Putin: U.S. ‘Created’ Georgia Conflict

Emails were flying among I.U.ers on the night the Olympics Games opened and Georgia was blasting the people of Ossetia with missiles designed to do the worst damage imaginable. There were no military targets, so these highly destructive missiles targeted civilians.


Shock and Awe in Ossetia.............


Our primary poster was not home. She was visiting her cousin in Alabama. He, however, keeps up with such things and informed her of what was happening in Ossetia.


"It's the pipeline," he said.


"It may be, at least in part," she said, " but it's more about the election, here, and continuing to poke at the old Russian bear. The "war on terror" is losing legitimacy even among Republicans; legitimacy it should never have had to begin with, so the idea is to revive the cold war. A new arms race will create some fat portfolios. This has the stench of neoconservative, international hi- jinks all over it."


Since, she has written me about the sadness she felt, watching the athletes from Georgia and Russia march into the stadium in Beijing not knowing that their nations were at war.


Putin has it right. It certainly would not be the first time that this administration has used "foreign policy" to manipulate the American electorate. Sadly, my strong hunch is that it won't be the last. As a matter of fact, the worst may well be yet to come.

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080828_putin_us_created_georgia_conflict/

Posted on Aug 28, 2008

Based on information from Russian defense officials and, no doubt, years of KGB savvy, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has surmised that the U.S. provoked the Georgia conflict in order to give John McCain a boost: “The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of U.S. president.”

He may be onto something, considering the neoconservative fingerprints all over this thing and John McCain’s man crush on the Georgian president. In fact, Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer made a similar argument—without the benefit of Russian intelligence—in a recent column.

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BBC:

Mr Putin said in the interview: “The fact is that US citizens were indeed in the area in conflict during the hostilities.

“It should be admitted that they would do so only following direct orders from their leaders.”

Mr Putin added: “The American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army.

“Why… seek a difficult compromise solution in the peacekeeping process? It is easier to arm one of the sides and provoke it into killing another side. And the job is done.

“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.”

(Could be that Putin looked into Junior's eyes and saw his soul. I wonder, how one would spell "Yuck" in Russian?)

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Republic of Slovenia / BOBO

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush, Putin and The Cold War Revival

Bush is an idiot, chapter 666, McCain is worse and Reagan didn't win the cold war, as it continues, thanks to "W".

"Don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked."

Vladimir Putin quoting Russian proverb

If the Bush administration proceeds with its plan to deploy its Missile Defense System in Poland, Russian Prime Minister Putin will be forced to remove it militarily. He has no other option. The proposed system integrates the the entire US nuclear arsenal into one operational-unit a mere 115 miles from the Russian border. It's no different than Khrushchev's plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in the 1960s.

Early last year, at a press conference that was censored in the United States, Putin explained his concerns about Bush's plan:

“Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States. It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability....And, for the first time in history---and I want to emphasize this---there will be elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of course, we have to respond to that.”

Nuclear weapons specialist, Francis A. Boyle, says the Bush administration's plans represent the “longstanding US policy of nuclear first-strike against Russia." In Boyle’s article “US Missiles in Europe: Beyond Deterrence to First Strike Threat” he states:

“By means of a US first strike about 99%+ of Russian nuclear forces would be taken out. Namely, the United States Government believes that with the deployment of a facially successful first strike capability, they can move beyond deterrence and into "compellence."… This has been analyzed ad nauseam in the professional literature. But especially by one of Harvard's premier warmongers in chief, Thomas Schelling --winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics granted by the Bank of Sweden-- who developed the term "compellence" and distinguished it from "deterrence." …The USG is breaking out of a "deterrence" posture and moving into a "compellence" posture. (Global Research 6-6-07)

Bush's real goal is to force Moscow to conform to Washington’s diktats or face the prospect of first-strike nuclear annihilation. Putin must respond.

Putin needs to present his case before the UN General Assembly emphasizing how the proposed US system upsets the nuclear balance of power and poses a direct threat to Russia's national security. He should give an account of US activities in Central Asia since the fall of the Berlin Wall showing how the Bush administration has pursued a hostile policy of encirclement and strangulation towards the Russian Federation. The US has brought most of the former Soviet satellites into NATO, including Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and now is seeking membership for Georgia and Ukraine right on Russia's border.

The US has expanded its military installations in other areas of Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan, posing long-range problems for the entire region.

The Bush administration has also used its intelligence agencies and NGOs to foment political unrest and topple regimes which were sympathetic to Moscow in its "color-coded" revolutions. Eurasia is now inundated with American puppets who get their marching-orders from the White House.

Also, the US and its allies have declared Kosovo, a vital part of Serbian territory, independent without UN approval. Serbia is a traditional ally of Russia's. Many analysts now believe that the recent fighting in South Ossetia was directly connected to the Bush administration's blatant disregard for Serbia's sovereignty.

Putin recently responded to these developments saying:

“Some people have the illusion that you can do everything just as you want, regardless of the interests of other people. Of course it is for precisely this reason that the international situation gets worse and eventually results in an arms race. But we are not the instigators. We do not want it. Why would we want to divert resources to this? And we are not jeopardizing our relations with anyone. But we must respond. Name even one step that we have taken or one action of ours designed to worsen the situation. There are none. We are not interested in that. We are interested in maintaining a good atmosphere." Putin added exasperated, “So what should we do?” The present situation has brought us “the brink of disaster!”

Russia has complied with its treaty obligations and removed all of its heavy weapons from the Eastern Europe and put them behind the Ural Mountains. They have reduced their military by 300,000.

At the same time Washington has increased its arms shipments to new allies in Eastern Europe and is building two new military bases in Romania and Bulgaria. Missile Defense components and radar are going up in the Czech Republic and Poland. Obviously, Russia cannot continue to disarm unilaterally while neighboring states bulk up with new US-made weapons systems.


When Putin heard that the Bush administration was developing "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons he said to Bush:

“It would be better to look for other ways to fight terrorism than create low-yield nuclear weapons that lower the threshold for using these weapons, and thereby put humankind on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. But they don’t listen to us. They are not looking for compromise. Their entire point of view can be summed-up in one sentence: ‘Whoever is not with us is against us.’”.

It wasn't Russia who scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) That was the Bush administration, too.


American expansionism has thrust the world into another arms race pitting East against West Cold War-style. The present system of international security has been upended and we are moving inexorably towards a military showdown between the two nuclear-armed powers.

As Putin stated at the press conference, "I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.”

Indeed.

Russia is experiencing a Renaissance. 20 million people have been raised from poverty since Putin took office 8 years ago. The Russian economy has been growing by 7% a year, real incomes are growing by an astonishing 12% per year and Moscow has become a thriving center of global trade. Oil and natural gas have restored Russia to its formal role as one of the great world's great powers. The last thing Putin wants is a nuclear standoff with the United States. But he will not shirk from his responsibilities either. If the Missile Defense system is deployed, Putin will be forced to raise the stakes and send warplanes over the construction site. That is the logical first-step that any responsible leader would take before removing the site altogether.

Bush should consider very carefully whether he wants to go ahead with this game of nuclear chicken or not. Putting a knife to Moscow's throat is an act of aggression equal to invading Iraq, only this time the victim has the ability to fight back

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mike Whitney

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Putin Calls For New Financial Order

In case no one has noticed, war has been declared on the U.S; and economic one, and we are more vulnerable than we have ever been.

Putin calls for new financial world order
By Neil Buckley and Catherine Belton in St Petersburg
Published: June 10 2007 19:10 Last updated: June 10 2007 19:10

Russian president Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions to reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia.

Mr Putin said the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace an existing model that had become “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy”.

His apparent challenge to western dominance of the world economic order came at a forum in St Petersburg designed to showcase the country’s economic recovery. Among 6,000 delegates at the biggest business forum ever held in post-Soviet Russia were scores of international chief executives including heads of Deutsche Bank, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Nestlé, Chevron, Siemens and Coca-Cola.

Business deals worth more than $4bn were signed at the conference – including an order by Aeroflot for Boeing jets – as executives said they were continuing to invest in Russia despite deteriorating relations with the west.

Mr Putin’s hosting of the forum capped a week in which he dominated the international stage. He warned last Monday that Russia might target nuclear missiles at Europe if the US built a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, then offered a compromise at the G8 summit involving switching part of the US system to Azerbaijan.

His speech on financial institutions suggested that, along with an aggressive recent campaign against US “unilateralism” in foreign policy, he was also seeking to challenge western dominance of the world economic order.

Mr Putin said 50 years ago, 60 per cent of world gross domestic product came from the Group of Seven industrial nations. Today, 60 per cent of world GDP came from outside the G7.

“The interests of stable economic development would be best served by a new architecture of international economic relations based on trust and mutually beneficial integration,” Mr Putin said.

The Russian president said there was increasing evidence that existing organisations were “not doing a good job regulating global economic relations”.

“Institutions created with a focus on a small number of active players sometimes look archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy. They are a far cry from recognising the existing balance of power,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

WTF Does That Mean, Vladimir?

What exactly do you plan to do?

Nothing insane, I hope.

Some of us simply must keep our wits about us. Nukes are a hellish way to die, for many.and there are far too many kooks with nukes in the world, right now, if you get my drift.

Hope you aren't one of them.

Surely, you understand by now, that the totally-addicted capitalists simply must have some kind of war going on somewhere, or their portfolios will sag, like the rest of them.

Cold Wars, Hot Wars, who cares, just keep people scared enough to pay the protection money.

They all thought they were going broke when the Berlin wall came down. It scarred them, I am afarid. The have had some kind of massive breakdown or something.

Have you, Sir, found a way to get wealthy by planning and working toward the nightmarish deaths of millons?

I hope not, for your own soul's sake, Sir.

I don't blame you for not trusting Junior. I certainly don't. Most of the world's population doesn't.

All I am saying, is give us a chance.....

Give peace a chance.

Who cares about the elite and their damn portfolios of death and carnage? Let 'em sag.

He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.


By Oleg Shchedrov
MOSCOW (Reuters) -

President Vladimir Putin on Friday renewed criticism of U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe, saying Russia would take "appropriate measures" to counter the system.
Putin told Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a Kremlin meeting that the proposed missile shield would be used to track Russian military activities.

"These systems will monitor Russian territory as far as the Ural mountains if we don't come out with a response," Putin told Klaus. "And we will indeed do this. Anyone would."

"We will not get hysterical about this. We will just take appropriate measures," he said, without elaborating.

Russia views the U.S. plan to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 as a major threat to its national security.

Washington says the system is needed to defend Europe and U.S. forces there against what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea. But top Russian politicians say the U.S. plan could disrupt European stability and fuel a new Cold War-style arms race.

Moscow's top brass say the missile shield does not pose any immediate military threat for Russia, but warn that Russia will have to develop new anti-missile technology to counter it. Continued...

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.