Windows to Russia

I was sipping that cup of coffee and doing some old time thinking’s! I like to do that once in awhile and Sveta listens to me as I talk at the dinner table. This time I was talking to Sveta and sipping that coffee and it dawned on me that I had read about increase in minimum wage in America. I do not know what it is now but in 2009 it was $7.25 per hour…

Then I remembered when…

I remembered that I was making $1.60 per hour and I also remember $2.10 per hour. Then I remember I was killing people for Uncle Sam in other countries and never cared again, until I had to pay those wages to employees…

The reason I remember this was that I could work two and a half hours and that paid for a Saturday night out on the town, with my girl at that time…

I remember a $5 dollar bill would put gas in my car, take two to a movie, buy popcorn and soda, eat at McDonald’s after words and still had enough to go to a local fair and win a stuffed bear for the girl…

Okay at $7.25 an hour, what can you do with that in 2 and a half hours of work?

Lets just take for sanity sakes and try to get around taxes and say you get in your hand what you make per hour!Lets use $2.10 per hour and $7.25 per hour. Lets use 1975 and 2012 as the times. In 1975, I could do what I stated above and did that very same thing as I dated more girls than I can even remember and got in way too much trouble for dating that many… (Taxes are definitely worse now!)

So lets try to see what we have to make now to achomplish the same thing in 2013, that I did in 1975…

In 1975 gas ran me around .45 to .50 per gallon and really much cheaper than that many times. Gas wars were a thing of my early driving years and I remember many times filling up at .30 + per gallon. I had a Volkswagen Beetle and it got the mileage…

In 2013 gas is running? $3.30 at the time of this writing! That is posted average over the whole country…

Then I realized that this won’t work… (?) The inflation and depreciation of the dollar; the dollar has been destroyed with the collapsing of the system. The numbers won’t happen for same hours worked and such…

In 1975 I had $5.25 to work with! In 2013 I had $18.25 to work with…

Two gallons of gas was a $1 in 1975 and in 2013 that is $6.60… (Strike 1)

A movie ticket in 1975 to a first run movie in my little town was .25 so .50 for two people. In 2013 and I checked on this by communication with a friend in the old home town. It is $6.50 per person for a first run movie and that is $13.00 right there alone… (Strike 2)

Okay we are at $19.60 and just bought fuel and saw a movie…

But lets continue like we are to dumb to see where this is going…

Buying popcorn and a drink for two. Now this really sucks! In 1975 (Actually 1977 by my only reference!) I am using 1977 as the reference, because I clearly remember Star Wars and I was so pissed that popcorn and a soda went up for such a huge movie and the prices climbed from there on. It cost me $1.00 to buy popcorn and a soda for two. That pissed me off…

Now lets wonder what it runs to eat popcorn and soda for two in 2013? Well all I have is Russia to verify this with and that sucks as from what I see in America it is much higher. $2.00 for a small pop corn and $2.00 for a small soda, per person! That $8.00 just for popcorn and a drink. That sucks and I know I paid more before I left America years ago… (I found this and almost had a heart attack – http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_price_of_popcorn_at_the_movies)

(Strike 3 and you are out of the ballpark!)

Now lets add up what we have spent so far…

In 1975 I have spent $2.50 and in 2013 I have spent $27.60 so far and I am not done…

Remember 1975 I had $5.25 to work with! In 2013 I had $18.25 to work with…

But wait we are not done…

I am still hungry and I want to eat at McDonald’s and my girl was hungry also…

In 1975 I remember that $1.50 bought food for two! Two burgers, two fries, two small drinks and two ice cream cones…

What does that run now? 2013 it costs for the above – at least $8.00 if not more… (Try $10 most likely!)

In 1975 I have spent $4.00 and in 2013 I have spent $35.60…

So lets ignore that fact that I still have money from my original two hours of working and I won a huge teddy bear for my girl and that took the rest of my money, because I was not going to give up until I won…

So the point of all this is that in 1975 I worked 2 and a half hours and had a fantastic Saturday night on a date and spent $5.00…

In 2013 at the minimum wage it would take working around 5+ hours to do the same thing (Try 7-8 hours to get that bear also!) and that excludes going to a fair and winning a stuffed bear. The cost of the fair would drive the cost to astronomical amounts and we will not go there, because my head hurts now at the thought of what we have done to ourselves in America…

I worked very hard for that $2 bucks and hour and it went a long ways as I enjoyed life, spending it. This isn’t an apple to apple comparison, it is an hour to hour comparison and what you have to work at a job to achomplish the same level of life as we did back in the old days…

This all goes to the wayside as I realize that non of this matters anymore as we have lost all our freedoms that made those old days seem to be much better. Even if the cost was the same, the expenditure of our humanness is a price too high to pay. We have lost all the way around and something as simple as having to work twice as many hours or even three times in many cases, to enjoy the basics of life. Has reached a serious breaking point in society and we don’t care…

Your mileage on these costs may be different and that is okay. The point is that your money does not go as far and one day the point of no return will be reached and it is looking like it is just around the next corner…

Have a good day…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Russia will restrict its meat imports from Europe if it does not receive additional guarantees that horse meat won’t be delivered to its market, Russia’s chief medical officer Gennady Onishchenko said Thursday. He said that he had received a letter from the EU in which it guaranteed full transparency of the investigation of the horse meat scandal. The scandal broke out three years ago when horse meat was found in “beef” ready-to-eat meals in Spain and Ireland. Later horse meat was found in beef products in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. The cause of the substitution has not been determined yet. RIA

Okay! So according to a statement like this, I would assume that Russians do not want horse meat in their stores? Right?

So what the hell is all this canned and fresh cut meat available all over Russia. Our little store on the corner has a supply of canned horse meat and as I confirmed today, Heinz Baby Food made of Pony…

No! Russia does not want horse meat. Just look at the pictures below and imagine a thousand times more products than this. All horse or pony…

лошадь – horse
конь – horse
конина – horse meat
пони – pony

Take a trip to the local store and what do you find? That is correct – horse meat!

Now I don’t really care and I will not eat it. Well at least until I am starved, because I have eaten much much worse in my life and actually horse meat is really good, just psychologically damaging to my brain… 🙂

So Russia – don’t act out the fool on this subject. I support the hell out of Russia on many subjects, but this won’t fly with this blogger. I live here and know that you have much more horse meat available than beef and also many other anti-western types foods. I also know that when you have ground meat it is horse or at least partly. I do not care and will only tell it like it is…

I eat it all and smile…

For you Americans on a high-horse against Russia…

The real reason that you are playing games is that you are trying to get your own internal meat market developed, hogs, pigs, chickens, turkey, goat, lamb, horse and 20 other meats are being developed as we speak and I think that is fantastic. But you went into the World Trade Organization with open eyes and trying to skirt the issue with falsifications is just plain ignorant…

Russia is better than that and Russia should have never joined the WTO…

So, now you know something more about Russia…

I love Russia and her ways…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

I listen to the US attack verbally and threaten China and now Russia with physical and cyber attacks, over Cyber Warfare. These accusations come and go, but the one thing they have in common is that they are getting louder and coming from the same source: The Western Empire…

For someone like me who has had a very popular website almost totally destroyed by the US government, in an attempt to silence me and my big mouth. It is really interesting to see what is being said by a cry baby country (as America is), over cyber attacks…

I have article after article with evidence that the USA government attacked my sites days in and days out. They relentlessly crushed my sites with DDoS attacks and many other inconveniences. I had to use at one point, three servers in various parts of the world, just to keep the site online…

I realize that no one cares, but I do and it cost me a lot of money to keep Windows to Russia online…

So I have indubitably no issues with saying that, “The USA government has censored me and tried on 50+ occasions to destroy my site and keep me offline!” Just a few articles below from when I got mad…

http://windowstorussia.com/wdcsun19usdojgov.html

http://windowstorussia.com/battleing-denial-of-service-attack-dos-attack-against-windows-to-russia-from-my-own-homeland.html

http://windowstorussia.com/in-russia-two-cups-of-coffee-chicory-and-some-thinkings.html

Now America has the gall to sit around and bitch about other countries doing to them what they did to me and them for over a year. All this is is another way for America to play games with your freedoms and Internet usage…

If China has been slapping back at the USA and Russian has been slapping back at the USA and Iran is slapping back at the USA, over cyber issues, Then I would think that the USA needs to quit instigating the issues first and become a friend and not a bully in the school yard…

China and Russia and Iran can do some serious cyber pain inducing to a bully and especially when the bully deserves it…

Sveta and I know all about it as we have endured serious viruses, DDos attacks and many other issues and they all came straight from the horses mouth – The US of A…

You do not have to like me or what I say, but you better think and listen, because our country America is digging a huge hole and one day we (you and me) will all be thrown under the wheels of the truck as the government tries to get us to condone attacking all countries that are just trying to stand up for themselves, against the school yard bully and that my friend is not the kind of country that I appreciate being associated with. The school yard bully…

My grandma would have said, “What is good for the Goose is good for the Gander!”

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

On Thursday the U.S. blocked a Russian draft statement in the UN Security Council which condemned the terrorist attack in Damascus and offered condolences to the victims and victims’ families…

“Unfortunately, the U.S. delegation, has yet again, blocked the necessary response to a terrorist attack and linked it to other issues. We consider it unacceptable to search for excuses for terrorists!” said a press release issued by the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations…

The draft statement prepared by Russia includes the confirmation of the postulate that: “Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security and has no excuses.”

Russia set America up royally on this one and America took it hook line and sinker, because they had no choice. Due to their actions behind the scenes in Syria…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

If NATO further expands to Georgia and Ukraine, crossing the Kremlin’ s “Red Line,” hostility would be further heightened. The missile-defense installations are supposedly aimed at Iran, but do pose a direct threat to Russia in the event of a nuclear first strike.

Former president Bill Clinton started his illegal air war over Kosovo ostensibly to save Kosovo Albanians from being massacred by the Serbs. The real purpose, however, has been rumored to be Moscow’s deprivation of its last European ally, Serbia.

Moscow has steadfastly opposed Western efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program as those efforts could be designed to support a regime change that would pave the way for Western penetration into Central Asia.

Russia has just published its new foreign policy concept in which President Vladimir Putin indicates that the most important aspect of Moscow’s foreign strategy is to strengthen its ties with China. The two countries hold the same principle on core issues in international politics and that can constitute a basic element in maintaining regional and global stability. Russia will engage in full spectrum foreign policy cooperation with China when dealing with new challenges or menaces, as well as in solving regional and global problems.

This may not exactly be what the Obama administration wants to hear. It has succeeded in stirring up conflict between China and Japan; but has been unable to sow any dissension between China and Russia. Its efforts to “reset” the relations with the Kremlin ended in slight disappointment.

Indeed, U.S.-Russia relations are now seemingly at their nadir. The publication of Moscow’s new foreign policy concept was delayed as Putin wanted to emphasize the principle of non-intervention in Russia’s internal affairs. He especially resents the humiliating Magnitsky Act, which was overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. Moscow retaliated by banning the American adoption of Russian orphans.

Stephen F. Cohen, Russian expert and professor emeritus at NYU and Princeton, is even talking about a potential new Cold War. As one Chinese saying goes, “It takes more than one cold day for the river to freeze three-feet-deep. ” Cohen points to four components of U.S. policy resented by Moscow:

* NATO expansion to Russia’s borders which now includes European missile-defense installations. This poses the most serious threat to Russian security. If NATO further expands to Georgia and Ukraine, crossing the Kremlin’ s “Red Line,” hostility would be further heightened. The missile-defense installations are supposedly aimed at Iran, but do pose a direct threat to Russia in the event of a nuclear first strike. Moscow has demanded participation in the European system, failing that, a written guarantee that it will never be directed against Russia. It was rebuffed on both counts.

* “Selective cooperation, ” or the obtaining of concessions from the Kremlin without any meaningful White House reciprocity. Putin has never forgotten his vital role in the 2001 U.S. war in Afghanistan and was later rewarded by George W. Bush’s further NATO expansion and tearing up of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

* “Democracy promotion” in Russia’s domestic politics, viewed by Russian leaders as an intolerable interference with their internal affairs. The National Endowment for Democracy openly funded Russian NGOs.

* Last but not least, high-level Moscow circles have repeatedly complained that “the Americans do not care about our national security.”

It is unlikely that Washington will make any meaningful concessions on these four issues. So the chill in relations will probably continue.

In fact, the clash of strategic interests has a long history. Former president Bill Clinton started his illegal air war over Kosovo ostensibly to save Kosovo Albanians from being massacred by the Serbs. The real purpose, however, has been rumored to be Moscow’s deprivation of its last European ally, Serbia.

Moscow has steadfastly opposed Western efforts to block Iran’s nuclear program as those efforts could be designed to support a regime change that would pave the way for Western penetration into Central Asia.

Russia has also blocked Western efforts to intervene in Syria, its ally in the Middle East, where it has a naval base at Tartus.

The Kremlin also pursues a hard line refusing to return the Northern Territories (four islands), which Moscow calls the Southern Kurils, to Japan. It is not just a conflict with Japan. It is also a response to the United States’ pivot towards Asia and the (Asia) Pacific region – Russia also considers itself a Pacific power. The latest incident occurred on February 12, the day President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address.

The U.S. military reported that two Russian “Bear” (TU-95) strategic bombers, capable of carrying nuclear cruise missiles, visited the U.S. strategic island Guam (Moscow denied this). U.S. Air Force F-15 jets were scrambled from Andersen Air Force Base to intercept the intruders. Nevertheless, both sides “stayed professional. ”

U.S. military officials hold that ever since Putin reclaimed the Russian presidency, the number of such flights in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska has increased, but encounters with U.S. aircraft have generally remained “very professional. ”

Neither side is looking for a fight; but they’re not on the best of terms either.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn.

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The coverup is under way in the USA! Russia is waiting for the answer and America is dragging it out as long as possible. When America has a good covered up excuse, then they will present the information as fact, but it really will be sapless in content. This is what Russia is waiting for, before they finalize issues against Adoption by Americans. They are giving America a last chance to prove that they care about the adopted Russian children with in her (American) borders…

Prosecutor General’s Office officials have spoken with the Sheriff’s office in Ector County, Texas, where three-year-old Maxim Kuzmin died in late January of causes that have yet to be established, spokeswoman Marina Grindeva said… (Been a month since death!)

Well the subject above is a huge issue in Russia and they are correct in that it is a huge issue and nothing to push aside. Now lets get to another issue that Russians feel strong about…

Another adoption issue has arisen and we are finding out that a woman came to Russia and lied about her sexual status in life to get a child to take back to America. She is lesbian and the lie was that she was not a lesbian, so that she would get a child…

Russian investigators are looking into the circumstances of a Russian child’s adoption by a US woman who concealed her same-sex marriage, a spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee said on Wednesday. Yegor Shatabalov was adopted in 2007. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, his adoptive mother broke up with her partner a couple of years later, and the two women became embroiled in a custody battle for the child. “We are convinced that Yegor has found himself in an intolerable situation that damaged his psychological health,” said Konstantin Dolgov, Russian Foreign Ministry’s special representative for human rights, democracy and the rule of law. “It all contradicts with the boy’s best interests, he requires normal living conditions and should be raised in a fully functional family.”

Russians are very anti-gay and “that is that…”

Now we turn to gold…

A new gold deposit of about 200 metric tonnes has been discovered in Russia’s Siberian republic of Yakutia, the region’s economics ministry said on Thursday…

Darn that is worth? Around $33,000 per kilo and that equates to 200,000 kilos = $6.6 billion dollars. No wonder they are excited and I know that the Russian government will buy every last ruble worth, to put in their huge gold stockpile…

Now lets look at small business and Russia…

The Russian parliament will meet shortly to discuss a government-proposed bill that allows foreigners to launch small and medium-scale businesses in Russia with an unrestricted share in the charter capital…

Now that is wonderful and I feel this will be just what the chef ordered to help out in the kitchen…

Now lets not use cement booties, but use the whole barrel full of cement to fix a unpaid debt issue to the Mafia?

Mikhail Pakhomov, 36, a legislator in the Lipetsk city parliament with the ruling United Russia party, was reported missing early last week and a murder investigation was opened. “Pakhomov’s body was discovered in a barrel of cement near the village of Obukhovo in the Moscow Region district of Noginsk,” an Investigative Committee spokesperson told RIA Novosti. The barrel was in the basement of a private garage, the spokesperson added…

It has been made clear after 12 people arrested, that he owed a huge debt of around $36,000,000 dollars?

Now lets end with this…

Researchers in southern Russia have unearthed remains of a rare mammoth species. Citing local villagers’ accounts of previous bone finds, they suspect that an entire graveyard of prehistoric creatures is waiting to be found at the site. The bones were found encased in clay near a river confluence close to the village of Verkhny Kurp in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic of the Caucasus Mountains. They likely belonged to the southern mammoth (mammuthus meridionalis), a species that lived in Europe and Central Asia between 2.6 and 0.7 million years ago…

Now that is cool and you have to say that areas like Siberia, where humans do not tread and destroy as much as they do in populated areas. That we are still finding things of the past in abundance…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

So now we know what is going on!

It is all caused by passion and love…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

I found this interesting…

Old American Newspaper Article…

To Soviet, There’s Nothing Like Ice Cream

MOSCOW (Sunday, April 2nd, 1972) -To illustrate to viewers how cold it has gotten this winter, a Moscow television commentator said even street corner Ice cream sales had fallen. When that happens in Moscow, comrades, you know its cold…

Russians love ice cream They eat tons of it every year indoors, outdoors, summer or winter. It is estimated that Moscow residents consumed nearly 330 tons of the stuff in the recent week. And that is while the temperature dipped to -13 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit…

Still served

In Moscow, outdoor ice cream stands operate year around (Vendors have electric heaters inside in the winter and lines in front of then of young and old alike are common. Muscovite’s favorites according to the newspaper, are ice cream cones of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry and the “Eskimo,” chocolate-covered ice cream on  a stick. Cones have been around in he Soviet Union for years: but the Eskimo is a fairly recent innovation. The idea was brought back from the United States in 1936 by former ambassador after he made a trip there as commissar of trade. Eskimos sell for 11 kopeks (13 cents) at the outdoor stands and are the cheapest Ice cream. They are sold everywhere on the street, in the subways, at movie theaters; and in grocery and department stores. Crowds of men. women and children can often be seen at store entrances bundled in heavy clothing and munching on cones while taking a shopping break. While Muscovite’s prefer Eskimos and cones, those living outside the capital are said to favor bricks of Ice cream and the “Leningradskoye,” a chocolate covered ice cream bar without a stick.

The Leningradskoye sells for 22 kopeks (26 cents and is double the size of the Eskimo. Lacking a stick. It also is a bit messier to eat.

Russians also eat ice cream rolls with a vanilla filling, sometimes with nuts, surrounded by chocolate ice cream packaged bricks, and chocolate covered bars decorated with sugared flowers or other designs. The ice cream enthusiasts can also Indulge at any one of Moscow, numerous Ire cream cafes where, the favorites are sundae-types of Ice cream with jam type sauces. Russians often drink a glass of white wine with such treats…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Sources report that Mr. U repeatedly signed and approved overtime that was not worked except when a particular individual went to services for Passover. Mr. U apparently did not do that for Christians during the Christmas Holiday.  The same individual of the Jewish faith was berated in front of peers for not attending a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Mr. U also referred to a black American intelligence analyst as ‘that boy’, according to sources.

“The associations that senior military officers have with corporate defense CEO’s and the proliferation of defense contractors with former military experience, literally overnight, providing dubious services, gadgets, and programs, is stunning. I don’t blame them. I blame the American people and the US Congress. At the end of the day, someone is going to ask: What did we get for all of the money we poured into the HTS program, and can you actually prove that it did what it claimed to do?”

“HTS got through three major funding hurdles, without a scratch. My bet is that after a cursory examination of where the money went, HTS will survive in some form or another. Because it is a cash cow, they [investigative personnel] don’t have to prove anything. There is no oversight of the program and no one is going to admit at this point that the program had gathered all the useful information about Afghanistan four years ago.”

How is this for a confluence of events?

USA Today’s Tom Vanden Brook, its Pentagon and Military affairs, had a dynamite piece on the US Army Human Terrain System (HTS) titled Army plows ahead with troubled war-zone program,” dated 18 February 2013. Shortly thereafter, on 19 February, another article by Vanden Brook appeared in USA Today with the heading “Congressman: Troubled Army program needs more oversight.”

Earlier on 17 February 2013, Dr. Max Forte, long time veteran of HTS debates posted on his Zero Anthropology site “The End of Debates on HTS?” Having learned of Vanden Brook’s work on the 19 February, Forte posted what might be the most comprehensive compilation of HTS documents on the web to include the US Army’s AR-15 investigative report; the Center for Naval Analyses Congressionally Mandated Assessment of HTS; and the National Defense University behemoth analysis of HTS featuring a worthy attempt to quantify the performance of HTS whilst taking pains not to criticize any party too seriously.

After all, the reports are so, like, really Washington, DC, and, as Forte has pointed out, HTS and linkages exist in a political context, as do we all.

 Meteor Hits US Army TRADOC/HTS: Updates 2013

Sources have commented on a number of matters relating to HTS during 2013. Some of those insights are listed below.

According to a source, “Most of the guilty have already collected their awards, letters of recommendation, and left the scene of the crime. I suspect that there were numerous programs like HTS that were also money pits that started out as good ideas, but then deteriorated into a morass of fraud and corruption.”

A source firmly believes that “there is no one in HTS who can look you in the face and tell you that anything new or useful has been learned in Afghanistan in the last three years, or that a single report generated by HTS bears any resemblance to any academically inspired research document that will assist any commander in the field in making a sound tactical or operational decision. With tactical operations winding down for the last year this is even more true.”

“HTS has a new EEO/discrimination complaint based on the period October 2011-January 2012. Most of the people responsible have left the program, so nothing will really be accomplished. Even if the victim’s claims are substantiated, she will still have to sue the Army to get any compensation. On the other hand, the door might be open to closer scrutiny of hundreds of programs like this that sprang up overnight,” said a source.

“At a time when military casualties were rising, all you had to do was convince one or two key people, that your gadget/program will save lives. Take a look at the anti-IED programs. None of those gadgets really saved any lives…the lower op-tempo is what saved lives, along with killing bomb makers. Now the military has warehouses full of these gadgets, and no war or conflict to use them in, even on the horizon. The next frontier for the US military is the drug war in Central and South America.” What about Africa? The many different cultures, customs and languages of the nations of Africa dwarf those of Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of complexity. Given the HTS track record in those two countries, HTS would likely do more harm than good putting uniformed military and support contractors in death’s path.

“Each HTS research mission should have begun with a question from the commander or his staff, for example: What is the feeling among the population at X village about the presence of American or foreign soldiers? The easiest way to find out, is to go ask a representative sample, which HTS teams NEVER DID. The sample sizes and the corrupt research methodology of the teams, made this information totally useless. HTS used raw percentages to widely exaggerate their findings. For example, they might go into a village of about 2000, question four people, and only get responses from three. They could then report that ‘75% of the respondents said…’ This looks very impressive and fools anyone except those people with a background in qualitative or quantitative research methods, or statistics. The HTS leadership was attempting to hide all the research reports conducted on their watch, behind a classified firewall, so they could not be accessed by casual observers and critiqued for their uselessness. Many of these reports eventually found their way to the Internet, and can be found there now, because the researchers were eager to toot their own horns.”

“The fact that HTS cleared the final funding hurdle of 2 January 2103 tells me two things,” said one source. “That the program is here to stay despite its lack of any real utility, and that it has some very heavy hitters within CGI who are somehow, keeping this zombie animated. I go back to my original premise, that fraud, mismanagement, incompetence, and indolence on this scale, without any appreciable oversight from TRADOC or DOD, must be a cover for some other program, but then as Freud once said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” and sometimes, the obvious is true.”

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters. His reports on HTS are widely available on the Internet-World Wide Web. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Truth is the best propaganda. Or try this…..We are #1 (Repeat all day long!) This belief in the unfettered right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American exceptional-ism…

Now that is a coffee thinking for this Tuesday, February 19th, 2013…

I think you will find that kind of arrogance everywhere, especially in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East…

But isn’t anti-Americanism as always the most popular, the most simple, and the most lazy way to deal with it all?

To a certain extent, that may be right. However, I think that the ubiquity of American culture worldwide and America’s ability to enforce their own view through foreign policy have developed this “doctrine of superiority” beyond that of other countries/peoples. Actually, many places in the developing world, people tend to accept that to be American is better than to be, for example, from the Middle East and many people emulate American culture to a ridiculous (and sometimes very funny) extent.

With great power comes great responsibility, and I think that the consequences of America’s belief in its ultimate superiority have led to some very serious consequences…

the notion that “anti-Americanism” even exists in your canon speaks volumes. If I were to criticize, say, Vladimir Putin, or the dominant nationalistic culture in Russian elite society that inoculates him from criticism, would I be considered “anti-Russian?” Likely only in the eyes of those whom I am criticizing. Is there a tendency among some to blame ills on the United States to which they can’t be attributed? Surely. And to be fair since I levied no examples yet, I can not discern whether I am pointing to that phenomenon or not. But the term “anti-Americanism” is as totalitarian as one can get, and is routinely employed by just the type of individual that I am calling out in this column to drown out honest debate with nationalistic bromides. That by being a social or political critic you are somehow operating against an entire nation of people is, in fact, the laziest, most simple, and most popular method of dismissing the very pertinent ideas raised here…

You may not have traveled much, which might excuse your ignorance, but even the most inane must see the difference between a popular belief that your country is great and the much stated and widely held doctrine that your country is the greatest in the world ever and can do no wrong. Politicians in the USA have to keep saying “This is the greatest country in the world” to get elected, you hear it every day in the USA, it’s ingrained in a way that is not mirrored anywhere else in the world. Here in Russia and I’m sure in other countries, we are self-deprecating in a way you just wouldn’t hear in the USA…

This belief in superiority harms the USA not just externally but is a strong bar to progress internally and externally. It’s nothing to do with anti-Americanism…

For the rest of the world, in general, people do not confuse their own cultural bias for objective truth. Americans genuinely believe that the rest of the world agrees with them or is merely ignorant of the truth. They believe that everything outside their borders is simply inferior, even in cases where people have studiously copied Americans’ ways of doing things. This national mythology does enormous harm, not only in foreign relations, but also domestically because Americans cannot imagine that anything about their country needs improvement…

Kind of proves the point, doesn’t it, that when you make a rational comment about the excesses of American nationalism, you are presumed to be non-Americans. That’s how strong the orthodoxy is…

I’m American and I love America. I’ve worked there, traveled extensively there and have very dear friends there. But if I criticize, then I’m just a whining jealous Expat living in Russia, because I couldn’t toe the line there…

I have always thought that there was certain similarity between USA and the old USSR in their world outlook and perceptions of their role in the world. The obvious exceptional-ism, the missionary zeal to spread your values around the world, the inability to accept criticism and the great power anti-nationalism with semi religious symbolism. Thankfully, USSR is now gone… and I wonder what is to become of USA. It is looking like a USSA following the same path…

There’s a slight difference. The USSR was trying to spread communism like the Vatican tries to spread ROMAN Catholicism, whereas the USA is trying to spread a nationalistic Americanism. Oops, I guess both suck…

Don’t forget Obama’s claim during an election debate: “America remains the one indispensable nation.” Obama, being a reasonably sane chap, couldn’t possibly believe this. But the fact that he thought it needed to be said publicly, suggests political discourse in the US, borders on the deranged end of society…

The social theorist Jurgen Habermas has a name for this: “Systematically Distorted Communication.” It occurs when the conditions for achieving a rational consensus are eroded, usually through power and money (alternative means of coordinating action), and so a situation of pseudo-consensus takes the place of rational discourse, whereby people are prepared to accept as rational things which are untrue, unjustified, insincere, meaningless, morally dubious, and so on. Of course, trying to engage in rational argument becomes impossible within such an environment, which is probably why tribal loyalties and ad hominem attacks are employed instead…

I guess those are my thinking’s today…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…