This is a good start,  stop the commerce that rallies for a senseless war.  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/israeli-ship-remains-at-sea-thousands-protesters-gather

Putin Advancing into Ukraine While His Strategic Flanks and Rear are Completely Vulnerable!

Siberia is in the Process of Separating from the Russian Federation!!
 

For some time now,  we have known that Putin was a former KGB operative who operated like most intelligence officers—tactically and myopically.  While Putin has huffed and puffed his way into the Ukraine’s Little Red House,  he has forgotten that his most valuable asset: SIBERIA which has suddenly ignited with the separatist spirit.

Ironically while Putin was initiating a separatist movement in EASTERN UKRAINE  he inadvertently initiated a similar separatist desire admits the millions of Russians living in Siberia.

For most of us,  Siberia was known to the west as the basic barren landscape of the infamous Gulags where millions of political dissidents were imprisoned and tortured during the Stalin and post-Stalin eras.  However,  since the downfall of the Soviet Union,  Siberia has transformed into a Texas-style basin of Russian Oil and Gas. Without Siberia folded into Putin’s direct security control,  a newly independent or “Federalized Siberia” would have its own constitution, government and institutions.  Clearly, a Federalized Siberia would not be in the interests of Putin nor his Ex-KGB corrupt political cronies.

Almost all the major gas companies –Gazprom et. al. – derive their natural gas from Siberia. Unlike the Siberia of yesteryear,  today’s Siberia is quite progressive and modern.  It is so advanced in development that the indigenous leaders who have been calling for an Independent Siberia since the 1990’s  have initiated a very sophisticated internet/political campaign which has led to constant protest marches in Moscow.

One can easily imagine that Putin has done everything he can to repress these marches a la the American Ferguson MO police department method utilizing tear gas, suppression and unwarranted arrests.  Unfortunately, as I have repeatedly reiterated for the past ten or more years,  Putin has no strategic sense, unlike his illustrious nefarious mentors—Marcus Wolfe and Stalin.

In reality,  Putin is a sprinter who will exhaust himself and the Russian people in erratic tactical advances that garner much sound and fury but signify very little.  While he saps the patience and resources of the Russian people and country, he will find himself at the end of a rope from which he can literally hang himself or cut it.  That decision is his to make.
Given his intractable, ‘malignant narcissism’, and his need to prove himself in some imaginary world of combatants,  he will most probably lead Russia into a quagmire of such economic and social pain that his own past constructive legacy will have been completely destroyed with one more pathetic incursion into Ukraine, Georgia, or whatever contiguous country he deems to be a strategic threat.

In fact the real threat to Russia has now become Putin’s unrelenting ambitions to ape the past successes of his historical predecessors.  He might want to emulate Catherine the Great who had done more for the Slavs than any other subsequent Russian leaders or Czar.   However, Putin whose understanding of Russian history and culture is limited to the confines of a muzhik has forgotten that Catherine The Great was in fact not Russian but Prussian  … or what would be considered in today’s times: GERMAN!!!

Putin would be wise to understand that present day Germany under the indomitable Angela Merkel is not with Putin but with the Russian people against Putin.

Let me end this blog with the poetess,  Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
“LIGHT TOMORROW WITH TODAY!!” 

   

be posting a shortie soon, here's some background.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/russia-bans-siberia-independence-march-extremism-law

Washington Post reporter arrested while working in Ferguson Mo., what gives?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-ferguson-washington-post-reporter-wesley-lowery-gives-account-of-his-arrest/2014/08/13/0fe25c0e-2359-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?hpid=z1

Thanks Barry Popik...."its the oil, stupid"  why Obama is Back in Iraq
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-12/real-reason-new-us-and-french-military-involvement-iraq

This is an older piece but worth listening to...Former Senator Bob Graham on 9/11 "I think its a massive cover-up"  "9/11 investigation should be re-opened"
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/senator-bob-graham-on-bush-saudi-911-coverup/52a88eaa78c90a42b700023e

Economic Sanctions Take a Bite Out of the Russian Soul!

“The First Cut Is the Deepest”,  a love song by the infamous British crooner Rod Stewart,  explains a basic principle of economic warfare---strike fast and hard and the enemies’ economy will be ‘severely hurt’. Unfortunately for the Russian people,  the economic sanctions instituted by the Obama administration then followed up by the Germany, France, 

England the rest of the EU, has had a significant economic impact on Russia as well as it’s erstwhile allies---Belarus, Ukraine [eastern],  and Kazakhstan. 

Recent Open Source Intelligence Reports [OSINT] like Stratfor report the following telltale signs of financial distress:

[1] Russia entering period of zero to negative economic growth. 

[2] Approximately $100Billion of capital outflow from major Russian businessmen and investors.

[3] Belarus, the closest Russian ally and will probably suffer the most from the economic sanctions. 

[4] Belarus is Russia’s largest export market amounting to $17 Billion in 2013.  Primary exports affected include vehicles [2.5 billion], dairy products [ 2.2 billion] and machinery [1.5 billion].

[5] In turn, Belarus receives all of its crude oil and natural gas from Russia. But in order to buy those precious commodities, Belarus needs subsidized loans from the Russian –dominated Eurasian Economic Community.  However, because of decrease Russian financial assistance, Belarus will have to seek recourse from the International Monetary Fund under the World Bank auspices [ a shadow agency for the USA]. 

[6] Kazakhstan’s main exports to Russia are ores [$1.5 billion], mineral fuels [$785 million], and iron steel [$773million]. It also exports its own crude oil and gas.

However, “Kazakhstan is heavily tied into Russia’s financial and banking system” [Stratfor, 8/10/ 14].

What does this mean for this very important Central Asian country that was once within the Communist Penumbra?

Kazakh’s TENGE [currency ] is tied directly to the Russian Ruble unlike the Belarus Ruble which floats according to world currency values.  So as the Russian Ruble goes down… so does the “Kazakh’s Tenge”. Without having done anything negative, other than to be associated with Russia, Kazakhstan has already lost 20% DEVALUATION.

What we are witnessing is the hidden war conducted by the spread of numbers all over the world which does not on the surface appear to kill anyone.  However, those numbers or electrons,  known as ‘economic warfare’ has a far more deadly strategic outcome than any military assault or weaponry.  Russia could experience at one and the same time, both external and internal disruptions that would threaten the economic,  political and psychological stability of the Russian Federation.

It is not a pleasant sight to watch an evolving economy like Russia’s implode because of Putin’s Foolhardy wasteful spending on the Sochi Olympics in order to garner some national pride. Was it really worth $51 Billion? Not from my perspective.

Is the Ukraine incursion worth billions more while the Russian economy is bleeding even more billions on an hourly basis?  

As in medicine and love, ‘the first cut is the deepest’ and inflicts the greatest damage.  Putin has not recovered from that infliction.  Instead he has spent an incredible amount of time, energy and resources trying to retaliate against a phantom enemy [capitalism] while having done nothing to redress the hemorrhaging wound.

As someone who helped to take down the Soviet Union [“Evil Empire” ala Reagan/Bush Sr],  I have no patience to witness the downfall of the Russian economy.  The Russians are a great people with an incredible culture.  As a people,  they have suffered more than any other country in defeating the Nazis and other Fascist systems.

The Russian people deserve a new leader who understands that the future of Russia is not tied to the parochial concerns and limited talent of an ex-KGB/Stasi agent named Vladimir Putin.  Putin’s grandiosity, self-absorbed entitlements and brash outbreaks of febrile utterances have compounded Russia’s failures and exposed its internal financial weaknesses that even we the bourgeois capitalists could never have dreamed of some thirty years ago.

Putin in his ill-timed,  poorly conceived concerns for my treasured Russian people reminds me of a statement that my favorite French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice Talleyrand Perigord made about one of his many mistresses-Madame De Stael [but I will change it to fit this particular occasion]:

“Putin is such a good friend and great leader of the Russian people that he would throw all the Russians into the Volga River,  watching them drown so that he could have the pleasure and glory of saving the very drowning that he had created”  Talleyrand understood the paradoxical nature of self-defeating grandiosity because although he was Napoleon’s trusted Foreign Minister,  Talleyrand had to ally himself with the dreaded enemy, the British, in order to end Napoleon’s Grand March to France’s self destruction. 

Take heed PUTIN!!
Russian Czar Alexander I defeated the WILD CORSICAN in order save France and Europe!!  Who knows who might have to defeat you in order to save Russia and the world economy?  Sacrificing your friends, Belarus and Kazakhstan, like the infamous courtesan Mdme De Stael,  is no way to treat your friends or remain in decent company.

 “Vsyovo Haroshovo!” All the best!!