Putin to Western Elites: Playtime is Over… Time for the Grownups to Take Charge

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Most people in the English-speaking world missed Putin’s speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those who heard of the speech didn’t get a chance to read it, and missed its importance. Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don’t think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he doesn’t exist for you to cultivate an opinion), this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of 5 March 1946. In this speech, Putin abruptly changed the rules of the game. Previously, one played the game of international politics as follows… politicians made public pronouncements, for the sake of maintaining a pleasant fiction of national sovereignty, but they were strictly for show, having nothing to do wit real international politics; in the meantime, they engaged in secret backroom negotiations that hammered out the actual deals. Previously, Putin tried to play this game, expecting only that Russia have treatment as an equal. However, the West dashed these hopes, and at this conference he declared the game to be over, explicitly violating Western taboo by speaking directly to the people over the heads of élites and political leaders.

1. Russia won’t play games and engage in back-room negotiations over trifles. Yet, Russia is ready for serious conversations and agreements, if these are conducive to collective security, based on fairness, and take into account the interests of each side.
2. All systems of global collective security now lie in ruins. There are no longer any international security guarantees at all. The entity that destroyed them has a name… The USA.
3. The builders of the New World Order failed, having built a sand castle. Whether or not a new world order of any sort is to be built isn’t just Russia’s decision, but it’s a decision that won’t be made without Russia.
4. Russia favors a conservative approach to introducing innovations into the social order, but it isn’t opposed to investigating and discussing such innovations, to see if introducing any of them might be justified.
5. Russia has no intention of fishing in the murky waters created by America’s ever-expanding “empire of chaos”, and has no interest in building a new empire of her own (this is unnecessary; Russia’s challenges lie in developing her already vast territory). Neither is Russia willing to act as a saviour of the world, as she did in the past.
6. Russia won’t attempt to reformat the world in her own image, but neither will she allow anyone to reformat her in their image. Russia won’t close herself off from the world, but anyone who tries to close her off from the world will be sure to reap a whirlwind.
7. Russia doesn’t wish for chaos to spread, it doesn’t want war, and it has no intention of starting one. However, today, Russia sees the outbreak of global war as almost inevitable, is ready for it, and is continuing to prepare for it. Russia doesn’t want war… nor does she fear it.
8. Russia doesn’t intend to take an active role in thwarting those who still attempt to build their New World Order… until their efforts start to impinge on Russia’s key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. However, Russia will teach the true meaning of pain to those who manage to drag it into this process through disregard for her interests.
9. In her external, and, even more so, internal politics, Russia’s power won’t rely on the élites and their backroom dealing, but on the will of the people.

To these nine points I’d like to add a tenth:

There’s still a chance to build a new world order that’d avoid a world war. Of necessity, this new world order must include the USA… but it can only do so on the same terms as everyone else… be subject to international law and international agreements, refrain from all unilateral action, with full respect of the sovereignty of other nations.

To sum it all up… play-time is over. Children, put away your toys. Now, it’s time for the adults to make decisions. Russia’s ready for this; is the world?

17 March 2016

Dmitri Orlov

Russian Insider

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/putin-western-elites-playtime-over/ri761

Editor:

Let’s keep it simple. Only one American candidate will treat Russia as an equal… Bernie Sanders. All others wish to continue the present warmongering course… there’s little to choose between the “conservatives” and Chilly Hilly… in the end, there is no difference between them (as much as that galls the righties and “liberals”, it’s the truth). If you want peace and justice, you’ll vote for Bernie… if you want war and oppression (both domestic and foreign), vote for any “conservative” or for “liberals” like Chilly Hilly. We have a historic choice to make…

#Feel the Bern… #Still Bernie…

BMD

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19 March 2016. “Which Jesus Do You Worship?” The Real One, Of Course!

Don’t be fooled… all too many who call out “Jesus, Jesus”, aren’t the Lord’s Servants… reflect on who they actually serve… a meaty reflection, indeed!

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A Proddie blogger asked, “Which Jesus do you worship?” I’d say that I don’t worship “Evangelical Jesus”… that’s a 19th-century counterfeit. Gimme that Ol’ Time Religion… yeah, the one that Ss Paul and Silas preached… HOLY ORTHODOXY! After all, who WROTE and COMPILED the Bible? THE CHURCH DID. Accept no unworthy Born Again ersatz substitutes… “Which Christ do you worship?” The One Who founded the Church and the One Whom that Church still confesses, as it has always done through the ages.

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death…

BMD

Vote Sanders: Everyone Else Will Send Your Kids to War

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Editor:

Normally, I don’t run things from the mainstream American media… but this is important. Firstly, a voice at one of the major media outlets tells the truth… a vote for Chilly Hilly is a vote for war. It tells you much about the well-paid sorts who condescendingly lecture us about her… do note that they’re all above-average in income, most went to so-called “élite” colleges (especially nasty are those who went to the so-called “Ivy League”… their obvious patronising is clear to all), and none of them have children in the forces (their kids are special… let poor kids die in foreign parts for the benefit of the Affluent Effluent). Also note that the author comes out of one of the Ivies… this means that Hilly’s grip on the media and academe is slipping. Don’t let the caterwauling of the HillyBillys disconcert you. Hilly doesn’t have a solid lead… she has less than she did in ’08… but don’t argue with her besotted votaries. All that’ll happen is that they’d lecture you on how stupid you are (by extension, how much brighter they are than you are), if you’re lucky. Leave them be. We don’t need them. If you say nothing, you’ll have nothing to repent of… unlike them. They defend evil and an evil person… reflect on that. 

I’ll leave you with one observation… the HillyBillys adulate a person who applauded the Easter Bombing of Belgrade… need I say more?

BMD

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Intervention is the central question of American foreign policy. When, where, and how should the USA project power abroad? Our answers help shape the world. Naturally, debate over intervention become part of this season’s presidential campaign. Most candidates sing from the same foreign policy hymnal. They share deeply ingrained assumptions… the USA is the indispensable nation that must lead the world; this leadership requires toughness; and toughness is best demonstrated by the threat or use of force. It is the Cold War consensus, untouched by the 21st century.

Only one of the remaining candidates broke with this orthodoxy. Often, people say that Bernie Sanders lacks experience in world affairs. Certainly, he spent far fewer hours thinking about global issues than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Yet, recently, he found a theme… the long-term effects of intervention. Rather than cheer every show of American force, Sanders reminds us of the parlous consequences of past assaults on other countries. This is a sharp break from our foreign policy catechism. Yet, it’s hardly new. Ever since the USA began intervening abroad more than a century ago, loud voices raised up dissent. Today’s protesters against foreign intervention aren’t a marginal fringe… “wacko birds,” as John McCain famously called them. They’re deeply rooted in American politics. Unfortunately for Sanders, history shows that voters usually reject them in the end.

Sanders doesn’t simply censure American intervention as a vague or abstract concept. He singled out several of the most misbegotten CIA operations, including the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, the next year’s overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the Contra war in Nicaragua during the 1980s. Moving to more recent history, he criticised Clinton for promoting intervention against Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011… a project that now seems disastrously misconceived. Clinton proudly claims her place in the interventionist mainstream, as do all the Republican presidential candidates… including Donald Trump, who remains an unapologetic champion of raw power despite some unorthodox views . Only Sanders is truly sceptical of what American intervention can accomplish. He shows himself to be just as far outside the Washington consensus on foreign policy as he is on domestic policy.

By rejecting the interventionist model, Sanders places himself in a rich American tradition. It dates back to the movement against American annexation of the Philippines in 1898-99. Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts thundered, “You have no right at the cannon’s mouth to impose on an unwilling people your Declaration of Independence and your Constitution and your notions of freedom and notions of what is good!” Mark Twain lamented that American leaders “invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit’s work”. These anti-imperialists, as they were then called, lost their battle by excruciatingly narrow margins. The Senate ratified the treaty by which the USA annexed the Philippines and other island territories with only one vote more than the required two-thirds margin. The US Supreme Court upheld it in a 5-to-4 decision. Yet, close as it was, victory for the interventionists was clear.

The tide of American intervention reached a peak with Woodrow Wilson, who promised to stop invading Latin America when its people learned “to elect good men”. It receded under the conservative Republicans who followed him. President Herbert Hoover, who’d lived and worked in a dozen countries, gave Americans unwelcome news… “In a large part of the world” people see the USA as “a new imperial power intent upon dominating the destinies and freedoms of other people”. After World War II, most Americans embraced the Cold War narrative, but rebels arose from both ends of the political spectrum. Henry Wallace, a liberal Democrat, and Robert Taft, a conservative Republican, ran for president on platforms urging a more modest foreign policy… what some called “isolationism.” Candidates from the interventionist mainstream trounced both of them.

That same mainstream punished Senator George McGovern for his audacious break from political orthodoxy during the 1972 presidential campaign. McGovern lost 49 states after pledging, “Never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad”. Other heretics, notably Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, also failed to persuade voters that American interventions often do more harm than good. Sanders is this generation’s embodiment of rebellion against foreign policy dogma. He sees much of America’s trouble in the world as the result of our own shortsighted interventions. It’s a trenchant insight. History suggests, however, that it makes bad politics. Americans prefer action, not reflection. We favour leaders who promise total victory, not those who urge restraint and warn of long-term dangers. We cling to the belief that the USA should, can, and must guide the world. Candidates who tell us otherwise rarely thrive.

19 March 2016

Stephen Kinzer

Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International Studies

Brown University (Providence RI USA)

Boston Globe

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/03/19/vote-sanders-everyone-else-will-send-your-kids-war/aJzUYVFOaivEbPy3BiButO/story.html

19 March 2016. Most “Evangelicals” Believe that One Must be “Christian” to be American

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Look at the above infographic. It’s scary, isn’t it? The “Evangelicals” and “Black Christians” both believe that one must be “Christian” to be “American”. Most Catholics and Orthodox are well-aware that these groups don’t consider us Christian. I kid you not. The “Evangelicals” proselytise our people… they do so without shame or excuse. Yet, most konvertsy (and some deluded ethnics, too) schmooze up to these vipers. You can’t have ANYTHING to do with Antichrist and his deceptions… clearly, “Evangelicalism” is the false religion spoken of by St John the Theologian in the Apocalypse. As I said, why even associate with those who don’t even consider us Christians, even though THEY are the Johnny-come-Latelies? The USA is secular by design. There’s no mention of a “state religion” in the US Constitution; indeed, it even forbids establishing such! The Founders were Enlightenment Deists… “Evangelicalism” didn’t exist then… neither did any of the present “Black Churches”. Being an American has nothing to do with Christianity… that’s saying that the blood shed by non-Christians for America means nought. That’s blasphemy, in a secular sense! That’s why Bernie is so important… he’d be the first non-Christian President of the USA. Trust me, the Founders would applaud… their vision of America was not a “Christian” one. Reflect on that, if you will…

BMD