Karabakhization
Bloody clashes between pro-Russian Ukrainians and regime supporters in recent weeks have only served to harden the resolve on both sides of the political spectrum. Due to the particularly cruel deaths of dozens of civilians in Odessa several weeks ago and the on going military raids by the junta in Kiev in which civilians are being killed, a permanent wedge is being placed between east and west. Fear, hate and an urge for revenge are some of the psychological factors driving people into action throughout the region. Ethnic and ideological divisions in Ukraine have reached their point-of-no-return. This conflict has the potential to go on for many years - and Russian officials, understandably, seem content.
In my opinion, we are seeing the Karabakhization of the conflict. What do I mean? As noted above, Kremlin officials have assessed the situation at hand and have come to the conclusion that sending in the Russian military is not in Russia's best interest at this stage in the conflict. Moscow will rely on Ukraine's pro-Russian population to carry-out its agenda in south-eastern Ukraine. Let's recall that Russia has absorbed the entire Crimean peninsula without any problems. The reunification of Crimea with Russia was truly a monumental task that Moscow carried-out flawlessly. Moscow does not want to overreach at this crucial juncture by entering headlong into a conflict in which some factors on the ground are not fully in its favor.
And there may be yet another reason behind why Moscow is not rushing in. At this stage, with Crimea already gone and eastern regions rebelling successfully against Kiev, some in the West may actually be seeking to draw Russia fully into the conflict. The intent obviously is to entrap Moscow in a prolonged conflict where Russian troops will cause death and destruction within a territory and amongst a people Russians consider their own. Having already made similar mistakes in recent memory, Moscow is recognizing the potential risks of getting caught in the middle of a civil war in which Russian troops get bogged-down in a long, guerrilla-style warfare.
Even if Western powers prove incapable of luring Russian troops into Ukraine, they have other motives at play. They may be trying to make the best out of a defeat. Although the Kiev uprising did not turn out the way Western powers were initially hoping it would, they have nevertheless managed to sow the seeds of conflict in the country, one that will bare bad fruit for many years. In doing so, they have given NATO a new lease on life as well as new opportunities for the Western elite, Nonetheless, with the Al-Qaeda fairytale losing its effect on the American cattle; with the economic situation in the Western world progressively getting worst; with calls for non-intervention growing in the US; with the military budget shrinking across the Western world; with Europeans being too complacent and pacifistic, the Western establishment desperately needed a new foe to distract their cattle's attention and increase their military revenue. Once again, Russia is that foe.
Moreover, it must also be pointed out that Moscow does not desire to escalate the financial/economic wrangling with the West - which is something that is in fact in no one's interest. Therefore, not having the proper justification for a full-scale military invasion of additional regions of an internationally recognized sovereign nation - and not wanting to risk its troops getting caught in the middle of a bloody civil war - Moscow is doing its best to turn the disputed regions into a hotbed of armed resistance and therefore manage the situation on the ground from afar - but always making sure to maintain the option of military intervention if need be. By officially remaining on the sidelines of the conflict, Moscow is, at least ostensibly, defusing the heightened tension with the West, containing the conflict that has the potential of spiraling out of control and allowing the West some diplomatic room to reciprocate.
Moscow's actions can therefore be characterized as one that is deescalating international tensions at the same time pushing a Russian agenda forward in eastern Ukraine.
A clear sign of Moscow's long-term strategy in Ukraine are Russian claims that they are merely supporting those in eastern Ukraine who are seeking some degree of autonomy via "federalization" within Ukraine: the implication begin that Russia is not seeking to "annex" eastern Ukraine. And in a clear sign of high level coordination with the pro-Russian movement in eastern Ukraine, even some of the rebel leadership have echoed the same claim. But despite these Russian claims, pro-Russian activists are being provided with all forms of support from Russia (including arms, money, humanitarian aid, volunteers and of course covert special forces) via the very long and largely unmonitored border crossings between Ukraine and Russia. This conflict, as all conflicts tend to do, has begun to take on a life of its own. And as more pro-government troops, pro-Russian activists and civilians die, this process will intensify and the regions impacted by the conflict will drift further and further towards Russia.
With Russian support, pro-Russian forces will manage to keep the Western-backed junta in Kiev at bay and in doing so eventually achieve defacto autonomy.
Despite the military raids we have been seeing by the Western-backed junta in Kiev in recent weeks, Kiev officials are carefully calibrating their responses against the Russian-backed insurgency. Thus far, their military efforts have been measured and limited in scope. We have not seen any large-scale, sustained military operations in the eastern regions by the junta in Kiev primarily because of fears that doing so runs the risk of drawing in Russian forces waiting just over the border. As I keep saying: If given the order, Russian troops will be soaking their feet in the Dnieper River in two or three days - and there will be no one to stop them. The dilemma for Kiev is that by not responding in full force, they are allowing pro-Russian forces to consolidate their holdings.
Having thus secured the legal framework for military intervention if the situation gets out of hand, Moscow currently seems to be laying the groundwork for a prolonged struggle for liberation. Thus far, things are going by the book and Ukraine has now entered a Karabakhization phase. This is a phase of low intensity conflict and this may last for some time unless an unexpected escalation in the crisis - or a sudden and fundamental change within Moscow's calculus - brings it into a new, more bloody phase. At the very least, however, this phase will ensure that the central authorities in Kiev remain weak and unstable and the pro-Russian regions will remain dependent on Moscow. This phase will also all but ensure that Ukraine is kept out of both the EU and NATO. For the foreseeable future, Ukraine's chances of joining the EU or NATO are therefore non-existent. Ukraine has entered into a period of long-term political, social, economic and financial instability. Pro-Russian regions in eastern and southern Ukraine are heading towards autonomy. The entire Crimean peninsula is back under Russian rule. Moscow has brilliantly maneuvered Kiev into an unenviable position where Ukraine has no choice but to become a buffer zone. Moscow has meticulously created a new reality on the ground. The effort has been both ingenious and monumental.
This very unfortunate situation is something that Ukrainians brought upon themselves by allowing Westerners to sow the seeds of Ukraine's ultimate destruction. Ukraine has therefore forfeited its right to be nation and the Western experiment has backfired terribly. Please revisit the previous four blog commentaries about the crisis in Ukraine -
The East-West Balance and the Strategic Importance of Crimea: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-military-balance-between-russia-and.html
Russia reclaims Crimea: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2014/03/in-historic-dispute-with-west-russia.html
The Battle For Ukraine II: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-battle-for-ukraine-ii-february-2014.html
The Battle For Ukraine I: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-battle-for-ukraine-december-2013.html
A telling sign of just how decrepit American/Western civilization has become in recent years: Filthy street whores from Russia being honored by professional whores in Washignton.
The good news for us all is that the Western establishment is suffering very massive geostrategic setbacks not only in Ukraine but across the world. Bashar Assad has stopped the Western/Turkish/Saudi-backed Islamic insurgency in Syria and is set to win a massive electoral victory in the up-coming presidential elections. Narendra Modi, India's new Hindu nationalist president and the rise of Egypt's secular military leader, General Sisi heralds a new era in which both Egypt, the Arab world's most populace nation and India, the world's largest democracy seem ready and willing to plot their future course independent of the West.
Historic sociopolitical shifts are occurring in Europe as well. Anti-establishment parties have recently made themselves heard throughout Europe. Anti-Americanism sprinkled with xenophobia, nationalism and Christian conservatism is on the rise throughout the European continent. This is a backlash to the Anglo-American-Jewish establishment's decades long effort to sow Globalization (i.e. ultra-liberalism) into the continent. And some in eastern Europe, as this very significant news article reveals, are once again looking at Moscow with longing.
Russia's unexpected rise as a global player during the past ten years has made much of this possible. And it is about to get even worst for the Western world for Moscow has begun to look East.
President Putin looks east
As the Western world slowly commits suicide via genetically modified foods, junk foods, pharmaceuticals, psychiatric drugs, overregulation, dwindling natural resources, undereducation, low birth rates, culture of violence, glorification of war, over-entertainment, consumerism, commercialism, selfishness individualism, mass homicides, child pornography, interracialism, illegal immigration, third world immigration, atheism, feminism, multiculturalism, celebrity worship, Holocaust worship, liberalism and gay pride parades - some others in the world are slowly plotting course for a new Eurasian century.
One of the very predictable repercussions of Western aggression against the Russian Federation is taking shape in front of our very eyes today: Russia and China are deepening their friendship. Who in their right minds could not see this coming? Warming of Sino-Russian relations is nothing new, it has actually been developing quite nicely in recent years -
Medvedev's China visit to carry forward China-Russia strategic ties (May, 2008): http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2009/03/perhaps-we-have-not-yet-fully-grasped.html
Is a strategic alliance between Moscow and Beijing what the political West wanted? Hardly. Such a thing is in fact what the West precisely fears. But due to the Western world's blinding arrogance and greed - not to mention the ominous fact that political power in Western nations rest in the hands of special interest groups - the evolution of a Sino-Russian alliance is exactly what Western powers are confronting today. And they have no one but themselves to blame for it.
President Vladimir Putin is confidently looking eastward. Moscow is seeking to tap into China's massive energy hungry economy and rapidly growing middle class. China desperately needs Russian commodities as well as expertise in certain sectors. It's a symbiotic relationship that has also grown quite strategic in character in recent years. And there is no turning back now. The proverbial genii is out of the bottle. The massive $400 billion, 30 year - US Dollar free - natural gas deal Moscow struck with Beijing is much more than a symbolic gesture for it's actually the beginning of the end of the US Dollar's global domination and perhaps the end of Western control over global commerce.
For the past several hundred years global commence and finance had been, to a large degree, controlled by a multinational, albeit European powers: Britain, France, USA, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Russia, Sweden, etc. This multinational character in trade and fiance began to change as a result of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and Germany's two defeats in 1918 and 1945. With economic giants at the time such as Russia, Germany - and Japan - no longer in the equation, Anglo-American influence in global commerce and finance - and thus politics - rose to unprecedented heights. The economic and financial principles set by Anglo-Americans at Bretton Woods at the close of the Second World War thus came to dominate the world. Since Second World War all roads have thus led to Rome. For nearly one hundred years the global financial system and global trade has been rigged solely to their benefit. For nearly one hundred years Western powers have looked at the rest of the world as a playground for their financial/corporate elite. For nearly one hundreds years Western companies and the US Dollar dominated the world. For nearly one hundreds years Western societies have thus enjoyed unprecedentedly high standards-of-living. This, however, came at a great cost to the rest of the world.
The following Swiss study may go a long way in explaining why the world is in the shape it currently is and why the Western economic/financial paradigm is in fact a very dangerous animal that needs to be killed before it drags down the entire world. When one begins to realize that over 90% of mega-corporations that control most of the global economy are Western entities - and that the Western war-machine essentially serves these mega-corporations - that is when political matters around the world today will start making better sense -
The entire Western world has been living in a bubble created by the US Dollar's global hegemony. The Western financial system has grown so immense in size today that it is essentially a virtual reality and a house of cards. This Anglo-American-Jewish paradigm, however, is living its twilight years. Once this Western financial bubble finally bursts and the house of cards falls apart - it's only a matter of time before it does - it will be lights out. The Soviet Union's collapse will look like a leisurely walk through a pretty flower garden in comparison because the Western world is too developed, too well fed, too complacent, too dumbed-down, too medicated and, too racially/culturally mixed to survive such a downturn.Does one 'super-corporation' run the global economy? Study claims it could be terrifyingly unstable: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051008/Does-super-corporation-run-global-economy.html#ixzz1k2BaFZ00
At this point in history, the only thing the West has going for itself is hype, the mere notion/facade of superiority (e.g. American exceptionalism) and the semblance/facade of stability achieved by the global dominance of the US Dollar. The Western world may look wonderful on the outside but it is slowly rotting on the inside. The Western world is living on past glory and on borrowed time.
In the not too distant past, Western powers went to war to preserve the global hegemony of the US Dollar. It can be argued that the criminal actions against Iraq and Libya in recent years were at least in part an attempt to preserve the US Dollar's supremacy in international trade. But, needless to say, Russia and China are not Iraq or Libya. With that said, the final end may prove long in coming. As long as Western puppet-masters are able to use their levers of social engineering to continue making the self-destructive peasantry in places such as Armenia and Ukraine think they will be "happy" living under the Western world order, the rest of humanity will have to wait before the beast is finally killed.
Ever since official Yerevan announced its decision to join the Russian-led Customs Union last September, the frequency and intensity of Western sponsored freak shows have increased in Armenian society. Armenia's ascension to the Customs Union, perhaps as early as this summer, will come not a moment too soon. The Armenian nation has wasted enough time pandering to criminals in the West. There is nothing of real value Armenia can gain from intimate dealings with Western powers. From China to Bosnia, the West is pushing an Turko-Islamic agenda. From Madrid to Beijing, the West is pushing a neo-Bolshevik-Globalist agenda. In this geopolitical climate, a multipolar world, one in which a traditional Christian power like Russia is a leader, is desperately needed.
Culturally, politically and geographically, Armenia is a Eurasian nation. Armenia's place is within a political/economic pact with Russia, Iran, China and India. This group of nations is where Armenia naturally belongs. It's high time we Armenians acknowledge certain geopolitical realities and adapt to them accordingly. It's high time we collectively begin seeing the opportunities presented by Russia and the potential they have for Armenia. As I have been saying for nearly ten years now, at least from an Eurasian context, the 21st century will belong to Russia and China (and also hopefully India, Iran, and Germany, if the latter can shed its Anglo-American-Jewish yoke).
Having learned its 20th century lessons well and endued with a vast, resource rich land that stretches from Europe to the Pacific Ocean - and a powerful, nuclear armed military to protect it all - the Russian Federation will be in the driver's seat in the 21st century. My humble hope is to see our small, impoverished, landlocked, remote and embattled homeland in the south Caucasus, at the very least, in its passenger seat.
Nature always brings order out of disorder
Although the Western political establishment is employing their propagandists to paint recent events in Ukraine in the most brightest of colors, there is no escaping the fact that the Western political order is suffering serious defeats on many fronts and that their power and influence today is in steady decline. The political and financial system put together at the end of the Second World War worked miracles for the Western world - while it lasted. This system, much of it essentially a Ponzy Scheme of global proportions, can not be sustained indefinitely. Sooner-or-later the bubble will burst, the game would be over and the illusion would end. The Anglo-American world is living its twilight years as its two century old global dominance is gradually decaying.
Unipolarity is destructive for it disrupts natural order in the universe. Nature, by nature, is multipolar and constantly seeks equilibrium. No single entity in an ecology can remain dominant for a very long period of time simply because, as we were thought in school, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Universal order is thus designed to reject unipolarity and it does so by giving rise to countering forces. Therefore, it was only inevitable that the unipolarity within human ecology in recent decades as a result of the unprecedented power the Anglo-American-Zionist establishment yielded has given rise to opposing forces as a means of balancing-out something that nature itself sees as a disorder or simply put - unnatural. Having come to acquire unprecedented power and influence over the world - and having begun to abusing it in recent years - it is therefore inevitable that the Western world world will sooner-than-later suffer a reversal of fortunes. This nature's balancing-out process is what we are witnessing take place in the world today. This is precisely why I keep claiming that Vladimir Putin was sent to bring human ecology back into its natural state of order.
We are therefore living through the birth pangs of a new world order. Nature is correcting what it sees as corruption. We are experiencing the emergence of a new multipolar political landscape where nations until recently held captive would finally be free of Western meddling.
As noted above, Ukraine is not the only battlefield where the West has suffered strategic setbacks recently. Armenia's all but certain membership in the Russian-led Customs Union has sealed the fate of the south Caucasus as a Russian zone of influence. Bashar Assad's crushing defeat of the Western-backed Islamic insurgency has all but ensured the survival of the Shiite/Iranian Arc. [The renewed carnage brought upon Iraq is a Western/Saudi war effort against this Iranian arc by other means.] Lebanon's Hezbollah has never been as strong as it is today. The uninterrupted continuation of Iran's nuclear program will ensure the survival of an independent Iranian state as a counterbalance to the Western-backed Sunni/Wahhabist entities of the region. General Sisi promises to be Egypt's new Gamal Abdel Nasser. Modi's rise in India promises better Indo-Russian and Indo-Chinese relations. Even in Europe there are clear signs that the people have had enough of Western "values". Finally, the current world disorder has given rise to a Sino-Russian pact and this newly emerging alliance between two of Eurasia's greatest powers is toying with the idea of delivering a final death blow to the Western world. Challenging the supremacy of the US Dollar - the root cause of Western power and influence - is making headlines once more.
In the big picture, it has been Russia's rise as a world power that has made all this possible. Russia's resurgence was the catalyst that set into motion a chain-of-events (beginning back in the summer of 2008) that has led to the current political landscape. Human society is headed into a new era and Western powers will be unable to stop it. Major geopolitical shifts will continue occurring and borders will be redrawn to accommodate the emerging new world order. But, what does all this mean for Artsakh?
What does all this mean for Artsakh?
Western propaganda sources within the Armenian community have recently been having a wonderful time with news reports that Moscow is planning to sell more advanced weaponry to Azerbaijan. As expected, incited by Western propagandists, Armenians are once again calling into question Moscow's reliability as a strategic partner, especially when it comes to the dispute over Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh). And once again I find myself faced with addressing this most unpleasant of topics.
If I had to describe what Moscow is doing in one word, it would be: Realpolitik. And if the word Realpolitik is not enough to satisfy the reader, then please consider the following.
Foremost, we must refrain from paying too much attention to Western news agencies (including most English language Armenian ones) if only to maintain sanity and a clear mind. No. Russia is not going to give Artsakh to the Turks. No. Russia is not arming Azerbaijan so that it can invade Armenia. Yes. Russia continues to be Armenia's only strategic ally. Yes. Russia continues to provide Armenia with free and affordable modern weaponry. Yes. Russian-Armenian relations are deepening and Armenia's borders have never been as secure as they are today as a result.
Russians selling arms to Baku should not always be looked at from the context of the dispute over Artsakh nor as a gauge measuring Russian-Armenian relations. In other words, the two are not necessarily interrelated.
Let's remember that Russia is an independent nation-state who's military industrial complex makes up for a significant portion of the Russian Federation's GDP. Russian officials know that there are a number of nations impatiently waiting for an opportunity to sell arms to Azerbaijan. If Moscow does not, someone else will. What's more, Russia has normal relations with Baku. We must also realize that in its efforts to reclaim the entire south Caucasus, Moscow is doing best to keep Azerbaijan within its orbit. In the big picture, a Baku within the Russian orbit is in Armenia's strategic interests - that is as long as Armenia is allied to the Russian Federation.
From an Armenian perspective, what would indeed signal trouble is if Russia was not providing Armenia with weaponry to counter the ones Azerbaijan acquired. As we all know, however, Russia is giving Armenia the appropriate arms it needs to protect itself from Azeri and Turkish aggression. In fact, seeing Baku's exorbitant military expenditures, Moscow has been doing its best to keep the balance-of-power in the region intact by providing an impoverished Yerevan with free or discounted modern weaponry. This military support by Moscow is the only reason why Yerevan has been able to hold its own against a big spending Baku. Moscow has made sure that for every kind of tank Azerbaijan possesses in its armed forces, Armenia has ample anti-tank weapons systems that can effectively counter it. Moscow has made sure that for every type of aircraft Azerbaijan possesses in its armed forces, Armenia has ample anti-aircraft weapons systems that can effectively counter it. And by protecting Armenia's western borders against NATO member Turkey, Moscow has made sure Yerevan can concentrate its very limited military resources on protecting Armenia's eastern border against Azerbaijan. In short, Russian arms sales to Baku need to be assessed rationally and in light of facts on the ground.
For further insight on this topic, please visit the following link to Artsakh war veteran and the director of Voskanapat think tank Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan's radio interview -
Լևոն Մելիք-Շահնազարյան: «2 օր առաջ ես գտնվում էի մի տեղ, որտեղ 22 տարի հայի ոտքը չի եղե»: «Թարմ ուղեղով»՝ Լևոն Մելիք-Շահնազարյանի հետNevertheless, recent Russian arms sales to Azerbaijan could also be a pressure tactic to ensure Yerevan does not have a change-of-mind come this summer when Armenia is expected to officially begin the Customs Union entry process. [There continues to be some resistance within political circles in Yerevan.] It could also be a pressure tactic to allow Russians a greater role inside Armenia. As mentioned above, however, it is more likely that Moscow is simply trying to keep Baku in its orbit. Let's recall once more that there are a number of nations that are ready and willing to sell arms to the oil-rich dictatorship. In fact, Turkey, Ukraine, Britain, Israel and the US have until very recently been selling more weapons to Baku than the Russian Federation. Anyone remember news reports two years ago about Israel's $1.6 billion arms sale to Azerbaijan? -
Azerbaijan Makes Massive Israeli Weapons Purchase (February, 2012): http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65053
Looking at US-Turkish relations and Russian-Armenian relations (November, 2012): http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2012/11/us-working-to-strengthen-relations-with.html
What we also need to keep in mind is this: Baku has been holding back from trying to militarily solve its dispute with Armenia not merely because of military factors per se but because of the region's political climate. Moscow's strong presence in the region is the primary reason why Baku has been restraining itself. Therefore, regardless of what arms the Azeri military possesses and who provided it to them, the reason why Baku has not attempted a military solution in Artsakh since their Moscow-brokered defeat in 1994 is their primordial fear of the Russian Bear. Once again, had Moscow not sold weapons to Baku, Azeris would have turned once again to Western powers, Turkey or Israel for such weapons. At the same time, had Russia not been in the picture, who would have picked up the tab of arming and training the Armenian military to the tune of many billions of Dollars?
At the end of the day, these kinds of news developments are being exploited by Armenia's Western mercenaries as a way of disseminating disinformation and spreading Russophobia. Their goal, as the reader should already know, is to drive a wedge between Yerevan and Moscow and severe Armenia from Russia.
Now, with that out of the way, I would like to address the other part of this matter: What will become of Artsakh.
In my opinion, if Yerevan remains within the Russian orbit and Armenians work to deepen Russo-Armenian relations, Artsakh will eventually reunite with the Armenian motherland. I firmly believe this will happen with Moscow's blessing. Recent events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine have provided Armenians with a wonderful precedent in this regard. Recent regional developments may mean that the resolution of the dispute over Artsakh may be nearing. Having returned to the south Caucasus after a near twenty years hiatus, Moscow will not want a festering wound to get in the way of its regional agenda. And this is where things might get a little worrying for us Armenians.
There may be one more bout - a quick, decisive and most probably a predetermined battle - between Yerevan and Baku that will settle the matter for once and for all. And the side that is closest to Moscow will derive the most benefits. This is why Yerevan's decision to enter the Russian-led Customs Union was an important strategic step to secure Armenia's vital interests within the Kremlin. With all due respects to the brave men and women serving in the Armenian armed forces today, without direct Russian support Armenians would simply be unable to mount an effective, long-term defense of Artsakh if Armenia's larger and wealthier neighbors decide to resort to sustained violence once again. As my favorite Wall Street saying goes: Past performances do not guarantee future results. Armenians were able to liberate Artsakh during the chaotic years following the Soviet Union's collapse (even then only after Russian support began coming into Armenia starting in early 1992, when the Soviet Union had collapsed and a new Russian state was born in its place).
Armenia today is a demoralized (largely thanks to the country's Western-led doom-and-gloom opposition freaks), impoverished, tiny, remote, landlocked and a blockaded nation surrounded by enemies in one of the most volatile regions of the world - and the traditional Armenian Diaspora (the diaspora comprising of Ottoman-Armenian genocide survivors) is simply too busy obsessing over genocide recognition in Washington, too busy assimilating in their beloved countries, too busy fighting "corruption" in Armenia and too busy complaining about dirty toilets in Yerevan. With the following we vividly see where Diasporan priorities lie today -
Prominent Diasporans Sign Statement in Support of Homosexuality: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2013/11/01/prominent-diasporans-sign-petition-in-support-of-equality-in-armenia/
Know your enemy. Know yourself. We Armenians cannot make the grave mistake of overestimating our capabilities and underestimating that of our enemies'. Regardless of whether or not Russians sell arms to Baku, Azerbaijan's military is getting stronger due to its oil and gas revenues. If for some reason Moscow stopped providing military support to Armenia and gave Baku a green light to attack, Armenians will, sooner than later, lose Artsakh - if not more. The key to Armenia's demise - and prosperity - is found in the highest offices of the Kremlin. We as a people need to wake-up from our illusions of grandeur and recognize this cold hard reality. Instead of fearmongerign about this, we need to see this as an opportunity.
But Moscow will not abandon Armenia nor give Baku the green light to attack Artsakh. What will Moscow gain from strengthening Turkish, Islamic and Western interests in the strategic south Caucasus by weakening Armenia by bolstering an Azerbaijan, especially after investing so much for so many years in Armenia? Had Turkish/Azeris money or oil been a real factor in Russia's foreign policy formulations in the south Caucasus, which is what many of our Russophobes claim, Moscow would have sold Armenia to Turks many years ago. Russian officials recognize the Turkic/Islamic threat better than us Armenians.
The reality is that Armenia and Artskah today play a very major role for Moscow. Artsakh's existence as a Russia-friendly Armenian fortress overlooking Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Iran serves the Kremlin's geostrategic interests in the region. Equally important for Russians is the simple fact that the dispute over Artsakh also ensures Yerevan's and Baku's political dependence on Moscow. Moreover, Artsakh is essentially an arms depot with a battle-ready population that will not bow to anyone and the Artsakh-Armenian military leadership enjoy a very close relations with their Russian counterparts. Therefore - strategically, economically, culturally, tactically and practically - Moscow will not do anything that will drastically change the status quo in Artsakh. Armenian sovereignty over Artsakh is therefore set in stone. With that said, now that Yerevan's allegiance has been secured via Armenia's ascension to the Moscow-led Customs Union, I expect Moscow to earnestly begin pursuing bringing Baku under its fold as well. Of course a best case scenario, from an Armenian perspective, would be if Baku continues to remain inflexible in its dealings with Moscow and Yerevan and continues its flirtations with Turkey, Israel and the Anglo-American world.
There are encouraging signs that Western powers may be placing more emphasis on their dealings with Baku now as a result of the September 3 decision by Yerevan. With a Russia-friendly government now in Tbilisi and with Yerevan firmly under Russia's wing, Western policymakers will do everything they can to keep a presence in Baku. The following is a revealing Washington Times article about Azerbaijan that essentially reads like a tacky infomercial -
Azerbaijan: An American ally in a sea of threats: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/7/azerbaijan-an-american-ally-in-a-sea-of-threats/?page=all#pagebreak
As noted above, we might see a short, choreographed war to convince both sides to come to the negotiation table and settle the Artsakh dispute for once and for all. As a final negotiated settlement with Baku, Yerevan may be expected to return some of the "seven regions" taken outside of Artsakh proper as a measure to settle Azeri refugees. I do not have any concerns about the fate of the territories west and south of Artsakh, namely strategic regions between Karvajar in the north-west and the Iranian border in the south-east. In return to Armenian concessions, Baku would be expected to recognize Artsakh's independence or its reunification with Armenia and perhaps return some areas of Artsakh currently under its control.
It is of paramount importance to mention here that the degree and depth of the concessions that would be expected from Yerevan is ultimately up to the diplomatic acumen of Armenian politicians and the lobbying efforts of our political activists in Moscow.
Although Russia is the Alpha and the Omega of the region, Armenians can still use their God-given talents to win hearts-and-minds in the Kremlin. It is therefore crucially important to show Russian officials that Armenians are united behind their leadership and that the entire population of Artsakh is fully mobilized for war. Major powers only respect power, not victim-hood and constant whining. Over a century ago one of our most beloved Katolikoi, Mkrtich Khrimyan, popularly known as Khirmyan Hayrik, warned Armenians about the paramount importance of Iron Ladles. Today, this proverbial Iron Ladle is as important for Armenia as it has ever been. In today's Armenia, however, this Iron Ladle should looked at from the context of Armenia's alliance with Russia.
Nevertheless, the inability of Armenians to unite behind their flag (as well as reveal political foresight) is the fundamental reason why major nations look at Armenia as a pawn as well as the reason why Armenia as a nation-state has been an endangered species within the global community.
I would like to reiterate once more that the primary responsibility of holding on to every square centimeter of liberated Artsakh falls upon the shoulders of Armenian politicians and Armenian lobbyists. Instead of complaining and fear-mongering and threatening closer relations with Western powers, as some of our idiots tend to do when things don't go our way with Moscow, we Armenians need to draw on all our national assets and make a strong case for Artsakh within the walls of the Kremlin. Yerevan must do all it can to convince the Kremlin that keeping Artsakh whole and powerful is in the geostrategic interests of the Russian Federation. If Armenians are unable to do this, Armenia may be forced to pullback from certain territories. Therefore, Artsakh's ultimate fate is to a certain degree in the hands of our politicians and activists and subject to our ability to convince and recruit Kremlin officials into our national cause.
Sadly, however, I do not see much of an effort being put into this vital strategic matter by Armenians in Armenia or by our "democracy" obsessed Armenians in the Diaspora. On one side, we have Western mercenaries doing their best to spread Russophobia and on the other side we have subservient chobans-in-Armani-suits sitting back and expecting Russian officials to decide everything for Armenia. There currently is no farsighted, pragmatic nationalism in Armenia. There is no pan-national effort by Armenian to tap into the opportunities Russia's alliance provides. Everything that Moscow does with regards to Armenia is essentially a by-product of Russian calculations. Thus far we have been lucky but this unsettling reality is one of the reasons why I have been preaching Russian-Armenian relations for the past ten years.
We cannot sit back and expect - or demand - that Russians to do the right thing for Armenia. Armenians need to embark on a collective, cohesive, pan-national effort to make a case for Artsakh's territorial integrity. Armenians need to figure out a way to make Artsakh a strategic asset for policymakers in Moscow. Armenians need to work on making sure they will have a major input in whatever the final settlement will look like. This won't be an uphill battle for Russo-Armenian interests within the south Caucasus converge for the most part. In fact, we are seeing this historic convergence of political interests between Russia and Armenia extending to Artsakh as well. Breaking all diplomatic norms, Moscow has even gone out of its way - risking serious political damage - to express its steadfast support for the Armenian state. In a press interview that shook many capitols around the world several months ago, the commander of the recently modernized 102nd Russian military base stationed in Gyumri, Armenia stated that if Baku attempts to take Artsakh by military force, his troops may join Armenian forces in retaliating against Azeri forces -
Russian Troops in Gyumri will Retaliate If Azerbaijan Attacks Artsakh: http://asbarez.com/115675/russian-troops-in-gyumri-will-retaliate-if-azerbaijan-attacks/
Karabakh’s Status in Customs Union?:http://news.am/eng/news/183477.html
Russia Shows its Hand on Karabakh: http://euobserver.com/opinion/122032
Ara Abrahamyan interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpf0iLdCJmU&feature=youtube_gdata_playe
Armenians would do well to put aside their misplaced pride and arrogance and realize that the Russian factor in the region's political landscape has been the only reason why there has been, there is and there will continue to be an Armenian presence in the region. Let's learn to curb our overpowering emotions and recognize this, accept this, and try to exploit this for Armenia's sake. But knowing how politically illiterate Armenians can be and how well Western interests are entrenched inside Armenia, I understand this will not be an easy task.
In other words, what we have in Armenia today is a nation that is dependent on and strategically allied to Russia but also a nation that is utterly saturated by Western programs and activists. What we have today in Armenia is not a very healthy situation.
Official Yerevan's so-called "complimentary politics", where Armenian officials sought to play both sides of the geopolitical fence, got Armenia to this point. I recognize that this approach to East-West relations worked well for Yerevan while the Russian Federation was weak and incapable of imposing its political will within its near abroad. However, what we all now need to recognize is that the geopolitical climate of the world has changed drastically since the time Yeltsin the Drunk was in power in Moscow. Today, Russian power and influence has been reinstated throughout much of former Soviet territory. Today, the continuation of complimentary politics will keep Armenia stagnant at best and vulnerable for collapse at worst.
Russians are once again warning Armenia
Although concerns by Russian officials (including President Putin) have been expressed in private during meetings with Armenian officials for many years, it's been only in recent years that Russians have been making public statements about the matter. In the big picture, what all this means is that times have changed and Armenians better take notice. Russia is once again the alpha and the omega of the Caucasus and Washington's machinations inside Armenia may finally be challenged by Moscow. In other words, we may be witnessing the end of complimentary politics in Yerevan - and it's not because of Armenian political foresight.
My thoughts regarding this matter should be well known by my readers. But I would like to make some reiterations nonetheless.
Foremost, Western-funded organizations, regardless of their stated intentions, are cancerous elements within the Armenian body. There are hundreds of registered NGOs in Armenia championing everything from trees to gays and they employ many thousands of people. I understand that for an economically struggling nation that is a good thing. However, at what cost to the nation? Look at any troubled hotspot in the world today and you will find Western organizations and individuals diligently working behind-the-scenes.
We must also be mindful that in a small, landlocked and cash-strapped nation like Armenia, these NGOs can potentially have a very large impact. A majority of these NGOs are Western funded operations, and I would dare say that a majority of them are tasked with pushing, in one way or another, a Western political agenda inside Armenia. In fact, most of the civic action programs we have been seeing in Armenia in recent years - specifically those attempting to propagate Russophobia, homosexuality, multiculturalism, feminism and Turkish-Armenian reconciliation - are the handiwork of these organizations and their activists. Many of the Social Engineering projects of the Western world are being carried-out inside Armenia by these groups. The Western task of driving a wedge between Armenia and Russia are also being carried-out by these groups. Under the guise of "freedom and democracy" these groups are actively pushing a Western imperial agenda inside Armenia. And God forbid when "forces of freedom and democracy" or their Turco-Islamic brigades ever start bombing Armenia (which may very well happen the very day Russian troops leave Armenia), it will be these employees of the American empire that will appear on CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera and make excuses for the aggression against Armenia.
Knowing firsthand the destructive nature of Westernization; knowing firsthand the hostility the Western political establishment holds towards Armenia; knowing firsthand the political ignorance and self-destructive streak prevailing inside a good cross-section of Armenians today - and being under no illusions about Armenia's capabilities as a nation-state to defend itself in the volatile south Caucasus - I fully endorse the aforementioned assessments by Russians of the dangers Westernization and Western funded organizations present inside Armenia and I am glad they are finally speaking up about this very urgent matter. As an Armenian, I would go even farther than what Russians have been saying and call for all Western-funded NGOs and media organizations such as Civilitas, Pre-Parliament, Radio Liberty, Lragir, Hetq, and ArmeniaNow to be shutdown and their key staff members placed either under surveillance or simply expelled from the country as foreign agents.
In light of recent regional developments, it is a matter of strategic importance that Armenia expel all Western funded organizations and place emphasis on the promotion of the Russian language inside Armenia. I reiterate: The promotion of the Russian language inside Armenia is of paramount strategic importance.
Armenia's youth, those who did not live during Soviet times, have been most susceptible to the most corrosive aspects of Western Globalism. It is therefore not surprising that the English has been making serious headway amongst Armenia's youth as less-and-less of them are learning Russian - the language of Armenia's largest trading partner, largest investor, largest arms supplier and largest energy provider.
Besides being the official language of CIS, CSTO and the fledgling Eurasian Union, all of which Armenia is a part of; besides being the language of Armenia's largest trading partner, largest investor, largest arms supplier, largest energy provider and only ally, the Russian language is an important depository of classical European civilization and an antidote to Globalese. Similar to how Israelis embrace the English language and American culture and relentlessly work to recruit Anglo-Americans into Israel's struggle in the Middle East, Armenians likewise need to embrace the Russian language and Russian culture and relentlessly work to recruit Russians into Armenia's struggle in the south Caucasus.
The English language has thus become a catalyst of corrosive change and a tool of manipulation and mental conditioning. When it comes to English, unbeknownst to the sheeple, alongside Shakespeare also comes the very toxic tenets of Western Globalism.
Wall Street bankers, multiculturalism, interracialism, anti-nationalism, anti-Christianity, corporatization, consumerism, GMOs, junk foods, pharmaceuticals, drug abuse, Anglo-American-Afro-Jewish pop culture, Holocaust worship, individualism and the promotion of sexual perversions, feminism and homosexuality travels very close behind the spread of the English language around the world.
The first and second official languages in Armenia need to be Armenian and Russian respectively. Those who worry about the status of the Armenian language in Armenia are allowing Cold War ghosts to muddle their thinking process. If Bolsheviks could not kill the Armenian language, and God knows they tried, Russian-led economic pacts such as the Eurasian Union never will. With that said, other languages that also need to be taught in Armenia are German, French, Persian, Arabic and Chinese. The English language should primarily be reserved for Armenia's diplomatic corps until a new Lingua Franca appears.
As the reader can see, I firmly stand behind Dmitry Kiselyov's comments regarding the troubling language situation in Armenia today. I also appreciate his honest if harsh candor. I much rather hear harsh truths from Russians than the usual sweet lies from Westerners. Mind you that I am saying all this as a Diasporan Armenian of Cilician heritage and one that does not speak any Russian.
It is nevertheless a very encouraging sign that Russians are becoming more involved inside Armenia. If any of what's being claimed in this CIA report can be trusted, we may be finally entering a new phase in Russian-Armenian relations, one where Moscow will become more proactive in Armenia's domestic affairs. Thank God. I can only hope that the next stage will see the implementation of some serious countermeasures to curb or neutralize or terminate Western-led entities operating inside Armenia. We Armenians must learn from the mistakes of others because Armenia is too small and too vulnerable to make the kind of mistakes made by Serbians, Libyans, Venezuelans, Syrians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Iraqis and Egyptians.
I would like to see Russian officials take the initiative in this regard because I do not have much confidence in Armenians to get the job done. Armenia is a nation today that is suffering terribly from a deficit of farsighted officials, professionals, intellectuals and pragmatic nationalists. The reigns of power in the nation today are in the hands of illiterate peasants, greedy monopolists and Western mercenaries. There is a virtual absence of sober-minded and farsighted nationalism in Armenian society today. The modern Armenian is too spineless, too selfish, too ostentatious, too moneygrubbing, too clannish, too politically ignorant and too enthralled by Western fairytales to do things that are actually in the long-term interests of the Armenian homeland. In fact, for a few dollars - or a Green Card - the typical Armenian in Armenia today is fully capable, wittingly or unwittingly, of laying waste to his or her homeland. Sadly, the overall situation is even sadder in the once proud Armenian Diaspora. The typical Diasporan today, the vast majority perhaps, is too busy assimilating in their beloved lands where - "when two of them meet...see if they will not create a New Armenia". And for most of those small numbers of Diasporans who have anything to do with the Armenian homeland, Armenia has unfortunately become something like an exotic zoo or a laboratory where to concoct their volatile sociopolitical experiments.
The following for example is yet another well-fed Western mercenary preaching suicidal policies to a disgusting ARF affiliated filth who only two years ago was trying to spread anti-Bashar Assad propaganda inside the Armenian community -
Past the Tipping Point: An Interview with Ara Papian: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/05/18/interview-ara-papian/
A friendly reminder: Armenia's neighbors are Turks, Azeris, Kurds, Iranians, Pan-Turkists, Islamists and of course backstabbing Georgians. Armenia's independence from Russia will ultimately mean Armenian dependence on Turkey. No Russia in the south Caucasus means no Armenia in the south Caucasus. And the ONLY reason why Western interests are in the Caucasus is to exploit the region's energy reserves free of Russian meddling and contain the growth of Russian power. Armenia therefore is not located on very fertile ground and ONE wrong move may destroy the nation.
Unfortunately, our typical "nationalist" nutjobs today (i.e. our culturally Asiatic, obnoxiously boastful, deeply ignorant and overly emotional chobans who think they are great patriots) will become a problem. Yes, Armenia's so-called patriots will become a problem. Trust me, Western interests working within Armenian society will make sure of it. As in the past, Western powers will utilize all levers at their disposal to manipulate these elements against the Armenian state and its deepening alliance with Russia. The usual suspects will be elements within the ARF (specifically those located in the Diaspora), elements throughout the American-Armenian community, those in Armenia living off Western grants, Western-funded NGOs, Western funded news organizations, Western-funded political parties like Raffi Hovanissian's Heritage party and of course Paruyr Hayrikian's zombies.
Throughout this whole process one of the largest CIA branches in the world will be doing its best to distract Armenians with utter nonsense - which is an American specialty. Therefore, as the American empire's most "pro-Armenian" official happily drinks toasts to genocidal criminals from Azerbaijan, some Armenians will continue dancing like happy little monkeys for the very honorable CIA representative in Armenia.
Arevordi
***
Russia’s reasons are obvious. In the case of China, there was less distrust until Washington suddenly turned up the heat on cyber-espionage and territorial disputes in the China Seas. Perhaps this confrontational behavior is just a brief aberration. But if Obama continues to needle and provoke China, he will not just be making an historic blunder — he will be playing straight into Putin’s strategy.
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More BRICS cooperation meant to bypass the dollar is reflected in the “Gas-o-yuan,” as in natural gas bought and paid for in Chinese currency. Gazprom is even considering marketing bonds in yuan as part of the financial planning for its expansion. Yuan-backed bonds are already trading in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and most recently Frankfurt.
Nothing could be more sensible for the new Pipelineistan deal than to have it settled in yuan. Beijing would pay Gazprom in that currency (convertible into rubles); Gazprom would accumulate the yuan; and Russia would then buy myriad made-in-China goods and services in yuan convertible into rubles.
It’s common knowledge that banks in Hong Kong, from Standard Chartered to HSBC - as well as others closely linked to China via trade deals - have been diversifying into the yuan, which implies that it could become one of the de facto global reserve currencies even before it’s fully convertible. (Beijing is unofficially working for a fully convertible yuan by 2018.)
The Russia-China gas deal is inextricably tied up with the energy relationship between the European Union (EU) and Russia. After all, the bulk of Russia’s gross domestic product comes from oil and gas sales, as does much of its leverage in the Ukraine crisis. In turn, Germany depends on Russia for a hefty 30% of its natural gas supplies. Yet Washington’s geopolitical imperatives - spiced up with Polish hysteria - have meant pushing Brussels to find ways to “punish” Moscow in the future energy sphere (while not imperiling present day energy relationships).
There’s a consistent rumble in Brussels these days about the possible cancellation of the projected 16 billion euro South Stream pipeline, whose construction is to start in June. On completion, it would pump yet more Russian natural gas to Europe - in this case, underneath the Black Sea (bypassing Ukraine) to Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Austria.
Bulgaria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have already made it clear that they are firmly opposed to any cancellation. And cancellation is probably not in the cards. After all, the only obvious alternative is Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan, and that isn’t likely to happen unless the EU can suddenly muster the will and funds for a crash schedule to construct the fabled Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, conceived during the Clinton years expressly to bypass Russia and Iran.
In any case, Azerbaijan doesn’t have enough capacity to supply the levels of natural gas needed, and other actors like Kazakhstan, plagued with infrastructure problems, or unreliable Turkmenistan, which prefers to sell its gas to China, are already largely out of the picture. And don’t forget that South Stream, coupled with subsidiary energy projects, will create a lot of jobs and investment in many of the most economically devastated EU nations.
Nonetheless, such EU threats, however unrealistic, only serve to accelerate Russia’s increasing symbiosis with Asian markets. For Beijing especially, it’s a win-win situation. After all, between energy supplied across seas policed and controlled by the US Navy and steady, stable land routes out of Siberia, it’s no contest.
The Fed is arguably monetizing 70% of the US government debt in an attempt to keep interest rates from heading skywards. Pentagon adviser Jim Rickards, as well as every Hong Kong-based banker, tends to believe that the Fed is bust (though they won’t say it on the record). No one can even imagine the extent of the possible future deluge the US dollar might experience amid a $1.4 quadrillion Mount Ararat of financial derivatives. Don’t think that this is the death knell of Western capitalism, however, just the faltering of that reigning economic faith, neoliberalism, still the official ideology of the United States, the overwhelming majority of the European Union, and parts of Asia and South America.
As far as what might be called the “authoritarian neoliberalism” of the Middle Kingdom, what’s not to like at the moment? China has proven that there is a result-oriented alternative to the Western “democratic” capitalist model for nations aiming to be successful. It’s building not one, but myriad new Silk Roads, massive webs of high-speed railways, highways, pipelines, ports, and fiber optic networks across huge parts of Eurasia. These include a Southeast Asian road, a Central Asian road, an Indian Ocean “maritime highway” and even a high-speed rail line through Iran and Turkey reaching all the way to Germany.
In April, when President Xi Jinping visited the city of Duisburg on the Rhine River, with the largest inland harbor in the world and right in the heartland of Germany’s Ruhr steel industry, he made an audacious proposal: a new “economic Silk Road” should be built between China and Europe, on the basis of the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe railway, which already runs from China to Kazakhstan, then through Russia, Belarus, Poland, and finally Germany. That’s 15 days by train, 20 less than for cargo ships sailing from China’s eastern seaboard. Now that would represent the ultimate geopolitical earthquake in terms of integrating economic growth across Eurasia.
Keep in mind that, if no bubbles burst, China is about to become - and remain - the number one global economic power, a position it enjoyed for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But don’t tell London hagiographers; they still believe that US hegemony will last, well, forever.
Whatever Washington may want or fear or try to prevent, the facts on the ground suggest that, in the years ahead, Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran will only grow closer, slowly but surely creating a new geopolitical axis in Eurasia. Meanwhile, a discombobulated America seems to be aiding and abetting the deconstruction of its own unipolar world order, while offering the BRICS a genuine window of opportunity to try to change the rules of the game.
That remains most of the rationale behind the American imperial containment policy - from Russia’s European “near abroad” to the South China Sea. Still, with no endgame in sight, keep your eye on Russia pivoting to Asia, China pivoting across the world, and the BRICS hard at work trying to bring about the new Eurasian Century.
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China rising
Anticipating trouble, China surrounded the drilling platform with coast guard vessels and, all told, more than six dozen ships of all sizes. This swift, calculated swarming into contested territory closely resembles other maneuvers by China against its neighbors, especially against the Philippines, such as the recent news of China’s building a landing zone on the cross-claimed Johnson’s Reef.
Vietnam erupted at the news of the Chinese aggression. Fierce anti-Chinese demonstrations in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and other locations led to the deaths of Chinese nationals and a diplomatic fusillade that has not died down, despite calls from Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung for order. China, not trusting that the Vietnamese nationalist reactions have played out, has launched the evacuation of thousands of Chinese nationals.
The well-paced Chinese provocations against important U.S. allies in East Asia are designed to show both Asia and the world that the U.S. cannot be trusted to honor its mutual defense treaties.
China is also not taking risks with its Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. property in the Paracels. Vietnamese media report that the Chinese navy has dispatched two of its largest amphibious ships, Jinggangshan and Kunlunshan, each packed with hundreds of troops, hovercraft, missiles and helicopters, in order to defend the rig from attack. In addition, the missile frigate Mianyang, carrying an ASW helicopter, will join the coast guard vessels to protect what China regards as its territory.
China’s plan to deploy an overwhelming force to secure a strategic asset has more than the Vietnamese government in mind. Beijing’s actions are timed to Putin’s state visit and a joint Russian-Chinese naval exercise in the South China Sea. Putin’s embassy aims to reaffirm economic and energy arrangements between the two nations.
Military links are clearly critical for the future of the relationship. Beijing is bullying Hanoi at this time in order to demonstrate that it can move as baldly against its neighbor Vietnam as Moscow can move against its neighbor Ukraine.
Russian supremacy
What Moscow looks to ascertain in the next weeks and months is if Beijing is able to serve as a trustworthy partner in defending Eurasia and its interests from interventions by the United States and its allies.
In Putin’s grand imperial vision, what Moscow desires is a partner to secure the seas surrounding the Eurasian supercontinent. Moscow’s fleet can control the Northern Passage and the northern Pacific Rim. Moscow will use the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to trade with India and the Persian Gulf. What Moscow wants from China’s fleet is to secure the southern Pacific Rim as well as to control the sea routes in the Indian Ocean approaches to the Gulf and Africa.
Russia’s expectations of China are very high: proof not only that it can dominate its tiny neighbors but also that it can stymie the U.S. The well-paced Chinese provocations against important U.S. allies — Japan and South Korea in the East China Sea, the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea — are designed to show both Asia and the world that the U.S. cannot be trusted to honor its mutual defense treaties. (Even U.S. reconnaissance flights in the region are reportedly unarmed to avoid conflict.)
President Barack Obama’s recent embassy to reassure Tokyo, Seoul and Manila of U.S. security guarantees has been undermined by the Chinese intimidation of the outgunned Vietnam.
China is not a reluctant provocateur. Ten years ago, the Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian Speech by Comrade Chi Haotian Vice-Chairman of China's Military Commission on the inevitability of war with the U.S. in order to achieve Chinese hegemony. Today, as a new cold war deepens between Moscow and Washington, Russia expects China to risk its profitable relations with the U.S. The Kremlin expects a partner willing to use force to secure their shared interests in the long struggle ahead for Eurasian domination.
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“Now Russia-China cooperation is advancing to a new stage of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction,” Putin said in an interview with the Chinese media released by the Kremlin on May 19. “It would not be wrong to say that it has reached the highest level in all its centuries-long history.”
Although China and Russia failed to sign a $400 billion gas supply agreement on May 20, there is still a chance that the two sides could agree on a deal before Putin leaves China or, more likely, in time for an economic forum in the Russian city of St. Petersburg later this week.
Amidst the Ukrainian crisis and the well-documented decline in Russia-West relations, this visit might have significant implications for the creation of a new world order. With Putin’s visit to China drawing the attention of both Russian and Western media, Russia Direct talked to a number of experts to find out about the long-term political and economic implications of closer Russia-China cooperation.
Alexander Panov, Ambassador Extraordinary, senior research fellow at the Institute of the U.S. and Canada, professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University)
[Putin’s] visit had been planned before the events in Ukraine and his major goal is to confirm strategic partnership in different international fields as well as agree on stepping up economic collaboration. The events in Ukraine and serious deterioration in Russia-West relations make this visit more significant globally.
Both sides present an alternative to U.S. aspirations to maintain its dominant position in world politics and economics. Probably, upcoming agreements will be a starting point for an accelerated reshaping of the entire system of international relations. It may include closer bilateral collaboration, but not about the creation of a military-political bloc, which neither Beijing nor Moscow is interested in.
Traditionally, China’s political culture doesn’t include the goal of joining a union with any countries, except North Korea. Agreements with this country resulted from China’s involvement in the Korean War, and currently, China supports the North Korean military under certain conditions. Likewise, Russia’s foreign policy strategy doesn’t seek to create military-political unions with other countries, except a union with Belarus.
At the same time, the very fact that Moscow and Beijing are coming together amidst the current events in Ukraine is obviously seen in the world as a response to the Western policy of attempting to contain both Russia and China.
Russia needs to join the Asia-Pacific Region’s economic processes not only by making far-reaching statements, but also by practical actions. Without support of China, Japan and South Korea – the leading economies in the region – it will be highly difficult to implement these plans. So far, Russia’s Far East remains closed or less attractive for foreign business. One of the goals of the Russian president’s visit to China is to start building a model of involvement of China’s business in the economic development of Russia’s Far East.
Richard Weitz, senior fellow and director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Russia’s overarching goals in Asia generally include promoting multipolarity (limiting the influence of the United States but also includes managing China’s rise), developing beneficial economic relations, having a visible presence in all major Asian events and institutions (in accordance with the vision of Russia as a great power), and minimizing the adverse impact of regional disputes while seeking to exploit some of them to enhance Russia’s influence and interests.
The strategy of developing the Russian Far East by increasing its economic integration within East Asia has both defensive and offensive purposes. Moscow hopes to counter Chinese economic absorption of Siberia as a raw material appendage while simultaneously building a more solid foundation for promoting Russia’s regional influence.
Russia’s most important Asian relationship is clearly with China. The two countries share interests in maintaining stability in the Korean peninsula, Central Asia, and the Middle East—all regions where their local allies are threatened by various forces. China has clearly emerged as Russia’s most important trading partner and gateway to other Asian markets, and soon could become its main source of foreign investment.
Most importantly, Chinese officials make a show of treating their Russian counterparts as representatives of an equal great power, a status they deny India and Japan. When Xi visited Sochi, he played up his knowledge and respect for Russian culture and sought out time face-to-face with Putin.
Thanks to the convergence of their models of government and their national ideologies, Russian and Chinese leaders increasingly share a common conceptual framework that is distrustful of popular democracy and of unconstrained free market economics and that shuns criticisms over other countries’ human rights practices. Their joint statements and actions reinforce each other’s legitimacy.
Nevertheless, the Russia-China relationship remains strategically limited in important respects. Their energy partnership continues its halting progress, with one step back for every two steps forward. Although China has now become Russia’s main trading partner, their bilateral exchange of goods, less than $100 billion in 2013, is much lower than that between China and its major Western partners.
Russia-China military exercises are intermittent and not well integrated. In the UN and elsewhere, their diplomats more readily agree on what Western proposals they oppose than on how to advance a more proactive positive agenda. Nonetheless, the Russia-China relationship could evolve to have a greater global impact, to the possible detriment of the United States and its allies. For example, Moscow has benefited from Beijing's de facto acceptance of its activities in Ukraine, which Washington opposes.
Nikolay Murashkin, Doctoral candidate, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge; former analyst at a London-based bank responsible for commodity transactions in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
With external tensions mounting for both countries, they seek mutual reassurance. While the bilateral gas deal has been on the negotiation table for two decades, it’s not only the chance to finally seal it, but also the opportunity for closer Russian-Chinese economic cooperation within a new geopolitical context. After gas talks were stalled over price and equity participation, the Kremlin’s bargaining power was recently reduced by the isolation measures adopted by the West in the aftermath of the Crimean crisis. In this situation, it is in Moscow’s interest to minimize possible concessions to Beijing by using the offer of a larger cooperation package as momentum driver.
Although Chinese leaders are aware of their current upper hand in the gas deal, they also need Russia’s support in securing the new Silk Road Economic Belt project, where Moscow has a say as a Eurasian power and a regional transit player. In particular, the success of the Chinese Silk Road initiative depends on the planned International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014, which, in its turn, is bound to raise the profiles of both Moscow and Beijing, which are stakeholders in Afghanistan.
Securing friendship in the North is also important for Chinese diplomacy for two reasons. Beijing is, on the one hand, pressured in disputes with East Asian neighbors that are supported by Washington, and, on the other hand, facing a test in relations with the new Indian leadership.
Whilst reinforcing Europe’s diversification policy to further reduce its energy reliance on Moscow, Russian gas supplies can make a huge difference in Northeast Asia. Procurement from Russia is likely to reduce the so-called Asian gas premium and lower the market price for Asian economies, thus helping their growth and even promoting Northeast Asian regionalism, which has been long stunted by rivalries between local powers.
At the same time, it is crucial for Moscow to avoid putting too many eggs into China’s basket and to maintain a diversified gas customer base within Asia. That involves improving its commercial presence in Japan, whose demand for gas has been steadily increasing, as well as building one on the Korean peninsula. The same diversification logic applies for Russia’s Asia-Pacific drive beyond gas: Multilateralism is key, and rapprochement with China should not come at the cost of Russian ties with East Asian partners, be it Japan, Vietnam or other countries currently in a row with Beijing.
Alexey Fenenko, leading Research Fellow at the Institute of International Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS)
The state visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to China is of substantial significance given the current bitter crisis in Russia’s relations with the West. Washington has consistently failed to build a diplomatic dialogue with Moscow during the last couple of years and the situation has become considerably worse over Ukraine, approaching an open political and military conflict. China, in turn, sees that Barack Obama is pursuing a containment policy against China by improving ties with Vietnam and expanding U.S. influence in the Asia Pacific region.
During the visit, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are expected to sign a deal to export Russian natural gas to China that will give Russia more freedom in its economic relations with the European Union by diversifying its export routes and enable China to meet its growing demand for energy. Creating an additional export path to the East will show the West that if anything happens, Russia can survive without them.
In regard to the question of Russian integration into the Asia Pacific region, it is important to say that here is a clear challenge. Since the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, the countries of Asia Pacific see Russia as the ally of China. Hence, they do not show any interest in giving up their relations with America and building stronger political and economic ties with Russia. The only country that Russia can develop relations with is Vietnam, which is not in China’s interests. Russia has to choose between being friends with China and competing with the U.S. in developing strong relations with the states of Asia Pacific.
![http://carnegieendowment.org/images/article_images/82189710_China_russia605.jpg](http://carnegieendowment.org/images/article_images/82189710_China_russia605.jpg)
It first needs to be recognized that, from the Chinese Communists' point of view, Russia's action in Crimea was far less disturbing than the earlier U.S. support for the Kiev maidan. Moreover, Moscow's successful politico-military-intelligence-psywar operation in Crimea can be of interest to Beijing as it considers various scenarios for future Taiwan-related developments. As to the ensuing confrontation between Russia and the United States over Ukraine, it diverts Washington's attention from China and absolutely guarantees that Russia, for a long time, will remain China's secure strategic rear. Finally, the U.S. sanctions upgrade China's importance to Russia as the one major economy in the world that is not susceptible to the U.S.-led sanctions drive.
Further, it needs to be noted that Russia's fear of China is usually—and conveniently—overstated in the West. In fact, Russia is perhaps the only neighbor of China that does not fret over the rise of its economy, the growing assertiveness of its foreign policy, or the increasing capabilities of its military. The Kremlin's calculus treats the first issue as an opportunity, the second one as aimed at establishing a multipolar world order which Moscow also welcomes, and the third one as directed mainly against the United States and its allies. Over the past 25 years, as the power balance between China and Russia was constantly changing for the benefit of the former, the relationship between Beijing and Moscow was progressively getting closer: a stunning phenomenon in the history of relations between two neighboring great powers.
Faced with U.S.-led geopolitical pressure in Eastern Europe and East Asia, Russia and China are likely to cooperate even more closely. Of course, Putin's economic project of a Greater Europe, linking his brainchild Eurasian Union with the EU, which has failed to ignite interest in Europe, will not yet be replaced with an expanded version of China's New Silk Road. Nor will the military alliance of the 1950s be revived; there is hardly a need for that. What might be expected instead is an energy, investment and industrial-technological partnership between China and Russia which will reshape and rebalance Eurasia, whose center of gravity will now move from Moscow to Beijing. Such an outcome would certainly benefit China, but it will give Russia a chance to withstand U.S. geopolitical pressure, compensate for the EU's coming energy re-orientation, develop Siberia and the Far East, and link itself to the Asia-Pacific region. The surviving Russian liberals of the 1990s will have the last laugh—before withering away.
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“Over the last few weeks there has been a significant interest in the market from large Russian corporations to start using various products in renminbi and other Asian currencies, and to set up accounts in Asian locations,” Pavel Teplukhin, head of Deutsche Bank in Russia, told the Financial Times, which was published in an article on Sunday.
A new payment plan
"This shows that in principle there is nothing impossible - you can switch from dollar to euro and from euro, in principle, to rubles," Vedomosti quotes Mr. Dyukov.
“As long as Russia is not subject to systemic sanctions, which could bring an artificial limit to our economy’s access to dollars . . . then I don’t think Russia will take any steps in order to bring about artificial de-dollarization,” the FT quoted Belousov as saying.
Meanwhile, China and Russia continue to draw closer together. They are not in a clear alliance, and have a number of diverging, even partially colliding interests, but they both challenge the global order in which the United States is the norm-setter and the sole arbiter. The Chinese do this in a much subtler way than the Russians, but both appear to have come to the conclusion that working one's way into the U.S.-dominated system is not worth it. This may have worked for Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II, but China and Russia are adamant about their sovereignty and strategic independence. This, incidentally, imposes constraints on how close they themselves would wish to become, but China's and Russia's overriding interests point toward close long-term cooperation.
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“We need to innovate our security cooperation (and) establish new regional security cooperation architecture,” Xi told the summit, which was also attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
CICA is a multinational forum to enhance cooperation in a bid to promote peace, security and stability in Asia. The forum groups 24 countries, among them Afghanistan, Azerbaijan Republic, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Nine countries and four international organizations, including the United Nations, have observer status. The CICA summit is convened every four years in order to conduct consultations, review the progress of CICA, and set priorities for its activities.The Chinese president also issued a veiled warning to the United States against building up a military presence in Asia, saying, “To beef up military alliances targeted at a third party is not conducive to maintaining common security in the region.”
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Obama's pivot to Asia is viewed with scepticism, as the US already
has more than it can handle in Ukraine, west Asia and North Africa. The
real Asia pivot is driven by rapidly rising economies, especially China,
as countries with major oil and gas reserves such as Russia, Iran and
Iraq are already turning eastward.
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And there is no doubt that Russia and China hold this pariah status in the eyes of the U.S. imperial elite. In the last months we have watched the U.S. try to push Russia East and tear it apart. At the same time Obama traversed East Asia trying to stitch together an anti-China military and economic alliance in the Western Pacific with Japan as the linchpin. In fact it is striking that the U.S. has allied itself with neo-Nazism in Ukraine and Japanese militarism on the other side of Asia. This is happening despite the considerable changes that have taken place in both Russia and China, neither of which would any longer claim to be interested in an anti-capitalist crusade. The only country that comes close in the opprobrium heaped upon them by the West is Iran. Why do these countries, especially Russia and China, remain the enemies of the West? With the struggle against Soviet-style Communism long over, the reason is certainly not ideological.
This riddle finds its answer in a suggestion by Jean Bricmont in his Humanitarian Imperialism. He observes that the main political development of the last 100 years was not the defeat of fascism nor the fall of Soviet style Communism, but the battle against Western colonialism. And this battle is far from over, for most of the world is still subject to total or partial domination by the West, a condition that Sartre and Nkrumah dubbed neocolonialism. The colonized peoples of the world, the overwhelming majority of humanity, still live under the worst of material conditions. Originally Nkrumah described neocolonialism thus
The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases, the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world. The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.
In the post Cold War world, the domination of the West has increasingly taken the form of direct military action by the U.S. with its Empire of Bases, subversion of defiant governments or “integration” of their military with the West, as is proceeding apace in Africa now.
How do Russia and China fit into this sweep of history?
Before the Bolshevik Revolution Lenin saw WWI as a war between the great European colonial powers, pitting England and its allies against Germany and its allies, for colonial spoils and imperial power. Or as has been said, England owned the world and Germany wanted it. That inter-imperial war precipitated the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, with the simple call for “Bread, land and peace,” and also a German Socialist Revolution which failed, forcing the Bolsheviks to turn inward.
The Bolsheviks were deadly serious. They took Russia and then the rest of the USSR out of the Western orbit, out of the ambit of the Western colonial powers, and they brought industrial development to their backward land. The failure of a revolution in Europe and the post WWI military assault on Russia by the West, including the U.S., meant that the USSR could no longer look to the West for advancement toward “socialism.” And because of Lenin’s view that the colonized nations needed to rebel against imperialism to advance and develop, the Bolsheviks also took up the cause of anticolonialism – from Africa to Latin America to Asia and, most importantly, to China.
In the end Russia became a great power and it remained out of the orbit of the West for over 70 years, almost three generations. Socialism and Communism were certainly not achieved, whatever one might mean by them. And that is a thing that disturbs most Left wing or “progressive” Western intellectuals to this day, most notably the Trotskyites and their ideological fellow travelers mired in the past. That outlook, however, misses the essential point in light of the struggle against colonialism. A proud independence, an escape from poverty and a severing of almost all institutional and economic ties with the West became accomplished facts in Russia. Few Russians studied abroad and few Westerners studied in Russia. There were no old school ties between the two.
Then came WWII, an attempt by Germany to conquer Europe and to destroy the Soviet Union. Out of this war came another great revolution, the Liberation of China. China had tried many things to escape the humiliation imposed on it by the West, including an attempt by Sun Yat-Sen and his followers to set up a Chinese democracy, Western style. One of those followers was Mao Zedong. With the failure of Sun and the victory of Lenin, Mao saw his chance, and he too adopted a Leninist Party structure but with emphasis on the peasantry. As Mao himself put it in July, 1949, “The Russians made the October Revolution … and the revolutionary energy of the…laboring people of Russia, hitherto latent and unseen by foreigners, suddenly erupted like a volcano, and the Chinese and all mankind began to see the Russians in a new light. Then, and only then, did the Chinese enter an entirely new era in their thinking and their life.”
By 1946 China had defeated Japan and by 1949 the Chinese Communist Revolution secured victory. And then China closed the door to the West and established its independence. Ties with the West were severed decisively for nearly two generations. With its independence secured by Mao and baseline development achieved, China could “open the door” but from a position of strength. Deng’s reforms turned China into a great economic power. China today is the second most powerful nation on the planet, once again interacting with the West – but on its own terms, as does Russia.
So the Communists of Russia did not achieve Communism. But they did achieve independence and great economic and military power. Surely China’s achievement was the greatest blow against colonialism in the wake of WWII and the greatest anticolonial victory in history. Western Europe and the U.S. did all they could to defeat the Chinese Communists, and they failed. They were on the wrong side of history – the colonial side, the side of domination and humiliation of entire peoples.
So today we find these two great powers, Russia and China, recently driven into one another’s arms by the endless crusades of the West to undermine them. Together they constitute a great power center outside the control of the U.S. Empire. Bent on global domination, the U.S. cannot tolerate such a defiant and alternative center of power. The reason is that such a center provides an alternative for others who would gain their independence from the West. Such an organization as BRICS would not exist, or if it did would not mean much, without the “R” and the “C.”
But the battle against colonialism has not ended. Certainly India, most of Latin America, much of East Asia and most of Africa have yet to break free of the West and develop their full economic potential. (They certainly have not escaped underdevelopment while in the embrace of the West.) In some places governments defiant of the U.S. have emerged as in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador. Where once the U.S. fought battles against insurgent liberation movements, now it fights to bring down defiant governments or leaders, another insight of Bricmont. That is also a feature of neo-imperialism. Some, like Mossadegh, Allende and Chavez, were genuine democrats who wished to bring their people out of poverty. Others have not been so democracy minded, but defiance of the West has been the common denominator for those whom the West seeks to destroy. As the world knows by now, “democracy” and “human rights” have nothing to do with U.S. neo-imperial strategy. The two cross paths only by accident.
Let us be clear about this outlook. This view is not intended to be a paean to the Communist nature of the great 20th Century revolutions. In fact these revolutions were failures in terms of the goals that they set themselves. They did not achieve an egalitarian society at any point. But they did find the road to independence and development and now to advanced development, which they are still undertaking today. And they serve as an alternative to the West – a powerful one. In this sense they might be termed accidental revolutions. Little in history goes according to script no matter who writes it. It can be said, though, that in terms of the great struggle against colonialism and for human development the Russian and Chinese revolutions were on the right side of history. And they were the major steps in that battle in the 20th Century.
Finally, Iran is the third of the big three Paramount Enemies of the U.S. and the West. Interestingly, Iran followed the same course as China and Russia. After the overthrow of the duly elected social democrat and nationalist Mossadegh by the CIA and the imposition of a brutal dictator, the Shah, a revolution, led by clerics in this case, and a peaceful one at that, overthrew the Shah and cut ties with the West. The clerical establishment played the same role in Iran that the Communist Parties of China and Russia played there. They led a revolution for independence and development and they have kept Iran largely outside the orbit of the West for 35 years. They will engage the West now largely on their own terms, just as China and Russia have done. The form of organization to break free is not critical nor is the ideology. It can range from Communism to Islam and other ideologies and organizations may serve as well. Perhaps we are witnessing some new forms of organization in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. The resolve and intelligence with which the break is carried out and the degree to which the common people support and benefit from it are the crucial factors.
But for those on the Left, religious antiwar activists and Libertarians who have campaigned over the years against the wars of the West, this is good news. Those who have fought against Western “interventionism” have been on the right side of history – wittingly or more often unwittingly. Given the different ideologies that the anticolonial movements in the West have adopted, it might well be that the core motivation is the side of us which is humane, perhaps our inner Bonobo versus our inner Chimpanzee.
Now, unfortunately, the dominant “progressive” strain in the West has largely abandoned an anticolonial stance. The world is no longer viewed through the lens of the far from finished anticolonial struggle but through the dubious categories of “human rights” and “real, true democracy.” The likes of Pussy Riot have replaced Mao in the eyes of the Western “progressives.” And all too many progressives, Juan Cole and Amy Goodman among them, for example, cheered for the Obama/Hillary war on Libya as Gaddafi was crushed. It went unmentioned in such “progressive” circles that Gaddafi gave Libya the highest Human Development Index in all of Africa, stood in the forefront of the struggle against U.S.-backed Apartheid, both in South Africa and Israel, and advocated a Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism that would make for independence from the West.
In sum the “progressives” of the West are now viewing events on the world stage through the wrong lens, the same one used by their rulers when it suits them. It is time to return to the proper way of looking at what is going on in the world. Only then will the anti-colonial and anti-interventionist movement be restored on the Left.
For the genuine libertarians the matter is simpler. They have always held to the view that our government has no business interfering in the life of other nations. For them the emphasis has been on the other side of neocolonialism, neo-imperialism. They simply do not want their government intervening abroad, do not believe it is moral, and do not want to pay for it, a bit of good solid Ayn Randian self-interest. If progressives pull free of the faux cry for democracy and human rights peddled to them, the door is open for a very broad antiwar, anti-Empire movement. And the need for such cooperation is essential lest we stumble into a world conflagration.
John V. Walsh writes for The Unz Review, CounterPunch.com, Antiwar.com and DissidentVoice.org. By day he has toiled over the physiology of neurons. He can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
Source: Why Are Russia and China (and Iran) Paramount Enemies For the U.S. Ruling Elite?
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While the arms trade between China and Russia exploded after the fall of the Soviet Union, shipments of major systems slowed in the early part of last decade. Part of the reason was demand; China felt that it no longer needed to pay top dollar for Russian systems that it could build itself. Another reason, however, involved Russian intellectual property concerns stemming from Chinese copying, and potential export, of Russian military systems. This made Russia reluctant to export its most sophisticated weapons.
But now we find ourselves in a situation where Moscow has become willing to take risks in order to give Washington a headache. One way in which Russia can do this is overcoming any internal obstacles to the export of sophisticated weapons to China.
Although the Russian defense industry has decayed since the end of the Cold War, it still retains a great deal of expertise and human capital, which China (a growing military power) could use to good effect. What kind of systems might this involve? Here are five areas in which Russia-China collaboration could prove useful to Beijing, and problematic for America.
Jet Engines
Engine construction has been one of the biggest roadblocks in the Chinese aviation industry over the past decade. Problems with power and reliability afflict not only legacy systems (such as the J-10, J-11, and J-15), but also China’s new stealth fighter prototypes, the J-20 and the J-31.
Russian engines don’t have a reputation for extraordinary reliability, but they have consistently performed better than their Chinese counterparts. One analyst argues that China’s interest in acquiring Russian Su-35 Flankers stems from an interest in examining and replicating the engines, which would jumpstart China’s own jet engine industry.
Assisting China’s jet engine industry would represent a major risk for Russia. It would eliminate one of the largest potential customers for Russian engines (China), while also improving China’s export position. Nevertheless, under certain circumstances a long-term relationship might make sense, especially if Russia expected few new orders from the PRC in any case. And Chinese jets with more powerful, reliable engines would prove a much more impressive threat to the U.S. Navy (USN) and the U.S. Air Force (USAF).
Bombers
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) continues to operate the H-6, a derivative of the old Soviet Tu-16 “Badger” bomber, a very rough equivalent of the US B-47. Various reports suggest that China is looking into a new bomber, with at least one potential prototype in the works.
Russia has considerably more experience with heavy bombers that China, and still operates several variants that exceed the capabilities of anything the PLAAF has flown. These include the Tu-95 Bear (and its maritime variant, the Tu-142), the Tu-22M Backfire, and the Tu-160 Blackjack. All of these models are old, but would still represent an advance on what China currently operates.
Indeed, as the Soviets expected their strategic bomber force to operate against NATO naval forces, the Russian experience with bombers comports nicely with Chinese needs. Soviet bombers provided a critical threat to U.S. carrier battle groups during the Cold War, and would fit snugly within China’s anti-access system of systems.
Analysts have periodically raised the idea of a potential sale of Tu-22 Backfire bombers from Russia to China, but no deal has ever come to fruition. The resistance appears to have come from the Russian side, out of concern about potential knowledge leakage and excessive growth of Chinese airpower. Indeed, Tu-22Ms would give China an additional long-range strike potential against U.S. bases and warships in the Pacific.
Whether Russia decided to export Tu-22Ms directly to China, to license their production, or simply to provide technical assistance with China’s new bomber projects, collaboration could produce a much more lethal PLAAF.
Submarines
As with other systems, China has leapt forward in the past 30 years with respect to submarine technology. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now fields respectable nuclear attack submarines, diesel electric subs, and even ballistic missile subs. However, these boats remain substantially behind U.S. standards, and even behind the standards set by the latest generation of Russian subs.
Despite Chinese advances, the PLAN could learn a lot from the Akulas, the Project 949s (Oscars), the Yuri Dolgurukiy, and even the troubled Ladas. While the PLAN’s subs expect to fill broadly similar missions to those conducted by Soviet boats in the Cold War, Chinese submarines remain much noisier than their Russian counterparts, and China has yet to perfect a “hunter-killer” sub that can tangle directly with the most advanced American submarines.
To be sure, Russia has closely guarded its submarine technology in the past, and production techniques for submarines appear to be some of the most difficult industrial processes to master, or transfer. Nevertheless, the leasing of an Akula to India in recent years suggests that Russia is open to the possibility of an arrangement. Russia won’t supply China with everything it needs to build an equivalent of the Yuri Dolgurukiy, but an array of technical assistance could still substantially improve the next generation of Chinese submarines.
Air Defense Systems
In the concentration of China's anti-access system of systems, less attention has been paid to the air defense network. Most literature has focused on the offensive elements of the defensive system, including submarines, cruise missiles, fighter-bombers, and ballistic missiles. And yet the integrity of the A2/AD system depends on the effectiveness of Chinese air defense systems. If U.S. aircraft and cruise missiles can strike Chinese airbases, communications nodes, missile launchers, and logistics centers, then the entire system could fall apart before completing its mission.
China has done good work on its air defense system, especially with the internationally competitive HQ-9. Nevertheless, the addition of Russia technology could only increase the robustness of the Chinese air defense network. Recently, it appears that Russia is preparing to export the S-400 SAM system to China, which would help the PLA fill both technical and coverage gaps. The S-400 can track and engage targets at a longer range than the HQ-9, allowing China to project an air umbrella over Taiwan.
Ballistic Missiles
China has made impressive leaps in the last twenty years with respect to ballistic missile technology. Driven in part by the Second Artillery, Chinese ballistic missiles now represent a sophisticated, multifaceted threat to any potential opponent. However, China still has much to learn from Russia, both in terms of short range and long range missiles. The Russian Iskander-E reputedly has terminal maneuvering characteristics that exceed any Chinese missile, and would provide the PLA with a major advantage in a wide array of potential conflicts. Russian ICBMs and SLBMs are still considerably ahead of their Chinese counterparts.
As with several of the other systems, Russian objections to export rest in security and intellectual property concerns. If China replicates Russian missile technology, the PRC could potentially muscle the Russians out of the export market. Similarly, some in the Russian armed forces view the prospect of exporting advanced short range missiles to a large, powerful neighbor with some serious trepidation. But then China may soon match Russian technology in any case, making reticence pointless.
Conclusion
Things have changed since the 1990s. China has become an impressive producer of military technology in its own right. It can no longer use everything that Russia produces, and its systems are increasingly competitive with Russia’s on the international market. For Russia, the risks of export to China have increased, especially because of concerns over China’s looe interpretation of intellectual property. Nevertheless, if Russia doesn’t mind engaging in some risk-acceptant behavior that could hurt the United States, broadening its weapon exports to and technical cooperation with China could fit the bill.
Robert Farley is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.
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The landslide victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the lower house of India's parliament, the Lok Sabha (The People's Assembly), has totally changed the domestic political scene. Indian voters have made history by displaying the ballot power to wipe out the Indian National Congress Party, identified with the Nehru-Gandhi clan, which had been at the helm for most of the time since India became independent in August 1947.
Source:http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=55660
Russia no longer needs to invade Ukraine
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Ukrainian forces have been trying to put down the armed insurgents in eastern Ukraine, where 40,000 Russian troops are massed on the border in preparation for a possible invasion. On Tuesday the Defense Ministry said six Ukrainian soldiers were killed by militants after the separatist leader in Luhansk, one of the regions that declared independence, was shot and wounded.
Russia has said Ukraine should respect the results of a weekend referendum run by the militants who said nearly 90% of people in the region voted for autonomy from the Ukrainian government. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he has the authority to invade to protect the ethnic Russians who make up the militancy.
European analysts say there is no need for Russia to invade eastern Ukraine now that it has gained ultimate authority over much of the country by its takeover of Crimea and declarations of independence in the pro-Russian east.
"The referendum actually advantages Russia," said Keir Giles, analyst at Chatham House's International Security and Russia and Eurasia Program London. "They do not need to have physical control of these regions to achieve their objective for the Ukraine, which is always has been to render Ukraine ungovernable."
Russia has called for the international community to respect the decision of the people of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and is calling for a "practical implementation of the outcome of the referendum in a civilized manner, without any repeat of violence and through dialogue," the Kremlin said.
The referendums follow one held in Crimea in mid-March by pro-Russian separatists there that resulted in a Russian military invasion and annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. Ukraine says the votes were rigged and the United States termed them illegal. Many have wondered if the latest votes are a pretext for Russian takeovers in the eastern Ukrainian regions.
"Russia annexed Crimea very quickly – we don't know if would be the same in Donetsk at all," said Andrew Wilson, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London, referring to a province in eastern Ukraine held captive by militants.
"In bigger-picture terms Russia can better control the guys in Crimea – they are real puppets. It is pretty unlikely that Russia would want to control south and eastern part of Ukraine as a whole, and it is pretty difficult to take only Donetsk."
Some analysts say if Russia ultimately accepts the move for independence, the provinces could end up as a puppet state.
"If Russia accepts the independence, we will have definitely a situation like in South Ossetia or Abkhazia or Transnistria, an independent state supported by Russia and in particular by the Russian military," said Liana Fix, an analyst specializing on the region at the German Council of Foreign Relations.
Meanwhile, Putin is pretending to lose control of the situation in the east just as he did when rebels in Donetsk kidnapped officials from the Organization for the Co-operation and Security in Europe, added Fix. That is to show he can present the face of a "good guy" to the world. But it has been largely pro-Russian separatists who for the past few weeks have stormed and occupied official buildings in eastern Ukraine, prompting the Ukrainian government to launch military operations to push them out.
"The situation is not as bad as it could yet be — it could go either way — but (it getting) even worse is more likely," Wilson said.
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The Cold War-style standoff over Ukraine may have subsided for now. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has drawn his troops back from the border and has promised to work with Ukraine’s new government. But the shifting reality here in eastern Ukraine suggests the crisis has simply entered a new phase. In contrast to Crimea, which was seized by Russian troops in unmarked uniforms this spring, eastern Ukraine is evolving into a subtle game in which Russian freelancers shape events and the Kremlin plausibly denies involvement.
Here in the green flatlands of eastern Ukraine, reminders of Russia are everywhere. Outside a former Ukrainian National Guard base, now occupied by a rebel militia, a jovial fighter from Ossetia in southern Russia, who goes by the nickname Mamai, said he crossed the border about a month ago with other volunteers.
In an interview, Mr. Borodai said that he and Mr. Strelkov, the Russian rebel commander in Slovyansk, had both gone to Transnistria, a breakaway area in Moldova, to defend the rights of Russians in the 1990s. He named the cities in Russia that volunteers have come from, including Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and Chita. He said he believed in the idea of a Greater Russia, and that he had come to Ukraine to realize it. “Real Ukrainians have the right to live as they like,” he said. “They can create their own state which would be named Ukraine, or however they like, because the word Ukraine is a little humiliating,” he said, asserting that the literal translation meant “on the border of.” (The etymology is disputed.)
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Through such tactics, a few thousand pro-Russian militants have seized buildings in about a dozen cities, effectively establishing control over much of an industrial region of about 6.5 million nestled against the Russian border.
Day by day, in the areas surrounding the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, pro-Russian forces have defied all efforts by the central government to re-establish its authority, and on Wednesday, Ukraine’s acting president conceded what had long been obvious: The government’s police and security officials had lost control.
While Russia denies any role in stirring the unrest, Secretary of State John Kerry and others have flatly accused the Kremlin of sending operatives to the region to organize, equip and direct the Ukrainians who make up the pro-Russian militias.
Nevertheless, the buildings now seized could serve the effort. A sample ballot reported in the Russian news media suggested voters would be asked whether they support a declaration of independence for the “people’s republic.” There was no mention of joining Russia. Although Russian is widely spoken in the east, which abuts Russia, credible opinion polls suggest that at most 20 percent of citizens want to join their giant neighbor, Ms. Aivazovska said.
In Slovyansk, the eastern Ukrainian town where the armed men are most firmly in control, local militia leaders say they now hold about 40 people, including seven Europeans in a German-led military observer mission captured last Friday. They were paraded before cameras Sunday, much as scores of United Nations peacekeepers captured by Bosnian Serbs in 1995 were filmed chained to bridges.
Mr. Putin, who values relations with Germany, where he was once a K.G.B. officer, hinted early Wednesday that the observers could be freed. The self-appointed mayor of Slovyansk responded via the website of Bild, Germany’s top-selling newspaper: “We have had no contact with Moscow yet, and here we don’t obey Putin but the People’s Republic of Donetsk.”
For writers, said Ms. Zabuzhko, the events of the last five months have pushed on her and fellow authors the duty of serving as a secular moral authority in the absence of credible politicians. “I have a new profession,” she said, “for which I was not applying.” Ukrainians, she added, “are searching for stability and hope — they want a glimpse of hope.”
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The gleaming airport terminal that put Kiev a commuter-flight away has been shot to bits, with travel to the capital now marked by a bone-jangling journey past rebel checkpoints. A presidential election held everywhere else in Ukraine did not happen here because of security threats. The governor fled for the same reason.
The region’s solidifying status as an island apart from Ukraine will make it harder to put this country back together again. So, too, will the ambitions of separatists, who see the areas they control as a beachhead in a wider campaign to cleave away half the country under the banner of Novorossiya — New Russia.
The idea, straight from the musings of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has become a rallying cry of insurgents here who see Kiev as an enemy capital and Moscow as their natural ally and benefactor. The proposed new entity even has a flag — one that Americans would instantly recognize as a symbol of separatist rebellion, with its blue bars laid diagonally across a red field. About 350 recruits are engaged in exercises with Ukraine's national guard in preparation for deployment to the east.
“Just like the Confederacy,” said a smiling Pavel Gubarev, an insurgent leader who calls himself the people’s governor of Donetsk. The blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, meanwhile, is rarely seen in this leafy city of 1 million in the middle of the country’s industrial heartland. To speak out in favor of Kiev is to invite attack from rebels who rule the streets and who have shown a taste for brutality.
Gubarev, like all top officials of the separatist movement here, has an office in this city’s occupied administration building. He has decorated his with photos of Che Guevara and Hugo Chávez, and his aspirations are no less revolutionary than were those of his idols. “We will destroy corruption and distribute the powers of the oligarchs to the people,” said Gubarev, a boyish 31-year-old who said he ran an advertising agency with 81 employees before appointing himself to lead this region of 4.5 million people.
Ukrainian officials say the rebellion’s true goals are far more insidious. The Donetsk People’s Republic, they say, is nothing more than a prop for Russia as it seeks to spread chaos and dismember Ukraine, a process that they say began with the Russian annexation of Crimea in March. Even if southeastern Ukraine is not formally absorbed into Russia, Ukrainian officials worry that Moscow intends to keep the area in its orbit as a breakaway republic, just as it did with South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the 2008 war with Georgia.
“This horrible thing was started by Putin, and it can be stopped by Putin, too,” said Konstantin Batozsky, a senior adviser to the governor of Donetsk, Serhiy Taruta,who recently decamped for Kiev as security here deteriorated.
Evidence of Russian meddling has mounted in the past week as rebel leaders have acknowledged that many of their fighters are “volunteers” from across the border, although the leaders deny any official Russian backing, as does Moscow. The admission coincides with reports from Ukrainian officials of mounting infiltration from the east, as trucks weighed down with militants and weapons slip across a border that exists on maps but not on the ground.
Source: Isolation deepens in breakaway Ukrainian region as separatists dream of New Russia
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The State Border Guard Service said it had opted to pull its forces back from the crossings into Russia's Rostov region because it had become impossible to "prevent a threat to the lives and health of the local population." Seven of the posts are in the southeastern Luhansk region, where pro-Russian rebels appear to have gained firmer control in recent days despite a stepped-up military operation ordered by the government in Kiev.
Russia has increasingly tried to depict Ukraine's military assault in the east as a humanitarian issue. On Thursday, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the fighting has driven thousands of Ukrainian civilians across the border into Russia. Kiev, however, said there was little evidence of a refugee crisis. The Ukrainian border service said it had seen no detectable spike in the number of people crossing into Russia. On Friday, Russian lawmaker Vladimir Pligin told the Interfax news agency that Russia had received about 800 requests for refugee status from people coming in from Ukraine.
This past week, Russia put a resolution before the United Nations Security Council calling for the creation of corridors allowing noncombatants to leave parts of eastern Ukraine where heavy fighting continues, and it has insisted that Ukraine cease what it calls military operations against civilians. The West has reacted coolly to Russia's U.N. proposal and has been skeptical of previous claims about asylum seekers.
On May 20, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees issued a report saying that while an estimated 10,000 Ukrainians had been displaced within the country, "the number of Ukrainian asylum-seekers in other countries has remained low."
Source: http://online.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-tenuous-grip-on-russian-border-slips-further-1402053327
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5829d60-ed48-11e3-8a1e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz343uJAOAE
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"We are carrying out tests of the readiness of the Russian armed forces. It was announced last November. The exercises will involve all branches of the armed forces across the country," Putin told reporters at the Defense Ministry.
"At the Priozersk training area (Kazakhstan), a successful interception of a ballistic target by a short-range countermissile was carried out. A massive rocket nuclear strike was repelled by a ballistic missile defense unit of air and missile defense troops," the representative said.
“The anti-missile system successfully struck the target that imitated a ballistic rocket,” the representative added.
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The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a "pariah state".
That might be more explicable if what is going on in eastern Ukraine now were not the mirror image of what took place in Kiev a couple of months ago. Then, it was armed protesters in Maidan Square seizing government buildings and demanding a change of government and constitution. US and European leaders championed the "masked militants" and denounced the elected government for its crackdown, just as they now back the unelected government's use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls in cities such as Slavyansk and Donetsk.
"America is with you," Senator John McCain told demonstrators then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the far-right Svoboda party as the US ambassador haggled with the state department over who would make up the new Ukrainian government.
When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia's most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.
Putin bit back, taking a leaf out of the US street-protest playbook – even though, as in Kiev, the protests that spread from Crimea to eastern Ukraine evidently have mass support. But what had been a glorious cry for freedom in Kiev became infiltration and insatiable aggression in Sevastopol and Luhansk.
After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.
So you don't hear much about the Ukrainian government's veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government's ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.
The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west's attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.
No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin's absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.
But the dangers are also multiplying. Ukraine has shown itself to be barely a functioning state: the former government was unable to clear Maidan, and the western-backed regime is "helpless" against the protests in the Soviet-nostalgic industrial east. For all the talk about the paramilitary "green men" (who turn out to be overwhelmingly Ukrainian), the rebellion also has strong social and democratic demands: who would argue against a referendum on autonomy and elected governors?
Meanwhile, the US and its European allies impose sanctions and dictate terms to Russia and its proteges in Kiev, encouraging the military crackdown on protesters after visits from Joe Biden and the CIA director, John Brennan. But by what right is the US involved at all, incorporating under its strategic umbrella a state that has never been a member of Nato, and whose last elected government came to power on a platform of explicit neutrality? It has none, of course – which is why the Ukraine crisis is seen in such a different light across most of the world. There may be few global takers for Putin's oligarchic conservatism and nationalism, but Russia's counterweight to US imperial expansion is welcomed, from China to Brazil.
In fact, one outcome of the crisis is likely to be a closer alliance between China and Russia, as the US continues its anti-Chinese "pivot" to Asia. And despite growing violence, the cost in lives of Russia's arms-length involvement in Ukraine has so far been minimal compared with any significant western intervention you care to think of for decades.
The risk of civil war is nevertheless growing, and with it the chances of outside powers being drawn into the conflict. Barack Obama has already sent token forces to eastern Europe and is under pressure, both from Republicans and Nato hawks such as Poland, to send many more. Both US and British troops are due to take part in Nato military exercises in Ukraine this summer.
The US and EU have already overplayed their hand in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the western powers may want to intervene directly, and the Ukrainian prime minister's conjuring up of a third world war presumably isn't authorised by his Washington sponsors. But a century after 1914, the risk of unintended consequences should be obvious enough – as the threat of a return of big-power conflict grows. Pressure for a negotiated end to the crisis is essential.
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In April 29, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) informed the Angela Merkel government about Academi commandos' involvement in Kiev's military operations in eastern Ukraine. Academi, former Blackwater (renamed in 2009), gained notoriety for killings of civilians in Iraq, arms smuggling and other crimes, TASS reports.
Media reports claiming that the Ukrainian leadership wants to recruit personnel from private foreign military companies "in order to maintain law and order" may suggest that the Kiev regime wants to suppress civil protest and discontent, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Private military company will be in charge of suppressing protest movements in Eastern Ukraine, said a source in the country's Security Service. According to him, the name of the company is Greystone Limited.
According to a source cited by ITAR-TASS, Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. In particular, the source said, the acting president Alexander Turchinov shares this opinion. "Therefore it was decided to attract foreign mercenaries, who will serve as political police and state security protection, " said the representative of the Security Service.
According to publicly available information Greystone Limited is a structural part of Blackwater, that was later renamed into Academi. According to military experts, the company is associated with the CIA and the US Defense Department. Its employees participated in the war in Afghanistan after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the company has appeared in Iraq and became involved in training the new Iraqi armed forces and police, as well as support of the occupation forces.
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No one wants to say so, but the Obama administration has backed the wrong horse in Ukraine, and the misguided wager is a big loss. It is hardly the president’s first failure on the foreign side, but it may prove the costliest of his many to date. For a while it was possible to pretend, just barely, that supporting the coup against Viktor Yanukovych, the elected president hounded into exile in February, would prove a sound judgment. Obama always came across as a welterweight in the ring with Vladimir Putin, simply not up to the Russian leader’s command of all available moves. But one could imagine Secretary of State Kerry clearing an exit corridor with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
For a while it looked as though the provisional government in Kiev might prove worthy of bailout funds from the U.S., the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, despite the new regime’s legitimacy problems. Putin took (back) Crimea and prompted little more than impotent bleating, true. But there was hope that this new bunch could hold together what remained of the nation at least until the elections scheduled for May 25.
It is all by the boards now. Regardless of how you may construe these past six months in Ukraine, we have just watched a failed effort to wrest the nation straight out of Russia’s sphere of influence and insert it into the West’s. It is now easy to conclude that the second-term Obama White House has not one foreign policy success to its credit and none in prospect. (The first term looks little better, for that matter.)
Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Mideast, Syria, China, and probably Iran in coming months: Nothing ad hominem here, but figuratively speaking, the failure-prone Kerry has crashed more helicopters in the desert than Jimmy Carter ever ordered airborne. Success in Ukraine was never in the cards for this administration. But it slipped beyond all grasp late last week, when the provisionals ordered a military operation to quell dissent in the numerous eastern cities where pro–Russian sentiment tends to be strong. Touching and pathetic all at once, an account of the result is worth reading simply as a reality check.
There is no coming back when your soldiers and security forces not only refuse orders once in the east, but volunteer their ammunition, guns, tanks, artillery, and personnel carriers to the locals, saying they have no stomach for the mission. Readers may disagree, but I will never take the provisionals in Kiev as other than the opportunistic imposters I took them to be from the first. The first conclusion here: Kiev should get no money from anyone until a proper government is elected to office. Next came the agreement Washington, the E.U., Moscow, and the provisionals negotiated in Geneva last Thursday. Instantly it appeared to make even less difference than the little it was first expected to. Washington immediately complained that Russia refused to call off its operatives in the east, who are supposedly to blame for all the unrest.
Obama took an extraordinary step Saturday, and again there seems no turning back from it. As The New York Times reported, the president has just declared Cold War II, having concluded that there is no working with Putin even if a solution in Ukraine develops. The project is to “ignore the master of the Kremlin, minimize the disruption Putin can cause,” and “effectively make Russia a pariah state.” All of this is advanced as position-of-strength imagery and strategy. It can be read as such only by the gullible. Turn this around and Obama has just announced a pout that amounts to his surrender to a statesman who has boxed his ears in every round.
Apart from this, it is compounding error to bring back the confrontation at the Cold War’s core. Just as wrong is NATO’s new plan to push its presence as close to Russia’s frontiers as it can. Are we now watching the start of another generation of needless tension and division between Europe and its easterly neighbor? It is the obvious risk as of this past weekend, and it is already evident the economic costs will be formidable: wasteful military and security spending, redundant infrastructure in the hundreds of billions of dollars, opportunity costs that simply cannot be calculated.
Most immediately, Washington and the European allies ought to be reversing course and turning Ukraine into a field of cooperation with Russia by way of a commonly supported bailout devoid of geopolitical motivation. This kind of thinking is now antique idealism, of course—something to hang in a museum. A decade and a half into a new century and the place of foreign policy has already shifted. A good one is essential to any nation’s well-being in this new era. As things stand now, Ukraine is due to show us the damage a bad one can do.
Pentagon: Russian fighter intercepted US plane
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The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West? Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.
Once Russia’s powerful listened when European embassies issued statements denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian state companies. But no more. Because they know full well it is European bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts from the Dutch Antilles to the British Virgin Islands.
We are not talking big money. But very big money. None other than Putin’s Central Bank has estimated that two thirds of the $56 billion exiting Russia in 2012 might be traceable to illegal activities. Crimes like kickbacks, drug money or tax fraud. This is the money that posh English bankers are rolling out the red carpet for in London.
Behind European corruption, Russia sees American weakness. The Kremlin does not believe European countries – with the exception of Germany – are truly independent of the United States. They see them as client states that Washington could force now, as it once did in the Cold War, not to do such business with the Kremlin.
When Russia sees Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal outbidding each other to be Russia’s best business partner inside the EU (in return for no mention of human rights), they see America’s control over Europe slowly dissolving.
As noted by Vadim Vedernikov, Deputy Director of the Research and Risk Management Department at UFS IC, both agencies are known for their long-term activities on assigning ratings to corporate and sovereign issuers, as they operate in "hot" credit markets such as China and the United States. The project to set up a single common agency has already been called the Universal Credit Rating Group.
"The ratings which the Universal Credit Rating Group could start assigning to Russian companies could gain a degree of recognition in foreign investment circles approaching that of the ratings which have been assigned by the American Three,” says Vedernikov.
According to Anton Soroko, an analyst at the FINAM investment holding, foreign rating agencies are legitimately drawing international attention to the growing risks of investing in the Russian economy, but they can also exaggerate a little. "Practically a monopoly has formed on the global stage in this segment. In this situation, the development of alternative appraisers will be a long-term benefit not only for Russia but also for the world as a whole," said the expert.
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Source: http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/05/egypt-set-to-reject-u-s-in-favor-of-russia/
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A bigger deal in the future is certainly possible; Moscow has a long history of below-market energy exports to its special friends, including its former Warsaw Pact allies — now paying market rates as NATO members — and, of course, Ukraine at various times. Of course, the Soviet Union took a similar approach to arms exports, which it often provided with long-term financing. In 1987, Soviet officials rescheduled some $3 billion in Egyptian debt for former Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s weapons imports during the 1960s. A later arrangement in 1994 reportedly settled all outstanding Egyptian debts.
Egypt’s gas purchase comes amid warm rhetoric from top officials on both sides, including Putin’s endorsement of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s presidential campaign earlier this year — in a meeting in Russia during Sisi’s first foreign trip after taking power — and a pointed statement by Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy in Washington that Cairo will “seek to nurture and leverage” its ties to Moscow, while insisting that this would not come at America’s expense. Meanwhile, Egypt opted not to vote on a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling on all UN member states to refrain from recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea in an apparent effort to avoid US pressure to support the measure, which was implicitly critical of Moscow.
Both Russia and Egypt have put particular effort into intensifying their military-to-military contacts. Though reported talks on a $3 billion sale of advanced Russian aircraft financed by Saudi Arabia seems unlikely to come to fruition — in no small part because post-Soviet Russia has been much freer in distributing subsidized energy than subsidized weapons — there are other signs of interest. And whether or not a contract is signed, some of Russia’s media and its foreign policy establishment sound quite enthusiastic about a renewed arms relationship with Cairo. One example of this is a recent article on the deal in the pro-government Izvestia newspaper, which carried the headline “Russia plans to renew its military presence in Egypt” and prominently quoted an expert asserting that “Moscow is activating full-scale cooperation in the military-technical sphere with Egypt, trying to raise it to a level like the 1950s and 1960s.”
Setting aside this huge but uncertain arms sale, Russia and Egypt have reportedly agreed to conduct joint counterterrorism exercises involving Russian paratroopers (who likely played an important role in Moscow’s rapid seizure of Crimea) and may also be discussing a deal on spare parts for Egypt’s legacy Soviet equipment, something that seems considerably more plausible than a major agreement on MiG-35 fighters that would not integrate easily into Egypt’s existing air force.
Beyond this, the Izvestia report noted above also cited an agreement to train Egyptian officers at Russian military academies that was completed during Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s fall 2013 trip to Egypt. Russia’s Defense Ministry website is also publicizing an April 2014 meeting between Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov and Egypt’s Deputy Defense Minister, Muhammad Said al-Assar. (Curiously, Antonov is wearing the uniform of a four-star general — an impressive sight considering that he is a career diplomat and former deputy foreign minister who was seconded to the Defense Ministry, in part to handle arms control and missile defense talks with Washington.)
Perhaps more surprisingly in some respects, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website notes a recent meeting between a Russian deputy foreign minister who also serves as Putin’s special envoy to the Middle East and Egypt’s ambassador in Moscow. Since meetings in Moscow with Russia-based ambassadors are not always reported, the Foreign Ministry looks like it is trying to make a point. In addition to Egypt’s presidential election, regional concerns and mutual interests, the two are said to have discussed “some practical aspects in the further strengthening of Russia and Egypt’s traditionally friendly relations.”
Despite the obvious theater here — in both Moscow and Cairo — the Obama administration would be unwise to dismiss a Russia-Egypt rapprochement as implausible and should follow further moves closely. Russia has clear interests in Egypt that go well beyond tweaking the White House and some of them, like anti-terrorism cooperation targeting Islamist radicals, are much easier to pursue with Sisi than his immediate predecessor. Egypt can also benefit from the relationship, at a minimum by forcing the Obama administration to think twice as it makes foreign policy. Come to think of it, Americans might benefit from that, too.
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Concerns are growing in some Western capitals that Bulgaria, for decades one of the Soviet bloc's most loyal members, could be falling back under Moscow's spell despite having been accepted years ago into Western alliances. Any eastward tilt in Sofia could undermine efforts by the European Union and the U.S. to present a united front to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Russia seeks to reassert its influence in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
Why Germans Love Russia
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According to these august figures — including former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt — NATO and the European Union were the real aggressors, because they dared to expand into territory that belonged to Moscow’s legitimate sphere of interest. And it seems part of the German public agrees. You thought that Germans were the champions of international law and a rules-based world order? Think again.
There is a blatant hypocrisy here. At times the same people who had relied on international law to attack the American invasion of Iraq are now, as newborn realists, excusing Russia’s need to infringe on the sovereignty of other nations.
In point of fact, despite its trumped-up charges against Iraq, the Bush administration had at least 16 United Nations Security Council resolutions to support its case. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president, had zero. The only common denominator of both positions seems to be an underlying anti-Americanism.
Some of this pro-Moscow sentiment is the work of Russia-sponsored propaganda: A recent investigative report by the newspaper Welt am Sonntag revealed how a shady network of Russia supporters has shaped public discourse in Germany. Even dialogue forums with Russia, co-sponsored by the German government, are full of friends of Mr. Putin, even on the German side.
But there is also a disturbing undercurrent among ordinary Germans that harks back to old and unfortunate German traditions. We have come to think of Germany as a Western European country, but that is largely a product of Cold War alliances. Before then it occupied a precarious middle between east and west.
Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War, German society may well be drifting away from the West again. In a poll last month by Infratest/dimap, 49 percent of Germans said they wanted their country to take a middle position between the West and Russia in the Ukraine crisis, and only 45 percent wanted to be firmly in the Western camp.
This anti-Westernism is coming from both sides of the political spectrum. There is the part of the left that is instinctively anti-American and takes the side of whatever international actor happens to challenge the status quo and the leading Western power.
Then there is Europe’s populist right, which agrees with Russia’s propaganda that Europe has become too gay, too tolerant, too permissive in its morals and too un-Christian, and which welcomes an authoritarian leader challenging Europe’s fuzzy multilateralism.
In Germany, you can find this current best represented by the new anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland Party. They take up a conservative strain of German thinking dating back to the 19th century, which harbors a resentment toward Western civilization and romanticizes a Russia seemingly uncorrupted by Western values and free-market capitalism.
What unites the apologists on the left and right is a striking disregard for the fate of the people who inhabit the lands between Germany and Russia, and a truncated notion of German history.
Some apologists will explain their sympathy as a matter of debt to Russia for German atrocities during World War II. But it is important to remember that the war started with Germany invading Poland from the West — and a few days later the Soviet Union invading Poland from the East, after both sides had secretly agreed to split Eastern Europe between them.
And so when German public figures, parroting Russian propaganda, dismiss Ukraine as “not a real country anyway,” or treat countries at the fault line between the West and Russia as second-class nations with somewhat lesser sovereignty, they are evoking memories in Eastern Europe of the bad old days, when the Nazis and Soviets turned the region into the “Bloodlands” of their respective dictatorships.
For decades Germany has tried to come to terms with its fascist past and to learn important lessons from it. And now, in another country, there comes an authoritarian leader who is trying to stabilize his regime by pursuing aggression abroad on the grounds of ethnic nationalism.
For anyone who has grappled with Germany’s Nazi past, it should have been easy to call right from wrong in this case, instead of finding excuses for Russia’s actions. It’s a test that too many of my compatriots have failed.
To be fair, in a recent poll 60 percent of Germans said that their country should stand with the West in the Ukraine crisis. So Russia’s ongoing aggression is having some effect on public opinion. But that still means that nearly half of all Germans do not feel a deep connection with the West and its values — which is precisely what Mr. Putin wants.
![](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WO-AS647A_GERUS_G_20140610184204.jpg)
Some German business leaders have been loud in urging Chancellor Angela Merkel not to support harsher sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine. But polls and interviews underscore another factor putting pressure on Berlin to pursue a softer line: a populace that has grown so distrustful of the U.S. that it is skeptical of following Washington's lead in a geopolitical conflict.
Among Germans, "the overwhelming feeling in the Ukraine crisis is that for the Russians—but also for the Americans—it's about own interests and not the interests of the people in Ukraine," says one of Germany's top pollsters, Manfred Güllner of the Forsa Institute in Berlin.
A poll published by research firm infratest dimap last week indicates German trust in the U.S. has plummeted to lows not seen since the thick of the Iraq war. Another poll, published in May, showed those Germans surveyed were more interested in deepening their country's ties with China than they were in doing so with the U.S. A third, published in April, showed that nearly half wanted Germany to take a "middle position" in the Ukraine conflict rather than standing firmly on the side of the West.
German government officials readily acknowledge that anti-Americanism—fueled most recently by revelations of National Security Agency surveillance activities in Europe—plays a significant role in how the public perceives the Ukraine crisis and has bred a reluctance among many Germans to side with the U.S
Ms. Merkel, the most popular German leader in decades, is acutely attuned to public opinion, often pushing her fellow conservatives to shift to positions with broad popular support—such as a national minimum wage and Germany's phase-out of nuclear energy. Officials, though, say it is Berlin's basic conviction that constructive diplomacy is more effective than escalating tensions with additional sanctions that has driven German policy on Ukraine—not domestic political or business interests.
Still, the disillusionment with the U.S.—and the effect on German perceptions of the Ukraine crisis—is palpable even in Heidelberg, the picturesque southwest German city that, thanks to a large U.S. Army garrison established after World War II, became a symbol of Germany's postwar love affair with the U.S. Generations of Americans mingled and intermarried with the locals here, shared American movies and sports, and invited Germans onto the military grounds for an annual festival.
Dr. Fritz Hack, pictured in his home in Heidelberg on May 29. Dr. Hack marched in a pro-U.S. demonstration in 2003 to counter anti-Iraq-War protests in Heidelberg. Dr. Hack now refers to revelations of National Security Agency surveillance as "a great catastrophe."
The Army closed its former European headquarters here last year as part of a broader U.S. military plan to reduce its presence in Germany. The withdrawal left behind a debate over how Heidelberg should commemorate the U.S. role in its city history. More broadly, it is prompting locals to ponder how Germany should recast the trans-Atlantic alliance as Cold War memories fade.
"People don't want a pilgrimage-type memorial for G.I.s here," says Ursula Röper, chairman of neighborhood association in the part of town that was home to part of the 445-acre American base. "If we do anything along those lines, then we also need to include other aspects, including ones that Americans aren't going to be comfortable with."
Detlef Junker, founding director of the local university's Heidelberg Center for American Studies, has pushed to turn part of the former Army base into a research center dedicated to the U.S. military presence in Germany. He says the center is a tough sell—in part because of an "estrangement" between locals and the country that helped liberate them from the Nazis.
The rejection of U.S. militarism, he says, is now visible in the German response to the Ukraine crisis. Many here fear being drawn into a confrontation with Russia and want their government to take a softer line with Moscow than Washington has called for.
Ms. Merkel has publicly echoed U.S. threats of broader sanctions against Russia. But her government has also been sending more conciliatory messages—phoning the Kremlin more than any other Western capital, for instance—amid fears among the German public of an escalation in the conflict.
On Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled to St. Petersburg for a long-scheduled meeting, choosing to engage his Russian counterpart on his home turf rather than seeking to isolate the Kremlin. "Germans fear being pulled into a war," Mr. Junker says. In the view of many Germans, he adds, "Putin is simply the mirror image of the United States."
Students at Heidelberg's storied university say some of the loudest voices discussing Ukraine on their Facebook news feeds were ones alleging that fascist militias backed by the U.S. were behind "atrocities" against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. "The U.S. is seen as the warmonger" in the Ukraine crisis, said Maximilian Güttlein, 19. "That gets good traction among the students."
Surveys show that younger Germans—decades removed from the hot and cold wars that shaped the trans-Atlantic alliance—are most likely to question their country's ties to the U.S. A poll published last month by the Berlin-based Körber Stiftung found 40% of Germans aged 18 to 29 wanted to reduce their country's cooperation with the U.S., compared to 27% of Germans 60 and older.
Many Heidelberg residents do see the Ukraine crisis as a reminder of the importance of the alliance with the U.S. for Germany's security. But even those who have been traditionally pro-American have had their trust shaken by last year's revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities in Europe. The reports of the NSA's access to communications of ordinary citizens, along with those of the agency monitoring Ms. Merkel's cellphone, struck a chord in a country whose Nazi past and experiences with East German surveillance have made it acutely sensitive to privacy issues.
In 2003, when thousands protested the Iraq War outside the U.S. Army gates here, Fritz Hack marched in an American-flag-waving counter-demonstration. Dr. Hack, a cardiologist, had treated and befriended many Americans over his career in Heidelberg and felt a duty to show the U.S. still had German friends.
Today, the 75-year-old Dr. Hack still plants the Stars and Stripes in his driveway when expecting American guests. But he says he couldn't imagine joining a rally defending the U.S. from the NSA revelations. U.S. eavesdropping on Ms. Merkel's phone, he says, "was a great catastrophe."
"The Iraq War wasn't about trust—it was a political debate," says Lothar Binding, a member of the left-of-center Social Democrats who represents Heidelberg in the national parliament. "What the NSA did in this eavesdropping affair goes much deeper. It is the misuse of trust among friends."
Source: http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-germany-anti-american-sentiment-fuels-push-to-tread-softly-on-ukraine-1402443505
On Wednesday Le Pen's party struck a deal with four other Eurosceptic parties - Geert Wilders' Dutch Freedom Party, Italy's Northern League, Austria's Freedom Party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang party. To form a faction, parties must have at least 25-30 members elected in at least seven EU member states. Le Pen said she was optimistic the National Front could forge a bloc with other parties in the European Parliament.
"I've got a whole series of meetings soon," she said. Asked if she would like to work with the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), she said: "It would be possible. We have the same fundamental position on Europe." UKIP leader Nigel Farage has, however, ruled out working with France's National Front. "They come from a different political family," he told the BBC in an interview. "We want nothing to do with that party at all." [ID:L6N0OI0AG]
On whether the National Front would work with the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD), Le Pen said: "They have not expressed any such wish up until now. We share certain views with the AfD but it's a popular party - it's an elite one and it has a completely different structure."
Asked if she saw her party getting to the second round of a national presidential election in 2017, Le Pen said that was a "very credible hypothesis" and added that her party had at last as much potential among non-voters as among voters.
She said Germany had become the Europe's economic powerhouse "because our leaders are weak" but said its neighbour should never forget that France was the "political heart" of Europe. She said a strong euro was ruining France and leaving the single currency bloc would represent "an incredible opportunity" for France, which she said was on the way to "underdevelopment".
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/01/us-france-lepen-idUSKBN0EC1ES20140601
![http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/6c6b4a16-0ea2-4f08-9c4e-36eb4c9a7d13.jpeg](http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/6c6b4a16-0ea2-4f08-9c4e-36eb4c9a7d13.jpeg)
Although the phrase Eurasian Union was first coined by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev 20 years ago, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who transformed the idea that had been in the air for some time into a viable political project. Putin drew conclusions from two fundamental facts which became apparent in the 2000s: the unwillingness of the West to embrace Russia as its own and an equal, and the malaise of Western capitalism, which was first felt in the US and which then led to a crisis in the EU.
Putin's answer to those developments was to recast Russia's international identity as both an independent power center, and a leader of a group of countries tied to it by a web of economic, political, and security arrangements, solidified by common historical heritage and shared civilizational trends. As she was preparing a year ago to depart her job as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton called the Kremlin's EAU project an attempt to bring back the Soviet Union. Clinton was right in the sense that Russia has revealed its ambition to reconstitute itself as a large geopolitical unit with a global reach, and thus a competitor to US global power.
The EU leaders were brusquely awakened to this fact in November as Putin managed to prevent Ukraine signing an association agreement with the EU. To Putin, Ukrainians and Russians are "one people," sharing many common traits; thus, Ukraine's integration with the EU rather than Russia would be unnatural, even perverse. The Russian president is prepared to work hard and long to integrate the 46-million strong Ukraine into the EAU project. This, however, will be anything but easy. The Ukrainian elite loathe coming back under Moscow's leadership, and Ukrainian nationalism, even in its moderate version, postulates that "Ukraine is not Russia," a view diametrically opposed to Putin's.
The EAU project is facing challenges of deepening as well as enlargement. Kazakhstan has made it clear that while it supports economic integration, it will seek to preserve its sovereignty and political independence. Even Belarus, whose population is not imbued with anything like Ukrainian-style nationalism, insists on a high degree of independence from Russia. Yet, some enlargement and some consolidation within Eurasia will be taking place. Recently, Armenia has been put on a fast track to join the Eurasian integration project. Kyrgyzstan is habitually bargaining to get the best terms of accession. The Eurasian Commission, headed by Viktor Khristenko, a former Russian deputy prime minister, is sure to get wider powers.
Since all prospective EAU members and candidates also belong to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), there is likely to be more coordination between the EAU and the CSTO. The Russian language as the lingua franca in central Eurasia will get a boost with more cooperation among the integrating countries. The EAU will doubtlessly increase Russia's standing as regards the EU, making the relationship more coequal. It will also strengthen Russia's position in Central Asia, including versus China, as well as in the South Caucasus.
These gains, however, will be less than groundbreaking, unless the Russian Federation itself manages to relaunch its economy on a basis other than oil and gas, improves the quality of its population, beginning with the elites, and dramatically upgrades its governance. For Russia to be a great power in the 21st century, it does not require more land, more people, or more allies. It needs to manage much better what it already has.
The author is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and editor-in-chief of its blog, Eurasia Outlook. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
![Russian President Putin](http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20140319/355259_Russian%20President%20Putin.jpg)
Source: http://presstv.com/detail/2014/03/19/355259/putin-puts-fear-of-god-in-nwo/
![http://www.redstate.com/files/2013/09/putin-obama.jpg](http://www.redstate.com/files/2013/09/putin-obama.jpg)
What does it mean? First, the technicalities: the comparison is made on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, which means that it takes into account the differing prices in the two countries. So, if a dollar is worth 6.3 renminbi today on the foreign exchange market, it may be that 6.3 renminbi can buy a lot more in China than one dollar can buy in the US. The PPP comparison adjusts for that; that is why China's economy is much bigger than the measure that you have most commonly seen in the media, which simply converts China's GDP to dollars at the official exchange rate.
The PPP measure is a better comparison for many purposes. For example, take military spending: the money that China needs to build a fighter jet or pay military personnel is a lot less than the equivalent in dollars that the US has to pay for the same goods and services. This means that China has a bigger economy than that of the US, for purposes of military spending. And in a decade, the Chinese economy will most likely be about 60 percent bigger than the US economy.
President Obama has just returned from a trip to Asia where he was criticised for not being tougher with China. However, Americans may want to consider whether "containing" China with a "pivot" to Asia is an affordable proposition. When the US had an arms race with the Soviet Union, the Soviet economy was maybe one-quarter the size of ours. We have not experienced an arms race with a country whose economy is bigger than ours, and whose economic size advantage is growing rapidly. Are Americans prepared to give up social security or Medicare in order to maintain US military supremacy in Asia? To ask this question is to answer it.
Fortunately, such an arms race is not necessary. China is a rising power, but the government does not seem to be interested in building an empire. Unlike the US, which has hundreds of military bases throughout the globe, China doesn't have any. The Chinese government seems to be very focused on economic growth; trying to become a developed country as soon as it can. Since China has 1.3 billion people, having an economy the size of the US means that average living standards are less than one-fourth of ours. They have a long way to go to become a rich country.
Of course, just because an arms race is unnecessary or unwinnable doesn't mean it can't get started. The Washington foreign policy establishment is much accustomed to the authority, prestige, and privilege of being the overwhelmingly dominant power on the planet. And as we saw during the eastward expansion of Nato in the 1990s – now coming back to haunt us in a new cold war with Russia – there are politically powerful military contractors that can also have a voice in US foreign and military policy.
The American people, according to polling data, are of another point of view. They are largely tired of unnecessary wars and mostly sympathetic to Obama's response to critics while in the Philippines: "Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force, after we've just gone through a decade of war at enormous cost to our troops and to our budget?" It is arguable that the only reason our government is able to maintain an imperial foreign policy is that so few Americans serve in the military and pay the ultimate price for it.
Still, there is a powerful ideology of American exceptionalism and a widespread belief that if the US does not run the world, somebody worse – possibly China – will. The fact that the US and its European allies still have more democratic societies with more developed rule of law than most middle-income countries – despite the setbacks of the past decade – reinforces this notion that the world will be worse off if the US loses power and influence.
But the US lost most of its influence in Latin America over the past 15 years, and the region has done quite well, with a sharp reduction in poverty for the first time in decades. The Washington-based International Monetary Fund has also lost most of its influence over the middle-income countries of the world, and these have also done remarkably better in the 2000s.
In the 18th century, those who opposed democratic revolutions like that of the United States had dystopian visions of governance without monarchy. So, too, our foreign policy establishment cannot imagine a multipolar world where the US and its allies must negotiate more and give orders less often. But economic trends are making this reality inevitable, and Americans should embrace it. Whatever the internal political systems of the countries whose representation in the international arena will increase, the end result is likely to be more democratic governance at the international level, with a greater rule of international law, fewer wars, and more social and economic progress.
![http://armenianow.com/sites/default/files/img/imagecache/600x400/RedSquare_(pixinn.jpg](http://armenianow.com/sites/default/files/img/imagecache/600x400/RedSquare_%28pixinn.jpg)
Armenia has still not officially protested against this statement by the Russian diplomat. But in the media there have been some articles describing it as “diplomatic nonsense” and a bid for total control of “hearts and minds” in Armenia.
The relations between Armenia and Russia increasingly appear to be contradictory: on the official level the two sides state about their fraternal friendship, loyalty for all times to come, about Armenia’s intentions to integrate into the pro-Russian Eurasian space. And on the “second level” the entire spectrum of conflict of interests and intentions of Armenia and Russia is manifested.
Yerevan openly states that the proposed terms of entry into the Russian-led Customs Union are not profitable to Armenia and it is negotiating with Moscow on privileges. However, judging by some information appearing in media, Russia is not going to give privileges to Armenians. Recently Moscow effectively refused to make an exception for Armenians in their immigration legislation that tightens the terms of stay of migrant workers and easier terms will be applied along with Armenia’s integration into the Russian-led bloc. According to the local media, Armenia cannot get customs privileges for 900 items of goods either. Duties on these goods will be increased two- or threefold after Armenia’s accession to the Customs Union.
Add to this the imperial rhetoric of Russia politicians, diplomats, pro-Kremlin journalists, who literally state that Armenia can live only on condition of its subordination to Russia. This rhetoric causes rejection in public and political circles of Armenia, even though it is not manifested in actions of protest. Observers say, however, that internal murmur is on the rise.
The Russian leadership does not hide any longer its intentions to completely absorb Armenia. One of the instruments of this absorption may become the new Russian law simplifying the granting of Russian passports to Russian-speaking citizens of other states. As a condition for receiving a passport within three months the Russians mention the renunciation of original citizenship. In Armenia there is already concern that migrant workers in Russia will start giving up Armenian citizenship and acquiring Russian citizenship en masse. There is the same concern in relation to the Armenian-populated Georgian region of Javakhk where Russia is also going to hand out passports.
This will give Russia an additional argument in its relations with Armenia and Georgia. The Kremlin has proclaimed a policy of protecting Russian citizens around the world, and under this pretext, two months ago Russia, in fact, annexed Ukraine’s Crimea. Distribution of passports may become grounds for, as the Russian ambassador says, “preventing any aggressive intervention in the internal affairs of friendly countries.” This could apply to both Armenia and Georgia.
![russia wants war](http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/russia-wants-war.jpg)
America Launched the Cold War Even Before World War II Had Ended
In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.
The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory. Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.***[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.***New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says. According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb. “Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden.
The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.”
Increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.***Instead [of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.***The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.***Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one.
The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
America Has Waged a Brutal Dirty Tricks Campaign for 70 Years
In late September 1947, [George] Kennan urged Forrestal to establish a “guerrilla warfare corps”—a suggestion Forrestal heartily endorsed—although the [Joing Chiefs of Staff] recommended against establishing a “separate guerrilla warfare and corps.” In December, Truman approved secret annex NSC 4-A, authorizing the CIA to conduct covert operations. He had dismantled the OSS’s covert parmilitary operations capabilities in September 1945, but now he brought them back in force. In the summer of 1948, he approved NSC 10/2, which called for “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” These activities were to be done in a way that would always afford the US government plausible deniability. In August 1948, Truman approved NSC 20, which authorized guerrilla operations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe ….***Beginning with Truman’s first day in office, his receptiveness to the views of hard-line anti-Communists, his denial of Roosevelt’s understanding with Staling, the provocative and unnecessary dropping of the atomic bombs, his spreading a network of military bases around the world, Churchill’s speech at Fulton, Truman’s call for fighting Communism in greece, the division and remilitarization of Germany, the continued testing of bigger and bigger atomic and hydrogen bombs which he used to threaten the Soviet Union, Truman’s deliberate exaggerations of the Communist threat both overseas and at home and his persecution and silencing of those who challenged these distortions. In all these matters, with few exceptions, the United states, after successfully liberating Western Europe, was now signaling fear and aggression ….
- The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
- The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special
- As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
The U.S. and NATO Have Been Trying to Encircle Russia Militarily Since 1991
![http://i.imgur.com/xgBMhBb.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/xgBMhBb.jpg)
Similarly, Germany promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east.” As Andrew Gavin Marshall explains:
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 prompted the negotiated withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe. The ‘old order’ of Europe was at an end, and a new one “needed to be established quickly,” noted Mary Elise Sarotte in the New York Times. This ‘new order’ was to begin with “the rapid reunification of Germany.” Negotiations took place in 1990 between Soviet president Gorbachev, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and President Bush’s Secretary of State, James A. Baker 3rd. The negotiations sought to have the Soviets remove their 380,000 troops from East Germany. In return, both James Baker and Helmut Kohl promised Gorbachev that the Western military alliance of NATO would not expand eastwards. West Germany’s foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, promised Gorbachev that, ” NATO will not expand itself to the East.” Gorbachev agreed, though asked – and did not receive – the promise in writing, remaining a “gentlemen’s agreement.”
Source: US-NATO Encirclement of Russia: America Launched the Cold War Before the End of World War II
New Ooga Booga No Longer Effective … So Government Switches Back to Tried-And-True Old-Timey Ooga-Booga
Fear of terrorists made the American public afraid, gullible and easy to manipulate for more than a decade. But now – despite the best efforts of the military-industrial complex to intentionally whip up an exaggerated hysteria of Islamic terrorists - Americans are starting to wake up from our fear-induced haze:
- For the first time since 9/11, we value privacy more than anti-terror protections
- We’re sick of war … and no longer falling for the government’s pro-war arguments
Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/american-people-longer-buying-terror-threat-government-pulls-evil-russian-card.html
One hundred years after the start of World War One, books on the period have become increasingly popular in Washington, Whitehall and NATO headquarters in Brussels, current and former officials say, and not purely for their historical interest. In June 1914, the killing of Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist triggered actions and alliances that brought war in barely a month.
Finally a new post! Great read Arevordi. I was wondering if you had any opinions on Nazarbayev's comments in Astana?
ReplyDeleteNot much to say about the comments in question. This matter is being blown out of proportions by Western operatives in Armenian society because they want to derail Armenia's membership in the Customs Union. Let's recognize that Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev has very good relations with Baku. His official stance is therefore nothing but a show. I have no doubt that behind closed doors he will agree to Armenia's membership. After all, it's not like he has a choice in the matter either. Similar to how the EU is a essentially an American-Franco-German operation, the Customs Union is a Russian one.
DeletePS: Please read the entire blog before you decide you like it or dislike it.
PPS: Please identify yourself next time you post.
Guys, Russia sells weapons to Azerbaijan in exchange for oil and gas, afterwards, they empower the Armenian Army jointly with Russian forces to counter the Azeri upgrades, thus forcing Azerbaijan to further buy even more expensive weapons from Russia.
ReplyDeleteThis is how the Kremlin can reduces hydrocarbon flow from Azerbaijan to Turkey and EU. Moscow will not bring an end to the status quo in Artsakh, and that is of course to our advantage. Not an inch of land shall be given away, on the contrary, since the course Baku might take will not necessarily be in Kremlin's direction, there might be a necessity for Moscow to take Azerbaijan by force and establish a land link to Iran. Aliyev will not lift a finger in case we decided (after some major cross border incident) to invade and liberate large swath of land from the evil regime that rules Azerbaijan. Why won't he fight back? Because he only is concerned with the oil and gas revenues that he's been siphoning for decades, is it worth to risk an extravagant lifestyle in exchange for some mountains in a far away place? It is in our military doctrine that when necessary, Armenia will destroy Azerbaijan's energy infrastructure. There's no power build-up in Azerbaijan. It's all an illusion. Just some big hangars with modern weapons in them and with almost nobody knowing how to use them, eventually all those weapons will fall back into Russian hands once Azerbaijan gets invaded. So Moscow is just moving some machinery from one place to another and thereby slowly diverting the flow of energy northwards.
By committing to equal relations in the region, Russia pulls Azerbaijan into its orbit meanwhile strengthening its foothold in Armenia. This is a good deal for Armenia.
Seeing rats like Marine Le Pen giving approval and praising Putin IS NOT A POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT. No one can have such tunnel vision! Another poster a few months ago suggested to you and your readers that the supposed newly rising "right-wing" in Europe were heavily Zionist. He specifically mentioned Girt Wilders, but he didn't know the half of it! The phenomenon stretches from England's EDL to Le Pen and beyond. You should be trying to weed these phonies out, not embracing anything they say as long as it is complimentary of Putin. Every name mentioned in the article, including Wilders, Le Pen, and the Belgian party Vlaams Belang are all in bed with Zionists and will serve only Zionist interests. It also gives a insight, if you're willing to open your eyes, into how right-wing "Fascist" groups came to power in Europe in the early and mid 20th century.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/27/far-right-philozionism-racism
"Almost all European far-right parties have come up with the same toxic cocktail. The Dutch MP Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigrant Freedom party, has compared the Qur'an to Mein Kampf. In Tel Aviv in 2010, he declared that "Islam threatens not only Israel, Islam threatens the whole world. If Jerusalem falls today, Athens and Rome, Amsterdam and Paris will fall tomorrow."
Meanwhile Filip Dewinter, leader of Belgium's Vlaams Belang party, which grew out of the Vlaams Blok Flemish nationalist party, many of whose members collaborated with the Nazis during the second world war, has proposed a quota on the number of young Belgian-born Muslims allowed in public swimming pools. Dewinter calls Judaism "a pillar of European society""
Flatte German
Flatte German,
DeleteThe articles about Le Pen and the recent successes of right wing European parties were featured in this blog merely as a way of revealing to the reader that there is currently a rising anti-establishment mood in Europe. No where have I made any assessments of the parties themselves. No where have I made any kind of statements about EDL and Le Pen. And the names Girt Wilders and Filip Dewinter do not even appear anywhere in this blog. You either seem to have reading comprehension problem or you simply have an axe to grind with me. Please stop.
PS: That "other poster a few months ago suggested to you and your readers that the supposed newly rising "right-wing" in Europe were heavily Zionist" was you my friend...
An Anonymous poster on February 10, 2014 at 1:27 PM in your " Happy Sarikamish" post wrote: " The leader of this "patriotic" branch is none other than the Dutch jew Wilders. He is an anti-islam ( anti islam) fantasy crusader." You responded to this by saying "I like what you write. I like the way you write. You have a lot of good information, assuming that they are accurate (wondering where you get it all)."
DeleteI don't know what pleasure you get in lying and saying it was me, or what point you think you're making when you lie and say it was me, but in any case you should have taken the opportunity at that time to look into it and better understand the allegiances of these rising political movements and figures. The nature of the rising Zionist right-wing in Europe was exposed by Zionist Brevik's rampage in Norway and the sentiments he expressed in his manifesto. When we see Jobbik and Golden Dawn, similar groups in Hungary and Greece, starting to align with Putin and Russia, then it starts having a bearing on the topic of this blog.
It is a phenomenon to keep your eyes on and read up on. Your professed ignorance ("wondering where you get it all") and persistent of lack of interest in it, might result in faulty alliances if they are shared by those in power. Speaking of which, your blind spot for Zionist intrigue I often find reflected in Kremlin policy, for example, tilting at "Fascists" and "Nationalists" when the Ukraine is actually being Jewed to death.
Flatte German
My dear Jew hunter,
DeleteJews have the activists and the money to fund any movement they want. In fact, they have the capability to start any form of movement in many parts of the world today. Moreover, Jews are a global powers and such powers seek to have players on both sides of the political fence. Therefore, even a movement that is anti-Semitic will have some form of Jewish involvement. In the current Anglo-American-Jewish era all this is expected. Anglo-American world has been the sociopolitical catalyst upon which Jewish agendas have been propagated in recent times. As long as the Anglo-American world is powerful, so will Jews. With that said, sometimes their experiments backfire, as it did during the Second World War. At the end of the day, I'll take Europe's Jew-led Right movements today over Europe's Jew-led ultra liberal movement. At the very least, Right movements have within them to turn anti-Jew and stop Europe's multicultural madness.
PS: You continue to exhibit very little understanding of Russian politics and the nature of the crisis in Ukraine.
I did not want to comment on Arevordi's latest blog entry until I had finished reading it. Nor do I want to be on here calling out every bad post that involves the supposed omnipotence and omnipresence of Jews; or lies about Hitler; or advocates third-world behavior like throwing battery acid at "immodest" women. But I have to ask, what is the point of this post? The blog entry does not in any way, shape or form support Geert Wilders or Nigel Farage or any of the other Zionist "conservatives" of Europe. Those people are as worthless as the Republican Party here in the US when it comes to combating the illness of globalism that is currently killing the west.
DeleteIf I may speak for Arevordi, this blog's intent is to highlight the importance of the rise of Russia for Armenia. In covering this topic, inevitably current events like Syria and Ukraine get covered, as do events in the west given the west's role as Russia/Armenia's ultimate rival and enemy. Arevordi unambiguously stated that articles featuring "dissident conservatives" within Europe are here to highlight that the west is not as stable and unified as it seems, and that the insanity of the ultraliberalism of era since the Soviet collapse - namely the promotion of homosexuality; militant atheism; militant feminism; mass immigration; multiculturalism and the near-criminalization of Nationalism; pedophilia; holocaust worship; nonstop war-mongering; and levels of greed and corruption on levels never before seen in history which are resulting in total social and political collapse to name a few - are producing cracks within the west.
That's it, there is no cryptic support for Zionist red-herrings being presented as genuine opposition in Europe. We work with what we are presented with, and Europe's (aka the "sick man of the world") strongest dissent comes from these types. And such dissent can be skillfully exploited to exacerbate the situation for the already ailing power establishment in Europe. If anything, their increasing popularity demonstrates how anti-Establishment Europe's populations are, despite decades of brainwashing by the controlled mass media and major social organizations and non-stop fear-mongering about the rising "Russian threat"... As Arevordi stated, Jews are so ingrained in the west that no major or even mid-sized organization can function without Jews. Hell even the late American White Nationalist leader William Luther Pierce had to rely on a Jew publisher, and enjoyed the films of Jew Stanley Kubrick.
As for the Ukrainian "nationalists/fascists", they are consistently taken to task on this blog for doing the Jew's dirty work. The author of this blog, myself, and most of the regulars here understand and admire National Socialism as it was perfected by Germany in the 1930s. It's not us who have tarnished the names "nationalist" and "facsist", it is the Swastika-bearing freaks in Kiev who are falling over themselves to kiss the asses of Jewess bitches nuland and timoshenko and Jew faggots like Yatsenyuk and John Cohen/Kohn-Kerry and declare war on the enemies of Judea. True National Socialism has long been crushed in the west, and these clowns just demonstrated that the only remaining "Nazis" in Europe are absolutely worthless. I suggest you not concern yourself with labels and try to understand the substance of the arguments presented here.
Ps, not that you don't know, but since a good part of World War 2 became bound with the old rivalries of the Russian and German Empires, the Russian victory will forever be celebrated in Moscow as the triumph of good over evil. You'll never hear the Kremlin say anything good about Fascists, because Fascism must remain the embodiment of evil. And why the hell should the Kremlin clean up the image of the "Fascists" anyway when all the major Fascists of the day are shamelessly eating out of the hands of nuland and co.
I'm breaking a silent promise to Arevordi by posting without finishing reading his latest wisdom, however the way this post is going I had a need to respond.
DeleteFlatte German, you raise some interesting points, however saying Arevordi is lying is beyond reason. Saying Ukraine is being Jewed to death is a truth, yet coming here and attacking the man the way you did is simply not going to work. I too am wondering why Golden Dawn and others are not siding with Russia does nail a very good point home. But please have some sense when posting attacks unjustifiably.
I too would take the right wing over the left any day, it's not just Ukraine that is being Jewed to death it's all of the Eurozone that is being Jewed to death. So if we are all saying the same thing what is the reason behind your hostility towards Arevordi? Perhaps you should save the Lying thing to Markel and crew who are nothing but puppets in the grand marionet show.
Vahram
Dear Vahram,
DeleteNote that I said the author of this blog lied ONLY when he claimed I had in fact authored the comment a few months ago warning about Zionist Girt Wilders and similar compromised Rightists in Europe, as if I were trying to create a false consensus and drum up a topic that was otherwise a non-issue or a lie.
The bottom line is Arevordi and I have a fundamental disagreement: I do not want to see, as he now admits, "a Jew controlled Right wing" in Europe, in opposition to the multiculturalist Bolshevik Jews of Europe because it goes without saying that the figureheads they foster at the heads of these right-wing movements will prove to be a controlled opposition engaging in self-defeating and ineffective behavior. Arevordi believes they at least contain the potential to turn against their Zionist masters, as he believes they did leading up to WWII. But I believe the opposition these Zionist controlled rightists put up to Jewish fostered Multiculturalism will be as false as their theoretical potential future opposition to Zionism, which I, again in contrast to Arevordi, DO NOT believe happened in WWII. Italian and German fascists SPONSORIED Zionism. And that's the point: ultimately the Nazis, the forerunners of these new Zionist Rightists in Europe, were publicly and loudly anti-Semitic, but were in practice boosting Zionism and establishing the state of Israel, which Hitler in his book rightly said would only function as a criminal base, BUT which he then helped establish! I quote:
"For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks."
My point, Vahram, is that Europe and the world can't afford any more "Jew-led Right movements". Everyone with half a brain knows that Merkel, Obama, Hollande, and Cameron are traitorous scum, keep an eye on their "opponents", which I'm glad we all now agree are "Jew-led".
Flatte German
Flatte German,
DeleteI don't disagree with your point, just your attack on Arevordi and the way it came across. I think we need to look at things and go deeper and not just look at the surface. For example sure Nigel is not exactly what Europe needs, in fact he is not as anti euro as he comes across. The way I see it is that England just has the City and finance and that is all that England is now. By playing this game of being fake anti Euro all they are trying to do is protect the City by not having the money dealings go to Brussels, they want England to maintain it's position and Nigel is skillfully playing this game to that end, while collecting the anti euro votes that go to the “ Controlled Opposition “ instead of a real opposition. But we must look at this deeper, for example where in the Euro zone did we have such parties 10 years ago?
The point being that right now in place of lovemaking and fornication in the streets full of joy you now have 30% of the vote going to parties that are anti Euro. This is a landslide in any measurable term as 30% of anything is huge, let alone a vote. Who is Europe was not dressed like a clown 10 years ago painting their faces blue with yellow stars and talking about a collective union of peoples? Fast forward 10 years and you have a grim picture of what has happened to a grand dream they sold the people. While some of the opposition is controlled not all the opposition is controlled. However they try as they might to control things simple fact is this is out of control and while they may vote for Mr. controlled X that person is not going to last long until we get another Hitler type that will do exactly what the crowd wants. By the time this happens the descent vote is going to be more the 30% I can assure you of this. The fact of the matter is that it is now in controlled hands for the most part, but having 30% that are against your ideas is not something you can direct as you please. Sooner then later more people are going to scream for change and sooner then later this economic hoax that has turned the Western world into walking zombies will collapse.
This is only a taste of what is to come, it is sad as I don’t think ultra nationalism is a long term solution to problems we face as humanity. I think that responsibly rational approach to things would do more to put things in the right then any extreme, but we are forced to the extremes by one side or the other. While we lean too far right people kick down your doors and make you follow some orders that everyone is supposed to follow, and on the other extreme if you rape 5 boys and show your ass on TV your are a hero. Clearly rationality has no play in human stupidity such is what we call Western civilization. We have proven time and time again that when you bring too many people together of different types they always kill each other, such seems our nature. The cunning brought everyone together not for the love dream but for the reason to rob more. They got too greedy and the situation is out of control. Enjoy the show.
The odds of having a German visiting an Armenian site to talk of Geopolitics would not have been a common site 10 year ago. This is the change that is happening let us hope it is the start of something bigger Lets just hope that our brothers in the Western half of Europe finally wake up and start smelling the coffee. We are tired of being on the front line all by ourselves carrying the European tradition and manning the damn gates all alone!
BTW welcome to our corner of the web, nice to have a German in the mix :-)
Vahram
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-separatists-whos-who/25408875.html
ReplyDeleteKeep track of who's who in E. Ukraine.
LG
That article is full of your typical liberal spin "ultra-nationalists", "Russian officers".
DeleteBut this one takes the cake:
"Vostok Battalion," a Russian military structure established in the 1990s by a Chechen warlord.
Vostok in Donetsk has nothing to do with Chechen Vostok. This Vostok is made of Donetsk residents and their commander is a former Ukraine Alpha operative.
Of course, do you expect anything else from rfe? I used this articled to keep track of the names of the individuals involved in the east of Ukraine.
DeleteLG
LOL and the link is from RFERL...Rolling on the floor pounding fist on the floor laughing my arse off.
DeleteWho the hell even takes RFERL seriously any more? If this was supposed to be a grand joke it worked.
Vahram
Russian's cutting down Russians. Song by Lube.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiiCfLvETLM
In case anyone is not aware. There are no Ukrainians. Ukrainianism is a historic fake and project carried out by the General Staff of the Austro-Hungarian empire to subvert and reprogram Russians into something else that hates everything Russian while being subservient to interests from the west. That is exactly what is now happening.
PS
ReplyDeleteI don't think Russia is going to be recognizing DNR or LNR. And I don't think Russia wants some kind of split Ukraine -- Russia wants a whole Ukraine and a de-nazified Ukraine -- this will be a very long struggle.
Can confirm that the Russians have transferred their Gyumri-based KUB antiaircraft missile battery to the Armenian Army. The system is now based in Artsakh.
ReplyDeleteThe de-contented and simplified export version of the KUB is the well known KVADRAT, better known as SA-6 from the Middle -East wars. It is a fully mobile medium range (30 km) system that adds new capabilities to the Karabagh self-defense forces.
The transfer was done right after Putin's last visit to Armenia. The KUB system has been replaced in the Russian base by a more modern BUK (SA-11).
Just in case my above post was confusing: The KUB battery we have received is the full specification variant, not the de-contented KVADRAT model that were exported to Arab armies.
DeleteYour original post could be read as if the variant Armenia received was the export version. Thank you for the clarification.
DeleteThe parties configuring the European right are in their majority orchestrated by the judaics. It is a kind of controlled opposition. From all these movements on the right spectrum of the political canvas there is only one, and only one which is outside the orbit of the judaics, it is the GD in Greece. Their leaders have been imprisoned unconstitutoinally; false charges, slander, calumnies and the full apparatus of the zionist government of occupation bearing down on the movement. Madame Le Pen is allowed to circulate in the mainstream of Frecnch politics because she professes obeisance to the zionists. Jack Wilders, he is a crypto jew in ny case and swears oath of allegiance to the Israeli masters. The rest are a gaggle of white gollywogs marching behind the caravans. As for Jobbik, it is a monumental joke, its leader claims the turks are racially related to the hungarians, and wish them joining the EU pronto presto, and all turkish muslims are welcome to move their settlements from Anatolia into Europe. Judaics and Islamist are in a holly alliance to deluge the European continent with their millions of excess bagage populations, plus the unending flood of Africans and Asians. They are succeeding , and their story has been an unqualified success since the invasion and occupation of Europe since 1945. None of the rightist groups, fake nationalists, parading their wares ( except the GD in Greece) in the political market has any policy regarding the immediate stop to the invasion and the commitment to turn the tide and repatriate the invaders who broke the frontiers and barriers of European nations. The official policy of the EU is multicuturalism, race replacement and displacement of Europeans from their homelands ---similar what the turks brought upon the heads of Armenians, displacement through genocide and replacement of Armenians in their own homeland ---. European politics is zionist-judaic politics. We won't mention America, because that is the supreme seat of judaic power, with Israel as the branch controlling the eastern mediterranean and middle east. Petruccio
DeleteNow that you've mentioned Golden Dawn as the (un)controlled far-right opposition in Greece, what about parties like Ataka (Bulgarian)? I'm not sure how many far-right parties within the European Union that are outside the controlled opposition orbit.
DeleteI still remember reading about how Golden Dawn will reconquer Constantinople and revive the Byzantine Empire. Im all for that! :)
DeleteI can not comment on Ataka, in Bulgaria. They have not made an impact in the country to the same degree as GD as done in Greece. There is a proscription order to ban the GD in Greece by the world zionist kabala . Conditions in Greece are different, Greece ,unlike Bulgaria, is bearing the brunt of the afro-asiatic invasion; also Greece's position as a sovereign nation is under question. The government of occupation is staffed by crypto judaics, crypto turks, free masons, mercenary politicians, sell outs to multiculturalism, atheism, antiorthodoxy and national ethnicide. There is only one group, in parliament, which assertively opposes the Zionized government of occupation bankrupt policies, lumping with the fake opposition groups --marxists, crypto maoists, anarchists and professional politicos in the same stweing pot, . In no other democratic parliament you have a genuine opposition party which outside the fenced ring of mainstream politics-opposition democratic circus. Calling government ministers by their name and their conduct as thieves, rogues, embezzlers, traitors ,tools of Zion and international jewry etc. Opposition parties are supposed to act within the parameters of what is acceptable in the democratic play pen of parliamen, oppose without opposing. The GD always make references and honours the Armenian genocide in practical terms, this of course stems from the common historical enmity against the turks. Unlike other European rightist parties, well funded by mainstream political venturists, tools of the system, the GD relies on his own financial resources from its members. They have no external funding . Hence the struggle is a sysyphean one. The GD has come out unambiguously of an alliance with Orthodox Russia, if they attain power, in direct variance of established and recognized political and economical bondage to the EU-USA-Israel Kabbala. The leadership is behind bars. They could come out from prison the instant they agree to become an ' opposition party' within the system. This is what the international zionist are hoping and wotking for. Disband, be persecuted, or join " us" . Their following is growing in inverse proportion to the decline of the other traditional political parties of the system.
ReplyDeleteAs long as Russia has leaders like Putin, Im thankful for this blog! Dont worry, we just have to be a little bit more patient- dont let western agents sell us out to the turk like they did to David Bek and Mkhitar Sbarabet.
ReplyDeleteI think Armenia will be fine as long as Christian-Slavs are in power in Russia and as long as Westernization/Globalization in their country is kept under control. I see the great leader of the Russian nation Vladimir Putin as the chosen one that started it all, but he is not the only one in Russia. There is a long line of Russian nationalists in government and Russian society in general is gradually becoming more patriotic. What we need is a Russia where the Slavic and Christian identity is powerful and in the majority. In such a climate, some of our migrant workers in Russia may suffer some bad treatment. So be it. In the big picture, what's important is that a powerful Russia is the only front against pan-Turkism, Islamic expansionism and Western Globalism. Therefore, thank God for Russian nationalism.
DeleteRegarding Armenians and Armenia: When we have a people this politically illiterate, arrogant, egotistical, materialistic, clannish, jealous and selfish we will continue to have stories such as Mkhitar Sparapet's fate at the hands of Armenian peasantry. There are many such stories throughout our long history and many more to expect to come. Related to this is our people's almost instinctive desire to stay in the middle and play both sides of the fence. As long as we pursue complimentary politics, Armenia will remain divided and endangered.
The first major instance of complimentary politics was the building of Garni temple in Armenia around the year 100 AD in the Roman style (with Roman aid money). King Trdat did this to appease Rome at a time when Armenia was part of Persian civilization. We see similar processes today with Armenia in the middle of the West and Russia. Armenia is taking Western money and implementing Western projects inside Armenia against Russian wishes. For centuries after Armenian rulers began appeasing Rome, Armenia was a battle-zone between Persia and Rome. Then, Rome (the West) managed to bring Christianity (a powerful Roman cult at the time that appealed to the lower caste, the "people") into Armenia and Armenians took the bait very similar to how Armenians today have enthusiastically latched on to democracy and various modern Western belief systems. Armenians were lucky at the time that the Persian empire was in steady decline and by 650 AD Persia had converted to Islam and the ancient Aryan/Zoroastrian civilization came to an end. I say lucky because in the absence of a Zoroastrian Persia, Christianity became a positive force keeping Armenia out of the Islamic civilization. Today, we are once more stuck between two competing civilizations - West (Rome) and Russia (Persia). Today, we are pursuing politics in the manner that Trdat did. Today, as it was back then, Armenia has become a prize between two great empires. Today, as it was back then, our attempts to play both sides of the political fence is not making any side happy - as it is keeping Armenia stagnant and vulnerable.
Complimentary politics made sense in the 1990s when the Russian state was on its knees. It's a different story today. Russia has gone through its cycle of decline. Russia today is on the rise and will be the greatest power in the 21 century. I call on Armenians to wake up from their stupor and recognize this as an opportunity if only to extract benefits for the Armenian state. But Armenia today is saturated by Western mercenaries and peasantry believing in Western fairytales. Since collectively Armenians don't have any balls or political foresight to eradicate this fifth column in Armenian society, these will become an obstacle to Armenia's development within the Russian orbit. This is why we can expect more self-destructive/treasonous behavior.
Interesting ideas Arevordi. Another one for the "Arevordi's Quotable Quotes" file. I agree with pretty much everything you stated here, no doubt Armenia has almost always existed between two superpowers, and Armenian Kings and Nakharars (their roles now replaces by government officials and oligarchs/businessmen) have been plagued trying to appease rival foreigners. I have a slight technical question regarding Christianity though; did it not first take root in Armenia before being adopted by Rome? I know one of the many falsehoods the pseudohistorian nina garsoian (the bitch's work is heavily included in the elder hovannisian's "history of the Armenian people" filth) was taken to task for was her allegations that Armenia converted to Christianity in the late 310s or early 320s. She claimed that Armenia could not have converted any earlier because the pagan Emperor Diocletian would have declared war on Armenia if Armenia converted to Christianity. You seem to be suggesting Christianity was purposefully sent into Armenia by the Roman Empire in order to bring Armenians further under Roman influence, when in fact Rome did not convert to Christianity before Armenia, and actually persecuted the local Christians in their Empire? Wasn't it the case that Armenia became Christian first, and then Constantine followed suit a couple of years later?
DeleteWhatever the answer, it does not affect that broader point you made about Armenia being stuck in the middle between rival empires throughout the ages. There is definitely a lot of historical precedent which we must study; I also believe the Bagratuni Kingdom Era, when the Bagratunis were kings of most of Armenia, and the Artsrunis claimed the title kings of Vaspurakan, and some other noble families claimed kingship in their own regions is a good example of the benefits and the dangers of decentralized power being exploited by various foreign interests. But if Armenia adopted Christianity before Rome/Byzantium, and during the period when Rome/Byzantium was anti-Christian, then we should recognize it as so. Even though historical events ended up such that Christianity did bring Armenia much closer to the western world over the next two-thousand years... I just want to get my facts straight.
Christianity did exist in Armenia from the time of Christ. Armenia did officially adopt Christianity as a state religion before Rome. The aforementioned are beyond question. Garsoian can burn in hell.
DeleteWhat I am saying is that by the third century, Christianity was a very powerful cult in the Roman Empire and its values were being disseminated via Roman culture - areas of Roman influence, which was much of the known world at the time. Moreover, major things like adopting a while new belief system does not happen overnight. Roman was under a lot of pressure to officially adopt the cult that had come to dominate much of Roman society and Roman controlled eastern territories.
Moreover, if you recall, Gregory the Illuminator lived in Roman territory. His father, the assassin that killed the Armenian king, was probably under Roman payroll, which may explain why young Gregory was taken to Roman territory for his safety. Also, the series of events that according to our Church legend led to Armenia's conversion started when King Trdat wanted to marry Roman virgins Gayane and Hripsime, who were supposedly fleeing Roman persecution.
Christianity primarily traveled upon Roman roads.
With that said, all I'm saying is this -
West = Rome
Democracy = Christianity
Armenian Diaspora = Roman occupied Armenia Minor
Russia = Persia
Orthodox Christianity = Zoroastrianism
OK thank you for clarifying. Explained that way it fits into the general picture I had in mind of history. If the adoption of Christianity led to the "dark ages" in Europe back in the day, I shudder to think what kind of hellish nightmare democracy will lead the west into if it is as successfully imposed as Christianity was.
DeleteAnd yes, fuck Nina Garsoian.
(Part 1 of 2)
ReplyDeleteA short essay on yet another reason why I hate the ARF
-I'd like to note at the outset that I don't want to endorse of codemn any of the local Armenian politicians of Glendale or Los Angeles, they are just useful for demonstrating my point.
I am no longer interested in commenting on asbarez at this moment because there is no way to get our points across if we are "speaking" at a biased forum which prevents our words from being heard/read. It's not a major loss in any case, because only teenage and twenty-something Armenian youth in Los Angeles read the garbage they post there anyway, and this English-speaking, globalist-brainwashed demographic has negligible (in fact nearly non-existent) impact on the Republic of Armenia, which is the only battlefield Armenian Nationalists should be concerned with. History has already proven that the western diaspora is big-talking and grossly under-performing, whether measured in the number of volunteers during the Artsakh Liberation War, or the number of repatriates making "life in an independent Armenia" a reality, or even the amount donated to Armenia Fund. Thus the fact that they are so easily turned into agents acting against the Armenian State by propagamda like asbarez and the other controlled press should not concern anyone in the least bit because their "activism" activities will be limited to retweeting anti-Armenian hashtags on Twitter and liking Civilitas video links on Facebook... But something caught my eye when I succumbed to a disgusting urge to browse through the sewers that make up Asbarez's comments section.
For you Armenians who are not from the Los Angeles area, let me give you some background information. The city of Glendale is located within Los Angeles County, and has a population of about 191,000+ of which half or more are Armenians. Every four years Glendale holds elections for its five-member City Council, and the City Council picks one of its members as Mayor each year. Naturally, Armenian political organizations get into the mix, and things often get dirty. The Dashnak's ANCA is one of the biggest Armenian organizations in Glendale (if not the biggest), but its power is mostly illusory because Armenian voters are not united as a block, օտար political organizations target Armenian voters (and regularly target non-Armenian voters with discriminatory campaigns against Armenian candidates and Armenians in general), and often times there are more than five Armenians who want the five available seats so they start attacking each other (democracy at its finest). Anyway there is a politician named Chahe Keuroghelian who has stood for election for the past several elections. The Dashnaks have flip-flopped, endorsing him in the mid-2000s, vilifying him later on, and downright making him out to an "enemy of the people" figure in recent years (knowing the diaspora, I am sure many of the more brain-dead Dashnaks consider him "worse than Talaat and Enver" but that's another topic)... Anyway the reigning princess of anti-Armenian self-hatred/destructivism, Russophobia, and pro-western peddling Asbarez, the user shamelessly callings itself "Armenian", left this interesting comment on the article cited below:
http://asbarez.com/123743/paula-devine-wins-glendale-city-council-race/#comments
"Chahe is the physical embodiment of an Armenian phenomenon, and something that has for some time now, hindered the advancement of Armenians as a people and a political force: driven by greed, and the egocentric self-promotion of oneself instead of the candidate or individual who is most electable or best suited for an office or position. His actions once again demonstrate just how destructive the Armenian ego is for the collective, and just as he has done before, Chahe’s candidacy has once again prevented another Armenian from taking a City Council seat in a city that is 40% Armenian. I am 100% sure he is getting paid to run for office every year and divide the Armenian vote."
(Part 2 of 2)
ReplyDeletePut aside the lofty rhetoric which has been misapplied to the most trivial and inappropriate of situations here - being posted by the "bottom bitch" of Armenian self-destructivism no less - and we can see this reveals a few things, mainly that "Armenian" is likely based in Los Angeles and that it basically pushes the ANCA line. We can be sure of that because other than the ARF no one in the Armenian Community in LA gives a damn about Chahe Keuroghelian, or much less sees him as an enemy deserving hate and ridicule, especially given the case that the Dashnaks regularly endorse non-Armenian candidates over Chahe. The reason the Dashnaks do that is because their power as a lobby and political force is almost nil, and they only way they can appear influential is to endorse candidates who would have won in any case - good examples of this are Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff and Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer who undoubtedly would win any election in their districts by default because the districts are overwhelmingly Democratic. Having no influence, or intention, to purse an actual pro-Armenia lobbying campaign in California, the Dashnaks are left to petty local elections and mud-slinging campaigns to keep themselves relevant... So much for "միայն զենքով կայ հայոց փրկութիւն"
I used to think this asshole might have been a non-Armenian troll operating out of a state department office, but now I think "Armenian" is just a ARF/AYF/ANCA-associated jackass with a twisted fetish for cyber Armenia-bashing. I suspect if we were to look through the list of recent ANCA Leo Sarkissian interns, or did investigations at AYF "barahantes" events, we would reveal the identity of this cyber-warrior. But that's beside my point. I want to highligh the anti-Armenianism prevailing in Dashnak organizations in the west. When Arevordi writes about the danger the diasopra poses for Armenia, this is what he is referring to. I have no personal vendetta against the ARF, but I just cannot cut this piece of shit organization any more slack as its members take the lead in attacking the Armenian state. The Dashnaks in LA, specially the youth and college-level members, seem to be more passionate in their hatred of the Armenian state and government than even the Azeri consulate. If there is a movement in Yerevan to crack down on western activists in Yerevan, I hope the ARF gets the treatment it deserves. From its venomous newspapers to its youth organization that takes every opportunity to attack the Armenian state (from "gay rights" to protesting Russian Border Troops killing two armed Turkish agents who tried infiltrating the Armenian border) to its professional lobbying organization which spends its resources promoting Raffi Hovannisian's failed coup d'etat attempt (anca's seto boyadjian, aba's garo ghazarian, etc.) to its morons and whores like maria titizian and garen yegparian. I can't overemphasize the danger that its organization poses for Armenia.
Relations progressing well
ReplyDeletehttp://armenpress.am/eng/news/764920/representatives-of-more-than-20-companies-of-russia-attend-%E2%80%9Ccu-armenia-cooperation%E2%80%9D-economic-forum.html
http://www.armradio.am/en/2014/06/10/russia-to-shoot-a-film-about-the-1988-devastating-earthquake-in-armenia/
http://armenpress.am/eng/news/764681/armenia-is-on-list-of-top-five-friendly-countries-to-russia.html
Long time reader
(Issues Part 1)
ReplyDeleteTense issues are cropping up all over the place and things are getting hotter. The Ukraine issue is falling too much in favor of Moscow as they have not taken the bait. What was supposed to go down as yet another Western takeover of another government failed. The boys in the West had no plan b, but one was created on the fly. Why not get Moscow to enter and take loses on the ground as the Ukis are a joke but can still be deployed asymmetrically and sting Moscow, they can’t stop the Russians but they do have the ability to inflict pain. This would shore up the counter propaganda and keep Russia as the new boogieman. However Moscow by not taking the bait and has switched the roles, it is the Ukie army that has to face the asymmetrical response by Russian patriots on the ground. The Ukes have lost countless assets in Crimea alone, never mind all the captured weapons on the ground in the East of the country and the outright downing of how many choppers now? The Ukes are unprepared for this and so is the West. There was talk of arming Ukraine but why do you have to arm them if they have such success? The answer is they are failing miserably, they are only racking up large damage to civil populated areas and simply turning everyone against them. In addition whatever assists they hit are theirs, they are hitting airports in the East but who uses these except the Ukrainian air force? This is costing them an arm and a leg and this is also not going according to the Western plan. Ukraine is a mess and the West owns this mess and it is in the international limelight. The propaganda war in Ukraine has been lost, every day that Moscow sits back is yet another nail in the coffin of the Ukrainian escapade.
As of today there are major ISIS forces in Iraq moving in on cities it’s a mess. This same group that the West has armed to fight Assad is now taking the offensive in Iraq. The same forces that attacked Aleppo and Kesab are attacking Kurds in the North of Iraq as well, this has Turkish fingerprints all over it. The same Turkish / Nato sponsored terror groups have been unleashed. There are numerous videos and photo’s showing huge amount of armed vehicles moving freely in the open. How could this kind of army be laying in secret? The matter of fact is this is no secret this is all been planed way in advance. There is too much force projection for it to have gone unnoticed this long by anyone but the blind. Conveniently they have gotten millions of dollars and gold from banks. The same gold that the Fed can’t deliver to Germany, ha ha is now in the hands of the Islamic forces. Too boot they have continently gotten air assets such as choppers tanks and you name it. An entire army has been formed in Iraq and is on the loose. How nice to park choppers and gold just where they could find them. Who wrote this script?
If that were all of it I would say that’s enough but wait. Resent reports out of Armenia are starting to sound alarm bells. Where before our stance to shootings was the standard we will punish them x more for every one they snipe has been replaced by talk I have not heard discussed openly since I can’t remember when. There are reports coming in that Turkish troops are in Naxcivan. There are reports of fighting and Armenian troops taking some land in Naxcivan! What are toorks doing in Naxcivan? And who amongst you think that the West ever cared about your Genocide? They are planning to attack you idiots stand there with your two puppet senators and plead your case, you have no clue what idiots you are.
Vahram
Well the Ukrs are creating a humanitarian disaster in Slavyansk and neighboring towns by using artillery against population centers. I am not too impressed with Russia's play on this at this point. They need to be setting up a humanitarian corridor straight to Slavyansk regardless of what UN says, as well as financing for the people fighting there. The people fighting are common folks with day jobs, their families need to have financial support - men can't just quit their jobs with families to feed to go fight. I am also seeing some interference in allowing volunteers from Russia to go. Thousands of Chechens want to go fight, they should let them.
Delete( Issues part II )
ReplyDeleteThe deal Russia made with China also came with and added bonus for Iran, while they signed the historic deal between the two powers they also spoke of a defense packed with Iran. There are too many things happening on a geopolitical and milpolitical scale happening in rapid succession for there to be any coincidence to all this. I never understood the dealings of the West with Islamic lunatics such as the Taliban, this came back to bite them hard. But an entire Islamic army forming and swiftly taking over large chunks of Iraq is not something that happens on it’s own.
This grand game has just gotten more serious and the Western political institutions are corrupted and inept to the core. I don’t think there is any creditable Western military intelligence that would even advocate for one second arming of these bastards, but I do think the Western politico’s have lost their minds as this will bite everyone. Don’t get me wrong everyone will feel this, but there is going to be one hell of a blowback for the West from this. In the end this will hurt the West way more and inflict continuous pain while others extract themselves from this.
Months ago I posted and said there might be some monitory reasons for this. Given what I see on the ground I don’t see any positive thing coming for the dollar from this. In fact this is exactly what not to do to save the position of the petrodollar. If economic war is at hand there has to be some money making venture, releasing Islamic hell hounds all over the place does nothing for the position of the petrodollar it only serves to weaken it. Oil is up, markets are down supposedly for some technical stuff that has been on the charts for so long and they have ignored it now they care about it? Markets are down oil is up because Islamic hell hounds are roaming the streets. There is no putting this jinni back in the bottle. China has Russia for it’s oil, the West needs this oil more then anyone else does. Setting the place on fire is only going to limit the oil trade to Russia, as the ME will become a cauldron. What is Europe going to do now? Get oil from Iraq via the Turkish pipeline? guess what it’s been shut down! As a side show supposedly they have taken 80 Turks as hostage as a game to show that Turkey is getting hurt too...LOL nice try but this is a game they are all safe and sound as per the plan, but the governor of Takrit is dead in the street and they have been killings of officials yet the Turks are safe! Eurofreaks just tried to shut down the new South Stream pipeline by playing games, let them shut it down now! I have never seen or read such stupidity being played by such large and well developed powers. The simple fact is all this is hurting the West more, this is doing nothing to help the West these are simply the most stupid moves I have ever seen. I don’t think the West sees reality any more, I simply think it is not in their calculus as they are playing dress the emperor naked and setting fire to Rome after a night at the orgy.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68496
http://www.lragir.am/index/eng/0/comments/view/32570#sthash.qwbmBk6m.dpuf
Vahram
This is inline with what I have been saying take a look at this quote link is below.
ReplyDelete"The Islamic Emirate in Iraq and the Levant is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on behalf of "Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal, the brother of the current Saudi Foreign Minister and of the Saudi ambassador in Washington. He is funded and supervised jointly by U.S., French and Saudi officers. Over the past month, he has received new weapons from Ukraine, where Saudi Arabia has acquired a weapons factory, and via Turkey, which has created a special rail line alongside a military airport to supply the IEIL."
http://www.voltairenet.org/article184211.html
Turks, West, Saudi and Jew what a brotherly love triangle this makes.
Vahram
Islamic movements in Syria and Iraq are a joint effort by Western-Israeli-Turkish-Gulf Arab states to curb the growth of Iranian/Shiite influence in the region. It's part of their effort to destroy what Westerners call the "Iranian arc" and deprive Russia from entering the region's political equation.
DeleteReports about turkish troops inside Nachickevan are filtering through, true, false or half truths is difficult to know. The only constant in the status quo is the Azeri cease fire violations and the number of casualties of our soldiers. Of course we do not know how much Azeris fall dead in these cease fire violations, but one armenian soldier death is one death too many. Our government keeps reminding and admonishing the Azeries of an appropriate response . We don't know if this is just posturing or genuine defiance. Is time in Azeries favor ? The hardware they seem to be getting in gargantuan quantities can be cancelled out by qualitatively superior, though numerically inferior, advance technogoly weaponry in Armenia's arsenal. But again this is not something it can be appraised with any degree of certaintly. War will one day break out, the status quo can be maintained for as long as Armenia maintains her superiority edge. But ultimately the turks will pursue and attempt to reach their historical objective . I am not sure about Russias attitude. But one thing is certain, the Armenians in Russia should start galvanizing their efforts and thinking of becoming a strong factor within the Kremlin strategists and policy makers.
ReplyDeleteAs long as Armenians continue flirting with Western powers and, as you suggested refrain from lobbying effectively in the Kremlin, Armenia's position in the south Caucasus with be tenuous at best. At the end of the day, Russians (Christian Slavs in Russia in particular) understand the region's geostrategic nuances much better than us Armenians and they have the tools to actually do something about it. Therefore, and as much as I hate to say this, I have more hope in Russians protecting Armenia than I do in Armenians. The entire Armenian' nation's (including the traditional Diaspora's) number one priority needs to be the fostering better Russo-Armenian relations. Take it however you like but this is the current reality and this is something we are not adapting well to.
DeleteThe pro-Obama (so-called liberal) side of the government-controlled corporate media in the US is painting the situation in Iraq in very simplistic terms. The anti-Obama (so-called conservative) side of the government-controlled corporate media is making it seem very complicated. What is happening in Iraq has been in fact going on ever since Iraqi Shiites unexpectedly came into power in Baghdad when the badly executed US/British invasion of Iraq took place back in 2003. What is happening in Iraq is a war between Iranian-backed Shiites and Western/Saudi-backed Sunnis. In other words, as in Syria, this is yet another proxy war the West is fighting against the increase of Iranian influence in the region. As in Syria, the West is using Islamic extremists - via Saudi Arabia - to fight its wars. Similar to how the Western-instigated crisis in Ukraine runs the risk of drawing Russia into the mess in Ukraine, the Western-instigated crisis in Iraq runs the risk of drawing Iran into the Iraqi mess. In the big geostrategic picture, what is happening in Iraq is a Western/Saudi Arabian effort to put a wedge in the "Iranian arc" - swath of strategic territory from Lebanon to Iran that is currently under Shiite/Alewite rule. How the CIA/Mossad backed Kurdistan fits in all this and what Kurds will do still remain to be seen. In the big picture, what's been happening in Iraq is Western style democracy in action.
ReplyDeleteThe west's recklessness and short-sightedness, and its utter disregard for civilian casualties in the Middle East (or Native Americans, or German and Japanese civilians, or anyone else for that matter) may completely set the region in flames... And if I were a Turkish analyst, I'd be terrified for Turkey. Turning the east and south of your country into an international terrorist transport hub, wars raging among and within your neighbors, having most of your large and backwards population in poverty and your economy depending on the quickly sinking west, all on top of an almost inevitable future conflict with Russia over your dying pan-Turanist ideals...
DeleteArmenians need to put their cutthroat, vicious, opportunist, underhanded, and cunning skills (normally reserved for business or personal politics) to full use in order to, when the time is right, pay back the turks for everything they've done for the past few centuries.
Turkey should have collapsed as a major power in the mid 1800s, until the west in the form of Britain and France saved by waging the Crimean War against Russia. Turkey should have collapsed in 1918, except that the victorious western allies were too busy bickering over who would get the scraps left over from the Ottoman Empire, while the Italians thought the Turks would be useful in checking rising Greek power in the Mediterranean, and then the whole of the west decided Turkey was worth saving as a pawn against the newly formed USSR. Turkey should have been overrun by the Red Army in 1945, but the leaders of the "free and democratic" did everything they could to save the Turkish dictatorship leading to the so-called Truman Doctrine (which if our disaporan idiots had any real patriotism or self-respect they would accept is still an active foreign policy priority of the assholes funding NGOs, propaganda outlets, and "opposition" politicians inside Armenia). Turkey is long overdue for a thorough collapse and partitioning. The quicker the west loses control over the middle east, the quicker the era of the petrodollar comes to an end, the quicker that fed-up Europeans and Americans begin revolting against the system, the quicker the end of Turkey's artificial life extension will come to an end.
And it's not only Armenians who should get the justice they deserved. Greeks, Bulgarians (because of the Thracian Bulgarian Genocide), Assyrians and many other Christians who suffered from Turkish tyranny should also get their justice.
DeleteThanks for the additional point Jerriko. You are correct in that many countries are deserving of justice from the Turks. Being an Armenian I usually limit my statements to Armenia, but we all fully recognize that Greeks and Assyrians were subjected to the same program of decimation as the Armenians were. And it is no surprise that the Balkans, long-occupied by the Turks, can trace most of its problems to Turkish actions in the area.
DeleteThat being said, I'd like to point out that Greece has essentially zero chance of getting anything out of Turkey today because Greece is a vassal of NATO and the EU. Hypothetically, if Armenia invaded Turkey tomorrow, Greece and Bulgaria would be bound under NATO to declare war on Armenia. Now of course in reality the populations of Bulgaria and Greece would likely be unanimous in wishing to see Turkey destroyed (except for the millions of Muslims who have become Greek and Bulgarian citizens), but in the "democratic" EU no one gives a damn what the people want, power flows downward through diktats from unelected EU officials. Hell, Greece can barely raise its voice over the Turkish rape of Cyprus because of how totalitarian the "Greek" regime is; Golden Dawn's persecution demonstrates that the EU runs the show in Athens, and as we all know Turks are a favorite tool of the EU.
All this just goes to show the importance of having Russia in Armenia as the only effective counterweight to the anglo-america-zionist-Islamist-Turkic dictatorship which imposes its authority over the west.
Listen to this
ReplyDeletehttp://lratvakan.am/?p=38794
Vahram
With all due respects Arevordi but this Russky is out of line: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68551 Can you at least criticize him?
ReplyDeleteActually the Russian gentleman has a point. I see no problem with Armenians being fluent in Russian and I would encourage such a thing. Obviously Armenian is and must be the first language but in a world of global economics, a small country like Armenia must prepare its future generations to speak multiple languages. Especially if they are entering a Russian led economic union. The fact that we don't indicates a failure of our education system over the last 20 years. Russian, Chinese and German are the best 2nd languages to learn. English will remain the main international diplomatic language so all diplomats must be fluent in it. For all Armenians living in Georgia, the Georgian language must remain a priority. With it Armenians that can penetrate the Georgian politics and business circles thus increasing our influence there. Seems logical to me!
DeleteArto2
Please don't waste everyone's time by posting garbage from western funded PR outlets like eurasianet.org. The author of that idiotic article is the Georgian faggot Giorgi Lomsadze, he's the only person on that page who deserves criticism, and a swift kick in the ass. Lomsadze ought to spend some time covering Georgian crimes against the Armenian nation like their presidential palace and their Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi built on top of destroyed Armenian graveyards over the past 23 years, rather than grossly misquoting a Russian official encouraging Armenians not to forget the Russian language - not, as Lomsadze's misleading title implies, to speak Russian as a replacement for the Armenian language.... Hey speaking of the Armenian language, I wonder why Lomsadze is not as concerned with the hardships, unofficial bans, and discrimination the Armenian language experiences in the Armenian-majority districts of Georgia. Gee, you don't suppose this western funded propaganda outlet is more interested in grasping at straws to take cheap shots at Russia and try to drive a wedge between Armenia and Russia, do you?
DeleteHere's a good rule to apply when reading an article: ask 1) what are the sources of this claim; 2) do the sources have any personal/political/religious/ideological interests against the party they are attacking; 3) do the sources have a history of bias and deceit? eurasianet, lragir, hetq.am, armenianow, radio liberty, aravot, civilitas, turkish-azeri-georgian--israeli media, and the entirety of the west's mainstream media fail this test without exception.
The Ukrs were declaring that they were going to take control of the border today in Lugansk. I guess their plan went to total crap with both their armoured column getting ambushed and a transport plane being shot down. Ukr Media is claiming that these were airborn troops from mostly eastern regions, but their are rumors that the real number is much higher and they were carrying among other Luthuanian special forces.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hungarianambiance.com/2014/06/hungary-donated-usd-1-million-to-build.html
ReplyDeleteI guess Hungary found a good use for the blood money it accepted from Azerbaijan for the release of axe murderer safarov, as it donated a million dollars for the "temple of hollowhoax worship" in Washington DC.
I often hear Armenians, particularly effeminate diasporans, bitching with the defeatist line "Armenia is not a normal country", often pinning the blame on the Russians. Well the example of Hungaria, and the rest of the kike-dominated EU and US, should hit us like ice water. For all its severe geopolitical problems, and for all the lack of political maturity in Armenians, we should be proud that the Republics of Armenia and Artsakh have not been reduced to whorehouses servicing anglo-american-zionist interests.
Hungary, and the rest of eastern Europe, have been reduced to a sick joke. Look at this celebration of islam the EU promoted recently in the Czech Republic:
US Government Promoting Islam in Czech Republic
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4262/islam-czech-republic
And look at the pitiful debt slavery and austerity that Romania, Bulgaria, and specially Greece find themselves in, despite these countries being surrounded by generally peaceful neighbors (ie no major wars to fight, and no imminent Turkish military invasions), having excellent seashores and islands for tourist purposes, being rich in natural resources, and having generally well-educated populations (isn't educations supposed to be the magical key to wealth and success in the west?).
It's a fact beyond dispute now: these former Warsaw Pact nations had it much better under the post-Stalin Soviets than they do under the Anglo-Kike alliance.
UN warns against mounting racism in Europe
ReplyDeletehttp://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-elections-2014/navi-pillay-warns-against-mounting-racism-europe-302717
More on Arevordi's point about the Western masses getting fed up. The globalist power structure is getting worried.
I would be happy if Europe's peoples do end up expelling their Muslim enemies en masse though, though how would it play out, that remains to be seen.
DeleteOn one additional note, I wouldn't exactly say that the former Warsaw Pact nations had it better under Soviet rule because of the corruption, but today's Eastern Europe is really going down the drain. One final note however, there is a trend in my Filipino homeland that should easily apply to most nations in the world: that the price for freedom in the Philippines and possibly other nations throughout the world is poverty, but the price for prosperity is repression. What I am seeing in Ukraine is that due to their traditional anti-Russian animosity, they inadvertently (or willingly) placed themselves under IMF-imposed debt slavery because it is seen as the lesser of two evils compared to Kremlin-imposed 'slavery'.
Jerriko, I would be happy for Europe to be free of its muslims and other third world immigrants as well. It would be an entirely altruistic happiness, I'd feel good that they saved themselves from the doom that mass immigration will otherwise bring them in the future. Such an event occurring would not have any benefits whatsoever from Armenia or Russia, and any Armenian who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy world where western Europeans look east and see their Christian, Aryan brothers. Reality is quite the opposite in fact, and if Europe shed its muslims and became all native again, they would grow stronger and the EU elites would be in a better position to pursue their energy interests at the expense of Russia and Armenia. I guess what I am trying to say is expelling muslims would be good for Europe, but nothing will change until the Anglo-American-Zionist ruling class is destroyed.
DeleteMy point about the Warsaw Pact was that the Soviets did not tolerate homosexuality (despite what the Alex Jones types like to claim), nor did it tolerate Islamic extremism, nor did it promote mass race-mixing and mass immigration, nor did it tolerate unnatural perversions for the sexes. Easter Europe could scrape on by under Soviet corruption, but the degeneracy the EU is promoting will is lethal.
And Ukrainians have proven to be short-sighted morons. Only the lowest forms of political illiterates with no self-respect would think of 2014's EU as preferable to Putin's Russia (except maybe for Muslim immigrants). In Ukraine you have "Nazis" doing the dirty work for jew leaders yatsenyuk, timoshenko, nuland, and the EU where holocaustianity and debt to jew banks are the international religions. You have Catholic assholes who simply hate Eastern Christians. And you have short-sighted "activists" of all stripes (feminist, environmentalist, anti-corruption, homosexual) who have had their frustrations directed by the invisible hand of the west towards Russia, a brotherly country they are dependent on and powerless to escape in any meaningful way... I don't know if the Philippines can be compared to the situation in Ukraine because they will be in poverty no matter what due to their self-destructive nature.
Very good advice though, as long as the economic levers are controlled by the US Dollar and the IMF and World Bank, uncooperative/free countries will be blackballed.
I know one cannot look at political developments, particularly developments occurring in foreign countries, with anything other than through realpolitik-focused eyes, but the barbarism of the west's "peaceful freedom activists" is just sickening beyond description. I can only imagine how history will remember this period in American history: enabling these types of inhumane massacres of civilians abroad, while crying helplessly at home when every week or so another over-medicated degenerate goes on killing spree:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infowars.com/gruesome-footage-of-isis-atrocities-reveals-al-qaeda-jihadists-will-stop-at-nothing/
Brutal Compilation most fierce DRIVE BY Missions by ISIS fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSQ7GMQW2AM
As an Armenian, I can only say I wish that the hypocrites who have been knowingly tasked with spreading anti-Assad messages within Armenia and the Armenian community, and their families, had been inside one of those cars which the "peace activists" showered with "freedom and democracy".
Saudi Arabia, Sunni Caliphate, NATO Run Secret Terror Army in Iraq and Syria
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infowars.com/saudi-arabia-sunni-caliphate-nato-run-secret-terror-army-in-iraq-and-syria/
"Saudi conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 [when] US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran’s arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. ISIS has been harbored, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and Persian Gulf states within Turkey’s (NATO territory) borders and has launched invasions into northern Syria with, at times, both Turkish artillery and air cover. The most recent example of this was the cross-border invasion by Al Qaeda into Kasab village, Latikia province in northwest Syria."
"According to Cartalucci, the Sunni rampage in Iraq is about providing a pretext to introduce NATO into Syria and finalize the current stalemate there. “Through Iraq, NATO has used its terrorist proxies to create a pretext to put this ‘buffer zone’ strategy back into motion,” he writes. “The prospect of the US, NATO, or the Persian Gulf states delivering Iraq from ISIS is an ironic tragedy – as definitive evidence reveals ISIS’ brutal incursion was of this collective coalition’s own doing to begin with, and for its own insidious ends. Instead, a joint Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian anti-terror campaign should be conducted to corner and crush NATO’s terrorist mercenary expeditionary force once and for all.""
"The globalists are primarily interested in fomenting chaos and disorder. Iraq was invaded in 2003 because it was a relatively strong contender in the neighborhood – and this is, as well, why it was coaxed into attacking Iran and, fatefully, Kuwait. Bush’s” Mission Accomplished” was not a tribute to the defeat of Saddam Hussein. It was an acknowledgement that Iraq had been reduced to a failed state on par with Yemen and countries in sub-Sahara Africa."
(Part 1 of 2)
ReplyDeleteRT - The Choice: Abandoning Thoughts of Abortion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VquCR48hAg
Russia's state-sponsored RT recently did a documentary on the topic of abortion. I think that this is monumental in terms of social policy, demographic planning, and setting the moral foundations of the Russian state back to the traditional, Orthodox Christian roots which helped Russia become a great power in the first place. Once again Russia proves to be the last front for traditional Christian/European values and against the immoral policies worshiped in the west. While I personally understand that often times pregnancies are unplanned and occur by accident, I cannot pretend that abortion is anything less than murder for the sake of convenience. I doubt anyone but the most brainwashed ultraliberal can claim otherwise if they take the time to actually watch footage of an abortion being performed, or look at sonograms of the live fetus within the womb before the abortion is performed, or most disturbingly look at the corpse of the fetus after its life has been ended. It's one thing to claim that "I need to end this fetus's life because I cannot or do not want to be responsible for a child right now" - that may be immoral but at least it is honest; the western power establishment wants to streamline the process by which women come to the decision to have an abortion, so they simply impose the false idea that the fetus is not alive until it leaves the womb and that way the expecting mother does not have to deliberate the moral and ethical considerations that such a decision entails. The west instead wants aborting a fetus to have as little stigma and consequence attached to it as a scab falling off from a wound.
In the west, the ruling powers preach that abortion is a fundamental part of the conept of women's rights. While I share the views Arevordi expressed earlier regarding women, that they are not property and deserve respect, I hold that abortions are not just a woman's choice, the decision also effects the father as well as the unborn child. By simple, universal math, the decision by one will be effecting more than three people. Yet, you will be very hard pressed to find any group apart from the religious nutjobs who argue otherwise, and unfortunately the problem with the religious freaks is that they only care about opposing abortion because they think it will buy them a ticket to heaven. The hypocritical pro-life crowd loses interest after the period for abortion expires, they seem neither interested in contributing to help the child and its family through financial aid, nor do they seem interested in working on actual programs to prevent unwanted pregnancies from occurring in the first place such as an actual sexual education program (not "you'll burn in hell if you procreate before marriage" topped off with "masturbation is a sin") and widespread access to condoms (because abstinence programs usually don't work, particularly in a hyper-sexualized society).
(Part 2 of 2):
ReplyDeletePutting the moral arguments aside, abortions have several negative consequences for nations, including Russia and Armenia. Particularly in more primitive societies, Armenia being no exception, daughters are viewed as less useful than sons for whatever reasons (sons work, sons "carry on the family name", etc.) and therefore when ultraliberals and feminists introduce abortions to these societies, a disproportionate number of girls are killed off and the societal/demographic balance is thrown out of order. The long terms consequences of having too many males and not enough females are a devastating threat to nations, and sadly Armenia's case here is very, very severe. Additionally, abortions serve to undermine the traditional values of the family, and are thus a part of the war against "Family, Country, God" that states need as a foundation. That's why the west pushes abortions, homosexuality, hypersexuality, pedophilia, militant feminism, and all other sorts of socio-cultural poison on targeted nations. And here is where the role of the Church comes into play in combating the west. Russia under President Putin, of course, leads the way and has set the golden standard in this regard. And lastly, abortions contribute to the freefalling birth rates that we see in developed countries, and I do not need to emphasize that Armenia CANNOT AFFORD to give up any more ground in the demographics department. In that respect, I'd like to point out this short article below and the remarkable demographic turnaround President Putin's Russia has had. In this regard the history of abortion, and its development which is intended primarily for eugenics purposes, is very interesting. By applying the concept of abortions instead for a self-imposed population control, countries like Armenia are in fact declaring war on nature in an attempt to stunt their own natural growth, and this can only lead to devastating consequences:
Pro Life Russia
http://www.tomatobubble.com/id401.html
I'd like to add that a huge requirement for preventing women from getting abortions is for the male partners to act like men and actually take responsibility for their roles in the pregnancy and beyond. It is very easy for the west and its militant feminists to twist this issue and use it as a tool to turn women against men by playing on womens feelings of vulnerability and historical fear/resentment of being oppressed and treated like property. I can't emphasize this enough: women are (slightly more than) half the nation, and for a nationalist program to be successful it needs to have as many men and women on board as possible to maturely confront these topics. And when it comes to abortions, the state and Church need to impose on all levels of society that 1) procreation is patriotic, 2) murder is immoral, 3) expecting couples can expect generous (or at least decent) support from the state (Hitler enacted a very successful domestic policy among these lines a few short years after he ended the chaos of the Weimar Era), 4) condoms should be widely available and high school/college students educated in how they can prevent unwanted pregnancies while still allowing intercourse because prevention is probably the most effective way of bringing down the number of abortions, 5) the long-term physical and psychological effects on women should be explained, 6) women considering abortions should be shown sonograms and photos of their fetuses, videos of abortions being performed so that they understand the consequences of their actions, photos of aborted fetuses, 7) if possible, the male should also be required to be consulted, and 8) the woman should be offered and strongly encouraged to talk to a priest, and the priest should be trained by the Church to be both compassion/understanding as well as firm in their offering of guidance.
ps abortions for tuks, azeris, israelis, pakistanis, and saudis, however, should be strongly encouraged.
Very well expressed thoughts on this very important sociopolitical issue, Sarkis. Your efforts are fully appreciated.
DeleteThank you for the compliments and encouragement Arevordi, and thank you for providing me with a forum to express my views on this and other topics. I cannot think of a single other English language Armenian forum where I could express my opinions without getting censored to oblivion. Sorry to veer off topic from this excellent blog entry focusing Artsakh and Ukraine, but these issues need to be addressed and unfortunately the only voices to be heard are usually from western agents.
DeleteSo the terrorists in Kiev were taught a hard lesson in not using their aircraft to attack the freedom-loving, Russian-speaking patriots in the East:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Air_Force_Ilyushin_Il-76_shoot-down
Ukraine has successfully been turned, from the corrupt country it was before the 2014 Revolution (aka Operation Nuland), to the hellish, bankrupt, bleak and barren warzone of today. It should have been obvious from the outset in 2013 for the protestors that another forceful regime change would accomplish absolutely no change except putting the country at serious risk for a total collapse... Once again we see that the self-destructive masses of Armenia's region are not only stupid, but extremely dangerous.
And check out these laughable statements from that clown Yatsenyuk, sadly he still has some of the truly hopeless bottom segments of Ukrainian society sincerely falling for his incitements:
"Ukrainian acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk remarked, "They lost their lives because they defended men and women, children and the elderly who found themselves in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders and sponsored by them inhumans. First, we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil.""
Take what you are being told by the Western news media with a grain of salt. A lot still remains unknown about events on the ground in Iraq. What is clear however is that the renewed carnage in Iraq is essentially a renewed effort to drive a wedge in what Western and Saudi interests see as growing Iranian influence in the region. Bloodthirsty demons of the so-called terror group known as ISIS are essentially those who Western powers have been supporting inside Syria for the past three years. Because their plans against Damascus were not successful, they have turned their attention against the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad. Every single one of Iraq's catastrophic problems are a result of Western aggression beginning in 1990. At a time when most things are made in China, some things remain exclusively made in America -
ReplyDeletehttp://rt.com/news/166092-iraq-militants-mass-executions/
Sadly, the situation in Iraq evolves in the direction wanted by the (in)famous Oded Yinon plan from 1982: the partition of Iraq in three parts according to ethnic and confessional demarcations.
ReplyDeleteDuring all the years of the Iraq permanent crisis Israel built solid connections in Kurdistan. It might be that eventually the famous Mediterranean pipeline (Mosul-Haifa) will be reactivated. That was the main reason of the destruction of the Iraqi state in the first place. One may wonder why it took so long to come to fruition.
I believe that the strike in Iraq is indeed directed at Iran. It is an attempt to embroil it in a large scale war.
In Ukraine it is obvious that Russia is the final target. The Zios decided to attack before it would be to late, when Eurasia would consolidate and made absolutely impossible any mischief. I suspect that the plan would have entailed revolts of the Muslim populations in Russia (again the Caucasus, but the Tatars as well). The creation of a "caliphate" would give a new impetus to the plans concocted by Brzezinski and Huntington.
http://forum.hyeclub.com/showthread.php/11485-Nagorno-Karabagh-Military-Balance-Between-Armenia-amp-Azerbaijan/page1071?p=351596&viewfull=1#post351596
ReplyDeleteAccording to as yet unconfirmed sources (but nonetheless reliable from past experience) , the Armenian Army liberated some historical Armenian territory inside Nakhichevan. Vahram's link from above (http://lratvakan.am/?p=38794) comments on this.
Needless to say, there are several conclusions to be drawn here:
-First, the Armenian Army has once again demonstrated that it is fully capable of not only securing Armenia's borders, but taking the fight directly to the Azeris in order to secure buffer zones to protect Armenia. I'm sure everyone here already appreciates the military of Armenia, but it's good to see them shining in action after several years of a toxic doom-and-gloom campaign by the western agents, media and NGOs trying to create hysteria over non-combat deaths which plagued the Armenian Army. While even one non-combat death is unacceptable, it is also a normal part of every army in the world, and it was despicable to see the political west trying once again to turn an Armenian tragedy into a political weapon to use against the Armenian state.
-Such a decision would not have occured without the approval of Moscow. Which makes me wonder whether Moscow wanted to send a message to Turkey regarding the was in Syria. Turkey is under treaty to defend Azerbaijan's claims to Nakhichevan, and Turkey's chest-pounding political and military leaders point it out every chance they get. Nakhichevan is a pretext Turkey hopes to use in order to keep its hopes of increasing its influence in the South Caucasus (and beyond) alive. It's also a psychological tool to pressure Armenia and to remind the Azeris that Azerbaijan's future is with "big brother" Ankara... If this was the strategic geopolitical calculus used, then we see a clear case of Armenia benefiting from its alliance with Russia at the expense of our Turkish and Azeri enemies.
-Turkey has not made any noise over Nakhichevan, neither has Azerbaijan in stark contrast to their normally ultra-belligerent tone for Armenia. Have the big, bad NATO minions of the region figured out that Armenia and Russia have check-mated their aspirations? Are they trying to save face with, and legitimacy in the eyes of, their highly disgruntled populations? It would not take much agitation to get some major riots going in both Turkey and Azerbaijan.
-I suspect the west, having run out of serious levels within Armenia, will take desperate attempts to stir up protests inside Armenia. Maybe they will activate hayrikyan or oskanian. LTP and even Raffi/Heritage seem to have lost their effects. Armenianow and Hetq might do a piece or two on corruption in the military, or neopotism in the government... IF that is the case, I hope Russia follows through on its recent public warnings in Yerevan about the unacceptable anti-Russian subversions by western activists in the country by ordering the Armenian Security Service to severely crack down on agitators and provocateurs.
I have a feeling Armenia acted alone on this. I think Armenia went rogue on Moscow for a change. For years the baboon has been sniping at our guys, and for years we have had a set response. As of late warnings from Yerevan have explicitly warned everyone that the situation would not permit the status to continue and that drastic measures would be taken. This was way before Ukraine so I have this feeling in my gut that this is a pure Armenian move.
DeleteFor years Moscow has been content at the situation just the way it is. After selling all the Arms they could they beefed up the Armenian base as a counter. Azerie's seen this and figured they would take advantage of the situation. While they are in no position to do anything militarily, politically internal and external and economically. As the recent meeting in Baku they expressed concern that their pipelines would come under terrorist attack. If Baku has such a worry about terrorists they are scared to death about any Armenian strike on such pipelines. But they felt brave and comfy in the sniping war. All this has changed.
I believe also seeing the situation for what it was Armenia finally made a move. This is something Baku is not ready to counter and the world is busy other places. The Turks are knee deep with issues and the Middle East, they have internal issues and this thing is going to go out of control for them on the ME front. Moscow is busy in Ukraine, Syria, customs union and playing games again with long range bomber patrols. This leaves two people in the playing field Armenia and Azerbaijan. Baku started playing this game and was warned many times not to play around, the warnings have stopped action been taken and this did not come with a nod from Moscow in my view.
Getze Hayastan!
Vahram
Just to add one more thing. This move by Armenia does not fit in to anybodies calculus at all. The West despite whatever it's doing behind the scenes keeps saying that there is no military solution to this. After all the West would love to have the Jewel of the region Armenia, and they want it in tacked. The US has built the second largest embassy in the world in tinny Armenia for a reason, and they did not build it to inherit a fucking smoke pile. The West wants Armenia in it's fold and without Armenia they are checkmated period!
DeleteSo who wants this? Moscow....NO, they are doing a very good game with Ukraine right now. If Moscow is not going in to Ukraine as I have repeatedly said they will do nothing until Kiev folds. But lets look at this, Moscow is not intruding in Ukraine yet they are going to have the temerity to give Armenia a green light?...NO FUCKING WAY.
Be proud, we few Armenians just made a move outside the calculus just like we did with in the first war for NKR. We faced Russian troops, we faced a blockade, we faced hunger, we had no weapons, we had no friends, we had no fuel, the Soviet Union collapsed, we had a devastating earthquake for gods sakes, yet we did it!
We fucking did it against all odds! We fucking did it.
And now we are all sitting here waiting for permission from Moscow? We don't need no stinking permission.
Vahram
Could be. But most probably Moscow had a hand in this.
DeleteDuring the opening stages of the Russian-Georgian war back in the summer of 2008, Azerbaijan was preparing to invade Artsakh with a large military force. Russia's military command, while busy beating up on Georgia, gave Armenians the green light to do a preemptive strike against Azerbaijan. Armenians did, and in the process liberated around seventy square kilometers of territory in Martakert and Hadrut regions. Russians asked Yerevan not to say anything about the operation. Yerevan did not. Baku, humiliated, did not say anything about it either. I found out about this operation in Yerevan on the evening of August 12, 2008 from the family members of a conscript that was actually involved in the operation. A month or so later I confirmed it from an Armenian army official I know indirectly. Many months later, when our Western-led political opposition was causing problems again, the top commander of Artsakh forces was forced to make some vague statements suggesting that a lot of territory was liberated during the Russo-Georgian war.
I think I may have more on this incident somewhere in this blog.
Anyway, Armenia's military staff is too close to Russia's military high command - and such cross border operations are too risky - for Yerevan to perform independently. Realize that Nakhijevan is a very sensitive matter in the region because it 'directly' involves Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia. In my opinion, what most likely happened is that Yerevan put a lot of pressure on Moscow because of Baku's aggressive actions in Nakhijevan and Moscow in response said do what you have to do but keep it clean and quiet. Our military leaders are very sober minded professionals. I don't see them taking unnecessary risks.
Let's also recognize that Baku is trying to draw Armenia into an open shooting match in hopes of derailing Armenia's membership the Customs Union.
I am not questioning what you found out last time with 70Km. You had to go to Armenia and in a round abut way found out that there was an operation. This is open, this is not the border between the two states this is the border with Nakhichevan. this is a game changer and you don't have to go to Armenia for this.
DeleteAs for Risk, I stand by what I stated, Risk of NKR was so much greater facing Soviet Troops. Little tinny Armenia faced not just wild mongoloids but Russian troops to boot. I remember after the quake Gorbi saying put the dead in the ground forget about NKR. What was the risk then?
To think that Risk, and Armenians are something far apart after all this history is not putting this issue to rest for me. Yes there was an operation once when Moscow was on the offensive because she hand to be, but this if a different case, and Georgia is no Ukraine.
We defied the odds not just once in history, we defied odds many times. We hold NKR with great regard only because this is no longer legends of history but the Armenian spirit in the now. Don't dismiss so easily what you learned from second hand talk in Yerevan this is out in the open and this is different.
If you want the next step, don't be stuck in the status the way it is presented for you to digest now. This is not the Armenia of 1992.
Vahram
Arevordi, I hope that this operation was largely the result of Armenian pressure on Moscow, as that would signal Armenia's leadership sensing an opportunity to make some unprecedented gains. Armenian officials, all the way up to Defense Minister Ohanyan and President Sargsyan have made it clear that Armenia has acquired more weaponry in the last few years that it did the first two decades of independence; perhaps they feel our Army is now in a position to assert Armenian interests more strongly even in areas where Ankara likes to think of itself as the ultimate power-holder (like Nakhichevan). Once again, we see that despite the doom-and-gloom hysteria the western-funded media has worked so hard to spread about Armenia, the objective facts point to Armenia being on the right track.
DeleteVahram, I'm all for being enthusiastic, but it's downright silly to think Armenia would take a step like liberating territory in Nakhichevan, with the heightened risk of Turkey getting involved, without getting an approval and green light from Moscow. Crossing the front-line at the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact already runs the risk of leading to things getting out of control, crossing the Nakhichevan border (a symbolic as well as strategic area for Turkey and Azerbaijan) could not occur without much deliberation, planning, and consulting with the Russians who are responsible for keeping the Turks from attacking Armenia. This does not take away from the excellent performance of the Armenian troops that carried out the operation, but we are here to discuss underlying geopolitics, not tactics and not the emotional aspects.
As for the Artsakh War, please remember that while Armenian troops performed in a praiseworthy and noble fashion, it would be shortsighted to forget that Baku was falling apart at the time of Armenia's victory: there were power struggles between mulatibov, aliyev and elcibey; one of azerbaijan's Gantsak (ganja) based generals marched on Baku; Russia kept Turkey from invading Armenia; Russia delivered a billion $ or so weapons to Armenia; and the Khasbulatov coup d'état attempt in Moscow was crushed. Had any of the above events played out differently there would have been a very serious risk of Armenia losing Artsakh. Gung-ho nationalism will not help Armenia... As heroic as Armenian soldiers are, it is a matter of fact that demographically small, isolated, and economically weak nations like Armenia cannot just decide to engage in wars of conquest in a region like the south Caucasus on their own (see: Saakashvilli, 2008). The reality on the ground is not much different from the 1990s or even 1918: brave but demographically very disadvantaged Armenians facing the threat of millions and millions of western armed/trained/supported Turks who are one bad event away from invading the region. As Arevordi likes to say "past performance does not guarantee future returns", and I sincerely doubt Armenia's government would run a risk like pushing into Nakhichevan without being secure in the knowledge that the Turkish threat would be checked (by Russia).
If comrade Zoravar is around, I'd like to hear his opinions on all of this. Thanks in advance.
Ps Arevordi I remember reading about the liberation of land in 2008 when I read through this blog about two years ago. As much as I kept up to date with the English language media during all that time, I had not heard a single source report any Armenian land gains until I read your words here. If anything I recall Harut Sassounian commenting back then about the failed Azeri attack on Martakert and how Armenia remained militarily secure despite the turmoil from the LTP riots. Zero mention of Russia on the matter.
Well thought out response, Sarkis. Thank you. While what Vahram said is plausible, I personally do not think Armenian officials would have risked such an operation without first notifying the Kremlin. Nothing to be ashamed of here, in my opinion. In fact, I 'hope' Yerevan is consulting with the Kremlin with regard to such sensitive matters.
DeleteThe Azeri attack Sassounian was referring to came during Levin Petrostein's Color Revolution attempt in March, 2008. Seeing Yerevan in turmoil, Baku was testing Armenia's defenses at the time. They were beaten back but we lost a few men. I blame Levin and his gang for all the deaths that occurred at the time. I even remember "Levonkakan' assholes claiming that Yerevan had started the hostilities against Azerbaijan to distract public attention.
The incident I am talking about happened some five months later, during the early stages of the Russian-Georgian war in early August, 2008. I initially broke the news about the Armenian military operation in my Rise of Russia thread in Hyeclub. I was in Yerevan at the time. If you go back to August, 2008 in the thread you'll find it. Hyeclub moderator "Federate" and I discussed the incident at length back then. He can help you find it.
I then posted this in September, 2008 -
Azerbaijan: The Stark New Energy Landscape: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2009/06/following-stratfor-article-is-very_18.html
More recently, I summarized the incident in this following blog entry from two years ago: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2012/04/can-armenia-exploit-russias-action-plan.html
BTW about Nazarbayev if he wants another competitor outside the fold for oil and gas he can have Baku! I am now calling his fucking bluff!
ReplyDeleteVahram
I just got around to reading the above article Arevordi had emailed back in April. A few interesting quotes below. A good resource for how closely entangled the US and Turkey are in their demon schemes to subjugate the middle east.
ReplyDeleteOf course most of the idiotic Armenian-American community is still holding out hope that the war criminals in Washington will "recognize" the Armenian Genocide. And there are countless Armenian-American assholes with a pathogolical hatred of Assad (and Russia and even Armenia for that matter):
The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
"In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.
Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron’s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria."
***
"A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria
***
"Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’"
***
"We could go public if it was somebody other than Erdoğan, but Turkey is a special case. They’re a Nato ally". The Turks don’t trust the West. They can’t live with us if we take any active role against Turkish interests. If we went public with what we know about Erdoğan’s role with the gas, it’d be disastrous.
Some news reports from Baku where Lavrov stated that Armenia's accession to the EEUAsian precludes the territory of Karabakh. They may be playing with words ? Armenia can not go anywhere, join anyone, or any bloc without Karabakh; this is simply non negotaible. We shall see how things will pan out. So far the dystopic statements, inimical to Armenia, in Astana by sultan Bekir Bayev appear to be in line with the accession principles.
ReplyDeleteSee if you can train yourself to not get too excited about diplomatic double talk. Exploiting emotional matters such as this is how Western disinformation agencies like EuraisaNet, Radio Liberty, Asbarez, Armenian Weekly, ArmeniaNow, Hetq, Lra-glir, ect, get you to turn against your government and your nation's only ally. Try to be smarter than that. Try to train yourself to read between the lines of what they write. What Lavrov said in Baku could not have been said any other way. And to the ears of trained political observers what he said is totally in-line with Armenia's interests. Moscow will be accepting Armenia, as is, into the Eurasian Union and - as is - Artsakh is defacto part of Armenia. Once Armenia enters the union Armenia's current reality (with Artsakh being a part of it) will be set in stone. This is why Western interests, Turks and assholes within our community, including the ARF, are doing their best to derail Armenia's membership.
Deleteread the comment this self destructive political peasant.
ReplyDeletehttp://carnegieendowment.org/2013/06/19/new-narrative-for-karabakh-conflict/gb2e
Sam Khachaturian January 22, 20146:37 PM
I do believe if one wants to know anything objective about NK conflict, then T.De Waal is the only source.
As for the conflict itself. Regimes in both countries systematically use NK card as a way to maintain their dictatorship in Azerbaijan and one party brutal rule in Armenia. Azerbaijan clearly doesn't need NK, but the national pride doesn't let them lose it. As Georgia did in South Osetian and Abkhazian case, Azerbaijan shall do exactly the same, just screw it. I am quite confidant that the day when the peace agreement is signed, Russia loses its role in South Caucasus, and a very interesting entity: economic union of the three republics: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan shall be established. Therefore the only player who doesn't want the problem's solution is Russia.
Blaming Armenia or Azerbaijan is not serious, as they have nothing in their hands, but hatred sent by cargo from Russia.
Armenian society is rife with self-destructive peasantry. These vermin will pose the number one threat to the Armenian state for the foreseeable future.
DeleteGee what a surprise, a random Amerikahay parroting the words of the psychopath paruyr hayrikyan for all of the non-Armenians to see. He sounds like another smug, arrogant asshole who thinks he understands the "true geopolitics" of the Artsakh conflict in which thousands of Armenians sacrificed their lives to achieve victory... I bet this asshole has attended a few ANCA townhall meetings, and maybe even one of those "Kosher Armenian Dinners" at various Jewish Community Centers across the USA where Jews and Armenians get together to discuss how similar the two peoples are and how we are "united in the fight against terrorism".
DeleteOn a slightly related note, I rather liked this comment from asbarez:
Daron says:
June 18, 2014 at 8:10 pm
Please do not bother us with this type of news, we are busy in offering Manthi cooking classes, organizing beach bash, job fairs, health fairs, open mics, art shows, celebrating Cinqo de Mayo and St. Patrick day. Recently we came across to a very potent “weapon,” with that weapon we were able to Save Kessab and Save Aleppo. We ask from the Syrian Armenian community to provide us a list that includes the names of the people that desire to be saved, and we will add their names on our next Hashtag campaign.
I’m pretty sure this comment will not be posted on Asbarez like my previous comment. It baffles me when you do not post a video of an Armenian old lady being interrogated by Al Nousra jihadists and taken as a prisoner of war. But, after two days you publish a whole article of imprisonment and torcher of four Armenians by FSA. I was wondering if Asbarez is Al Nousra sympathizer.
What is this talk of Russians in east and south Urkaine (as well as Crimea) being put there by Stalin (after various famine) and not being there first? Were not these area a part of Russia proper before the Soviet Union? Any information this would be great. Thanks
ReplyDeleteAnswers to your question may be found in my first two blog posts on the Ukraine conflict.
DeletePlease identify yourselves when posting here.
What that talk of "Russians are not natives here" is just another version of the lie we Armenians often hear that "Armenians are not natives of the Armenian highland, they were wandering Aryan tribesmen who migrated to 'what is now Armenia' very recently in history and displaced the non-Armenian/Aryan native Urartians". Such falsehoods emanate from Turksish, Azerbaijani, mainstream western (specially American and British), and Israeli "historians", as well as the so-called "Armenians" like richard hovannisian.
DeleteIn both cases, its just a cover to justify displacement of the Russians/Armenians or at the very least placing them under a foreign yoke. In Crimea, the west's ultimate wet dream is to revert the region to Tatar/Turkic domination and have another easily controlled/manipulated Turkic buffer state and pawn against Russia.
http://armenianow.com/commentary/analysis/55420/armenia_georgia_president_sargsyan_visit_abkhaz_railroad
ReplyDelete"A few hours before Sargsyan’s visit to Tbilisi the Armenian leader received head of the Russian Railways company Vladimir Yakunin, who said that Russia does not intend to build and finance the Iran-Armenia railroad project because now it is implementing a major railway project with Iran through Azerbaijan."
If this is true and there are no other details which the spin masters at ArmeniaNow are leaving out then this is indeed a failure for Armenian foreign policy makers, and a strong incentive to decrease Russian control of Armenia's strategic infrastructure. A policy where Armenia buys back its former assets piece by piece if a foreign entity doesn't take steps to improve upon them ought to be discussed at the NS council and parliament.
LG
If it is a failure, it's because of the Georgian factor in the equation. I do however have a feeling we are not being provided the whole truth by ArmeniaNow. With that said, let's for the sake of argument take what's being reported as true. Moscow not wanting to finance an "Armenian-Iranian" railroad make perfect sense if the continuation of that railroad will not go to Russia because of the missing link - Georgia. Why would Moscow want to invest serious money in something that is fundamentally between Armenia and Iran? This is why Yakunin reportedly suggested that if Armenians want Russian participation they should focus on the Abkhazian Railroad (i.e. Georgian factor). If it is true that Moscow wants to run a railroad through Azerbaijan, than it's a signal that Moscow is not going wait for Georgians to make up their minds. By running a railroad through Azerbaijan, Moscow will have even more leverage over Baku. This is yet another case where Armenia's geography is proving too be its curse. As long as we do not break out of our mountain prison and establish a link to the Back Sea or the Russian Federation, Armenia will remain a fragile nation-state.
DeletePS: Moscow has invested in Armenia by purchasing infrastructure as a means of control. Moscow will not follow up on its purchases if Armenia's allegiance is not 'fully' secured and if the region remains a volatile powder keg. As of now, although Moscow is in a powerful position, the south Caucasus region is still up for grabs and Armenia's government - as well as those standing on the political sidelines ready to takeover - is rife with Western operatives.
Last I checked a railroad from Tehran to Moscow already exists, which bypasses baku. It existed during Soviet times. That's how many people entered the Soviet Union. There's nothing new in what the article says.
DeleteAlso, construction of another railway between Iran, azerbaijan and Russia started about 7-8 years ago. What ArmeniaNow is saying is old news.
DeleteI agree that it doesn't make much sense for Russia to fully sponsor a railway from Iran to Armenia which will not connect to Russia. However, the article mentions that 'Russia also blocks offers of Iran and Western countries on the laying of the Iran-Armenia communications.' Now this sentence can be taken to mean a number of different things. But if it is taken to mean that Russia is not willing to let other states finance the project than something is amiss. I do not think that this is the case but regardless Armenia must find financing for the Iran-Armenia railway.
DeleteThe Abkhaz railway is closed not only because of Georgian intransigence but Abkhaz/Russian as well. Here is an example where the interests of Armenia (to have the railway open in Abkhazia) do not match Russia's (to get Georgia to accept the loss of Abkhazia).
Russia running a railroad through Azerbaijan and into Iran will gain them some leverage over Baku but they will also give some to said regime. It is a 2 way street, though we can debate whether the leverage will be equal or not. If Azerbaijan serves as a east-west and now potentially a north-south hub then Armenia's importance in the EAU diminishes quite a bit.
Armenia can not afford any geopolitical adventures (link to Russia or Black Sea) without the full backing of Moscow, something it has either not sought or did not receive.
Assuming Moscow is waiting on Armenia's full allegiance before it begins to make more investments, one may then ask isn't this approach counter-productive? First, it allows anti-Russian forces a tangible criticism to use against deepening or even continuing ties with Russia, second, it keeps Armenia weak and poor therefore a crappier ally to have, and third it makes the purchase of infrastructure a bad business decision because it brings in very little profits.
What all this boils down to is that Armenia desperately needs far sighted, cunning, and patriotic leaders & policy-makers who dearly love their motherland. Otherwise we will continue to remain pawns for various empires to manipulate according to their whims, meanwhile always praying to remain on the positive side of their interests.
LG
I have spoken about this with Russian professors and specialists from Russia's foreign council. Though Russia certainly is interested in the opening of the Abkhazia - Georgia railway, it is not something they are focussing on now. There has been almost no lobbying effort from the Armenian side to 'force', 'bribe' or 'convince' the Abkhaz side to agree opening the railway link with Georgia. Also, there has been no organised effort in Moscow / Kremlin by wealthy, powerful Armenians to appeal to Russian decision-makers to try to push the Abkhaz side to make it happen. Armenians are too busy making themselves richer. Azerbaijan on the other hand, is spending a huge amount of time, money and other resources to advance their goals.
DeleteAlready since 2003/4/5 Russia "agreed" to build the Azeri-Iran railroad. The money probably was already available, but because of political reasons they did not quickly implement the project. Now they did.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/rzd-signs-on-to-azeri-iranian-rail-link/223476.html
With these kind of strategic issues, Armenians should have organised a major fundraising / lobbying effort in order to realise the project. They have not done so. If they do, Russia (and Iran) would not mind to have both a railway link through Armenia and through Azerbaijan. If the one in Armenia is realised, probably this will be used more as this one will be shorter and cheaper to use (Moscow-Yerevan / Western part of Russian Railways is shorter than Moscow-Baku / Eastern part of Russian Railways).
Very well said, Sarkis.
DeleteMy concern wasn't that Russian Railways has not invested in Armenia, I know it has. My concern is more along the lines of other interested parties being prevented from investing in Iran-Armenia railway, which if true, is a big failure for the Armenian government, and a short sighted move by the Russians.
DeleteIf Armenia collected taxes from all its citizens and corporations then it would be in a position to buy back some of its former assets. And if Armenia can not manage its assets it isn't because we lack the talent it is because we have self serving peasants in top leadership roles across the whole of government. Lobbying Russia ought to be done, finding a way to replace the assholes in top positions must be a priority too. These two issues are not mutually exclusive. Russia has its interests, Armenia has its interests, they will not always be in sync, let us use the time we have now to nurture a patriotic policy-making and diplomatic core, otherwise our state will remain weak pawn of great powers, and always near the verge of extinction.
LG
LG,
DeleteI agree with everything you have said. I also have to remind you that you and some others here represent our patriotic core. It is young, well educated, well exposed and pragmatic patriots such as yourselves that need to strive to make a difference. Armenia needs people like you. As I have been saying, on one side of the political fence we have Western mercenaries, psychotic freaks and politically illiterate peasantry... on the other side of the political fence, we have chobans-in-Armani-suits, cutthroat monopolists and wannabe gangsters. One side is doing its best to turn Armenia into a Western brothel servicing Turks, the other side is robbing the nation and comfortably sitting back hoping Moscow will take care of everything. We need pragmatic nationalists who are capable of using our nation's God given talents to extract maximum benefit for the Armenian state. As you said, this is indeed the time to get things done. As bad as things may seem at times, Armenia has not had it this good in well over one thousand years. We have a historic opportunity. The new generation needs to step forward.
With that said, we also need to identify and curb those traits within us that work to keep us from going forward as a collective people - as well as identifying and nurturing those traits within us that can help us go forward.
Your attention please. "Aidar" of the so-called "national guard" got wiped out. Excellent clip by lifenews
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efMosh4xCow
Incidentally, Ukrainian SBU has produced a "terrorist list" and on them is a list of journalists of the Russian Federation. People from vesti, lifenews, komsomolskaya pravda. They even put that 23 year old Armenian girl who has been doing reports from Slavyansk on that list. Just goes to show the kind of psychos they are.
Brutal, but this is the only way to deal with western-sponsored mercenary-terrorist murderers.
DeleteLet's have a moment of silence for these brave Ukrainian "nationalists", they sacrificed their lives to advance Jewish interests in the region... and failed. Idiots.
Rebel 1: Turn over, turn over, we need you alive for exchanges. Your side finishes off wounded fighters but we don't. Lay down, lay down. We gave you a tourniquet, appreciate it.
DeleteWounded Prisoner: Water please...
Rebel 1: What?
Wounded Prisoner: Water
Rebel 1: Why dont yours carry water? We dont have any. Finished as well...
[--------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: From there they attacked us. Here is the Trophy BTR.
[-------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: Guys, give some water. Help him drink. Get some water. They'll bring you water soon. There is another tank burning there. Here, Ilyusha [Wounded Prisoner]...give him a drink, we're not bloodthirsty people. Here drink. Here drink. That good? You hang in there dude, survive. Enough? Enough?
Wounded Prisoner: [nods]....help me.
Rebel 1: How can I help you? You keep shooting at us. "Help me"...You shouldn't have started shooting. We cant raise our heads, we cant take away our own wounded. Lay down.
[-------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: Comrade Poroshenko, here lay your soldiers, here lay our soldiers. What do you need this for?
[-------------------------------------]
Rebel 2: I put down an icon for Gods forgiveness, for YOUR sins Poroshenko, for your American money. Here is your man, we are not finishing him off, but you keep executing our wounded. Cutting them...beasts. Here brother [gives water]. Dont finish him, maybe he will live.
Rebel 1: This phone is pissing me off. His phone is ringing. Where is the phone?
Rebel 2: Where is the phone?
Rebel 1: Turn over.
[-------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: Thats our BMD. Now ours...scumbags wanted to break through the checkpoint with two attacks...two tanks and two BTRs...scumbags...dont want to negotiate like human beings? bastards!
Rebel 2: We are with god, guys. And you are for dollars.
Rebel 1: We all have children, families...and you bastards for money...scumbags...
Rebel 3: In the treeline! In the treeline!
Rebel 1: Guys watch the treeline. RPG men, get ready. Watch that treeline.
[------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: Well, they lost more than we..
Rebel 4: Who is inside?
Rebel 1: No one. No one. Ours are there. This one still alive? Ilyusha [wounded prisoner] you alive?! Ilya! Its over...
Rebel 4: I think he is dead.
Rebel 1: We cant even treat our own wounded...thats it...thats how it is comrades....God is with you.
Rebel 5: Does anyone have water here?
[------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: What now? National Guard scum. I have 3 kids [inaudible]. We are not animals like you. We are not executing you.
[-----------------------------------]
Rebel 1: [National] "Guards"-bastards...now they will take them...I dont know to exchange or to jail.
Rebel 6: Is that a BTR or a BMP?
Rebel 1: Its a BMP, guys.
[-----------------------------------]
Rebel 1: Show your mug here! Are you happy, you scumbag. We dont kill our prisoners, unlike you.
Rebel 7: Who were you working as?
Prisoner: Gunner.
[------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: How much are you paid?
DeletePrisoner: 3,000
Rebel 1: Hryvnas a day?
Prisoner: A month
Rebel 1: So you came here to kill for 3,000 hryvnas a month?
Prisoner: No
Rebel 1: You a conscript?
Prisoner: No a contraktnik. (professional soldier on contract, but not part of regular army)
Rebel 1: Contraktnik? And you want to die here?
Prisoner: no
Rebel 1: They why did you come here!?!?!?! Rip up the contract and go home!
Rebel 2: So you came here thinking that you can kill, but no one can kill you?
Prisoner: No
Rebel 1: Then why did you come here?!?! Tell me you bastard. Tell me why did you come and bring-[inaudible]
Rebel 7: [inaudible]
Rebel 1: [inaudbile] did you cut off ears?
Prisoner: [shakes head]
Rebel 8: So you came to kill with this? Look at this stuff. Are these pastries? Did you come to give out pastries then? You came here with weapons? Why? Why did you come to my land with weapons?
Rebel 1: You are a fascist, you understand that?
Rebel 8: A fascist, he was promised supremacy here. [inaudible]
Rebel 1: You sold yourself to Americans, to Europe. You, as Slavs, to them are the same scum as Russians, as Kasakhs, as Belorussians. You are just meat [cannon fodder]. You dont understand that? They view us like slaves like they view all Slavs.
[--------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: What city are you from?
Prisoner 2: Uzhgorod(?)
Rebel 1: Uzhgorod?
Rebel 9: Let me take care of him first.
[----------------------------------------]
Prisoner 3: I was paid 2,400 hryvnas.
Rebel 1: And you moron, came here to kill for 2,400, hryvnas?
Prisoner 3: [inaudible]
Rebel 10 (background): TAKE THAT DAMN MACHINEGUN AWAY FROM HIM GODDAMIT, THEY MUST SURRENDER ALL WEAPONS!!!!
Rebel 1: Do you have any children?
Prisoner 3: Yes, two.
Rebel 1: I have three
[---------------------------------------]
Rebel 11: Did you come here for money?
Prisoner 3: No
Rebel 12: Then for what? "Those that dont jump are Maskals"?
Prisoner 3: Was called up.
Rebel 1: Called up? To defend the motherland?
Rebel 11: A good job the "Motherland" did of defending you. She said: "Either 15 (years in prison) or go get shot at." Do you love Ukraine? [inaudible]
[--------------------------------------]
Rebel 1: (singing) "All my brothers have fallen, from mortar shells, but we stand our ground. And fight on bravely"
Earnestly hoping for your next blog entry for June. :)
ReplyDeleteHow can we break out to the Caspian, or line up our frontier with Russia ? It is clear that the desire and intent aside, the drive to achieve such an enterprise needs to have the unambiguous backing , support, and force from Russia.
DeleteNot to be too off topic, but I just wanted to bring attention to this article right here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.storyleak.com/us-dollar-under-grave-threat-russia-plans-global-retaliation/
In this article Sergei Gladyev had proposed to President Putin that they should form an anti-dollar alliance in order to speed up the collapse of the US Petrodollar. As Glazyev would point out, the third rounds of Russian economic sanctions would target whole sectors of the Russian economy, not only resulting in the potential collapse of the Russian economy, but the EU economy as well. The real purpose of this, was to make the US economy the only 'safe haven' as he points out.
What I wish to also point out is that the very essence of the US and Western capitalist system is built on the notion of usury, which allows the speculators to gain profits at the expense of their customers. By having the US military launch interventions in areas like Iraq, Libya and many other nations with the ultimate objective of targeting Russia, Iran, China, even North Korea (because North Korea, along with Cuba and Iran don't have a "Central Bank" that the usurers could use to loot their economies). What we will probably see in the future (even if World War Three might start tomorrow) is the total implementation of the same system of usury imposed on nations that actually consider usury to be immoral. I would not be surprised if Putin decided to pass a law that will effectively ban Russian companies from charging interests on the loans that their domestic customers make, or if China decides to dump US treasury bonds.
One other note: Putin recently offered support to the current Iraqi government of al-Maliki against the jihadists as a way to show to the world that if al-Maliki's government were to be toppled by the jihadists (ISIS, supported by the US and the Gulf states), Russia and China might get involved.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-20/russia-reignites-proxy-war-putin-offers-complete-support-iraq-prime-minister-scorned
Jerriko, as long as the Petrodollar is not seriously threatened and as long as they do not begin to suffer dire consequences for their actions around the word, they will continue to treat the world as their lucrative playground.
DeleteThink of it this way: They destroy nations, kill millions and ruin the lives of hundreds of millions and then they go up on public podiums and contemplate whether it was the right thing to do... In other words, regardless of how bad it gets around the world as a result of their policies, at the end of the day, they go to their estates and gated communities sit by their fireplace, sip their wine and check to see how their stocks are doing...
As long as this now centuries old process continues, the Anglo-American order will enjoy superiority in world affairs.
China is stuck with the treasury bonds hard and fast. They can not disgorge them even if they wanted to. One seems to forget that both Russia and china are part of the international financial system, They may represent a different stream in the same pool. China is as ravenous a capitalist entity, as the USA. Their cunning lies in that they act under the radar. They are just as imperialists and nation-phagus ,rapacious plunderers as the USA; the difference is they are late comers into this game. With their excess population which they vomit all over the globe they are colonizing any land their chink hordes set foot in. Even in China in the higher echelons of finance, banking and policy making you have a breed manning the ramparts best known as " chinese jews". One wonders which new world order would be better. The current one is revolting and it stinks to the cinders, its destruction can not happen any sooner ,but the new forthcoming NWO, according to the forecasters and crystal ball gazers , the one represented by the Asian monstrosities of China and India , natural racists to the bone marrow , can be even more revolting. Ten years ago the late President Kirchner of Argentina, and his then economic adviser, J Melkonian,( an intelligent Armenian economists albeit brought up in a leftist marxist orientation, approached the Chinese for loans and investments. The chinese directed Kirchenr and Melconian to the IMF, as for investments they proposed the establishment of a network of medium and heavy industry factories in Patagonia. Kiechner applauded the chinese proposal and promised Argentine manpower to work these factories. Kichner was ready to sign a hundred protocols to implement the investment. The whole thing stalled and has gone into hibernation, when Kichner discovered the string of conditions under which the investment were going to be deployed. The Chinese conditions imposed these factories would be staffed by their nationals, and as such 1 million chinese were to be allowed entry in the next 15 years. Needless to say the chinese invasion of Argentina continues, short of the 1M mark; however the insidious colonization with their inexhaustible hordes and legions of excess population marches on in line with imperial capitalist expansion . Similar scenarios have taken place in Africa, former Rhodesia under the Mugabi tribesmen, Zambia, Malawi Congo, Angola, Mozambique one sees the masses of yellowmen and Dravidians swarming over the continent. Facundo Quiroga
DeleteFearmongering about Russians and Chinese by saying they are in the pockets of Westerners and Jews all you are doing is aiding Westerners and Jews. Maybe one day you'll wake up and realize your rhetoric's fundamental flaws. Anyway, knowing the evil nature and character of the existing NWO very well, I'll take my chances with a new NWO...
Deletehttp://rt.com/usa/163936-us-increasing-military-black-sea/
ReplyDeleteOnce again, turkey is indispensable for the west. This article is one of many examples over the years, whether as a proxy to US aggression against Iraq, or against Syria, or meddling into the South and North Caucasus, or into Central Asia, or into Ukraine.
Something so simple yet the majority of the braindead diaspora and the "opposition" cannot seem to grasp.
What is happening in Ukraine today is a Western attempt to curb Russian influence in Europe by inciting interethnic violence between Ukrainians and Russians. What is happening in Iraq and Syria today is a Western attempt to curb the growth of Iranian/Shiite influence in the Middle East by inciting interethnic violence between Sunnis and Shiites. In every single case, it's the region's most miserable classes and extremist fringes that are being recruited (often times through proxies) to do the Western world's dirty work. Every single toxic sociopolitical movement in the world today - from Turkic separatists in western China to Islamic cannibals in Syria and Iraq to political opposition thugs in Venezuela - has well funded offices and activists in downtown Washington and London. Due to genetic traits that make Armenians prone to political illiteracy, emotional outbursts, viscous gossip, arrogance, jealousy, tribalism, materialism, naivete and self-hate, Armenia also continues to be very vulnerable to Western machinations. If we Armenians ever lose Artsakh or even worst, it will be the result of our people's political illiteracy and Western fetishes. Democracy, Westernization and the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance are the most dangerous pestilences facing mankind today. But there is still hope. The following report is encouraging news that Kremlin officials have begun actively addressing this modern plaque. Please read it entirely and share it with friends -
ReplyDeleteRussians Warn Arab Officials on the New Warfare: http://mebriefing.com/?p=790
In my humble , country side bumpkin, view-opinion I do not believe for a moment that Armenia will lose Artsakh. Artsakh is an indisoluble and integral part of Armenia. Furthermore Russias interests in the Caucasus are served better in this way. Russia has , for all intents and purposes, recognized Artsakh as a de facto part of Armenia. The de Jure aspect is something else and for obvious political reasons is being overlooked. It is not in Russias interest to extend additional territory nor powers to the sothern muslim-islamic entities. Russias historical enmity with Turkey is latently al;ive , albeit under the radar. It is in Russias interest to keep beefing up and looking after her only reliable and loyal ally in the Caucasus. Of course things can change. If anything risky may develop, an alternative scenario would be for Russia to claim or keep Artsakh as part of the Russian federation, as a Tsarist legacy. In any case Russia does not need to trade land, nor pay anything to the Azervaijanies to bring that nation under her orbit/influence. A lot of noise is being made about Russian arm sales to Azerbaijan, but a conspicuous silence is kept about weapons transfer/sales by USA-Israely-Turkey to the same Azerbaijanies; which surpasses the amount of sales from Russia to that country. The key factor here is the qualitative superiority of Armenias arsenal versus the garage full of rusting hardware of Azerbaijan. The incredible amount of hardware Azeries are collecting has to be used sometime , lest it rusts into dissuse. FQ
ReplyDeleteI agree with ever word you wrote. I made the comment about us Armenians losing Artsakh or worst primarily as an alarm about falling victim to Western machinations. With that said, hypothetically speaking, if a Western mercenary like Raffi Hovanissian or a psychotic Russophobe like Paruyr Hayrikian ever come to power in Armenia, we will most probably lose Artsakh or worst.
DeleteSome excellent photos of Armenian police at their new building and showing off new crowd control weaponry:
ReplyDeletehttp://forum.hyeclub.com/showthread.php/11485-Nagorno-Karabagh-Military-Balance-Between-Armenia-amp-Azerbaijan/page1074
I hope these weapons will only serve as deterrents and not need to be used, but if the west gets desperate and tries to undermine Armenian statehood before ascendance to the Customs Union is complete, I would want the Police to crack down mercilessly on any attempted riots. We all know that the western regimes are pure evil, they probably dream of causing another March 2008 or EuroMaidan in Armenia, therefore I take comfort in the fact that the self-destructive peasantry will be prevented from destroying Armenia at the behest of their masters in Washington and Brussels... In case anything happens in Armenia in the future, these weapons will put the cattle back in line; however, this time Armenian authorities must make an example out of any leaders of a potential coup d'etat and not let them return home they did with LTP and his gang of criminals.
ps, take a look at the degenerate monkeys acting appalled at the fact that Armenia's police are not sitting on their hands and instead are being proactive in facing the biggest threat to Armenia (namely western-backed traitors) in the comments towards the bottom. These spineless losers essentially masturbate to pictures of Armenian Su-25s and S-300s but have absolutely no understanding of the concept of National Security. These military fanboys, none of which actually bother living in Armenia much less serving in its security structures, are quick to criticize Armenian police yet oddly silent about the outrages (murder, battery, drug-running, corruption, mass spying, etc.) of the militarized police forces of the countries they live in. It's remarkable seeing how trained Armenian keyboard warriors are to manifest the worst aspects of Armenian self-hatred and political immaturity every time the Armenian state presents solutions to the existential threats facing Armenia (ie the Protocols relating to easing trade and Armenia's economic isolation; the Customs Union in addressing Armenia's economic and political issues; and the development of a capable crowd-control police force to prevent the pseudonationalist-homosexual-Turkophile alliance from tearing down the Armenian state internally).
http://carnegie.ru/eurasiaoutlook/?fa=55915
ReplyDeleteThat's about right.
LG
LG, the Armenianow piece makes a generalization like "Russia also blocks offers of Iran and Western countries on the laying of the Iran-Armenia communications" with absolutely no sources, credible or not, to back it up. The author of the piece is Naira Hayrumyan, she has a long history of bias and outright lying. You may recall a few years back, around 2008 when the Armenia-Iran gas pipeline was built (with help from Gazprom) Armenianow, Radio Liberty and the Armenian-American media kept throwing around the claim that "Russian pressure on Armenia supposedly resulted in the width of the pipeline being reduced so that it could not be used to export more competing Iranian gas through Armenia. The claims are still on the English language Wikipedia article on the pipeline, and -- prepare to be shocked -- the main citation on the "Political Controversy" section of the article leads to the Amenophobic kike jackass vladimir socor, while a secondary cite links to Stratfor. Needless to say, I don't believe a word coming out of these sources, they are professional liars and frankly out of touch with reality. I sincerely fail to see any scenario under which Russia benefits from preventing Armenia from developing the Iran-Railway, I'm sure Moscow does not enjoy diverting some of its budget to occasionally bailing out its South Caucasian partner due to Armenia's severe economic and trade issues, specially in light of the fact that Moscow knows that: the Abkhazia railway is not a likely option; that air travel and the ferries across the Black Sea are not a replacement for land routes; that Armenia is already isolated from much of the regional infrastructure and most of its borders are closed; and that western NGOs and opposition press will have a much higher chance of a successful regime change operation within Armenia if the economic situation deteriorates to the point that the masses are ready to take to the streets... As such, I have to say "nice try Armenianow, but I can see through your bullshit."
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, we'd all like to see better leaders, but that is a long-term, generational process. Replacing self-interested top-level Armenian officials today would only result in other men with equally powerful but different self-interests. Even great men leaders like Hitler and Putin, or the Armenian kings of old, had to deal with the interests of powerful business interests, political groups, foreign interests, and Nakharars. The fact that Russians, Europeans, Americans and others exploit Armenian "elites" so easily speaks to the weakness and spinelessness of the modern Armenian, its just business as usual for the foreigners. Foreigners are interested in keeping in place friendly elites inside Armenia, and as long as the modern Armenian remains, for all intents and purposes, a spineless and selfish choban, Armenia will remain a joke. Armenia will remain under corrupt servants of Russia as now or transfer to corrupt servants of America as we see in the rest of the world for the time being. Evolution is the solution here, and something that no foreigner will be able to help us with. In fact, I am extremely worried that the next generation will be too influenced and too corrupted by the west to do any better than the preceding generations.
Time will tell, although each report that comes out concerning the postponement of Armenia's accession to the EAU provides ammunition to all the Russophobes. Moscow needs to make this happen or figure another way for Armenia to not be a member but have unfettered access to the EAU market if Armenian membership is too much of an issue at this point in time.
DeleteLG
And here are some more examples of falsehoods from that Armenianow article:
ReplyDelete-"This means that Armenia will still remain for a long time in the railroad blockade, which has been imposed on it not only by hostile Turkey and Azerbaijan, but also by allied Russia."
Equating the blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan on Armenia to Russian refusal to pay for the Iran-Armenia highway is just outright ridiculous, and only betrays a pathological hatred for Russia. I used to see similar idiotic statements from the cyber-warriors on Asbarez. They might as well just state "Russians are worse than the Turks". They are following the US psych-ops playbook and denigrating Russia at every opportunity, both subtly as in this line and directly as they do elsewhere. Repeat a lie often enough and intensely enough, and people will start to believe. Too bad after more than 23+ years of independence and a western presence in Armenia, this is starting to have some effect on the "opposition" crowd.
-"Moscow and Sukhumi are trying to force Tbilisi to recognize the independence of Abkhazia"
Those evil Russkies and those poor Georgians. How dare they demand Tblisi recognize as de jure what the de facto reality is on the ground in Abkhazia... Funny how the folks at Armenianow seem dead set against these pro-Russian, de facto independent statelets in the South Caucasus. It reminds me of their vile, anti-Artsakh reporting during the March 2008 period. What Hayrumyan fails to mention is that Georgia itself was trying to force Abkhazia into submission as part of Georgia, and in doing so to become a future base for the Turkish and other NATO troops and settles Georgia wants to flood itself with. That kind of, sort of puts the consequences and benefits that Armenia received from the liberation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in a whole new light. Not to mention the thousands of Abkhaz-Armenians that were spared the onslaught of a Georgian invasion and occupation.
-"Georgia and Ukraine intend to sign an association agreement with the European Union, while Armenia, also at the end of the month, may sign the Treaty of Accession to the Customs (Eurasian) Union. This will mean that the Armenian-Georgian border will become the customs border between the EU and Russia"
A new level of fictitiousness. Georgia does not share a border with any EU state, so a Georgian association agreement with the EU would change nothing for Armenia. And there is a difference between an Association Agreement and EU membership, so quite literally nothing would change regarding the Armenia-Georgia border. When it suits western interests, membership by an otherwise isolated state like Georgia magically results in a holistic, unbroken border by the larger association (the EU); yet when it does not suit their interests they never fail to point out that the state (Armenia) does not share an "actual" border with the larger association (the Eurasian Union). But looking at Armenianow's audience, I understand why Hayrumyan dispenses with things like logic, honesty, and objectivity.
-"if Tbilisi does not agree to duty-free or other regimes, the meaning of Armenia’s accession to the Customs Union is lost"
Oh my, mighty Tblisi has Armenia and Russia by the balls I see. I actually hope this is true, because the Russians aren't going to let peons like the Georgians get in the way of Armenian membership in the Eurasian Union. The Eurasian Union is Russia's future, and the already-defeated Georgians will not prevent it from expanding into the vital South Caucasus. She buried it deep (much as several men a week bury into her whore ass every week) but this is actually the message she is desperately trying to convey in her article: "Russia bad, Customs Union bad, pro-Russian Armenian government bad, hail Uncle Sam and European Union". Everything else is a lie or a distraction.
Do you know when the Eurasian Union will become a reality? Just looking forward to the day when the Western world led by America collapses into the dustbin of history...
DeleteThe full implementation of the Eurasian Union and the benefits it will present Armenia is still a long way away. These things happen in stages and they often come across geopolitical stumbling blocks. The Western world is doing its utmost best to derail Moscow's Eurasian ambitions. The crisis in the Ukraine is part of that agenda. We Armenians can also expect major hostilities in the south Caucasus. There are some indications that Western interests may try to pit Azeris against Armenians - in yet another effort to derail Moscow's regional plans. In short, we need to recognize that Moscow is battling the devil. I believe Moscow will in the long term prevail, but nothing is certain. Moreover, what will happen in the meanwhile to our small, impoverished, remote, desolate, landlocked and blockaded nation surrounded by predators in one of the most hostile regions of the world is anyone's guess. What I am trying to say is that before things finally get better, they may get worst. The next few years may therefore be years of more pain and more setbacks. In all this, you can thank the Anglo-American-Zionist global order and their subservient monkeys in our communities...
DeleteA rational analysis of the Ukraine crisis:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infowars.com/nyt-revamps-its-false-ukraine-narrative/
Doesn't Alyev grow tired of threatening to go to war on NKR ? His vapid bluster and warlike boasts have a hollow ring, are boring,and risible. Yet he continues in this vein. There was also another " armchair Azeri general" unleashing similar warnings of an impending assault to " liberate" lands. Well, we trust the armenian armed forces will retaliate ten fold when attacked. The attack will sometime take place, the question is when ? FQ
ReplyDeleteI do not want to dismiss any threat too lightly, but Aliyev's threats at this point in time appear to be meant entirely for domestic consumption. Yerevan and Stepanakert have made it explicitly known for a long time now that the threats are not intimidating Armenians. A more interesting question is "how long will Aliyev be able to deflect the growing resentment among Azeri citizens onto the Armenian side in order to hang on to power?" Azerbaijanis so far have enough hysterical hatred incited among themselves to not give too much thought to all those mansions in Dubai Aliyev's spawn own.
DeleteGood find LG. The Shia/Sunni and Iranic/Turkic tensions within Azeri society may represent an excellent opportunity for Armenia to skillfully exploit in order to weaken Azerbaijan. Not too mention the numerous ethnic minorities as well as the general resentment of Azerbiajan's large, impoverished lower class.
ReplyDeleteAzerbaijan is an interesting example of an artificial attempt at an ethnogenesis, one that is likely doomed to failure.
Армянские оружейники презентовали новую снайперскую винтовку (видео)
ReplyDeletehttp://novostink.ru/armenia/75656-armyanskie-oruzheyniki-prezentovali-novuyu-snayperskuyu-vintovku-video.html
спасибо
DeleteՆախիջեւանի հետ սահմանին Հայաստանի դիրքերը բարելավվել են. բացառիկ կադրեր հատուկ գործողությունից
ReplyDeletehttp://www.yerkirmedia.am/?act=news&lan=hy&id=20982
Շնորհակալություն
DeleteYes I get your sense of sarcasm. Putin is doing a good enough job and Arevordi would surely come to my conclusion that time is on our side. Just watch the U.S. destroy itself without resorting to nukes in the equation...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Christians-Iraq-Putin-Assyrian/2014/06/30/id/580008/
ReplyDeleteLG
This all has a very 19th century feel to it. Back then it was primarily Armenians looking to Russia for help against Turks, now it's Assyrians looking to Russia for help against Western backed terrorists...
DeleteSarkis, I don't know if this person was of Armenian background or not, but SBU has put a host of people from various Russian news organizations on its "terrorists wanted" list - on the same level as Igor Strelkov(whom they call "Girkin") and Valerij Bolotov of Lungansk People's Republic.
ReplyDeleteThey did, in fact, put a young Armenian girl who works for lifenews along with her colleagues in lifenews as well. The Ukr security forces are on an all-out hunt for Russian journalists, 3 pairs have already been illegally seized and 3 people have been killed. The SBU and the so-called "national guard" hate Russian journalists with a passion for it is the Russian journalists who report that it is local people defending themselves from genocide, that the city of Slavyansk is being shelled every single day and every day someone there gets killed. They show militia of Novarossya as ordinary and decent people who found no other way to defend their values, culture, and history than with weapons in hand. They fear that the Russian news stories reaches other parts of Ukraine and brake the hysteric propaganda campaign they are inflicting on the citizens of Ukraine.
I would definitely cross NetFlix off of the list to watch movies for their notoriously anti-Putin/Russian documentaries and movies. There was actually a "documentary" about Khordovsky, directed by him, about how evil Putin was and how unpopular he was, and how Khordovsky was jailed because he was jewish(boohoo)......
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it it does have a retro feel to it. Except this time the West is not ascending, but like the ottomans before them is heading toward civilizational decline.
ReplyDeleteLG
SO today was the first day of the end of a "ceasefire" that never was in the first place. The Ukrs made hardly any progress on the ground and took losses in tanks, APCs, trucks with ammunition, fuel tankers, and men. Progressed hardly no where, but at least took ferocious revenge against economic and civilian objects in Lugansk, Kramatorsk, and Slvyansk. In north Donetsk they hit with an air strike a substation leaving all of Slvyansk and Kramatorsk without electricity.
ReplyDeleteIn Donetsk, the Vostok batallion and Donetsk Berkut stormed an interior troops base hosting Ukr spetznaz "Sokol" - the facebook minister Arsen Avakov heroically coordinated the defense of the base from "terrorists" from far away on facebook, but to no avail, the Ukrs valiantly fell -- According to witnesses Arsen Avakov's hands and eyes were very tired.
I have indigestion every time I see transplanted Hovanissian pontificating on tv screens. Sometimes I wonder if this guy is a genuine armenian ? Yet i admit I was an admirer of him when in 1989-1990 as foreign minister he was a champion for Artsakh, and how well he articulated the Armenian cause in the " Voice of america". Now it is a very different story. But what can we do? Armenia is truly a free country, he can speak his mind and carry a few followers with him in the wrong direction. This is the essence of democracy, not that I am a democrat, on the contrary I am a nationalist, and what today is called a nazi, fascist or extremist. But Hovanessian, Paruhyan and the other intellectual-political quasimodos need to have the freedom to speak their minds. We just have to be mature enough to qualify them and distinguish between misguided idealists, or traitors. All parties or groups which fail to se the geopolitical realities need to be reined in. We can not tolerate divisions, and we can not tolerate streams of our national consciousness to betray our race and nation. I always like to compare our young nation with that of the Greeks. We have a lot more in common than uncommon with them, yet, thank God we are not alike. Greece was thumbed down under ottoman islamic slavery for 400 hunded years. The greek nation has now reached a plateau of amnesia. They have allowed their tiny nation to be invaded and colonized since the mid eighties, by arabs, afghanies, north africans, turks and muslims. You have to have had a trecherous ruling elite to manufacture such a tragedy for your nation. fortunately we in Armenia have not fallen to the amnesiac disease. We know our history, we know our race and culture, we know our traditions and we know our eternal enemy, eternal enemy because with Turks around we can not , unlike the hapless and disgraced Greeks, have a minute of peace, a minute of security or a minute of tranquility. With Turks around we need and must be on a ever war footing. That is why it is incomprehensible that chameleons like Hovanessian, Paruhkyan, Oskanian, LVP, and other transplants from abroad are allowed to propagate and motivate a shift in consciousness and vigorously attempt to deviate from the course history has charted for the national salvation. It would be interesting if someone could initiate an investigation into the banking accounts of LVP, Oskanian,Hovannessia ,Parukyan and other trucklers and proditors in the Armenian political scene. Who is behind them ? Armenia wil live and grow strong, and we have to view Azeri threats as an opportunity, not as a fear, for war and liberate more homeland territories , so that we may break out from our ring fenced position in which we find ourselves in the present. FQ
ReplyDelete“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave”
ReplyDeleteLeo Tolstoy
"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain"
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte
“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws"
Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
Therefore, let it surprise no one that since the end of the Second World War most nations on earth (including Armenia in recent years) have had central bank officials trained in the Western world. This is why representatives of nations are forced to quietly sit at the table with Wall Street bankers and IMF officials. One of the Western world's most powerful weapon-of-mass-destruction is indebtedness and financial servitude - on a personal level as well as on a national level. This is how they make or break nations around the world. The whole system is designed/rigged to bring wealth into the coffers of the Western elite - at the cost of either destroying or enslaving nation-states around the world. This is ultimately why the Western world holds unprecedented powers over mankind.
As long as nation-states do not take back the right to print their own money independent of Western wishes, they will remain dependent upon Western powers for survival. As long as nation-states allow themselves become dependent upon Western loans for their development, they will remain dependent upon Western powers for survival. As long as nation-states stake their economic survival on trading with the Western world, they will remain dependent upon Western powers for survival.
With that in mind let's recognize that the Anglo-American-Jewish global order will rule the backward barbarians of this world as long as the backward barbarians in question (Argentinians in the following particular case) blindly embrace the financial/economic paradigm setup by the Anglo-American-Jewish global order at the end of the Second World War -
This Is How A Hedge Funder Brings An Entire Country To Its Knees: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-hedge-fund-guide-bringing-160839238.html
As long as all roads led to Rome, punishing nations for not following Roman dictates proved easy for Romans. Today, all roads (financial, economic and cultural) have been meticulously paved to lead to Washington. It has therefore become troublingly easy for the Western establishment to impose harsh penalties on nations that do not follow rules it has created for its self-interest -
Putin Says U.S Blackmailed France Over Warship With BNP Fine: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-01/putin-says-u-s-blackmailed-france-over-mistral-with-bnp-fine.html
As long as the Western world is protected by oceans and allied buffer states - and as long as they control the commodities trade and the money flow in the world - failed stated within targeted areas of the world actually serve their long term interests. As long as the Western establishment is not made to suffer severe consequences for their actions around the world, they will continue their egregious crimes against humanity -
Chaos incorporated: http://rt.com/shows/crosstalk/169768-democracy-ukraine-new-agenda/
The Western elite has in recent years targeted Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine with unrest. The intent has been to curb the growth of Russian power; curb the growth of Iranian power; curb the growth of pan-Arab nationalism; maintain control over the region's energy production and distribution; and ensure the survival of the Jewish state. Watch the following interview and remember that Paul Craig Roberts was once an official in President Ronald Reagan's administration -
Raul Craig Roberts on Ukraine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NZnHyTYsqU
http://rt.com/news/170572-rand-east-ukraine-plan/
ReplyDeleteThe US government-funded RAND Corporation's plan reads like an instruction manual for ethnic cleansing planned for Russians in eastern Ukraine. Thank God Moscow would today, as it has in the past, crush mercilessly any self-styled "great power" which would date undertake such action. Does the west today export anything other than death, destruction, and depravity?
Queue the Armenian Diaspora's sense of self-righteous, "Never Again(!)" outrage at the threat of Genocide recurring anywhere in the world. No, they're too busy with fireworks and searching for new, "pro-Armenia", Biden/Pelosi-style candidates to throw money at for the November Congressional election? Well, then...
The worst is yet to come. Now I've seen facebook posts that reveal some anti-Western cyberwarriors' loss of faith in Putin, accusing him of selling out Novorossiya. Is this either a part of Putin's plan to make the junta of Nuland(eli)a even more guilty of war crimes, or is this a Western plan to bring further pressure on Putin's regime?
DeleteI have read the RAND Corporation's plans for the ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Russian population, and needless to say, the US won't stop until Russia itself is wiped off the map. I could only pray for the day when I am given the chance to actually take up arms and fight for Russia.
With that in mind, I wanted to formulate an idea that should change the world, but I do fear that I will fall into the trap of being a hopeless romantic.
I've also seen random people complaining that Putin is not acting tough enough. I can't blame the Russians for being upset over the massacres of their people in eastern Ukraine, but they need to control their emotions and realize that the west is trying to force Moscow into a war. Putin is playing the diplomatic game properly, while the west is getting more desperate, criminal, and careless in its actions. Waging open war against Ukraine is still not yet in Russia's interests, due partially to the need to prevent non-extremist western Ukrainians and others from uniting against Russia, and to prevent the diplomatic and economic consequences that would case... What we are seeing in Russia is a people's tolerance has reached its limits at the open call for genocide emanating from Kiev and the west. I suspect official Moscow will expertly use this to crush the remaining "pro-western opposition" traitors within Russia.
DeleteJerriko, picking up a gun and going off to war is a last resort to be used only when ones homeland faces the threat of hostile invasion, such as Armenia faces from Azerbaijan. Short of that, war kills off the best, bravest, noblest, and most ideological of young men, and leaves the world poorer for it. A far more effective way to ensure victory, at least at this moment, would be to keep a clear head, learn to see through the lies peddled out by the western elite, educate yourself and educate others around you, and raise a decent family to carry the victory into the future. The west is intent on spreading deception, death, ignorance, and destruction; the antidote to that is Truth, Life, Intelligence, and Self-Respect.
Any views on this movement which call itself the government of Western Armenia and offers citizenship and an ID card ?
ReplyDeleteI've vaguely heard a few things about the "government of Western Armenia" over the years. I believe they also adopted a flag of western Armenia around 2004. My take is that they are absolutely pointless, a doomed attempt to keep the Armenian Diaspora relevant to any future Turkey-Armenia negotiations, and possibly apply pressure on Yerevan. We saw during the Protocols era that while President Sargsyan's Armenia was setting up a major diplomatic victory, the leaders of the western Armenians/diaspora were hysterically calling for his assassination. Giving these inexperienced, self-styled leaders a voice is a threat for Armenians, specially since some of them frequently take opposing positions to official Yerevan and often push a anglo-american-zionist agenda on the side.
DeleteThe people who believe in that movement also probably believe that the key to regaining western Armenia is the Treaty of Sevres and "official" genocide recognition by the US Congress.
My advice to anyone who identifies themselves as a "western Armenian" or "Cilician Armenian" and who wants to take some steps in asserting their ethnic identity is to get over themselves, drop the artificial separation from eastern Armenians, recognize that the only government/flag/anthem/citizenship which matters for the Armenian cause is that of the Republic of Armenia (including Artsakh), and to work on establishing and developing ties with the state that Armenians have if they have any intention of maintaining an Armenian identity. That is the only realistic future for Armenians, and it is also the only hope of ever making a legitimate land claim for western Armenia at some point in the future (a complex topic that requires its own blog entry). All other efforts are a waste of time and money, and in all likelihood will cause more divisions among Armenians that our western/turkish enemies can exploit.
Are you talking about the organization run by a weird French-Armenian who claims to be a former ASALA member? If so, I suggest you don't have much hope. I know the organization quite well.They cannot be trusted. They are most probably supported by one of the Western intelligence services. More importantly, they do not recognize the current Armenian state are their homeland. What they want is some form of a separate Armenian state that is in close alliance with Kurds. The leader of the organization was in Syria and northern Iraq during the last two years trying to convince the Kurds there to help him resurrect Cilicia within Syria. Like I said, they cant be trusted. They have the potential to become a serious liability for Armenia.
DeletePavel Dremov, one of the field commanders of the resistance in Lugansk Peoples Republic, a Don cossack, gave an interview.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WczGfgZOME4
He gave Nagorno-Karabakh as an example of how an enemy with significant advantage in armor and artillery can be defeated. He speaks very highly of Nagorno-Karabakh.
do you know how to get from russian to english captions on youtube? I dont know russian obviously...
DeleteThere's a "CC" in the video control panel under most videos. However, it is not available on all videos, and often times the subs are inaccurate because they rely on user submissions or on primitive auto-translate technology.
DeleteIt's not available on this video at all. Perhaps a Russophone reader can provide a very brief, general transaction of the relevant points.
And now for a brief look at the cultural "achievements" of the Armenian American community:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2014/06/03/37722/new-armenian-american-reality-tv-show-sparks-outcr/
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Critics-Slam-Glendale-Life-Reality-Show-For-Perpetuating-Stereotypes-261100571.html
http://www.glendalenewspress.com/news/tn-gnp-upcoming-tv-show-glendale-life-faces-criticism-20140530,0,6616593.story
I don't really watch too much TV to begin with, but I thought I'd comment on this. Of course everything is fake, and the "stars" try to act as outrageously and unrealistically as they can in order to generate a reputation for themselves and gain a following on Twitter and elsewhere. It's an alternate reality. But sadly in the United States this is the shit that the coveted demographics watch. Impressionable Tween girls up to late-twenty year olds and beyond watch the American equivalent of this kind of crap on MTV, E!, the networks and other channels which primarily target women as their audience. Unfortunately, a lot are not mature enough to understand that this is not how decent people are supposed to behave, and they end up emulating the whores they see on TV because the producers glamorize those whores and convey the message "if you want to be rich, famous, and popular, then act like this". Animalistic "pop culture" that has practically destroyed the west, as Arevordi has described it, localized for an Armenian audience.
It's a pretty sad state when this is the low brow garbage on Armenian TV in the west, along with non-stop commercials for: 1) plastic surgery (featuring the most Nordic/Slavic looking, six foot tall, blonde, green-eyed, Non-Armenian actresses you can imagine that look absolutely nothing like the average Armenian woman), and 2) lawyers. I don't know if these reflect the values of the Armenian community, or whether these are the values that the Armenian-American networks want to instill into the Armenian community, but life tends to imitate art and Americans tend to adopt the beliefs and behaviors of characters they see portrayed in the media. All signs point to a very grim future for Armenians in the west.
Sad as all of that may be, this garbage is actually a step up from the toxic, anti-Armenia, Hetq.am/Ara Manoogian-inspired political pieces they feature on the USArmenia TV "news". The network is 24/7 whores of all stripes.
Want to share with you guys some recent developments:
ReplyDeleteIf you read the news, you may have picked up "Ukraine army routes rebels in Slavyansk".
This is not yet "Karabakhization" of the conflict.
In Donetsk there is a lot of oligarchial and material interests at play and a lot of traitors. The city of Slavyansk with initially its 120K population turned into an absolute bastion of the resistance. For 3 month they raised an army and valiantly held an over 20000 strong enemy. They knocked out more than half of Ukraines military helicopters, an observation plane, and several SUs. They acquired a few tanks and Nona artillery systems. From a couple hundred, they left Slavyansk in the thousands. IN that time, they caused significantly more damage to the enemy than they took themselves.
Last week, the last lifeline to Slavyansk was closed in the village of Nikolaevka. Igor Strelkov (commander of this group) made a couple of troubling announcements. The first was "Today in battles in Nikolaevka, 20 of our RPG-18s failed, the enemy rode into town in armored vehicles without even any infantry support apparently knowing that we have nothing to answer with". More troubling were traitors: "3 field commanders deserted their positions".
Apparently some "sympathetic" people from Donetsk provided them these defective RPGs and bought off the 3 field commanders. Strelkov and his men, along with 30K civilians still left in the city were destined to "heroically" die there. Strelkov, understood what's up and did not get with the program, opting to save his army instead. He planned a brilliant breakout composed of total secrecy of his plans and declarations from him and his men on their final prayers and goodbyes as they stand till the end. On July 5th, a diversionary attack was launched by his armoured group against a Ukr checkpoint, while a large column of armoured and regular vehicles went offroad with their lights off before getting on the main road to Kramatorsk, in the meantime 300 of his "special forces" from their trenches deluded the Ukrs that the militia was still in town by opening fire on the Ukr movements. That 300 stayed in town for a couple more days to cause the incoming Ukrs trouble. The breakout was a success, thousands of Strelkov's fighters made it to Donetsk.
Some Armenian grandpa named Kurginian went on a tirade about "Strelkov's betrayal" -- he obviously is a 5th column rep, I wanted to punch him listening to his words. But it is obvious that Strelkov was supposed to die in Slavyansk by their calculation. Now hopefully Strelkov can create order and vertical of power in Donetsk.
PS:
The Kremlin does not control the situation in the Donbass, they are creating facts on the ground themselves. Ahead there is more broken factories, infrastructure, homes, and lives. Russia can expect 100s of thousands of refugees in the near future.
Thank you for the update, please continue to share recent developments with us.
DeleteI think that if the E. Ukrainians can hold off for another year that the worsening socio-economic climate of Ukraine (due to signing AA with EU + IMF intrusion into economy) will bring more people to their cause, and paralyze the regime in Kiev.
LG
Thanks for the update Skhara.
DeleteFrom my end I can inform the readers that the retreat from Slavyansk was a definite setback for the rebels. But it was just a battle. In my opinion, the war is far from over. Donetsk and Lugansk have been strengthened recently with new "shipments" of weapons. The latest one arrived this morning (local time) and the rebels are actively recruiting new volunteers.
Despite all the Western support, Kiev has not won yet and they don't have the luxury of time as the war is bleeding them physically, economically, diplomatically and morally.
Having said that, I hope diplomatic efforts bring a quick and peaceful conclusion to this tragic situation.
Skhara, what's going on is very much the Karabakhization of the conflict. Yes, there was a tactical setback but overall it's all going according to plan. Yes, Moscow has been unusually quiet lately. Why? In my opinion, it's due to NATO's recent announcement that the organization will not expand into Ukraine and Georgia. There have been a lot of behind-the-scenes meetings lately. This NATO announcement seems to be some kind of a deal struck between Moscow and the West and this is most probably why Moscow has not been pounding its chest in recent days. Having said that, as the body of this blog commentary suggests, Moscow will continue providing the freedom fighters with all sorts of aid. In final analysis, the rebellion in the east/south will not be defeated. Despite what you are hearing in the Russian news, Russian special forces are operating throughout eastern and southern Ukraine.
DeletePS: You are being too emotional again. I also think you are taking Russian news coverage of the situation too verbally. Realize that just like what they do in the West, pro-Moscow news outlets are also in the business of spinning news information.
Before Strelkov's breakout from Slavyansk, the groups were a little disjointed. I wouldn't call Slavyansk a setback since they milked the situation for all they could. They simply do not have the manpower to hold all the towns and villages in Donbass. So its important to build a vertical of power and keep their arteries between Donetsk and Lugansk open.
ReplyDeleteRight now for the militia of Novarossia they have some juicy tactical opportunities available.
1. Lugansk airport
2. Donetsk airport
3. The southern boiler
1. Lugansk: about 2000 soldiers + polish mercenaries have been sitting here for weeks without food supplies and water supplies. Recently a very accurate artillery attack drove them to agony as they attempted an armored breakout from the airport, but came upon a mine field that the militia used to block them and were forced right back into the airport
2. Donetsk. Strelkov showed up and a proper airport operation conducted. Very painful artillery attack forced the soldiers inside attempt a breakout, but they were forced back in. Still sitting blocked.
3. The southern "boiler". That's a name that militiary people on both sides of the fence call the situation that Ukr army got themselves into. See map:
http://s1.stc.all.kpcdn.net/f/4/image/55/16/821655.jpg
The Ukr army units are compressed in the south while the militia holds a dominant height: Saur Mogila. This already yielded a major tactical result today:
http://www.isok.ru/img/full/636161cb2054b9900efa3d130509566b.jpg
http://lifenewscontent.ru/static/posts/2014/7/136376/a86eb8769e5aea7023f6532c2771d79d.jpg
http://lifenewscontent.ru/static/posts/2014/7/136376/114cbef088d3eab4b8018511993e142d.jpg
Bullseye! That's pretty good shooting if you take into consideration the fact that Grads are unguided rockets.
DeletePS: I bet it was not luck.
Definitely not luck. They had scouts that corrected and guided the fire. The vehicles were the main target, but the Ukr have 100s of wounded that they cannot properly evacuate.
DeletePoroshenko threw a hysterical fit claiming they will kill 100 times more. Although I don't if he means they will be mass murdering civilians since they are obviously trying to kill all the militia they can.
They are saying that Poroshenko is drinking heavily now and is totally inadequate. He is being scolded like a school boy at the American embassy.
According to the latest RT news, anti-American sentiment is actually rising in Germany as a result of the latest NSA spying scandal.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG-QcSaOCbQ
What do you guys think? Is this a good example of Europe pulling out of the Unholy Trio's orbit? (Anglo-American-Zionist cabal).
Der Spiegal had a poll on their site about the Crimea situation asking what to do about Russia, question were something along the lines of:
Delete1. Extreme economic sanctions
2. No sanctions just diplomacy
3. West is being hypocritical, Russia is protecting its national interests
over 70% the last and Der Spiegel took the poll down after only 4 hours.
Also, there was an article on Der Spiegel titled: "Is Germany a nation of Russia apologists?" one of the reader comments noted: "A better question should be: 'Is Germany a nation of America apologists?'"
Anyway, I saw some debates in the Bundestag, only the lowly socialists speak the truth - its a pretty hopeless situation in their pro-American political establishment. Incidentally, both German and French banks are being sanctioned by Americans now and they are taking it lying down. Recently Germany tried to work out with the Fed to get their gold back to Germany by 2020 -- the Fed showed the Germans the finger - humiliated Germans had to claim that "their gold is safe in America".
Germany is the heart and soul of classical European civilization. In fact, Europe is for the most part a creation of Germanic peoples. One of my dreams is to see the liberation of Deutschland - minus its Turkish fetish...
DeleteIt took the map from Skhara's above post and placed a red star on the village of Zelenopolye where the Ukrainian Army group was annihilated by that Grad attack. But the map itself is very interesting:
ReplyDeleteIn their mad rush to encircle the Rebels and cut them off from the Russian border, the Ukrainian generals did the mistake of sandwiching themselves in a long but narrow strip right between Russia and the fortified rebel positions that have the high ground. Their positions in that area are now at the mercy of the rebels. I hope Strelkov takes advantage of the situation and counterattacks to eliminate and capture large amounts of Ukrainian soldiers.
http://oi62.tinypic.com/2w6z1ib.jpg
The rebel leaders in Donetsk Strelkov, Borodai and Antiufeev during press conference. Photo:
ReplyDeletehttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8LWq3PeZSp8/U8Ab0mf-PHI/AAAAAAAAF7U/X0Ra9NKGWig/s1600/%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%91%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B9+%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%8E%D1%84%D0%B5%D0%B5%D0%B2.png
Coincidentally, all three of them were in Transdniestria during that conflict.
The Kremlin must be taking the Novorossia project very seriously.
By the way, yesterday's "humanitarian" aid column from Russia included 5 tanks and 3 anti-aircraft guns. Photo:
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/bmpd/38024980/1322492/1322492_900.jpg
Prior to the annihilation of the Ukrainian unit near the Russian border, a similar event occurred on the same day in a much smaller scale. The video below is from the Lugansk airport area where the rebels use mortars to pound Ukrainian army armored vehicles and score direct hits. You will see them clearly half the way through the video.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkmXkMrybjM#t=30
"I love mortar men"
Delete"Oj you beautiful mortar men"
Incidentally, two soldiers from west Ukraine "Ivano-Frankovsk", commended about this southern pickle saying "The guys need to evacuated". The militia is still pressing there, they will not let them relax. I don't know if they have enough heavy weapons to finish them them.
As far as the Kremlin is concerned. For me, it is still up in the air. I don't particularly understand the Kremlin's strategy here. I believe the Kremlin is working with the situation that the rebel's are creating themselves.
In Slavyansk Strelkov's men did not have much quality weapons. The anti-tank situation was very poor, but it did seem to have improved lately. Militia in Lugansk is claiming 9 tanks knocked out in battles west of Lugansk today.
An Armenian volunteer: Arthur Gasparyan (from Spitak) who joined the rebels in Donetsk (via the Russian border) and was involved in the disastrous attempt to take the Donetsk airport and some other missions in Gorlovka. He is now back safely in Russia and has given this interview in Russian (use google translate):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25452387.html
Yeah, he basically confirmed the absurd nonsense that was in Donetsk before the arrival of Strelkov there. Incidentally, Vostok is now loyal to Strelkov and this time they didn't walk in to the airport like a bunch of idiots and get shot. Khodakovsky is being suspected in treason, although Strelkov denied it, but I bet they are watching him.
DeleteOne part that I picked up on is the general trend of back in the USSR "friendship between the peoples". Armenians, Russians, Ossetians, Chechens.
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-i-was-a-separatist-fighter/25455466.html
DeleteThe interview is now available in English too.
LG
Thanks for posting that link LG.
DeleteZoravar,
ReplyDeleteCould you give your opinion on this whole Kurginian debacle in Donetsk? Whose interests do you think he represents? Obviously his outburst is ridiculous if not outright treason and sabotage.
I don't know much about the Kurginian thing. My Russian language skills are very limited.
DeleteSorry.
This is in Lugansk:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0TAhMAsknM
Fierce battles against tanks in Lugansk today. 2 Su-25s shot down over Gorlovka. Another Mi-24 shot down. Strelkov says the Ukrs were given 4 Apache helicopters.
Shooting in the "southern boiler" using tracer fire
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-wNeLm6JI
Moscow 'considering targeted strikes' on Ukraine https://news.yahoo.com/moscow-considering-targeted-strikes-ukraine-084145577.html
ReplyDeleteArto1
That actually is disinformation. If Russia does anything, it will not be public.
Deletehttp://armenianow.com/commentary/analysis/56012/armenia_russia_eurasian_union_karabakh_azerbaijan_arms_statement_sargsyan
ReplyDeleteWell they are at it again. Of course the Armenian leaderships lack of strategic thinking both domestically and internationally is the primary reason why all of this is occurring.
LG
-Armenian officials realize that with the the western-created crisis in Ukraine, Russia's Eurasian Union - Russia's grand project to secure its position in the Near Abroad and to rival the EU, North American, and East Asian Blocks - has suffered a setback which could potentially create a very negative precedent for other member states.
Delete-For Moscow, Armenia's ascent to the Customs Union must be secured at all costs in order to fortify the organizations presence and domination in the strategically critical South Caucasus region. Not having Armenia is not an option, and Georgia [Abkhazia, Ossetia, and near total saturation by western agents and NGOs[ and Azerfagjan [too infiltrated by NATO-member Turkey and western oil interests] can in no way replace the role of Armenia/Artsakh for Russia.
-Armenia thus has a rare opportunity to actually put real pressure in Russia and potentially squeeze more concessions out of Moscow during the time that Kremlin leaders are busy dealing with the Ukraine crisis, Novorossiya project, and the military, clandestine, political, diplomatic, black propaganda, social subversive, financial, and economic aggression coming out of the west... Just like Armenia for years played games for years with the EU negotiators in order to buy itself time and concessions, Armenia can stretch out the negotiating schedule and try to haggle economic and trade concessions out of Moscow. If the west's own press is to be believed, Armenia mainly wants some exemptions to certain trade and tariff policies that would be in its favor, which are the types of interests any normal government tries to secure for itself before committing to a supranational organization. In this manner Armenia's leaders are infinitely more pragmatic than the Bulgarians, Romanians, Georgians, Poles, Balts, and others who, after finally having escaped the totalitarian Communist system, rushed as fast as possible to throw themselves at the totalitarian, multicultural, debt-slavery system of the EU.
-As analysts have pointed out, if Armenia becomes a full member of the Eurasian Union, it will basically double Russia's voting power in the organization because Yerevan will almost always support the Russian position due to its reliance on Russian troops, arms, and investments. Thus Armenia's value for Russia is much greater than it may at first appear to the untrained eye. This explains Belarus and Kazakhstan taking steps to hinder Armenia's ascent, along of course with the trade opportunities Minsk and Astana see in Baku. Ironically, if my above analysis conforms to reality, Armenia can use Belarus/Kazakhstan opposition to strengthen its position in asking for more Russian concessions while at the same time making open declarations that Armenia will NOT cede any concession (ie border guards) on Artsakh.
-It's only natural Armenia would complain about Russian arms sales to Azergayjan despite the fact that Russia keeps the balance of power tilted in Armenia's favor through free weapons, intel, training, and the presence of Russian troops, because at the end of the day those weapons are aimed at Armenia. And the idea of peace-keepers in Artsakh has been around and rejected by Yerevan since the late 1980s. The desperate criminal-traitors at Armenianow are again grasping at straws and trying to create mountains out of molehills in order to keep their activities in Armenia relevant (and therefore keep western funding coming).
-Despite the venomous lies that the cyberwarrior scum have been spreading for years, Armenian leaders have in fact proven capable of pressing Armenia's interests in Moscow and everywhere else despite Armenia's massively handicapped geostrategic position. Yerevan obviously cannot leave Moscow's orbit, but it is trying to exploit everything it can out of Moscow without seriously endangering the alliance.
-Also note Armenia's opposition is neutered, the only notable power rivals to the government are the business interests.
Having interacted with Armenian officials I do not hold them in the highest esteem. As usual, 20% are doing 80% of the work. The remaining 80% are in it for themselves and short sighted goals.
DeleteI agree with you that Russia has more to gain from Armenia joining than Belarus and Kazakhstan. As CSTO members these 2 states are about as useful to Armenia as non member Mongolia, in fact both have close ties with Azerbaijan. I don't like either Nazerbayev nor Lukashenko.
If Armenian officials are trying to get concessions out of Moscow, they need to keep their mouths shut about when Armenia will join the EAU. On 3 or 4 occasions they have given dates which have passed, it makes them look bad as well as the whole Eurasian integration project.
I am not worried about Russian peacekeepers in Artsakh, they will only end up there as a last resort. However, I prefer to keep things the way they are. Armenians need to defend their own lands, otherwise we will always remain pawns of various great powers, and continue to have a victim mentality which is fatal.
Armenianow is garbage but we must continue to monitor their activities, and some of the bs they print is based upon gossip/chatter one hears among Armenians. Of course they sensationalize it and claim that analysts are talking about it, when the reality is that only a few out of many are discussing the topic.
LG
The men in Donetsk are relatively neutered. There is not even close to enough manpower considering the number of people. Nagorno-Karabakh with its 130000 population mobilized 10K-15K army. Donetsk with its million doesn't have 10000 yet. They put their checkbox on referendum, but really don't want to fight.
ReplyDeleteIf you guys haven't heard, Avakov declared the current "maidan" as a project of the FSB. Those drug addicts and petty criminals were "freedom fighters" before the current oligarchical took power, now they are a project of the FSB. Pretty soon they will be liquidated and Obama won't be complaining about any violence against peaceful demonstrators.
ReplyDeleteSo they just discard their own thugs like garbage. Not surprising.
DeleteThose Maidan retards deserve everything that happens to them. Worthless scumbags must learn that stupidity and uncontrolled emotional outbursts mandate punishment in the real world. They disgraced the once proud Swastika by turning it into a symbol of western Jewery's irregular ground forces. They'll get no sympathy from me.
DeleteA very fitting end for these types: debt-slavery; western corporate control of all their state and natural resources; jail time for questioning the hollowhoax myth; extortionate inflation on groceries, fuel, and utilities; homosexual propaganda for their sons (although since they are majority catholics homosexuality and pedophilia are things they learned from a young age from their priests); and some nice third-world immigrants to rob them, rape their wives, and knock up their daughters.
I wonder which of their enemies these geniuses will turn to for help, the Poles, Romanians, Turks, or Russians?
A Ukr column was attempting to break towards the airport in Lugansk and here is what happened to it:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8_OfM_U9Q
The young man at 1:17 is an Ossetian.
Says:
We were lying here and a column of about 9 vehicles like this (BTR, BMP, 2 tanks) were going towards the airport. One of your commanders whacked the first BMP, if we didn't "whack" them they would have whacked us. Russians were are you come help your Slav brothers. I am Christian, I am not Slav I am Ossetian I am here to help.
The Cossack later say holding a trophy helmet. This is "National Guard" - this is my first trophy.
News from the battlefront:
ReplyDelete1.The Ukrainian Army attack on Lugansk has failed. Once again, this attempt was a straight line dash that eventually exposes their flanks to counterattacks. They now retreated from the previously occupied villages of Alexandrovka, Yuvilenoy and Roskoshnoye.
See map below (the blue arrows are the directions of Ukrainian attacks):
https://pp.vk.me/c620727/v620727927/cd97/06E0jYUC4zc.jpg
2. New photos have emerged from the rebel GRAD attack on the Ukrainian army unit near the Russian border.What a carnage:
http://pereveslo.org.ua/index.php/suspilstvo/item/13439-u-merezhi-z-yavylysya-novi-fotohrafiyi-naslidkiv-biyni-pid-zelenopillyam-foto.html
3. Latest "Humanitarian" shipment from a brotherly country included 4 tanks and 3 Gvozdika self propelled artillery. It arrived this morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Y_jjAxREs