At a recent conference, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev (translatable as “son of the bear” - appropriate) finally made the dread statement - “Cold War II” has started. Funny; some of us have known this for some time. Not an attractive outlook, for those who lived through much of the last one … Yours from Syria, head-down … JR.
I grew up with it, the commercials about “Duck, and Cover”, the Red Menace, all of the stuff the gov’t was putting out in the Early 50’s through the 60’s . We had monthly air raid drills at School, and were taught how to best shield ourselves from an A-Bomb strike. Being near Lake michigan, there were a fair number of defensive Missile Sites near to where I lived. 3 of them within 10 miles of my house. Even my Daughter collects Cold war Civil Defense memorabilia.
My state capital city (Melbourne) in 1950s or early 1960s telephone book had a map showing levels of damage within various radius rings of atomic weapon dropped on city centre. As an all or nothing bloke, I wasn’t happy about living in the middle between the instantly vaporised rings around the city centre and the paint scorched off houses further out.
I remember as an early teenager talking to other kids during the Cuban missile crisis about whether we’d see the missiles coming or just get blasted without warning. The latter wasn’t entirely without some attraction during Latin and elocution classes.
Odd thing is that my son and his mates were a lot more worried and fatalistic around the same age as a result of bin Laden’s assault 9/11. I wonder if that’s because they grew up in a world which, from their limited knowledge, seemed free of war while my generation was strongly affected by WWII, even though we weren’t born until well after it ended, because just about every adult close to us passed something on to us about or from WWII, from Japanese atrocities to just disparaging our prized toy because it came from Japan.
I think my generation was conditioned by our parents’ experience of WWII, and our grandparents’ experience of WWI which conditioned our own parents, to accept major wars as natural about every 20 or so years. And Vietnam fitted pretty neatly into that time line and expectation. It would have been a rare house when I was a kid not to see photos of family members in uniform from WWI and or WWII prominently displayed in the main living area. There was also a lot of other stuff that made military service etc seem normal, from massive amounts of war surplus weapons and other equipment down to the average tradesman often wearing his ex-Army or other service uniform as working clothes. None of this applied to my children’s generation, nor a generation or two before them which, I suspect, had the curious effect of making them less concerned about war and yet more susceptible to a much stronger alarmed response to events such as 9/11 than my generation.
The same applies to modern Western leaders and politicians. Churchill, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Stalin and Khrushchev, among many other post WWII national leaders, had personal experience at various levels of the greatest war the world had known, and were much more inclined to be resolute in dealing with military responses to political problems, and at the same time preferring to avoid the consequences of another world war. No Western leader since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis has had to confront the realistic prospect of starting another world war, which is probably just as well as most of them probably would have wimped it. And, much as it pains me to say it because I detest her, probably the only one who wouldn’t have wimped it would have been Maggie Thatcher.
Yes, it was strange, wasn’t it ? My little country is, and long has been “neutral”, but few here had any illusions as to what might happen to us if our near neighbours, the British, were nuked comprehensively in consequence of an “all-out superpower confrontation”. A nuclear strike on Belfast - not in my country, but on the same island - was even a distinct possibility. For much of the period, there was the uncomfortable sense was that our ultimate security lay in MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - not exactly the Doomsday Device, but almost as good, and almost as, well, mad.
Now, I am not saying that nuclear Armageddon is just around the corner. That having been said, an environment that might enable this to happen seems to be on the way back - and most younger people seem blissfully oblivious to the implications. Certainly, the activities of Al Quaeda, ISIS and co. is righly feared. However, it is hardly to be compared with the activation of a decentralized, but nonetheless worldwide “Doomsday Device”. In the late-1940s, people were introduced to this notion by a sort of natural, progressive process. No sign of this now. We all need to get a grip; but it is hard to see this happening. Nuclear antiques away ? JR.
ISIS is, in global terms, a trivial military force controlling geography of no great international significance, apart from sitting astride some potential routes for improved exploitation of oil to the West. Notwithstanding its barbaric conduct, ISIS is utterly irrelevant in a major global war context, except to the extent that it has generated or is involved in conflicts which have initiated the latest round of proxy wars between major powers, e.g. Syria with the Russians and Americans on opposite sides.
The bigger risk in the Middle East is the eternal Sunni / Shiite rivalry underpinned by the long popularity of internally conflicting Islamist aims in Arab countries and Iran and the crazy religious politics of Islamists tempered by occasional collisions with political and military reality, e.g. the bizarre alliance between the fundamentalist Saudis and the infidel US which offends other Islamic fundamentalists who regard the Saudis as apostates / infidels / deserving of death etc etc etc and not suitably qualified to be the keepers of Mecca etc. The history of the region since the West was kicked out of colonial and semi-colonial control by the 1970s demonstrates that Arabs, Persians, and Muslims don’t need external interference to initiate and maintain perpetual conflict with their supposed Muslim brothers and sisters.
If the Saudis take on Iran as seems likely currently, and not least because the Saudis’ American ally has reached detente with Iran which can now export oil to further depress the oil price which is adversely affecting the Saudis economy, my money is on Iran. Unless the Saudis are supported by Western military resources, which will turn the recent detente between the US and Iran into a cluster**** disaster which could well spark a major proxy war conflict and perhaps get out of control into a wider conflict. Just more insanity by and between nations. The true anarchists are beginning to make sense.
The looming wild card at the moment is China’s increasingly aggressive stance in the disputed islands (i.e. largely man made by China recently) in the South China Sea. Why would China need surface to air missiles in a primarily civilian aircraft corridor? This has elements of revisiting the Cuban missile crisis. What point are they trying to make? Are they trying to provoke a conflict? How does this sit with China’s dependence on the West for its faltering economic expansion and exports? As is usual with so much of China’s self-contradictory behaviour in various areas, it doesn’t make sense to a rational Western observer, unless perhaps they’re doing the North Korean act of provoking a crisis so they can extract concessions from the other parties to compensate for their faltering economy. Inscrutable orientals at their global best.
The only thing of which I am certain is that the world won’t be a substantially better place until we can identify the politician / power seeking / bully / thug gene and remove it from the gene pool.
Interesting comments. In the early days of Islam, the all-too-natural urge of rival Muslim leaders (the Prophet’s successors) to fight each other was somewhat restrained by the Prophet’s injunction that Muslims should not fight fellow members of the Faithful. However, they overcame this pretty early by adopting the practice of having their own Imams anathemise their enemy as apostate, heretic or whatever, removing the bar on fighting him. In the meantime, the various Arab potentates of this period had begun to fill the gap by enlisting slave or mercenary armies of “non-Muslims” (actually in all cases soon-to-be-Muslims) to conduct the wars - a development of profound importance for the future of Islam. Many of the great Muslim military leaders of the succeeding centuries - Nur-ed-Din, Saladin, Babars and so on - were Kurds or Turks, and the Mamelukes of Egypt were, technically, a slave-army composed of Afro-Egyptians.
As to a possible Saudi-Iranian war - their lack of a common land border might inhibit this somewhat, as would the restraint imposed on the situation by the US. Problem - as the “Financial Times” pointed out this morning, the Iranians, the Saudis and the Turks (the Saudi’s "Sunni brothers) seem increasingly likely to be drawn into direct engagement in the Syrian miasma by the force of events. If this came to pass, we could have a situation in which mutually antagonistic “Muslims” were in conflict in Syria, and in which two US allies (one a member of NATO) could be projecting military force in an area in which Russian forces are actively engaged in fighting. “We’ll meet again …” JR.
Among the reasons we in the West have to endure jihadists in our midst bent on destroying us is the fact that various Arab regimes cracked down on Islamic fundamentalists wanting a true sharia nation, e.g. Egypt cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood at various times post WWII and the same all through Arab countries. This saw many fundamentalist leaders who weren’t imprisoned or killed in their own countries seek and obtain asylum in infidel nations, notably Britain and France where they had freedoms even now undreamt of in all Arab countries.
Up to that point, around the 1980s, the fundamentalists had been essentially local Islamic revolutionaries seeking to overthrow their offensively non-Islamic governments / dictatorships which they proclaimed as infidels for betraying true Islam. Curiously, their expulsion to the West enlarged the ambit of their zeal to get rid of infidels and added to their shit list the very nations which gave them asylum, a characteristic of detestable people who like to bite the hand that feeds them. Reinforced by the success of their jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, they came to believe that anything was possible, ably assisted by filtering back into various Arab nations returning Arabs who had fought in Afghanistan, which alarmed those same Arab / Muslim nations as many Western nations nowadays are alarmed by the same concerns of jihadists returning from Iraq, Syria and sundry other ISIS / jihadist hot spots.
I could go on about the circular insanity of the growth of Islamic jihad, but wherever one looks in the recent history there is a constant theme: a small core of violent zealots determined to impose sharia upon the rest of the world and to murder anyone they regard as their enemies, being about 99.5% of the rest of the world’s population, infidel or contrary Muslim regardless.
Add in the insane complexities of international economics and super-power support for various actors and the exquisitely labyrinthine and, appositely, Byzantine religious and political stances and ambitions of the local actors and it is a mess which cannot be cleaned up, only contained.
If it is not contained, it might break out and contaminate the rest of us with serious conflict rather than the, in global conflict terms, inconsequential events like 9/11, London train bombings and so on.
Yet, as Syria shows, trying to contain it threatens to export the contamination as super-powers embark on yet another set of cluster**** adventures on the backs of their stunning failures in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where the US and its allies managed to win or could have won militarily but still couldn’t manage the aftermath because they didn’t think it through, while the Soviets couldn’t even win militarily in Afghanistan with considerably fewer restrictions on waging their war than applied to the US and its allies.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. There is no sign that sanity is likely to prevail among super powers or lesser powers, so we’re doomed to live in an asylum run by the lunatics in power.
Which, abhorrent as it might seem, suggests Westmoreland’s Axiom; namely: “Kill’em all, and let God sort’em out” now comes into application.
At the time he spoke the above, Westmoreland caused alarm among the pacifists, and despair among the diplomats.
However, this may well be the occasion upon which Westmoreland is proven to have been correct. Regardless of how uncomfortable that might be to those of us living in the present day.
I make no comment of approval of Westmoreland’s Axiom, merely record that as regards the Islamic Jihadists he may well be yet proven correct.
Kind and Respectful Regards, Uyraell.
Hello folk;) Nice to see here all you back))
Actualy , its meaning he belong to bears family. That is sound rather comic, coz his height is no more 1m 60cm;) We call him “nano-president” , but not for his biometrical defects - rather for his idiotic demagogy and his sensless role in govenment “as premier”. Some folk compare him to last tsar of Russian Empire - Nicolas II - both of them are hopeless nd useless in politic.
finally made the dread statement - “Cold War II” has started. Funny; some of us have known this for some time. Not an attractive outlook, for those who lived through much of the last one … Yours from Syria, head-down … JR.
The Cold war v2.0 has been already started de-facto since 2013 becouse of Syria and in 2014 becouse of Ukraine. So nano-medvedev actually nothind has descovered. But i hary to calm you down- the new cold war isn’t even close to what we have survived in 1950-80yy. The new war is a war of rulling elites for power - nothing even close to fight global deadly ideologies like communism vs capitalism. Poeples on boths sides don’t look to each others as at the enemies. That’s of couse doesn’t mean the some of diehard warmongers could start the real thermonuclear hot war accidentally;) Amother war weage the our own Mass-media - be carefull listening all they say and show! The media just serve to rulling clans, whic fight for power - so they can be danger for own people.
Your’s from fighting Donbass…
Chevan old Friend, good to see you here, hope all is well !
Same from me.
Regarding “Yours from fighting Donbass”. Are you in Ukraine, and okay?
Nice to see you too, old mate TG)))
Nope)) I just joking in JR style. He is writting his is from Syria. Really is him?
I,m OK.
As for the Ukraine, …hmmmmn we have there a full mess- ukrainians say the entire Soutern Russia is ukrainian land , the russians claims the Estern Ukraine and Crimea - the russian land. Everything there is quite complicated;)
And money, which is a type of power, and often the most effective way of controlling others by buying their power.
According to some reports, the greatest concentration of massive wealth in a ruling elite is in the Chinese Communist leadership, which pretty much fits with the usual venality and hypocrisy of politicians, and the absurdity of China as a communist nation which relies upon rampant capitalism to expand.
Increasingly true, thanks to greater education and information and, especially, the internet spread of information not controlled by governments.
Anyone with half a brain in any country knows that the average person is being screwed by the obscenely wealthy in their own and other countries, and it doesn’t matter which government is in power because in the end all major political parties rely upon the rich for their election in democracies and for their continuation elsewhere.
Yeah, and as usual the people who will fight, die, be injured and rendered homeless and otherwise damaged by the war won’t be the rich who profit from it.
Rupert Murdoch. That says enough, except that Murdoch and his type are more likely to make the ruling clans serve his interests rather than the interests of the ruling clans, because he controls the information given to the voters which makes the politicians afraid of him and his type.
Yeah, the information is a real power. What they decide to tell us in mass media - often is just full bul…it. How else will one to controll the masses? Just lie…
And they still want to controll the internet. Have you heard about peoples who been banned in FaceBook becouse of their views? I think the special secret govemental organisation do monitoring the internet and social networks for propoganda purposes. The call it the “fight with extremism” - but anyone “with half of brain”( good slogan) know the real extremists stood behind their govenments.
Which is why Putin and or his mates have got rid of some very courageous journalists in Russia, usually by killing them, whereas in China they tend to disappear before suddenly turning up to plead guilty to idiotic charges (no doubt to protect their families from further oppression).
Generally this doesn’t happen in the West, although there are some gross examples from Northern Ireland with journalists being killed.
More usually, it’s just the case that certain news outlets don’t employ the sort of journalist who might express a view which offends the owner’s (e.g. Murdoch’s) views and interests.
The same applies at the other end of the political spectrum, but there is usually very little money there so they don’t have the mass influence of the likes of Murdoch through his print and electronic outlets.
Then there is also the commercial restriction that other outlets which depend upon major corporation advertising aren’t going to cut their own commercial throats by taking an anti-capitalist line.
The journalist killing isn’t the only the way to controll the mases. Don’t forget about special secret service operations. The staged “islamic terrorism” in Europe, no doubts for me, the part of the big game of secret services. I know for sure few cases when FSB trued to organize the “terroristic attacks” in early 2000yy in own Volgograd!!All attempts have bee failured coz the local police done it’s work better! They want to put it to the “chechen terrorists”. There is no doubt the terrorism is an absolute evil- but they want the “manned terrorism”.I know such a way of thinking should bring us to the 9’11 and the resons caused it.
Power to control what is published is shifting from a variety of local, national and international independent newspapers, radio and television stations with different perspectives and whatever control government exercises over them to a massive concentration in a few internet addresses such as Facebook which are not subject to any control but the whim of their owners and the drones who work for them.
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It’s part of the bizarre process of the masses, be they individuals or small businesses who nowadays are closer to workers than Marx’s bourgeoisie (or worse off than employees in my country as the small tradespeople, being just one person, are generally required to be businesses when contracting to larger companies so that the larger companies don’t bear their proper burden of workers’ compensation insurance and superannuation etc), sacrificing their individuality and control of their own affairs to anonymous internet ‘services’ such as Facebook, PayPal, and others which are not subject to any real government or other control and generally are immune from legal action as their domicile is difficult or impossible to ascertain. Check out the reviews at the end of this article for what is either a spectacularly incompetently run multi-national business or a scam: http://www.merchantmaverick.com/reviews/square-review/
The problem is that all such adresses is under tight controll , moreover their owners are in a plot.
Did you knew Mark Zukerberg awarded by…CIA;)
A strange tendency for a country of democracy…
Interestingly, the Chinese gov’t has censured and blacked out any American CNN broadcasts regarding the now infamous “Panama Papers”…
Yours from the Manchurian Labor camp!