Why Russia Doesn't Fear the West?

Caption on the above picture at flickr says Foros, Crimea. It is apparently a Russian Orthodox Church built in 1892.  Link to flickr location of original at bottom of this post. Link above also shows various residences of the Russian Czars in Crimea which they "owned" for 130 years and the Soviets controlled through links to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist State.

 I just read a long screed at Politico about Crimea and why Putin sent in the troops.  It took me back to college days and the times we sat writing reports with our foreheads filled with sweat and our stomachs churning until we learned that the old saw was true.

If you can't win the argument with facts, then baffle them with bullshit.

After the US started bombing Iraq in preparation for a ground invasion, I realized that war was a huge benefit the news media and it's pundits, especially when the "big" game is afoot.  But even more than that, there are signs the news media fear

The title at Politico was "Why Russia Doesn't Fear the West", but it seems to obscure the real reason: We and our Western European allies still are beholden to outdated fossil fuel industry.

  Yes, Europe is  directly involved in buying Russia's natural gas  because of their proximity to it's production fields and it's generally colder weather (though we should note they dumped overlarge vehicles many years ago), but it's actually the fault of our own (US) acquiescence to the stolen election of 2000.

By the end of the 20th century we were at the cusp of advances in solar, wind and other energy  that would have cost the government less and added more to alternative and natural energy advances than 8 years of invasive war helped anything.  Like Fat Albert on skates US could have grabbed the hand of Europe and built  momentum with solidarity and whipping actions that drove alternative energy development along like a speed skater.

Instead, thanks to GOP backers like Halliburton, Big Oil, and the Koch brothers' industries (yes they made millions off the Iraq War despite their protestations that they do not like armed conflict) we invaded a nation that posed no threat but had large stocks of oil.

The GOP also passed a bill while in control of the House, Senate, and White House that actually gave tax breaks for businesses to buy big gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. 

If all that money had been used to convert to solar, wind and other alternative energy industries, the US could have built a massive stockpile of natural energy producing resources and technology.  We could have supplied Europe with more and better natural energy technology so they could have avoided buying petroleum products from the Kremlin.

Instead the Bush administration opted for Global Climate Change boosting, and inducing war for more fossil fuels from the Middle East.

And now the news media needs to only cover the "facts" that please Big Money, Big Energy, and the backers of the American political right.

The Soviets would have been proud of Putin maybe, but definitely of the way that the West has learned to control people's minds by crafting garbage news and opinion to feed them and therefore how their teachings and tactics have continued to cripple the West.

In fact, Russia does have some historical claim going back to a time when white Europeans and their descendants were expanding in North America which we say gives us a valid claim to that territory we call The United States of America.

That may not be cool today, but it gets real sticky when we mention that though Truman did not start a war when China took over Tibet and East Turkmanistan, neither did Eisenhower when he came into the office two years later, and the venture into Vietnam that the great WW2 that the general did start as president to block "the Commies", didn't work out so well.

Picture of (presumed Russian Orthodox) Church in Crimea used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to flickr user Lexus_2k who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Map showing the expansion by Catherine the Great into the Crimea:

Entire map of Russian Imperial expansion, apparently in German, found at Old Map Blog.  To see this version more clearly save to disk, find, and open ( which in Windows 7 can then be enlarged)

Did Israel Stop Reuters From Filming Their Operation on Gaza?

Last night and early this morning, Reuters had a live cam filming the bombing of Gaza.  The above video shows the first time that I saw the Reuters cam stopped.  The camera came back on within 2 minutes with a long lens shot that didn't move for a while and no talking. Twenty minutes or more later talking began again (also in a language I don't understand) and the camera began to move again, especially in the direction of bombings.  In one, case they focused as best as they could from apparently miles away on  building that had been hit, showing people arriving at a collapsed structure, but soon drew back.

When the sound of trucks were heard again they would stop talking and focus back on a generalized shot in front of them.

At one point one of the men said (that I could hear) "can't do that".  I don't know why.  That was the only English I heard.

At at least one other point I heard vehicles approach and the feed when down again repeating what happened when just after this video showing though without showing the arriving troops or vehicles.

Look at what you see last in the live video portion of above and tell me these guys did not feel they were under threat for what they were doing. Someone whips the camera around focuses on a canon style weapon on top of one of the trucks that had arrived with the (I assume) IDF just before the feed dies.

Video kept coming on after blackouts for an hour or so more, but then never returned, again suddenly cut off.

I hate to pick on Israel unnecessarily, but they don't seem to be acting with transparency in this case, nor with fairness towards our own people who Nettie wanted to use in a massive invasion of Iran which could have killed 100,000 young Americans and triggered a universal draft.
Update: The Reuters Live Stream camera covered Gaza last night as well. I viewed some video there during their very early morning hours, then it went down. I checked in an hour later and it had become daylight and they were filming again, for a couple of hours. It once went to the whining signal they give, but using alink at the side brought back live (I assume) video. That did not repeat then next time the video disappeared at about 1 am (my time), before I went to bed about 2 am. So, apparently they are not being stopped from their job, but I think it is obvious that they did feel there was a threat when they first encountered the troops. Last night a missel struck close enough to them get dirt on the lens, but did not explode as far as I could see. I assume that since they seem to be filming across a no man's land into Gaza that they are in Israel, and coupled with the fact that the site was not destroyed, that the missile came from Gaza, showing the huge difference in what the two sides are lofting. Some, apparently home made weapons, versus 500 pound monsters that destroy whole buildings and all inside them.

Romney/Ryan Camp Ready to Let Bush Era Neocons Lead Us Back to War

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The GOP team is already calling for a war in Syria.
And Iran is right on the other side of Iraq from Syria.  Remember how we went into Afghanistan and then 8 months later started marching towards war in Iraq?

And, yes, Obama did lead the us to "war"  in Libya.  A very Clintonian war.  One in which our side won and we lost no servicemen or women.  That kind of war is only possible if our servicemen can mostly stay in planes.

The portion of Rachel's video that references the phenomena of  the Romney/Ryan campaign turning over their foreign policy to Bush era NeoCons is clipped here from a longer video.

Isn't it really weird that a nation like Israel which seems to need a lot more land than it has is our best friend and we keep getting into wars in their part of the world that might one day actually open up more land for them (if the neocons didn't keep messing up the job).  But here are the neocons pushing for more war in the middle east, and then maybe Israel can get on with its Manifest Destiny.


And Romney, I'm sure will let them do it so he can hide his tax cuts to himself behind all the war news.

Iran will likely be such a deadly war that the Universal Draft set up by the Selective Service is likely to be triggered.  The UD is a plan to force draft registration on all young people from 18-34 male and female and few if any deferments, none for post high school education.

Romney Demonstrated For War and Draft, Then Refused to Serve

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Kinda Weird and creepy, but somewhat in line with what Dubya did, jumping in front of other eligible applicants in the Texas Air National Guard so he didn't have to go to "Nam".

Are Israeli Security Groups Pushing the US Towards War With Iran?

Lower Stairway Falls in Pennsylvania

All states have nice parts and ugly parts.  The ugly in PA could  be an Israeli security group which may be playing world wide games in our nation, readying the country for another war in the Middle East.

Above photograph is placed using native Flickr coding and used via Creative commons License: Attribution (CC by 2.0). Rollover for name of photographer who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

According to a 2010 report at This Can't Be Happening : Harah!: Israeli Company Hired by State Government to Spy on Pennsylvanians the PA Homeland Security Agency has contracted with a private Israeli security company, as have "a number of local police departments in the state".

So you ask, what's so funny?

Scott Ritter may have been personally targeted by a Pennsylvania police department, in an entrapment scheme that I wrote about just 7 months ago in Doesn't Anyone Else Think It's Weird That Authorities Just Threw Scott Ritter in Jail As They Work Up A War on Iran?

I shouldn't have called it jail.  He was actually sent to prison where people spend long times.  Details are at the link above.

Now I learn that Pennsylvania's Homeland Security Agency has been using an Israeli security team since 2010. One of the courses the group taught at University of Pennsylvania was “Undercover/Plainclothes Tactical Operations".  We know that quite a bit of of anti-terrorism happens online. And tactics being tactics one just needs to question if Ritter was somehow entrapped jsut because he was Scott Ritter. If a person had his email address she, or, as it turned out, he could have actually invited Mr. Ritter to the chat room where he met the "15 year old girl" he allegedly knowingly made advances on.

Did Mr. Ritter ever have contact with the particular group or any Israeli security group or even anyone in Israel with whom he shared emails?  We know how any information they can get their hands on is scooped up and recorded by the Israeli government.  In one case, Mossad was shown to have used the identities of people who have passed through their customs gates to commit terrorism.  (The Israeli government copies passports and other documents people are carrying into Israel are often taken and copied upon entry).

Who wants the US to invade Iran and cripple our nation with another massive disastrous war?

 Israel.

Who spoke out strongly before the invasion of Iraq, and would have spoken out strongly against an invasion of Iran, especially exposing the faux nuclear weapons expert David Albright  who so often "discovers" new reasons to invade the nation?

Scott Ritter.

Luckily, President Obama, is not George W Bush, but Romney sure looks and acts like Bush except for slight differences due to Romney being a spoiled Upper Midwest elitist who self deported to the North East while "Dubya" was a spoiled North East to Texas Cowboyland elitist.

More on the danger of an invasion of Iran if we don't elect the right man in November: 

You may remember that many GOP heavies signed a letter allowing them to start and maintain a massive war effort if any terrorist struck our nation.  So far, we have struck back at two nations, one nation the Bushies refused to spend resources on and even let the terrorist mastermind get away at Tora Bora for the reason -- as explained by Army experts -- of enabling the invasion of Iraq by not exhausting the American public's tolerance for war, and the other has damaged our military to the point of near collapse.  Dubya was supposed to invade Iran during his second term according to the neocons inside and outside the government (the Israeli government) but public outrage was so high by that time that even "Bushie" figured it out. 

So when Israel decided the time was right for the US to invade Iran during Obama's term, they sent out their feelers and pressure groups.  A prominent liberal columnist advised Obama to do it because it would guarantee his re-election.  The columnist was probably honest, knowing how the news system works. It can't abuse a president at war -- even if he's liberal and mainstream media get most of their money from the 1%.

Luckily for us, Obama wouldn't take the bait.

Many experts agree that there can be no more war of any size, without a draft (because the military is exhausted) which the SSS wants to extend to the age of 34, and prohibit most deferments, including those for being female.  The SSS also wants to be able to draft doctors, computer experts, linguists, and other unspecified persons, of any age because of their "special skills".  This was all admitted during the Bush administration, but MSM has done it's best to hide this again.

I think it was Tom Brokaw, along with Susan Eisenhower and another media or government related person who sat on a 3 person panel in which each agreed that any more war would require a draft, though notably Marco Rubio has a plan to import, or take Dreamers and documented people from other nations to serve in our military.  Then Americans would only have to foot the bill is the implication.

Of course, footing the bill for Af-Pak and Iraq nearly destroyed our economy when you factor in the fact that the Bush administration was able to hide it's horrific inattention to the financial sector by being enabled by MSM's fixation on the "wars".  I mean really, just how much space do you think they could open up in their papers and online between celebrity news and war news to actually warn us of impending disaster?  Online the space could be less limited, but still the writers have to be hired to write the stuff, and /or speakers to do the talking in podcasts or news reports and the local newscasts are a joke with possibly 5 minutes of "real news" hidden somewhere within sports, celebrities, and weather.

When Nick Ut Saved the Naked Running Girl

I don't mean to be as flip as that title might suggest.  The photograph shows children, one a naked girl running down the road.  You can't see how badly burned she is from the front, but the children from a South Vietnamese village had been caught in a napalm attack from their people's own military. 

First lets have an definition of Napalm from Wikipedia:

Napalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon.

It makes the burning fuel stick to the human or other body so it burns more effectively.  This is what the South Vietnam army was dropping on the people of the village that you will see in the video.  That kind of horrific tactic is why many Americans didn't feel bad that South Vietnam and their allies, er we, lost the war. .

More importantly, this is a look at what was allowed in those days, and may still be allowed in the theater of war.  It is cleaned up and removed from sight of people back home.  We saw the still at the time.  Everyone most likely remembers it, and I read a report of what happened once in the 80s.  But I never saw the video before, never saw Kim Phuk's back with it's horrible burn before I saw this report.

The report will tell you that Nick Ut works in LA now as a photographer.  I have seen his name on many photos, including ones that people might call paparazzi shots.  He was the guy or one of the photographers who caught Paris Hilton crying as she was driven back to complete her sentence of incarceration a few years back.  We all have to get by somehow.

(The people in fatigues were all photographers and reporters, not military.)

You Can't Give Million Dollar Donations and Use a Phony Name? Who Knew? #p21

Flamingo Party, Laguna Hedionda, Bolivia

Someone hide the Tequila They already look like they're happy enough.

Picture shared via Flickr native coding and allowed by Creative Commons License (CC by 2.0).  Rollover to see flickr name of photographer who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

NPR has a report on how two top men of Nu Skin (an Amway type company) gave a million dollars each to Romney's SuperPAC by using the name of a fake business and something you might find on WOW.  That is apparently illegal and sad.  (Audio version of report is also available from page at link above.)

Instead of getting the privacy they craved and not informing their customers what they apparently do with the money they get from selling a product, they managed to get a local reporter and NPR interested it the donations and now a lot more people know.

BTW,  Eric Prince's sister is married to Dick DeVos "of the Amway fortune" as described by a Huffington Post report (and others to which I have not linked) so I guess like with pizza: cheap ingredients being used to make something sold for enough to offer seven figured donations = success for Republicans.  And then they would like government to ignore them please while they buy up the nation.

Look Who Supports Everyone's Troops

I can't bring myself to just steal the graphic so see it >>>> there<<<<.  I know the graphic is all over the web.  I don't know who started it, sometimes it has a white background sometimes a red one, but the flickr account I linked to had a copyright license so I haven't shared it here.

Meanwhile below is a Banksy version of the Grim Reaper with a twist of smiley face. I know it's still someone else's art, but I don't think one can copyright street art, and I think Banksy knows that and the flickr host has this offered as through Creative Commons license Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0). We love him more every time we see his work though, so that's some kind of payment. Okay I'll go buy his movie. Somehow I have to pay the man back for all that great street art. (Rollover picture for photographer attribution.)

Doesn't Anyone Else Think It's Weird That Authorities Just Threw Scott Ritter in Jail As They Work Up A War on Iran?

One of the strongest advocates against going to war in Iraq in the years before 2003 was Scott Ritter, a former UN Weapons Inspector, who told the Bush government that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program anymore and he was right!

David Albright on the other hand wrote the Iraq was actually on it's way to the smoking gun mushroom cloud scenario, an he was wrong.
 
So, though Mr. Albright is able to grab the spotlight by telling the neocon press what they want to hear, he got it all wrong in his analysis in the mid nineties, but he got one thing correct, what Israel wanted the US and UK to think about attacking Iraq.  It was the fear of a nuclear attack that made a war feasible, not just a late night joke.

But who is Albright?

He was supposed to be a nuclear expert, but Scott Ritter who worked tirelessly in the field didn't see him getting much contact with real nuclear physics especially in the Middle East..

He was touted as the man who discovered a plan for a small nuclear trigger in a suitcase, which many other nuclear weapons experts said was less than half of he threat that Albright had worked it up to be.

But Mr. Albright is very valuable to those who want to attack Middle Eastern Muslim countries for regime change and that's enough to get Israel to want him to be the big "expert" on Iran's (and other 'rogue' nations') nuclear program(s).  He was brought out the morning that Israel told the world of the nuclear plant in Syria they destroyed.  It's like the generals and retired generals that were trotted around before the war on Iraq was started to make the case for war.  Always the same guys, and always pushing for war.   Then it turns out they all had financial ties to military munitions and equipment dealers and the stations that had them on the air to talk up war knew they would make money if the could start a war --a lot of money too.

There really is too much money to be made supplying the forces with the weapons of war.

The Scott Ritter article I just summarized and on which I was commenting  can be found at Truth Dig: The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was  My summary was too brief to do Ritter's article justice, and I suggest you read it yourself.

But briefly Ritter notes that Albright was a dilettante in weapons inspection, who allows the media to call him a physicist and a "doctor" though he only had the "doctor" put on at an honorarium, in which case it should not be used to pretend the man the degree in high education.  You don't see Bill Clinton running making sure every knows he has a honorary PHD.

 And Ritter pointed out that Albright is not a physicist, just a guy who asks a lot of questions.  I believe there are people who want Albright to hear the worst about Iraq and they make sure he does.  Then the wealthy and powerful forces shop the guy to the media as the sole expert go to guy on Middle Eastern nuclear security issues.

And so Albright's latest clams were all packaged up and trotted out to the compliant media complete with shadowy "furriners" looking to sell plans to the Iranians.

But Scott Ritter is not the only guy warning about another Middle Eastern war that has been silenced.  Mohamed El Baradei was forced out as head of the IAEA a few years ago.  Before that he worked hard for good common sense to reign over Middle East ventures.  He also warned that Iraq had no nuclear ambitions anymore, but his wisdom was pushed aside in the rush to attack Iraq.  And now they have a man in as the head of IAEA that shares the war mongering spirit.  

After he left the IAEA El Baradei gave an interview in which he acknowledged as he always had that Iran does probably want a nuclear weapons program but mostly for prestige, not for belligerence.  El Baradei said he thought that once they had created a nuclear capability they could be convinced to store it all on a island in the Persian Gulf, nominally Iranian, but under the control of the IAEA.  I had that article up when the browser crashed the other day and it wouldn't bring the article up again, nor could I find it via search engine.  But I'm quite certain of what it said.

So just remember when you hear the war drums beat, that they had to get rid of two of the staunchest opponents to the pumpers of convenient military adventures that Israel wanted and wants just to get their game going. (Convenient to Israel, of course, because they haven't been actually doing any of the fighting and dying.

Here's a 2003 report on the earlier stings on Scott Ritter at AntiWar.com TARGET: SCOTT RITTER: The War Party gets ugly 

And here is a report on his recent conviction and imprisonment.  They sound curiously similar and both much like they could be targeted stings.

One would like to know whether Ritter was contacted by the supposed under-aged females first via email at least in this last case, because it's not past Mossad's capabilities to get an email address of one of its most hated war opponents.  The Pocono Record makes the worst case, but there is no analysis of whether he might have been invited to that chat room by someone.  Local news is quite lazy over crime, just accepting what the police tell them.  And, BTW, If what Ritter claimed was actually true, then he actually committed no crime, but was unfairly imprisoned.

Now it may be true that Ritter was guilty in all cases, though the jury in the NY cases believed him when he said he was seeking help and he was released and the records sealed.  In the recent trial records ordered sealed forever were unsealed (WTF?) and the non evidence there was used to convict him and send him away for at least 18 months and up to 5.5 years.  So the war starts within 1 and1/2 or up to 5 and 1/2 years down the road.  You can practically count on it.
BTW< I am not implying that Obama or many in his administration are pushing for war. They may be as unsure as most of America. I showed above how outsiders could have manufactured Ritter's imprisonment. So to leave the administration only warmongers and some less authoritative voices to try to figure out what to do. That's where Albright and the new IAEA chief will come strutting in, probably many "experts" that just happen to have ties to war munitions groups.

AP Reports That Younger Troops More Likely to Be Killed Than Older Ones

Yeah, y'all young whippersnappers go up there and grab that oil for us.

We'll be right down here waitin' for ya while we sip our cold beers.

Picture is used via Creative Commons license via Flickr's native placement and attribution coding. Roll over picture to see photographer identification. Click on it to go to original site, see other sizes, etc.

You can read the AP report at source. (Link below)

My comment is "Of Course!"

That is the whole purpose of war, to waste the life and health of younger people to grab cheap resources from other nations.

Why wouldn't we expect that the same "save yourself" attitude would find it's way into the armed forces themselves?

You can fill younger folks heads with notions of duty, courage, and honor, or at least shame of dishonor.

Young people have to believe in those qualities to transition from the attitudes of childhood to adult reason (or what serves as reason).

Still as old and powerful people and especially organizations with political power can maneuver a nation's young adults into war, it's easy to see that younger soldiers may be maneuvered into more dangerous positions.

Also, older soldiers might have moved up in rank, and I assume that adds some safety. In fact, that's probably used to spur younger soldiers into acts of bravery in order to gain higher rank.

Young people dying for the gain of older ones, though. Yeah that's war.

See AP's Report "In Iraq, youngest US troops bore the heaviest toll"

Video: Now Republicans Are Talking About Killing Social Security

First Medicare and now Social Security. And you wondered where the GOP thought it would get the money to finance American Exceptionalism, where the US fights eternal war for big business? From you, friend.

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