This week’s visit to Pravda (I think we missed a visit or two back there) gives us a mini-treasure trove. We’ll start with a venue whose “free and fair elections” are under attack, warranting hundreds of OSCE observers (and thousands of local ones) who, it is feared, the local regime, which uses its control of a biased state media in its own favor, will not allow near polling stations, or especially vote counting. It does trouble one that the Ukraine may prove to be as corrupt a third-world style banana republic, as, say, Florida, but so sayeth our State Department in a harshly worded letter.
Anatoly Safonov, like Vladimir Pooty Poot Putin, a former KGB officer, has been appointed by Putin to the post of Russia’s “terrorism czar” (for obvious reasons, that particular moniker will not be used internally in Russia!) The approach is that all agencies of government, in cooperation with their counterparts in other nations (particularly the “special services” of other nations) must be brought to bear in coordination against terrorism as a transnational criminal enterprise. Didn’t hear anything about hundreds of thousands of troops deployed against politically opportune bogeymen’s states, there… “Coordinated, interagency response, not limited to just one agency” as a response to terrorism. You think?
Another Russian response would appear to be more classically in the American model: the North Ossetians (North Ossetia is the site of the horrifying recent mass murder of school children and their partents at Beslan) have taken matters into their own hoods and formed the North Ossetian Ku Klux Klan. While I certainly wish they had chosen a better name and concept, their point is well-taken: local officials are corrupt and ineffectual, and they are sitting ducks to the vicissitudes unleashed by the nearly 10 year old Chechen war and other instability in Southern Russia and the Caucasus region, and hence, self-help will probably be the only help they get. Again: this is the stated justification for our Second Amendment, even if, like Russians in general, we stand by while our central government consolidates its powers using “terrorism” as cover for its political land grab.
Finally, Pravda lets us know what our own media won’t tell us: our Pentagon is still using depleted uranimum shells against Iraqi targets, with adverse health consequences to Americans and Iraqi alike… While even I am skeptical of the “contaminated for the next 4.5 billion years” statement, there is no question that releasing contaminated, radioactive dust from this shit is pretty much our use of “dirty bombs” against the Iraqi people. Just part of that immense moral authority this nation continues to carry forward.
Das vidanya, y’all.
tdog
The Ukrainians are real Soros-haters, like the Republicans, though they are more blatant in letting their motivations out.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to convince Dems that they should feature Soros rather than hiding him, but there’s been no interest. He sure stacks up well compared to Scaife, Moon, or the Koch brothers.
Well, I’ll hand it to the Ukrainians that they are willing to be out with their blatant anti-semitism, and not
pretend that its some “traditional values” bullshit like the loathsome Scaife, et al. do here (who are delighted to play more “subtle” forms of anti-semitism; the Jewish banking cabal, etc.).
Dems are uncomfortable with Soros because they feel his money HAS TO come with strings attached– they just cannot comprehend that unlike an industry lobbyist, he may be “rich enough” and be solely interested in a “better world”. It’s beyond them. Which is why the Mellon Scaifes, et al. always MAKE MONEY from their ideological projects via gov’t tax breaks, subsidies et al.
Its the DNC mentality– and I think it was you, Z, who suggested that starting by taking the DNC leadership out back and shooting them might not be a bad start.
Soros MIGHT CONSIDER giving the $2K max to every Dem running for Congress, however… if he wants to say he did EVERYTHING he could.
I MEANT to say D L C of course. but the DNC is dominated by DLC types these days.
Damn– I could have called this one “Kiev, Key West…”