Not Surprised...

I can't say I'm all that surprised about the revelations Jeffery Sachs and Matt Taibbi have brought forward about the US's interest and involvement in the ending of Communist Russia and the development of whatever Russia is now. I will admit to be depressed by such revelations, because it just confirms how idiotic our leaders are.

Remember the fall of the Soviet Union? Everything was going to be hunky dory, supposedly, and every country, including Russia, was going to turn to capitalism and prosper - or so we were told. And TPTB sent people, like Sachs, to do that for countries like Poland. But Russia? Naw. It seems that TPTB always wanted Russia, the former Soviet Union, to fail, to remain our enemy. Our military industrial complex needs it. And so TPTB set that up to happen. Sachs details some of that in his article 'A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations'. The sub-title of the article says it all: 'The U.S. was advised toward a "Marshall Plan" to help rebuild post-Soviet Russia as a democracy, but a key witness says the Cold War never ended, because we didn't want it to'.

Taibbi and Sachs discussed all this recently on Counter Points - 'Jeffrey Sachs, Taibbi: How The West DESTROYED Russia' (the discussion is 50 or so minutes long):

So, basically, we helped form Russia into what it is now, and we've constantly made it into our enemy. And... here we are. It's like our people in power simply can NOT see beyond their immediate profit, can not do things for the regular people, whether those people are American or European or Russian or Chinese or Ukrainian or... whatever. I suppose most all political leaders are like that, eh?

Anyway, thanks for reading this post. Here's the open thread - remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!