, thereby bypassing Russia altogether. An initial, "early-oil" pipeline was built to carry petroleum from newly-developed fields in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast, where it was loaded onto tankers for delivery to international markets. This would be followed by a far more audacious scheme: the construction of the 1,000-mile BTC pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Tbilisi in Georgia and then on to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Again, the idea was to exclude Russia -- which had, in the intervening years, been transformed into a struggling, increasingly impoverished former superpower -- from the Caspian Sea energy rush. Clinton presided over every stage of the BTC line's initial development, from its early conception to the formal arrangements imposed by Washington on the three nations involved in its corporate structuring. (Final work on the pipeline was not completed until 2006, two years into George W. Bush's second term.) For Clinton and his advisors, this was geopolitics, pure and simple -- a calculated effort to enhance Western energy security while diminishing Moscow's control over the global flow of oil and gas. The administration's efforts to promote the construction of new pipelines through Azerbaijan and Georgia were intended "to break Russia's monopoly of control over the transportation of oil from the region," Sheila Heslin of the National Security Council bluntly told a Senate investigating committee in 1997. Clinton understood that this strategy entailed significant risks, particularly because Washington's favored "energy corridor" passed through or near several major conflict zones -- including the Russian-backed breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, Clinton made a secondary decision -- to convert the new Georgian army into a military proxy of the United States, quipped and trained by the Department of Defense. From 1998 to 2000 alone, Georgia was awarded $302 million in U.S. military and economic aid -- more than any other Caspian country -- and top U.S. military officials started making regular trips to its capital, Tbilisi, to demonstrate support for then-president Eduard Shevardnadze. In those years, Clinton was the top chess player in the Caspian region, while his Russian presidential counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, was far too preoccupied with domestic troubles and a bitter, costly, ongoing guerrilla war in Chechnya to match his moves. It was clear, however, that senior Russian officials were deeply concerned by the growing U.S. presence in their southern backyard -- what they called their "near abroad" -- and had already had begun planning for an eventual comeback. "It hasn't been left unnoticed in Russia that certain outside interests are trying to weaken our position in the Caspian basin," Andrei Y. Urnov of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared in May 2000. "No one should be perplexed that Russia is determined to resist the attempts to encroach on her interests." Russia Resurgent At this critical moment, a far more capable player took over on Russia's side of the geopolitical chessboard. On December 31, 1999, Vladimir V. Putin was appointed president by Yeltsin and then, on March 26, 2000, elected to a full four-year term in office. Politics in the Caucasus and the Caspian region have never been the same. Even before assuming the presidency, Putin indicated that he believed state control over energy resources should be the basis for Russia's return to great-power status. In his doctoral dissertation, a summary of which was published in 1999, he had written that "[t]he state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources [including oil and natural gas], independent of on whose property they are located." On this basis, Putin presided over the re-nationalization of many of the energy companies that had been privatized by Yeltsin and the virtual confiscation of Yukos -- once Russia's richest private energy firm -- by Russian state authorities. He also brought Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas supplier, back under state control and placed a protégé, Dmitri Medvedev -- now president of Russia -- at its helm. Once he had restored state control over the lion's share of Russia's oil and gas resources, Putin turned his attention to the next obvious place -- the Caspian Sea basin. Here, his intent was not so much to gain ownership of its energy resources -- although Russian firms have in recent years acquired an equity share in some Caspian oil and gas fields -- but rather to dominate the export conduits used to transport its energy to Europe and Asia. Russia already enjoyed a considerable advantage since much of Kazakhstan's oil already flowed to the West via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which passes through Russia before terminating on the Black Sea; moreover, much of Central Asia's natural gas continued to flow to Russia through pipelines built during the Soviet era. But Putin's gambit in the Caspian region evidently was meant to capture a far more ambitious prize. He wanted to ensure that most oil and gas from newly developed fields in the Caspian basin would travel west via Russia. The first part of this drive entailed frenzied diplomacy by Putin and Medvedev (still in his role as board chairman of Gazprom) to persuade the presidents of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan to ship their future output of gas through Russia. Success was achieved when, in December 2007, Putin signed an agreement with the leaders of these countries to supply 20 billion cubic meters of gas per year through a new conduit along the Caspian's eastern shore to southern Russia -- for ultimate delivery to Europe via Gazprom's existing pipeline network. Meanwhile, Putin moved to undermine international confidence in Georgia as a reliable future corridor for energy delivery. This became a strategic priority for Moscow because the European Union announced plans to build a $10 billion natural-gas pipeline from the Caspian, dubbed Nabucco" after the opera by Verdi. It would run from Turkey to Austria, while linking up to an expanded South Caucasus gas pipeline that now extends from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey. The Nabucco pipeline was intended as a dramatic move to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas -- and so has enjoyed strong support from the Bush administration. It is against this backdrop that the recent events in Georgia unfolded. Checkmate in Georgia Obviously, the more oil and gas passing through Georgia on its way to the West, the greater that country's geostrategic significance in the U.S.-Russian struggle over the distribution of Caspian energy. Certainly, the Bush administration recognized this and responded by providing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the Georgian military and helping to train specialized forces for protection of the new pipelines. But the administration's partner in Tbilisi, President Mikheil Saakashvili, was not content to play the relatively modest role of pipeline protector. Instead, he sought to pursue a megalomaniacal fantasy of recapturing the breakaway regions of Abhkazia and South Ossetia with American help. As it happened, the Bush team -- blindsided by their own neoconservative fantasies -- saw in Saakashvili a useful pawn in their pursuit of a long smoldering anti-Russian agenda. Together, they walked into a trap cleverly set by Putin. It is hard not to conclude that Russian prime minister goaded the rash Saakashvili into invading South Ossetia by encouraging Abkhazian and South Ossetian irregulars to attack Georgian outposts and villages on the peripheries of the two enclaves. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly told Saakashvili not to respond to such provocations when she met with him in July. Apparently her advice fell on deaf ears. Far more enticing, it seems, was her promise of strong U.S. backing for Georgia's rapid entry into NATO. Other American leaders, including Senator John McCain, assured Saakashvili of unwavering U.S. support. Whatever was said in these private conversations, the Georgian president seems to have interpreted them as a green light for his adventuristic impulses. On August 7th, by all accounts, his forces invaded South Ossetia and attacked its capital city of Tskhinvali, giving Putin what he long craved -- a seemingly legitimate excuse to invade Georgia and demonstrate the complete vulnerability of Clinton's (and now Bush's) vaunted energy corridor. Today, the Georgian army is in shambles, the BTC and South Caucasus gas pipelines are within range of Russian firepower, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared their independence, quickly receiving Russian recognition. In response to these developments, the Bush administration has, along with some friendly leaders in Europe, mounted a media and diplomatic counterattack, accusing Moscow of barbaric behavior and assorted violations of international law. Threats have also been made to exclude Russia from various international forums and institutions, such as the G-8 club of governments and the World Trade Organization. It is possible, then, that Moscow will suffer some isolation and inconvenience as a result of its incursion into Georgia. None of this, so far as can be determined, will alter the picture in the Caucasus: Putin has moved his most powerful pieces onto this corner of the chessboard, America's pawn has been decisively defeated, and there's not much of a practical nature that Washington (or London or Paris or Berlin) can do to alter the outcome. There will, of course, be more rounds to come, and it is impossible to predict how they will play out. Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology; so long as this pattern persists, he or his successors are likely to come out on top. Only if American leaders assume a more realistic approach to Russia's resurgent power or, alternatively, choose to collaborate with Moscow in the exploitation of Caspian energy, will the risk of further strategic setbacks in the region disappear. Copyright 2008 Michael T. Klare Michael T. Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books). Other entries in Globalization 15 Nov 2008 @ 08:03: ZAIBATSU GLOBALIZATION ‘VOODOO ECONOMICS’ BOWING OUT 26 Jan 2008 @ 11:33: An Open Letter To Amy Goodman 1 Dec 2007 @ 10:42: Would You Invest In Green Technology Or Guns? 21 Nov 2007 @ 23:59: An Easy Solution Missed 7 Nov 2007 @ 21:08: Blackwater, Blackwater Run Down Through The Land, Part 2 27 Oct 2007 @ 07:43: Creating the 3rd Millennium Civilization Security 29 Sep 2007 @ 12:38: "Black Waters, Black Waters Run Down Through The Land" 24 Aug 2007 @ 07:29: American History: The Bush Family Legacy 20 Jul 2007 @ 19:17: Well, well, well... It happened!.... How do U feel about this? 7 May 2007 @ 09:38: Cascading Cross Defaults
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14 Aug 2008 @ 11:20, by Richard Carlson
