Monday, August 18, 2008

Back In the USSA

In his prime he was the most dominant wrestler since the semi-mythical Milo of Croton. A terrifying, 6'4" mound of sharply defined muscle mass, three-time Russian gold medal winner Alexander Karelin typically sported a tonsured head that was as blunt as an artillery shell and an impavid glare as frigid as mid-winter in his native Novosibirsk.


His sheer size, as well as the game face he brought a match, were often often sufficient to terrify competitors into submission even before they tied up on the mat.
His physique was deceptive; he appeared bulky and smooth, perhaps even a little flabby, while warming up. This sometimes engendered fleeting hope that he might be a little soft, a little slow.


When competitive exertion began, however, dense plateaus of muscle would suddenly reveal themselves in Karelin's chest and upper thighs, sharp striations of sinew would etch themselves in his arms, and his opponent would learn that Karelin's strength was entirely functional -- and utterly inhuman. They would likewise discover that he had the agility of a much smaller athlete, as well as the flexibility of a gymnast.



Much of Karelin's training was derived from his upbringing in one of Russia's most pitiless regions. One of his preferred training protocols was to run uphill sprints through chest-high snowdrifts; to increase the difficulty he would often carry a large log on his shoulders. He also spent countless hours hiking, hunting, skiing, and rowing a boat in the wilderness.


By the time he became an Olympic athlete Karelin was already a world-class physical specimen.
Between 1987 and 2000 (when he was beaten in Sydney by the heroic Rulon Gardner), Karelin never lost a match, and never surrendered a point, in international competition. Many of his opponents, unable to mount an offense, focused instead on trying to prevent Karelin from executing his signature scoring move -- the "Karelin Lift."


Derived from a move generally used by much smaller Greco-Roman grapplers, the Lift involved securing a body-lock on the opponent and then lifting him from the mat and dropping him on his head. Bear in mind that Karelin, who competed in the 286-pound weight class, was executing that maneuver on world-class competitors who weighed roughly as much as he did.




When he was approached in 1999 to run for parliament as a member of Vladimir Putin's Unity Party, Karelin -- regarded as a national hero by the Russians, who as a truly civilized people have a proper esteem for wrestling, the purest sport -- was told he would have to grow his hair and otherwise soften his terrifying visage. "Maybe you want me to pierce my ears and nose, paint my cheeks, use lipstick and makeup?" Karelin growled at his image-maker, who quite likely found himself involuntarily irrigating his skivvies.

An intimidating silhouette: Karelin (guess which one?) towers above his Russian Olympic teammates.


Even though he appeared to be an authentic Ivan Drago, a product of a super-secret Soviet genetic engineering project (hence his nickname "The Experiment"), Karelin is literate and refined man.


He has steeped himself in the admirable literature and exquisite classical
music of his homeland, to which he has a deeply rooted devotion. Like many Russians of his generation, however, his is a somewhat paradoxical patriotism.


For most of his life, his country was run by undisguised criminals who strip-mined it of its wealth, both tangible and cultural; who filled mass graves with tens of millions of innocent victims, and ran the world's largest network of prison camps; and who ruled through terror at home while pursuing subversion, and aggression abroad.



After winning his first gold medal in Seoul in 1988, Karelin acquired the cultural clout to defy the Soviet Communist Party, at a time when such defiance was still a very risky proposition. Shortly thereafter
he asked his mother to renounce her Party membership, which she did.


Karelin's study of Solzhenitsyn's work had taught him, quite properly, to loathe Communism, but it left him hurting and puzzled: "[A] lot inside me was ruined by trusting in the society where I live. After reading this, I had nothing left. I wondered, Are there no white spots in our history, only black? My whole country is in perpetual funeral."



Patriots of many countries, our own emphatically included, can empathize with Karelin. It is natural to love one's country. It is just as natural for informed people to despise the government that rules them.
Many Russian patriots who became politically aware shortly before the end of the Soviet Union were put into an exceptionally painful position: As much as they loved their country, they couldn't feel proud of it.

Milo's demise: The aged former wrestler, always seeking to test and validate his strength, attempts to split a recalcitrant stump with his bare hands. According to the legend, his hands became inextricably entrapped in the stump, and Milo was left helpless to defend himself when he was set upon by wolves.


That's the predicament confronting well-informed, principled patriots living in the proto-Soviet USA. Please forgive me for quoting something I wrote several years ago -- a column for The New American magazine that was rejected by its timorous editor and publisher for being a touch too controversial.


At the time, George Bush the Lesser, purported conqueror of Mesopotamia, was still in high triumphalist mode. He was still wreathed in the institutionalized awe of an official personality cult, and it struck me at the time that Bush had more than a little in common with Russian President Vladimir Putin.



Both had come to power as the result of appointment, rather than election. Both benefited from high-profile terrorist attacks the following September -- in Russia, it was a series of apartment bombings; in the US, of course, it was 9/11. Each of them used those incidents as a pretext to resume a highly controversial war -- Chechnya for Putin, Iraq for Bush.


Each worked quickly to centralize power in the office of the chief executive, and to expand the use of surveillance, extra-judicial detention, and torture. Both of them practiced shameless cronyism, and cultivated a quasi-official "Dear Leader" cult.
For all of these similarities, I concluded, the comparison between Bush and Putin is fundamentally unfair, since "one of them heads an increasingly authoritarian and lawless government that is pursuing a radical vision of global revolution rooted in the teachings of the Soviet Union’s founders. The other is merely the president of the Russian Federation."


The unpalatable reality of our present circumstances is this: Putin's Russia, in domestic terms, still displays many of the traits of its Soviet past -- but it is the regime in Washington that is carrying out a truly Soviet-style foreign policy. Moscow doesn't seek to build an ideological empire run by a vast army of apparatchiks and puppet rulers. Washington manifestly does.


This is apparent in the ugly war that Washington arranged in Georgia, a country run by a visibly unbalanced tool of the neo-"conservative" politburo. Mikheil Saakashvili was brought to power in 2003 through a coup orchestrated by
the National Endowment for Democracy, often referred to as the "Neo-conservative Comintern." Georgia's "Rose Revolution" was one of a series of color-coded "revolutions" that roiled various countries in recent years -- Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution," the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution," and the "Tulip Revolution" in Krgyzstan.


Georgia's "Rose Revolution," observes Peter Hitchens of the London Daily Mail, "was a putsch achieved by an orchestrated mob, followed by an election so shamelessly one-sided that our supposed hero got 96 per cent of the vote."


That figure reminded me of the "Tirana Index," devised about two decades ago by Charles Krauthammer, who at the time was a mildly innovative commentator at The New Republic. Alluding to the fact that Albania's ruler Enver Hoxha, an unvarnished Stalinist, routinely "won" elections by majorities of 99 percent or higher, Krauthammer asserted: "The higher the vote any government wins in an election, the more tyrannical it is."


That was how Dr. Krauthammer saw things circa 1986.



Today -- well, last Friday (August 15), when his most recent
column was published -- Krauthammer, who has degenerated into a tediously predictable neo-con hack, extols the Georgian regime as "Georgia's democratically elected government," even though by his own Tirana Index Georgia would have to be classified as a despotism.


The recent behavior of Saakashvili's junta -- ruling through a state of emergency at home, and engaging in blatant aggression abroad -- certainly illustrate that Krauthammer was on to something with his Index.


No matter, he insists: Should Saakashvili's government fall because of an ill-conceived effort (abetted by Washington and Tel Aviv) to force unwilling ethnic Russians to submit to its rule, then we must be ready to "make Russia bleed." This is to be done first through international ostracism, and then by supporting an Afghan-style armed resistance movement, if necessary.


Hey, great idea, Chuck, given that, y'know, Washington's last venture in Afghan-style proxy warfare was such an unqualified success.


Last March, the Bush administration made it known that it supported Georgia's request to join NATO -- as soon as it dealt with the problem of ethnic separatism in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The correct way to deal with separatism, of course, is to respect the right of people to go their separate ways if they choose to, and then to conduct commerce and diplomacy on peaceful, honorable terms.


That's the correct way. It is not, however, the "American" way, at least since 1861.


It's certainly not what Saakashvili -- whose political base consists of Georgians who want to reclaim South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- had in mind.


And this is obviously not what Washington had in mind when it dispatched hundreds of military
advisers to Georgia, conducted war games with the Georgian military that ended just a week prior to the assault on South Ossetia, and (with the help of Israeli contractors) equipped the Georgian Army for an attack that Washington certainly knew was coming -- just as it certainly knew Russian reprisals would not be far behind.


I have no way of knowing if Washington expected the Georgian military to collapse under the Russian onslaught as quickly and completely as it did. Since the Georgia gambit was planned by the same strategic geniuses who assured us that American occupation forces in Iraq would be greeted with candy and flowers, I suspect the result was an unpleasant surprise.



While neither side in this conflict is entirely clean, it was the post-Soviet Russian military that acted with professionalism, efficiency, and, for the most part, proportionality; it was the Georgian forces
trained and equipped by the proto-Soviet regime in Washington that committed an act of undisguised aggression, and -- when stymied by a superior force -- channeled its murderous rage into attacks on innocent civilians. And in a moment of unabashed censorship worthy of Soviet state television, Fox "News," an acknowledged appendage of the White House, actually tried to suppress eyewitness testimony of American civilians who reported that the Georgians had been the aggressors, and the Russians had acted to protect civilians.


After abetting Georgian aggression before the fact, and intervening during the ensuing hostilities (by airlifting Georgian troops from Iraq and dispatching military "humanitarian aid" missions), Bush retained the unmitigated gall to insist that the Russians had to honor Georgia's version of its international boundaries: "A major issue is Russia's contention that the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia may not be a part of Georgia's future. But these regions are a part of Georgia. There's no room for debate on this matter."


Leaving aside the fact that the U.S. has no right or need to be policing ethnic boundaries in the Trans-Caucasus, Bush is missing a point that should be obvious even to him: His puppet regime lost the battle; it was the side that requested a cease-fire; and the losing side doesn't get to dictate what can and cannot be debated.


Clearly, Bush and the adults who script his lines aren't finished with the Georgian conflict, and they're preparing to capitalize on what could be a long stretch of unpleasantness between Washington and the only other government on earth that can actually do material harm to the United States.



Whether or not Russia was justified in its decision to intervene in Georgia, this was
not an act of Soviet-style imperialism, at least on Moscow's part.


Since the USSR was brought down in a controlled demolition back in 1991, Washington has never neglected a chance to get into Moscow's grille. It has expanded NATO into Russia's front porch, bringing into that alliance not only the entire former membership of the Warsaw Pact but also the Baltic States that once belonged to the Soviet Union proper.


And now, even as the Bush Regime claims the right to change any regime on earth it doesn't like, it lectures Moscow about the vulgar impropriety of launching a military mission intended to protect ethic Russians from military aggression that was planned and orchestrated in Washington.



This. Is. Going. To. Hurt. American Greco-Roman Olympian Jeff Blatnick, winner of a gold medal at the Soviet-free 1984 Games in Los Angeles, is about to experience the painful result of the "Karelin Lift."

It's likely that the wizards of warfare who confected the conflict in Georgia saw the current Russian military establishment much as Alexander Karelin's early opponents saw him -- big and intimidating, certainly, but also soft and, perhaps, a trifle stupid.


But it's clear now that Russia can muster the means to assert control over its "near abroad," a part of the world where Moscow remains formidable, and where we have no business meddling. That doesn't mean the meddling will stop anytime soon, of course: There's simply too much profit to be made by the War Lobby now that the public is being convinced that the Russians are once again on the march. And this may be the entire point of this bloody, cynical exercise.


It is the fate of Alexander Karelin's ancient counterpart, Milo, that may foretell the end of Washington's empire. Milo enjoyed a long and uniformly victorious career, but eventually Time, the subtle thief of youth, stealthily sapped his uncanny vitality.


As Milo became an older man, a dangerous dis-proportion developed between his vanity and his strength. He compulsively tested his strength by focusing it on opponents that couldn't fight back -- inanimate heavy objects and the like.


One day he found a farmer working with doomed persistence to split a large, gnarled tree stump with a wedge and a hammer. Eager to display his strength, Milo told the farmer who he was and asked if he could try to split the stump with bare hands. The farmer, delighted by the sudden appearance of the celebrity, invited Milo to grapple with the stump, and then ran off to fetch food.


Unfortunately, Milo's confidence overmatched his strength. As he thrust his fingers into the stump, the wedge fell out, inextricably trapping his fingers. While the farmer tarried, a pack of wolves overwhelmed the aged wrestler, sadistically toying with him over the last, exquisitely painful hours of his life.


The imperial military is already trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our rulers are doing their considerable best to entangle it in Iran. And now, rather than trying to get free of those snares, Washington is doing what it can to bring on the wolves.


A quick note --

Please forgive the tardiness of this installment. I spent the past several days sorting out some computer problems.




On sale now!










Dum spiro, pugno!


22 comments:

  1. As a child growing up in the days of President Reagan, I was extremely patriotic. When my parents asked me what color I would like to paint my room, without hesitation I answered, "Red, white, and blue." Now that I am older and more aware of the state of our nation and the absolute corruption of Washington, it saddens me to know that we, America, are now the bad guys.

    Most Americans are willingly ignorant about the state of affairs of our nation, and even if they are told the truth, the truth is too scary for them so they doublethink.

    Mr. Grigg, when taking all that has happened into account and reflecting upon what we have degenerated into, would you conclude that our republic is now over? Do you think that a "reformation" is likely?

    "Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

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  2. The imperial military is already trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our rulers are doing their considerable best to entangle it in Iran. And now, rather than trying to get free of those snares, Washington is doing what it can to bring on the wolves.

    A situation Russia is well aware of and which it sits patiently awaiting. Why risk unnecessary cost in treasure and human lives fighting a wounded jackal when you can just sit back and let the beast slowly bleed itself out from its self-inflicted wounds? The denizens of the Kremlin, unlike the ruling cabal of criminal imbeciles inhabiting the whitewashed halls of power within the Rome-on-the-Potomac beltway, can clearly see the complete and inevitable collapse of the dollar in the near future, the complete breakdown of the U.S. military (to a degree infinitely worse than that occurring at the end of the Vietnam War), and the dawning of the day in the very near future when the few long-time allies Amerika now has will finally say "ENOUGH!"

    No one's fool, this Russian Bear. It will indeed enjoy the last laugh.

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  3. Great post summarizing the recent debacle of our leaders, whose motto ought to be, "No treachery untried." But, I don't think Bush resembles Putin in his career - he certainly does not in his temperament. It was interesting for me to read in a biography of Mr. Putin that his family home burned down and the only thing he managed to save was a crucifix. This image expresses very well what happened to Russia. It went through a crucifixion and now it is undergoing a resurrection - or showing signs of moving in that direction. Unfortunately no great suffering has come to Americans to compel a course correction - self-indulgence rules the day. We live in a regime which has decreed action without consequences - except for itself, in which case it is action without reflection and without the capacity to be affected by reality. Triviality and flippancy on the one hand, arrogant self-enclosure on the other. We need people to come forward with a bracing commitment to holding up the mirror to ourselves.

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  4. I keep hearing that song by REM playing in my head.

    anon

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  5. The Republic was lost long ago -- Garet Garrett's book "The People's Pottage" is a great (if heartrending) description of the process in the 20th century.

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  6. (Wrestling plug starts here) What a fine piece that included one of the greatest in the sport of wrestling. I knew of Karelin's wrestling feats, but did not know of his political outlook. My son has spent several years practicing the reverse body lift (the Karelin lift)and I know how extremely difficult it is to lift your own weight above your head, while the weight is kicking and wriggling and then attempt to "toss" that weight.

    There is something about the sport which teaches determination and humility and also builds character. (end of wrestling plug)

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  7. Brilliant, the parable/analogy between Milo's entanglement and the US was excellent. I wonder what will come of all of this. It certainly seems that this fall is shaping up to be very important in world history.

    Keep up the good work.

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  8. Don't worry, even the most carefully sterilized news accounts could not hide the facts. Some of us know exactly which is the budding nation struggling for self-rule, and which nearby government is attempting to put down that movement by force. And neither are Russia.

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  9. "Putin's Russia, in domestic terms, still displays many of the traits of its Soviet past -- but it is the regime in Washington that is carrying out a truly Soviet-style foreign policy." -- Will G.

    Yep. The problem for those schooled before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 -- and especially for Boomers subjected to the full force of anti-Soviet rhetoric during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 -- is that the Soviet Union was held up as the prototypical example of an Evil Empire:

    The Soviets cultivated satellite countries, occasionally invading them. At home, they ran a vast prison Gulag. Economic freedom was circumscribed by a vast bureaucracy which effectively regulated living standards, except for a privileged elite. Dissent was punished by arrest, followed by drumhead "trials" in courts with 99% conviction rates.

    Unfortunately, today the US resembles this description in every detail ... except that you don't even get a "trial" in fedgov court, unless you're crazy enough not to plea bargain your "exposure." Young people may think the post-9/11 security crackdown is just normal, everyday life. But the United States did not use to be a "Homeland" (a Nazi term sinisterly appropriated by the Bush regime).

    If Emperor Bush wants to be taken seriously by the Russians, perhaps he'd better betake himself to the UN next month and bang his shoe on the podium, a la Khrushchev. Boomers will grok the code. Buddy, can you spare five rubles for a cup of coffee?

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  10. I wrestled in high school and college Will. Most of those in the heavyweight class didn't exceed 200 pounds. If they did it was rarely comprised entirely of muscle. Yes, wrestling is one of the purest and most grueling sports but also, unfortunately, one of the least appreciated. If there are cutbacks in school budgets wrestling is usually first on the list to get the ax.

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  11. the soviet union had a 99% conviction rate? funny, the feds have a 98% conviction rate.

    just a thought.

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  12. I'm surprised readers haven't made more of the NATO aspect of this, it is, after all the closest to a multilateral international police force we have, and it is looking to grow.. !

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  13. Please avoid posting photos of the current president. I was about to eat.

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  14. Listening to Bush condemn Russia
    makes me cringe in fear knowing
    that millions of Americans are
    buying into his bulls*it.

    George Bush is a liar and a thief.

    Guess who else fits that description?

    (Maybe Chaves really did smell sulfur?)

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  15. I take predictions of American collapse with a giant grain of salt. The people peddling that line are the same MSM party that gets everything else wrong.

    I think the problem is the opposite. There will be no collapse.

    I don't wish America ill, but there's something to be said for being taken down a peg or two every so often.

    One of America's problem is that, as far as major powers are concerned, there is no viable alternative. The Russians are really unstable and corrupt, Communist China is evil from top to bottom, left to right, east to west. The EU is a gross, fascistic bureaucracy posing as a state that's posing as a non-state. Islamia is on a 1400 year war path.

    Demographically, the US is the only technologically advanced country that is growing.

    For me, this Georgian nonsense is he last straw. I was angered by NATO's aggression and incompetence in the Balkans, especially the wide-spread denigration or dismissal of Orthodox Christian civilization, and the ignorance of the role of Yugoslavia as the strongest predominantly Christian nation between the Turks (and Arabs) and Europe.

    One could, however, blame everything on Clinton, Chretien, Blair etc., and hope that things would get better.

    There are many things to criticize about Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, but at each step of the way, there was always some room for debate. The Taliban sheltered al-Qaeda, the Iranians fund terror world-wide, Iraq + Kuwait under Saddam would be a nightmare.

    And most of the critics had nothing better to offer. Just platitudes and often hysterical and hypocritical criticism.

    But the US push for the NATO protectorate of "independent" was a step on the edge of evil. One could argue that Bush etc had inherited Clinton's mess in the Balkans but pushing for Kosovan "independence" (in violation of the very UN resolution, 1244, that the US had passed in the security council!) was an active assault on Serbia in support of Jihadi mafiosi.

    Then they went deep into the realm of evil with the Georgian "adventure" (I hate to have to descend to Soviet terminology, but can't think of a better word right now).

    If Russia's buildup was so blatant, as is now claimed, then how come the "advisers" and satellites and CIA didn't anticipate it?

    And the response in the media and government is beyond pathetic. Democrats and liberals have nothing to say because they have no principles and so are unsure what tone to take in the last days of an election campaign. They've also lost all credibility, and with their involvement with al-Qaeda (Afghanistan & Bosnia) and the KLA, and their role in Kosovan "independence" they have no more of a leg than the Republicans do to stand on.

    The talk radio windbags and self-appointed "conservative" scribblers don't even pretend to be objective, They don't even mention that Georgia attacked. Just anti-Soviet propaganda (not that the Soviets shouldn't be "antied"! but Russia is not the USSR!).

    And what bothers me most is that America's democratic peace-loving "allies" (Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kosovo, Bosnian Muslims, Fatah, Afghans) must be having orgasms at the thought of the two major Christian regions at war.

    Did you know that the US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, is not only a Muslim, but is a citizen of Afghanistan? He's said that he can't decide what his next job should be, US Secretary of Defense or Aghan president. And nobody seems to care.

    Russia is the only Orthodox Christian state in the world that has successfully resisted Jihad since 1453.

    And the Western powers almost consistently allied themselves with the turks against Orthodox Christians in Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia.

    Of course the religious bigots who run the US (Methodist preacher Hilary, Baptist preacher Carter, "Hymie-Town Jackson, Bush, Pat Robertson, etc ad nauseum -- even the pseudo-Christian moron Obama!) know nothing about the Orthodox Christian church and civilization, and care even less.

    The end of Communism means, obviously a resurrection of pre-Soviet Russian pride and the Church. These historical facts mentioned above are as familiar to Russians as the Alamo and Gettysburg are to Americans.

    The idea that they would just sit back and twiddle their thumbs while The US, allied with Turks, just goes about setting up NATO bases in Georgia and Crimea is INSANITY! especially after the War on Serbs.

    This goes beyond the errors of mismanagement or getting caught up in situations that get out of hand.

    In my opinion, the US, in August 2008, has become a force of evil in the world.

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  16. Correction:

    "the US push for the NATO protectorate of "independent" was a step on the edge of evil"

    should be:

    ... "independent" Kosovo ...

    ___

    Also:

    Notice how the anti-missile patriot installation in Poland was sold as a defense against Iranian missiles.

    When the Russians saw it as a provocation, Rice etc said, "Don't be ridiculous!"

    Then, just a weeks after Russia smacked Georgia around a bit, the Poles rush to sign the "treaty" [i.e. we allow you to put Patriots here and pay for them and pay for the maintenance etc"]

    I thought it had nothing to do with Russia.

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  17. Dear Mr. Grigg,

    You know who this is - we have corresponded, although you don't usually reply. Take this how you will. I am not going to get into any discussion of it.

    I for one am consumed with delight and joy over the events of the past couple of weeks in Georgia. It is a real shame that a few thousand people, (mostly Ossetians,) and a handful of US servicemen (whose names and deaths have been suppressed by the media,) had to die, but the world has been saved from a massive calamity which would have plunged us into a global economic catastrophe.

    In short, before Kleine Mikheil got a hard on and decided to display his masculinity to the world by attacking the Russian Bear, and then wailing for Big Bad Uncle Sam Bush to come help him, Israel was planning to use Georgia, with the connivance of the Bush regime and the insane CIA, (which by the way is riddled with Jews, who have risen to positions of power in that Agency and are slowly packing its ranks with their co-religionists) as a base of operations from which to launch a surprise attack on Iran. The Georgian Defense Minister, Davit Kezerashvili, an Israeli citizen, was in on the plot, but, from his actions it would appear Kleine Mikheil Saakashvili probably was not. (The adjective Kleine refers to his brain, not the rest of him. His IQ is demonstrably less than his hat size.) How they planned to get around him I do not know. Maybe he would have died conveniently of a heart attack - one of those CIA wet operations - upon learning his country was being used to attack Iran.

    Round trip from Tbilisi to Tehran is 2,300 km, while from Tel Aviv to Tehran is 3,200 km. This would have allowed Israeli bombers to conduct the attack without refueling. Moreover, the Iranians, if they suspected an attack, would have expected it to come from the west over the Persian Gulf, not down from the north in the direction of Russia and Armenia. All their missiles are ranged in the mountains along the shore of the Gulf, waiting for the Israeli attack, which would not have come.

    By the time the approaching planes were identified (Imagine the panic in Tehran: "Who the hell is that? Are they Russian? What are they doing? Wait, hold your fire until we can identify them - God forbid we should shoot down Russian planes. Oh my God, they are bombing us.") - by the time it was realized they were Israeli, they would have dropped their bombs and been on their way back to Georgia, then to refuel quickly, and back over Turkey to Israel. (Yes, the Turks were part of it.)

    Russia, of course, has seized all kinds of intelligence in Georgia, and is reading it with great interest. (Understatement of the still-young century.) Why do you suppose they are taking their sweet time withdrawing? It takes time to go through all those file cabinets and desk drawers.

    Now this insanity cannot proceed, especially as long as Uncle Ivan remains sitting in Georgia, and the entire world, including the bleating sheep in Europe, owe Mr. Putin a debt of gratitude for saving the world economy from collapse.

    And you wondered why Congoleezza was so terminally pissed off at Kleine Mikheil? Now her boss' moment of glory as he trots off into the sunset will never happen. Kleine Bush will just fizzle out like a wet firecracker.

    However, the controlled media and their Neocon shills, shrieking with fury that their little Operation King David has been ruined, have stirred their tame politicians and the sheeple public into a frenzy of rage at their unacknowledged savior - Putin.

    Calm down, everybody, and say a prayer of thanks to God and a prayer for the good health of Mr. Putin, that you only have to pay $3plus change for a gallon of gas, instead of $12 or more.

    Politics, dear sheeple, is a marvelous game. "Do you pick Curtain #1? Or Curtain #2? How about Curtain #3?" Behind each curtain, dear viewer, is the same identical crock of shit.

    Which, did you but know it, after being picked by you, has to be eaten - by you. Those are the rules. Ha, ha. Funny, no?

    Sleep well, and be happy that the sun still shines on a world yet unfried by nuclear war. Pray that McCain does not get elected (but he probably will, because of dirty tricks planned for Michigan - Detroit, in specific - remember, you read it here first) because he is descending into a fog of Alzheimer's and will not serve more than 1-2 years. Provided his melanoma does not get him first. If he picks Lieberman as his VP we will have a Zionist Israeli citizen finally in charge of our country, something they have been trying to achieve for 60 years.

    God help us all.

    Kind regards,
    Lemuel Gulliver.

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  18. Lemuel:

    Well said. Try as I might, I cannot, sadly, find anything in your analysis that defies logic or that isn't clearly supported by current events.

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  19. I used to think one president could not wreck the republic then douchenozzle the decider came along. I also used to think only Napoleon and Hitler were detached from reality enough to take on Russia but it looks like the MBA genius and his snarling satan puppet master will poke and prod and pester until Russia is forced to act. Right now is not a good time to trifle with Russia. She is fighting for her very survival. Roughly 750,000 citizens die each year and it will be a Muslim majority country in 30 years. It is a shame we can't be allies but since the The War Against Terrorism isn't going all that great might as well revive the cold war wouldn't want those defense industry warpigs bottom line to suffer.

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  20. Not sure on the 750k of Russian mortality rate. I am no good at math hehe. But due to high alcoholism rate and high infant mortality average Russian male lives to only 60. Some third world countries have longer life expectancy. It might have something to do with quick response in Georgia they need all the people they can get. Analysts say it will take a generation to improve. Maybe the smart people are not breeding??

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  21. 10 Reasons Why We Need a New (Cold?) War

    By Gary Corseri

    05/09/08 "ICH" -- - 1. Russia is too damned uppity. After Georgian “peace-keepers” turned their guns on genuine Russian peace-keepers in South Ossetia, after Georgia bombed and killed 1500 South Ossetians, Russia had the nerve to counter-attack!

    2. Russia is too big for its britches. It still possess a sizeable chunk of the planet’s real estate—twice as much as the U.S. (not counting our foreign bases and various client states). They’ve less than half as many people as we have (and they’re mostly Slavs, anyway). Obviously, a lot of the land conquered under the Tsars ought to be up for grabs in the New World Order. The West needs those resources. It’s our planet too!

    3. Russia doesn’t play fair. When we get our apparatchiks in Poland to install missile interceptors on Polish land—the Russkies balk and claim Poland is now a legit target for Russky missiles. What’s this? Diplomacy through intimidation? Just because we do it, does that mean they should? Monkey see, monkey does? Russkovia is full of monkeys with nuclear warhead missiles!

    4. Russmonkeya has been howling ever since we broke the ABM treaties. Don’t they realize we have the “freedom” to break treaties at will? Didn’t they ever hear about our “Indians,” with whom we broke all our treaties?

    5. Russia has too many good writers whom they take seriously! Solzhenitsyn, for example. He was critical of the Soviet system, found it “soul-less,” etc. and the Russkies listened intently, put the heat on him, and he up and exiles himself to bucolic Vermont, where, fast as a fast-food, deep-fried chicken burger will bring on heartburn, he gets jaundice-eyed about America—calls us “decadent,” “consumerist,” “materialistic,” “immature” and yada yada yada. We, of course, ignore him—which is death to serious writers. So he up-ends himself again, returns to Russkovia, is critical of Mother Russiasky again and this time the Russkies burnish the samovars and conscientiously reflect on what he’s saying. … Naturally, we continue to ignore him.

    6. Haven’t the Putin reforms gone far enough? Wouldn’t we rather have a good-ole-boy vodka-boozer like Yeltsin in place, selling off the state’s resources to well-placed Russkie frat-boy-like oligarchs close to Western frat-boy-like oligarchs? Putin is too popular in Leninslavia! With a New Cold War, he’s bound to rein in the reforms, wrest more power to himself and bring on uprisings against him—uprisings our National Endowment for Democracy can shape and mold. Obviously, we need a guy like Brezhnev in there—a somnambulistic status-quo man who will keep a New Cold War simmering.

    7. A New Cold War is good for the dollar. The War on Terrorism is getting a bit frayed. Americans are starting to bawl: What’s in this for me? (Typical!) They’re whining about no health care or homes foreclosed or lousy schools, and the memory of 9/11 is already fading, in spite of our best rhetorical efforts. (Can you believe it? There are 6-year olds who weren’t even alive then?) Also, Americans don’t see progress in our War on Terror. Are we any safer now? they ask. We need to ratchet up the fear with a formidable enemy like Russia-Slavia. We need to put people to work making more bombs, missiles, aircraft carriers, etc.

    8. If we don’t have a New Cold War with Russia, we’re going to face other problems from uppity nations like China and Iran. The ‘08 Olympics proved to the world the Chinese are just as good as we at presenting a “really good shew.” Better! (Anyone remember the Atlanta Olympics? It was much smaller; people got killed; there was police repression, and besides all that, it was boring!) The Chinese are feeling their oats now and they’re bound to get more assertive as they seek the same oil we’ve been drilling in the Middle East since John McCain wore knickers. They’ve got all those jobs our corporations outsourced to them and in a couple of decades they’ll have a bigger GNP than us, and in a couple beyond that, a bigger per capita! Weren’t they a nation of “coolies” just 100 years ago, and dyed in their wool Mao-jackets just 30 yrs ago? We’ve got to stand up to Russostan now so China, Inc. doesn’t stand up to us later! We’ve got to show these Socialistas who’s the boss cause force is all people like that can understand! As for Iran—it’s a nation of towell-heads and terrorists who hate us for our freedom! If we don’t have a New Cold War now, those Iranians will go on developing their nukes and they’ll join forces with the Russoviks and the noodle-slurpers and we and Israel can kiss our tuchus dasvidanya!

    9. A New Cold War is good for our politicians and our media. Our politicians are already humming the tunes. Pretty soon they’ll be “dancing with the stars.” They won’t be able to deliver on 10% of what they’re promising because the corporations and the lobbyists and the media ain’t gonna tie the ribbons until they get their greasy palms greased. And the way to over-grease the palms is to enforce “war taxes.” Which means taking middle class taxes and forking them over to industries and institutions that thrive on death and chaos. It means more of the likes of Jack Bauer on TV making the world safe for democracy by torturing Russkies who mean the farm boys in Kansas and the mothers in Alaska bodily harm. (Isn’t it better to torture one Russkie suspect who might have info to save a million American lives? And if we once in a while waterboard the wrong Yuri or Lara—isn’t that better than little Johnny down the street getting anthraxed even though he still can’t read?)

    10. Russian novels are too long and depressing; no American bothers to finish them. A New Cold War, on the other hand, will accelerate Armageddon. We already know that ends in the triumph of Good over Evil. So, in the immortal words of G.W.B., “Bring it on!”

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