Putin Historical Perspective

In the comments to an article at Consortium News by Ray McGovern yesterday, a writer outlined some crucial points about Putin.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/07/progressive-journalists-jump-the-s...

‘Progressive’ Journalists Jump the Shark on Russiagate
March 7, 2018 - By Ray McGovern

COMMENTS
nonsense factory
March 7, 2018

The most fundamentally important thing for the general American public to understand about Russiagate is that this is just the latest play in an American Empire project that dates back to around 2003-2005, when Putin rejected the Boris Yeltsin-era policies of Russian integration with the Wall Street/London/Brussels economic hegemon. The two key historical events that mark the beginning of this era are

(1) Putin’s rejection of ExxonMobil’s bid for a controlling interest in Yukos, the major Russian oil company, which would have reduced Russia to the status of a subject of the American Empire, with no control over its own natural resources.

(2) Putin’s arrest of the Russian oligarch with the closest ties to Wall Street, i.e. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which by comparison would be like the US throwing Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in jail for tax evasion; Putin also exiled the two oligarchs who had worked closely with the US to engineer Yeltsin’s political comeback in the 1996 Russian election, Gusinsky and Berezovsky. (Berezovsky is also interesting as he is a plausible suspect in the Litvinenko polonium poisoning story).

At that point, the American Empire project opened up the eastern Europe energy wars, attempting to control pipeline access to Europe, the goal being to cut off Russian pipelines while building new pipelines to regimes in Central Asia and the Middle East that were Empire members in good standing.

The 2008 Georgian-Russia war (instigated by Condi Rice, Chevron Director) was one of the first major salvos in this game. The Syrian regime change game c.2010 instigated by Hillary Clinton was directly related to Assad taking the Russian Gazprom / Iranian pipeline deal over the one promoted by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Israel and the US. The Ukrainian coup effort led by Victoria Nuland was about controlling the Russian gas pipelines to Europe...

This latest Russiagate story, based on dishonest claims about who leaked the DNC and Podesta emails to Wikileaks and “social media manipulation” of American public opinion, is just more of the same…

Comments in response to nonsense factory and to Ray McGovern included these points:

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/07/progressive-journalists-jump-the-s...
Realist
March 8, 2018
This is an exceptionally clear, concise history of the ongoing war that Washington has been waging against Russia and its interests during the entirety of Putin’s leadership, and an equally impressive outlining of the true nature of the factions vying for power in DC. The contest is over pure, naked power that has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, democracy, what is right, wrong, moral or immoral, nor even over anything that can be factually established as having actually taken place…

CitizenOne
March 8, 2018
… Currently the media is urging Trump to do “something” about the “something” that Russia did while warning him that just because the intelligence got it wrong on Iraq, past instances of intelligence agencies telling lies to support war should not influence Trump’s judgement on the current set of intelligence against Russia. They argue that the set of circumstances is not the same and Trump is foolish to compare Iraq with Russia as far as bad intelligence information goes.

But it is the same. It is the same intelligence misinformation delivered to Congress which has them investigating Trump for failing to play along with the war mongers. The NY Times in an Op Ed by the editorial board on 2/18/2018 published a story “Stop Letting the Russians Get Away With It, Mr. Trump” which was triumphant over the Mueller indictments even though the indictments revealed no collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russians. The Editorial Board chastised Trump and said, “For starters, he could impose the sanctions on Russia that Congress overwhelmingly passed, and that he signed into law, last summer. Of course, this would require him to overcome his mysterious resistance to acting against Russia and to focus on protecting his own country.”

Based on what? No evidence? The Russian government was not indicted by Mueller. Why are they insisting Trump enacts new sanctions and enforces previous sanctions against Russia when the Russian government is not even mentioned in the Mueller indictments?...

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CB's picture

electorate as is Putin?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oBOlJI2YJE]

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@CB of videos. No bluster, no bragging, straight recitation of the facts.
Is it any wonder he has an 80%+ approval rating?

Stop These Fucking Wars

peace

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Azazello's picture

Thanks nonsense factory, and Linda Wood too.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

snoopydawg's picture

like sane countries are doing, we might not have to war as much as we do. Why can't we just make deals with countries for their resources like they do for theirs? It would certainly be much cheaper than having to invade them and take what we want.

Since Mueller got appointed to try to pin something on Trump, Russia Gate has gone in so many different directions it's not even remotely close to the original claims that he "colluded" with Russia. And no one who believes this has noticed.

Thanks, Linda

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg Solar won't solve everything geopoliticaly, but it sure seems to me that disengaging from the petrodollar would help.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Hawkfish's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

I figured this out as a teen after the oil embargo and before climate change was a thing. With enough energy and education you can solve most resource problems. Imagine if we had started back then.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

ggersh's picture

our gravest enemy...yep good ol Vlad

I havent watched it yet but clapper has a trailer
saying if vlad doesn't like it your kaput unlike
amerika where they just send you to disneyland.

yep its a full court press and how it ends could
be the end

https://www.history.com/specials/americas-greatest-threat-vladimir-putin

"A gripping look at Putin’s rise from humble beginnings to brutal dictatorship, and his emergence as one of the gravest threats to America’s security."

EDIT: spelling

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

TheOtherMaven's picture

@ggersh

so they're now looking for a Boogeyman for the 21st Century.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

CB's picture

@TheOtherMaven
It's a professional Hollywood hit piece. Most likely will win an Oscar for best documentary.

In this revealing 2-hour special, we will take viewers on a spine-tingling journey to understand how this cunning spymaster and dictator – a man called “friend” by the American president, but perceived as “foe” by their military and intelligence agencies – plans to change the balance of power, overthrow the existing order, and threaten American supremacy everywhere he can. The story will be told using a combination of expert interviews, stylized recreation, rare archival footage, and present day investigation. We will hear from former bodyguards and KGB comrades; oligarchs and spurned pals who have run afoul of the enigmatic ruler. We will also talk to American spymasters and agents who fought against him in the past and continue to do so today. Some will appear for the first time on television.

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@CB and challenge "American supremacy" for God's sake. Could that be any more transparent to those of us out here who are awake? Jesus, the rest of this country will lap that shit up. The History Channel, what a bunch of bunk.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

TheOtherMaven's picture

@lizzyh7

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

CB's picture

@ggersh
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqYsSApxOOE]

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CB's picture

An interesting read

Why the West Cannot Stomach Russians

"In the eyes of the West, Russians are ‘traitors’. Instead of joining the looters, they have been standing by the ‘wretched of the world’, in the past, as well as now. They refused to sell their Motherland, and to enslave their own people. Their government is doing all it can to make Russia self-sufficient, fully independent, prosperous, proud and free."

When it comes to Russia or the Soviet Union, reports and historical accounts do get blurry; in the West they do, and consequently in all of its ‘client states’.
...
Westerners like simplicity, particularly when it comes to moral definitions of “good and evil”. It matters nothing if the truth gets systematically ‘massaged’, or even if the reality is fully fabricated. What matters is that there is no deep guilt and no soul-searching. Western rulers and their opinion makers know their people – their ‘subjects’ – perfectly well, and most of the time, they give them what they are asking for. The rulers and the reigned are generally living in symbiosis. They keep bitching about each other, but mostly they have similar goals: to live well, to live extremely well, as long as the others are forced to pay for it; with their riches, with their labor and often with their blood.
...
Recent ‘refugee crises’ showed the spite Europeans feel for their prey. People who made them rich and who lost everything in the process are humiliated, despised and insulted. Be they Afghans or Africans, the Middle Easterners or South Asians. Or Russians, although Russians are falling to its own, unique category.

Many Russians look white. Most of them eat with knife and fork, they drink alcohol, excel at Western classical music, poetry, literature, science and philosophy.

To Western eyes they look ‘normal’, but actually, they are not.

Russians always want ‘something else’; they refuse to play by Western rules.

They are stubbornly demanding to remain different, and to be left alone.

When confronted, when attacked, they fight.
...
That is when the greatest wave of propaganda in human history really began to roll. From London to New York, from Paris to Toronto, an elaborate web of anti-Soviet and covertly anti-Russian hysteria was unleashed with monstrously destructive force. Tens of thousands of ‘journalists’, intelligence officers, psychologists, historians, as well as academics, were employed. Nothing Soviet, nothing Russian (except those glorified and often ‘manufactured’ Russian dissidents) was spared.
...
Under Gorbachev, a ‘useful idiot’ of the West, things got extremely bizarre. I don’t believe that he was paid to ruin his own country, but he did almost everything to run it into the ground; precisely what Washington wanted him to do. Then, in front of the entire world, a mighty and proud Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics suddenly shook in agony, then uttered a loud cry, and collapsed; died painfully but swiftly.

A new turbo-capitalist, bandit, pro-oligarch and confusedly pro-Western Russia was born. Russia which was governed by an alcoholic Boris Yeltsin; a man loved and supported by Washington, London and other Western centers of power.

It was a totally unnatural, sick Russia – cynical and compassionless, built with someone else’s ideas – Russia of Radio Liberty and Voice of America, of the BBC, of black marketers, of oligarchs and multi-national corporations.

Is the West now daring to say that Russians are ‘interfering’ in something in Washington? Are they out of their minds?
...
Russian culture is enormous: from poetry and literature, to music, ballet, philosophy… Russian hearts are soft, they easily melt when approached with love and kindness. But when millions of lives of innocent people are threatened, both the hearts and muscles of Russians quickly turn to stone and steel. During such moments, when only victory could save the world, Russian fists are hard, and the same is true about the Russian armor.

There is no match to Russian courage in the sadistic but cowardly West.

Irreversibly, both hope and future are moving towards the east.

And that is why Russia is desperately hated by the West.

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Here is short clip of interview where reporters ask him if he is a friend to the West. I suppose the realist school of international relationships would call him a rational actor. In America he is a metaphysical persona of evil.

When German journalists asked the very simplistic question on whether Putin considered himself a friend or a foe to the West- he answered neither. There is the simple concept of national interests, which may or may not be at odds with other countries. Diplomacy is the art of being able to reconcile your national interests, alongside those of other States, compromising on certain aspects along the way. However, the Atlanticist world view (EU/US/NATO) has shown not to allow for mutual respect, nor for cooperation. Through a number of covert means, they ask for nothing less than for Russia to no longer ascertain its national interests, which makes President Putin #1 Boogeyman in the world today.

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lotlizard's picture

@MrWebster  
what Germany’s national interest is, and question whether it is truly served by current policies — well, you’ll automatically be smeared as some kind of Nazi.

Apparently only a Nazi would want Germany and other European countries to remain identifiable polities, cultures, and ethnicities, as opposed to becoming — as most U.S. states are — an arbitrary geographical division, historical curiosities, a set of lines on a map whose “representatives” actually only serve globalists’ wealth extraction and war machine.

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