Windows to Russia

All I can say is that last week in America was interesting and after what I saw happening, I am glad I have escaped that country. The final straw that broke the camels back was when I saw that the 19 year old terrorist crawled out from the boat on his own, then he was arrested, after they shot at him a thousand times. Now they say he shot himself and will never talk. That on top of all the other inconsistencies solved my thinking issues about certain things. At least as far as the American government is concerned…

I went to bed last night and told Sveta that Orwell would be a “sweet and sour” man right now. Sweet that he was correct and sour that he was correct, about the future. 1984 is a must read and in that book you will see the happenings in America and the future of America as you read it. I guess I should say, “Read the book if you can read, but many Americans can not read very well anymore and a book like 1984 – takes a person educated, who can read to understand it. That is past America…”

I will not write a huge article about what is going on in America. If I have to explain to you about what happened (Boston) right in front of your eyes, then you are too far gone and will believe nothing anyone says. So while I feel worried about Americans, I do not feel sorry for Americans. For we got what we voted for all these years and we got what we wanted all along…

We (Americans) have now stepped on-board the Orwellian Express…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

Any event that impacts on the United States’ “homeland security” would have worldwide repercussions. The repercussions of the Boston Marathon bombings are most expected on the United States’ ties with Russia.

President Barack Obama on Friday expressed satisfaction that the manhunt for the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing has ended with the arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is of Chechen extraction. But he added, “Obviously tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them: why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?”

These are pertinent questions to be asked, and the latter one can be answered definitively only with co-operation from Russia, which is forthcoming with a carte-blanche offer by the Kremlin to help out despite the frosty Russian-American ties in recent times.

The White House has disclosed that Obama spoke to President Vladimir Putin Friday night. The US statement said:

President Obama spoke by phone tonight with President Putin of Russia. President Putin expressed his condolences on behalf of the Russian people for the tragic loss of life in Boston. President Obama thanked President Putin for those sentiments, and praised the close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack. The two leaders agreed to continue our cooperation on counter-terrorism and security issues going forward.

It is an effusive account, but then, Putin did offer help in investigations within hours of the Boston tragedy. The Russian security briefly detained Tsarnaev’s father (who lives in Russia) and interrogated him before releasing him.

The US-Russia security cooperation has taken a beating in the recent year or two even as the “reset” in the relations ended and a period of cold-war style distrust and acrimony developed between Moscow and Washington. However, it is too big a surmise to make at this point that a resetting of the moribund US-Russia “reset” is under way as a result of the Obama-Putin phone conversation.

The point is, many issues of core interest to both sides in the overall testy relationship are intractable in a short term. Big powers do not overnight reset their compass. In fact, on Friday, the US State Department issued yet another annual human rights report, which alleged that fraudulent methods were applied by the Russian government in the last presidential election, which Putin won.

No answers yet: The Kremlin gave a rather taciturn account of Obama’s phone conversation with Putin, merely saying the two sides “emphasized their interest in increasing coordination between Russian and American intelligence services in the fight against international terrorism”.

Conceivably, Moscow would be quietly pleased that the US is getting a taste of its double standards on terrorism. The Chechen terrorists used to be known as “rebels” in the US lexicon.

But, having said that, Moscow would also be wary that taking advantage of Tsarnaev’s Chechen ethnicity and Kyrgyz background, the US might insist on being a stakeholder in the counter-terrorist strategies pursued by Russia in the North Caucasus and the Central Asian region. (Kazakhstan has an estimated 50,000-strong Chechen population.)

Significantly, on Saturday, Russia state television carried an interview with the Tsarnaevs’ mother alleging that her sons were “set up” and that the two boys have been under “constant FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] surveillance”. She said:  “They [FBI] used to come [to our] home, they used to talk to me – they were telling me that he [the older, 26-year-old Tamerlan] was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites? they were controlling him, they were controlling his every step? and now they say that this is a terrorist act!”

The Wall Street Journal meanwhile disclosed that the FBI had interrogated Tamerlan, who got killed last week, in 2011 at the specific request of the Russian government, “but didn’t find evidence of suspicious activity and closed the case”.

Indeed, these are early days and the Tsarnaev file may take new twists and turns. Surprisingly, Tamerlan made a six-month visit to Russia last year and is reported to have visited Dagestan – that is, even after he figured in the FBI’s watch list – and we have no choice but to believe that the FBI wasn’t smart enough to take note of it.

Curiously, India also had a strikingly similar frustrating experience when the Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley, who was involved in the planning of the fidayeen attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, paid repeated visits to Pakistan and India even after the US security became cognizant of his background and had interrogated him.

Intriguingly, Putin’s offer to Obama in his message within hours of the Boston bombing that “the Russian Federation will be ready, if necessary, to assist in the US authorities’ investigation” – to quote the Kremlin readout – was made before it was even known that there could be a Chechen link to the terrorist act.

A cat-and-mouse game seems afoot. At a minimum, it seems possible that Russians could have anticipated that something like the Boston bombing was waiting to happen.

Great game continues: Indeed, if the climate of Russian-American relations improves as a result of the new found camaraderie over the struggle against counter-terrorism and Islamist extremism, the fallout can only be positive for regional and international security.

For one thing, Russia’s hard line opposing the ascendancy of the Salafist and al-Qaeda groups in Syria and its support of the staunchly secular Bashar al-Assad regime stands vindicated. Yet, the outcome of the “Friends of Syria” [FOS] core group meeting in Istanbul on Saturday shows, on the contrary, that the calibrated drift in the US approach toward deeper engagement of the Syrian opposition fighters will continue.

How far should the US be prepared to put its weight in on the Syrian issue has been a difficult decision for Obama to make. The Istanbul meet took an important decision “to channel all military assistance [to Syrian rebels] through the SMC [Supreme Military Council].”

US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Washington will double its assistance to the Syrian opposition to US$250 million and will expedite delivery of new US military assistance to the Syrian opposition fighters. “I’m going to make sure this is a matter of weeks. It has to happen quickly; it has to have an impact,” he said.

In fact, Kerry disclosed that FOS core group also discussed “how we might try to reach out to Russia” to persuade it to end its military assistance to Bashar al-Assad and its refusal to agree to a United Nations Security Council resolution.

There was not a trace of remorse in the US stance on regime change in Syria – that it might lead to the ascendancy of militant Islamists and al-Qaeda – in the aftermath of the Boston bombing.

Again, US-Russia cooperation in counter-terrorism struggle ought to be a game changer for Afghanistan. Nonetheless, there is no likelihood of a change of heart on the part of the US or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in their point blank refusal to have any collaborative partnership with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the Collective Security Treaty Organization in the stabilization of Afghanistan.

Suffice to say, the Great Game goes on – Tsarnaev or no Tsarnaev – because the Boston bombing may ultimately have little to do with US-Russia relations. The Chinese commentators are perhaps close to the point when they say the Boston bombing has more to do with the US’s deepening domestic problems and its “sluggishness” in addressing them and the “gains and losses in the international sense” become irrelevant.

The real challenge facing Obama is not that the US-Russia reset has become moribund as a result of which the US’s homeland security has suffered, but that such incidents like the Boston bombing, as Global Times newspaper commented, “will serve as catalysts pushing partisanship to extremes” in America, which is already facing “serious polarization of politics and society”.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

LONDON – The Boston bombing was major blowback. That much is certain. The question is, what level of blowback?

It could have been a covert op gone real bad. It could have been blowback from former ”freedom fighters” – in this case ethnic Chechens – reconverted into terra-rists. It could have been straight blowback for United States foreign policy targeting Muslims, whether dispatching them to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or Bagram, extraordinarily renditioning them, or target assassinating them.

The FBI, predictably, is not admitting any of these three options. It sticks to a convoluted screenplay worthy of those cocaine-fueled

Hollywood nights in the 1980s; a couple of bad guys who ”hate our freedoms” because… they do.

As I’ve written elsewhere in a sort of preamble for this article, there are inter-galactic holes in the story of the Tsarnaev brothers. Now we also know – via their mother – that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring elder brother Tamerlan for at least five years. In a subsequent interview to CNN’s Piers Morgan, the mother actually talked, significantly, about ”counseling”.

At the same time, the FBI was forced to admit it had in early 2011 accepted a ”foreign government” (code for Russia) request to take a closer look on Tamerlan. This, apparently, they did – and found nothing terrorist activity-worthy.

So what happened afterwards? Some IQ above 50 in the FBI must have noticed they now had access to a precious Chechen-American asset. So Tamerlan became an FBI informant. They could play him like a fiddle – like so many patsies before.

Yet if they didn’t, the FBI can rightfully be accused of devastating incompetence (that would not be a first). Because what the FBI is saying is that they had no clue their asset was working on a bomb, was trying to test-drive it, or was carrying a suspicious backpack to the Boston marathon.

What the FBI will never say is when was the last time they monitored/controlled/harassed Tamerlan. Remember, this is the same FBI that gave us The Fast and The Furious-style Iranian cum Mexican cartel plot to kill a Saudi ambassador debunked in a matter of days.

Tamerlan, of course, may have out-FBI-ed them all (not that hard) – and after years of being monitored/harassed started working as a double agent. Apparently he left the US for Russia for a long period – January to July 2012. Nobody knows exactly what he did; the FBI would love to prove he was engaged in terrorist tactical training. Still, if he was indeed a valuable asset, he could have been sent on a mission to infiltrate Chechen jihadis led by Doku Umarov in neighboring Dagestan.

As for the ultimate, nuance-filled word on the extremely cozy relationship, since the 1990s, between Washington and Chechen terra-rists – a taboo issue in US corporate media – one should look no further than the awesome Sibel Edmonds, posting here.

About that drill
The FBI has the power to impose on the US and the whole world a far-fetched ”young evil Chechens” screenplay. So let’s develop an alternative, credible scenario and see where that takes us.

Instead of two bad (foreign) guys, totally Americanized, who suddenly were inoculated with rage ”against our freedoms” by some jihadi indoctrination, mostly online, let’s see who really profits from what happened in Boston.

The Boston Globe was forced to ”disappear” the information of a counter-terrorist drill – including bomb-sniffing dogs – taking place during the marathon. Picture the FBI telling its asset Tamerlan he would be part of the drill. Although a tough guy himself, his family could easily have been threatened if he did not cooperate.

So Tamerlan was handed a black backpack with a fake pressure-cooker bomb inside and told to drop it in a determined place – as one of the procedures included in the drill. And it’s here that we have to be extra careful; there’s no conclusive evidence to establish whether this was supposed to be only a drill, or was the bomb designed to explode.

Let’s assume tough guy Tamerlan and his impressionable brother Dzhokhar were actually responsible (no FBI in the picture). After so much planning there had to be an immediate escape route – as in transportation, passports, money, plane tickets. There was nothing. Dzhokhar went to school, worked out in the gym, socialized, sent Twitter messages.

There are absolutely no witnesses saying the brothers dropped the bombs. They did it because the FBI says so. And from there onwards, it’s holes galore. They robbed a Mercedes at a gas station and let the driver go away – not without telling him that they were the marathon bombers. Dzhokhar and the Mercedes manage to escape from a major gunfight, by-passing a massive police barrage – but not without the Mercedes running over Tamerlan whose body was enveloped in explosives. Dzhokhar leaves a blood trail but he is not tracked by any dogs.

And then there’s the juicy martial law test drive; a whole city totally shut down, at immense cost, because of a fleeing teenager. Watch out, America, this is just the beginning.

What is certain is that the Tsarnaev brothers were not jihadis; only Murdoch gutter media addicts will swallow it. Just take a look at this jihadi website, quite well established, and fully representative of what is known as the Caucasus Emirate Islamic insurgency. They ask very good questions, for instance here. And they thoroughly debunk depicting the brothers as hardened jihadis.

The omniscient Craft
Few paramilitary outfits in the industrialized West are as sinister as the Craft. Craft was responsible for the drill. Its symbol is a skull not dissimilar to the Marvel character The Punisher. Its motto is a subtlety-shy: ”No matter what your mother told you, violence does solve problems”. US corporate media simply vanished with any trace of Craft operatives swarming the marathon site; talk about a media blackout.

Alternative media though was not intimidated. Here one may find a conclusive treasure trove of photos showing Craft operatives at the marathon site, complete with combat wear, black backpacks, tactical gear, and even carrying a radiation detector. So how did the FBI react to it? By imposing an absolute blackout. Total photo censorship, as in ”other photos will not be deemed credible” – only photos and footage showing the Tsarnaev brothers. Craft is untouchable.

The problem is that everything touching Craft in this scenario is troubling. 1) Their invisibility – corporate media sheepishly bowing to the FBI and never even mentioning them. 2) Their ”security” expertise – your army of mercenaries gets paid a fortune and all your hyper-trained tough guys loaded with high-tech gear cannot find a couple of amateur bombers. 3) The sinister possibility that this was a black ops produced by Craft.

If we stick to reality, not Marvel comics, all the Boston bombing evidence points to something very close to the modus operandi of that dodgy galaxy of al-Qaeda franchises. Based on the collected evidence of the brothers’ history and behavior – no military or sabotage background – it also suggests they were not experienced enough to pull that off by themselves. But it’s perfectly sensible to envisage a copycat al-Qaeda op then attributed to a couple of fall guys – something that Craft at least in theory could easily design.

So this is where a realistic scenario leads us: an FBI/Craft false flag op which, 1) may have gone terribly wrong, thus the necessity to find two sacrificial lambs in a matter of hours; or 2) the sinister possibility this was designed as a little entrapment game to produce the exact same results – leading to further by now almost complete militarization of US civilian life.

The writing is on the (bloody) wall. The final vestiges of the rule of law are disappearing – even as a bipartisan panel had found that George W Bush elite functionaries were all, indisputably, implicated in torture; and that torture was systematic, even though it never led to thwarting any terror plot.

Washington is about to join the glittering ranks of Mubarak-era Egypt, Bahrain and Uganda. As that nasty little piece of work, Senator Lindsay Graham, put it, now ”the homeland is the battlefield”. And you’re an enemy combatant if we say so.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The American National Security State failed to protect the American people yet again, this time in Boston, Massachusetts. Twelve years of ramping up federal, state and local venues with billions of dollars worth of anti-terrorism training, intelligence fusion centers, and equipment was for nought. Chasing “the terrorists” around the world for ten years whether by remotely piloted vehicles (Drones), or Special Forces, could not prevent the carnage of 15 April 2013 at the Boston Marathon.

The USA is bloodied again this time showing that it was unable to provide security at one of the world’s most publicized legendary athletic events.

The Brothers Tsarnaev succeeded. The mainstream media assisted in the process by channeling their thoughts and emotions of fear and anger that were likely aimed at the elimination of civilians around the globe by the US military and intelligence machinery. The mainstrem media was a force multiplier for the Tsarnaev’s as they fanned the flames of their anger rattling American leadership and an intellectually challenged public.

Who designed the security plan for the Boston Marathon? Was it designated a National Special Security Event by the US national government? Should security personnel be fired, demoted? No, wait. There is the lesson of 911: no one was held accountable for the destruction of two of America’s symbols of national power—the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Now that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have stated that the global war on terror is global and waged on the US Homeland, how are we to deliniate between terror, crime and war? But what assurances can local, state and federal officials give the American people besides inane biblical quotes at televised national mourning ceremonies?

Is the US killing of non-combatants (women and children) acceptable around the globe because the intent was to off the enemy and not the child playing with a goat? What’s the dividing line between a American serial killer who downs dozens of children in a school (Sandy Hook) or, over the years, rapes and murders over 30 human beings (Green River), and the teenager and young man who killed and maimed at the Boston Marathon?

In order to obfuscate the failure of the US National Security State, the mainstream media takes center stage—with the advice and consent of America’s elite—to get the prevailing national narrative back on track. It’s predictable: everyone in the world is evil; the USA is a force for good; no one could have forseen the event, and on and on ad nauseum. In short, blame it on someone else and ignore the structural problems in America’s violent, myth heavy cultural landscape.

The media apparatus must shape the environment, or, post-415 in Boston, get the narrative back on track. The practice is not disimilar to that of the US military’s military information support operations (MISO). Hence, The New York Times recently said the “the country is jittery.” On what basis did the New York Times make this comment? Were all 315 million people, residing on a landmass of 9.8 million square miles, jittery? And then comes the video from all mainstream media outlets showing armed Massachusetts  National Guard personnel and Boston SWAT showing force, assuring the public.

And what’s the deal with the State effectively shutting down the city of Boston (technically Watertown) in the search for one human being? “Stay inside,” national security officials say. Chicago, Illinois sported 506 murders in 2012. In the USA there are approximately 16,000 murders each year. And the culmination of evil is a 19 year old from Boston?

Speaking of evil,  the World Socialists points this out. “Between the speech Obama delivered in Tucson in January 2011 and the one he gave in Newtown in December 2012, there were—among the many more mass killings across the country—the following incidents:  July 2011—A shooting rampage in Grand Rapids, Michigan that claimed eight lives;  August 2011—A gunman killing seven people in Copley, Ohio before being killed himself;  September 2011—A shooting at a Carson City, Nevada IHOP that killed five;  December 2011—Six people shot to death on Christmas morning in Grapevine, Texas by a man dressed as Santa Claus, who then turned his gun on himself;  April 2012—A mass shooting at an Asian school in Oakland California that killed seven;  May 2012—Five people killed in a shooting spree in Seattle, Washington;  August 2012—The shooting deaths of seven at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin;  September 2012—The killing of six in a workplace shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When “evil” recurs with such numbing regularity, it clearly must have deep roots in American society.”

In Bad News Revisited : The Protrayal of Violence, Conflict and Suffering on Television News (Journal of Peace Psychology, 1996), the authors lay bare the motivations that drive mainstream media news coverage. Though the findings are from 1996, their relevancy is timeless.

“Stories are often episodic, ahistorical accounts that rely on stereotyped assumptions and fail to provide context or explanation. Instead of communicating substantive information that aids in understanding, television news often focus on emotional and tragic elements that tend to inflame and even obscure what is taking place. Television news thus follows the same pattern of distortion found in entertaining programming. For example, fictitious characters in television are murdered at a rate 1,000 times higher than real world victims. Because television is primarily an entertainment medium, it is not surprising that news divisions tend to select stories for their entertainment value. As a result the distinction between news and entertainment is becoming increasingly blurred.

Focusing on conflict reflects the widespread assumption of news directors that people are attracted to violence…the selection of stories is often based on unsubstantiated assumptions, standard production practices and mechanical formulas…The more people watch TV, the more likely they are to have unrealistic fears accompanied by feelings of insecurity, suspicion and hopelessness…the notion that news is determined by events is a myth created by the mass media to shield themselves from criticism…the media manufacture news by what they select and how they present it…the pressures are enormous to treat news as entertainment and to make the news exciting. News gets packaged like soap operas and there is an urgency to create dramatic footage…it is profits and prestige that govern the content of television news, not the desire to inform the public..what is shown on the air is carefully orchestrated to conform to the network view of the world…the construction of reality according to television tends to serve the interests of the disseminators rather than the public….”

Back to the World Socialists: “The corporate media, which has cynically dubbed Obama the ‘consoler-in-chief,’ hailed his latest speech as ‘inspiring,’ ‘powerful’ and ‘moving.’ It was all they wanted to hear and in no way conflicted with their efforts to frame the events in Boston within the reactionary narrative of the ‘war on terrorism,’ turning them into another justification for war abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.”

Already the media has filled the airwaves with disdain for the people of Russia, Chechnya and Kryzygstan. “They are all conspiracy theorists,” some say. Constant references to ethnicity and Islam—to include Cold War rhetoric aimed at Russia–echo the same banter post-911. One of the Tarnaev’s was a US citizen. What turned him?

Isn’t it time for the USA to look inward?

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters. His latest book is The Raptor’s Eye. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The Belarusian president (Alexander Lukashenko), in the past has made these statements:

“As for woman-woman, I once said that it is our men’s fault that today a woman has replaced a man. It is our fault. So I am sorry about that. We turned out to be incapable for some women,” Lukashenko said…

“As for men, I say sweet Jesus! God forgive them! I never initiate the discussion about them or judge them, because at the moment it is beyond my understanding,” he said…

LOL! I like this guy… 🙂

Makes sense to me…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The Boston Marathon bomb suspects were from a Russian region near Chechnya (Most likely Georgian/USA sponsored!) and had lived in the United State for at least 10 years. One dead and the other on the loose. They used high powered weapons and threw pressure cooker bombs at the police. They had explosives strapped to their bodies…

Hell who needs Hollywood anymore? Real life is definitely better than a bang bang shoot them up movie and a whole lot more dangerous, if you get that front row seat, you are out of luck…

Why it looks like Clark Kent the mild manner reporter who is Superman, would have his hands full trying to keep the chaos under control. Much less a government that allowed it all to get out of hand as it tried to cover its tracks while doing many many underhanded things with in the last 48 hours. Oops say the little bird…

Is it my imagination or is the USA looking like a bursting Dot.com bubble and it is getting a little out of hand?

Chaos is the word for this week…

Chaos…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

From may 1st through May 10th it is nothing but holiday celebration time in Russia. This is the time that Russians get the Dachas woke up and the village homes aired out. In fact I already smelled the grass being burned off the fields around Moscow and sometimes that makes for a smokey mess at times…

The chart below is the holidays that are celebrated at this time of the year…

Sveta has mentioned that we need to go to the village and clean it up, as well as air it out…

Now I hope she meant that, because I just love the village as it is the best place in the whole world. 🙂

Nothing makes this big bear perk up better than a trip to the Russian Village that we have a home in…

Our Russian Village home…

Why life is just grand in the village, in fact life is perfect, fabulous, magnificent, wonderful and stupendous all at the same time. You have an old well for water, electricity (most of the time), huge ponds to fish in, forests all around, friendly village people and the freshest air in the world…

Why it is just Grand…

Time to plan that trip to the village…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

This week Russia has presented 90 days visa free with the USA/Russia…

MOSCOW, April 18 (Itar-Tass) – Russia has invited the United States to cancel visas for all trips lasting 90 days or less, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday…

This is not the first time that Russia has proposed this to the USA.  For the last many years that I have been living here in Russia, They try at least once a year to bring up 90 day visa free with America. That is the same that I have with Ukraine, Israel and many other countries. Sveta has the same with many countries. The 90 day visa free is ideal and for a vacation it is plenty of time in any country…

It is always so nice when I travel to Ukraine and never have to worry about a visa. It just is another quality of life…

So once again Moscow waits to hear a reaction from America and as in the past I assume that reaction will be either silence or a big resounding, NO!

Strange huh! Who is the one afraid of brain drain, again? Not Russia…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The world is becoming more multipolar. But the United States is only one of its poles. It has a huge navy, and it is striving desperately to gain control over all of the world’s oceans and, therefore, the major cargo routes. The United States is also the world’s financial center. The US dollar functions as the world currency, and the US Federal Reserve issues it. The United States doesn’t make trousers, but you can buy them from China.

The industrial pole shifted to China not long ago. China has a huge skilled workforce that works cheaply, and it also has a favorable economic environment. China needs a lot of oil and gas to make the pants worn by people throughout the world, not just in the United States. Chinese corporations use dollars to buy oil and gas all over the world, but mainly from the Arab world, the Persian Gulf countries in particular. Those countries are under the military and political control of the United States (except for Iran). That makes for a closed circle. The United States rattles its sabers, Chinese workers sew jeans, and the Arab sheiks do a brisk trade in energy commodities.

A country that is a major oil and gas exporter on the one hand, and, on the other, possesses a powerful armed forces and a large arsenal of nuclear tipped missiles, doesn’t fit in this well-oiled system built by Washington. That country is Russia. In addition, Russia has GLONASS and spacecraft, whereas the United States has GPS but no spaceships. They’re gone. Budgetary shortcomings played a definite role in their demise.

So, the United States has dollars but no spaceships. They rent them from Russia. Using dollars, of course.

The problem is that the number of dollars in circulation is increasing, but their buying power is falling. A thousand bucks meant something ten years ago, but not today. It isn’t so much that Russia loves the dollar less as that it has begun loving the yuan more — those colorful pieces of paper with the portrait of the great Chinese President Mao Tse-tung.

Mao valued human rights even less than Comrade Stalin, but you can buy lots of high-quality goods cheaply with yuans. Also, the Chinese Communists love to buy (or simply copy) Russian arms. They might like to get their hands on American weapons, preferably the most advanced ones, but the imperialists in Washington don’t trust their economic partners in Beijing.

Liu Guchang, China’s ambassador to Russia, caught the essence of the (Hegelian) conflict in world politics when he observed that China is seeking to diversify its energy imports and Russia – its energy exports. He made that statement at the launch of the project to build the ESPO oil and gas pipeline.

What does the US want? The United States want to control everything — but especially the global trade in energy. Oil and gas are paid for in dollars on the world market, and as soon as someone wants euros or yuans in exchange for their energy commodities, that “someone” turns out to be a dictator and a tyrant who violates human rights and has chemical weapons. The United States doesn’t much like countries that have nuclear weapons either, but it can’t do anything about them.

The great North Korean leader Kim Jong-un recently promised to launch a nuclear strike on American bases in South Korea, Hawaii and Guam and Japan if provoked by the United States. So what’s to be done? The US Defense Department postponed a test launch of its Minuteman 3 ICBM. The Pentagon came to that decision to avoid exacerbating the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

The Americans are a powerful people. But they’re also a very nervous people. Kim Jong-un is aware of that and periodically conducts a ballistic missile or nuclear test.

Returning to the subject of import-export diversification I should point out that President Obama and, especially, Mrs. Clinton aren’t exactly ecstatic that China and Russia are developing better relations. — especially that sales of Russian oil and gas to China are increasing. Moscow and Beijing may ultimately refuse to use US dollars in settling accounts, and then the end of the world that didn’t happen in December 2012 will actually come about — at least for the politicians in the White House and their compatriots at the Federal Reserve.

Again, the Americans are powerful people. Their strength is that they aren’t used to sitting back while somebody or something threatens their income. Karl Marx once said that capitalists are capable of any crime for a 300% profit. But that was before, during the harsh imperialist times when the United States was importing slaves from Africa rather than oil.

Things are different now. Modern capitalists are still capable of any crime, but for defending human rights and fighting corruption, not for money that they despise. As soon as construction began on the ESPO, Alexey Navalny, a minority stakeholder in Rosneft, appeared out of nowhere and announced to an astonished world that there are thieves in Russia. Then it turned out that Navalny apparently stole some things himself: a distillery, party money and some timber. It’s hard to say whether he did or didn’t. A Russian investigative committee is currently looking into all that. But the fact remains that construction of the ESPO has generated quite a bit of noise, “without outside interference,” of course.

The main problem the United States has with the ESPO is that China is getting oil and gas from Russia through an overland pipeline and not from supertankers passing through the Strait of Malacca. That means US carriers don’t represent a threat to the ESPO. A ground operation against Russia would be senseless for anyone, and the US Army definitely isn’t up to the task.

Another fine point is that the East Siberian oil is of a higher grade than oil from the Urals, which currently is Russia’s main oil export commodity. It contains less sulfur and other impurities. It’s lighter. It will be in high demand. Thus, the price set for Dubai oil, whose production is controlled by the Arabs sheiks (and we know WHO ELSE) may be challenged in the future. This situation doesn’t inspire the Arab sheiks and their Washington patrons with a sense of historical optimism, and they’re nervous.

What actions can the guys from the US government and the oil exporters attached to them take, or rather, what have they already been doing for quite a while now? Since direct military pressure on Russia isn’t very promising, they can employ traditional Anglo-Saxon political methods. That is, they can find people in Russia with the lofty title of “agents of influence” who will agree to help thwart construction of the ESPO for money or out of “great love for the Motherland.”

First of all, everybody in Russia who fights corruption has been mobilized. There is corruption in Russia, isn’t there? There is something to shout about; there is reason to draw up something like the Magnitsky list or to use something that already exists. That is, they can try to intimidate some senior Russian government officials. Cries of corruption can very easily be used as a reason to freeze bank accounts. And that’s fine.

Second, those same overseas puppeteers have mobilized a large number of Russian activists to protect the environment, tigers, and plants native to the taiga. The tigers are suffering, and the vegetation is wilting.

Third, there are the so-called “patriots” and “nationalists,” who are screeching on their blogs that Vladimir Putin plans on using the ESPO to “dismember mother Russia and sell out to the Chinese.”

This whole mechanism has been in operation for a long time now. Most of those who oppose the “Putin regime” are in the dark and don’t even suspect who is pulling their strings. However, no one promised them it would be easy.

•  This article first appeared in New Eastern Outlook

Konstantin Penzev is a Russian historian and writer, especially for New Eastern Outlook…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

The Russian government or Klmikia government will resign? Translation from Hindi does not work very well and that is the only source I found this in so far…

According to media reports in central Russia, the ministers and governors on Tuesday night in Klmikia with a closed – door meeting President Vladimir Putin raised the question of the resignation of the government of the Russian country. (Or is it the resignation of the Klmikia government?)

The President of Russia said that the Ministers job effectiveness is very “superficial . He said, “If we are not doing so (do not implement the decisions), is of the view that either I am not working, or I all of you are not working correctly and to all of you, I will have to give you resignation. Your attention toward this fact, I would like to draw in that date, I think that you will have to give resignation.”

All I can say is that he is cleaning house somewhere…

I guess we will have to wait to see if this becomes clearer or not, but I do know that Putin will roll heads if he sees the need to do it…

Looks like the Klmikia government has been fired…

Post by Kyle Keeton
Windows to Russia…

PS: The Republic of Kalmykia; Kalmyk Oirat: Хальмг Таңһч, Hal’mg Tanghch) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). Population: 289,481 (2010 Census). It is the only Buddhist region in Europe. It has become well known as an international center for chess because its former President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is the head of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). This is where Sveta and I traveled and just loved the place…