Disagree with The Voice In the Wilderness and off you go!
He is the reincarnation of Stalin Hitler. Disagree and you’re off to the gulag. Be gay and you’re off to the gulag. Oppose Putin and off to the gulag.
Russia is no model state for me, but US media should keep to the facts and stop warmongering for the sake of spreading capitalism. [Former FM under Boris Yeltsin invited for CNN Interview – Andrei Kozyrev]
About morals and ethics, one clear-cut basis for human rights is the number of citizens jailed and whether a nation uses the death penalty: USA loses out in the world of the 21th century. In the death penalty statistics, the number of wrongful shooting deaths has not been reckoned with.
If you are considering naming traitors, I have a long list of most eligible candidates, none are bloggers here @BooMan.
Judith Miller, John McCain, all Neocons, Christiane Amanpour, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Steve Hadley, whole bunch under the Bush-Cheney administration really with responsibility for Guantanamo Bay, Aby Ghraib, torture, assassination by drones … just for starters.
Full discussion in my recent diary – Making An Enemy – Demonizing Putin Endangers America’s Security.
Looking for a traitor …
So our representatives on The Hill have found someone to blame for the loss of Crimea to the Russians. Never mind the facts about Gladio, German intelligence DNB and support for neo-nazis in Galicia to counteract the communist threat. Isn’t that what it was all about, funding a US coloured revolution in the Ukraine, Nuland’s $5bn well spend. We’ll wait and see how fascist the installed government will be in Kyiv. Putin is no stranger to history in the region and decided not to wait for a turn for the worst and gave support to self-determination in the Crimea where the Russian Black Sea fleet has its most important naval base. The Ukrainian officers were split 50/50 whether to leave the Crimean peninsula or stay and become Russian officers.
○ The Snowden affair: Whatever happened to the blame game – June 2013
○ Guess Who’s Spying on Huawei
○ Are Intelligence Officials Justified in Blaming Snowden for Not Predicting Crimea?
Undoubtedly, Donald Rumsfeld would qualify by unanimity of votes:
BooMan’s fp story – Your Pie-Hole, Shut-It.
Washington Post article – Rumsfeld bashes Obama on Afghanistan, says ‘a trained ape’ could do better.
Oui, I don’t know you are a US citizen or not. If not, you have no reason to be loyal to the USA and cannot, therefore, be considered a traitor.
But I have seen too many here that are quick to criticize the USA and portray Putin as an angel. The solid anti-Israel faction I can dismiss as anti-Semitic. I have seen plenty of that in my life. But I have been heartily sick to my stomach for the last fifty years at those who delight in putting down the USA, portraying it as the demonic force behind everything bad in the world, while praising Russia/Soviet Union as a force for everything that is good and pure. I like you and Marie2. I really do. But I want no truck with anti-Americanism. It is indeed a shame to have to ally with those who despise me, my family, and my class, no-nothing idiots worshiping a non-existent sky-god and denying basic Science. If you have any doubt who I am referring to, it is the Republican Party. But there is only one thing that trumps financial interest and that is solidarity. Three times in my life I have sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I hold those oaths to be the most sacred, ranking at least equal to my marriage vows. Putin is one of those enemies.
Being too loyal is one of my vices. I have been taught at SLU to watch out for propaganda, I hate warmongering and I don’t want to be made a fool of. Today’s media is ratcheting up the war rhetoric, worse than during the Cold War. My uneasiness today can only be compared to March 2003 and October 1962.
It’s all fairly relative, today @ET I got criticism for quoting an anti-putin news item. I strayed from the propaganda media of CNN, BBC, France24 and Al Jazeera.
Voice, it sounds like you’ve been out in the wilderness a little too long now. Now is the time for the Unity and Solidarity that will transform our collective situation. We have a country that is pretty close to being gutted out now. The rapacious sociopaths that rule the roost are now acting “under the color of law” in so many fields. They take upon themselves the mantle of the country, of the state. To be against a Vice President of the USA, for example, is not necessarily anti-Americanism. Some might argue that that IS actually the essence of the powerful American ideal of freedom and truth.
But the facts are pretty clear. Compare the number of ‘foreign bases’ for the US vs. the Russian Federation.
Let’s talk about the Monroe Doctrine…….Oh wait…
How about the PNAC Plan? That’s still being played out, right now! Libya, Syria, Ukraine. That is semi-declared war under the color of law. Acting as if they held legitimate American authority. Much criminal, not at all American in my book.
Frankly, I think Putin has been very smart and in keeping with the best of the Russian Bear. We owe him a really big “thank you” for his work on the Syrian WMDs.
He’s a martial artist who knows how to bring the lumbering giant down to the ground with minimal damage, using the giant’s own inevitable mistakes as his weapons. Crumbling Empire. Putin has lived through it, we are just entering our Crumbling Empire period.
To see Putin as a deranged enemy is to live in a paranoid reality, imo. But if the thing you say about the Palestine question is “The solid anti-Israel faction I can dismiss as anti-Semitic”, then I say that seems like a paranoid reality, too. You need to know this because we all need to get beyond our stereotypes and over broad generalizations so we can start moving forward again, United.
This not about Bush. This is about Putin and armed assault of a neighboring country. If I’m a thief does it excuse you stealing from a blind man? What Bush and Obama have done doesn’t excuse what Putin has done.
I’ve said before that I see a lot of logic in Crimea being part of Russia. But the proper way was to introduce a UN resolution establishing a neutrally monitored election, not sending in Spetnaz troops and tanks. And if Ukraine’s borders, admittedly arbitrarily set in the Soviet era, are to adjusted, it should be by free negotiation with Ukraine trading something for the land (thirty years of free gas?). That’s impossible now so Putin will at some point send in his tanks to “free” the Eastern edge of Ukraine. Or possibly to “reunify” the whole of Ukraine. Who would stop him?
You are right, Voice. It doesn’t “excuse” him. What it does do is prove Mao Zedong’s old premise, “Power comes from the barrel of a gun” just as have the Bush and Obama military actions proven the same thing.
As you also point out:
And therein lies the crux of the matter. Mutually assured destruction produces a tightrope act. How far can/will any major power go before risking nuclear war? I fully expect that China will do something similar to what Russia has done either west or east of its borders quite soon. Should the Xinjiang rebels get too disturbing, Tibetan political actions become too burdensome or Taiwan become so valuable as to almost demand being taken, this move of Putin’s…and of course the inability of the NATO so-called “powers” to do anything except act like a giant Granny No No…will serve to excuse the use of massive military force to do what the leaders of China deem necessary to keep their bloated empire afloat.
“Who would stop them?” as you ask.
Granny No No?
C’mon.
And how?
Military actions that go past empty posturing and threats? Between and among the 1984-style “Big Three?” Gimme a break. “Ka-BOOM!” and there goes the whole game. They know that. It’s the only thing that has stopped major-league wars since Hiroshima.
Sanctions? The aggressors will do the math…again, just as did the Bush II and Obama regimes. Potential profit from action as opposed to potential harm from sanctions. Apparently that calculation adds up to action as far as Putin is concerned, and so far he has been right on the money.
So nu?
Cyberwar?
Please.
Mutually assured cyberdestruction.
Bet on it.
The already barely held-together “superpowers” would shred within a few months’ time, and then we’d be right back in the shrouds of history. Warlord against warlord. Where is the trillions of dollars-level profit in that?
And the Great Game progresses.
I personally think that the U.S. is headed for a breakup much like that of the U.S.S.R., with China soon to follow.
Bet on it.
I am.
AG
You could be right about the breakup. The neoconfederates are very strong.