March 27, 2014 · 2:11 pm

The Orient Express….

Before you listen to one more saber-rattler, please take the time to read David P. Goldman’s wise insights at PJ Media, “Not Even Wrong About Russia”.

Then read his December 22, 2013 pick for the most under-reported foreign news story of 2013 (here).

Okay, here’s a JK link (yes, he’s amazing at coming up with fascinating links – here it is).

The hysterics boggles my mind.  A review of the actual discussions, agreements and history of the immediate post-Soviet period is in order, then start reading back through all the missteps on both sides, and once you’ve done that take a deep breath, calm down and think.  I  read and posted the link previously of an informative piece, “Don’t Kid Yourself about Ukraine”, by G. Murphy Donovan at The American Thinker a couple days ago, in which he quoted open source news reporting to back his points.  In the comments section, he was accused of spreading disinformation, being a communist and working for Mr. Putin.  Is this really what it’s come to in America, when you don’t buy into the political posturing?  A distinguished Air Force officer, who devoted his life to keeping America safe gets accused of being a communist, because he dared to challenge the political hacks in DC and the drivel they are feeding us.  How ridiculous and I was outraged on his behalf!  If we can’t question or discuss events openly, then we are surely in trouble in America.

Why doesn’t the mainstream press report any of these facts that would give us a clearer understanding of the events that led up to this latest crisis?

 

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Military, Politics

March 27, 2014 · 7:46 am

When in doubt, listen to George Friedman

I admit to not knowing enough about Ukraine to feel confident that I’m well-informed on the situation, but I keep reading and listening to reports to try to gain a better understanding of the situation.  Most of the true reporting these days seems to come from amateur bloggers, who dig up everything from old news reports to official government documents, to flesh out the history of  Ukraines’s troubled path during the post-Soviet era.  Here’s a little quiz from the Christian Science Monitor, “How much do you know about Ukraine?  Take our quiz”.  I didn’t know much, because on a lot of these questions – I guessed.  I wonder how our political leaders who rush to the nearest microphone to support various action, regards Ukraine, to include calling for escalation of the crisis, know???

Well, the same goes for the geopolitical intricacies at play in this Ukraine crisis, which finds the West and Russia at odds and endless advice from experts in the West on how to deal with Putin.

Thanks to JK’s incredible memory and researching ability, here is a 2009 George Friedman analysis that far surpasses anything else I’ve come across to explain the situation – “The Western View of Russia” is republished with permission of Stratfor.”:

The Western View of Russia
Geopolitical Weekly
Monday, August 31, 2009 – 15:11 Print Text Size

By George Friedman

A months-long White House review of a pair of U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) installations slated for Poland and the Czech Republic is nearing completion. The review is expected to present a number of options ranging from pushing forward with the installations as planned to canceling them outright. The Obama administration has yet to decide what course to follow. Rumors are running wild in Poland and the Czech Republic that the United States has reconsidered its plan to place ballistic defense systems in their countries. The rumors stem from a top U.S. BMD lobbying group that said this past week that the U.S. plan was all but dead.

The ultimate U.S. decision on BMD depends upon both the upcoming summit of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany on the Iranian nuclear program and Russia’s response to those talks. If Russia does not cooperate in sanctions, but instead continues to maintain close relations with Iran, we suspect that the BMD plan will remain intact. Either way, the BMD issue offers a good opportunity to re-examine U.S. and Western relations with Russia and how they have evolved.

Cold War vs. Post-Cold War
There has been a recurring theme in the discussions between Russia and the West over the past year: the return of the Cold War. U.S. President Barack Obama, for example, accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of having one foot in the Cold War. The Russians have in turn accused the Americans of thinking in terms of the Cold War. Eastern Europeans have expressed fears that the Russians continue to view their relationship with Europe in terms of the Cold War. Other Europeans have expressed concern that both Americans and Russians might drag Europe into another Cold War.

For many in the West, the more mature and stable Western-Russian relationship is what they call the “Post-Cold War world.” In this world, the Russians no longer regard the West as an enemy, and view the other republics of the former Soviet Union (FSU) as independent states free to forge whatever relations they wish with the West. Russia should welcome or at least be indifferent to such matters. Russia instead should be concentrating on economic development while integrating lessons learned from the West into its political and social thinking. The Russians should stop thinking in politico-military terms, the terms of the Cold War. Instead, they should think in the new paradigm in which Russia is part of the Western economic system, albeit a backward one needing time and institution-building to become a full partner with the West. All other thinking is a throwback to the Cold War.

This was the thinking behind the idea of resetting U.S.-Russian relations. Hillary Clinton’s “reset” button was meant to move U.S.-Russian relations away from what Washington thought of as a return to the Cold War from its preferred period, which existed between 1991 and the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations after Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. The United States was in a bimodal condition when it came to Russian relations: Either it was the Cold War or it was post-Cold War.

The Russians took a more jaundiced view of the post-Cold War world. For Moscow, rather than a period of reform, the post-Cold War period was one of decay and chaos. Old institutions had collapsed, but new institutions had not emerged. Instead, there was the chaos of privatization, essentially a wild free-for-all during which social order collapsed. Western institutions, including everything from banks to universities, were complicit in this collapse. Western banks were eager to take advantage of the new pools of privately expropriated money, while Western advisers were eager to advise the Russians on how to become Westerners. In the meantime, workers went unpaid, life expectancy and birth rates declined, and the basic institutions that had provided order under communism decayed — or worse, became complicit in the looting. The post-Cold War world was not a happy time in Russia: It was a catastrophic period for Russian power.

Herein lies the gulf between the West and the Russians. The West divides the world between the Cold War and the post-Cold War world. It clearly prefers the post-Cold War world, not so much because of the social condition of Russia, but because the post-Cold War world lacked the geopolitical challenge posed by the Soviet Union — everything from wars of national liberation to the threat of nuclear war was gone. From the Russian point of view, the social chaos of the post-Cold War world was unbearable. Meanwhile, the end of a Russian challenge to the West meant from the Russian point of view that Moscow was helpless in the face of Western plans for reordering the institutions and power arrangements of the region without regard to Russian interests.

As mentioned, Westerners think in term of two eras, the Cold War and the Post-Cold War era. This distinction is institutionalized in Western expertise on Russia. And it divides into two classes of Russia experts. There are those who came to maturity during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, whose basic framework is to think of Russia as a global threat. Then, there are those who came to maturity in the later 1980s and 1990s. Their view of Russia is of a failed state that can stabilize its situation for a time by subordinating itself to Western institutions and values, or continue its inexorable decline.

These two generations clash constantly. Interestingly, the distinction is not so much ideological as generational. The older group looks at Russian behavior with a more skeptical eye, assuming that Putin, a KGB man, has in mind the resurrection of Soviet power. The post-Cold War generation that controlled U.S.-Russian policy during both the Clinton and Bush administrations is more interesting. During both administrations, this generation believed in the idea that economic liberalization and political liberalization were inextricably bound together. It believed that Russia was headed in the right direction if only Moscow did not try to reassert itself geopolitically and militarily, and if Moscow did not try to control the economy or society with excessive state power. It saw the Russian evolution during the mid-to-late 2000s as an unfortunate and unnecessary development moving Russia away from the path that was best for it, and it sees the Cold War generation’s response to Russia’s behavior as counterproductive.

The Post-Post Cold War World
The U.S. and other Westerners’ understanding of Russia is trapped in a nonproductive paradigm. For Russia, the choice isn’t between the Cold War or the Post-Cold War world. This dichotomy denies the possibility of, if you will, a post-post-Cold War world — or to get away from excessive posts, a world in which Russia is a major regional power, with a stable if troubled economy, functional society and regional interests it must protect.

Russia cannot go back to the Cold War, which consisted of three parts. First, there was the nuclear relationship. Second, there was the Soviet military threat to both Europe and the Far East; the ability to deploy large military formations throughout the Eurasian landmass. And third, there were the wars of national liberation funded and guided by the Soviets, and designed to create powers allied with the Soviets on a global scale and to sap U.S. power in endless counterinsurgencies.

While the nuclear balance remains, by itself it is hollow. Without other dimensions of Russian power, the threat to engage in mutual assured destruction has little meaning. Russia’s military could re-evolve to pose a Eurasian threat; as we have pointed out before, in Russia, the status of the economy does not historically correlate to Russian military power. At the same time, it would take a generation of development to threaten the domination of the European peninsula — and Russia today has far fewer people and resources than the whole of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact that it rallied to that effort. Finally, while Russia could certainly fund insurgencies, the ideological power of Marxism is gone, and in any case Russia is not a Marxist state. Building wars of national liberation around pure finance is not as easy as it looks. There is no road back to the Cold War. But neither is there a road back to the post-Cold War period.

There was a period in the mid-to-late 1990s when the West could have destroyed the Russian Federation. Instead, the West chose a combined strategy of ignoring Russia while irritating it with economic policies that were unhelpful to say the least, and military policies like Kosovo designed to drive home Russia’s impotence. There is the old saw of not teasing a bear, but if you must, being sure to kill it. Operating on the myth of nation-building, the West thought it could rebuild Russia in its own image. To this day, most of the post-Cold War experts do not grasp the degree to which Russians saw their efforts as a deliberate attempt to destroy Russia and the degree to which Russians are committed never to return to that time. It is hard to imagine anything as infuriating for the Russians as the reset button the Clinton administration’s Russia experts — who now dominate Obama’s Russia policy — presented the Russian leadership in all seriousness. The Russians simply do not intend to return to the Post-Cold War era Western experts recall so fondly.

The resurrection of talks on the reduction of nuclear stockpiles provides an example of the post-Cold generation’s misjudgment in its response to Russia. These START talks once were urgent matters. They are not urgent any longer. The threat of nuclear war is not part of the current equation. Maintaining that semblance of parity with the United States and placing limits on the American arsenal are certainly valuable from the Russian perspective, but it is no longer a fundamental issue to them. Some have suggested using these talks as a confidence-building measure. But from the Russian point of view, START is a peripheral issue, and Washington’s focus on it is an indication that the United States is not prepared to take Russia’s current pressing interests seriously.

Continued lectures on human rights and economic liberalization, which fall on similarly deaf Russian ears, provide another example of the post-Cold War generation’s misjudgment in its response to Russia. The period in which human rights and economic liberalization were centerpieces of Russian state policy is remembered — and not only by the Russian political elite — as among the worst periods of recent Russian history. No one wants to go back there, but the Russians hear constant Western calls to return to that chaos. The Russians’ conviction is that post-Cold War Western officials want to finish the job they began. The critical point that post-Cold War officials frequently don’t grasp is that the Russians see them as at least as dangerous to Russian interests as the Cold War generation.

The Russian view is that neither the Cold War nor the post-Cold War is the proper paradigm. Russia is not challenging the United States for global hegemony. But neither is Russia prepared simply to allow the West to create an alliance of nations around Russia’s border. Russia is the dominant power in the FSU. Its economic strategy is to focus on the development and export of primary commodities, from natural gas to grain. In order to do this, it wants to align primary commodity policies in the republics of the former Soviet Union, particularly those concerning energy resources. Economic and strategic interests combine to make the status of the former Soviet republics a primary strategic interest. This is neither a perspective from the Cold War or from the post-Cold War, but a logical Russian perspective on a new age.

While Russia’s concerns with Georgia are the noisiest, it is not the key Russian concern in its near abroad — Ukraine is. So long as the United States is serious about including Ukraine in NATO, the United States represents a direct threat to Russian national security. A glance at a map shows why the Russians think this.

Russia remains interested in Central Europe as well. It is not seeking hegemony, but a neutral buffer zone between Germany in particular and the former Soviet Union, with former satellite states like Poland of crucial importance to Moscow. It sees the potential Polish BMD installation and membership of the Baltic states in NATO as direct and unnecessary challenges to Russian national interest.

Responding to the United States
As the United States causes discomfort for the Russians, Russia will in turn cause discomfort for the United States. The U.S. sore spot is the Middle East, and Iran in particular. Therefore, the Russians will respond to American pressure on them where it hurts Washington the most.

The Cold Warriors don’t understand the limits of Russian power. The post-Cold Warriors don’t understand the degree to which they are distrusted by Russia, and the logic behind that distrust. The post-Cold Warriors confuse this distrust with a hangover from the Cold War rather than a direct Russian response to the post-Cold War policies they nurtured.

This is not an argument for the West to accommodate the Russians; there are grave risks for the West there. Russian intentions right now do not forecast what Russian intentions might be were Moscow secure in the FSU and had it neutralized Poland. The logic of such things is that as problems are solved, opportunities are created. One therefore must think forward to what might happen through Western accommodation.

At the same time, it is vital to understand that neither the Cold War model nor the post-Cold War model is sufficient to understand Russian intentions and responses right now. We recall the feeling when the Cold War ended that a known and understandable world was gone. The same thing is now happening to the post-Cold War experts: The world in which they operated has dissolved. A very different and complex world has taken its place. Reset buttons are symbols of a return to a past the Russians reject. START talks are from a world long passed. The issues now revolve around Russia’s desire for a sphere of influence, and the willingness and ability of the West to block that ambition.

Somewhere between BMD in Poland and the threat posed by Iran, the West must make a strategic decision about Russia, and live with the consequences.

“The Western View of Russia” is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

 

 

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March 25, 2014 · 11:18 am

Just links

This is going to be just a few links, because I’ve got to clean my house before my youngest daughter arrives this afternoon for a visit.

G. Murphy Donovan has another excellent piece at The American Thinker today – “Don’t Kid Yourself About Ukraine”

Here’s a link from GMD’s opinion piece by former US ambassador to the USSR, James F. Matlock, Jr. (1987-1991) that’s a must read:
“The U.S. has treated Russia like a loser since the end of the Cold War.”

GMD’s piece has several links and interesting photos too – here’s another must read at Global Research, written by George Eliason: “Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis. Stepan Bandera and the Legacy of World War II”

Here’s another tough talking lady broad(yikes) – Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko’s leaked phone call: “Screw it, we should take up arms and kill the goddamned katsaps” — derogatory Ukrainian slang for Russians — “along with their leader.” then further in the conversation when asked what to do about the 8 million Russians still living on Ukrainian territory, here’s her answer, “We should hit them with an atomic weapon.” From Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty  She even outdoes dragon lady, Hillary’s, “We came, we saw, he died!” comment…

Here’s a repeat of the best background reporting on Yulia Tymoshenko I’ve come across, from blogger, Anna Raccoon: “Uk-Raine Terrain”, replete with info on her early years, to include her style makeover from wealthy business tycoon to looking like a “modest village schoolteacher”…. stranger than fiction, really she hired a social psychologist to “block out the image of wealth”….

More chaos in Egypt boiling up (from the BBC): “Egypt court sentences 528 Morsi supporters to death”

Now I really must clean this house…. Later!

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March 24, 2014 · 4:20 pm

Who will defend our castle?

“No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character” 

– John, Viscount Morley

Being sort of squeamish and abhorring violence, I’m not a fan of war movies, but one of my favorite movies, oddly enough, is The Big Red One, the 1980 Sam Fuller WWII epic.  Being a lowly private in the Army, stationed in southern Germany in 1980, our movie theater was located across a parking lot,  behind my barracks.  My kaserne, perched atop a picturesque southern mountaintop, was a vintage German army post and the Germans built their posts in a consistent, orderly fashion, with the companies neatly arranged around a parade field in the center and all the lesser support facilities beyond that tight circle.

There wasn’t much to do on small kasernes, like the one I was at, but being a little country girl, I found everything new and interesting. I could imagine I was Heidi in the Alps (well, okay, the Swabian Alps), following the footpath down the mountain to the town proper or let my imagination run wild,  gazing out the large window at the end of the female hallway, where a view to rival the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, greeted me each morning.  My view, a lovely old monastery perched upon another mountaintop in the distance, fueled my ever-fluttering flights of fancy.  Of course, I took several trips to that old monastery to explore it close-up.

Now, having a movie theater within walking distance seemed a luxury to me, because the nearest movie theater, where I grew-up in the mountains of  PA, was 10 miles away.  I would always ask a few of the guys to go to the movies with me and first we’d go to the snack bar, next to the movie theater, for ice cream, because I loved eating my vanilla ice cream first.  These uncomplaining young men, in gentlemanly fashion, usually insisted on buying my ice cream too.

I met many wonderful young men in that unit and as an aside to this tale, gentlemen were still in plentiful supply in the US Army in those days. Back to my story,  the only drawback to our movie theater was the same movie played for weeks on end, until something new arrived from the States.   I watched The Big Red One over and over and each time I came away remembering some new details I had missed before.

JK sent me a link to a fascinating WWII story, The Battle for Castle Itter, which reminded me of a line from The Big Red One, that has stuck with me all these years.   I’ve spent decades thinking about war and wondering if this endless cycle of human behavior can ever change.  I’ve wondered if we’re destined to continually build up human societies, only to demolish them through corruption and then outside conquest.  I’ve wondered, as the line in The Big Red One, will we ever find a time when, “der krieg ist vorbei.”

The almost farcical nature of the characters and events in the battle for Castle Itter provides a quirky, yet almost emblematic view of  how in the unlikely circumstance of fighting for their lives, this castle’s curious mix of inhabitants, like people everywhere, can put aside national and personal loyalties, to unite in moments, because not much else mattered, except surviving.

The story centers on VIP French prisoners, whom the SS kept imprisoned in Castle Itter during WWII.  As the Americans advanced across Europe in the waning days of the war, a young American first lieutenant, John C. “Jack” Lee, Jr., made the mistake of volunteering to go secure the castle, after a surrendering German major arrived to tell the advancing Americans about the VIP prisoners held prisoner in nearby Castle Itter.  The young American officer sets off with 8 volunteers, plus 5 soldiers from the African-American Company, along with the surrendering German major and a truckload of his German soldiers.   The French VIPs, upon seeing their small rescue force, were unimpressed that such a paltry band of soldiers was sent to rescue their grand personages.  But quickly the scene changed as the castle fell under attack from SS troops.  The squabbling French VIPs (which included two French generals, who despised each other) and  the surrendering Germans all turned to the young American lieutenant to take charge of their castle defense.  To get the full impact of the absurdity of the events, read the full story of the battle for Castle Itter (here’s the link again).

In history, certain moments in time become the leitmotif, that subsequent generations warn us identify a bellwether event.  Glenn Beck, aside from drawing complex charts, in which he connects the dots, in ever-widening and distant circles, prognosticates often about what he refers to as  “the Archduke Ferdinand moment”, harkening back to the assassination of the Austrian heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Serbia, which led to the outbreak of World War I.  History doesn’t replay like watching old reruns on TV, it’s more nuanced and runs along in patterns that require looking at human history from a wider perspective than awaiting a single, harbinger of doom event.

Times do change and while history is replete with enough strange coincidences to give one pause, it seems more useful to step back and take a big picture view of history, if seeking a more useful predictive model.  As events in the world overtake our national security folks in the Obama administration’s collective strategic-thinking ability, America seems adrift in the world.  America, with President Obama, leading us from behind, forces his national security team to play defense (rather poorly),  reacting in ever-disjointed fits and starts.  The US flails about, wantonly widening  the decades old strategic-vacuum the US fell into when the infamous “end of history’ mentality took hold after the Soviet Union imploded and we sat on our laurels just floating along in a dangerous world, believing we could bail water faster than anyone else in the world, safe and insulated from the geopolitical waves around the globe.  Sadly, our lifeboat went to sea without strategic life-vests, part of the new fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants, not so grand strategy. The always erudite and eloquent, G. Murphy Donovan (here), assessed the Obama administration’s policy,The Brennan Doctrine:

“There is no evidence that the Brennan doctrine supports prudent near or long-term strategy. Strategic appeasement has now produced a generation of catamite tacticians, leaders that assume a defensive crouch after each indignity, hoping that the next atrocity will not hurt as much as the last.”

In numerous past posts, I’ve bloviated on and on and on about this President’s dangerous lack of geopolitical acumen (here, here, here, here), an endless broken record playing the same old tune.  To begin to understand history it starts from the little picture human building block – trust.  Believe it, because it’s true!  No matter how enlightened, how educated, how many fancy degrees and terminology you conjure up, at the end of the day, trust determines our fate, from the smallest human endeavor and interactions to the big picture moves by countries on the world stage. To repeat from my  “B.H. Liddell Hart Echoes through time” post last year, (from his short book, “Why We Don’t Learn From History” – free download here):

“Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises.  It may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken the whole structure cracks and sinks.  Any constructive effort and all human relations – personal, political, and commercial – depend on being able to depend on promises.”

Over the weekend, while reading a favorite blog, Diplomad2.0, that’s a regular stop on my blogging routine, I found a link posted in the comments section, by Sundling, obviously an historically-inclined poster, that left me wondering why no one in my history classes had ever mentioned this brilliant paper before: “Fate of Empires and Search For Survival”, by Sir John Glubb.  Published in 1976, this 26 page paper blasts away at studying history through a series of memorization of isolated, unconnected events or from a lopsided view from one country’s or time period’s perspective.  Glubb implores us to step back and take a long view of history as a study of the human race.    A short search of Sir John Glubb’s bio and you will find a man who traveled extensively, read extensively, and a man whose ideas moved beyond the island of his birth to encompass the world and humanity, in its entirety:

“To derive any useful instruction from history, it seems to me essential first of all to grasp the principle that history, to be meaningful, must be the history of the human race. For history is a continuous process, gradually developing, changing and turning back, but in general moving forward in a single mighty stream. Any useful lessons to be derived must be learned by the study of the whole flow of human development, not by the selection of short periods here and there in one country or another.  Every age and culture is derived from its predecessors, adds some contribution of its own, and passes it on to its successors. If we boycott various periods of history, the origins of the new cultures which succeeded them cannot be explained.”

Glubb’s short paper breaks down the life of empires as falling into an amazingly similar pattern through history, which he divides into 5 distinct ages of an empire.  The last age is the Age of Decadence, which he describes as :

“The Age of Decadence.

(e) Decadence is marked by:

Defensiveness
Pessimism
Materialism
Frivolity
An influx of foreigners
The Welfare State
A weakening of religion.

(f) Decadence is due to:

Too long a period of wealth and power
Selfishness
Love of money
The loss of a sense of duty.

(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

(h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.”

For a fuller understanding of his views, read the short paper.  I’m not Glenn Beck and I won’t pretend to be the harbinger of doom, but I must say, at the very least, this paper caused a few ripples of uneasiness as I digested Glubb’s analysis of the life cycle of empires, once again,  published in 1976.

Watching the events in recent years play out, with American military adventurism, in pursuit of transplanting democracy in  inhospitable arid desert sands during the Bush years, then moving to knee-jerk, reactionary gambits under Obama’s shaky trigger-finger, trying to force regime change on the cheap, with bluster and poorly applied military pressure, it’s clear to see that America desperately needs, if not a grand strategy, at least a coherent strategy.  The Battle for Castle Itter serves as the perfect metaphor for how the world understands a calm, strong American taking charge of a dicey situation and even a passel of troublesome French notables, to include two generals, quickly fell into line and followed.  A group of surrendering Nazis, likewise sized up their situation and cast their lot with the unflappable young American commander, who without hesitation led from the front.  And at the end of day, sadly, 1st Lieutenant Lee, came from another American generation, far removed from the Choom-gang, drug haze of Obama’s youth.

The Battle for Castle Itter also shows how a whole bunch of competing interests can spin wildly out of control and create an international conflagration in moments and sadly we don’t have a calm, collected American commander to defend our castle.  We’ve got, leading-from-behind Obama, war-protesting, medal-throwing John Kerry, yes-sir, yes-sir Chuck Hagel and drone kill champ Brennan, nudged by the likes of Samantha the genocide pixie, Susan the ever-faithful political handmaiden, and always hovering nearby, bossy-pants Valerie, keeping watch that none dare stray from her approved  narrative (fabrications)…

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Filed under American Character, American History, Foreign Policy, General Interest, History, Military, Politics

March 20, 2014 · 2:16 am

Brain-sucking spiders

May the conspiracy gods rest tonight, Australian officials report they located a debris field.   Let’s hope CNN’s Don Lemon can safely take off his tinfoil hat and stop worrying about the possibility of a black hole swallowing up unsuspecting airliners…..  JK, came up with this simple no frills explanation.  For the sake our collective sanity, let us hope this Australian debris field is the missing Malaysian jetliner and may the families receive some long overdue closure.  Long ago, when news reporting had time constraints on air and word count constraints in print, Ms Anna Raccoon (blogger extraordinaire) discussed at length the new age journalists compared to old-school reporters in a recent post, “Forgive Us Our Press Passes”.  In her usual erudite style, Ms Raccoon writes:

“They ‘reported’ the news from wherever the editor had had the sense of humour to send them. ‘Timbuktu’? They hired a camel. ‘Baghdad’? Then they hired a bodyguard – and an interpreter too. They didn’t sit in an expensive hotel suite in Beijing offering ‘live updates’ on the situation nearly 3,000 miles away in Kuala Lumpur.”

Yes, Ms Raccoon, so true, nor did they sit in a TV studio and speculate about Black Holes or….

“Here’s another theory I’ll just throw out there: what about the plane entered a wormhole into another dimension? I don’t know if that’s how the science works, though.”

Yes, in place of hunting down facts we present crackpot theories as worth our time exploring….  After uttering ridiculous nonsense like this can anyone ever take him seriously as a news reporter?

When my kids were young and one of them said something ridiculous, I would put my hand on his/her head and ruffle the hair with my fingers as I laughingly exclaimed, “Oh no, it’s a brain-sucking spider that got you!” (sometimes if the utterance was totally idiotic, I even added, “Oh no, it’s starving!”).   Who knew brain-sucking spiders wiped out most of the journalistic community…..  Or I could speculate that the brain-sucking spiders died out from lack of a food source.  Who knows, conspiracy theories abound.

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Filed under General Interest, The Media

March 16, 2014 · 1:17 pm

Any seat on the bus (my city’s ARRA hand-out)

 Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

– Kerry Livrgren

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(ARRA).  Occasionally, major scandals hit the news of incredible waste or fraud, with this bailout, the tally which will lurch to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019 and  yet our public consciousness of government malfeasance flutters by with only vague awareness of the Solyndras or the shrimp on treadmills horror stories .

How much has actually been spent remains hard to decipher and due to the maze of federal funding avenues, mapping this money’s trail will likely prove about as fruitless as the projects it funded, more dust in the wind.   Blaring headlines of scandal, fraud and abuse through this law coalesce in short bursts of light, then quickly burn out and fade into the darkness that is government’s secure cover from public exposure.  We, the public, possess short attention spans and quickly move on to the next big news story, easily forgetting yesterday’s tempest that roiled our senses momentarily.  Laugh at the exercising shrimp at your own peril, for we like to sit snug as a bug in our partisan-colored rugs, content to blame the other roaches and dust mites for all the problems.

We like calm sailing,  so best to let waters calm and the putrid muck settle back to the bottom, where the clear waters serenely mask what lurks below.  I live in a very blue county in a Southern state that votes reliably red in most federal elections.  A drop in the bucket from the ARRA made it to my small city (town) in the form of a brand spanking new transit system, composed of 9 buses, each replete with ADA-compliant wheelchair lifts and  2 wheelchair spaces.  Our system shifted into drive in 2010 and keeps chugging along.

Working at the hub (our local big box store), where these buses pull in many times a day, I’ve watched these buses make their stops multiple times a day, year after year.  The highest number of passengers I ever spied on a bus stopping in front of my store was 2, yes 2.  Now, I admit to surprise at leaving the local Applebee’s restaurant a few years ago and seeing numerous passengers disembarking from a city bus, which contained families of soldiers from our nearby military post.  Was I missing the big picture of how successful this stimulus project really was, viewed from my partisan-tinted glasses?  I doubt it.  To service these empty buses requires: 22 new employees including 1 general manager, 2 administrative personnel, 1 mechanic, 3 road supervisors, 1 bus hostler, and 14 drivers.

How many years and how much taxpayer money will be exhausted before this transit system runs out gas?   I don’t know, but I do know that in this city, you won’t have to ever worry about having to sit in the back of the bus, you can choose any seat you want….  And if you thought the shrimp running on a treadmill going nowhere was the craziest waste of taxpayer money, you might take a closer look around your own neighborhood and find one just as wasteful as my city’s transit system.

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Filed under General Interest, Pet Peeves, Politics

March 12, 2014 · 8:11 pm

A few US military funding links

The Washington Times Headline says it all: “Obama runs special forces into the ground”

US Department of Defense, March 12,2014: “2015 Budget Reduces Infrastructure Spending, Official Says”

And if you want to just read it yourself: “UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FISCAL YEAR 2015 BUDGET REQUEST OVERVIEW”

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March 12, 2014 · 6:00 am

An angry American fat cat

Oh my, another strange 911 call, this time the emergency was a couple and their baby in Portland, OR,  who had to barricade themselves in the bedroom out of fear of their rampaging 22-pound cat.  The man kicked the cat in the butt after the cat scratched their 7 month-old baby and then, Lux the pampered cat, went bonkers.  This 911 call epitomizes what’s wrong with too many men today.  Just listen to this man telling the 911 operator how the cat is charging the door trying to attack them, after he kicked the cat.  A grown man who can’t deal with a pet and he and his wife sit cowering in fear in the bedroom, yes that’s the sad truth, and he wasn’t even ashamed that he couldn’t protect his family from the family cat. Where have all the real men gone???   In a misguided attempt to work out the problem, this shining example of American masculinity, happily reported that the family wants to keep the cat and the cat awaits the arrival of a pet psychologist….  An obese cat in need of therapy, why not, as the humans seem to be beyond help in this family.  Only in America could an overindulged pet warrant this much understanding and would the man of the family hide in fear from Lux, the cat with anger issues.

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March 11, 2014 · 6:17 am

Stratfor’s Geopolitical Weekly

Ukraine’s Increasing Polarization and the Western Challenge
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 – 03:02 Print Text Size
Stratfor

By Eugene Chausovsky

Just days before the Ukrainian crisis broke out, I took an overnight train to Kiev from Sevastopol in Crimea. Three mechanics in their 30s on their way to jobs in Estonia shared my compartment. All ethnic Russians born and raised in Sevastopol, they have made the trip to the Baltic states for the past eight years for seasonal work at Baltic Sea shipyards. Our ride together, accompanied by obligatory rounds of vodka, presented the opportunity for an in-depth discussion of Ukraine’s political crisis. The ensuing conversation was perhaps more enlightening than talks of similar length with Ukrainian political, economic or security officials.

My fellow passengers viewed the events at Independence Square in an overwhelmingly negative light. They considered the protesters camped out in Kiev’s central square terrorists, completely organized and financed by the United States and the European Union. They did not see the protesters as their fellow countrymen, and they supported then-President Viktor Yanukovich’s use of the Berkut security forces to crack down on them. In fact, they were shocked by the Berkut’s restraint, saying if it had been up to them, the protests would have been “cleaned up” from the outset. They added that while they usually looked forward to stopping over in Kiev during the long journey to the Baltics, this time they were ashamed of what was happening there and didn’t even want to set foot in the city. They also predicted that the situation in Ukraine would worsen before it improved.

A few days later, the protests in Independence Square in fact reached a crescendo of violence. The Berkut closed in on the demonstrators, and subsequent clashes between protesters and security forces throughout the week left dozens dead and hundreds injured. This spawned a sequence of events that led to the overthrow of Yanukovich, the formation of a new Ukrainian government not recognized by Moscow and the subsequent Russian military intervention in Crimea. While the speed of these events astonished many foreign (especially Western) observers, to the men I met on the train, it was all but expected.

After all, the crisis didn’t emerge from a vacuum. Ukraine was a polarized country well before the EuroMaidan movement took shape. I have always been struck by how traveling to different parts of Ukraine feels like visiting different countries. Every country has its regional differences, to be sure. But Ukraine stands apart in this regard.
Ukraine’s East-West Divide

Traveling in Lviv in the west, for example, is a starkly different experience than traveling in Donetsk in the east. The language spoken is different, with Ukrainian used in Lviv and Russian in Donetsk. The architecture is different, too, with classical European architecture lining narrow cobblestoned streets in Lviv and Soviet apartment blocs alongside sprawling boulevards predominating in Donetsk. Each region has different heroes: A large bust of Lenin surveys the main square in Donetsk, while Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist revolutionary, is honored in Lviv. Citizens of Lviv commonly view people from Donetsk as pro-Russian rubes while people in Donetsk constantly speak of nationalists/fascists in Lviv.

Lviv and Donetsk lie on the extreme ends of the spectrum, but they are hardly alone. Views are even more polarized on the Crimean Peninsula, where ethnic Russians make up the majority and which soon could cease to be part of Ukraine.

The east-west Ukrainian cultural divide is deep, and unsurprisingly is reflected in the country’s politics. Election results from the past 10 years show a clear dividing line between voting patterns in western and central Ukraine and those in the southern and eastern parts of the country. In the 2005 and 2010 presidential elections, Yanukovich received overwhelming support in the east and Crimea but only marginal support in the west. Ukraine does not have “swing states.”

Such internal political and cultural divisions would be difficult to overcome under normal circumstances, but Ukraine’s geographic and geopolitical position magnifies them exponentially. Ukraine is the quintessential borderland country, eternally trapped between Europe to the west and Russia to the east. Given its strategic location in the middle of the Eurasian heartland, the country has constantly been — and will constantly be — an arena in which the West and Russia duel for influence.

Competition over Ukraine has had two primary effects on the country. The first is to further polarize Ukraine, splitting foreign policy preferences alongside existing cultural divisions. While many in western Ukraine seek closer ties with Europe, many in eastern Ukraine seek closer ties with Russia. While there are those who would avoid foreign entanglements altogether, both the European Union and Russia have made clear that neutrality is not an option. Outside competition in Ukraine has created wild and often destabilizing political swings, especially during the country’s post-Soviet independence.

Therefore, the current crisis in Ukraine is only the latest manifestation of competition between the West and Russia. The European Union and the United States greatly influenced the 2004 Orange Revolution in terms of financing and political organization. Russia meanwhile greatly influenced the discrediting of the Orange Regime and the subsequent election of Yanukovich, who lost in the Orange Revolution, in 2010. The West pushed back once more by supporting the EuroMaidan movement after Yanukovich abandoned key EU integration deals, and then Russia countered in Crimea, leading to the current impasse.

The tug of war between Russia and the West over Ukraine has gradually intensified over the past decade. This has hardened positions in Ukraine, culminating in the formation of armed groups representing rival political interests and leading to the violent standoff in Independence Square that quickly spread to other parts of the country.

The current government enjoys Western support, but Moscow and many in eastern and southern Ukraine deny its legitimacy, citing the manner in which it took power. This sets a dangerous precedent because it challenges the sitting government’s and any future government’s ability to claim any semblance of nationwide legitimacy.

It is clear that Ukraine cannot continue to function for long in its current form. A strong leader in such a polarized society will face major unrest, as Yanukovich’s ouster shows. The lack of a national consensus will paralyze the government and prevent officials from forming coherent foreign policy, since any government that strikes a major deal with either Russia or the European Union will find it difficult to rightfully claim it speaks for the majority of the country. Now that Russia has used military moves in Crimea to show it will not let Ukraine go without a fight, the stage has been set for very difficult political negotiations over Ukraine’s future.
Russian-Western Conflict Beyond Ukraine

A second, more worrying effect of the competition between the West and Russia over Ukraine extends beyond Ukrainian borders. As competition over the fate of Ukraine has escalated, it has also intensified Western-Russian competition elsewhere in the region.

Georgia and Moldova, two former Soviet countries that have sought stronger ties with the West, have accelerated their attempts to further integrate with the European Union — and in Georgia’s case, with NATO. On the other hand, countries such as Belarus and Armenia have sought to strengthen their economic and security ties with Russia. Countries already strongly integrated with the West like the Baltics are glad to see Western powers stand up to Russia, but meanwhile they know that they could be the next in line in the struggle between Russia and the West. Russia could hit them economically, and Moscow could also offer what it calls protection to their sizable Russian minorities as it did in Crimea. Russia already has hinted at this in discussions to extend Russian citizenship to ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers throughout the former Soviet Union.

The major question moving forward is how committed Russia and the West are to backing and reinforcing their positions in these rival blocs. Russia has made clear that it is willing to act militarily to defend its interests in Ukraine. Russia showed the same level of dedication to preventing Georgia from turning to NATO in 2008. Moscow has made no secret that it is willing to use a mixture of economic pressure, energy manipulation and, if need be, military force to prevent the countries on its periphery from leaving the Russian orbit. In the meantime, Russia will seek to intensify integration efforts in its own blocs, including the Customs Union on the economic side and the Collective Security Treaty Organization on the military side.

So the big question is what the West intends. On several occasions, the European Union and United States have proved that they can play a major role in shaping events on the ground in Ukraine. Obtaining EU membership is a stated goal of the governments in Moldova and Georgia, and a significant number of people in Ukraine also support EU membership. But since it has yet to offer sufficient aid or actual membership, the European Union has not demonstrated as serious a commitment to the borderland countries as Russia has. It has refrained from doing so for several reasons, including its own financial troubles and political divisions and its dependence on energy and trade with Russia. While the European Union may yet show stronger resolve as a result of the current Ukrainian crisis, a major shift in the bloc’s approach is unlikely — at least not on its own.

On the Western side, then, U.S. intentions are key. In recent years, the United States has largely stayed on the sidelines in the competition over the Russian periphery. The United States was just as quiet as the European Union was in its reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia, and calls leading up to the invasion for swiftly integrating Ukraine and Georgia into NATO went largely unanswered. Statements were made, but little was done.

But the global geopolitical climate has changed significantly since 2008. The United States is out of Iraq and is swiftly drawing down its forces in Afghanistan. Washington is now acting more indirectly in the Middle East, using a balance-of-power approach to pursue its interests in the region. This frees up its foreign policy attention, which is significant, given that the United States is the only party with the ability and resources to make a serious push in the Russian periphery.

As the Ukraine crisis moves into the diplomatic realm, a major test of U.S. willingness and ability to truly stand up to Russia is emerging. Certainly, Washington has been quite vocal during the current Ukrainian crisis and has shown signs of getting further involved elsewhere in the region, such as in Poland and the Baltic states. But concrete action from the United States with sufficient backing from the Europeans will be the true test of how committed the West is to standing up to Moscow. Maneuvering around Ukraine’s deep divisions and Russian countermoves will be no easy task. But nothing short of concerted efforts by a united Western front will suffice to pull Ukraine and the rest of the borderlands toward the West.

Editor’s Note: Writing in George Friedman’s stead this week is Stratfor Eurasia analyst Eugene Chausovsky.
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 “Ukraine’s Increasing Polarization and the Western Challenge” is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

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March 11, 2014 · 6:04 am

Selfskies…..

Whenever you think the press really has a clue about what’s going on, just surf the internet.  Here’s a story from the UK Daily Mail, “Selfskies from the frontline:People of the Crimea pose with the masked Russian invaders” – they’re all smiling, the Russian invaders and the oppressed citizens of Crimea.  Don’t ask me….. I can admit that I  really have no clue what to make of it all.

Not to be left in the lurch, the White House has released  a series of  photos of President Obama talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone: the mom jean style  or   the clenched fist pose.

Putin didn’t bother with selfskies, he took Crimea without firing a shot, which love him or hate him, provides the snapshot of him.  As to the desires of the various people of Ukraine, danged if I know.  The more I read about them, the less I feel confident that it’s as cut and dried as politicians would have us believe.

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