The Real Enemy Of Russia Is Not Islam

[Armenian Highlander]

You all are not placing the overall situation that existed within Anatolia in a proper perspective. Armenians did not have an experienced leadership nor foreign support. There were many reasons why Armenian politics of the time seemed submerged in incompetence and hopelessness.

 

First; Armenians were caught off-guard because they did not see the Genocide coming.

 

Second; Armenians did not see the Russian revolution coming, which in essence, forced the Russo-Armenian army to abandon the lands which had gained when they advanced as far west as Van.

 

Third; Armenians did not foresee the western powers abandoning them in favor of gaining the sympathies of the Turks.

 

Fourth, Armenians did not foresee the newly created Bolsheviks abandoning them in favor of gaining the sympathies of the Turks.

 

Fifth; Armenia did not have an economy, no natural resources.

 

Sixth; Armenian populated lands were devastated by famine and war.

 

Seventh; the Armenian population was either scattered, killed or impoverished.

 

Thus, due to dire historic circumstances, Armenians were in an untenable situation and did not have any real choices but to abandon the land to the Bolsheviks who were essentially the lesser of the two evils. Nevertheless, a handful of Armenians soldiers and peasants did manage to cleanse the Armenian Republic of Turks and Kurd and did manage to defeat a much larger Turkish force in 1918. We are being too condemning of our inexperienced leadership of the time who were essentially in an hopeless situation.

 

Did our leadership make numerous mistakes? Of Course they did, they made many mistakes. However, we need to put this in a proper perspective: they did not have any foreign support; their tiny population was disease stricken and starving; they did not have proper diplomatic experience nor the international connections; and, finally, the land under their control did not interest any of the major powers.

 

Nevertheless, it was because of them that the Armenian Republic was created and it was because of them that it did survive. Instead of condemning the leadership of the time, we need to learn from their mistakes so that we don't repeat them in the future.

[alpha]

With current leadership Russian state is headed to failure, just like Mussolini did half a century ago.

 

Moscow's Mussolini

 

By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

September 20, 2004; Page A20

 

Thou art so pitiful,

Poor, and so sorrowful,

Yet of great treasure full,

Mighty, all-powerful,

Russia, my Mother!

 

Citing these stirring words of the poet Nekrasov, Vladimir I. Lenin, the new dictator of Russia, published on March 12, 1918, his reasons for moving Russia's seat of government from St. Petersburg (Petrograd) to Moscow. Amid the chaos, confusion, and violence of those revolutionary days, Lenin, having just five days earlier entrenched himself in the Kremlin, proclaimed:

 

"Russia will become mighty and abundant if she abandons all dejection and all phrase-making, if, with clenched teeth, she musters all her forces and strains every nerve and muscle. . . . work with might and main to establish discipline and self-discipline, consolidate everywhere organization, order, efficiency, and the harmonious co-operation of all the forces of the people, introduce comprehensive accounting of and control over production and distribution -- such is the way to build up military might and socialist might."

 

Moscow -- which centuries earlier had been the capital of Ivan the Terrible but was demoted to the status of a provincial town when Peter the Great opened a window to Europe by constructing St. Petersburg as his new capital -- thus once again became Russia's epicenter. And so it remains to this day, with Lenin's slogans eerily anticipating Vladimir Putin's recent justification for centralized power.

 

It is important to recognize that to the Russians the Kremlin is more than just the seat of government. It epitomizes the centralizing tradition of the Russian autocracy. It is a tradition that is fearful of any regional autonomy, of any genuine decentralization, a tradition that fosters the chauvinist paranoia that political pluralism will almost inevitably precipitate the breakup of Russia itself. That mentality fitted well into the Stalinist notions of central planning, and it fit well into the bureaucratic mentality of the KGB with its ethic of suspicion and hierarchic discipline. For products of the KGB, such as Mr. Putin, it is axiomatic that if Russia is to be "mighty, all-powerful," it must be ruled from the top down.

 

* * *

Two significant realities flow from the above. The first is that Moscow is the home of a parasitic political elite that identifies the interests of Russia with its own interests. Subordinating an enormous country with 11 time-zones to all decision-making concentrated in the hands of remote Moscow bureaucrats is a formula instinctively favored by parasites. The monopolistic power of the Muscovite elite suffocates local initiative and prevents the various regions of Russia from exploiting their own talents and resources.

 

 

It is not an accident that under Stalin as well as in recent years, Moscow has been and remains the privileged beneficiary of modernization and development. In contrast, other Russian cities continue to stagnate and the Russian countryside remains largely reminiscent of the days of Tolstoy. To this day, much of all foreign investment is devoured by Moscow alone (or recycled abroad) while in many other cities (like Vladivostok, for example) even rudimentary services -- housing, hospital care, etc. -- are almost primitive.

 

Secondly, the leeching and self-centered mindset of the Moscow political elite stifles political democratization. Mr. Putin's move is popular with the elite because it propitiates the basic interests of a power elite that still harbors nostalgia for great- power imperialist status, that identifies its own well-being with domination over all of Russia, and through Russia over at least the former states of the Soviet Union. To the power elite, the independence of Ukraine, or of Georgia, or of Uzbekistan is an historic offense. To it, the resistance of the Chechens to Russian domination is a "terrorist" crime. To it, autonomy for 20 million ethnically non-Russian citizens is a challenge to its own privileges.

 

The turn toward statist centralism under Mr. Putin's KGB regime should not be confused, however, with a return to some form of communist totalitarianism. Today's Russian rulers realize that communism meant stagnation and the elite knows that communism also would mean relative deprivation for itself. State-capitalism, subject to central control, as well as the advantages of wealth and travel abroad provide the best formula for both self-gratification and nationalist aspirations.

 

Mr. Putin's regime in many ways is similar to Mussolini's Fascism. Il Duce made "the trains run on time." He centralized political power in the name of chauvinism. He imposed political controls over the economy without nationalizing it or destroying the economic oligarchs and their mafias. The Fascist regime evoked national greatness, discipline, and exalted myths of an allegedly glorious past. Similarly, Mr. Putin is trying to blend the traditions of the Cheka (Lenin's Gestapo, where his own grandfather started his career), with Stalin's wartime leadership, with Russian Orthodoxy's claims to the status of the Third Rome, with Slavophile dreams of a single large Slavic state ruled from the Kremlin.

 

That combination may be appealing for a while but ultimately -- probably within a decade or so -- it will fail. The younger and better educated and more open-minded Russian generation will slowly permeate the ruling elite. The upcoming generation will not be satisfied with life in a Fascist petro-state in which the Kremlin glitters (because of oil profits) while the rest of the country falls further and further behind not only Europe but also China. They are aware that decentralization of their huge country, which can unleash social initiative, is the key to modernization. That reality cannot be obscured forever by the slogans about "terrorism" that Mr. Putin used to justify the imposition of stifling political centralization.

 

Indeed, already today the neighboring Ukraine of nearly 50 million people (whom the Bush NSC has so studiously ignored while naïvely courting Mr. Putin) is beginning to provide a contrast in two major domains: its economic progress is more diversified and more evident in other cities than just in the national capital; and its politics (while still vulnerable to manipulation) have produced two genuinely contested presidential elections. As of today, no one can predict the outcome of the Ukrainian presidential elections scheduled for late October, a fact that stands in sharp contrast with the Russian "elections" in which Mr. Putin was the candidate.

 

Unfortunately, over the last several years the White House has fostered a cult of Putin that has done great harm to the increasingly isolated Russian democrats. Their cause deserved support. There were Russians who bravely stood up and opposed the progressive silencing of Russia's free media. There were Russians who voiced concerns regarding the narrowing scope of Russia's democracy. There were Russians who protested against the inhuman and almost genocidal massacres of the Chechens. Never once did any of them hear any measure of support from the top leadership of the country that once held high the standard of human rights in opposition to communist tyranny.

 

Moreover, the Bush administration should wake up to the fact that what happens in Russia bears directly on what may also happen in the space of the former Soviet Union. Today, many in the newly independent post-Soviet states fear that in the name of a war against terrorism the U.S. may also ignore Mr. Putin's intensifying efforts to encourage manipulated elections in Ukraine, to promote separatism in Georgia (while fiercely crushing the Chechens for seeking it), and to isolate Central Asia from the international economy. The fact is that prospects for democracy within Russia are interconnected both with the existence of national pluralism within the space of the former Soviet Union and with the spread of political pluralism within Russia itself.

 

There is a basic lesson for America in all this: For democracy to thrive in Russia, its neighbors must be truly secure, the rights of non-Russian minorities must not be forgotten, and Russian democrats must not be ignored.

[bellthecat]

Did anyone here notice a news report that a prominant Russian cosmonaut was beaten up in a Moscow street by a gang of Russian policemen because he "looked" Chechen?

 

It must have been this Magomed Tolboyev person that was the victim. Russian culture in action:

 

Racist Assaults on the Rise After Terror Attacks

By Anatoly Medetsky

 

The Moscow Times

Monday, September 13, 2004. Page 1.

 

Staff Writer The recent terrorist attacks caused a spike in assaults

on dark-skinned people from the Caucasus region and elsewhere last

week, human rights activists said.

 

Decorated former test pilot Magomed Tolboyev said Friday that he was

assaulted by police officers during a document check near the Vykhino

metro station. The officers said he had a Chechen-sounding last name,

he said.

 

In Yekaterinburg, gangs of young people attacked three Armenian and

Azeri cafes, killing one person and injuring two, police said.

 

Authorities have blamed the downing of two planes, the explosion

near a Moscow metro station and the Beslan school siege on Chechen,

Ingush and Arab fighters and suicide bombers.

 

Dark-skinned people have in recent years increasingly been the targets

of racially motivated attacks -- attacks that police usually write

off as hooliganism. But the increase over the past week can only be

attributed to the terror attacks, said Alexander Brod, director of

the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights.

 

"Anti-Caucasian sentiments always get stronger after terrorist

acts," Brod said. "People blame everyone in the Caucasus. This is

the stereotype in people's minds.

 

"Unfortunately, the authorities don't do a good job explaining that

terrorism doesn't have a nationality," he said.

 

 

Tolboyev, an assistant to State Duma Deputy Viktor Semyonov and a

native of Dagestan, said two police sergeants stopped him to check

his papers Thursday near Vykhino in Moscow's southern outskirts.

 

He showed them his Duma ID and told them that he had been decorated

with the title Hero of Russia, which he received for his participation

in the Soviet space shuttle program, Interfax reported.

 

The officers took the ID. When Tolboyev attempted to get it back,

one of the officers went behind him, put his arm around his neck and

began to strangle him, Tolboyev said.

 

"My throat still aches, and I haven't been able to swallow for two

days," he said, Interfax reported.

 

Asked by telephone Friday why the officers had confronted him, Tolboyev

said, "I don't know. Maybe they didn't like something about me."

 

Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin confirmed Sunday that police

had stopped Tolboyev to check his documents. But he said a police

investigation found that Tolboyev had been treated properly considering

his "disobedience, aggression and abuse." He did not elaborate.

 

Tolboyev said he was stopped as he was returning from the North

Ossetian administration's office in Moscow, where he had expressed

his condolences over the school siege.

 

He said he finally got back his ID.

 

In the Urals, a group of young people broke furniture in the Azeri

Kaspy cafe in Yekaterinburg on Thursday night and then hurled in

Molotov cocktails, according to news reports. A 52-year-old relative

of the cafe's owner died in the fire, which gutted the building.

 

That same night, about 20 young people armed with sticks and chains

broke into an Armenian cafe, Oasis Plus, and beat the Armenian staff,

wounding four. Two were hospitalized with skull and brain injuries,

news reports said.

 

Attackers tossed Molotov cocktails in another Armenian cafe, the

Shartash, on Thursday night, but the staff was able to douse the

flames before anyone was injured.

 

In a fourth attack Thursday, unidentified men set fire to the U Davida,

an Armenian cafe in Verkhnyaya Pyshma, a village near Yekaterinburg,

police said. Cafe staff quickly put out the fire.

 

Yekaterinburg police said they have detained two suspects but dismissed

any possible racial motive in the attacks, calling them hooliganism.

 

"They are in no way related to Beslan or any ethnic issues," said

Valery Gorelykh, spokesman for the Sverdlovsk regional police, which

includes the city of Yekaterinburg.

 

Mikhail Matevosyan, deputy chairman of the regional Armenian

association Ani-Armenia, said he has no doubt that the cafe attacks

were connected to the recent terrorist attacks.

 

Whenever Chechen rebels score a victory over federal troops in Chechnya

or commit terrorist attacks, groups of young people begin targeting

Caucasus natives, he said.

 

"They probably think, 'You hit us there, and we'll hit you here,'"

he said by telephone from Yekaterinburg.

 

He ruled out a Armenian-Azeri turf war as a possible reason for

the attacks.

 

Elsewhere, four young men with close-cropped hair beat to death a North

Korean citizen in Vladivostok the weekend after the school siege ended,

Noviye Izvestia reported. Unidentified assailants painted a swastika

on the gate of a Jewish cemetery in Irkutsk on the night of Sept. 6-7,

the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights said.

[bellthecat]

And another example:

 

Globe and Mail, Canada

Sept 15 2004

 

Chechens live in fear of reprisals

 

Anti-Caucasian discrimination hits new high in wake of Beslan, MARK

MacKINNON reports

 

By MARK MacKINNON

 

 

MOSCOW -- The day after the siege ended at Beslan's Middle School No.

1, terror came to the Khadayev home outside Moscow.

 

Asya Khadayeva, 43, first spotted the car with the dark windows as

she left for work at about 7:30 a.m. The car followed slowly as she

and her daughter walked to the bus stop, and she was relieved when

the bus picked them up and their pursuers didn't follow. An ethnic

Chechen, she had been worried about revenge attacks on her family

following the tragedy in Beslan.

 

What she didn't know is that the men in the car were waiting for her

to leave. After the bus pulled away, about 30 men burst through her

home's doors and windows. Some wore masks and security-service

uniforms, others carried grenades and automatic weapons.

 

Her three teenaged children, who were still in the house, were forced

to lie facedown on the floor with blankets over their heads. A gun

was pressed against her 15-year-old son Magomed's skull. Her

five-year-old daughter Amina was dragged from under her bed and

forced to kneel beside her siblings at gunpoint while the home was

searched.

 

"She was screaming, 'Don't shoot me and don't kill my brothers,' "

said Ms. Khadayeva, who moved to Moscow with her family four years

ago to escape the war in Chechnya. "They wouldn't even let her older

brothers comfort her."

 

The children's father, Ramzan Khadayev, said the men identified

themselves as members of various Russian security services, including

the Federal Security Bureau.

 

They were at the house for several hours, Ms. Khadayeva said. Some of

the officers later drove to the food market where both parents and

Ms. Khadayeva's brother work, and questioned all three.

 

"One officer told us, 'You should leave [Moscow], it's not your

home,' " she said. "I told them, 'Okay, give me back my apartment,

which your soldiers destroyed, and the property that was stolen from

me and I'll leave tomorrow,' " Ms. Khadayeva said. "They said that

wasn't their problem. They told us we are Chechens so we are

terrorists."

 

Chechens have been persecuted and feared in Russia since the 19th

century, when the armies of Czar Alexander II first tried to subdue

the fierce people who live along the north end of the Caucasus

mountain range. But the discrimination has hit new heights in recent

years as dozens of acts of terrorism across Russia have been blamed

on Chechens.

 

The hatred grew again after the hostage-taking at Beslan, where more

than 350 people were killed. Yesterday, Russian prosecutors charged a

Chechen man identified as Nurpashi Kulayev in the deadly

hostage-taking, the Interfax news agency reported.

 

With a fresh wave of anti-Caucasian xenophobia sweeping the country,

many Chechens say they now rarely leave their homes, fearful of even

their neighbours.

 

In Moscow, police have arrested dozens of Chechens in the past few

days, including a group of 20 men yesterday who were renovating

schools in the region. They were released later in the day. Last

week, in the Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg, gangs of youths

armed with clubs, chains and Molotov cocktails attacked cafés owned

by Armenians and Azeris, killing one person and hospitalizing two

others.

 

Human-rights activists say the police are among the worst offenders

when it comes to anti-Caucasian racism.

 

"They have orders from the authorities to check every Caucasian

person, man or a woman. They treat every Caucasian as a potential

terrorist," said Yuri Tabak of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau.

 

The situation for Chechens and other Caucasians living in Moscow has

become so dangerous that some say they've stopped going outside

unless it's absolutely necessary.

 

Fatima Dudayeva fled the ruins of Grozny to join her sister in Moscow

a month ago, hoping to find work and "have some fun" in the big city

after almost a decade of constant war. But her arrival coincided with

a string of suicide bombings carried out by young Chechen women --

two on passenger planes and another outside a Moscow metro station.

 

Denied registration papers that would allow her to look for work or

rent a place of her own, she stays with her cousin in a small

apartment in the city and says she's gone further than the corner

store only once in the past two weeks.

 

During that single trip out, Ms. Dudayeva was stopped by a policeman

who asked her to prove she wasn't wearing a suicide belt. She had to

pay him a 500-ruble bribe (about $25) to avoid being taken into

custody.

 

"They look for a Chechen trace in everything that goes wrong," the

dark-eyed 26-year-old said. "The next time something happens in

Moscow, the next terror act, it will be better to go back to

Chechnya, despite the war there, and stay for a while until things

calm down here."

[Armenian Highlander]

Putin, the Patriot

Opinion; Posted on: 2004-09-17 01:09:36

 

That's why the neocons hate him – and love Chechen terrorists

 

by Justin Raimondo

 

With the recent downing of two planes over Russian airspace, now believed to be the result of a terrorist attack, and the horrific Beslan stand-off, in which women and children were butchered on the world stage and in living color, a curious double standard is asserting itself in the West, almost without argument or even much notice. The response to these attacks by Western leaders has been almost uniformly to put the onus of blame, not on the terrorists, but on Vladimir Putin, who is accused by, among many others, neo-connish "libertarian" Cathy Young, Reason magazine's resident New England schoolmarm and inveterate busybody, of "misusing" the Beslan incident. Putin has long been demonized by the neocons as an aspiring Stalin, and now he is being blamed for provoking and inflaming the Chechen terrorists by refusing to negotiate with them.

Neocons Move Against Russia

 

Source: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/index.php

[Armenian Highlander]

Who benefits when Russia is weakened?

 

 

As a result of language difficulties and a combination of other factors, the current situation in ex-Soviet Central Asia and its periphery is often ignored in White nationalist circles. Yet what is happening there is of extreme importance to our race and is one of the leading battlefields for White survival. In simplest terms, White, Slavic Russia is holding off a coalition of Islamic Turkic and kindred peoples allied with the corrupt “West” and Israel. Russia’s aim is to secure her borders, retain Russian influence in the region, and have some say in the fate of the huge oil reserves in the area. [Photo: Russian missile]

 

While the Chechens are an extremely old, non-White population with their own linguistic and ethnic identity, many Turks consider them to be fellow Turanians, and the feeling is mutual. The fact that Turks and Chechens share the same Hanafi school of Sunni Islam adds to the fraternal bond, especially considering the Turks' fractious relations with the rest of the Muslim world for centuries. There is also a large Chechen expat population in Turkey itself. Turks have offered the Chechens aide in numerous forms since war broke out on the 1990s against the Russians.

 

Turks in what is today Anatolian Turkey (Asia Minor) are fairly new there, having only finally conquered the Greek Byzantine capital of Constantinople – now Istanbul – as late as 1453. Turks were originally Central Asiatic people; their appearance today is the result of intermixing with Anatolian populations and the hordes of slaves taken in their empire building. That Ottoman Empire controlled much of the Middle East, North Africa, and Balkan Europe, and was a thorn in the Russian side for hundreds of years. It leaves its imprint on the Middle East today in the shape of the post-Ottoman nations: Iraq, for one, is composed of three Ottoman provinces. The Ottoman Empire was only dismantled thanks to their defeat as German allies in the First World War. Turks today, especially radicals such as the Grey Wolves, retain a strong sense of ethnic attachment to their racial heartlands in Central Asia, and look down on their Arab and White former subjects with contempt. The Turks are an extremely warlike people and unlike politically-correct 'Westerners' maintain authentic popular martial traditions. They were remarkable for their adaptability, and are today, unarmed as immigrants, as much of a threat to Europe as they were in the days of the Janissaries.

 

A large 'pan-Turanian' school of thought arose towards the end of the 19th Century, in reaction to the Russian Empire and analgous to the 'pan-Slavic' and 'pan-Germanic' thinking then weakening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and which would significantly contribute to the horrors of the First World War. As with so much of 19th Century 'scientific racism' pan-Turanian ideology was flawed: Finns, Estonians and Hungarians -- who arguably speak Turanian-derived languages and yet are White people -- were lumped in as cousins of the Turks. Flawed language theory was also seen in the use of the word 'Aryan', and that variation of pan-Germanic theory which saw all 'Britons' in the British Empire as 'kin' with common interests, with the spectacle of Sudroid Indians and Negroid Jamaicans -- all 'Aryan' speakers -- sharing a supposed identity and world-view. In the Turanian view, their cousins stretch all the way to Korea and Japan. Even many Western Jews, descendants of Turkic converts to Judaism, are Turanians. 'Typical Jewish features' are in fact Turkic.

 

A Turkish-Israeli entente should come as no surprise. For one thing, the Turks are as historically resented in Arabic lands as are the Jews. The Turks ran the Ottoman Empire roughshod over Arabs for centuries, while the Turkish seizure of the Muslim leadership is still resented. Today the Turks are surrounded with non-Turkish enemies. The Kurds, an Indo-European-speaking population, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and Whites in the Balkans all fear Turkey, which seeks to reassert its historical dominance. Like the Israelis, they are “outsiders” in the neighborhood. Israel and Turkey share a free trade pact and military co-operation, with Mossad agents aiding non-Turkish Kurds in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq while aiding Turkey’s vicious war against its own Kurds. As far as Turkish appetities in oil-rich Central Asia go, Israel has entered a joint deal with the Turks to arm the Turkic Azerbaijanis and other projects are ongoing. It is in Israel’s interests to see Central Asia develop as a major source of world oil under the tutelage of their Turkish allies, undercutting the world’s dependence on Arab sources, even as Israel undercuts the stability of regional powers such as Saudi Arabia (having already succeeded in having Iraq taken off the market). High oil prices are in no-one’s interests.

 

Another goal of Zionists and Turks alike is to sideline Russia. Not least is the fact that a weakened and reduced Russia opens up the oil rich lands of Central Asia. In addition, a strong Russia acts as a balance to the heavily-Zionist-influenced United States, and is a nuclear-armed, White nation. Putin’s determined efforts against his nation’s Jewish oligarchs – who until recently had a lock on Russia’s oil -- is a potential sign of things to come which the Zionists want to avoid at all costs. Brushfire wars on the Russian perimeter pin Russia down and weaken her resolve on both the domestic and international stage.

 

Another error many make in analyzing Israel is that Islamists – Muslim fundamentalists – are somehow a threat to Zionism or the New World Order generally. The opposite is true. What Israel does not want is a series of progressive, secular states such as Libya, Syria or Saddam's Iraq, which have the potential to grow into real threats. They much prefer the primitive, medievalist Islamists such as the ones presently dividing Iraq, or nuts like Osama who serve to alienate the “West.” In Afghanistan these obscurantist bandits succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union and have a potential to feed off the superstition of the vast uneducated hordes of the Muslim world to undermine those Arab regimes attempting to advance their people. Algeria is a wreck as a result of Islamists. Syria, whose ruling elite are Alawis, highly heterodox “Muslims” with roots in ancient Anatolian paganism, rightly fear the Islamists, who they have suppressed ruthlessly. The “heretical” leanings of the Syrians is the main reason for their alliance with Shi’a Iran. Egypt’s President Sadat was assassinated in a Muslim Brotherhood hit, and Jordan, Libya and Iraq have all had problems with Sunni extremists.

 

Well-placed funding in areas such as Kosovo, Chechenya (where the majority of ordinary people welcome Russian colonial rule) and Bosnia have worked vicious wonders.

 

Source: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=3708

[bellthecat]

While the Chechens are an extremely old, non-White population

 

 

Jeez, what fool wrote that piece of !

 

 

They are at least as "white" as you are, AH.

[Armenian Highlander]

Jeez, what fool wrote that piece of ! They are at least as "white" as you are, AH.

 

I hate to admit this, but I agree with you.

 

Nevertheless, the point the author is making is that Chechens have a Turkic/Semitic admixture within them. Thus, genetically (technically) Chechens are not "genetically" completely white. This has nothing to do with the "tone" of ones skin color, since a large percentage of "non-white" population within Asia have light "white" skin. Nevertheless, the point the writer made is foolish and pointless. However, I posted this article for its geo-political analysis - which I agree with.

 

Although your comment this time was not stupid, nevertheless, it was not smart either. I am still waiting for you to say something smart.

[Armenian Highlander]

CIA angers Russia by predicting break-up of state within 10 years

 

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

30 April 2004

 

Russia's political elite has been stung by a recently declassified CIA report that suggests the world's largest country could fall apart at the seams in a decade and split into as many as eight different states. The report, Global Trends 2015, has sparked a lively debate in Russia about the country's territorial integrity and triggered passionate denunciations from some of Russia's leading politicians. Its unflinchingly bleak assessment of Russia's prospects has angered many at a time when the Russian government is doing its best to talk up the economy.

 

The fact that the gloomy prognosis comes from its old Cold War enemy makes it all the harder for Russia to swallow. But many ordinary Russians seem to share the CIA's pessimism. An opinion poll conducted by radio station Ekho Moskvy earlier this week revealed that 71 per cent of those surveyed (3,380 people) thought that the disintegration of the motherland was a "real threat".

 

Yesterday's Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper printed a map for its readers showing how Russia might look by 2015 if the CIA is right. It showed Siberia broken up into four different countries, with western Russia similarly partitioned.

It is not for nothing that president Vladimir Putin's party is called United Russia. According to the CIA, some of Russia's eastern regions are so rich in natural resources such as oil and gas that they will opt to break away from Moscow, which they have long accused of poor governance.

 

Komsomolskaya Pravda was dismissive of the report. "Either the CIA has super perspicacious analysts who can see what mortal Russians, including politicians and political scientists, cannot, or someone has got it wrong," it said. Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Russian parliament, said: "I completely reject the possibility of Russia breaking up. "Over the past four years, a lot has been done to strengthen vertical power and legislation in the constituent parts of the Russian Federation was brought into line with the constitution a long time ago." According to the CIA report, a falling birth rate meant that the country's population was likely to decline to 130 million by 2015 from 146 million today. It also painted a picture of Russia as a terminally ill patient.

 

"The Soviet economic inheritance will continue to plague Russia," the report said. "Besides a crumbling physical infrastructure, years of environmental neglect are taking a toll on the population, a toll made worse by such societal costs of transition as alcoholism, cardiac diseases, drugs and a worsening health delivery system. Russia's population is not only getting smaller, but it is becoming less and less healthy and less able to serve as an engine of economic recover."

 

Dmitry Orlov, the director of Russia's political and economic communications agency, claimed the CIA had an ulterior motive. "The conservative wing of the American Republican party is interested in the maximum weakening of Russia's position and maybe even in its fragmentation," Mr Orlov told the Izvestia newspaper.

 

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/stor...9&host=3&dir=73

[Armenian Highlander]

What Are We Doing in Russia's Neighborhood?

 

February 04, 2004

 

by Patrick J. Buchanan

 

Napoleon III, Emperor of France, saw his opportunity.

 

With the United States sundered and convulsed in civil war, he would seize Mexico, impose a Catholic monarchy and block further expansion of the American republic. In 1863, a French army marched into Mexico City. In 1864, Maximilian, the brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, was crowned Emperor of Mexico. The French empire had returned to North America a century after its expulsion in 1763.

 

Secretary of State Seward did nothing until the Union armies had defeated the Confederacy. Then, he called in Gen. John Schofield, who had wanted to lead an army of volunteers into Mexico to drive the French out, and instructed him instead to go to Paris. "I want you to get your legs under Napoleon's mahogany and tell him he must get out of Mexico," Seward told Schofield. To impress upon Napoleon that the Union was in earnest, President Johnson, at the urging of Grant and Sherman, sent Gen. Sheridan with 40,000 troops to the Rio Grande.

 

Napoleon got the message. The French army headed for the boats, and Maximilian went before a Mexican firing squad. Lesson: Nations are unwise to seize upon the temporary weakness of a great power to put military forces inside its sphere of influence. Which brings us to this headline in last week's Washington Post: "U.S. May Set Up Bases in Former Soviet Republics."

 

The lead graph reads like something out of the London Times in the salad days of Kipling and Queen Victoria: "Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the United States might establish military bases in parts of the former Soviet empire, but he sought to reassure Russians that increased U.S. influence in the region does not pose a threat to them." With bases already in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, we apparently intend to build a base in Georgia, birthplace of Stalin.

 

Query: What are we doing there? What is the strategic interest in Georgia? Tbilisi is about as far away as one can get. Why are we rubbing Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat by putting U.S. imperial troops into nations that only yesterday were a part of that country? Powell anticipated the question: "Are we pointing a dagger in the soft underbelly of Russia? Of course not. What we're doing is working together against terrorism."

 

But after Iraq, where we invaded an oil-rich country on what the world believes were false pretenses and forged evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, why should Russians not suspect our motives? After all, the neoconservatives who beat the drums loudest for war, and cherry-picked the intelligence sent to Bush that got us into war, have been braying for years that we intend to create an American empire and impose our "benevolent global hegemony" on all mankind. Why should Russians, Chinese and Iranians not believe America's crusader castles in Central Asia and the Caucasus are not part of a grand scheme for a Pax Americana?

 

Have we forgotten our history? When Reagan put Marines into the middle of Lebanon's civil war, 241 perished in the terrorist bombing of their Beirut barracks. Reagan retaliated, but got out. He should never have gone in. Who runs Beirut or rules Lebanon is not our business. When we intervened in Somalia's civil war, we got "Blackhawk Down" in Mogadishu and 18 dead Rangers. Again, we pulled out. We should never have gone in. When we planted a U.S. army on Saudi soil after the Gulf War, we got 9-11. Now we have pulled out of there.

 

How often must we be taught the lesson?

 

Have we considered the consequences of planting military bases in countries afflicted by Islamic fundamentalism and ruled by autocrats who, only 15 years ago, were apparatchiks of Moscow? A U.S. imperial presence in Central Asia and the Caucasus resented by Russia, Iran and China and detested by Islamists is less likely to contain terrorism than to invite it.

 

Even a cursory reading of U.S. history shows us to be an almost paranoid people about any foreign military presence near our frontiers. The French, British, Spanish and Russians were all bought off or driven out. Moscow's presence in Cuba and meddling in Grenada and Nicaragua in the Cold War were constant causes of American outrage.

 

But if we are entitled to our own Monroe Doctrine – i.e., no foreign colonies or bases in our backyard – are not other great nations like China and Russia equally entitled? Why should they not feel as we do, and one day act as we did with Napoleon, and tell us to get out of Central Asia and to get out of the Caucasus?

 

But, again, why are we going in? Other than empire, what is the vital interest here?

 

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

 

[...]

 

Source: http://antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=1846

[Armenian Highlander]

What Are We Up to – in Ukraine?

 

by Patrick J. Buchanan

 

In the 1940s, as Stalinists were seizing Czechoslovakia, ex-OSS agents were running bags of money to Italy and France to ensure the Communists were defeated in national elections. In the 1950s, using a rent-a-mob, the CIA effected the ouster of an anti-American regime in Iran and the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala. In the 1980s, after Solidarity was crushed by Gen. Jaruzelski, Ronald Reagan secretly aided the Polish resistance. Many of us applauded these Cold War means, as we believed that the ends – security of the West and survival of freedom – justified them.

 

But when news broke that South Africa was maneuvering to buy the Washington Star in the 1980s, this city was ablaze with indignation. How dare they seek to corrupt American media! In the 1990s, when China was caught using cutouts to funnel cash to the Clinton campaign, we were full of righteous rage. Given this history, several question arise. Are we today using Cold War tactics in a post-Cold War era? Are we guilty of the same gross interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine, trying to fix their election, we would consider outrageous and criminal if done to us?

 

Are we Americans hypocrites of global democracy?

 

Consider what we have apparently been up to in Ukraine.

 

According to the Guardian and other sources, NED – the National Endowment for Democracy – and USAid, Freedom House, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and George Soros' Open Society Institute all pumped money or sent agents into Kiev to defeat the government-backed Viktor Yanukovich and elect Viktor Yushchenko as president. Allegedly in on the scheme is the supposedly objective and neutral Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

 

The Guardian's Jonathan Steele describes how we put the fix in:

 

"Yushchenko got the Western nod, and floods of money poured in to groups which support him, ranging from the youth organization, Pora, to various opposition websites. More provocatively, the U.S. and other Western embassies paid for exit polls ..."

 

Those polls showed Yushchenko winning by 11, demoralizing the opposition and convincing most Ukrainians he was the next president. But, on Election Day, Yushchenko, like Kerry, lost by three, as the populous eastern Ukraine delivered the same huge margins for favorite son Yanukovich as did western Ukraine for Yushchenko. Into the streets came scores of thousands of demonstrators, howling fraud and demanding that Yushchenko be inaugurated. Engaging in civil disobedience, and backed by the West, the crowds intimidated parliament, President Kuchma and the judiciary into declaring the election invalid.

 

John Laughland writes in the Guardian of the double standard our media employ: "Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown on our TV screen. ... Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been 'bussed in.' The demonstrators in favor of Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous."

 

Laughland is saying the Yushchenko demonstrations may be as phony as that U.S-Albanian war in the Dustin Hoffman-Robert DeNiro film Wag the Dog. He calls Pora "an organization created and financed by Washington," like Otpor and Kmara, which were used in Serbia and Georgia to oust leaders Washington wished to be rid of. Pora's symbol, writes Laughland, depicts "a jackboot crushing a beetle."

 

If the United States has indeed been interfering in Ukraine to swing the election of a president who will tilt to NATO, against Moscow, we are, as Steele writes, "playing with fire."

 

"Not only is [ukraine] geographically and culturally divided – a recipe for partition or even civil war – it is also an important neighbor of Russia. ... Ukraine has been turned into a geostrategic matter not by Moscow, but by the U.S., which refuses to abandon the Cold War policy of encircling Moscow and seeking to pull every former Soviet republic to its side."

 

Our most critical relationship on earth is with the world's other great nuclear power, Russia, a nation suffering depopulation, loss of empire, breakup of its country, and a terror war. That relationship is far more important to us than who rules in Kiev. For us to imperil it by using our perfected technique of the "post-modern coup" – as we did in Serbia and Georgia and failed to do in Belarus – to elect American vassals in Russia's backyard, even in former Soviet republics, seems an act of imperial arrogance and blind stupidity.

 

Congress should investigate NED and any organization that used clandestine cash or agents to fix the Ukrainian election, as the U.S. media appear to have gone into the tank for global democracy, as they did for war in Iraq

 

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=4114