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Title: Examining the Hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia
Source:
Information Clearinghouse
URL Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40624.htm
Published: Jan 4, 2015
Author: Boyd D. Cathey
Post Date: 2015-02-02 09:34:46 by Tooconservative
Keywords: Putin, Russia, Ukraine
Views: 14399
Comments: 42
The mainstream American media and American political leaders seem intent to present only a one-sided, very negative picture of the Russian leader. Various allegations are continually and repeatedly expressed. How do these charges stand up under serious examination? What is their origin? And, what do they say about the current political and cultural environment in America and the West? The allegations against Putin can be summarized in five major points: The charges against Putin go from disingenuous to the dishonest. The “KGB thug” and the “break-up” of the USSR accusations have been addressed in a variety of well-researched books and in-depth articles. The documentation contradicts these allegations, including some charges that have been made by usually conservative voices. It is extremely curious that such ostensibly conservative publications as The New American, for example, find themselves parroting accusations first made by notorious leftwing publicists and, then, by international gay rights supporters. On the contrary, various historians and researchers, including Professor Allen C. Lynch (in his excellent study, Vladimir Putin and Russian Statecraft, 2011), Professor Michael Stuermer (in his volume, Putin and the Rise of Russia, 2008), M. S. King (in The War Against Putin, 2014), Reagan ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, former Congressman Ron Paul (his web site, www.ronpaulinstitute.org, contains numerous scholarly articles defending Putin), Reagan budget director David Stockman, and conservative writer William Lind—none of these men on the Left—have pointed out that those allegations have been ripped out of context and are largely untenable. Additionally, numerous conservative religious authors have investigated and defended Putin, including Catholic journalists such as Michael Matt in The Remnant, Dr. E. Michael Jones in Culture Wars, Dr. Joseph Pearce in The St. Austin Review, and Gary Potter, and writers for conservative Protestant organizations like the Gospel Defense League. Nevertheless, the charges made against Putin are presented as fact by many Neoconservative “talking heads” on Fox (e.g., Charles Krauthammer) and on talk radio (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck), as well as by the Leftist establishment media. Disinformation is clearly at work here, even among some of the strongest voices on the American right. Professor Lynch reveals in his detailed study that the evidence for the “Putin KGB thug” allegation is very thin and lacks substantial basis. First, Putin was never “head of the KGB,” as some writers mistakenly (and, often, maliciously) assert. That is simply a falsehood. Rather, he served as a mid-level intelligence bureaucrat who sat at a desk in Dresden, East Germany, where he was stationed with his family for several years before returning to Leningrad. His job was to analyze data, and he had no involvement in other activities. [Lynch, pp. 19-21] Contemporary American intelligence reports confirm this fact. Indeed, this was one of the reasons that early on, during 1990 and 1991, Putin was considered a hopeful figure among the generation of younger Russians by American intelligence sources. After the fall of Communism during the administration of Boris Yeltsin, he very briefly served at Yeltsin’s request as head of the FSB intelligence service. But the FSB is not the KGB. Lynch treats in some detail the question of Putin’s supposed continued subservience to KGB ideology, with particular reference to the events surrounding the abortive Communist coup by the old hands at the KGB in August 1991. Putin, by that time, had resigned his position in the KGB and was serving as deputy mayor to pro-American Leningrad mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, one of the fiercest critics of the KGB and the old Soviet system. It was Putin who organized the local Leningrad militia to oppose the attempted KGB coup and protect Mayor Sobchak and the forces of democratic reform: Putin played a key role in saving Leningrad for the democrats. The coup, which lasted but three days, was carried out on August 19. That same day Mayor Sobchak arrived on a flight from Moscow. The Leningrad KGB, which supported the coup, planned to arrest Sobchak immediately upon landing. Putin got word of the plan and took decisive and preemptive action: He organized a handful of loyal troops and met Sobchak at the airport, driving the car right up to the plane’s exit ramp. The KGB turned back, not wishing to risk an open confrontation with Sobchak’s armed entourage [led by Putin].” [Lynch, p. 34] This signal failure in Russia’s second city doomed the attempted KGB coup and assured the final collapse of the Soviet system and eventual transition of Russia away from Communism. It was Vladimir Putin, then, who was largely responsible for defeating and preventing the return of Communism in Russia. It is very hard to see how a secret supporter of the KGB would take such action, if he were actually favoring the return of Communism. As Professor Lynch recounts: Putin accepted the irreversibility of the Soviet Union’s collapse and came to terms with the market and private property as the proper foundations of the Russian economy. [Lynch, p.28] It is true that Putin lamented the break-up of the old Soviet Union, but not because he regretted the disappearance of the Soviets, but, rather, because of the numerous and intimate economic, linguistic, social, and cultural connections that interrelated most of the fifteen constituent republics of the old USSR. His comments on the topic were very clear, but have been selectively taken out of context by the Putin haters. [See the book-length interview with Putin, with comments from other Russian leaders, First Person: An Astonishing Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, New York, 2000, pp. 165-190] Much like the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I, which left significant ethnic minorities cut off from their historic former homelands — for example, millions of Austro-German Sudetens in Czechoslovakia, Hungarian Transylvanians in Romania, etc. — and a number of economically non-viable states in the Balkans, the dissolution of the Soviet Union created the same situation in Eastern Europe. The present intractable crisis in Ukraine is a clear example of what can happen and has happened as a result. It was this situation that Putin rightly lamented; it was this break-up that he foresaw correctly as a tragedy. The much-criticized—by the American press—secession of Crimea from Ukraine and its subsequent re-union with Russia clearly illustrates this. What too many so-called “experts” in America fail to understand (or, if they do, skillfully omit in their reports) is that Crimea was an integral part of Russia for hundreds of years until Communist Nikita Khrushchev sliced it off from Russia and gave it to Ukraine in 1954, despite the fact that 60% of its population is ethnically Russian and its culture and language completely Russian. [See the Wikipedia article, “Crimea”] Moreover, the Ukrainian “oblasts,” or provinces, of Lugansk and Donetsk, have a similar history and ethno-cultural make-up. They were arbitrarily added to the Ukrainian socialist republic in the 1920s after the Communist revolution, despite being historically part of Mother Russia for centuries. Interestingly, at the same time Putin made the “break-up” of the Soviet Russia comment, he visited Poland to denounce and condemn the Communist massacre and crimes in the Katyn Forest at the beginning of World War II, as well as the horrid Soviet gulags. On more than one occasion, especially at the meetings of the international Valdai Discussion Forum in 2013 and 2014, he has harshly condemned in the strongest terms Communism and the atrocious crimes committed by Communists. In so doing, he made extensive reference to Russia’s Christian heritage (also criticizing same sex marriage, abortion, and homosexuality as being “opposed to the most sacred values of our traditions”). Putin’s remarks at the Valdai Forum in September 2013, in front of representatives from most European countries, deserve extensive quoting. Here is some of what he said: Another serious challenge to Russia’s identity is linked to events taking place in the world. Here there are both foreign policy and moral aspects. We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their historic roots, including the Christian values that constitute the very basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan. The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote paedophilia. People in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation. And people are aggressively trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis. What else but the loss of the ability to self-reproduce could act as the greatest testimony of the moral crisis facing a human society? Today almost all developed nations are no longer able to reproduce themselves, even with the help of unlawful migration. Without the values embedded in Christianity, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question. And Putin gained firm support and endorsement from that inveterate and most intransigent anti-Communist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Before his death in 2008, Solzhenitsyn praised Putin and stated that he believed Putin’s personal acceptance of Christian faith to be genuine. American ambassador William Burns visited Solzhenitsyn (April 2008) shortly prior to his death and quoted him as stating that under Putin, the nation was rediscovering what it was to be Russian and Christian. [See article at guardian.co.uk, Thursday, December 2, 2010] The great Russian anti-Communist also gave a long 2007 interview with the German magazine, Der Spiegel, saying the same thing. So, then, if the Putin-haters are correct, did Putin fool the great Solzhenitsyn who was by far the greatest and most intransigent anti-Communist of the 20 th century? Not likely. About the personal corruption charge Lynch offers substantial detail and discusses how it got going, basically spread by Putin’s liberal opponents. To those who suggest that Putin stood to make a fortune off his political choices, Lynch (and others) offers substantial documentation to the contrary: Putin was not corrupt, at least in the conventional, venal sense. His modest and frankly unfashionable attire bespoke a seeming indifference to personal luxury. While as deputy mayor. He had acquired the use of the summer dacha of the former East German Consulate and even installed a sauna unit there, but when the house burned down in the summer of 1996, his $5,000 life’s savings burned with it. To have accumulated only $5,000 in five years as deputy mayor of Russia’s second-largest city and largest port, when hundreds of less well-placed Russians were enriching themselves on government pickings, implies something other than pecuniary motives behind Putin’s activities (….) In sum, Putin was honest, certainly by Russian standards. He lived simply and worked diligently. Accused by a foe…of having purchased a million dollar villa in France, Putin sued for slander and won his case in court a year later. [Lynch, pp. 33, 35] Some of the hostility towards Putin emerged when he became interim president of the Russian Federation after Boris Yeltsin stepped down in December, 1999. Putin had established himself as a loyal and forthright political leader since serving as deputy mayor for the pro-democratic Mayor Sobchak. He had also served Yeltsin faithfully. But Putin was no Yeltsin. While initially following the Yeltsin pro-American and pro-Western lead in foreign policy, Putin was also aware that Russia was undergoing a radical transition from a decrepit and collapsed Communist state to the recovery of some of its older traditions, including a mushrooming, vibrant return to traditional Russian Orthodoxy, a faith which he has publicly and personally embraced. [See various confirming reports, including Charles Glover, “Putin and the Monk,” FINANCIAL TIMES Magazine, January 25, 2013, and video clip. During the days of oppressive Communist rule, the Russian Orthodox Church, at least the official leadership, was subservient to Marxism, with many of its leaders at least mouthing Communist ideas, if not serving as agents. The former Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei (who died in 2008), had been criticized as a collaborator with the Communist regime. However, the so-called “intelligence proof” that suddenly “appeared” in Estonia stating that he was a secret KGB agent has been placed in very serious doubt (see Wikipedia, “Patriarch Alexei” article). Apparently, the “documents” were most likely fabricated and not genuine. Indeed,as the Encyclopedia Britannica in its biography of him relates, Alexei was "the first patriarch in Soviet history to be chosen without government pressure; candidates were nominated from the floor, and the election was conducted by secret ballot.” Not only that, after the fall of Communism, Alexei publicly denounced Communist crimes and called for the freedom of Christianity in Russia. It became something of a moot point when Alexei died in 2008; his replacement as head of the Russian church was Archbishop Kirill, someone who is known for his staunch opposition to Marxism and his defense of historic Christianity and traditional morality. As Russian religious scholar Professor John Garrard exhaustively demonstrates in his excellent study, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent (2008), from 1991 onwards the Russian Orthodox Church began a necessary purification, with older collaborators and Communist agents gradually stepping down or being removed. Today the Russian Orthodox Church is, by far, the most conservative, traditional and anti-Communist religious body in the world. It has gone so far as to canonize dozens of martyrs killed by the Communists and celebrate the Romanov tsar and his family who were brutally murdered by the Reds in 1918. Significantly, since 1991 over 26,000 new Christian churches have opened in Russia, and the fact that Christianity is being reborn in Russia has not gone unnoticed among some Christian writers in the America and Europe, although generally ignored by the secular press. [There are numerous articles and reports chronicling this amazing rebirth, e.g., Russia has experienced a spiritual resurrection, Catholic Herald, October 22, 2014; see also, “Faith Rising in the East, Setting in the West,” January 29, 2014, Break Point Commentaries. Such a phenomena is not some Communist plot, but represents a genuine desire on the part of the Russian people to rediscover their religious roots, ironically just as a majority of American now seem to embrace same sex marriage, abortion, and the worst extremes of immorality and the rejection of traditional Christianity. In support of his goals Putin has championed Russian laws that: (1) have practically outlawed abortion in Russia (no abortions after the 12 th week, and before that time in limited cases, and also the end of financial support for abortions, reversing a previous Soviet policy); (2) clamp down on homosexuality and homosexual propaganda---absolutely no homosexual propaganda in Russian schools, no public displays of homosexuality, with legal penalties imposed for violating these laws; (3) strongly support traditional marriage, especially religious marriage, with financial aid to married couples having more than two children; (4) have established compulsory religious instruction in all Russian schools (including instruction in different Christian confessions, in different regions of the country); (4) implement a policy instituting chaplaincy in Russian military regiments (and religious institutions now assist in helping military families); (5) have made religious holidays now official Russian state holidays; (6) have instituted a nationwide program of rebuilding churches that were destroyed by the Communists (the most notable being the historic Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow); and (7) officially support the Russian film industry in producing conservative religious and patriotic movies—interestingly, the most popular film in Russia in 2009 was the movie “Admiral,” a very favorable biopic of the leader of the White Russian counter-revolutionary, Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, who was executed by the Communists in 1920. The film was supported by the Russian cultural ministry. Can we imagine the American NEH doing anything similar in the current United States? [See reports, OneNewsNow.com, January 23, 2013; LifeSiteNews, October 26, 2011, August 1, 2013; Scott Rose, Bloomberg News, June 30, 2013; see also Garrard on some of these actions] As American Catholic author, Mark Tooley, has written Understanding a More Religious and Assertive Russia, April 2, 2014: Putin has formed a close association with Russian Orthodoxy, as Russian rulers typically have across centuries. He is smart to do so, as Russia has experienced somewhat of a spiritual revival…. Orthodoxy is widely and understandably seen as the spiritual remedy to the cavernous spiritual vacuum left by over 70 disastrous, often murderous years of Bolshevism. Resurgent religious traditionalism has fueled Russia’s new law against sexual orientation proselytism to minors and its new anti-abortion law. Both laws also respond to Russia’s demographic struggle with plunging birth rates and monstrously high abortion rates that date to Soviet rule. Some American religious conservatives have looked to Russian religious leaders as allies in international cooperation on pro-family causes. As the largest nation in the world, with historic connections to the rest of Europe, but also to Asia, Putin understood as well that Russia, despite the Communist interlude, was still a major power to be reckoned with. A reawakened Russian conservative nationalism and a return to the traditional Orthodox Christian faith did not, he initially hoped, predetermine an eventual clash with the European Union nor with the United States. Indeed, after the 9/11 attack on the “twin towers” in New York, Putin’s Russia was the first nation to offer its full support to and its cooperation with American intelligence agencies to combat terrorism and bring the culprits to justice. Having combated Chechen Islamic terrorism in the Caucasus region, Russia had experience dealing with Islamic extremism. [Lynch, pp. 100-105; Stuermer, pp. 5-6] Nevertheless, Bush administration Neoconservatives basically kicked Russia in the teeth. With their zealous belief in liberal democracy and global equality, to be imposed on offending nations if need be , as Allan Bloom once boasted, they condescendingly refused Russian collaboration. As leading Neocon publicist and “talking head,” Charles Krauthammer, expressed it, “we now live in a unipolar world in which there is only ONE superpower, and that is the United States.” The Neoconservative condescension towards Russia, first after 9/11, then with the threatened placement of missiles in Poland, pushing NATO to the very borders of Russia, and finally following the bungled American diplomatic escapade in Georgia in 2008, cemented a conviction among Russians and by Vladimir Putin that the desired partnership with America was unrealizable, at least for the time being. [See Lynch, ch. 6, generally, for a thorough discussion of Russian foreign policy; Stuermer, pp. 196-199] The desire for Russia to become a “collaborative partner” in any kind of situation resembling international parity was just not acceptable to American Neocons. Whereas Yeltsin had been welcomed in Washington as “America’s poodle,” willing to do America’s bidding, Putin believed that the largest nation in the world, which had thrown off the Communist yoke, merited a larger role. His desire was for a real partnership. But aggressive attempts spearheaded by the United States to incorporate formerly integral parts of Russia—areas that were and continue to be considered within the Russian “sphere of influence,” even if independent—into NATO, largely dashed Russian hopes for partnership with the West. [Stuermer, pp. 191-196] In 1996 the late George Kennan cautioned the American foreign policy establishment that expansion of NATO into those areas “was a strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions.” Kennan warned against a foreign policy that was “utopian in its expectation, legalistic in its concept … moralistic … and self-righteous.” [Robert Sidelsky, Kennan’s Revenge: Remembering the Reasons for the Cold War The Guardian, April 23, 2014, ] Henry Kissinger echoed this warning on November 12, 2014, calling in Der Spiegel the American response to Russia “a fatal mistake.” Perhaps it is no coincidence that many of the present-day Neocon publicists descend from immigrant Jewish Labour Zionists and inhabitants of the Russian “pale of settlement,” who experienced tsarist pogroms in the late 19 th century and who later formed the vanguard of Marxist efforts to overthrow the tsar and establish a socialist state? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s mammoth study, Two Hundred Years Together (still untranslated into English, although a French edition exists: Deux Siecles Ensembles, 1795-1995, Fayard, 2002), offers fascinating detail on this process. The Socialist internationalism manifested by those revolutionaries found its incarnation in Leon Trotsky, murdered at Stalin’s orders in Mexico in 1940. Despite the supposed migration of the Neocons towards the political Right in the 1970s and 1980s, the globalist and “democratic” legacy of Trotsky remains a not-so-distant lodestar for many zealous partisans. At times this paternal reverence continues to break forth, in unlikely sources. On National Review Online, a few years back, Neoconservative writer Stephen Schwartz wrote: To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists and Stalinists in their second childhood make of it what they will.” [See Professor Paul Gottfried's commentary on Takimag.com, April 17, 2007] For the American Neocons, the emergence of a nationalist, Christian, and undemocratic Russia is perhaps too reminiscent of the “bad old days.” And despite very different circumstances, a non-conforming Russian state demanding any form of parity with the world’s “only remaining superpower” is out of the question. On the contrary, Boris Yeltsin was a Neocon favorite. Yeltsin’s tenure as president seemed not only to echo a second-rate “America’s poodle” status, his handling of the Russian economy proved disastrous for the average Russian, but lucrative for a handful of Russian oligarchs, who in turn were connected to American business interests. Wikipedia (article on Boris Yeltsin) sums up his actions in this way: In 1995, as Yeltsin struggled to finance Russia’s growing foreign debt and gain support from the Russian business elite for his bid in the early-1996 presidential elections, the Russian president prepared for a new wave of privatization offering stock shares in some of Russia’s most valuable state enterprises in exchange for bank loans. The program was promoted as a way of simultaneously speeding up privatization and ensuring the government a much-needed infusion of cash for its operating needs. However, the deals were effectively giveaways of valuable state assets to a small group of tycoons in finance, industry, energy, telecommunications, and the media who came to be known as “oligarchs” in the mid-1990s. This was due to the fact that ordinary people sold their vouchers for cash. The vouchers were bought out by a small group of investors. By mid-1996, substantial ownership shares over major firms were acquired at very low prices by a handful of people. Boris Berezovsky, who controlled major stakes in several banks and the national media, emerged as one of Yeltsin’s most prominent backers. Along with Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Bogdanov, Rem Viakhirev, Vagit Alekperov, Alexander Smolensky, Victor Vekselberg, Mikhail Fridman and a few years later Roman Abramovich, were habitually mentioned in the media as Russia’s oligarchs. On his assumption of the presidency and his election to a full first term, Putin resolved to end this economic domination by “the oligarchs,” but in so doing, he antagonized their internationalist capitalist partners in the West on Wall Street and in Bruxelles. During his first term, Putin proved himself to be a clever and resourceful politician. He organized a powerful political base, his United Russia political party, and, like most successful political leaders, was able to parlay his economic successes and a favorable conclusion to the Chechen civil war into a strong base of support across the Russian Federation. Criticized by some domestic opponents for not following punctiliously all the hallmark benchmarks of Western-style “democracy,” Putin insisted that the difficult path to Russian democracy was different than that so often pushed (and imposed) by the United States around the world. Nevertheless, the average Russian citizen experienced more real liberties and more economic freedom than at any time in Russia’s long history, and the credit for that must be Putin’s. [Lynch, pp. 69-74; Stuermer, pp. 199-200] The continuing charges that Putin is corrupt and has surrounded himself with ex-KGBers have as their origin, not surprisingly, leftist and liberal domestic opponents of the Russian president in Russia, as Lynch, Paul Craig Roberts, M. S. King, and others have shown. In fact, most of Putin’s advisors lack serious earlier Communist/KGB involvement. The charges, nevertheless, have been picked up by the Murdoch media and Neocon press. Just as they had lauded Yeltsin, they quickly turned on the nationalist Putin, who quickly became in the Western press a “KGB thug,” “corrupt,” and desirous of “restoring the old Soviet Union. One of the major, if indirect, Russian domestic sources for the corruption charges comes via a prolific Russian politician, Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov, identified as a “new liberal,” is a longtime opponent of Vladimir Putin and a favorite of John McCain and various “mainstream conservatives.” [See, "Russians React Badly to U.S. Criticism on Protests," The New York Times, January 6, 2011] Over the years he has penned a number of election broadsides and pamphlets, charging Putin with everything from feathering his own “nest” with “billions of rubles,” to election fraud. [See Nemtsov, Putin: What 10 Years of Putin Have Brought, 2010] In each case, his allegations lack the kind of sources to make them creditable. It is as if Al Gore were to have written a pamphlet about George W. Bush in the 2000 election: it and its content would immediately be highly suspect. That some supposedly conservative American publications and news sources could give these accusations credence just demonstrates the power of the liberal/left media and the international anti-Russian homosexual lobby who have tried desperately to propagate such ideas. Although the Nemtsov origin for the constant media barrage is important, in recent months the nature of the Western opposition to Putin and Russia has been radically transformed. While Nemtsov’s canards certainly have found their way into the Western press, since Russia’s legal prohibitions (in early 2013) against homosexual propaganda (especially directed towards underage children) and its forthright defense of the Christian institution of marriage, the vigorous opposition to Putin has assumed a “moral” dimension, symbolized best, perhaps, by Obama’s appointment of several over-the-hill, openly homosexual athletes to head the United States delegation to the Sochi Olympics in early 2014. Such an action demonstrated both the fundamental rejection by the American leadership (and Western European leaders) of Russia’s affirmation of traditional marriage and traditional Christianity, while illustrating the formal apostasy by the West from its own traditional Christian moorings. Enter Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen. Numerous references to Gessen began to appear last year, and soon she was appearing as “the Russian authority” on several of the Sunday morning news programs and as a guest on the Establishment’s special programs dealing with Russia and Ukraine. Repeatedly, she is identified as “the noted expert and author on Russia and Vladimir Putin.” Her 2012 volume, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, has been cited on such programs as “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation” as critical to understanding Russia and its president. She is the most widely-quoted writer on Russia and Putin now in the West. But just who is Masha Gessen? She is identified by the Wikipedia (not known for its right wing bias) as a Jewish lesbian activist, with dual Russian and American citizenship (how did she manage that?), who is “married” to another lesbian, with a “family,” but who advocates the abolition of the “institution of marriage,” itself. She has identified herself as a violent opponent of Putin and of traditional Christianity. Yet, her book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, is held up as the best volume on Russia and its president, while even her defenders (writing reviews on Amazon.com, for instance, and elsewhere) admit that her study reads like “one, long, impassioned editorial.” Let us add that Gessen is an unrelenting champion of the Russian lesbian punk rock band, “Pussy Riot,” who profaned the high altar of one of the most sacred churches in Russia, the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Her volume, Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (2014), is a passionate apologia for that pornographic lesbian band and a vitriolic attack on both Putin and traditional Orthodox Christianity, especially the institution of marriage, which Putin strongly and publicly defends. Her attacks find their way into the whole spectrum of American opinion, including, sadly, into supposedly conservative publications. Indeed, many Neoconservatives are remarkably “soft” on issues surrounding homosexual rights. [See, for example, “Fox News Goes Gay,” Christian Newswire, August 14, 2013; James Kirchick, “Out, Proud, and Loud: A GOP Nominee Breaks Boundaries,” The Daily Beast, February 18, 2014; Andrew Potts, “Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer calls gay rights struggle ‘heroic’,” Gay Star News, January 1, 2014 ] Gessen, then, has now become one major source for attacks as well as the “analysis” spewed out by the major networks. As one can see, the real key here increasingly is the issue of homosexuality and the fact that Putin’s Russia defends traditional Christian ethics and has clamped down on gay propaganda. Gessen finds this intolerable….thus, even though her journalistic writing purports to take a researched and scholarly view of Russian affairs, her attacks, the charges of corruption and anti-democratic tendencies, are all subsumed into something much more important to this vocal activist: an all-encompassing passion to advance homosexuality worldwide and an unremitting opposition to traditional Christianity. But it is not just a prominent and influential publicist like Masha Gessen who identifies the issue of homosexuality as central to the hatred for Putin and contemporary Russia. Gessen’s views are now completely mainstream in the West, illustrated resoundingly by President Obama’s naming of those gay former Olympians to represent the United States at Sochi. The gesture was unmistakable, but its symbolism indicated something more profound in the West’s post-Christian mentality. Indeed, this salient aspect of what euphemistically is now called “defending human rights” underpins EU and American policies towards Russia. Such organizations as the Human Rights League, People for the American Way, and the United Nations have gotten involved on a global level, cementing this template. In the international political sphere, no clearer illustration of this pervasive influence on policy may be found than in the response of close American ally German Chancellor Angela Merkel to President Putin’s criticism of the collapse of traditional Christian morality in America and Europe. As reported by The Times of London, November 30, 2014, Merkel, who had for some time urged a softer approach to Russia and continued negotiations, finally realized: that there could be no reconciliation with Vladimir Putin when she was treated to his hardline views on gay rights.The German chancellor was deep in one of the 40 conversations she has had with the Russian president over the past year — more than the combined total with David Cameron, François Hollande and Barack Obama — when he began to rail against the “decadence” of the West. Nothing exemplified this “decay of values” more than the West’s promotion of gay rights, Putin told her. The Kremlin and instead should adopt a policy of Cold War-style containment. And Merkel is not alone. She joins Barack Obama and prime ministers David Cameron, Francois Hollande, and the leaders of the EU in expressing this important underlying rationale for Western policy towards Russia. It is, then, the formal Western and American embrace of homosexuality, same sex marriage, and other deviations from traditional Christian morality as normative that has opened a steep chasm and motivates zealous proponents, for whom Vladimir Putin and a revived traditional Russia present a distinct challenge to their eventual global success. It is, then, this rebellion against God-created human nature and against natural law, itself, that is bitterly opposed to Russia’s affirmation of traditional religious belief. It is this divide now that forms the deepest basis of the profound conflict between East and West. Indeed, the world has been turned upside down, with Russia now defending Christianity, while the American and Western political and media elites viciously attack it. As Patrick Buchanan now rightly asks: “On whose side is God NOW on?” Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European intellectual history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in American intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English on historical subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations. Small sections of this article were originally published on the Communities Digital News website, April 16, 2014. Poster Comment: A long read but it examines many neglected and important issues about Ukraine and Russia. And it concludes pointedly with a trenchant Buchanan quote.
January 04, 2015 "ICH" - "Unz Review" - Anyone who has followed the ongoing crisis in Eastern Europe and Ukraine knows the very hostile view that the establishment news media and Washington political class have of President Vladimir Putin of Russia and his policies. In the halls of Congress and in the mainstream press—almost every night on Fox News—serious charges are proffered against Russia’s president and his latest outrages. Sanctions and bellicose measures get enacted by the House and Senate overwhelmingly, with only meagre opposition and almost no serious discussion.
Hatred of Vladimir Putin and Russia
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#1. To: TooConservative (#0)
God is always his own side. He rewards those who follow him, not necessarily in this life, but always in the next. And he punishes all who oppose him. Today, the United States slaughters 2 million babies per year and is rapidly moving to call buggery "marriage" and punish whomever will say it isn't. And we're shedding blood all over the world over money and power. Russia, by contrast, has clamped down on abortion and is reducing it. And Russia has re-embraced Jesus and Jesus' God. Russia is not giving way to the homosexual circus. Of course God looks more favorably on Russia than America now. He would be inconsistent if he didn't.
I knew someone would chime in with that view. I don't necessarily disagree. However, Russia doesn't have any record of great consistency so you can't exactly count on this to continue forever. I thought it was a sweeping essay and decently sourced. It might not dismiss entirely the Putin suspicions but it reduces them to a far more human dimension. Clearly, the liberal media outlets and the usual neocons and their warmonger puppets like Stain and Lady Lindsey and her dumber sister Ayotte, are foaming at the mouth to go toe to toe with the Russkies. Well, not them actually. They'll send some dumb farmkids from Iowa or Texas to Ukraine to fight for Western civilization. One can hope that the American public will finally see through these expensive and bloody shams and the beating of the war drums but the public seems to enjoy wallowing in paranoia to justify their own villainous warmongering and meddling across the globe.
It's related to the "Upper Middle Class is Evil" essay elsewhere on the board. The desires of the Upper Middle Class definitely skew American politics everywhere that is important. Relative to world standards, even working class and Projects-dwelling Americans are middle class or better. And it was war that caused America to emerge as the superpower which, in turn, was able to turn people who would not be much of anything anywhere else into comfortable middle class people. America needs war to maintain its grip on the world, and it needs that grip on the world to maintain its economic dominance that, in turn, is what supports a significant part of the American middle class. Lose the imperial dominance, and the RELATIVE American class structure may remain, but in absolute terms, the wealth of all but the very top will shift quite dramatically downward, on a par with what has happened in Greece. America avoids a Greek drama simply by overaweing a lot of the potential competition. But if a chink appears in the armor, the whole thing would come sliding down. The super-elite know that, but most everybody else knows it too, if only intuitively. Hence the instinctive reflex towards militarism and violence. Lose the empire, and we lose our status and our middle class lifestyle...that's the belief. It's essentially true.
I'm not sure Upper Middle Class describes these small-business entrepreneurs, academics at Ivy League institutions, lawyers, and upper-echelon government workers, top union employees in aircraft and automobile manufacture or railroads or airlines. They are upper class to me, not a part of the middle class at all. Though only a few decades back, many of them would have been squarely middle class. That only goes so far and is no reason to allow the disparity of wealth to expand like a metastasizing cancer. What's wrong, comrade, finally realize it's your ox that needs to be gored, not just the "rich" (a.k.a. "Republicans")? That's why Reihan Salam's little essay hit pretty close to home. It is not true. I can't believe you expect anyone to take such self-serving nonsense seriously. You sound like some ridiculous neocon, blathering the establishment lies about how WW II brought us out of the Great Depression which is nothing but fantasy spun to people who don't know much history. I guess you won't be treating us to any lectures on the social gospel and caring for the poor and working class for a while.
For the American Neocons, the emergence of a nationalist, Christian, and undemocratic Russia is perhaps too reminiscent of the “bad old days.” And despite very different circumstances, a non-conforming Russian state demanding any form of parity with the world’s “only remaining superpower” is out of the question. On the contrary, Boris Yeltsin was a Neocon favorite. Worth a look... Takimag is uneven in quality, sometimes excellent, sometimes really out there. I'll read through a bit at least but I always found the Trotsky accounts a little tedious. I just don't like Marxist politics and dialectic, probably too European for me. And that bit about the "hideously hot house in Mexico City" sounds stupid. What, as opposed to the air conditioned villas everyone else had. Fer God's sake, air conditioned homes were decades away. You could always post it here, put it in our archive. But I suppose it would be hard to find a good category so you could ever find it again. Maybe the Historical category though...
MY ox? Au contraire, mon frere. I am not "Upper Middle Class" or "Middle Class", or "Upper Class" or "Working Class"...or any class at all. I am a nobleman. I've been a well off one, and I've been a poor one, but wealth does not matter. What I have is a matter of divine gift, not a matter of the accumulation of wealth. That America doesn't acknowledge the existence of nobility doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Here, I think, we generally refer to it as "charisma". In any case, if we are to look at the economic interests of my current monetary class, I suppose I would be classified as "Upper Middle Class", according to your article. You would call me "Upper Class". A tally of my net worth would reveal me to be quite poor, however, as I have put my purse into my own head, and into the head of my wife and my offspring, and continue to do so. Accumulating material wealth that can rust and be stolen is unwise, so I don't. I accumulate experience and knowledge, so that there is substance behind my native superiority. Noblesse oblige, apres tout. But when it comes to economic policy, I of course think that the home mortgage deduction should be ended, that tax-free municipal bonds should become a thing of the past, that all income from whatever source derived should be taxed by the Social Security tax, without a cap. And in truth, I think that the whole tax system should be scrapped and replaced with a unitary gross wealth tax, without progressivity, that will tax every dollar exactly the same, and tax it only once each year. What ox have I to be gored? The "middle class tax breaks", and "upper tax class breaks", and "Earned income tax credit", should all be swept away. We should have a system of cradle to grave Medicare, paid out of the general fund, to provide for everybody's health insurance. We should do away with tax breaks for retirement funds and all of that nonsense and simply turn Social Security into a uniform universal retirement system (which it already is anyway), and pay for it out of the general fund (and end both the deductions game and the chasses-gardees of investment managers, who earn fabulous middle-man fees from the necessity of people to save for retirement, if they can. Creche-through-doctorate education should be public, and paid for out of tax coffers, with merit exams as the basis for entry. Harvard, with tens of billions in endowment, should be paying the unitary wealth tax on that endowment, not being allowed for it to grow perpetually tax free and yet not pay the full tuition and board for every student who attends. The point of the tax break is education, and yet the students still pay so that the fund can grow faster - it already has enough to pay all student costs and still grow. The whole system should be reformed, in ways that will markedly reduce the privilege of anybody who has any privilege, top or bottom, so that all face the government as individuals and there are no special rights carved out for special people. This is how it should be: gore everybody's ox. How will my ox be gored? Well, I would lose my mortgage deduction, and my pay would be subject to Social Security tax (until we enacted the Unitary Uniform Wealth Tax). My profession would cease to have a licensing requirement - the barriers to entry would be lower and people in it would earn less money. It is not a bad thing to democratize law. My Church would be taxed on its properties and gross wealth in the US. This might drive a divestment, so that resources are placed into improving the lot of people, as opposed to building marvelous facilities. That would be a good thing. I would remain a charismatic French Viscount. My wife would remain very beautiful. My daughter would remain a world class athlete and virtuoso musician. Why? Because God's gifts of charisma, intelligence, beauty, athleticism and musical skill are just that: God's gifts, and because I have diligently put my purse into our heads and bodies so that we do not HAVE, but we can DO. In fact, if you want me to LEAD this movement towards a better America and world, I am more than ready to do it and live in monastic poverty in order to do so. Grace and love will remain. I don't care about material things. My essence has never depended upon them and never will. But I do not think you will be clamoring to fall in line behind me, because I think that you, as most, are very enamored of the belief that if you play the angles right, you can amass material prosperity and then have security. But this is an illusion. Whatever you amass can be taken away. Only if it is integral to YOU can it not be taken away, not even in a prison. Not even if they take your head. They kill themselves if they take your head. They send you to God.
But when it comes to economic policy, I of course think that the home mortgage deduction should be ended, that tax-free municipal bonds should become a thing of the past, that all income from whatever source derived should be taxed by the Social Security tax, without a cap. And in truth, I think that the whole tax system should be scrapped and replaced with a unitary gross wealth tax, without progressivity, that will tax every dollar exactly the same, and tax it only once each year. What ox have I to be gored? The "middle class tax breaks", and "upper tax class breaks", and "Earned income tax credit", should all be swept away. We should have a system of cradle to grave Medicare, paid out of the general fund, to provide for everybody's health insurance. We should do away with tax breaks for retirement funds and all of that nonsense and simply turn Social Security into a uniform universal retirement system (which it already is anyway), and pay for it out of the general fund (and end both the deductions game and the chasses-gardees of investment managers, who earn fabulous middle-man fees from the necessity of people to save for retirement, if they can. Creche-through-doctorate education should be public, and paid for out of tax coffers, with merit exams as the basis for entry. Harvard, with tens of billions in endowment, should be paying the unitary wealth tax on that endowment, not being allowed for it to grow perpetually tax free and yet not pay the full tuition and board for every student who attends. The point of the tax break is education, and yet the students still pay so that the fund can grow faster - it already has enough to pay all student costs and still grow. Add in trust funds, foundations, eliminating "non-profits", etc. It would eliminate a lot of the rent-seeking behavior and moral hazard public policies we currently have. And it looks like an undesirable solution mostly if you want to join the upper classes in exploiting the loopholes and privileged set-asides (maybe by winning the lottery). You could argue it is a much fairer system and one designed to eliminate wealth and privilege disparities and incentives for grossly selfish behavior and a growing sense of a classed society like the Brits have had so long. After all, it is often entrance to the Ivy League schools and social set that provides a barrier to keep the "wrong people" out of their social networks and professional associations. They take in some tokens, racial and otherwise, but the bulk of slots (Ivy League, country clubs, etc.) are for the Yankee scum and their offspring.
On another thread, I spoke of the level at which things have to be done at the real world: organization of the cul-de-sac. It is true that having money makes it easier to organize people, not just because you can pay some - in fact, paying people to do something is one of the least effective ways of getting anything done, as every French king who ever hired mercenaries, or Mitt Romney with his "highly paid election consultants" can all tell you. What having money does, most of all, is give you ownership of your time, so you CAN organize people, and it allows things that require a capital investment to be done more quickly. Money should be converted into operating capital (example: get the backyard farms GOING, so that people start getting hands-on experience right away, because that gets everything moving faster than building up from zero). Right now, the national lottery is somewhere north of $317 million, which means a lump sum payment, after taxes, would be about $110 million. On another thread, I'll tell you what I will personally do with that money, if I win it, to change the world. But lets get off the cul-de-sac and speak of the ultimate levels of organization in America, federal, state and local government. There are a few amendments to the Constitution that do need to be made, most importantly concerning abortion. And these are important to the social order, because if you just cut off abortion rights right now, WITHOUT addressing the economic order, you will end up piling up 2 million welfare kids per year, year on year, and overwhelm our creaky system. Right now we're filling the gap with illegal aliens, but they don't take the full battery of benefits the way American poor do, because they don't dare. Let's, then, speak of the FINAL OBJECTIVE, the steady-state of the national political economy to which we should ultimately be striving - or at any rate to which I will lead you if you follow me. I do not believe in hiding the football. I think you state your objectives like a platform. But, unlike Democrats and Republicans, I think that you mean all of it, and you don't merely throw together a bunch of things that will appeal to some group or other. In fact, much of what I have to say is really unappealing in the short term. It is only if you truly understand that it is an objective fact that every other man and woman on the planet is your first cousin (however many times removed), and if you care about your family - all of it, even the ones you don't like - and care about the safety and dignity of mankind, that you will agree what has to be gone through to do right. So, let's look at what I would "do to you", to your country, if you followed me. First, we would frankly admit that it doesn't stop with country. Country is a staging area, because countries are sovereignties, like individuals. First we have to fix ourselves, then our immediate families. Then our neighborhoods and extended families. Then our town. Then our state. Then our country. Then the world. So we're not aiming at a "Fix America and pull up the drawbridge" thing. In fact, the reason for nationalism - for looking after our own first - is to give them a secure footing to enable them to reach out. At each stage, that is what we are about: building individuals, houses, families, communities, states and the country on firm bedrock, all of it, so that secure and happy people can reach out and help. How many times have you walked down the street and seen a suffering animal, or person, and thought "God, if only I could help!"? But you know that in truth, you CAN'T really help, other than maybe through a kind word or gesture, that will give a little moment of happiness but that won't actually lift the man or beast back to health and make whole. Imagine what Jesus (and Peter and Paul) were able to do: heal paralytics and raise the dead!, turning sorrow and despair into joy. Well, we can't. At least not yet. I personally, in secret where nobody saw, had God raise two small dead animals from the dead in my very hands, so I know that what is recorded in the Bible is not a story, and that God CAN do these things, today, if he CHOOSES, but he doesn't CHOOSE to. This is sad, but he is God and he is wise and he knows what he is doing. So we can't pine away for such powers. Rather, we have to accept the mission GIVEN TO US. THAT is what we're supposed to do, and Jesus didn't give us supernatural powers to do it. Our natural powers are enough. We will have supernatural help, though, if we do what we've been directed to do.) You have had those moments of "If only I could help!" So have I. All that follows is predicated on THAT - on really HELPING, and helping in such a way that the problems CEASE for a hundred million, and then for billions, of people because the earthly and human source of the problems cease. There will ALWAYS be the unearthly sources: the challenges of Satan, and the aggressive efforts of demons to sow pain. This is so, and WE cannot banish that. But by being better, and by resolutely marching in the ranks of God, we do drive the demons back, and God DOES reward those who do his will with greater power to hold the field once won. Until the world ends the demons will drive at people. OUR objective, in these policies of our "platform", is to reduce the incidence of HUMAN pressure on other humans that drives them downward. The world is STILL going to be filled with sexual obsession, with the will to domination, with cruel people wanting cruel things, and with greedy one-ways just out for themselves. THAT will not be ended until Christ returns, because we can't banish the Devil. But we can certainly stop behaving like devils ourselves. Sin will remain, but it can be channeled into things that sully the self, as oppose to utterly crush all of the other people around us. Ultimately, really, that would be the spiritual effect of a political victory: the crushing of bodies by poverty and domination would cease, and people who still be battling sexual sin and human nastiness - but they'd be doing it from a position of full bellies and the security of children. Utopia this will not be, for Utopia assumes that we can banish the Devil and change human nature. But in the real world, only God can banish the Devil, and he's already told us he isn't going to until the end. So, we can't banish the Devil, and we can't change human nature. But just as money, power and force are used to keep human beings in subjection to other human beings right now, largely in service of avarice and greed, power, force and money will still be used to keep other human beings in subjection - the difference will be that the ones help in subjection will be those who crave domination and material excess at the expense of everybody else. Somebody's dream will be crushed. That is always true in an evil world. Right now, the dreams of billions are crushed by a dire economic reality, SO THAT the dreams of a few extremely powerful and wealthy can be fulfilled. The reversal will simply be that those dreams of the current extremely powerful and wealthy will be crushed, and their system of control will be taken from them, they will be reduced (not utterly destroyed or killed - this is not Marxism), SO THAT, billions of others can live what would be a "lower middle class" or "working class" existence with homes and enough to eat, and intact families. The net quantity of suffering will be reduced overall, but the Ayn Rands of the world will be shrieking in moral agony, because their worldview will in fact be crushed out and held out by political force. That ain't Utopia. It's more like...Finland. But it's not really Finland either, for Finland has an ethno-racial glue underpinning it that America, and the world, will never have. And in Finland, the low population makes it easier. Finland has a highly educated population that works heavily in tech and finance, and the population is small, so there's a lot for few. That means that redistribution, even on the wrong principles, arrives at a pretty good result. America is vast and sprawling, with 300 million people and no ethnic majority. The unity that makes a Finland or a Sweden is not here. We can't rely on anything but the right ideas and steady purpose to unite us: blood, and even language, won't do it. And also, the Devil will always be trying to derail us. We have our work cut out for us. Still, let's talk on. Structurally, whatever we do has to steadily improve things over time. "Improve" has to be defined in terms of making people physically healthy. When people are mentally overstressed, their health collapses. When they don't eat well or are sheltered poorly or are exposed to toxic environments, their health suffers. Health is the BEST single material gauge of how well overall we are doing. A society that is rich but obese, full of diabetes and cancer, and dying young, is not happy and is not doing it right. That describes the oil sheikdoms: they're fantastically rich, and sickly, because their societies are built on bad principles. In strict economic terms, "improve" means that the level of poverty (objectively, not politically, defined) decreases while the overall economy either stays steady or expands. An economy that does not grow at all, but does not shrink, while the levels of health increase (remember: mental health is an aspect of health) is a society that is doing well. If it is growing, even better, but just marking time while internally improving is good. However, if the economy is shrinking (objectively measured), even if health and happiness is rising: this may be unsustainable over time. It may settle into a realistic level, but it may just keep shrinking. This is Greece or the USSR after it's fall. And that means that the gains will reverse and be lost, as the money runs out. The purpose is never to build a "socialist Utopia". Utopias are impossible in a world that the Devil ranges at large. But beyond that, one of the PURPOSES of socialism is the valuing of power and specifically the central power to redistribute and control - there are men who CRAVE this power and status. Again, that is an evil of the world. The answer is NOT to simply deny government that power SO THAT it can be concentrated in the hands of private individuals who distribute things to their OWN selfish personal benefit. No, the answer is to choose men with better angels as their leaders (and watch them to insure that remains so), who have proven up through the ranks (of cul-de- sac, family, town, state and country) that their motivations are right and their morals are properly aligned, who don't crave the power but who are seeking the right RESULT. So, now, let's talk even more concretely. To have an economy that grows or stays put while health increases within requires many things. At its most basic, it means paying for whatever government you have at a level that will not cause the economy to shrink successively so that it can't sustain. The purpose is not to tax as much as possible either. We're not seeking the peak of the Laffer Curve. We're seeking to do what government needs to do (with the intention of reducing that sphere as the "connective tissue" of family and community strengthens underneath and is able to bear more of the load. Government expenditure should be a bit of a "sinking fund", with the intention that heavy expenditures up front are capital expenditures that improve the structure itself and don't require permanent outlays. So, the issue is never "deficit spending" as such. If an overall economy is growing faster than government debt, a government CAN permanently run a deficit and increase debt each year without ever risking a default. It CAN, but there are very good reasons not to do that. Namely: when you run a permanent debt structure, you get a whole class of people stockjobbing off of government debt, and a whole class of bureaucrat - very well paid bureaucrat - with an interest in arcane financial manipulations. Arcane financial manipulations can, for the first generation and maybe part of the second, really be for the public good. Soon enough, though, ministers will aspire to those positions whose purpose is not purely to use their arcane talents to address the public good, but who, rather, are seeking their own position and advancement. That is where we are now with the Fed and with government contracting. It is where the monarchies of Europe all ended up. We need to be headed in the direction of completely retiring the national debt and getting the government out of the borrowing business. This will, of course, change everything, and radically demote the power of finance. And that's part of the point: finance is complicated and secretive, and is an alchemy that can only be done by a few (at immense profit and therefore immense moral hazard). But GOVERNMENT finance should be simple housekeeping, understood by the average person, precisely because when it is arcane, it becomes opaque, and behind that opacity, corruption. Wherever Internet sites are unmonitored and people notice it, they fill up with porn. Wherever finances are hidden, they become cancerous with corruption. The Devil is everywhere, and he is insistent. So you have to remove the crevasses where he can hide. And that means you have to forego some tools that are useful in the interest of keeping things simple and transparent. EFFICIENCY is not a virtue when it requires experts to such a degree that control is lost. Returning again to the matter of grand economic strategy, over time and over nations, the average total growth rate of absolute wealth seems to be about 3%. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower. But overall, over time, it's about 3%. This is similar to the average growth rate over time of the price of real estate, for very good reason: MOST real estate is still on-the- ground stuff (skyscrapers, et al, change the picture and make the vastly expanded floor space from technology the key, but there are not all that many of those relative to the whole market). It is the growth in population that, over time, drives up real estate prices. Net overall 3% takes into account population flows and booms in some area offsetting busts in others. As everything is built on land, all people require some space to live, and population growth means more space is needed, real estate is the most lateral of all needs. No wonder, then, it has grown on average, over time, at 3%, a parallel to the overall gross economic growth of nations over time. Now, what that 3% number means is that if one were able to tax the ENTIRE wealth of an economy, that a 3% gross wealth tax is the equivalent of a 100% income and capital gains tax along with a 3% property tax. If the economy overall grows at 3%, and you tax all property, capital and gains at 3%, you've captured the whole economy. Therefore, when considering the finances of a nation, one must look at the gross wealth, and then look at the level of taxation and of government expenditure. If government taxation exceeds 3% of gross wealth, the result will be an eating of seed corn that will diminish the economy over time (because the average growth of 3% is very unlikely to be changed, over time, by some higher short term boom - 3% over time is where things have settled out for centuries). If government expenditure exceeds 3% of gross wealth, the seed corn may not be immediately eaten, if the government runs up debt, but eventually a structural impediment to repairing anything will be built in. When you look at the gross wealth of the United States, you find that the numbers are highly variable. The FED used to publish a Gross National Wealth figure. They stopped. Now there's a Net National Wealth figure, of about $85 trillion, that disregards debt. Trouble is, debt is ITSELF wealth, an asset, to those who hold the debt. The old Gross National Wealth figures were in the $140T to $160 trillion range. Obama just submitted a $4 trillion budget, and it's still got a deficit. The states cost about $2 trillion to run. So, the total cost of government in the US is now up to about $6.5 trillion per year. If we look at NET national wealth, the $85 trillion figure, to pay for government without incurring debt would require a 7.65% wealth tax figure! That would be the equivalent of over a 200% income tax. Staggering. Of course GROSS wealth is the key figure. Even then, assuming the higher $160T figure for gross national wealth, the gross wealth tax would have to be set at 4.1%, but the whole economy grows at only 3%. In other words, right now, we are destroying the foundations of our economy, eating them away like rust. When Louis XIV began to do this with his opulent Versailles and his aggressive imperial wars, France was the European colossus, essentially unstoppable. France's advance was slowed, but not stopped, throughout his reign. But by the time of Louis XVI, in 1789, the interest on the national debt of France would have consumed 100% of the tax revenue of the state. 100%. Of course that never happened. They had a Revolution instead. We're in our Louis XIV phase. Still immensely strong and wealthy. We CAN turn the ship of state. But if we don't, then we will head towards our Louis XVI phase, and our Revolution, and when that happens, it will be Trotskyite in its fury and intensity. So, it's not as though the need for change can be ignored. The changes I propose are the BEST, in that they are the most humane and will result in something sustainable. Other changes are possible. But the one thing that is certain, from the numbers, is that national survival is impossible on the current trajectory. We are SPENDING 4.1% of the (maximal) national wealth every year now, (7.65% of the Net National Wealth). We are eating the seed corn. Take it from a French nobleman: this will CERTAINLY lead to total collapse, and revolution, and revolution will be bloody and Marxist. There will also be the Fascist counterpart. The Fascists and the Communists (to borrow names) will battle over America, and whether we end up with Mussolini or Stalin at the end of it all, the loss of life and human suffering will be unbelievable. We can avoid it all and have a Finlandish future, but it will require real CHANGE, PAINFUL change, giving up cherished ideas and policies in exchange for something better. Let's look at Louis XIV's France. That is where we are. France did what Louis wanted. And had Louis been smarter, France would have won all of Europe. Louis' two fatal errors were these: excessive luxury and favoritism for the noble elite, and all war, all the time, everywhere. Yes, France grew in size by about a quarter, and was "France the Great and Terrible", and all of Europe spent the better part of a century in various combinations struggling to slow the French advance. Yes, Versailles was opulent, and everybody everywhere emulated it. But a 64 years after Louis' death, those decisions caused a Revolution. Now suppose instead that Louis had not been so grandiose. His creation of a civil service profoundly modernized France (much as the creation of the Mandarins made ancient China a unitary state). But Versailles and the whole gallery of pomp cost 10-15% of France's budget every year. Immense sums of money, on parties. Had the bulk of that money simply not been spent, the wealth left in the hands of the populace would have been considerable. And had Louis taxed the nobility, they would have been unhappy, but the civil service and the army actually RAN France, in part because Louis had nearly died in a nobles' revolt when he rose to the throne as a child. The Fronde had already been put down. Taxing the nobility would have made them...unhappy. But that's it. Nothing more. They were already a spent force militarily, France's government was already middle class, thanks to Louis, and firmly in his grip. He didn't NEED to mollycoddle the nobles to the extent he did. By doing so, he made a patent of nobility incredibly valuable: it meant that one paid no taxes. And thus, the competition of the wealthy merchants to BECOME nobles, by being offered a patent, was extreme. This ended up gaining lots of bribes for lots of corrupt ministers, but it ultimately depleted the coffers of France. Louis was wise on many things, but he allowed himself to be trapped by his own senses, and he let excessive softness towards the super-rich of France weaken the state by eating the seed corn. And then of course war. War everywhere. Louis made war on his neighbors. He added Alsace and Lorraine and half of Flanders to France. All sorts of Caribbean islands were added to France. His explorers took the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley. The overseas imperial enterprises were quite profitable; the frontier wars, less so. Still, had he simply contented himself with territorial gains and overseas empire, these expensive wars would have been bearable. However, he also engaged in endless meddlesome wars. The War of Spanish Succession, over putting a Bourbon on the throne of Spain. He succeeded in doing so, but at dramatic cost. Most fatally, Louis was fond of war, but he didn't keep his eye focused in one place long enough to FINISH OFF his enemies. The most incredible example of this occurred in 1690 at the Battle of Beachy Head. Louis' finance minister, Colbert, had forged for Louis the world's most modern navy. Big ships, designed by engineers, heavy weapons, trained crews: the French sailed their fleet into the English Channel, encountered a combined English/Dutch Fleet, and damned near destroyed it. The English and Dutch suffered grievous losses and fled with their remants up the Thames. France controlled the English Channel. The dream of Napoleon 100 years later was actually achieved by Louis XIV. The French Navy controlled the English Channel, and kept control of it for a year and a half. During that time, England was in panic. France had the largest and best trained army in Europe, and the French controlled the English channel. England had just undergone the "Glorious Revolution" a year and a half before - the English political situation was in flux, and Ireland and Scotland were restive. And the French had kicked in the front door and established naval supremacy in the Channel. All Louis XIV had to do to conquer England and cut it apart, leaving Scotland and Ireland independent, and perhaps even incorporate England into the French Empire as a vassal state (thereby dooming the Dutch as well), was to stretch out his hand. He had the fleet, he had the army. All he had to do was march it to the ports, send it across the Channel, and conquer. Had he done so, all of history would have been changed. His wars in Germany and Holland would have become easier, because the English could not finance it. The Americas would have become French (and Spanish). Grand strategic victory was within France's grasp...and Louis simply didn't see it. He was so utterly obsessed with taking castles in Germany, that he didn't free up the soldiers. He didn't free up the troops. He had made his POINT to the English and Dutch, established French naval superiority, sailed grandly up and down the Channel for a year and a half. But then he turned his eye away from the fleet. The grand gesture had been made. The fleet sailed back into port, tied up, and rotted away over the years. And that was that. Instead of ENDING the wars of Europe with a stroke, Louis XIV simply let a "lesson be taught", and turned back to endless wars on the frontier. Yes, France's frontier did expand. But at the cost of endless warfare that drowned the treasury. Had Louis, instead, decided to WIN the wars decisively, that needed to be done in London, not on the Rhine. He didn't see it. He was unfocused. He liked playing with his soldiers. Colbert gave him the strongest fleet in the world, and actually defeated the combined British and Dutch fleet...and Louis was content to tie up that great fleet and let it rot. Idiot. Instead of ending the wars in a fell swoop and having the blessings of peace, the "Sun King" prolonged them by decades, bankrupted France, and let England live to rise again. So, between forever war and favoritism and excessive spending on the court, Louis set France on the path to bankruptcy and Revolution. I don't really need to show all the parallels to America, do I? This has gone long, so I'll cut short this segment. The proper strategy for America is to get our spending down first to 3% of national wealth, and then down below that to have true growth again. To do that, we have to rethink everything, starting with forever war and world empire. We cannot afford it, and it needs to end. Secondly, we need to end the obsession with the police state. Consider. Adjusting for size, if France had American-style incarceration rates, the French would have 460,000 people in prison. In fact, they have about 45,000, less than a tenth. And yet, they have a far lower murder rate and generally lower violent crime. In America we like to use prisons. We like to have huge police forces. These are really armies and fortresses, and they are an expensive luxury that does us no good. We have to reign back this obsession with the "Rule of PETTY Law" in America, because if we DON'T, then our excessive love for force, for our concept of law and regimentation, and for heavily military forces at home and abroad, will surely bankrupt us and destroy the country. It's not a question of IF, it's a question of how long until we have burnt up the national wealth and hocked it all so deeply we can't afford any of it. Then the troops can't be paid, and a highly regimented, highly militarized society stops paying its soldiers, and then you have a violent revolution. That's what happens. Take it from a Frenchman: that is what happens. And the reason WHY is deeply economic. I've said before: American forces need to be pulled out of the abroad, brought home, slashed by 75%, with the remainder placed on the Mexican Border. REAL threats are to be addressed. Imaginary threats are to be ignored, because we do not have the wealth to fight them. Note that this means that Russian wins the Donbass, and Ukraine doesn't join the EU. It means that ISIS wins, unless the ARABS (and Jews) decide to fight it. It means that the Chinese dominate their region. It means that the ARABS have to face off against the Iranians. It means that we cease to police the world. That goes a long way towards rectifying our finances, but it doesn't go all the way. We'll talk more in the next installment.
Essays are pretty long to read. I don't find much that is concrete in what you're suggesting. The devil is always in the details. I think you have to start with some simple fundamental changes. And a lot of oxes would get gored. Many hogs at the federal trough would have to get chased away from it. Fundamental laws need to change and not by having a lawless president nullifying them. I think you fail to account for any real possibility of change after the poisonous Obama regime has so wrecked the stability of rule of law in this country.
I see a baseline drawn by the bankruptcy of SSI in 2017 or so followed by the bankruptcy of Social Security itself in around 2025. At any rate, those are the current projections. We are already well past the point of painless corrections.
You don't find these things concrete? Cut the military by 75%, bring home the troops and place the remainder on the US border. Reduce incarceration rates by 90%, eliminate most prisons and eliminate 75% of the police forces. This will entail a radical reduction in the enforceable laws and regulations. These two expedients alone will save on the order of a half-trillion dollars per year. This is also very concrete: Eliminate all current forms of federal, state and local taxes, fees, excises, imposts and tolls. Replace the tax system with a single, unitary gross wealth tax. Tax all assets (stocks, bonds, bank accounts, real estate, cars, boats, planes, gold, silver, crops) and the payout value of all insurance policies, at the rate of 2% per year. There are no tax deductions. There are no progressive rate scales. All individuals are taxed, and each corporate entity is separately taxed. Corporations and similar entities are "people", after all - the Supreme Court has said so - and "people" are taxed. Note that this means that corporations with complicated tax-avoidance and liability-avoidance structures, or companies that hide their ownership and operate in secrecy will be destroyed by the tax code in one year, by being separately taxed, at 2% of gross, at each level of corporate existence. The purpose of corporations is to provide insurance for individuals against individual loss. There is a price to be paid for avoiding personal liability, and that price is taxation. The current spaghetti bowl organizational charts are intended to be opaque so as to facilitate asset shifting for tax avoidance purposes, and to hide management authority for legal liability purposes. Legal persons bear taxation, without deductions. If you want the PRIVILEGE of legal isolation from liability, then you will PAY for the privilege of a corporate existence by paying taxes. The new tax code would force corporations to reorganize themselves into simple one-tiered structures, giving transparency and simplicity - and allowing for accountability. Include a page on the tax form by which people can mark the department and branches and percentages to which they would prefer to their see their tax dollars go. The results will be tallied and published so as to indicate the desires of the people. Swedish rules on entity taxation: all entities tax returns are published as a matter of public record. Individuals exist by the grace of God, so if individuals choose to do business in their own name, their tax records are secret. However, entities do not naturally exist and are wholly creatures of government. Corporations, LLCs and legal partnerships, exist purely as creatures of government, according to government rules, and one of those rules should be that they have no right to financial secrecy. The purpose is to stop individuals from "incorporating" and otherwise muddying up their lives and the lives of the courts by creating all sorts of fictitious entities to "shield" themselves from imaginary liability. Remaining an individual retains the shield of personal secrecy. Incorporate, and you are partly a creature of the state, and one of the rules of the state is financial transparency. This is intended to remove the need for arduous discovery process to uncover assets. Companies will have to maintain simple structures to avoid multiple layers of taxation. And they won't be able to hide any assets: that is tax evasion. Fundamental reform of the legal code. End civil discovery: it is a violation of the 4th Amendment. End separate civil/criminal trials: it is a violation of double jeopardy. Curtail prosecutorial discretion. Any company that does business in the United States must file US-style transparent tax returns. Refuse to do so, and the American market is closed to you. Most foreign companies engage in all sorts of secrecy and corruption. The purpose of the American tax transparency law is specifically to remove this cloak and dagger from US entities. Of course, the ability to play that game would give foreign companies an advantage. The simple expedient to cut off that advantage is this: if you want to sell anything in or into the US, you have to file US tax returns, and that means transparency. The net result will be that many foreign companies will cease to do business in America. And that, in turn, will recapture that portion of the market for American producers. No, tax transparency will NOT cause the nation to cease to exist. The Swedes have tax transparency, and Sweden has done very well for a long time. Those are very concrete things, all of them. They say how we're going to COLLECT money, effects that will have, and how we're going to stop SPENDING money. It speaks of how we will change our position and configuration on the use of force. There is much more. The bottom line, really, is that everybody is treated the SAME - no special perks for the powerful OR the poor. And also, sunshine is the best disinfectant. And no, you don't have the right to hide wrongdoing. But also, the law and regulation books should be taken apart and people left to be free - and inefficient. Inefficiency leads to full employment. Americans will not pay the cheapest price. They will pay the price necessary to keep American businesses alive and Americans employed. By taxing at the highest practical level initially, and making the necessary cuts, a budget surplus will be produced that will then retire federal, state and local debt. Once the debt is eliminated, tax rates will drop.
At any rate, those are the current projections. We are already well past the point of painless corrections. What I want to see, what I have written, really fixes the situation and is fair. Currently, it is unrealistic: Americans don't WANT to be fair. So, accepting unfairness as a given, to shore up Social Security we tax the whole compensation with the Social Security tax: ALL wages, including stock options should be taxed by Social Security and Medicare. THAT will close the gap and produce a surplus. Securities transactions must be subject to the sales or transfer taxes just as clothes, cars and houses are. Capital gains should be taxed at the same levels as the income tax, for capital gains are simply another form of income. The estate tax should be abolished. Instead, inheritance should be treated as exactly what it IS: INCOME to the recipients. There should be no estate tax, but whoever inherits anything should pay income tax on the inheritance.
The problem being that you could work a lifetime and not dislodge even a single current policy and replace it with the desired remedy. You'd have to stage a complete revolution to implement something like that. It is far more sweeping than FDR's New Deal.
You'd have to stage a complete revolution to implement something like that. It is far more sweeping than FDR's New Deal. Well, I could win the Powerball tonight. It's almost $400 million. If I take the lump sum, after taxes I'll still have about $111 million. And that is plenty to set about changing the world. If I win, I'll invite you to have a front row seat to the change, starting in my little garden.
You'd have to have an island. And if you succeeded, a military. Too many elites would not tolerate a successful rival system. The danger of a Good Example.
I'll drop my resume to be your self defense force advisor:)
"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)
Too many elites would not tolerate a successful rival system. The danger of a Good Example. Would I really? No, I don't think so. Follow along and learn. First, foremost, I know from direct divine intervention that God IS, and I know by studying the miracles he has left behind WHO he is. That, in turn, caused me to study intently what it is that he WANTS of each of us. In his own words. So, I have already internalized God's moral code. It's not about believing - I don't believe, I know - it's about knowing what he WANTS. I do. I also know that there are other spirits in the world that are hostile to us. I'll generically call them "demons". But though the demons be powerful, they are not AS powerful as God (who created them, too). But certainly the demons are more powerful that ME, or than these "elites" I am supposed to be so concerned about. No. It is by God's grace that I know how to overcome the demons: by turning to God and having HIM do it. The God that preserves me from demons also preserves, and will preserve, me against mere mortal men, all doomed to die, as am I also. "Then up spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate, 'To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?'" Once you know the truth of the world, and of the beings without it and within it, and the physics, and who commands it, you fear nothing, for there is literally nothing to fear save God. And if you fear him properly you will do as he said, and not really have ANYTHING to fear. You may be killed, but then again, God protects me from demons. Surely if he bothers to extend a massive lottery win to me, he will also protect me from other men, as long as I stick to the path that he has pointed out. But then too, having been granted a singular victory by God in the form of the largest single person lottery jackpot in history, it is obvious that God intends me to carry into execution that which I have planned. It is equally obvious that the Devil will attack. But of course the Devil will be thwarted by God's hand each time, for as long as I stay to the path. God did not heal my broken neck and undo my paralysis and show his mastery over life and death to me, and also grant me $150 million dollars in a night, just to allow me to be swallowed whole by demons and petty men. No indeed. I have been given the football to DO something with it, and I will. Will I eventually be killed? Perhaps. If not by a bullet then by a heart attack or cancer or accident. God will eventually harvest this fruit as he does all. That's ok. If I lived forever, I would be trapped within the circles of this world, like a caterpillar that never was able to spin a chrysalis so as to emerge a butterfly. God knows what he is doing. And I know what he is doing too (at least in broad brushstrokes, as he has revealed it). So there is literally nothing to fear. Live, it is well: one can press on. Die, it is well, for Gan Eden awaits, and then the Resurrection, and the City. It's a win/win any way you look, provided you stay on the path. The immediate effect of the win would be the promise of instant liberation from the need to work for a salary. My time would be my own very soon. This alone is an immense gift, one of the biggest, for there are many things to do, and all of them require supervision. I would not, however, immediately quit my job, for I hold a position of responsibility, and it would do a grave disservice to my colleagues and to the owners of the business for whom I work for me to simply leave them in the lurch. There would be a transition - a relatively rapid one, but a proper transition nonetheless. Rapidity is necessary to separate myself from any work-related liability. I already know my sins, the people I have wronged in some way. I cannot undo the wrongs, and many are probably long forgotten. Nevertheless I can lighten the financial burdens of these people with gifts. No gift tax is owed on monies up to $13,000 per donor, per person, and none is owed at all on payment of medical care or educational expenses. I do not propose to bring everybody I have ever wronged onto a payroll, but I certainly will lighten their load as a free gift. As far as those who have wronged me? I forgave everybody who ever wronged me long ago. I do not hold onto grudges. Forgive everything, and you will be forgiven everything. Jesus said that. Therefore, I do it. This means that I don't worry about anything. I don't fear death, and I don't fear judgment either. But I would like the ease the temporal burden of those I have wronged. That will take some time, of course, but it will be a persistent background activity. Any actual legal debt shall be paid, in full. I shall also carefully consider any of my crimes, as well as any sins, and weigh the question of statutes of limitations. Old crimes are a means by which Satan can move men to attack a man. God forgives sins, but men do not forgive breaches of their rules until a certain time has passed. Likewise, any sort of professional liability. I will certainly purchase professional liability insurance, not to protect cash, but rather, because when there are major insurance amounts at stake, the insurance company lawyers are zealous in defending against all claims, and skilled at it. Let them worry about such things. What I shall be doing for awhile will not raise anybody's interest in any case. As you can see, one begins with the spirit, for that is everything, it is the only thing that survives. Everything else dies and falls to dust. By keeping my spirit very clean, forgiving, and helping, God's grace will protect me from demons (and the men inspired by those demons) for as long as he chooses. I myself being clean and pure, I then must turn to practical matters of money management. The purpose is not to hoard and become fascinated by money. Quite the contrary! The purpose is to place the money in such a way that it continues to generate the freedom to supervise those things that must be supervised, to finance those things that must be financed, and to help the people in my ambit needing help. That's why God gave me the money in the first place. It shall, then, be invested, preliminarily, in a way that fulfills several important criteria. But more on this later, for now I must sleep. Perhaps when I awake I will be a winner, and you'll be able to watch what I do instead of reading the overall plan. And so: to bed.
You're all set except for the part where you actually win the lottery. I assume you passed math classes through junior high so you do understand the odds of you actually winning much. "But", the lottery player always responds, "someone's going to win so I do have a chance!"
I assume you passed math classes through junior high so you do understand the odds of you actually winning much. "But", the lottery player always responds, "someone's going to win so I do have a chance!" A lottery win would be an obvious gift from God, obviously, and a sign to proceed full speed.
I had a relative who years back used to spend hundreds of dollars sometimes on Lotto tickets just to "up" his odds. It is usually some person who spends $1 or $2 bucks or splits the cost of one ticket who wins it all. I remember when in college some factory in the NYC area where 7 people chipped in for one ticket, they won and split the winnings. Collect all that money from Lotto brave Vicomte13 and donate it to St Jude's Children's Hospital. Donate in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Store up your treasure in Heaven! We are mere pilgrims on this earth...pilgrims in an unholy land.
"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)
I can boil down the hate on Putin based on these few reasons: A) The Neoncons/Foreign policy establishment/MIC fear/hate Putin because he blocks their foreign policies like attacking Syria, etc. B) The secularists have to contend with a white Christian country not going in line with the secularization trend in the first world. Russia is out of step and her serving as a powerful beacon for Christian centered nationhood is a threat to them. It is the emphasis on the white and Christian that they have a problemn with. They could care less (or little) if non white people are harsh on gays, etc. C) Ethnic hatred of Russia by ethnicities that immigrated to the west as well as ingrained hatred of Russians, Slavs and Orthodox Christians found in Western European culture. Into this group is the subset of people who never let go of the "Cold War" world view. For example, the Canadian PM trying to appease Canadian West Ukrainian origin voter, etc. In the case of Jews, conservative Hassidic Jews support Putin because he has been helpful in reviving Russian Jewish religious life but other nationalist Jews hate Putin because he plays Israel off against Iran and Arab interests and does not automatically support Israel and uses Israel as a football against American diplomacy.
It may be simpler than that. America needs an enemy, a credible one, one whose size and capability justifies continuous military spending.
Very true. However, the Ukrainian Prime Minister announced today they are fighting the regular Russian Army, and not separatists.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
I believe you intended to say, "American government."
He has a track record for truthfulness comparable to Baghdad Bob. And he clearly took a leading role in the Maidan coup to depose the former elected government.
Here's US Assistant Secretary of State (and wife of PNAC Co-Founder Robert Kagan) Victoria Nuland spreading diplomacy and love Here she is talking about the $5 BILLION DOLLARS the US has blown on Ukraine (Note the Chevron Logo) No one ever asked the Citizens of the US if they wanted $5 Billion Dollars of their tax money spent to overthrow the Ukraine government Why do the People of the US Tolerate this? They don't even demand an audit. It's like taking candy from babies. So they deserve what they get. Here's VP Joe Biden's son Hunter, who was kicked out of the Navy for Drugs, and has landed himself a seat on the board of the biggest gas company in Ukraine- Burisma.com- it's fun when you're part of the elite, no?
The FACT remains, the Russian Army is the main group carrying the fight in Ukraine.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
So what! Ukraine has had several coups, and guess who has been behind them? The worst clashes of Euromaidan broke out after the parliament did not accede to demands that the Constitution of Ukraine be rolled back to its pre-2004 form, which would lessen presidential power. Police and protesters fired guns, with both live and rubber ammunition, in multiple locations in Kiev. The riot police advanced towards Maidan later in the day and clashed with the protesters but did not fully occupy it. The fights continued through the following days, in which the vast majority of casualties took place. On the night of 21 February, Maidan vowed to go into armed conflict if Yanukovych did not resign by 10:00 AM. Subsequently, the riot police retreated and Yanukovych and many other high government officials fled the country. Protesters gained control of the presidential administration and Yanukovych's private estate. The next day, the parliament impeached Yanukovych, replaced the government with a pro- European one, and ordered that Yulia Tymoshenko be released from prison. In the aftermath, the Crimean crisis began amid pro-Russian unrest.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
Mostly George Soros and those elements at the State Department who share his goals.
A constant accusation which is never presented with any facts. There are plenty of foreign fighters from western Europe mostly. There are native militia guys. No one has found a single Spetsnaz in eastern Ukraine.
How about FSB? Who are the main rebel leaders? Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen, was appointed prime minister of the self- declared Donetsk People's Republic and has been a prominent public face for the rebels. He's the rebel leader who after speaking with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak agreed that the plane's flight data recorders would be handed over. According to Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are rumors Borodai is a Russian intelligence officer who has reached the rank of general in the FSB, the successor to the KGB. "Borodai himself has denied (the rumors), but I would say that given his trips back and forth to Moscow, he has certainly been consulting with parts of Russian intelligence over the past couple of months," he said. In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Borodai denied any responsibility for the downing of MH17. Another name that crops up frequently is that of Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, the self-proclaimed defense minister for the people's republic. Ukrainian President compares MH17 to 9/11 03:05 According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Strelkov on July 17 "posted a social media report bragging about the shoot-down of a transport plane -- at which point when it became clear it was civilian, they pulled down that particular report." Also a Russian, Strelkov was a military commander in the rebel redoubt of Slovyansk before it was retaken by Ukrainian forces, later reappearing in Donetsk city. He was also present in Crimea at the time of its annexation. Added to an EU sanctions list in April, he was described as being on the staff of the Russian military's main Intelligence Directorate. BTW, it takes 18 months training to fire the missile, which shot dowm MH-17
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
You do not need "experts" to know or claim that there are all types of rumors. But it takes little training to confiscate and hide data from the air traffic control in Kiev and to classify "the investigation".
"FACT"? Is it some funny acronym?
And you might recall nobody on FR defended and stood up for Putin more than me. That was the reason I was banned from the site.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
I was banned after posting an article criticizing Yeltsin. Funny.
The holes in the plane were from a missile, and not an aircraft cannon. That is CERTAIN.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
Is it remarkable there are FSB or Spetz in the Ukraine? We have DEA agents in Mexico. What is more remarkable is that the USA, a whole continent and a half away wants to have a say in what happens at Russia's border. Russia's actions are perfectly understandable and rational. It is right next door to Russia and they share religion, culture, history, language and ethnicity with each other. I have no idea why the USA has a dog in the Ukraine fight.
A dog and $5 Billion Dollars, as US Assistant Sec of State Victoria Nuland has detailed in the video in post #27 above. Why do you think the US would "invest" $5 Billion dollars of taxpayers money in Ukraine? That money could have done a lot here. Who benefits if Ukraine does what Washington DC wants? Why is there a Chevron logo opposite the US Flag when this Nuland scumbag is talking? Maybe Chevron is going to benefit?
I never mentioned the role of the United States, and my concern is between Russia and Ukraine. I am well aware of the commonality between Ukraine and Russia. My wife is half Ukrainian and half Russian. The fact that they are brothers is all the more reason there should not be a conflict between the two. Quite frankly the conflict is downright evil, and there is no way it can be justified. Let me repeat that again, the conflict is downright evil.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
So she is 100% Russian. Just like an American Anglo-Saxon marrying a British Island Anglo-Saxon produce a 100% Anglo-Saxon child. There is no ethnic tribe or genetic component to "Ukrainian". The Ukraine means "the borderland" where the same people were cut off from competing empires.
I understand that, and Ukraine is the old Rus. I'm very familiar with the history of the area.
“Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen, from the grave.” John Chrysostom www.evidenceforJesusChrist.org
As Patrick Buchanan now rightly asks: “On whose side is God NOW on?”
#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Of course God looks more favorably on Russia than America now. He would be inconsistent if he didn't.
#3. To: TooConservative (#2)
One can hope that the American public will finally see through these expensive and bloody shams and the beating of the war drums but the public seems to enjoy wallowing in paranoia to justify their own villainous warmongering and meddling across the globe.
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
The desires of the Upper Middle Class definitely skew American politics everywhere that is important.
Relative to world standards, even working class and Projects-dwelling Americans are middle class or better.
But if a chink appears in the armor, the whole thing would come sliding down. The super-elite know that, but most everybody else knows it too, if only intuitively. Hence the instinctive reflex towards militarism and violence. Lose the empire, and we lose our status and our middle class lifestyle...that's the belief. It's essentially true.
#5. To: TooConservative, BorisY, Trotsky neocons, progressive globalist scum, mainstream REAL Republicans, *The Two Parties ARE the Same* (#0)
At times this paternal reverence continues to break forth, in unlikely sources. On National Review Online, a few years back, Neoconservative writer Stephen Schwartz wrote:
To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists and Stalinists in their second childhood make of it what they will.” [See Professor Paul Gottfried's commentary on Takimag.com, April 17, 2007]
The New Face of National Review (April 17, 2007, Paul Gottfried)
The D&R terrorists hate us because we're free, to vote second party
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#6. To: hondo68 (#5)
(Edited)
#7. To: TooConservative (#4)
What's wrong, comrade, finally realize it's your ox that needs to be gored,
#8. To: Vicomte13 (#7)
In any case, if we are to look at the economic interests of my current monetary class, I suppose I would be classified as "Upper Middle Class", according to your article. You would call me "Upper Class". A tally of my net worth would reveal me to be quite poor, however, as I have put my purse into my own head, and into the head of my wife and my offspring, and continue to do so. Accumulating material wealth that can rust and be stolen is unwise, so I don't. I accumulate experience and knowledge, so that there is substance behind my native superiority. Noblesse oblige, apres tout.
#9. To: TooConservative (#8)
#10. To: Vicomte13 (#9)
#11. To: All (#10)
It's not a question of IF, it's a question of how long until we have burnt up the national wealth and hocked it all so deeply we can't afford any of it. Then the troops can't be paid, and a highly regimented, highly militarized society stops paying its soldiers, and then you have a violent revolution.
#12. To: TooConservative (#10)
I don't find much that is concrete in what you're suggesting. The devil is always in the details.
#13. To: TooConservative (#11)
I see a baseline drawn by the bankruptcy of SSI in 2017 or so followed by the bankruptcy of Social Security itself in around 2025.
#14. To: Vicomte13 (#12)
#15. To: TooConservative (#14)
The problem being that you could work a lifetime and not dislodge even a single current policy and replace it with the desired remedy.
#16. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
If I win, I'll invite you to have a front row seat to the change, starting in my little garden.
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#15)
If I win, I'll invite you to have a front row seat to the change, starting in my little garden.
#18. To: TooConservative, redleghunter (#16)
You'd have to have an island. And if you succeeded, a military.
#19. To: Vicomte13 (#18)
#20. To: TooConservative, redleghunter (#19)
You're all set except for the part where you actually win the lottery.
#21. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative, GarySpFc (#20)
"But", the lottery player always responds, "someone's going to win so I do have a chance!"
#22. To: Vicomte13, TooConservative, A Pole (#1)
#23. To: Pericles (#22)
#24. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Russia, by contrast, has clamped down on abortion and is reducing it. And Russia has re-embraced Jesus and Jesus' God. Russia is not giving way to the homosexual circus.
#25. To: TooConservative, Pericles (#23)
America needs an enemy, a credible one, one whose size and capability justifies continuous military spending.
#26. To: GarySpFC (#24)
However, the Ukrainian Prime Minister announced today they are fighting the regular Russian Army, and not separatists.
#27. To: TooConservative, All (#26)
(Edited)
#28. To: TooConservative (#26)
He has a track record for truthfulness comparable to Baghdad Bob.
#29. To: TooConservative (#26)
And he clearly took a leading role in the Maidan coup to depose the former elected government.
#30. To: GarySpFC (#29)
So what! Ukraine has had several coups, and guess who has been behind them?
#31. To: GarySpFC (#28)
The FACT remains, the Russian Army is the main group carrying the fight in Ukraine.
#32. To: TooConservative (#31)
#33. To: GarySpFC (#32)
(Edited)
According to Andrew Kuchins, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are rumors
BTW, it takes 18 months training to fire the missile, which shot dowm MH-17
#34. To: GarySpFC (#28)
The FACT remains, the Russian Army is the main group carrying the fight in Ukraine
#35. To: A Pole (#33)
You do not need "experts" to know or claim that there are all types of rumors.
#36. To: GarySpFC (#35)
And you might recall nobody on FR defended and stood up for Putin more than me. That was the reason I was banned from the site.
#37. To: A Pole (#33)
But it takes little training to confiscate and hide data from the air traffic control in Kiev and to classify "the investigation".
#38. To: GarySpFC, TooConservative, A Pole (#32)
#39. To: Pericles (#38)
I have no idea why the USA has a dog in the Ukraine fight.
#40. To: Pericles (#38)
It is right next door to Russia and they share religion, culture, history, language and ethnicity with each other. I have no idea why the USA has a dog in the Ukraine fight.
#41. To: GarySpFC (#40)
(Edited)
My wife is half Ukrainian and half Russian
#42. To: Pericles (#41)
So she is 100% Russian. Just like an American Anglo-Saxon marrying a British Island Anglo-Saxon produce a 100% Anglo-Saxon child. There is no ethnic tribe or genetic component to "Ukrainian". The Ukraine means "the borderland" where the same people were cut off from competing empires.
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