MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
So sad this is now how we respond
- Thread starter Voltrader
- Start date
This is just another example of a rapidly declining superpower moving toward insignificance. The mentality required to post that image goes beyond America's current weak leadership. It's a Western societal problem that would take at least a generation or more to fix - if Western society had the stomach to fix it. It doesn't. Better get used to it.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2247692/ This movie has been right on the money so far. Our country and president are leading from behind and we our on our way to looseing our status. I fear that China with the iou's we owe them and Russia with there mind set. There our new super powers rising. And America is not on that list. Korea is also another that we need to have eye on. I hope I am wrong and our country will rise to status. I doubt it will be under the administration. I think Obama might have low t I might want to look into that.
MANWHORE
Subscriber
I just want sex.
Is that really, too much, to ask for
Is that really, too much, to ask for
Voltrader
New Member
We have a group of people who think they are enlightened and in their minds have evolved past the thought that anything besides diplomacy is needed. The problem with this thinking is Vlad don't give a shit he smells opportunity he has not evolved into the world peace frame of mind unless it is world peace through Russian domination. These enlightened folks have no idea how to deal with guys like this because they think it is all about them. This whole Oh you better not crap or else we are going to shun you is going to get us in trouble. It is not how you keep tyranny at bay it has never been the answer through out history theseguys only understand brass tacks type of tactics everything else is regarded as weakness. This guy will push it as far as we let him and by the time the enlightened ones figure it out it will be to late. Vlad is on TRT I gaurantee that. I can give a shit if Russia has Ukraine but guys like Vlad need to be checked before he starts to do the checking.
Well said.
I just want sex.
Is that really, too much, to ask for
No bro that is not an unrealistic expectation. I think that if people were getting more sex, the world would be a better and happier place.Putin would not have time to invade Russia's neighbors.
Wings_of_pain
New Member
Americas going down, because the population doesn't have the same blue collar values we used to. It used to be that men of work ethic and laborers were to be valued and respected, but now that this country openly shits on the working class you can bet nobody wants a part of that nonsense. Thus, we have this place where everyone's looking to get theirs and fuck everyone else, only this mindset screws the national whole. I can't blame people that buy into it though, when public servants are corrupt shitbags at every level imaginable there's not a whole lot to cling to in the ways of reasons not to become a capitalist cunt yourself.
D'Souza is paying a high price for that film. Is this really what we've come to?
Inequality Before the Law
by Mark Steyn
Inequality Before the Law :: SteynOnline
My former National Review shipmate Dinesh D'Souza has pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws. As part of the general sclerosis of the "justice" system, he will not be sentenced until September 23rd. If the judge operates to the sentencing guidelines, D'Souza will serve 10-16 months in jail. He will also be, unto the end of his days, a convicted "felon", and thus, depending upon what sentence he serves, unable to own a gun, and, depending upon which state he chooses to make his home, unable to run for public office and/or vote.
For a $15,000 infraction. (Not 20K, as widely reported - the first five is legal.)
Here's what I wrote about the case four months ago:
The United States Government is corrupt. The IRS is corrupt, the EPA is corrupt, the Department of Justice is corrupt. They use their powers selectively to chastise their political enemies. In a hyper-regulatory state, there are laws against everything, and everyone is guilty of being in breach of at least 300 of them at any hour of the day. I have no use for Dinesh D'Souza, for example, but it seems obvious that he's been set up as this season's Benghazi video maker. There are gazillions of $20,000 campaign-finance infractions across America, but the only guy that's been singled out is the fellow who made a hit anti-Obama movie. As John Hayward puts it, he's been
'...busted for doing 59 in a 55-mph campaign-finance zone in your little compact car, while huge semi trucks full of political cash blast past you at a hundred miles an hour without the cops batting an eye.'
D'Souza's enemies are gloating. As is the habit in the American system, he will most likely be prevailed upon to cop a plea in return for a reduced sentence. And everyone else will get the message: If you make a film or write a book attacking Obama, make sure it's a flop - or anyway not so big a hit it catches the regime's eye.
'...busted for doing 59 in a 55-mph campaign-finance zone in your little compact car, while huge semi trucks full of political cash blast past you at a hundred miles an hour without the cops batting an eye.'
D'Souza's enemies are gloating. As is the habit in the American system, he will most likely be prevailed upon to cop a plea in return for a reduced sentence. And everyone else will get the message: If you make a film or write a book attacking Obama, make sure it's a flop - or anyway not so big a hit it catches the regime's eye.
As to those huge semis full of political cash, let's just start with the most obvious. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected president with the aid of not two "illegal" donations but thousands upon thousands:
I mentioned earlier that "Della Ware" of "12345 No Way" had managed to make a campaign donation to the fraud-friendly Obama website but not to the McCain site, and that the Obama money was whisked out of her account and into Barack's swollen coffers moments later. "Della" – real name Erika – emailed The New York Times and managed to persuade them to cover the story, if only on their blog. We'll see if the news is fit to print tomorrow morning. The headline is unusually robust – "Obama's Online Site Accepts More Fakes" – although the story continues:
'To be fair to the Obama campaign, officials there have said much of their checking for fraud occurs after the transactions have already occurred. When they find something wrong, they then refund the amount.'
If they'd really wanted "to be fair", the Times would have pointed out that, in order to accept donations from "Della Ware" and "Saddam Hussein" et al, the Obama website had, intentionally, to disable all the default security settings on their credit-card processing. I took a look at the inner sanctum of my (alas, far more modest) online retail operation this afternoon and, in order to permit fraud as easy as that which the Obama campaign is facilitating, you have to uncheck every single box on the AVS system, each one of which makes it very explicit just what you're doing – ie, accepting transactions with no "billing address", no "street address" match, no "zip code" match, with a bank "of non-US origin" (I've got nothing against those, but a US campaign fundraiser surely should be wary), etc. When you've disabled the whole lot one step at a time, then you've got a system tailor-made for fake names and bogus addresses.
So the Times seems to have missed the point – which is that this cannot be an unfortunate accidental side-effect of the unprecedented tsunami of enthusiasm for Barack the Spreader, but has to be something far more calculated. As Jim notes over in Geraghtistan:
'The press has been telling us about Obama's amazing online donations for more than a year now. There is absolutely no excuse for not digging into this story.'
'To be fair to the Obama campaign, officials there have said much of their checking for fraud occurs after the transactions have already occurred. When they find something wrong, they then refund the amount.'
If they'd really wanted "to be fair", the Times would have pointed out that, in order to accept donations from "Della Ware" and "Saddam Hussein" et al, the Obama website had, intentionally, to disable all the default security settings on their credit-card processing. I took a look at the inner sanctum of my (alas, far more modest) online retail operation this afternoon and, in order to permit fraud as easy as that which the Obama campaign is facilitating, you have to uncheck every single box on the AVS system, each one of which makes it very explicit just what you're doing – ie, accepting transactions with no "billing address", no "street address" match, no "zip code" match, with a bank "of non-US origin" (I've got nothing against those, but a US campaign fundraiser surely should be wary), etc. When you've disabled the whole lot one step at a time, then you've got a system tailor-made for fake names and bogus addresses.
So the Times seems to have missed the point – which is that this cannot be an unfortunate accidental side-effect of the unprecedented tsunami of enthusiasm for Barack the Spreader, but has to be something far more calculated. As Jim notes over in Geraghtistan:
'The press has been telling us about Obama's amazing online donations for more than a year now. There is absolutely no excuse for not digging into this story.'
The Obama campaign intentionally disabled all its credit-card security controls in order to accept thousands of illegal campaign donations. Were the D'Souza standards applied to Obama, he'd also be looking at a jail term and ineligible to run for (or continue in) office. Yet, oddly enough, federal investigators declined to look at the case.
Okay, what about a less successful presidential candidate? The oleaginous John Edwards:
Sen. John Edwards' presidential campaign finance documents show a pattern of giving by low-level employees at law firms, a number of whom appear to have limited financial resources and no prior record of political donations.
Records submitted to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show these individuals have often given $2,000 to the North Carolina Democrat, the maximum permitted by law.
In many instances, all the checks from a given firm arrived on the same day - from partners, attorneys, and other support staff.
Some of these support staff have not voted in the past, and those who have voted include registered Republicans, according to public records on file with various county registrars of voting.
Edwards' campaign records also reveal that many of these individuals' spouses and relatives contributed the maximum on the same day. The Hill found many of them to be first-time givers. Some have no previous demonstrable interest in politics, while others appear to be active Republicans.
Records submitted to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show these individuals have often given $2,000 to the North Carolina Democrat, the maximum permitted by law.
In many instances, all the checks from a given firm arrived on the same day - from partners, attorneys, and other support staff.
Some of these support staff have not voted in the past, and those who have voted include registered Republicans, according to public records on file with various county registrars of voting.
Edwards' campaign records also reveal that many of these individuals' spouses and relatives contributed the maximum on the same day. The Hill found many of them to be first-time givers. Some have no previous demonstrable interest in politics, while others appear to be active Republicans.
Yeah, but it wasn't as huge a scam as Dinesh D'Souza's 15 grand, was it?
In the three-month financial reporting period ended March 31, the Edwards campaign reported raising more than $7.4 million, the vast majority from individual contributors. Records show that nearly two-thirds of these contributions came from persons connected with law firms.
And then there's the billion-dollar black hole of Obama bundler Jon Corzine:
Maybe in addition to having very close friends in the White House, the U.S. Senate, New Jersey and Wall Street, Corzine didn't do anything worth prosecuting related to MF Global bankruptcy and the straight-up loss of more than a billion dollars. And maybe in addition to having enemies in the White House and other corridors of power, D'Souza's $20,000 crime makes him Public Enemy #1. I don't know.
But if there were selective enforcement of laws under this administration, that would be something worth caring just a bit about.
There are other things "worth caring just a bit about", too. The American Spectator channels Pope and a famous "leader" headline in The Times of London:
Who Breaks A Butterfly Upon A Wheel?
But that's standard operating procedure here. America has the most politicized judiciary in the developed world, presiding over a system lacking any sense of proportion. Four months ago I commented on the fact that, for his15-grand crime, D'Souza had been handcuffed, had his passport confiscated, been obliged to cough up half-a-million dollars in bail, and was forbidden to travel beyond New York City without permission from the judge:
The cuffs, the bail, the internal exile: Sick, sick, sick. And Americans should be ashamed of themselves for putting up with it, presumably on the quaint belief that as long as they keep their heads down they're unlikely to catch the eye of their so-called "Justice" Department. I quoted the other day my old boss Conrad Black on federal "justice", so let me do so again:
'Those who do exercise their constitutional right to a defense receive three times as severe a sentence as those who plead guilty; 95 percent of cases are won by prosecutors, 90 percent of those without trial.'
D'Souza has made his first mistake by having the impertinence to plead "not guilty". But it's not so difficult to picture him a year or three down the road belatedly copping a plea in return for only two years in jail instead of the 15-30 or whatever crackpot sentence each individual count commands. And the rest of us will all learn an important lesson in what happens when your anti-Obama tract is too successful.
And so it has proved, although it took a mere four months rather than "a year or three". When you have a politicized judiciary operating a system with no sense of proportion, a l'il ol' thing called "equality before the law" is even more important. D'Souza's monstrous crime supposedly came to light during an FBI "routine review" of FEC campaign-finance filings. These "routine reviews" never stumbled on Obama or Edwards or Corzine's groaning sacks of untold millions, so senators Cruz, Grassley, Lee and Sessions were sufficiently intrigued to write to the FBI asking them to explain what exactly these "routine reviews" are, and what other government entities are involved. As I said at the time:
Once they have these answers, they'll presumably be reassured by the happy coincidence of an entirely random "routine review" just happening to alight on the one guy in the country who made a hit anti-Obama movie.
In the hyper-regulatory state, we are all guilty of something. In the NSA security state, the authorities can easily find the something or other of which we're guilty. And, in a land of arbitrary, whimsical, selectively enforced law, what matters is not guilt or innocence but merely whether you're the guy the feds decide to target.
That was D'Souza's crime: he made the mistake of attracting their attention.
A land with selectively enforced law is a land with no law. It is, in fact, a tyranny.
I'm often asked why I live in far northern New Hampshire. And I usually reply, well, it's only 40 minutes from the border, and you never know when you might have to leave in a hurry. I used to say it as a joke.
How can they be stopped?!
nuncaquite
New Member
Which Korea?
Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony
Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony | The White House
Remarks by the President at the United States Military Academy Commencement Ceremony | The White House
Obama’s cynical foreign policy speech at West Point
By Jennifer Rubin
Obama’s cynical foreign policy speech at West Point
President Obama’s speech at West Point was pure Obama — cynical, strewn with straw men and vague to the point of meaninglessness.
Take his opening barb: “By most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise – who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away – are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.” The issue isn’t whether we are in decline; it is whether Obama’s policies are leading to decline. Rather than directly address his critics’ specific criticisms of, say, his wrongheaded obsession with the “peace process” or the failure to check China’s aggression and “pivot” to Asia, it’s much easier to write the critics off as rooting against America.
Obama congratulates himself on “winding down” a war. Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies sees the false notion that we are “winding down” a war as the essence of the president’s self-delusion. He e-mails, “America is not stronger for having ‘wound them down’ rather than finding a strategy to defeat enemies we choose not to understand.”
Consider this odd formulation from Obama’s speech: “A different view, from interventionists on the left and right, says we ignore these conflicts at our own peril; that America’s willingness to apply force around the world is the ultimate safeguard against chaos, and America’s failure to act in the face of Syrian brutality or Russian provocations not only violates our conscience, but invites escalating aggression in the future.” Wait, isn’t that what interventionists say? It is isolationists on the right and left who say otherwise. Anyway, it is a peculiar formulation to be uttered by the president who dragged his feet on Libya, erased his red line on Syria, has stood on the sidelines while 160,000 Syrians have died, refused to bolster the Green Revolution and has no discernible policy for dealing with the Arab Spring.
As Obama goes through his “principles,” it becomes apparent that he is either highly cynical or misinformed, since his own record follows none of the precepts he outlines. He asserts, “If nuclear materials are not secure, that could pose a danger in American cities. As the Syrian civil war spills across borders, the capacity of battle-hardened groups to come after us increases. Regional aggression that goes unchecked – in southern Ukraine, the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world – will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military.” Umm, but all those things are happening — on his watch.
Obama’s platitudes are the stuff of a freshman college student: “Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will.” But these are sentiments, not his administration’s policy objective, for which there are defined means of obtaining results. He seems to believe that saying we must always lead excuses not actually leading.
What does it even mean to say that “when issues of global concern that do not pose a direct threat to the United States are at stake – when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction – then the threshold for military action must be higher” when Obama announced we had a national interest in preventing use of weapons of mass destruction and then backtracked, refusing to act?
You have to marvel at assertions like this: “I believe we must shift our counter-terrorism strategy – drawing on the successes and shortcomings of our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan – to more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold.” First, this has been U.S. policy since the George W. Bush administration. Second, in perpetually insulting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, failing to complete a status-of-forces agreement in Iraq and bugging out of Afghanistan regardless of conditions on the ground, Obama has undermined that policy.
He calls for “a new Counter-Terrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines. These resources will give us flexibility to fulfill different missions, including training security forces in Yemen who have gone on the offensive against al Qaeda; supporting a multinational force to keep the peace in Somalia; working with European allies to train a functioning security force and border patrol in Libya; and facilitating French operations in Mali.” How about adequately funding the U.S. military, which is the finest and most critical counterterrorism entity on the planet?
By far, the most egregiously hypocritical comments concern Syria, in which Obama once again posits the choice as one between “American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war” and doing nothing. Almost no one has advocated the former, and he refused to do anything despite an array of alternatives. Worse yet, he speaks approvingly of actions he has rejected for years, thereby permitting the slaughter of 160,000 people and providing Iran with a huge psychological boost. (“That does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his people. And in helping those who fight for the right of all Syrians to choose their own future, we also push back against the growing number of extremists who find safe-haven in the chaos.”)
Obama likewise acts as though we have restrained Russian President Vladimir Putin from capturing Crimea or as though Iran is not much closer to a nuclear weapons capability than when he took office. As to the latter, he concedes that a diplomatic deal is highly unlikely and is mum on the effects of lifting sanctions. On Iran, get a load of this self-contradiction: “The odds of success are still long, and we reserve all options to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But for the first time in a decade, we have a very real chance of achieving a breakthrough agreement – one that is more effective and durable than what would be achieved through the use of force.” It is real, but a long shot? Whatever. It’s just a flood of words, unconnected to reality and devoid of specific content.
It was a depressing and cynical speech, one that presumes no one is aware of what Obama or the rest of the world is doing. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute summed it up for Right Turn, “I don’t know what America or what world he thinks he’s living in. It is nothing more than rationalization and recasting failure as success — like saying an F is an A and congratulating yourself.” And we have 2 1/2 more years of this. Heaven help us.
Alexander Motyl on the Ukraine Crisis
Transcript: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/audio-video/foreign-affairs-focus-alexander-motyl-on-the-ukraine-crisis
Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, sits down with Alexander Motyl, an expert on Ukraine who teaches political science at Rutgers University–Newark. "Putin has effectively lost Ukraine," says Motyl. "For the first time in the 25 or so years of Ukraine's independence, I'd say that virtually...the entire Ukrainian population, minus a bit of the Donbas, but even there wavering...is united against Putin, is united against Russia, and is united for Ukraine. That's never been the case. And Ukraine has Putin to thank for that."
War Comes to Ukraine
The Consequences of the Crash in Donetsk
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141645/alexander-j-motyl/war-comes-to-ukraine
Alexander J. Motyl
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–Newark.
Yesterday afternoon, by most accounts, pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. The attackers ostensibly thought that the Boeing 777 was a Ukrainian plane about to enter Russian airspace. Soon after the attack, Igor Girkin, the self-styled commander of the Donetsk People’s Army, http://espreso.tv/news/2014/07/17/stryelkov_radiye_zahybeli_mayzhe_trokhsot_inozemnykh_hromadyan_z_boyinha_777 [1] on his website that “We just shot down an AN-26 plane near Torez; it’s scattered somewhere around the Progress mine. We warned them not to fly in ‘our sky’.” Soon after, RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency, seconded [2] Girkin’s claim.
After it became apparent that the plane was not Ukrainian, Girkin erased his post and Aleksandr Borodai, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, tried to put the blame for the attack, which killed 295 [3], on Ukrainian authorities [3]. Later in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated [4] that it was “unquestionable that the state over whose territory this took place is responsible for this terrible tragedy.”
The atrocity comes three days after Russian militants shot down a Ukrainian transport plane flying over Krasnodon district in Luhansk province and one day after a missile -- which Ukrainian authorities believe was fired by Russia -- brought down a Ukrainian SU-25 [5] jet over Donetsk province.
This week also saw a major escalation of Russian military involvement in Ukraine; in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 13, about 100 Russian armored personnel carriers and other vehicles crossed from Russia into Luhansk province [6] in Ukraine. Unlike earlier Russian deployments into Crimea and eastern Ukraine, these carriers were openly adorned with Russian insignia and flags. The flow of Russian tanks and soldiers into the area has since continued, and Ukrainian authorities estimate that up to 400 [7] additional “little green men” (a term coined during the Crimea invasion for Russian troops without insignia) have infiltrated into eastern Ukraine’s Donbas.
Until yesterday, that escalation had gone relatively unremarked in Western media. But now, no matter who fired the missile, things are set to change. The downing of a civilian plane may conceivably qualify as a war crime, inasmuch as it entailed the unwarranted militarily destruction of a civilian target. At any rate, it was certainly an atrocity and an act of terrorism. And if Girkin -- an ethnic Russian who hails from Russia and who, by some accounts, is still an officer in the Russian military intelligence service, which would make him officially subordinate to Russia’s president -- really was involved, Putin might arguably be politically responsible for the crime.
Politically and economically, that couldn’t be worse news for Putin, who launched a charm offensive just last week at the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Putin, worried about the Ukrainian army’s rapid advances on insurgent positions, met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and convinced her to agree to negotiations with the insurgents. His efforts -- presumably deemed insincere by Washington -- collapsed on Wednesday when the Obama administration imposed new financial sanctions [8] on several important Russian banking and energy institutions, including Gazprombank, Novatek (an independent natural gas producer), the Rosneft Oil Company, and the VEB Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs. Hours later, the Russian stock market took a nosedive and the ruble fell.
Putin might have managed to muddle along. Although most of the West has been deeply critical of Russia and its support for separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, European and American policymakers have been hesitant to impose the most severe sanctions and have seemed ready to move on to other foreign policy issues, such as Iraq and the war between Israel and Hamas. Even the Obama administration’s recent round of sanctions was not as far-reaching as many critics of the president would have liked.
But the Malaysia Airlines crash will force both the United States and Europe to come to terms with unpleasant realities. First, Russia has effectively embarked on a war against Ukraine. Kiev is no longer fighting homegrown insurgents and separatists; it is fighting Russian soldiers and Russian military equipment under Russian military command. War, unthinkable in Europe for so long, has truly come to the continent. Second, Russia also apparently believes that Donbas, the region over which the Malaysian flight was travelling, is Russian territory and that terror is a perfectly justified means for keeping control of it. As a new Amnesty International report has made clear, Russian forces have systematically engaged in http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR50/034/2014/en/c8e25fcd-c791-4edb-ac3f-6b1a1ce12977/eur500342014en.pdf [9] against civilians in the eastern Ukrainian regions they rule.
In a word, even before yesterday, Donbas was well on its way to becoming Ukraine’s Bosnia -- with Putin playing the part of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, Russia playing the part of Serbia, and Putin’s Donbas supporters playing the part of Bosnian Serb irregulars. Once Bosnia became a killing field, Europe and the United States could no longer turn a blind eye. NATO forces intervened in September 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force; two months later, the war ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
A direct Western military intervention in Ukraine remains unlikely. But other military assistance has now become possible for the simple reason that, if it did down the plane, Russia has already crossed the very red line that Washington had feared a more robust response in Ukraine would lead it to transgress. The United States, for its part, has ample military equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could easily be diverted to Ukraine.
This week’s tragedy could remove any last shred of hope that Putin could be a valuable interlocutor in the Ukraine crisis. It is not impossible that he will realize that continued war with Ukraine is a lose-lose proposition and decide to use the crash as an opportunity to reinvent himself as a peacemaker who can pressure the separatists in Ukraine, hammer out some deal with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and declare victory. That doesn’t seem likely. But if he doesn’t, Russia’s cold war with the West could warm up considerably.
Links:
[1] http://espreso.tv/news/2014/07/17/stryelkov_radiye_zahybeli_mayzhe_trokhsot_inozemnykh_hromadyan_z_boyinha_777
[2] http://ria.ru/world/20140717/101640...er&action=addClass&value=registration
[3] http://news.msn.com/world/ukraine-says-rebels-shoot-down-malaysian-airliner-295-dead
[4] http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/07/18/7032275/
[5] http://news.msn.com/world/ukraine-air-force-jet-downed-by-russian-missile
[6] http://www.unian.ua/politics/939080...lasya-prorvatis-v-ukrajinu-z-rosiji-rnbo.html
[7] http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/07/17/7032170/
[8] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20140716.aspx
[9] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR50/034/2014/en/c8e25fcd-c791-4edb-ac3f-6b1a1ce12977/eur500342014en.pdf
Transcript: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/audio-video/foreign-affairs-focus-alexander-motyl-on-the-ukraine-crisis
Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, sits down with Alexander Motyl, an expert on Ukraine who teaches political science at Rutgers University–Newark. "Putin has effectively lost Ukraine," says Motyl. "For the first time in the 25 or so years of Ukraine's independence, I'd say that virtually...the entire Ukrainian population, minus a bit of the Donbas, but even there wavering...is united against Putin, is united against Russia, and is united for Ukraine. That's never been the case. And Ukraine has Putin to thank for that."
War Comes to Ukraine
The Consequences of the Crash in Donetsk
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141645/alexander-j-motyl/war-comes-to-ukraine
Alexander J. Motyl
ALEXANDER J. MOTYL is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University–Newark.
Yesterday afternoon, by most accounts, pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over eastern Ukraine. The attackers ostensibly thought that the Boeing 777 was a Ukrainian plane about to enter Russian airspace. Soon after the attack, Igor Girkin, the self-styled commander of the Donetsk People’s Army, http://espreso.tv/news/2014/07/17/stryelkov_radiye_zahybeli_mayzhe_trokhsot_inozemnykh_hromadyan_z_boyinha_777 [1] on his website that “We just shot down an AN-26 plane near Torez; it’s scattered somewhere around the Progress mine. We warned them not to fly in ‘our sky’.” Soon after, RIA Novosti, a Russian news agency, seconded [2] Girkin’s claim.
After it became apparent that the plane was not Ukrainian, Girkin erased his post and Aleksandr Borodai, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, tried to put the blame for the attack, which killed 295 [3], on Ukrainian authorities [3]. Later in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated [4] that it was “unquestionable that the state over whose territory this took place is responsible for this terrible tragedy.”
The atrocity comes three days after Russian militants shot down a Ukrainian transport plane flying over Krasnodon district in Luhansk province and one day after a missile -- which Ukrainian authorities believe was fired by Russia -- brought down a Ukrainian SU-25 [5] jet over Donetsk province.
This week also saw a major escalation of Russian military involvement in Ukraine; in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 13, about 100 Russian armored personnel carriers and other vehicles crossed from Russia into Luhansk province [6] in Ukraine. Unlike earlier Russian deployments into Crimea and eastern Ukraine, these carriers were openly adorned with Russian insignia and flags. The flow of Russian tanks and soldiers into the area has since continued, and Ukrainian authorities estimate that up to 400 [7] additional “little green men” (a term coined during the Crimea invasion for Russian troops without insignia) have infiltrated into eastern Ukraine’s Donbas.
Until yesterday, that escalation had gone relatively unremarked in Western media. But now, no matter who fired the missile, things are set to change. The downing of a civilian plane may conceivably qualify as a war crime, inasmuch as it entailed the unwarranted militarily destruction of a civilian target. At any rate, it was certainly an atrocity and an act of terrorism. And if Girkin -- an ethnic Russian who hails from Russia and who, by some accounts, is still an officer in the Russian military intelligence service, which would make him officially subordinate to Russia’s president -- really was involved, Putin might arguably be politically responsible for the crime.
Politically and economically, that couldn’t be worse news for Putin, who launched a charm offensive just last week at the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Putin, worried about the Ukrainian army’s rapid advances on insurgent positions, met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and convinced her to agree to negotiations with the insurgents. His efforts -- presumably deemed insincere by Washington -- collapsed on Wednesday when the Obama administration imposed new financial sanctions [8] on several important Russian banking and energy institutions, including Gazprombank, Novatek (an independent natural gas producer), the Rosneft Oil Company, and the VEB Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs. Hours later, the Russian stock market took a nosedive and the ruble fell.
Putin might have managed to muddle along. Although most of the West has been deeply critical of Russia and its support for separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, European and American policymakers have been hesitant to impose the most severe sanctions and have seemed ready to move on to other foreign policy issues, such as Iraq and the war between Israel and Hamas. Even the Obama administration’s recent round of sanctions was not as far-reaching as many critics of the president would have liked.
But the Malaysia Airlines crash will force both the United States and Europe to come to terms with unpleasant realities. First, Russia has effectively embarked on a war against Ukraine. Kiev is no longer fighting homegrown insurgents and separatists; it is fighting Russian soldiers and Russian military equipment under Russian military command. War, unthinkable in Europe for so long, has truly come to the continent. Second, Russia also apparently believes that Donbas, the region over which the Malaysian flight was travelling, is Russian territory and that terror is a perfectly justified means for keeping control of it. As a new Amnesty International report has made clear, Russian forces have systematically engaged in http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR50/034/2014/en/c8e25fcd-c791-4edb-ac3f-6b1a1ce12977/eur500342014en.pdf [9] against civilians in the eastern Ukrainian regions they rule.
In a word, even before yesterday, Donbas was well on its way to becoming Ukraine’s Bosnia -- with Putin playing the part of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, Russia playing the part of Serbia, and Putin’s Donbas supporters playing the part of Bosnian Serb irregulars. Once Bosnia became a killing field, Europe and the United States could no longer turn a blind eye. NATO forces intervened in September 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force; two months later, the war ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
A direct Western military intervention in Ukraine remains unlikely. But other military assistance has now become possible for the simple reason that, if it did down the plane, Russia has already crossed the very red line that Washington had feared a more robust response in Ukraine would lead it to transgress. The United States, for its part, has ample military equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could easily be diverted to Ukraine.
This week’s tragedy could remove any last shred of hope that Putin could be a valuable interlocutor in the Ukraine crisis. It is not impossible that he will realize that continued war with Ukraine is a lose-lose proposition and decide to use the crash as an opportunity to reinvent himself as a peacemaker who can pressure the separatists in Ukraine, hammer out some deal with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and declare victory. That doesn’t seem likely. But if he doesn’t, Russia’s cold war with the West could warm up considerably.
Links:
[1] http://espreso.tv/news/2014/07/17/stryelkov_radiye_zahybeli_mayzhe_trokhsot_inozemnykh_hromadyan_z_boyinha_777
[2] http://ria.ru/world/20140717/101640...er&action=addClass&value=registration
[3] http://news.msn.com/world/ukraine-says-rebels-shoot-down-malaysian-airliner-295-dead
[4] http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/07/18/7032275/
[5] http://news.msn.com/world/ukraine-air-force-jet-downed-by-russian-missile
[6] http://www.unian.ua/politics/939080...lasya-prorvatis-v-ukrajinu-z-rosiji-rnbo.html
[7] http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/07/17/7032170/
[8] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20140716.aspx
[9] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR50/034/2014/en/c8e25fcd-c791-4edb-ac3f-6b1a1ce12977/eur500342014en.pdf
Does anyone here believe for ONE SECOND that if the US broke apart, and each holding their percentage own of current resources, weapons, geographic potential - THAT the LARGER PORTION WOULD LET THE BREAKAWAY STAND UNCHALLENGED.....!
Are you serious...? Spiritual Sloth ='s LUXURIOUS FANTASY..... The kind that set one up for a BIG FALL....!
Clearly -Its a set up on Putin to make Russia look bad and Ukraine is not supposed to have rockets like that... I think they defined as "Pro-Ukrainian Russian Breakaway sect.."... LOL Right...
Does anyone recall UKRAINE GIVING UP THE LARGEST STASH of weapons grade plutonium in history. They SOLD it to JAPAN in 1995. Hence MOX Fuel Reactors...
Gotta cut this one the bitch hollas and she just f'd me good... LOL
Are you serious...? Spiritual Sloth ='s LUXURIOUS FANTASY..... The kind that set one up for a BIG FALL....!
Clearly -Its a set up on Putin to make Russia look bad and Ukraine is not supposed to have rockets like that... I think they defined as "Pro-Ukrainian Russian Breakaway sect.."... LOL Right...
Does anyone recall UKRAINE GIVING UP THE LARGEST STASH of weapons grade plutonium in history. They SOLD it to JAPAN in 1995. Hence MOX Fuel Reactors...
Gotta cut this one the bitch hollas and she just f'd me good... LOL
whodatnation
New Member
Surely didn't realize some of our members were also awake. It is truly sad that America has been betrayed and it's people used as slaves to obtain an agenda of madmen. The truth is that America is owned already and has been since the induction of the FED. If the world is to prevail and not just us we must take back our God given rights to be free from the tyrannical governments that are now in place. With the NDA we have essentially lost any freedom within our own borders. It truly seems as though that they are pushing to create a world war three.
Today's @NSDC_ua map of ATO zone shows rebel-held territory shrinking, their lifeline to Russia nearly cut off.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/495155297586262017/photo/1
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/495155297586262017/photo/1
DONETSK REBELS SURROUNDED, COMMANDER SAYS [Prelude to Putin invasion?]
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/barricades-come-down-kiev
DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — A top commander of the pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine said Saturday that Ukrainian forces have seized a key town, leaving the rebel region's largest city of Donetsk surrounded.
The statement by Igor Girkin, a former Russian special service officer better known by his nom de guerre of Strelkov, appears to be a significant admission by the rebels that Ukrainian forces are gaining the upper hand in the four-month-old fight.
Strelkov said the town of Krasnyi Luch, which lies on one of the two main roads between Donetsk and the rebel-held east's other main city of Luhansk, "has been taken by the enemy."
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/barricades-come-down-kiev
DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — A top commander of the pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine said Saturday that Ukrainian forces have seized a key town, leaving the rebel region's largest city of Donetsk surrounded.
The statement by Igor Girkin, a former Russian special service officer better known by his nom de guerre of Strelkov, appears to be a significant admission by the rebels that Ukrainian forces are gaining the upper hand in the four-month-old fight.
Strelkov said the town of Krasnyi Luch, which lies on one of the two main roads between Donetsk and the rebel-held east's other main city of Luhansk, "has been taken by the enemy."
Russia’s Eurasian Vision
http://www.project-syndicate.org/co...out-the-kremlin-s-plan-for-a-re-divided-world
NEW YORK – The escalating conflict in Ukraine between the Western-backed government and Russian-backed separatists has focused attention on a fundamental question: What are the Kremlin’s long-term objectives? Though Russian President Vladimir Putin’s immediate goal may have been limited to regaining control of Crimea and retaining some influence in Ukrainian affairs, his longer-term ambition is much bolder.
That ambition is not difficult to discern. Putin once famously observed that the Soviet Union’s collapse was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. Thus, his long-term objective has been to rebuild it in some form, perhaps as a supra-national union of member states like the European Union.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/co...out-the-kremlin-s-plan-for-a-re-divided-world
NEW YORK – The escalating conflict in Ukraine between the Western-backed government and Russian-backed separatists has focused attention on a fundamental question: What are the Kremlin’s long-term objectives? Though Russian President Vladimir Putin’s immediate goal may have been limited to regaining control of Crimea and retaining some influence in Ukrainian affairs, his longer-term ambition is much bolder.
That ambition is not difficult to discern. Putin once famously observed that the Soviet Union’s collapse was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. Thus, his long-term objective has been to rebuild it in some form, perhaps as a supra-national union of member states like the European Union.
I don't know about all that. But did you SEE THIS...!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/07/russia-bombers-arctic/13746681/
Its a sad set-up going on....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/07/russia-bombers-arctic/13746681/
Its a sad set-up going on....
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