Precisely why Russian action against Saudi Arabia’s proxy militias of fanatics is against western interests is something which nobody in the western elite seems to believe it is necessary to explain. That Russia is bad and evil and must be opposed is another one of those axiomatic beliefs of the governing elite, which they can’t bring themselves to believe the public do not wholeheartedly share. Equally they cannot quite understand why we the people do not see the necessity of backing the Saudi regime.
I am a stern critic of Russia’s democratic deficit, human rights record, and gangster dominated economy and government. But on all these counts it is still a thousand times better than Saudi Arabia, and I am quite certain that 99% of Europeans would be happier living in St Petersburg than Riyadh.
If the Russians turn back CIA and Saudi-backed rebels I for one shall be delighted.
Russian activity in Syria is nothing whatsoever to do with NATO. The Syrian rebels under attack by Russia are not members of NATO. Russia is not attacking Turkey and there is no chance whatsoever that Russia would deliberately attack Turkey. So the suggestion of NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg that NATO will send forces to protect Southern Turkey is absolute madness. In the Iraq War, two of the United States “pinpoint accurate” cruise missiles aimed at Baghdad actually hit Syria. At some stage Russia is going to accidentally hit something in Turkey, it is the nature of war. It is like playing football in the garden – it is inevitable the ball will go over the neighbours’ fence at some stage, however careful you are.
Increasing the amount of military hardware in Turkey – which is already extremely militarised and already full of US forces – just increases the political temperature and chances of something going disastrously wrong, with no possible gain except making the stupid western countries who messed up the Middle East feel less envious of Putin.
NATO countries have caused the crisis in the Middle East through their disastrous and criminal invasions. Russia is not and could never be strong enough to launch an actual attack on western Europe even if Russia wanted to – which Russia most certainly does not. Just like Trident missiles, NATO was no use to the United States on 9/11 and is no use against any actual challenge we face in the world. It exists to perpetuate the dominance of a neo-con elite and ensure massive income to the arms industry.
NATO’s attempts to build up forces around Syria and around the Baltic show that NATO’s over-activity poses the only viable threat of a disastrous world war. Ask yourself this question. Why does the USA, a country which faces no risk of invasion from anybody, account for 44% of the military spending of the whole world? NATO exists solely for client states to assist the projection of US military power abroad. Every decent European should be campaigning for their country to leave NATO.
David Cameron and the War Machine v Jeremy Corbyn and World Peace….YOU CHOOSE
http://internationaltimes.it/ball-and-chain/
“three quarters of the Ukraine is completely alienated from Russia”
Three quarters of the territory is certainly run by aliens.
This Colleen Graffy all over the BBC at the moment is a nasty bit of work
She was the first Chairperson of Republicans Abroad etc…
She seems to get carte blanche on the BBC to spout her ignorant and deeply agendised drivel.
Probably cos some fat overpaid BBC exec thought she looked like Kirstin Scott-Thomas..
A twisted spook in the Goebbels game,no doubt.
Just another bullshit artist.
This is an extremely welcome clarification by Craig. Russia is not, on this occasion, acting as an expansionist empire, nor is its ally China. There are 3 countries who are failed empires who have attempted to restore heir faded glories in Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and France. These three wasps created the Red topee colonial rule in the Middle East, which British comedian Tommy Cooper successfully subliminally took the piss out of.
That franco-turco-saudi set-up was characterised by espionage, treachery and a strong hint of israeli complicity.
The Arab Spring is a USUKIS neo-colonial enterprise which has utilised the jaded glory of the previous Middle Eastern franco-turko-saudi confederacy by stirring up nationalistic atavistic pride, the classic trick for winding up Arabs because their societies are tribal hence Ba’athism. French pride and Turkish pride. Pfff! Apparently the french and the turks still listen to the patriotic tweaks of their politicians. Brits will have listened to David Cameron as if their tea’d been made of urine and melamine.
I am not at all convinced, in view of the commonality of Zionist power in US, UK, IS, Russia and in the Chinese banking system, by any comments by anyone in NATO, including the fox that got away our own dear blog owner Craig, criticising Russia. I believe this is a carefully crafted plan to eliminate Muslim hotheads who are attracted to Al Qaida and IS by luring them with sex and money to Syria.
The interesting thing to emerge in recent weeks to me has been the universal disrespect that contributors here and the Saudi monarchy share for both Islam and Muslims. Even if NATO is trying to eradicate hotheads using Russia fire-power, still I get the feeling that Saudi and Qatar really hate Islam and really wish they were located in London, Washington or Israel, while Russia and China are genuinely a coalition of the righteous.
I am left with the strong feeling that Russia and China’s Muslim neighbours will find a safer haven with these Asian empires than they will ever find with USUKIS, or Saudi and Qatar, who mock our religion in our faces on a daily basis. This is a total propaganda coup for Russia and China.
ChrisJ @ 1:17am As I understand it Craig and the moderator(s) are not one and the same, though Craig clearly has the capability to moderate and sometimes additionally exercises this. They may be simply trying to keep themselves out of trouble or avoid being tarred with over-used labels and shit thrown around willy-nilly in order to discredit and make mischief. Over-cautiousness I think is the case here. The fact that is a taboo super-sensitive subject is itself telling. I’m rather of the opinion that information should not be hidden, particularly in the internet sphere, for fear of that perilous slippery slope of censorship and excessive secrecy, and that people are mostly worldy enough to make their own judgements and take things as they see them with or without a pinch of salt as the case merits.
The document you linked is full of interesting mostly historical information covering monopoly central banking and its origins and more, and appears largely factual, being a mere timeline of events, it is infact an excerpt from a book by one Andrew Hitchcock, but by association it is damned and discredited as the site which you linked to (though the document and larger excerpts may be available from other sites too), is full of batshit crazy and really really ugly stuff, submitted to the site seemingly without any oversight, particularly notable is virulent anti-Muslim hate-speech in other articles there, though the link you posted is not of this or any other reprehensible nature and does not in my opinion cross any line.
At least on the first page of comments here, or for the greater part of it, there is wisely some, though a rather capricious, attempt to keep comments vaguely on-topic (putting aside the unlikely innate interconnectedness of all things) for the avoidance of utter chaos here in the comments section. Do not be disheartened, the big picture is a mosaic, some pieces though are missing, upside down or not in the right place. No man dare presume to have a monopoly of truth …
@TonyM – I accept your point about the moderator not being the same as Craig. I should direct my frustration at the moderator and his lack of moral fibre first before I know what the take of the blog owner is. Though I think I remember Craig mentioning before that he wouldn’t accept any more ‘anti Zionist nonsense’ – that was a while back, granted-he may have changed his mind by now.
Regarding your other points. I don’t agree. The time for fretting whether it is taboo or not is over and just a bit…2002. The more the subject of all extreme doctrines are covered, including Zionism , the better and more rational the discussion will be. If the horrors of Stalinism, Blairism,Bushism and communist China can be discussed, then so should Zionism -never mind that they are often the same.
You also sadly do that classic straw man thing of agreeing or acknowledging the very informative contents in the link but then getting all fidgety and uppity about the site where it happens to be hosted which is ‘Before it’s news’ – does it really matter for heaven’s sake? The information as you admit is available on hundreds of not more of sources. If you don’t like the site where it’s found, google the damn thing and find it on a sight that is more in line with your taste in packaging – a site with goldfish wallpaper, vidoes of cats, the guardian or whatever that may be. As for your ‘batshit crazy’ remarks about that site – come on – people aren’t that boxed in anymore. As you admit yourself, people are savvy and can make up their own minds – they can look at a multitude of sites without having to be explained to how their views should be framed for each bit of information they look at. Pick and mix and bake your cake. As it happens , ‘Before its news’ from what I’ve seen seems to have pretty good articles that help people think outside of the usual cultural marxism that has been forced on us for so long. And guess what, the world is bat shit crazy right now. If in your view there’s hate speech, which I haven’t spotted on that site myself, ignore it or point out that you don’t believe it’s right. The BBC, Guardian, CNN and others are also full of very very ugly stuff. It’s just that it’s spun and sold in such a horrifically bland, subtle and sociopathic way.
The main point being , forget where the link is from as that is irrelevant. The contents is what is important. And it is very very important for people to start debating it openly and rationally.
No man dare presume to have a monopoly of truth. You would hope so. But unfortunately there are psychopaths trying to do just that.
Russia is acting with French (US/UK?) support.
Why don’t they all stop fighting, get around a table and talk. Sort out Israel. The festering sore.
It’s a continual failure to bring Demcracy and peace to the Middle East because of Oil.
Don’t know why Russian action in Syria is against western interests? Come on. Russia is preventing regime change, a necessary prerequisite to piping gas from the gulf to Europe, thereby putting Russia out of the business. So let’s have a bit more realism. What we,re seeing is a Russia that doesn’t, make anything, has a GDP smaller than Spain, or was it Estonia, kicking the empires butt.LOL
Not oil, ken, gas.
Jives You mentioned Colleen Graffey. She certainly believes in self promotion. All this tweeting and retweeting on her paper review on the BiBiCee.
https://twitter.com/Colleen_Graffy
Law Professor, International Law at Pepperdine U. Former Diplomat, Public Diplomacy US State Dept. From Santa Barbara, CA. Living in London.
I have only seen her on Esler’s Dateline. She is used by the state broadcaster for their promotion of the USUKIsNATO axis.
“As I have frequently explained, in three years Putin has gone from a situation when all of Ukraine was very connected to Russia, to a situation where three quarters of the Ukraine is completely alienated from Russia.”
This beggars belief. Ukraine is arguably more lawless than the US and always has had a gangster government run by the oligarch mafiosi. But the above statement makes it sound like Putin was responsible for the civil-war in Ukraine that divided the country and alienated it from Russia, when in actual fact that was done by people like Victoria Nuland, ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and the MSM. Sometimes I cannot get my head round your logic and as so many others have pointed out you do seem to have a strong dislike for Russia and its president, without giving any concrete reasons. In the interest of debate I should like to hear those reasons, particularly concerning your dislike of Putin, if you can find any.
“I don’t know much about Russian military history,”
Might I suggest that you look at what happened when it tried to prop up puppet regimes in Afghanistan and Yemem – there is plenty of evidence in the cemeteries of Moscow and the the drug trade that was introduced to Russia as a result.
Harry’s Law
yep those Syrian Sunnis just love Hezbollah and Iran. You have a very touching belief in what King Assad II says.
We all know that your sympathies are with the corrupt supremacist regime in zionistan and anything that is good for zionisatn is good for everybody is your mantra!
Hence your jaundiced view above is of little value to anyone on the ground, in Syria, or anywhere else for that matter. You have simply forgotten that the people of Syria are sick of the mayhem and the destruction that has been wreaked upon their country by the mercenaries, terrorists, and opportunist criminals. Hence your attacks on Assad are a mere automatic reaction in the face of the set back for the “grand plans” of eretz zionistan, and can be simply filed as; sour grapes.
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Mary this character was used by the beebeecee/Cspan intensively during the build up to the Iraq war, she is a neocon and a war propagandist.
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Well said, as with the Enron case do you remember how many troughers were involved on this side of the water?
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The bullies get stunned pretty easily with a first punch on their nose!
The oligarch owned media in the West are a reverse barometer, if there exists no weapons of any kind these will portray that as the weapons of mass destruction that as yet humanity knows not of!
If there are kick arse weapons found and current, then the same bunch will start playing down the significance and capabilities of the said weapons! This is an extension of the fishwife diplomacy that is the main stay of the current transactions of the US et al these days.
Tony M
It was I that deleted your post, personally. Theories about the Rothschilds controlling everything are pretty daft, but I would let that pass. But your sentence about the Ashkenazy was plainly racist.
Giyane
You are an idiot. Ask a Chechen, Tatar or Uighur about Russian and Chinese friendliness to Islam.
A little mentioned aspect of the Russian missiles is that western intelligence appears surprised at their range, being significantly greater than previously believed. This is not the end of what, for the west, will be a series of nasty surprises.
I very much doubt the intelligence agencies are surprised. They’ve been around for a while, and can be found in that esoteric bulletin of military hardware, Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M-54_Klub
Variant 3M-14T refers.
The media, conditioned to accept that US (and even on occasion European) hardware is superior to anything the primitive Russkies can assemble using hammers and crowbars (as they do), are astonished, of course, but that’s the media for ya.
I don’t think there is any doubt about Russia’s ability to produce decent missiles. It is a shame they can’t make a decent LED TV, car or laptop.
Russia’s policy of simply attacking Assad’s enemies and letting God sort out the goodies when they arrive is the only sensible approach to the situation. Russia’s experience in Afghanistan was mentioned above, and they have presumably learned, as NATO has not, famously, that the white hats you arm today are the black hats shooting at you tomorrow.
Agree with pretty well everything Craig says. Adding, god knows why the UK allows itself to be involved in this bloody mess at all.
Gas is a by products of Oil, along with lots of other products. Plastic etc used for cars. The sooner their are more electric cars. The better? 4 times cheaper to run. The US runs on cheap Gas but lower emissions. EU approved emissions levels are over twice as high.
Merkel caused the trouble in Ukraine she refused Ukraine a loan. The ex President looked to Moscow for a loan. The bloodshed was the result. The Ukraine President, is now, the Billionaire who took all the Ukrainian assets and wants to start another Conflct. The majority Russian speaking people in Ukraine voted to go with Russia.
I don’t think there is any doubt about Russia’s ability to produce decent missiles. It is a shame they can’t make a decent LED TV,… or laptop.
Can we? Most of the hardware and all the circuitry’s done in China, nowadays, whatever the nationality of the label on the box.
Cars? Can you point to an exclusively UK model wholly made in the UK from UK-made components? I can’t. I have even more trouble with UK missiles…
Doesn’t China make the most TVs and laptops?
Ba’al,
Who said anything about exclusive ownership? There is, beyond doubt, a continued lack of a diversified manufacturing sector in Russia.
Craig
9 Oct, 2015 – 8:35 am
“I don’t think there is any doubt about Russia’s ability to produce decent missiles. It is a shame they can’t make a decent LED TV, car or laptop.”
____________
By stark contrast, one has to admire the Chinese for having made the transition from state-controlled manufacturing to entrepreneur-driven.
How they will make the transition to democracy is another matter and probably one of the greatest political/social experiments ever.
Banal Zevul’s point is a redundant one, as no one has ever stopped the Russians from outsourcing, nor is outsourcing by definition evil.
____________
On the lighter side and in continuation of the Pink Condom series:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/oct/08/steve-bell-jeremy-corbyn-queen-cartoon
Ba’al made my comment before I refreshed page and saw yours. I agree it was a very funny (strange) observation.
Beth
Yes, China had done a brilliant job of developing a diversified manufacturing base. That is why China has a far better record of economic growth than Russia.
Not denying it, Craig. Just noting that we suffer from the same deficiency, in addition to no raw materials.
BTW the first viable genuinely portable television, I think, was sold in the UK in the late 60’s. 6″ screen, black-and-white, discrete components – this was long before integrated circuits – used germanium transistors like everything else at the time. Made in, and probably heavily subsidised for export by, the USSR. They also exported excellent optics, made on captured Leica plant. The motorcycles were shit, though.
Banal Zevul’s point is a redundant one, as no one has ever stopped the Russians from outsourcing, nor is outsourcing by definition evil.
Villager’s observation is irrelevant (as usual), as my point was not that anyone had stopped the Russians from outsourcing, but that the lack of a coherent manufacturing capacity attributed to Russia is something from which the UK also suffers.
It’s probably legitimate to guess, at least, that the electronics in Russian armaments rely as heavily as ours on Chinese-sourced components and such assemblies as can be made there without blatantly compromising security. Though I imagine that as Russia has less access to the dollar, there are more practical difficulties in the field of consumer electronics. Then again, labour is cheaper in Russia than here, and more competition might be expected from them.
“Every decent European should be campaigning for their country to leave NATO”
Could be little foolish at times when Russia has increased its military spending and quite openly proclaiming its neo-colonial policy towards former USSR. It is very common terminology in Putin’s Russia to claim that former soviet republic must have “limited sovereignty” which means that they can be sovereign up to certain point but not up to the point of foreign policy, military cooperation or foreign trade especially in mineral recourses.
Now, one could agree that limited sovereignty is not something new. One could argue that most of European countries have limited sovereignty with US as dominant power, one must clearly distinguish that in case of European countries it is voluntary alliance (European countries do not want to spend money on military catching up and trust US with security guarantees). In case with Russia limited sovereignty means Georgian or Ukrainian style where Russia would do everything to prevent its vassals from claiming full sovereignty. And by no means alliance with Russia is voluntary but subverted and based on fear to be next (Georgia or Ukraine). And this is true even in cases of two Russia’s most trusted allies Belarus and Kazakhstan (latter even more so).
Mr Murray,
May be you (as the diplomat who worked many years in Poland) need to ask Polish people if they want to leave NATO and yet again be the frontline state with very limited recourses to withhold its more powerful neighbours (if they decide to engage in yet another war).
The question of Russia returning to its force first policy was just a matter of time. Russia of today (similar to Russia since Peter the Great) is Empire. It has no other means of holding to most of its territory then force and subversion. It is clearly visible in Chechnya where money (Kremlin spent on Chechnya more than in any other Russia’s donor regions) plus military and intelligence play key role on ensuring that only cooperative forces are in power.
Playing cat and mouse with Russia is dangerous game and history has proven it MANY times. Not for Anglo-Saxons of course, but for our neighbours in the East who gave their lives in huge numbers to the greatness of Russian Empire (even in soviet format it was still Russian Empire especially during Stalin who is well known for his russophilia).
Fedup I know that the propaganda for the Iraq war on the BBC was massive. I was at work in those days and was not online so missed most of it. I did go on the march.
‘“Not since Iraq have I seen BBC News working at propaganda strength like this. So glad I’m out of there”
These are the words of the former economics editor of the BBC’s Newsnight show, Paul Mason, relating to the BBC’s coverage of the Scottish independence referendum. The London broadcaster’s biased reporting on Scottish independence is not an isolated incident however, as the BBC has been blatantly warping, misrepresenting and omitting pertinent facts and narratives on numerous issues, from its coverage on Israel to its distortion on Ukraine.’
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bbc-a-biased-propaganda-arm-of-anglo-american-power/5411459