SCO backs Moscow against West

SCO backs Moscow against West
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:23:43 GMT

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has supported Russia’s peacekeeping mission in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia.

The organization’s member states however reiterated that any solution to the dispute over the region should be based on the principle of territorial integrity, the Russia Today reported.

“Unfortunately, we have to state that attempts are being made to secure certain interests using force, not the principles of strict observance of international law and denial of confrontational bloc thinking,” Medvedev told the SCO summit in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

“A fine example of such irresponsible criminal actions is Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia. It is well-known who connived with the Georgian authorities and even incited them, pursuing their own profit. Such behavior is unacceptable and should be stopped. In such an extreme situation, we remained reserved and continued our responsible and predictable policy,” he added.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed hope on Thursday that the united position of the organization would send a signal to” those who try to turn black into white.”

Leaders from the countries convened in Dushanbe as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional group founded in 2001 to balance NATO influence in the Central Asia region.

The West has strongly opposed Russia’s military action in Georgia this month and Medvedev’s decision to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country holds the presidency of the European Union, earlier said the bloc was considering sanctions against Moscow.

But Russia criticized the West for agitating the Black Sea region and warned attempts to isolate Moscow could lead to an economic backlash.

Moscow remains wary of a growing NATO naval presence in the Black Sea, accusing the West of using aid shipments as a cover for rearming Georgia’s shattered forces after Russia responded to Georgia’s military action against the province of South Ossetia.

“Certainly some measures of precaution are being taken,” said a spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov. “It’s not a common practice to deliver humanitarian aid using battleships.”

Peskov stressed such attempts by Western states against his oil-rich country would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states.”

China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, however, voiced support for Russia’s ‘active role’ in resolving the conflict in Georgia.

DNC PROTEST MARCH LED BY IRAQ VETERANS

more about “CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WOR…“, posted with vodpod

Live, From Golden, Colo., It’s Al-Jazeera

Live, From Golden, Colo., It’s Al-Jazeera

By Dana Milbank

Al-Jazeera’s presence wasn’t appreciated by some residents, including James Morris, left. Golden’s mayor at first invited the Al-Jazeera crew to a cookout, then withdrew the offer.

GOLDEN, Colo., Aug. 27 Deep divisions, bad feelings. Tensions that threaten to boil over during this week’s gathering in Colorado.

The Obama-Clinton feud at the Democratic National Convention? Well, yes, but that’s happening 13 miles to the east of here, in Denver. The fight in Golden is between the townsfolk of this quaint Western hamlet and al-Jazeera English, which is trying to broadcast from here during the convention.

It started innocently enough: Qatar-based al-Jazeera decided it would film the locals in Golden, the home of Coors beer, as they watched the convention from a biker bar Wednesday night. This would allow al-Jazeera’s viewers to see Bill Clinton and Joe Biden through the eyes of those in a small American town that could pass as a set for a Hollywood Western.

City leaders at first offered to host a pork-free barbecue for the Jazeera crew, then abandoned that plan when angry residents protested. But the Buffalo Rose, a 150-year-old saloon here catering to bikers, offered to let al-Jazeera broadcast from its bar.

The result: a sort of 21st-century shootout at the O.K. Corral on Wednesday night under the shadow of Lookout Mountain, where Buffalo Bill is buried.

Word spread that three rival biker gangs — the Sons of Silence, the Banditos and the Hell’s Angels — declared a truce for the night so they could meet at the Buffalo Rose in a united protest against al-Jazeera. But the network stood its ground and set up its cameras.

Across the street from the bar, two dozen protesters under the watchful eye of a statue of Adolph Coors waved American flags, blew air horns and revved motorcycle engines. “Al Jazeera is terrorism,” announced one sign. “Go home, Al Jazeera — Voices for al Qaeda and bin Laden,” proclaimed another. The protesters had shirts printed up for the occasion, saying “Buffalo Rose/Tokyo Rose” in English and Arabic, although they botched the Arabic translation.

One biker covered his T-shirt in thoughtful, handwritten messages, such as “Islam Sucks” and “Al-Jazeera: Anti-American Pond Scum.”

“Al-Jazeera is the No. 1 propaganda machine for the enemies we fight,” growled Mick Woodworth, a Navy veteran of the Iraq war. “They support terrorism,” he said, and the mostly American al-Jazeera crew in Golden “are traitors to the United States of America.”

Across the street, a smaller group of Golden residents lined up in a counterprotest. A bunch of right-wing fanatics, grumbled one. Buffalo Rose owner Murray Martinez, a biker himself with long hair and a chin beard, folded his arms across his chest. “They think I’m bringing in terrorists to launch a jihad in the little town of Golden,” he scoffed.

The Golden police manned the rooftops around the bar. Inside the bar, the al-Jazeera crew sat idly while the overhead television flashed scenes of the Democratic convention, where Barack Obama was being nominated for president by acclamation. Nobody was watching.

The regulars at Buffalo Rose took the Qatari invasion, and the demonstration, in stride. “Al-Jazeera? Is he here? Where is he?” inquired Travis Henry, sipping a Bud Light.

Golden, a gold-rush town of 18,000, was a too-good-to-be-true locale for al-Jazeera. Across the main drag in town is an arch announcing: “Howdy Folks!” The smell of brewing beer is in the air, and a large sculpture of a buffalo stands outside the Buffalo Rose.

The leader of this would-be terrorist cell: al-Jazeera’s Josh Rushing, a Texas-born Marine veteran who wears blue jeans and cowboy boots. “I guess you could call it a mild jihad for the truth,” said Rushing, sipping a latte. Wearily, he added, “This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened.”

Al-Jazeera, like Fox News, bills itself as a straight-news outlet, but others, including the Bush administration, accuse it of an anti-American bias; it also seems to have first dibs on all of Osama bin Laden’s videotapes when al-Qaeda chooses to release them.

City Manager Mike Bestor, before he rescinded his barbecue offer, called the al-Jazeera visit a way to “show Arab viewers what Americans are like.” For better or worse, Golden seems to be doing just that.

Townsfolk raised such objections at last week’s city council meeting that the city manager rescinded the barbecue offer, but others rushed to the network’s defense, including Steve Stevens, who wrote to a local e-mail list offering to host the al-Jazeera barbecue: “My home is (1) a zero carbon home; (2) a Museum of Net Zero Carbon Transportation; (3) a Victorian Bicycle Museum . . . I will cook the Bar-B-Que in the 2 Solar Ovens.”

“I’m welcoming to any international visitors coming to visit us in peace,” explained Stevens, wearing Uncle Sam attire and riding one of his Victorian bicycles outside of Buffalo Rose.

But that wasn’t the majority view Wednesday night in downtown Golden.

Inside the Buffalo Rose, the Al-Jazeera crew was filming the locals watching Bill Clinton’s convention speech. Outside, Woodworth, the Navy veteran, circled the block in a pickup truck, honking the horn and trailing an American flag.

A man with dark skin drove by and looked curiously at the fracas. “Go back to your own country,” a biker shouted at him.

Buffalo Rose owner Martinez, who said he received death threats for hosting Al-Jazeera, responded by tacking the First Amendment to a pillar outside the bar and directing his staff to wear the “Buffalo Rose/Tokyo Rose” T-shirts the protesters made.

“They’re doing it strictly on emotion,” he said as he watched the flag-wavers across the street. “They only support the First Amendment for people who see things their way.” Martinez said something else, but a protester’s air horn drowned out the words.

Disarm: The Lesson of the Georgia Fiasco

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

George Bush, with the clock ticking down the last months of his presidency, nearly started yet another war that might have escalated in the manner of World War I: a diplomatic failure backed by arms that resulted in a superpower clash.

It is a wonder that the world has survived his “war on terror,” which turned out to be a war on American liberty and anyone in the world who got on his nerves. His confrontation with Russia in defense of a belligerent little client state of the US could have sealed his fate and ours too.

We need to examine Bush’s actions and see how the US nearly stumbled into a calamity. For in the last weeks, we have gained a picture of the future with this continued push for a secure American world empire with its endless webs of payments, relationships, jockeying for power and treasure, and a diplomatic corps honeycombed with belligerents and lobbyists for foreign governments. The peace, such as it is, can be shattered through small screwups that will end in massive death.

Make no mistake about it: the flare-up was caused entirely by US diplomatic failures. You wouldn’t know this, however, if all you did was watch television news. Fox and CNN have portrayed Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili as a benevolent leader of a “young democracy” struggling in the shadow of the mighty bear Russia.

In fact, Saakashvili was elected on a “National Movement” ticket with a centralizing, revanchist platform of retaking the autonomous provinces in the Caucasus, and he has ruled this country the size of South Carolina with an iron fist under a state of emergency for years. He had every intention of ruling these non-Georgian peoples who do not want to be ruled by him, as even the CIA admits. As for his domestic program, it has consisted mostly of cracking down on tax evasion and beefing up state coffers.

After smashing the province Ajaria in 2004 following his rigged election, and then crushing Kodori Gorge in Abhkazia (which even has a separate language) in 2006, he moved on to South Ossetia (which also has its own language) this year, where Ossetians and Russians live and Russian peacekeepers patrol.

A young democracy? Ossetians never voted for Saakashvili. But he insisted on ruling them anyway, moving militarily and bombing the capital in the middle of peace talks on the opening day of the Olympics.

Tin-pot, fascist mini-dictators like this are a dollar a dozen, and such territorial disputes will always be with us. The critical question is: what gave Saakashvili the confidence that he could pull this off? He believed that the United States would back him as a quid pro quo for his having sent troops to Iraq. The US responded to his cooperation in Iraq – sending Georgian citizens to kill and be killed – by sending him military training support and guns and bombs, and wining and dining him in Washington.

In all the confusion of the last days, there is no question, then, that Georgia was the aggressor in South Ossetia. Russia responded within its sphere of influence both against Georgia but mostly against an incredible show of arrogance by the Bush administration. According to the New York Times, which interviewed many officials who refused to be named, the Bush administration began backpedalling very quickly, claiming that they never gave permission to Georgia to crush any separatist movement.

But by that time, the politics began. In a very scary editorial and series of speeches, John McCain all but threatened nuclear war against Russia, failing to mention that his own foreign policy adviser was a paid lobbyist for Georgia. Had McCain had his way, the US very well might have a hot war going on right now on the Russian border, fighting for the privilege of a dictator to crush the rights of South Ossetians to their own self-determination.

No doubt that had the conflict continued – and it still might – we would have been told that we were fighting for the rights of the poor Georgian people against Russian imperialism. The American media, even before looking at the facts, had already decided who wore the halo and who wore the horns in this struggle, giving loving interviews to liars of all stripes, so long as they took the US line.

None of which is to say that Russia wears the halo and Georgia the horns. In war, blood ends up on the hands of everyone involved, and there is no shortage of evidence to prove the case against any and all governments involved.

What we need to fix on here are the first principles. It’s an upside-down world, not all that different from the one that existed at the start of World War One, another conflict which was said to be about fighting against aggression and fighting for democracy and self-determination. As Francis Neilson said in his 1915 classic How Diplomats Make War: “No country thinks of putting these principles into practice, but somehow they seem to be worth fighting for.”

If we are to follow Neilson further, we will see that in his lessons of the start of that war, he takes aim at a central pillar of diplomacy then and now, namely the claim that the proliferation of arms guarantees the peace. He quotes Richard Cobden: “the greatest evil connected with these rival armaments is that they destroy the strongest motives for peace.”

So it has been in these diplomatic games played by our rulers. They believe they are controlling the world, when suddenly they are controlled by events. Then they rope the rest of us into it, following the usual plan of war: forcing the rest of us to adopt the government’s view of who is wearing the halos and horns, regardless of the facts:

During a war it is no easy task to prevent your sympathy clouding your reason. The whole social system seems to be organized against any individual attempt to concentrate the attention dominantly upon the causes of the war. Governments, churches, theatres, the press, and local authorities, direct their efforts, in the main, warwards; the whole thought of society and commerce seems to be occupied with war; and all desire to question the reasons given by statesmen for participating in the war must be suppressed. It has been ruled already by certain ‘leaders of thought’ that it is unwise, unpatriotic, and un-English, to suspect the motives of Governments, or waver for a moment in swearing wholehearted allegiance to the authorities: you must think only of the war. If you dare ask for the truth, you are helping the enemy; if you suggest an early peace, you are hindering the militarists who desire no peace until their enemy is utterly crushed. Insidious, bewildering, and plausible, are the reasons given by statesmen and journalists for inflicting a humiliating defeat; without it, they tell us we must not hope for disarmament. No patriot is supposed to ask if disarmament is at all probable. No one must ask if a single statesman really believes such a blessing will follow if the enemy be annihilated.

Over just a few short days, we saw this whole process beginning to play itself out, in an ominous sign for the future. But it is a future that can change. As Neilson wrote, “Citizens who desire peace can indulge in no greater folly than that which is summed up in the phrase, ‘the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.’ … Governments have made the war; only the peoples can make an unarmed peace.”

‘No, Ted Pike is Not an ADL Agent’

August 27, 2008 — crescentandcross

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been forced to give that answer in the last 2 days I could no doubt buy something REALLY nice for my wife’s upcoming birthday. This–meaning ‘No, relax, Rev. Pike is not working for the ADL’ has been the stock answer I’ve been forced to give to the deluge of bewildered (and sometimes outraged) queries I’ve received in the last few days concerning the piece he wrote recently dealing with the conference in Baltimore attended by me, Hesham Tillawi and Chuck Carleson a week or so ago in which he asserts that the three of us (but more importantly, Chuck Carleson and I, being Christians) have given the Jewish spy agency ADL ‘all the ammo they need’ to destroy our movement.

When my spiritual blood-brother Hesham Tillawi called me to talk about the article I could hear the blood in his temple veins pounding like war drums. I can’t say I blame him. As a Muslim who has never harmed a hair on a Christian head and who has personally seen friends and family members in Palestine killed before his eyes (including a 14-year old kid who took a bullet in the face at point blank range) hearing one of the more ‘enlightened’ experts within our movement spouting such nonsense about Islam is maddening.

I was not particularly surprised to hear the news of the article. I spoke with Ted this past weekend and (as usual) had an extended and for-the-most-part friendly discussion on this topic where he made his feelings known to me. Sad to say that no matter what reasonable arguments I used in countering the irrational opinions he held about Muslims, no matter how many times I quoted sections of the Koran and clarified those portions deliberately misquoted and misrepresented by the Jewish media he had used in forming his opinion it wound up being a wasted effort on my part.

The real reason I was not surprised however is because it’s something I’ve dealt with now for many years, meaning well-intentioned but at the same time poorly-informed Christians going off half-cocked over my willingness to rub elbows with ‘the Mohammedans’, as they often put it. Since I began writing on this issue of the war in the Middle East, as well as the three components to it–meaning Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I have lost most (if not ALL) of my former ‘Christian’ friends, to say nothing of the extended lecturing I‘ve received from family members. ‘Don’t you know what it says in the Koran??? My God, what are you thinking????’

Good God, how many times have I heard that from friends and relatives who repeat what they heard from Jewish groups that lie as a matter of principle, as well as all their Gentile lackeys such as Hanity, Limbaugh, Glen Beck, et al? It is an incalculable number, to be sure. Talk about feeling like Will Smith’s character in the movie I am Legend where he is the only sane person in a city full of zombies completely unaffected by reason. Hearing contradictions to positions they have held their entire lives, namely that Christianity and Judaism where not affectionate siblings within the same family but rather were antithetical to each other, as well as that other ‘biggie’–that Islam is not about ‘jihad, 72 virgins and conversion by the sword’ has been like telling the average person steeped in the superstition of the Dark Ages that the world was not flat and that leeches do not cure disease.

I have come to the conclusion that this–the unwillingness to consider the possibility they are misguided–Is as much an ‘American’ thing as it is a ‘Christian’ thing. Westerners in general and Americans in particular, much due to the fact that they have been the dominant culture in terms of economic and military power the last 4 centuries have developed an organic sense of their invincibility and infallibility and refuse to consider the possibility that maybe they get it wrong from time to time.

And unfortunately, as brilliant and as brave as Ted Pike is he is no exception, something I learned recently in conversations we had about various issues concerning the Middle East. While he may be an expert on Judaism, he certainly is not when it comes to understanding Islam. Based upon things he has said to me in the past year it was obvious to me that he has not done any substantive study of what Islam teaches and our conversation this past weekend was no exception, where his slightly-accusatory questions were surprising and yet not surprising at all–‘Slay the unbelievers were you find them‘–straight out of the Zionist script in demonizing Islam with no mention of the fact that this particular passage in the Koran deal specifically with Muslims utilizing their right to self-defense when THEIR homes, churches and communities were being assaulted, as is occurring today. ‘Look at the war between the Shias and Sunnis in Iraq’ as if it were all a product of the inherent, organic violent nature of Islam and not related to the fact that it is a civil war deliberately started by Israel and the US. ‘Look at the way they treat their women’ as if we in the west had any business lecturing ANYONE around the world on things such women’s issues when we raise gems like Madonna and Britney Spears as role models for young girls. The fact that there are millions of Christians in the Middle East, as well as churches standing that have been there for 20 centuries–IN THE MIDST OF A SEA OF MUSLIMS–and that these populations and structures have not been destroyed was not evidence enough that there is nothing anti-Christian about Islam. IF there is anything anti-Christian these days about Muslims‘ attitudes towards Christians, could it possibly have something to do with the fact that the Christians working in the interests of Zionist Jews have invaded the Middle East, murdered millions of innocent people and subjected tens of millions to a lifetime of mental and physical suffering?

And yet, what is the position we are supposed to adopt? No, this has NOTHING to do with it, it is all because the ‘Moozlims’ hate everyone and want to convert them to their way of thinking.

Of course, the truly maddening thing of it all is that the entire problem dealing with the misconceptions of Islam could be cleared up literally in about 10 minutes. 10 MINUTES. That’s all it would take, for someone with 3 functioning brain cells to sit down with a copy of the Koran (as I did) and read the sections constantly quoted by the Jewish media to see that they are all lies and misrepresentations. 10 minutes could have saved the 4,000 American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the millions of innocent persons between those two countries who have been murdered.

I suppose I should be more disappointed than I am, but the fact is that when it happens enough times you start to develop a thick skin. The fact that Rev. Pike’s piece was picked up by a few of the bigger websites within the alternative media does not surprise me either, as some (and I emphasize SOME) of them have started to swim in the waters of irrelevancy as evidenced by the fact they will post just about ANYTHING, including ‘breaking news stories’ concerning UFO’s, Bigfoot, and in the case of one rather large website, stories that parrot the Jewish line about Islam being violent and backwards. If there was anything that harms the credibility of our movement, it is these folks. Barring some radical shift (where they ditch the foolishness and disinformation they are using as filler for their sites) they are destined to become the step children of Art Bell and his ilk and then before long there will be no substantive resistance to the madness of the Zionist agenda.

Generally I do not get into public squabbles with fellow soldiers on the field. There is enough ordnance being lobbed at us from our enemy and, as much as a no-brainer as it may be, the fact is I don’t think it is a good battlefield tactic to shoot one of my own guys. However, as soon as someone within my platoon becomes a liability rather than an asset and starts shooting at me, then I have to take steps to protect myself, and this is one of those times.

That having been said, I will say this–the position taken by Ted Pike and others in refusing to share a foxhole with someone else based upon the fact they are not ‘Christian’ is suicidal. We in the formerly Christian West fighting the beast are a mere handful up against all the powers of hell and are few in number the fact is this–WE NEED THEM, meaning the Muslims, and as far as I am concerned as long as they are shooting at the same enemy I am and not at me than I am all too happy to march alongside them and call them fellow soldiers, which includes clapping them on the back when they put themselves in harm’s way in order to fight the good fight.

On the other hand, writing pieces such as he did this past weekend, where he is basically siding with the ADL and other Jewish groups that hate us for our freedoms, want to see our freedom-loving, freedom-minded civilization become a mirror image of the totalitarianism they have setup everywhere they have gone does our effort NO help. As much as Rev Pike imagines the ADL rubbing its hands with glee over the fact that a few Christians spoke at a for-the-most part Islamic conference, the truth is they are more pleased with the fact that someone from within the ‘truth movement’ is spouting the same lie-based Islamo-phobia that has become the most important sparkplug in the engine of the New World Order.

The fact is, I had a fabulous time last weekend with the ‘Mohammedans’, as some disparagingly refer to them. There were no beheadings, no suicide bombers, no one put a sword to my throat and threatened to kill me if I did not turn to Allah and I did not see any women being beaten. No foul language, no ‘Jesus F******Christ’ that I would have heard at a gathering of typical Christians in America. Not only did I have a great time, I would bring my wife and kids at any such similar gathering any day of the week. So much for the conventional wisdom that depicts Muslims as terrorists and jihadists.

Therefore, what I will tell those deluging me with emails and calls wondering if indeed Ted Pike is ‘one of them’, my answer is, only if you consider ‘them’ to be those well-intentioned but poorly informed activists who go off half-cocked and by virtue of this action allow themselves to (unwittingly) be used in the service of our enemy. He is otherwise a brilliant man, but it appears that in this case he is allowing his tunnel-vision sense of religion to get in the way of him doing the right thing and to see the bigger picture which includes a reconsideration of the propaganda that the Jewish media is feeding the West concerning Islam and all for the purpose of robbing us of our senses and our ability to think rationally and in our best interests.

Otherwise, as far as the rest of the dishes on his information buffet table dealing with Zionism, Judaism and the Talmud, I would say ‘eat to your heart’s content’, but avoid anything he offers dealing with Islam, as it is no doubt likely to give you a certain amount of intellectual indigestion.

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Russia: NATO interference means war

Russia: NATO interference means war
Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:09:45 GMT

Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin

Russia’s ambassador to NATO has warned that any military interference in the Caucasus conflict will be considered as declaration of war.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper Vremya Novostei, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that any NATO attack on the Moscow-backed regions would “mean a declaration of war on Russia.”

This is while the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held talks with the Chinese President Hu Jintao in Tajikistan ahead of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which is taking place on Thursday.

Medvedev, “informed his Chinese colleague about the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” AFP reported. The two men also discussed regional and international issues.

Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev (L) China’s Hu Jintao (R)

The SCO is an intergovernmental organization which was founded in 2001 by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran holds an observer status in the SCO. This year’s summit will also be attended by the presidents of the above mentioned nations on August 28.

The Neocons Versus Russia

August 16, 2008

The Russian invasion of Georgia following Georgia’s attempt to reestablish its dominance over its secessionist province of South Ossetia has certainly infuriated the neocons. Max Boot and Charles Krauthammer have called for various moves to isolate Russia from the West and from the international economic community. The Weekly Standard has an article by Stuart Koehl urging Georgians to fight on with US aid, and an article by Charlie Szrom of the American Enterprise Institute (aka neocon central) advocating massive US aid and alliances among Eastern European countries.

We know that neoconservatism is a Jewish movement — the news having finally reached the mainstream media with books like Jacob Heilbrunn’s They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. Now imagine for a moment that you are a typical Jewish neocon — that is, someone who sees the world fundamentally through Zionist lenses and, for starters, cannot fathom any difference between the interests of the United States and Israel. Or, what amounts to the same thing, imagine that you are an Israeli geopolitical strategizer. How would such a person think of the situation?

Quite clearly, you would be very unhappy that Russia has managed to crush the Georgian military and threaten regime change in Georgia. Israel has strong connections to Georgia. It has provided weapons and training to the Georgian military (although it recently stopped providing weapons after Russian complaints). Israel also has over $1.5 billion invested in Georgia, and Israel is proposing that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline be extended to the Israeli port of Ashkelon for transshipment to south and east Asia. Two top ministers of the Georgian government are Jews with strong ties to Israel, including Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili who is a former Israeli fluent in Hebrew.

The other side of the equation is that neocons have been hostile toward Russia. They supported the war that resulted in independence of Kosovo from Serbia, an ally of Russia. They also support Chechnyan independence from Russia, NATO membership for Eastern European countries formerly dominated by the USSR, and the aggressive US policy of providing missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic.

Why the neocon hostility toward Russia? We could certainly imagine that if Russia was controlled by the Israel Lobby and Jewish interests in the same way that the United States is, this would not be happening. Indeed, a major neocon complaint is that Russia delayed sanctions against Israel’s arch-enemy Iran and has supplied Iran with nuclear material as well as weaponry designed to protect its nuclear installations.

Quite simply, we think that neocon hostility stems from the fact that Russia under Vladimir Putin proved to be far more nationalistic than is good for the Jews or for Israel. A landmark event was Putin’s crackdown on the oligarchs — that small, overwhelmingly Jewish group of tycoons that came to control the industrial base of the USSR during the shift to capitalism. The oligarchs pumped huge amounts of money into the campaign to keep Boris Yeltsin in office and enrich themselves. They also supported Putin at first, but Putin gradually cut into the dominance of the oligarchs.

When in 1996 it appeared that Yeltsin might lose his reelection to the Communists, the oligarchs poured millions into Yeltsin’s campaign and began flooding the television airwaves (which they owned) with pro-Yeltsin “news” items while conspicuously failing to give any airtime to the opposition. With Yeltsin’s victory, the loans-for-shares deal was finalized, catapulting the oligarchs from a small group of millionaires to a small group of billionaires. A few years later the oligarchs “guaranteed” (to use Berezovsky’s term) that Vladimir Putin, like Yeltsin before him, would get elected in Russia’s 2000 Presidential elections.

A turning point was the arrest and imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos, the oil giant. Arch-neocon Richard Perle led the charge against Putin, calling for the ouster of Russia from the G-8 — the same sort of policy the neocons are proposing in the wake of the invasion of Georgia. Khodorkosky was viewed as without any feeling for Russian nationalism and far too friendly with the United States:

Khodorkovsky has spent years pursuing what is essentially a personal, pro-American foreign policy, cultivating contacts with the most influential politicians, diplomats, bankers and public relations specialists in Washington — actions the siloviki, a group of hawks in the Kremlin made up of former KGB men, consider reprehensible….

Compounding this perceived threat are Khodorkovsky’s efforts to endear himself to the White House. One only need look at the people who have rallied to Khodorkovsky’s defense [the article mentions Stuart Eizenstat, Richard Perle, George Soros, and John McCain (!)] to see how the siloviki could make a convincing case to cut Khodorkovsky down to size.

The crackdown against the oligarchs resulted in agonized complaints about the demise of democracy in Russia, and we are sure to see more such complaints in the wake of the invasion of Georgia. The neocons much preferred a democracy in which the Jewish oligarchs completely controlled the media and could buy large blocs of the Duma — in other words, a democracy that much more resembles our own.

The fact that Soros and Eizenstat — both associated with the left — also condemned Khodorkovsky’s arrest suggests a Jewish consensus on this issue. Soros was also deeply involved in the so-called Rose Revolution that vaulted Mikheil Saakashvili into the presidency of Georgia.

Moreover, the most recent ADL document on anti-Semitism in Russia notes that despite better relations between the Russian government and Jews within Russia, there have been no changes in Russia’s foreign policy toward Iran or its policy of engagement with the Palestinian group Hamas. This contrasts with the ADL’s stance early in Vladimir Putin’s presidency when the ADL complained that the Russian leadership did not immediately condemn what the ADL terms “Governor [of Kursk Alexander] Mikhailov’s blatantly anti-Semitic statement.” Mikhailov had expressed his gratitude for the support Putin had given him in his struggle against “filth” — a reference to the previous governor of Kursk, Alexander Rutskoy, Boris Berezovsky, and the All-Russian Jewish Congress. Berezovsky is a former Russian-Jewish media tycoon who used his control of the main television channel to promote Boris Yeltsin for president in 1996 but fled Russia after the ascent of Putin after being charged with fraud. Rutskoy, who is Jewish, was seen as allied with Berezovsky. The ADL complained that the Russian leadership chastised Mikhailov only after a “storm of protest that Mikhailov’s conduct generated among Jews and the mainstream media in Russia and abroad.”

No wonder Pat Buchanan recently termed democracy a “flickering star” because democratic governments are so often out of touch with the people they rule, whereas governments like China and Russia enjoy overwhelming popular support. This is so on a wide range of issues in the US — immigration policy being the most egregious example. In the area of foreign policy we have seen that a small cabal of neocons could successfully promote US involvement in a costly and disastrous war in Iraq — a war on behalf of Israel and certainly not in the interests of the United States.

And speaking of democracy, the fact that John McCain came to the defense of Khodorkovsky is yet another indication that he is completely tied into the neocon foreign policy establishment. Just recently it became known that Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy adviser, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of Georgia. Scheunemann was also President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, sponsored by Bill Kristols’ Project for a New American Century. Kristol, like the other neocons, is eager for the US to stand up to Russia over Georgia: “Is it not true today, as it was in the 1920s and ’30s, that delay and irresolution on the part of the democracies simply invite future threats and graver dangers?” Ah, the old argumentum ad Hitlerum.

There can be no greater condemnation of American democracy than that John McCain will be the candidate of one of the major parties, while the other party will nominate Barack Obama.

Finally, we should remember that from 1881 until the fall of the Czar, in addition to dominating the revolutionary movement in Russia, there was a Jewish consensus to use their influence in Europe and America to oppose Russia. This had an effect on a wide range of issues, including the financing of Japan in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, the abrogation of the American-Russian trade agreement in 1908, and the financing of revolutionaries within Russia by wealthy Jews such as Jacob Schiff.

The triumph of Bolshevism resulted in a period of Jewish dominance in the Soviet Union and unimaginable horrors for the Russian people. This period of Jewish dominance and its disastrous effects on the Russian people are doubtless not far from the minds of Russia’s current leaders.

We can expect a similarly long and persistent Jewish campaign against Russia, waged with all the intensity of the 1881–1917 campaign. In an age of nuclear weapons the stakes are very high for the entire planet.