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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Putin</title>
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		<title>Obama Administration Trusts Russia on Iran</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-administration-trusts-russia-on-iran</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Nov 2014 05:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bomb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244609</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Another catastrophe in an administration's catastrophic foreign policy. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/po.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244613" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/po-450x253.jpg" alt="po" width="343" height="193" /></a>The Obama administration is so desperate to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by the current deadline of November 24<sup>th</sup> if at all possible that it is willing to trust Russia to play a key implementation role. In the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s duplicity with regard to Ukraine and Putin&#8217;s increasingly aggressive stance towards the West that harkens back to the Cold War, the Obama administration is deluding itself into thinking that it can trust Putin to keep his word on ensuring that much of Iran&#8217;s uranium stockpile is converted into a relatively harmless end product.</p>
<p>According to an article on November 4<sup>th</sup> in the <em>New York Times</em>, the Obama administration is encouraged by Iran’s purported willingness to ship much of its huge stockpile of uranium to Russia, which would convert it to fuel rods. The idea is that fuel rods are much more difficult to use in making nuclear bombs. Iran&#8217;s current stockpile of uranium is estimated to be in the range of 28,000 pounds, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.</p>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> article quoted an unnamed American it claims to be deeply involved in the negotiations as saying that &#8220;if the Iran-Russia deal works, it could be the cornerstone of something much larger.&#8221;</p>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> also quoted from a recent speech delivered by Wendy R. Sherman, the chief American negotiator with Iran, in which she presumably alluded indirectly to the proposed Russian involvement in uranium conversion, stating that &#8220;we have made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable.&#8221;</p>
<p>A senior National Security Council official praised Russia&#8217;s role in the negotiations with Iran. The official, quoted by the <em>New York Times</em>, said that &#8220;it is accurate to say that the Russians have played a very helpful role during these negotiations.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mind you, this is the same Russia whose president lied outright about the presence of Russian military forces in Crimea and has recently added to his barrage of insults against the United States by accusing the U.S. of supporting &#8220;neo-fascists&#8221; and &#8220;Islamic radicals.” Putin has cultivated alliances with both the Iranian and Syrian regimes in order to enhance Russia’s own influence in the Middle East.</p>
<p>This past September, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced a series of bilateral projects agreed to between Iran and Russia, worth seventy billion euros. In clear defiance of the U.S.-led international economic sanctions against Iran, Russia’s closer ties with Iran will include cooperation in the energy sector, which Novak described as “mutually beneficial” to the two countries. Areas of cooperation include power, oil and gas and what Novak described, in a meeting with his Iranian energy counterpart, as “the peaceful use of nuclear energy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even if Putin were somehow miraculously sincere in his intentions this time, which is virtually impossible for the Russian leader who is trying to re-create the Russian empire, he cannot control what Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran&#8217;s supreme leader and ultimate decision-maker, will actually do. Khamenei torpedoed a similar deal worked out between the Obama administration and Iran in 2009 that would have involved the shipment of some of Iran&#8217;s nuclear fuel out of Iran. Moreover, Iran has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency unfettered access to conduct inspections anywhere in the country, meaning that Iran would be free to hide some uranium and assets used to produce weapons grade enriched uranium in undisclosed covert locations. Its centrifuges would keep spinning. And Iran&#8217;s alternative route to a nuclear arms capability &#8211; its heavy water plutonium reactor &#8211; would not be affected by a uranium conversion deal with Russia.</p>
<p>Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei, who must sign off on any final deal, said this past May that those Iranians who promote negotiations with the United States are committing “treason.” He also committed his country to jihad against the United States:</p>
<p>“Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.”</p>
<p>President Obama wants a deal at all cost with Iran to tout as his significant foreign policy achievement. The potentially tragic consequences will be the next president’s problem. The Obama administration thinks that it can get away with even a bad deal, because it assumes that the primary opponents of such a deal – Israel and many members of both parties in Congress – are too powerless to stop it. The administration believes that it is too late for Israel to take unilateral military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities and that the U.S. Congress can be end-run.</p>
<p>In his October 28<sup>th</sup> article in <em>The Atlantic</em> entitled “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” Jeffrey Goldberg quoted a senior Obama administration official’s epithet accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of cowardice. The charge derives in part from the Obama administration’s belief that Netanyahu is not willing or able to launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at this time.</p>
<p>“It’s too late for him to do anything,” Goldberg quoted another senior Obama administration official as saying, referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s purported hesitation “to pull the trigger.”</p>
<p>As for the Congress, the Obama administration has sent strong signals that it believes it does not have to seek formal Senate ratification of any agreement the administration reaches with Iran because such an agreement would not constitute a formal treaty. Moreover, the Obama administration believes that the president has the executive power to unilaterally suspend most sanctions against Iran.</p>
<p>President Obama has no compunctions about thumbing his nose at Congress and countenancing vile insults hurled by his senior lackeys against Israel’s prime minister. But he appears willing to trust one proven liar and aggressor, Putin, to help implement a key part of an agreement with a regime whose supreme leader, a fanatic theocrat, has vowed jihad to destroy the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>A Disturbing Defense of Putin&#8217;s &#8220;Realism&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/william-r-hawkins/a-disturbing-defense-of-putins-realism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-disturbing-defense-of-putins-realism</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2014 04:43:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William R. Hawkins]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[foreign affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John J. Mearsheimer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241576</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[John J. Mearsheimer blames the Ukraine crisis on the West.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Mearsheimer.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241584" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Mearsheimer-280x350.jpg" alt="Mearsheimer" width="234" height="293" /></a>It is tempting to dismiss the <a href="http://stopwar.org.uk/videos/no-to-nato-no-new-wars-demonstration-against-2014-nato-summit#.VAn-IWP0e3N">protests</a> that took place at the NATO summit in Wales as the inconsequential braying of leftists who welcome a new Cold War as an opportunity to renew their vows with Moscow. However, even <a href="http://stopwar.org.uk/news/nato-is-by-far-the-biggest-danger-to-world-peace-it-should-be-dissolved-immediately">fringe ideas</a> can migrate into mainstream discourse. Case in point, John J. Mearsheimer&#8217;s <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault">article</a> in the current (Sept.-Oct.) issue of <em>Foreign Affairs</em>, the flagship journal of the very establishmentarian Council on Foreign Relations. The author is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago with a long list of scholarly work. But, like the &#8220;No to NATO&#8221; demonstrators, Mearsheimer argues that the Ukraine crisis is the fault of the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin was &#8220;provoked&#8221; into resorting to force to &#8220;take Crimea&#8221; and &#8220;working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.&#8221; He argues that Putin is &#8220;motivated by legitimate security concerns&#8221; which justify his actions.</p>
<p>Mearsheimer&#8217;s tone is not the crude revolutionary rant of the Wales rabble. Indeed, he pretends to criticize NATO from the right by attacking &#8220;liberals&#8221; from what he calls the &#8220;realist&#8221; perspective. He alleges that the West committed two sins. First, its aim was &#8220;to make the entire continent look like Western Europe,&#8221;</p>
<blockquote><p>The United States and its allies sought to promote democracy in the countries of Eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence among them, and embedded them in international institutions.</p></blockquote>
<p>What a nefarious scheme! Imagine wanting to bring Eastern Europe up to the living standards of the most advanced societies on the planet! The Russians opposed this effort because they do not want stronger nations on their borders. The Kremlin particularly opposed Western support for democracy in Ukraine, starting with the Orange Revolution. Mearsheimer doesn&#8217;t mention that the spark for the Orange movement was the attempt to steal the 2004 election for the pro-Moscow candidate Viktor Yanukovich. The Ukrainian Supreme Court overturned that fraud. He was elected in 2010, but was overthrown in 2014 Because of well-grounded fears that he was dragging the country back under the Russian yoke. He did not just reject a pending trade agreement with the European Union. Earlier he had extended the lease on Russia&#8217;s naval base in Crimea, which was due to expire in 2017, until 2042. After the coup, Yanukovych fled to Russia. It should also be mentioned that Yanukovych had served as governor of Donetsk Oblast, now the center of the Russian-backed separatist insurgency.</p>
<p>Mearsheimer claims that Russia did not seize Crimea until after the coup posed a threat to its security. But Moscow had been working hard to control all of Ukraine through a puppet government in Kiev; one that had welcomed a Russian military presence in the country. When that effort finally failed in the face of an aroused Ukrainian populace, it has resorted to force to grab what it can.</p>
<p>Like those on the Left, Mearsheimer spends most of his article attributing Ukrainian fears of Russia to Western &#8220;social engineering.&#8221; Yet, anyone familiar with the history of the region knows that Ukrainian nationalism is homegrown, a reaction to a long record of Russian oppression. Has Mearsheimer forgotten the great famine of 1932-1933? This was the result of Joseph Stalin&#8217;s policy of forced collectivization and was meant to crush Ukrainian society. Six to seven million Ukrainians died, something the survivors and their descendants have not forgotten.</p>
<p>Towards the end of his piece, Mearsheimer does finally concede that the Ukrainians desire an alignment with the West. But then argues,</p>
<blockquote><p>This is a dangerous way for the Ukrainians to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great power politics are in play. Abstract rights like self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states.</p></blockquote>
<p>He also thinks it is dangerous for the West to think in such terms, advising that even if the Ukraine wants to join the EU or NATO, &#8220;the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests.&#8221; After all, it would upset the Russians if Ukraine moved west, and Mearsheimer is fully in the Russian camp. He even defends Russia&#8217;s attack on Georgia in 2008. &#8220;Putin sought to keep Georgia weak and divided&#8221; writes Mearsheimer, calling this a &#8220;clear warning&#8221; to NATO.</p>
<p>Mearsheimer claims the second sin of the West was not to understand that &#8220;might makes right&#8221; realism is still alive in Russia. Now that this has been revealed to all, the West should back off and appease the Kremlin. Or more precisely, appease Putin whom Mearsheimer sees as &#8220;a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected.&#8221;</p>
<p>In a key passage, he notes &#8220;When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next.&#8221; But wouldn&#8217;t such regime change be in the interests of the West, and of the Russian people?</p>
<p>Mearsheimer apparently thinks only Russia has the right to act on the tenets of realism and protect its security (and regime) interests. NATO enlargement was not just an exercise in liberalism, it greatly strengthened the alliance and pushed back the Russian &#8220;sphere of influence&#8221; which Mearsheimer thinks is sacred. But why should the West preserve Russian influences that are hostile to its own economic and security interests? When a rival retreats, you advance; that&#8217;s realpolitik. Western values and interests were not in conflict, they were in sync. Today, Putin, looking at a &#8220;war weary&#8221; America and a disarmed Europe, thinks it is the West that is in retreat. So it is time for Russia to advance&#8212; and Putin has intellectuals like Mearsheimer to champion the Kremlin&#8217;s cause.</p>
<p>The problem is not that NATO has done too much, but it has done too little. Ukraine is the great prize &#8220;when great power politics are in play.&#8221; Ukraine has a population and territory on a par with Spain, and larger than Poland. Its vast potential can only be developed if aligned with the West. Putin&#8217;s revanchist dreams of a rebuilt neo-Soviet empire should not be accommodated.</p>
<p>Mearsheimer is correct about one thing. The West has not backed up its strategy with sufficient force. It did not foresee the intensity of Putin&#8217;s ambitions and did not prepare to meet his challenge. Sanctions will not deter him, and NATO has allowed its military forces to so atrophy that even putting together a 4,000-man &#8220;rapid reaction force&#8221; (as proposed in Wales) may prove difficult. The hot topic at the Wales summit was getting the Europeans to pledge to raise defense spending to a paltry 2% of GDP.</p>
<p>Russia is much weaker in population, wealth and technology than NATO; but it has boots on the ground and that will likely prove decisive in eastern Ukraine unless the Western will to mobilize real power revives. Thus, Mearsheimer&#8217;s article can have a positive effect, albeit not the one he wants. It can remind readers that &#8220;realpolitik remains relevant&#8221; and induce American and European leaders to rearm as well as rethink the nature of the 21st century. The practice of realism is not unique to Eastern Europe; it can be seen across the Middle East and Asia as well. The new century is not that different from previous centuries and will require all the traditional tools of statecraft and strategy. Those still loyal to the West should consider Mearsheimer&#8217;s disturbing defense of Putin to be a wake-up call.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>The Global Map, 2017</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/the-global-map-2017/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-global-map-2017</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 04:56:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama's radical transformation hasn't stopped with America. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240660" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/world-on-fire-creative-commons.jpg" alt="world-on-fire-creative-commons" width="314" height="228" /></a>Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn&#8217;t stop at America. President Obama&#8217;s greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map.</p>
<p>Fast forward three years. Here&#8217;s where we stand.</p>
<p>Given Europe&#8217;s failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia&#8217;s borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>But it didn&#8217;t stop there. Russia began squeezing Georgia again, and pro-Russian regimes are consolidating their power in Kazakhstan and Belarus. Belarus asked the Russian government to place 15 warplanes inside the country in 2014; Kazakhstan got into a tiff with Russia over comments Putin made unsubtly suggesting a possible invasion of the country, then complied with Putin&#8217;s demands when the West did nothing.</p>
<p>Thus far, Putin has not invaded any NATO countries. But that could change, given the high Russian population in Latvia and Estonia.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jordan&#8217;s kingdom has fallen, replaced by a radical Islamist regime. That Palestinian Arab regime has attempted to consolidate its power by forming an alliance with Hamas in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In Lebanon, the Iranians and Syrians have effectively annexed southern Lebanon. Israel&#8217;s only quiet border is now its southern border with Egypt.</p>
<p>In Syria, Bashar Assad has retained a measure of power by essentially conceding territory to ISIS in the eastern part of the country; after a halfhearted intervention against ISIS, the international community went quiet as ISIS formed its sought-after caliphate in eastern Syria and northern Iraq.</p>
<p>In response, Iran essentially invaded southern Iraq, and Turkey launched covert action against the Kurds in order to prevent the formation of a broader Kurdistan encompassing parts of Turkish territory.</p>
<p>With the withdrawal of the United States and its allies from Afghanistan, Pakistan has once again made its presence felt. The Taliban have effectively taken control of large swaths of territory, with the help of the Pakistani regime, which has shifted leadership but not position with regard to radical Islam.</p>
<p>In the most stunning international move, China has threatened full-scale annexation of Taiwan, barring access to the South China Sea from Western countries and cutting off Taiwan&#8217;s trade routes. The West has refused to leverage China, fearing financial retaliation. China has made similar moves against the Philippines.</p>
<p>Come 2017, this will be President Obama&#8217;s legacy: a world of redrawn borders, all to the benefit of some of the worst regimes on the planet. When America retreats from the world, its enemies expand.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Foreign Policy of Empty Words</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-foreign-policy-of-empty-words</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2014 04:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[For America's enemies, actions speak louder than rhetoric. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240426" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001-450x337.jpg" alt="1393766471000-AP-Obama-Budget-001" width="316" height="237" /></a></p>
<p><em>“When force threatens, talk is no good.”</em></p>
<p>That line from John Ford’s classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance contains wisdom everyone from peasant to king knew before our modern age and its smug illusions. Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by “forever debating the question and never making any progress” and issuing “empty decrees.” “All words, apart from action,” Demosthenes warned, “seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men.” We’ve had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues.</p>
<p>Just in the last few weeks we have heard a lot of bluster about Islamic State, the rampaging jihadists in northern Iraq who have left in their wake a trail of traditional Muslim mayhem–- sectarian cleansing, forced conversion, slaving, rape, torture, slaughter, and Koran-inspired beheadings, including two American journalists. In response to these decisive deeds, Obama has thundered that he will “degrade and destroy” the “cancer.” In an op-ed co-written with British Prime Minister David Cameron, he has vowed that the allies “will not be cowed by barbaric killers.” His vice president Joe Biden, with his usual trite hyperbole, has threatened, “We will follow them to the gate of hell until they are brought to justice.” And Secretary of State John Kerry, after the beheading of journalist James Foley, has warned, “The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil. ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous, vicious atrocity will be held accountable.” “By whom” is the question the passive voice artfully leaves unanswered.</p>
<p>To paraphrase Demosthenes, the greater this administration’s ready tongue, the greater distrust it inspires in our allies, and the greater boldness it creates in our enemies. Or to put it in my old man’s more earthy terms when I smarted off, “Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash.” Obama has been bouncing foreign policy checks from Ukraine to the South China Sea, and most points in between.</p>
<p>Indeed, the deeds necessary to back these loud boasts have been few. That should not surprise us, since Obama has said and done much to tell the world that we will not act decisively, relying instead on verbal processes and gestures of force like bombing some trucks to create a telegenic illusion of action. He started his presidency with the “apology tour,” on which he called the U.S. “arrogant, dismissive, derisive,” confessed that we are “still working through some of our own darker periods in our history,” proclaimed that we “will be willing to acknowledge past errors where those errors have been made,” confessed that “too often we set [our] principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford” and so “we went off course,” and promised that we “are working to improve our democracy.” How could such a tainted and flawed state have the moral authority to act with the confidence and decisiveness that his recent rhetoric implies?</p>
<p>Likewise his domestic deeds have undercut the capacity to enforce his tough foreign policy words. Because of cuts to the military budget––inspired in part by his desire to reduce the U.S. to merely one unexceptional member of an international coalition that supposedly can maintain global order and create collective security––our military capacity is destined “to be an increasingly hollow force,” as Bret Stephens writes, “with the Army as small as it was in 1940, before conscription; a Navy the size it was in 1917, before our entry into World War I; an Air Force flying the oldest—and smallest—fleet of planes in its history; and a nuclear arsenal no larger than it was during the Truman administration.”</p>
<p>Commensurate with this undercutting of America’s armed forces have been Obama’s empty bluster and careless language, something dangerous coming from the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military power in history. “Leading from behind” in Libya, the vanishing “red line” in Syria, the juvenile scolding of Putin “that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters,” the “no strategy” gaffe about the “jayvee” jihadists of the Islamic State–– all were instantly refuted and discredited by facts on the ground created by hard men of brutal action. Libya is not a democracy, but the jihadist version of Road Warrior. Syria’s Bashar al Assad is winning in Syria by slaughtering close to 200,000 men, women, and children. The Islamic State still controls northern Iraq and Syria, and still sits at the gates of Baghdad. And Putin has snatched Crimea and is closing in on eastern Ukraine. Throw in Obama’s penchant for berating allies like Israel, ignoring the interests of others like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, undercutting vulnerable states like Poland and the Czech Republic, and appeasing genocidal mullahs in Iran, and is it any surprise that his words “inspire greater distrust” in everyone except our enemies?</p>
<p>Of course, Obama’s habit of using words to substitute for politically risky deeds is universal in the West. We just saw a NATO confab in which a lot of big talk for the reporters end up so much smoke when the details are parsed. NATO leaders have agreed “to establish a so-called spearhead force of several thousand troops designed to move into trouble spots at short notice,” as The Wall Street Journal reported. Talk about closing the barn door after the Russian bear has got loose. I’m sure Putin is trembling over the thought of “several thousand” NATO troops that someday might materialize to stop his adventurism. If NATO isn’t acting now, what makes anyone think this special “spearhead force” will act in the future, even if NATO members do create it? As Charles Krauthammer writes, the force “is a feeble half-measure. Not only will troops have to be assembled, dispatched, transported and armed as the fire bell is ringing, but the very sending will require some affirmative and immediate decision by NATO. Try getting that done. The alliance is famous for its reluctant, slow and fractured decision-making.”</p>
<p>And haven’t we heard this sort of braggadocio before from Europe? Remember the 60,000-man “rapid reaction force” the EU was going to create so that they could avoid any further embarrassment of having “cowboy” Americans pull their foreign policy irons out of the fire, as happened in Bosnia and Kosovo? Given that only three European NATO members honor the 2% of GDP minimum for military spending, it’s unlikely that the money for creating this alleged “deterrent” will ever be budgeted, not with EU economies in the doldrums, and widespread grumbling over “austerity” budgets. No wonder that, as the Journal reports, “most details of the force . . . remained to be settled.” But don’t worry, NATO leaders have “committed” to spending the 2% on defense they “committed” to in 2002 and subsequently ignored. Better read the fine print: the commitment is non-binding and will be implemented over a 10-year period. Who knows how much more of the old Soviet Empire Vladimir will have taken back by then.</p>
<p>“Word, words, words,” as Hamlet says. But words useful for politicians who want to avoid the risk and uncertainty of action, and don’t want to face disgruntled voters at the polls. And when this perennial calculus is joined to the progressive belief that an exploitative, racist, neo-imperialist America is disqualified by its sins from being the guarantor of global order and stability, you get the world we are rapidly becoming––a Darwinian jungle of feral violence, illiberal hegemons, thug-nations, and nuclear-armed terrorist states.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Miserable Failure</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-miserable-failure/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-miserable-failure</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-miserable-failure/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:14:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Isolated, angry and in denial.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/o31.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239951" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/o31-333x350.jpg" alt="President Obama Makes Statement On The Sequestration" width="248" height="261" /></a>It was always obvious what Obama’s supporters wanted. They weren’t willing to settle for a Hillary, just another politician who would punch the clock, deliver tepid speeches and push their leftist agenda.</p>
<p>They wanted someone larger than life. A head made for Mount Rushmore and a body that would be cast in statues across the country. Speeches meant to be studied in classrooms for the next hundred years.</p>
<p>They compared him to JFK and Reagan. He was treated as the icon that his backers wanted him to be. His election was supposed to be a watershed moment in American history.</p>
<p>Instead it ends in miserable failure.</p>
<p>At home, Obama is caught in a desperate tug of war with Republicans. He won the budget battle by sending park rangers to shut down national monuments. His last ditch gamble for holding on to the Senate is using racial tensions in Ferguson to promote black voter turnout.</p>
<p>And if he wins, all he’ll have is what he has now.</p>
<p>This is how shoddy and tawdry the reality of Hope and Change has become. Trapped in a corner, Obama is dragging out the dirtiest Chicago politics. He’s trying to hold off the inevitable by using the same types of tactics that the crooked mayor of his hometown would.</p>
<p>There’s no inspiration here. No words that will resound across time. Just dirty rats on a sinking ship.</p>
<p>Blame Congress has become the new Blame Bush. ObamaCare is a slow motion disaster that requires constant course corrections to keep it from coming apart. It’s not the new Social Security or Medicare. It’s the new HMO; a clumsy construction that most Americans are unhappy with.</p>
<p>Obama’s only power comes from his abuse of his authority, but what one man does, another man can undo. Instead of creating a lasting legislative legacy, Obama’s executive orders and legislation by administration are a house of cards that his successor can topple with the same pen and phone.</p>
<p>They seem intimidating in the way that the actions of tyrants are, but tyranny can be undone with tyranny. What Obama failed to do was build a consensus. He didn’t change the course of American history. He didn’t win the hearts and minds of Americans. Now he’s reduced to vandalizing America.</p>
<p>Obama said that Putin’s actions in Ukraine weren’t a sign of strength, but a sign of weakness. There is some truth to that. Putin’s economic policies have failed and he was unpopular at home. But the Obama tyrannical reign of phone and pen also isn’t a sign of strength. It’s a sign of weakness.</p>
<p>Like Putin, Obama has run out of options.</p>
<p>Unpopular with voters, shunned by his own party in battleground states, he rules by executive order and parties with influential executives while ignoring his responsibilities.</p>
<p>That’s not Reagan. It’s not JFK. It’s not even LBJ.</p>
<p>Stumbling to the microphone in a tan suit, he admits that he has no strategy for ISIS. Why should he? A few months ago he was calling a force that controls much of Iraq and Syria a junior varsity team while claiming credit for defeating Al Qaeda. Now his spokesman insists that the US is not at war with ISIS.</p>
<p>What Obama says has no relationship to reality. It’s always been that way. It’s only becoming obvious to those talking heads inside his media bubble now.</p>
<p>Obama’s foreign policy consisted of a flowchart of how things were supposed to work. There was an arrow from “Outreach” to “Reconciliation” to “New Middle East”. Instead Iraq is on fire. Libya is on fire. Syria is on fire. Everyone else is either mocking him or begging for his help without seriously expecting him to do anything useful.</p>
<p>And the flowchart doesn’t mention any of it.</p>
<p>ISIS was supposed to be a JV team. Iraqis are supposed to reconcile. ISIS isn’t supposed to be at war with the United States. Like most ideologues, Obama confuses what his reading of the inevitable forces of history says should happen with what is actually happening. Political Islam was supposed to stabilize the Middle East. Instead the future will be defined by a clash between national armies and Islamist militias.</p>
<p>Removing US troops from Iraq was supposed to fix the problem. The best anti-colonialist scholarship said it would. Instead combined with the Arab Spring, it let Al Qaeda take over much of the country.</p>
<p>But what else was an ideological fanatic big on theory and short on life experience going to do?</p>
<p>Obama is Fareed Zakaria. He’s Thomas Friedman. He’s Paul Krugman. He read all the books and he talks a good game so that it’s easy to miss the fact that his ideas don’t have much to do with real life.</p>
<p>Friedman babbling about the flattening world, Krugman pretending that money is infinite and Zakaria jumping from one ridiculous globalist idea to another sound good in a lecture hall or a column.</p>
<p>But only an idiot would actually listen to them.</p>
<p>Obama’s speeches sounded good, but only idiots would elect a man with no life experience, no executive experience and no meaningful experience of any kind for speaking well, instead of doing well.</p>
<p>Of course Obama doesn’t have a strategy for ISIS. Why would he?</p>
<p>ISIS wasn’t supposed to happen. His schedule, in between golfing and fundraising, had amnesty and Global Warming unilateral orders penciled in. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also wasn’t on the schedule. Killing missile defense and being incredibly flexible were supposed to fix that.</p>
<p>As a last resort, sanctions, the universal failure of global diplomacy, were supposed to keep this from happening. But like everything else that Obama tried, they didn’t work.</p>
<p>Obama doesn’t live in the world of “What is” but the world of “What should be”. Inspiration does come from the world of “What should be”, but when it isn’t grounded in the world of “What is” then it manifests as insanity or leads to miserable failures.</p>
<p>The difference between the brilliant architect and the lunatic on the street corner is that while both of them know “What should be”, only one of them knows “What is”.</p>
<p>Obama’s inspiration came from “What should be”. He never did understand “What is”. His followers thought and think that “What is” can be waved away, ignored or beaten down as a last resort. That is what he is doing now with his executive orders and his unilateral rule. He is trying to salvage his miserable failure as a leader by forcing his way on the whole country.</p>
<p>It hasn’t made him popular. It hasn’t made his way into the American Way. It has isolated him. The American people have rejected him in poll after poll. Now the media is slowly accepting their verdict.</p>
<p>And no, he doesn’t have a strategy for that.</p>
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		<title>Putin’s Unchecked Aggression</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/putins-unchecked-aggression/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putins-unchecked-aggression</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:12:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[How to avoid Russia's checkmate. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1392924232400.cached.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239961" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/1392924232400.cached-400x350.jpg" alt="1392924232400.cached" width="307" height="269" /></a>Russia has expanded the scope of its military intervention in Ukraine. Following on the heels of its illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea and arming of the separatists fighting the Ukrainian government in eastern Ukraine, Russian regular troops have now joined the separatists’ fight. They are equipped with heavy weaponry, including armored personnel carriers. And a new southeastern front has been opened by the Russian-backed separatists which would enable Russia to gain effective control over a vital land link between Russia and Crimea.</p>
<p>Determined not to allow Ukrainian forces to quell the separatist rebellion, which they were well on their way to doing, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to use more Russian military might to tip the scales in the separatists’ favor.</p>
<p>On August 26<sup>th</sup> – the same day that Putin was meeting with Ukrainian President Poroshenko in Minsk, Belarus to talk about peace &#8211; satellite imagery showed Russian combat units southeast of Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.  Ukraine also detained regular Russian Army personnel from the 9th brigade, whom Russia claimed had mistakenly wandered into Ukraine.</p>
<p>A separatist leader boasted that three or four thousand Russian soldiers have joined their fight, whom he claimed were using their vacation time to help their comrades. NATO has estimated that at least 1,000 Russian troops were present in Ukraine. Dismissing Russia’s “hollow denials,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on August 29<sup>th</sup> that</p>
<blockquote><p>it is now clear that Russian troops and equipment have illegally crossed the border. This is a blatant violation of Ukraine&#8217;s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It defies all diplomatic efforts for a peaceful solution.</p></blockquote>
<p>United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, in his briefing to an emergency session of the UN Security Council on August 28th, referred to the “deeply alarming reports of Russian military involvement in this new wave of escalation. If confirmed, it would constitute a direct contravention of international law and of the UN Charter.”</p>
<p>Mr. Feltman added that, “as arms and heavy weaponry reportedly continue to flow unabated into Ukraine from Russia,” illegal armed groups operating in the Donetsk region</p>
<blockquote><p>have reportedly intensified their activities over the last two days, spreading violence along Ukraine’s southern coast, in the direction of the key strategic port of Mariupol…The southward spread of fighting, along the border with the Russian Federation and the Sea of Azov, marks a dangerous escalation in the conflict.</p></blockquote>
<p>After Mr. Feltman spoke, each member of the Security Council, as well as the Ukrainian UN representative, chimed in with their remarks. Lithuania, which had requested the emergency meeting, went first. Its ambassador accused Russia of committing multiple violations of international law in its “aggression” in Ukraine. She demanded that Russia remove its fighters from Ukraine.</p>
<p>U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power lambasted Russia for ignoring the repeated calls of the Security Council to stop its aggressive actions. “Instead of listening, instead of heeding the demands of the international community and the rules of the international order, at every step, Russia has come before this Council to say everything except the truth,” Ambassador Power said. “It has manipulated. It has obfuscated. It has outright lied.”</p>
<p>Ambassador Power warned that the United States and its partners will work together &#8220;to ratchet up the consequences on Russia.&#8221; France’s UN representative concurred.</p>
<p>British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the Security Council president during August, said: &#8220;Now we see irrefutable evidence of regular Russian forces operating inside Ukraine.&#8221; He reeled off numbers of heavy weaponry in the hands of the separatists, most of which was supplied by Russia, including 100 tanks, 80 armored personnel carriers, 500 anti-tank weapons and more than 100 artillery pieces.</p>
<p>During the Security Council meeting, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin did his best to fend off the condemnations of Russia’s actions coming from other members of the Council and the Ukrainian representative.  Sure, there were Russian “volunteers” present in eastern parts of Ukraine, Ambassador Churkin said. &#8220;No one is hiding that,&#8221; he claimed. But then, in an apparent game of turnabout is fair play, Ambassador Churkin called on the United States to be more forthcoming about what he asserted to be the presence of 1000 Western advisers in Ukraine. He said that he wanted to &#8220;send a message to Washington: Stop interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states.&#8221;</p>
<p>Russia will be sending another “humanitarian” convoy into Ukraine, Ambassador Churkin declared. And he challenged the other members of the Security Council to adopt the text of his proposed press statement calling for an immediate unconditional ceasefire, inclusive dialogue and stepped up humanitarian relief. The Lithuanian ambassador said that her country would need more time to review the text, but it appeared to be deficient in not calling specifically for the separatists to stop impeding the flow of humanitarian aid.</p>
<p>Ambassador Churkin tried to maintain an even demeanor as he delivered the official Russian line in response to the sharply critical speeches that preceded his remarks. His strongest rhetoric was reserved for the Ukrainian government in Kiev, which he accused of engaging in “a war against its own people.” Ambassador Churkin also dismissed the Ukrainian government’s call for a ceasefire and for the separatists to lay down their arms as a sham.</p>
<p>President Putin’s decision to up the ante has reversed the tide of momentum that had been going the Ukrainian government’s way. Now the Ukrainian military forces are on the defensive and at risk of losing control of a wide area of coastal territory. Putin praised the separatists’ resurgence “in intercepting Kiev’s military operation.” He called the separatists the fighters of Novorossiya – meaning the territory Putin likes to refer to as “New Russia,” based on what he claims belongs historically to Russia.</p>
<p>Putin talks out of both sides of his mouth. While single-handedly providing enough weapons and troops to keep the rebellion going against the duly elected government of Ukraine in Kiev, he talks about opening humanitarian corridors and wanting peaceful dialogue. Putin has no interest in peace except on his terms. His goals are to take effective control over as much of the eastern portion of Ukraine as he can, keep the remainder of Ukraine as weak as possible to make it too much of a burden for Western Europe to bail out, and continue to expand the territory of “New Russia.”</p>
<p>“The question is to ensure the rights and interests of the Russian southeast,” Putin said in a nationally televised interview last April after his aggressive occupation of Crimea. He continued:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s New Russia. Kharkiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, Odessa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times, they were transferred in 1920. Why? God knows. Then for various reasons these areas were gone, and the people stayed there. We need to encourage them to find a solution.</p></blockquote>
<p>Expanding the reach of the Russian empire to that of the czarist glory days is Putin’s idea of the right solution. And nobody should even think of taking any military actions against Russia in return. &#8220;It&#8217;s best not to mess with us,&#8221; he warned on Friday. “I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers.&#8221;</p>
<p>To justify his imperialistic ambitions, Putin brazenly invoked Russia’s own suffering at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Referring to Ukrainian current military actions against Ukraine’s southeastern cities, he told students last week that “[I]t reminds me of World War II, when German forces encircled Russian cities like Leningrad and hit residential quarters with heavy artillery.”</p>
<p>Putin’s Nazi reference in his remarks to students is ironic to the say the least, considering that his own Ukraine strategy is an echo of Hitler’s Anschluss. Also, he had no comment on the civilians killed by rockets imported from Russia or the depraved public parading and humiliation of captured Ukrainian soldiers by the separatists in violation of the Geneva Conventions. And Putin has apparently moved beyond the tragedy of the passengers and crew who lost their lives aboard the commercial Malaysian plane shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.</p>
<p>The United Nations Security Council has met 24 times on the subject of Ukraine. It has turned into bad theater. All we hear is the predictable rhetoric from Russia and its critics. Russia’s veto power prevents anything of real substance from being accomplished.</p>
<p>Increasingly severe economic sanctions have been imposed by the United States and its Western European allies against Russian individuals, businesses and the financial and arms industries. However, aside from some tough-sounding rhetoric, European leaders are equivocating on exactly what new stronger economic measures they would be willing to take against Russia and when they would do so, worrying about the impact of such measures on their own economies. President Obama may impose more sanctions on his own if need be, but he would prefer to reach a consensus with Europe on next steps. Either way, as a senior U.S. diplomat told me, sanctions do not appear to be making much of a difference in changing Putin’s calculations.</p>
<p>President Obama has ruled out any direct overt U.S. military confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, which makes sense. But with economic sanctions not fazing Putin and direct military confrontation out of the picture, one U.S. official was quoted by The Telegraph as saying: &#8220;If Putin is immune to economic pain and we are not willing to use military force, then he&#8217;s got us in check mate, doesn&#8217;t he?&#8221;</p>
<p>Putin has us in check mate only if we ignore what Winston Churchill counseled about the Russians in his 1946 “Sinews of Peace” speech. He said that “there is nothing they admire so much as strength.”</p>
<p>What we need to do is to find creative ways to display the kind of strength that will get Putin’s attention and give him pause.</p>
<p>First, we can provide more sophisticated arms and training to Ukraine’s beleaguered military forces together with more sharing of intelligence information. Second, we can utilize covert operations in support of dissidents in Crimea and anti-Russian Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine to create a counter-force that would undercut Putin’s assumption of a low-cost occupation.</p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most important of all, Obama should now deploy the mobile missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, which he had mistakenly decided not to do in his first term as part of his failed attempt to “re-set” relations with Russia in a more positive direction. In fact, Obama should add Hungary and the Baltic states to the list. In other words, do to Putin what he has been most afraid of. Contain him with an encirclement strategy.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees that these measures will work.  But one thing is for sure. If we do nothing but add a few more sanctions, Putin will not stop his aggression with eastern Ukraine.</p>
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		<title>Putin Storms Ukraine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/putin-storms-ukraine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-storms-ukraine</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:51:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[invasion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bad situation turns seriously worse.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-28-at-10.30.26-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239782" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-28-at-10.30.26-PM.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 10.30.26 PM" width="303" height="245" /></a>Yesterday, Ukrainian President Petro O. Poroshenko <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/world/europe/ukraine-conflict.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">declared</span></a> that Russia had invaded his nation. Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian military, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-and-ukraine-troops-battle-in-south-prompting-fears-of-widescale-invasion/2014/08/28/04b614f4-9a6e-40f4-aa21-4f49104cf0e4_story.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">confirmed</span></a> that two armored columns of Russian forces, replete with tanks and armored fighting vehicles, captured the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov near the Russian border. Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat in the face of superior fighting power that included Grad missiles launched from Russian territory. “Our border servicemen and guardsmen retreated as they did not have heavy equipment,” Lysenko said in a statement.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NATO released a <a href="http://usnato.tumblr.com/post/96003086125/new-satellite-imagery-exposes-russian-combat-troops"><span style="color: #1255cc;">series</span></a> of satellite images further confirming that at least 1,000 soldiers and Russian artillery units were operating in Ukraine. Captured in late August, the images show the artillery units moving through the Ukrainian countryside and establishing firing positions near Krasnodon, Ukraine. &#8220;Over the past two weeks we have noted a significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia’s military interference in Ukraine,” said Dutch Brigadier General Nico Tak, director of the Comprehensive Crisis and Operations Management Centre (CCOMC), Allied Command Operations. &#8220;The satellite images released today provide additional evidence that Russian combat soldiers, equipped with sophisticated heavy weaponry, are operating inside Ukraine’s sovereign territory.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Tak further noted the overall scope of the invasion was much wider than the current effort. &#8220;We have also detected large quantities of advanced weapons, including air defense systems, artillery, tanks, and armored personnel carriers being transferred to separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine,” he explained. &#8220;The presence of these weapons along with substantial numbers of Russian combat troops inside Ukraine make the situation increasingly grave.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The motive for doing so was also illuminated. &#8220;Russia is reinforcing and resupplying separatist forces in a blatant attempt to change the momentum of the fighting, which is currently favoring the Ukrainian military,” Tak added. &#8220;Russia’s ultimate aim is to alleviate pressure on separatist fighters in order to prolong this conflict indefinitely, which would result in further tragedy for the people of Eastern Ukraine.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">President Poroshenko cancelled a scheduled trip to Turkey and <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-poroshenko-says-russia-forces-invaded-ukraine-100653464.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">convened</span></a> an emergency meeting of the Ukrainian security and defense council to determine what steps his government would take to address the crisis. &#8220;I made the decision to cancel a working visit to the Republic of Turkey in connection with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Donetsk region, in particular in Amvrosiyivka and Starobesheve, as Russian troops have actually been brought into Ukraine,&#8221; he said in a statement on the presidential website. Poroshenko also requested the meeting of the U.N. Security Council that took place yesterday afternoon.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Lysenko stated that Russian troops began entering Ukraine shortly after midnight, adding that “Russian servicemen” are in control of several other localities around Novoazovsk. There are also reports of a Russian BM-27 Uragan missile system in the area.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The satellite images paint a grim picture. In addition to the strategic setups in and around Krasnodon, the images show a steady buildup of Russian forces on the Russian side of the border near Rostov-on-Don, approximately 31 miles from the Dovzhansky, Ukraine border crossing. Between June and late August, a conglomeration of battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, cargo trucks and tented accommodations were established, with NATO insisting it represents &#8220;one example of the multiple encampments that Russia has positioned near its border with Eastern Ukraine.” Another image shows what appear to be a half dozen Russian 153mm 2S19 self-propelled guns located in Russia near Kuybyshevo, which sits only four miles south of the Ukrainian border, near the village of Chervonyi Zhovten. According to NATO the guns are pointed north, &#8220;directly towards Ukrainian territory.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions 28 miles west of Novoazovsk, around the port city of Mariupol, anticipating that Russian forces will attempt to secure a road link to Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed last March. If successful, Russia and/or the separatists would gain a direct land corridor to the peninsula, as well as control of the entire Sea of Azov, thought to contain extensive gas and mineral deposits. National Guard spokesman Ruslan Muzychuk told the AP in Mariupo that Ukrainian troops currently control the area, even as he too insisted his government had proof the Russians were moving large amounts of weaponry into Novoazovsk, presumably headed for Mariupo and a seemingly critical confrontation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Aleksandr Zakharchenko, a rebel commander and the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, also confirmed the presence of 4,000 Russian troops in Ukraine, but insisted that many of them were active-duty soldiers on leave who have “volunteered” to fight for freedom. “There are active soldiers fighting among us who preferred to spend their vacation not on the beach, but with us, among their brothers, who are fighting for their freedom,” he said in an interview on Russian state-run television.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Unsurprisingly, Russia has once again denied the incursion is happening. A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0828/639813-ukraine/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">told</span></a> Russia media sources that &#8220;this information has no relation to reality,” and that units on the Ukrainian side of the border were simply engaged in &#8220;tactical training exercises on their own and outlying ranges” and that such efforts &#8220;were the normal work of any army.” Andrey Kelin, Russian representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also toed the company line, contending that “no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment present.” “Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that,” he added. “All of them were proven false back then, and are being proven false again now.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not quite. On Tuesday, Ukraine <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11057540/Capture-of-Russian-paratroopers-in-Ukraine-overshadows-talks-with-Russia.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> the Monday capture of ten Russian paratroopers who had “accidentally” crossed the border, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. &#8220;These servicemen really did take part in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossing it likely by mistake at an unequipped and unmarked point,” a Ministry source told Russian media.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ella Polyakova, a member of President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s advisory council on human rights, contradicted those assessments, insisting that a Russian invasion is taking place. &#8220;When masses of people, under commanders&#8217; orders, on tanks, APCs and with the use of heavy weapons, (are) on the territory of another country, cross the border, I consider this an invasion,” she said.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">European leaders were on board with Polyakova’s characterization. German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding an explanation. French President Francois Hollande characterized Russia&#8217;s actions as “intolerable” and warned of further sanctions if they continue. &#8220;Russia cannot simultaneously aspire to be a world power in the 21st century and not play by the rules,” he <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2014/8/28/international-news/ukraine-vows-defend-itself-russian-invasion"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> in a speech to French ambassadors. He was echoed by British Prime Minister David Cameron who also spoke of unspecified “consequences” if Russian continued its “large scale incursions.” Cameron insisted that Putin’s stated desire to end the conflict peacefully “is not credible when Russia is supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine with arms and troops,” even as he warned the effort &#8220;must cease immediately.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Obama administration also accused Russia of orchestrating the fighting, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki <a href="http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/europe/2014/08/russian_columns_enter_ukraine_leader_urges_calm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">contending</span></a> the latest incursions &#8220;indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk.” Donetsk is the largest city held by rebel forces and 11 people were reported killed by shelling Wednesday night.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At yesterday&#8217;s U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Power continued leveling accusations at the Russians. &#8220;Russian soldiers, tanks and air defense have supported and fight alongside separatists as they open a new front in a crisis manufactured and fueled by Russia,” she declared, further noting that Russia had been called to account on other occasions. &#8220;At every step, Russia has become before this council to say everything but the truth. It has manipulated, obfuscated and outright lied,” she added.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Power also urged the Security Council to take immediate action. &#8220;How can we tell those countries that border Russia that their peace and sovereignty is guaranteed if we do not make our message heard on Ukraine?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;The cost of inaction is unacceptable.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">NATO is apparently preparing for action. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/nato-east-european-bases-counter-russian-threat"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> that the organization will for the first time deploy forces at new bases in Eastern Europe, to counter Putin’s aggression and protect Baltic States that were former Soviet satellites. The plan is to be unveiled at a meeting in Wales next week when NATO seeks to overcome divisions within the alliance, with the ultimate aim of securing an agreement to station troops along the Russian border. &#8220;We will adopt what we call a readiness action plan with the aim to be able to act swiftly in this completely new security environment in Europe,” said Rasmussen. &#8220;We have something already called the NATO response force, whose purpose is to be able to be deployed rapidly if needed. Now it&#8217;s our intention to develop what I would call a spearhead within that response force at very, very high readiness.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">He also illuminated sobering reality. &#8220;We have to face the reality that Russia does not consider NATO a partner,” he explained. &#8220;Russia is a nation that unfortunately for the first time since the second world war has grabbed land by force. Obviously we have to adapt to that.” So does Putin, who is sure to be infuriated by the move.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Late yesterday afternoon the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/world/europe/ukraine-conflict.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">reported</span></a> that President Poroshenko ordered mandatory conscription into the Ukrainian army, which was suspended last year, be reinstated. “The situation is certainly extremely difficult and nobody is going to simplify it,” Mr. Poroshenko said. “Still, it is controlled enough for us to refrain from panic.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Perhaps it is—for now. Yet one is left to wonder how long such “control” can be maintained. Vladimir Putin’s expansionist urges have been extremely popular among the Russian people who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/why-russians-back-putin-on-ukraine.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">share</span></a> his vision of a resuscitated “empire.” How far he and they are willing to go to maintain that worldview may determine the fate, not just of Russia and Ukraine, but the entire continent of Europe. It wouldn’t be the first time national pride ignited a widespread conflagration.</p>
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		<title>Who Was Yuri Andropov? Ideologue, Policeman, Apparatchik</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=who-was-yuri-andropov-ideologue-policeman-apparatchik</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Aug 2014 04:35:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andropov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Soviet Union]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Why a deceased Soviet butcher has an ever-growing mini-cult following.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/moscow-kremlin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238846" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/moscow-kremlin-450x337.jpg" alt="moscow-kremlin" width="277" height="207" /></a>We should not be surprised that, in Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s Russia, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov –born a hundred years ago, on June 15, 1914– enjoys an ever-growing mini-cult following, shaped and upheld from the very top. For Putin and the mafia surrounding him – all characters coming from the middle-level structures of the KGB– Yuri Andropov represents the strength of a system which, they believe, was not meant to collapse. In Andropov, they admire the virility, vitality, stamina, robustness of the system that collapsed in December 1991. Worshiping Andropov, they lionize their own youth.</p>
<p>The triumphalist fantasies of the Soviet years continue to haunt the Kremlin’s imagination. Resorting to the myth of Andropov is in fact an attempt at legitimization by way of history. Obviously, what we are dealing with is a history forged, doctored, counterfeited. In short, a history rigged, distorted, and mystified.</p>
<p>According to this secret police worldview, Andropov’s reforms – carefully supervised by their initiators in the party and security apparatus – were unlikely to lead to a massive breakdown of the ideocratic party-state institutional structure. Andropov was a bureaucrat hardened during the Stalinist purges following WWII. He was a true believer in the USSR’s mission as a “bastion of world socialism.” Like so many other apparatchiks, he had adored Stalin. He had been the protégé of Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov, the most dogmatic of the official ideologues. Andropov’s election in November 1982 as General Secretary of the CC of the CPSU and president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, thus nominal head of the Soviet state, was a big change in the pattern of succession. This was the first time that a former chief of the secret police had made it to the helm of the totalitarian regime called the USSR. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria had come within reach of this position, but – as we well know – he was finished off before being able to fill it. Arrested in June 1953, a few months after Stalin’s death, Beria was executed as a spy in December of that same year.</p>
<p>Andropov’s career began under the auspices of Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov, the supreme ideologue of Stalinism unleashed. Zhdanov was directly in charge of the Karelian-Finnish Autonomous Republic, where Andropov steeply climbed up the party hierarchy. I emphasize this because Zhdanov was the most influential exponent of the Leningrad faction, brutally purged after his death in 1948. The political mythology of Leningrad&#8217;s communists matters a great deal in this particular version of history. Vladimir Putin himself comes from that town, as do many members of his close entourage.</p>
<p>After a stage as a Central Committee bureaucrat, Andropov was sent to Hungary as an ambassador, where he was given the particularly sensitive mission to oversee political dynamics throughout the crucial year 1956. Presumably Andropov himself had suffered a shock following the disclosures in Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev’s “Secret Report” at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956. On the other hand, ideologically speaking, his convictions were shatterproof and unflinching, made ​​of reinforced concrete. He was not a man of doubts, he lacked the courage to question the thorniest issues in the history of the party that he had served with<em> perinde ac cadaver </em>devotion. He was a fanatic communist, a true believer.</p>
<p>In the Soviet Embassy in Budapest, in 1956, one of Andropov’s subordinates was KGB officer under diplomatic cover, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who later became himself head of the State Security Committee. Astutely friendly and seemingly benevolent, Andropov played the openness card and thus managed to put the suspicions of Imre Nagy and the other reformist group members to sleep. When the revolution broke out on October 23, 1956, Andropov simulated a conciliatory stance and accepted the claims issued by the new government. He was calm and affable, a world-class impersonator. The friendly act was in fact hiding the huge anxiety of Moscow’s envoy.</p>
<p>In truth, Andropov was one of the most adamant activists; he strongly supported the idea of ​ Soviet military intervention. He then gave the legal government members assurances that, if they were to come out of the Yugoslav embassy’s building where they had taken refuge after the second Soviet military intervention, on November 3, 1956, they would be granted freedom and would be able to go home with their families. Right after Nagy and his friends left the embassy premises, giving credence to Andropov’s promises, they were captured, thrown into Soviet trucks, and shipped to Romania. The official story was that they had requested political asylum. In reality, the whole thing was a gangster-like operation, namely the kidnapping of still legitimate officials of a state which had dared to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Andropov was also the one who convinced János Kádár to break with Nagy and form the so-called “Workers’-Peasants’” Quisling government.</p>
<p>As a reward for his contribution to destroying what the communist propaganda called “the Hungarian counter-revolution,” Andropov was put in charge of the CPSU’s international relations department, a position from which he struggled to maintain Soviet hegemony within the world communist movement. As secretary of the CC, he collaborated with Suslov for the consolidation of a hardline ideology. He was one of the most active critics of the Chinese Communist Party, accused of political adventurism, as well as Yugoslav “revisionism.” He loathed any deviation from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. The 1968 Prague Spring gave him nightmares, he fervently supported military intervention to suppress what has gone down in history as the attempt to pursue with a human face. He tried unsuccessfully to organize a world communist conference to excommunicate Mao&#8217;s party. He had become the Kremlin&#8217;s most sophisticated expert in world communist affairs.</p>
<p>Precisely because he was a most reliable, disciplined, and faithful apparatchik, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksey Kosygin – the tandem who ended up at the pinnacle of the Soviet dictatorship after Khrushchev’s departure (in October 1964) – appointed Andropov succeed Vladimir Semichastny’s as chairman of the KGB in 1967. Maximum efficiency was needed and Andropov had proven that he was a highly effective defender of the nomenclature.</p>
<p>The one who suggested his appointment as chief-policeman of the USSR was red cardinal Mikhail Suslov, the ideological pontiff who had sensed the risk of the official monolithic doctrine’s disintegration. Andropov’s main mission was to suppress the human rights movement, to nip in the bud any dissident initiative. He was a champion of the most abject misinformation and recklessly cultivated criminal “special methods.”</p>
<p>As shown by <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/the-virtue-of-lucidity-yuri-glazov-and-the-fate-of-communism/">dissident intellectual Yuri Glazov</a> in his illuminating writings, Andropov was a paradigmatic<em> Homo Sovieticus</em>. His main opponents were the great dissidents Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov. He personally conducted disinformation campaigns against them. He also handled the terrorist actions against Pope John Paul II. In the history of the Cold War, the methodically stubborn bureaucrat Andropov endures as one of the most sinister characters.</p>
<p>When he became secretary general, the KGB started a disinformation campaign in the Western media which sought to advertise him as a secret reformist, “a closet liberal”, a man who, in his heart of hearts, admired Western cultural values, loved jazz, and was by no means the tenacious, obtuse, and dogmatic monster described in previous accounts. In fact, the inflexible Yuri Andropov came to power an exhausted and seriously ill individual– as exhausted and seriously ill as the system that he so badly wished to save. His reforms were modest, half-hearted, lacking vigor and vision, and mainly targeted at strengthening discipline in factories. They did not transcend some trivial doctrinal touch-ups. His formula was “acceleration” (<em>uskorenie</em>).</p>
<p>Andropov was definitely not tempted to encourage the transparency which, under Gorbachev, would become known as glasnost. As secretary general – we learn from Kryuchkov’s memoirs – he opposed the return of the anti-Stalinist party intellectual Aleksandr Yakovlev from the Canadian diplomatic exile. As far as party intellectuals go, he was close to Yevgeny Primakov and Georgy Arbatov, whom he deemed trustworthy not only for party leadership, but also for the KGB. Primakov, the future prime minister of Russia between 1998 and 1999, was probably even an undercover KGB officer.</p>
<p>Andropov personally conducted the frenzied reactions of the official propaganda after the downing of the South Korean airliner in 1983. He died in 1984, mourned by no one except his former KGB underlings, including, most likely, the up-and-coming Vladimir Putin. Perhaps his only merit was promoting Gorbachev, thus speeding up – involuntarily, of course – the ruin of a despotic regime, a totalitarian experiment responsible for the death of over twenty million human beings.</p>
<p>In a rare moment of honesty, Andropov said that there can be no greater error than reopening the public debate on the “accursed question.” He was referring to the Stalin question. Forced by the logic of the struggle for power, Gorbachev reopened this Pandora box and expedited the USSR’s downfall. This denouement was something the KGB abhorred. Years later, Andropov’s fan Vladimir Putin, a former KGB lieutenant-colonel, spoke about the end of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the history of the twentieth century.”</p>
<p><em>This essay was broadcast by the Moldovan service of Radio Free Europe. It was translated from Romanian into English by Monica Got.</em></p>
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		<title>Bill Whittle: The Murderer in the Kremlin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-the-murderer-in-the-kremlin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-whittle-the-murderer-in-the-kremlin</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Aug 2014 04:56:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[bill whittle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kremlin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Murderer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Truth Revolt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="field-body">
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bm.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238335" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/bm-450x258.gif" alt="bm" width="249" height="143" /></a>Russia is on the move. But as Bill Whittle shows in this searing FIREWALL, Americans simply cannot wrap their minds around the history of terror and murder of the Russian Secret Police. Bill presents that history in horrific fashion, and shows the West just what it is up against. See the video and transcript below:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h5QTjg2HI5Y" width="400" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<p>THE MURDERER IN THE KREMLIN</p>
<p>Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.</p>
<p>Russia is on the move. And we need to know just exactly who we are dealing with here, because Americans cannot understand the Russian people without…</p>
<p>You know what. Let’s just stop there. Americans cannot understand the Russian people. Period. They are, in every way, a mirror image of our society and we fundamentally free and decent people simply cannot get our minds around the institutionalized murder, terror and tyranny that infects that state to this day.</p>
<p>So, just to scratch the surface, let’s briefly look at the history of some of the leaders Russian secret police.</p>
<p>This is Felix Zher-zhin-ski. He’s the father of what became known as the Checka, the Soviet secret police. Tens of thousands of political opponents were shot under his directions. Of course, tens of thousands of murdered men, women and children was small price to pay to bring about Comrade Lenin’s Worker’s Paradise, but just so there is no confusion about what his mission was, Zher-Zhin-ski once said, “We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly” and that the mission of his Russian secret police was “the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles.&#8221; Not based on their guilt. EXTERMINATION based on class distinctions.</p>
<p>His successor, Vyach-es-slav Men-zhin-ski was described by Comrade Trotsky as “more like the shadow of some other unrealized man, or rather like a poor sketch for an unfinished portrait.&#8221; These were relatively quiet times for the secret police, now renamed the OGPU.</p>
<p>Not the kind of man you need for heavy lifting when the work of real murder lay ahead, he was replaced by Genkrich Yagoda.</p>
<p>Now we’re beginning to get down to business. This State Police murderer, like others before and to follow, took his orders from the Kremlin, but the actual killing took place in this stately yellow building, called the Lubyanka. It doesn’t look like a death camp; it sits right in the middle of Moscow and people go to work there every day. But as office buildings go, the Lubyanka has the distinction of having tens, or more likely hundreds of thousands, of people who entered the building but never left the building. Starting with the show trials of the leaders of the revolution, Yagoda secret police – now renamed again as the NKVD &#8212; began killing his own people in earnest. However, when he privately wrote Comrade Stalin that these executions were starting to look bad in the foreign press, this was taken as a not having sufficient zeal for the Soviet Holy Cause.  At his trial, he shouted to a closed curtain, begging the Great Leader in his defense to consider all of the ordinary Russian people he had worked to death in his name: &#8220;I appeal to you! For you I built two great canals!&#8221; Witnesses saw a flash of a match and a curl of smoke from behind the curtain. Yagoda was stripped naked, just for extra humiliation, beaten, and then shot.</p>
<p>He was replaced by this animal: Nikolai Zezhov. Five feet tall, he was nicknamed the Blackberry, or sometimes The Bloody Dwarf. During the Great Purge, peaking around 1937, 680 THOUSAND people were shot by the NKVD. That’s every single person in Baltimore, Maryland.</p>
<p>Why were you shot? Maybe you had relatives overseas and were engaged in Anti-Soviet spying. Maybe you raised your hand to make a suggestion to improve crop yield at a collective farm meeting and were guilty of lack of faith in the Soviet leadership. Maybe someone wanted your little dacha – your cottage. Or maybe someone wanted your job. Or your overcoat. Or your wife. All they had to do was write a letter and you were either sent to the frozen Gulags and worked to death, or more likely, taken to the Lubyanka and simply shot in the head. Yezhov, industrious Communist state murderer that he was, made a major improvement to the execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka: a sloping concrete floor with a small gutter that made it far, far easier to hose off the blood.</p>
<p>Now you’d think the Russians would be ashamed of this. But on December 20th, 1937 there was a gala celebration in the Bolshoi Theater to celebrate 20 years of Russian State Police terror. Yezhov’s picture hung beside Stalins, and he entered to thunderous applause.</p>
<p>Of course, killing thousands of people every week, by hand, all through the night can take a toll on a man. Yezhov descended into homosexual orgies and weeks of drunkenness. When it came his turn to receive his Soviet reward for outstanding service – being shot in the Lubyanka basement – this mass-murdering sadist fainted at the news, and hysterical and weeping he was carried to the room with the sloping floor and shot in the head.</p>
<p>Surely, you’d think nothing could be worse than Yezhov – the Disappearing Commissar, the man airbrushed into a Soviet non-person. You’d be wrong.</p>
<p>Under Lav-rent-tee Beria the NKVD – later to be renamed again as the KGB took  the slave labor camps – the Gulags – into high gear. Who was worked to death in this frozen, dysentery ridden, institutionalized hell? Scientists. Musicians. Poets. Steelworkers. Peasants. Not people who had committed crimes so much as people who might someday commit crimes. Oh, and other people too: women. Lots of women. This entire system depended on signed confessions produced by torture. The wives of these innocent men had to denounce them as spies and traitors as well. Most of them did. But many did not, and they are buried in the permafrost, on orders from the Kremlin, because the sentence for not denouncing your husband for crimes he did not commit was ten years slave labor on the TIE-GA – the frozen Russian forest plain, where the temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero. That’s where these women died. Their children were sent to state orphanages to be beaten as enemies of the state.</p>
<p>Beria was proven to have committed scores of rapes – the actual number was likely in the hundreds. He would cruise the streets of Moscow in his limousine, pick a woman that appealed to him, take her to his sound-proofed room and rape them, telling them “Scream or not; it doesn’t matter.” After they were raped they were given a bouquet of flowers as they were shoved out into the snow – the implication being that it was all consensual.</p>
<p>When his turn came, this animal also collapsed, begging on his knees for mercy, wailing and crying so loudly that his Comrade executioner shoved a rag into his mouth in order to shut him up before he shot him in the forehead.</p>
<p>We always assumed the KGB was a spy service, just like the CIA. It’s not. Its primary purpose has been to impose terror on the Russian people. The Checka was renamed the OGPU. The OGPU was renamed the NKVD. The NKVD was renamed the KGB. And in 1991, the KGB was renamed the FSB – the Federal Security Service. And the FSB director, descended in an unbroken chain from Zher-zhin-ski through Yagoda, through Yezhov and Beria was named Vladimir Putin, and his office was in the same Lubyanka building that had seen so much horror and blood.</p>
<p>As I said, we Americans cannot conceive of such people – let alone the terror of living under them. But these men got to where they are through a willingness to commit cold blooded murder in service of the Russian state. Like all bullies, they view weakness with contempt, and like all bullies, they turn into whimpering, sobbing cowards the instant that the violence they deliver with such lack of conscience is delivered to them.</p>
<p>That is whom Barack Obama is up against. And if we don’t hit them, and hard, and soon, then he will commit an act we can’t ignore or forgive. Then the world will see something it has not seen since 1945: America all the way angry. And fundamentally kind, decent, generous people all the way angry is not something he is going to want to see.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Putin&#8217;s Secret Message to Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/putins-secret-message-to-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putins-secret-message-to-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:45:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Klavan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Truth Revolt]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238111</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0oesPD7rNXw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p style="color: #000000;">In which our multilingual host translates a secret videogram from Russian President Vladimir Putin to American President Barack Obama on the current state of Russian/American relations.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I’m Andrew Klavan and this is the Revolting Truth.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ever since President Obama took office, he’s been making friendly overtures to the Russians, trying to “press the reset button” in relations between our two countries.  In 2012, the president was even caught on an open mike promising he’d have more “flexibility” to cave in to Russian demands after he was re-elected.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded warmly to Obama’s gestures by warmly cheating on our arms treaties, warmly supporting our enemies in Syria, warmly annexing Crimea, and warmly abetting the destruction of a Malaysian airliner while warmly threatening to invade Ukraine.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Is there some subtle miscommunication between Russia’s leader and our own?  In search of an answer, we at the Revolting Truth have obtained a classified videogram sent from Putin to Obama that may shed some light on the current state of US/Russian relations.  The video is in the original Russian but I’ll do my best to translate.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Dear President Obama&#8230;  Thank you for offer of great flexibility&#8230;  I am believing in you&#8230;   because women are more flexible than men and I think of you&#8230;  as weak woman who I am slapping in face&#8230;  like Chechnyan prostitute.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately, since my scrumptious devouring of Crimea&#8230;  you are making squeaky mouse noises&#8230;  threatening sanctions from&#8230; imagined storybook place called international community&#8230; which coming from former community organizer girl like yourself makes ex-KGB man like me laugh ha-ha-ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ha-ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Ha.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I am very much enjoying when you offer me so-called “off-ramp” of my Crimea invasion as if re-building mighty Soviet borders was just big silly boo-boo I am making&#8230; I will certainly very soon say “oops” and withdraw my armies&#8230;  no&#8230;  Just kidding.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I am also liking very much when you tell me I cannot invade Ukraine because this is 21st century&#8230;  I am glad you are owning calendar so you will not be late for playing golf game&#8230; in girly shorts.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Now I must fly to Havana to lease fighter jets to Castros and establish military bases there&#8230;  In words of great American Jew songwriter Irving Berlin, I will See You in C.U.B.A.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Goodbye funny little president girl.  I thank you for joking at Mitt Romney when he called Russia U.S. enemy.  You are good friend to me and great lollipop&#8230;  No&#8230;  no&#8230;  sucker&#8230;  and you can kiss my mighty Russian donkey.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">That must be some sort of old slavic expression or something.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">Well&#8230; I hope that clears things up.</p>
<p style="color: #000000;">I’m Andrew Klavan with the Revolting Truth.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>From Andropov to Putin: The Last Spasm of a Decrepit Dictatorship</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/from-andropov-to-putin-the-last-spasm-of-a-decrepit-dictatorship/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=from-andropov-to-putin-the-last-spasm-of-a-decrepit-dictatorship</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 04:15:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andropov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FSP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gorbachev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237332</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The last gasp of the secret police's squalid rule?  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pa.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237393" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pa-450x281.jpg" alt="pa" width="309" height="193" /></a>Kremlinology is back on the daily agenda. This can hardly be considered good news. I distinctly remember: the year was 1983 and Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov – former Chairman of the Committee for State Security, an institution known under the horrifying acronym of KGB – reigned as absolute leader of the CPSU and the USSR. Today, the Russian Federation is commanded by none other than Andropov’s former subordinate, one-time KGB lieutenant-colonel and deputy chief of the residency in Dresden (in what was called – then and for four more decades after that – the GDR), Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.</p>
<p>On September 1, 1983, a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean Air Lines commercial aircraft (Flight 007), which had taken off from Kennedy Airport in New York City and was heading for Seoul after a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska. The current tragedy, directly linked to Russia’s intervention against the democratic revolution in Ukraine, shows that the Putin regime is applying and developing the strategy of Bolshevik-inspired international terrorism. The West must acknowledge this state of affairs before it is too late.</p>
<p>Years ago, the <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/remembering-a-dissident-3-1-1/">Soviet dissident Yuri Glazov</a>, one of the most lucid interpreters of the Soviet experience, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/vladimir-tismaneanu/the-virtue-of-lucidity-yuri-glazov-and-the-fate-of-communism/">diagnosed Andropov&#8217;s neo-Stalinism</a>, more sophisticated but no less repressive than Leonid Brezhnev&#8217;s, as the last gasp of the nomenklatura&#8217;s squalid rule. The same can be said about Putinism, this latter-day incarnation of the Andropov model. I will write soon about the Andropov legacies and Putin&#8217;s efforts to revive it.</p>
<p>Andropov’s propaganda claimed that the Soviet leader had not been aware of the decision to attack. Born one hundred years ago in 1914, Andropov died in 1984. He was followed in office by the inept Konstantin Chernenko and then – with his strengths and weaknesses, his well-known consistencies and inconsistencies – by Mikhail Gorbachev.</p>
<p>September 1983 is considered to be among the top moments of the last period of the Cold War, a moment of all-out, explosive tension. The USSR collapsed in December 1991. What followed was the Boris Yeltsin chapter, and then – under various avatars, either as president or Prime Minister – that of Putin. For the latter, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Putinism meant imposing a disguised dictatorship of the KGB’s successor, the new/old secret police known as the FSB. The FSB&#8217;s “ethos” is deeply rooted in the tradition which began with the Cheka and the entranced Polish-Russian Bolshevik, Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.</p>
<p>On July 17, 2014, a missile launched by the separatists in Eastern Ukraine – armed by Putin’s Russia and with military leadership provided by Russian citizens, Putin’s direct emissaries – downed a Malaysian airliner, flight MH 17, with 298 passengers on board. No one survived. The disaster was complete. Only apparently was this an anomalous and absurd action. In fact, as so many of the actions prompted by Russian (then Soviet, then yet again Russian) imperialism, it’s all about the infamous paranoid style being consistently exercised, without any reluctance or scruples. It replicates Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic&#8217;s mendacious tricks in his relationship with mass murders such as General Ratko Mladic and the psychopathic nationalist Radovan Karadzic.</p>
<p>In fact, Putin – either explicitly or surreptitiously – has encouraged the separatist rebels. Putin’s propaganda has gone once more into a state of hysteria, bearing a shocking resemblance to that of Slobodan Milosevic, especially that of the delirious Serbian television, during the wars of secession in former Yugoslavia. The lies are coming down in heavy waves, frantically and shamelessly. Brought up in the KGB’s climate of fabrications, legends, and mystifications, Putin idolizes Andropov. What is currently happening in Russia is linked to perhaps the last great spasm of the totalitarian secret police. Stale and stifling, Putin’s world belongs to bygone times. Predicting its end can be read by those who <em>can</em> read – the facts, not the stars.</p>
<p>Andrew Nagorski, one of the finest experts on the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet world, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-nagorski/the-downed-airliner-putin_b_5599912.html">writes the following</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>When the façade of an authoritarian regime begins to be exposed to the harsh glare of truth, it usually crumbles at some point. That doesn’t necessarily happen immediately or even fast. But both the world at large and the Russians themselves will soon realize that the emperor in the Kremlin has no clothes. Future historians are likely to look at the downing of Malaysian Flight 17 as a pivotal moment in that process.</p></blockquote>
<p>I find it unnecessary to emphasize British historian and journalist Timothy Garton Ash’s competence. In “The New York Times,” Garton Ash – the author of the classic book “The Uses of Adversity,” a profound connoisseur of Europe’s political meanderings of the last five decades and more, an expert on German-Russian relations and the recent history of what was the Soviet Bloc – deals with the ominous Putin doctrine. It is a doctrine which encodes, in an aggressive manner, Russia’s right to intervene whenever the Kremlin decides that the rights of populations of Russian origin from other countries are being threatened.</p>
<p>The Russianness criterion would be similar to that used by Nazi Germany in the &#8217;30s in order to define what was known as &#8220;Deutschtum,&#8221; meaning the common origin as a people, as “volk.” Garton Ash is right, this is an ideology of resentment, a conglomeration of authoritarian-imperial and intensely nationalist fantasies, with catastrophic consequences for the international situation. Putinism, as a mental formula, was not born yesterday. It suffices to read or re-read the writings of admirable individuals such as Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, Yuri Glazov, Sergey Kovalev, Yuri Orlov to grasp the barbaric, totalitarian roots of what we may call the Putin Doctrine.</p>
<p><em>This article came out on the Romanian online platform www.contributors.ro and was translated into English by Monica Got.</em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Long-Awaited Investigation into Alexander V. Litvinenko&#8217;s Murder</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=britain-launches-investigation-of-alexander-v-litvinenko-murder</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:49:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alexander V. Litvinenko]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Investigation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poison]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237045</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Formal inquiry finally launched into the killing of a KGB-agent-turned-dissident.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-237047" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/yTYYn-437x350.jpg" alt="yTYYn" width="275" height="220" /></a>On Tuesday, nearly eight years after former KGB officer-turned-dissident Alexander V. Litvinenko was killed by radioactive poisoning, the British government <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/britain-opens-investigation-litvinenko-assassination-n162661"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced</span></a> it was opening a formal investigation into the matter. The decision is likely to further strain already tenuous relations between Russia and Great Britain, who are at odds regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, their support of Bashar Assad in Syria, and their possible complicity in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The move represents an about-face for Home Secretary Theresa May, following the London High Court’s decision in February <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/54344161/ns/world_news-europe/t/uk-court-quashes-decision-not-hold-litvinenko-poisoning-inquiry/#.U9DxjKjFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rejecting</span></a> her refusal not to hold a public inquiry. May’s reluctance had stemmed from concerns about what effect it would have on British-Russian relations, which have long been strained by the murder. But despite denials by British Prime Minister David Cameron, it appears the murders of 298 passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists has provided the ultimate impetus for reconsideration.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;I am announcing today the government’s decision to establish an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to investigate the death of Mr. Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006,” May <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/announcement-in-relation-to-the-death-of-mr-litvinenko"><span style="color: #1255cc;">announced </span></a>on the <a href="http://uk.gov/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">uk.gov</span></a> website. “The inquiry will be established by the Home Office. The inquiry will be chaired by Sir Robert Owen, a senior judge who is the current Coroner in the Inquest into Mr. Litvinenko’s death.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">During the long legal process leading to May’s announcement, Owen insisted the British government possessed documents that “establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death of Alexander Litvinenko.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/17246562/ns/dateline_nbc/t/litvinenko-assassins-likely-escape-justice/#.U9D3UajFm3c"><span style="color: #1255cc;">history</span></a> of bad blood between Litvinenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin goes back to 1998. At the time Putin, a former KGB officer, was appointed to head the FSB, which is what the KGB became after the fall of the Soviet Union. Litvinenko had also been a KGB officer working in counterintelligence before getting a 1997 promotion to senior operational officer in the FSB department investigating organized crime at the new agency. Litvinenko incurred Putin’s wrath when he and four other FSB agents conducted a news conference during which they accused the head of the organized crime directorate of ordering the assassination of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky was a powerful businessman and political operative allied to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">After Litvinenko warned Berezovsky about the plot, he was fired and subsequently arrested three times. After spending a month in jail he was released after promising not to leave Russia. But he acquired a forged passport and fled with his wife and son seeking asylum in Britain on Nov. 1, 2000.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Over the next six years, Litvinenko became an anti-Kremlin journalist, accusing the Russian government of abuses during their battles with Chechen separatists in the 1990s, and the FSB’s alleged 1999 bombing of 300 people in explosions at apartments in Russia that was used to justify its second war against Chechnya. He also claimed two of the Chechen separatists who took hostages at a theater in Moscow in October 2002 during which 162 people died were working for the FSB. He also pointed the finger at the FSB for having trained al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. In addition, he accused Putin of pedophilia.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet what might have set the wheels in motion for Litvinenko’s murder was his investigation into the October 2006 murder of fellow Russian Anna Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya was also a journalist who had built an international reputation for her own exposés of the Russian government’s activities in Chechnya. After she was gunned down outside her home, Litvinenko began his investigation, and ultimately accused Putin of ordering Politkovskaya’s assassination.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On November 1, 2006, six years to the day after he arrived in London, Litvinenko met with former Russian army officer Dmitri Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in central London, where he drank tea from a pot poisoned with polonium-210. Afterwards it was discovered that the pot, the teacup, the hotel bar and several members of the bar’s staff had been contaminated with polonium 210.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">From that day until his death on Nov. 23, Litvinenko, 43, slowly wasted away, from the long distance runner he was into a bald and frail husk, one excruciating day after another. On his deathbed, Litvinenko, who had predicted Russia would assassinate him, blamed Putin for his poisoning. Putin has dismissed the allegation.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">At the time, investigators believed that the plot to kill Litvinenko had been orchestrated by Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent. Lugovoi, who is now a member of the Russian Parliament, denied any involvement in the plot, as did Kovtun. A document filed with the Crown Prosecution Service by police in 2007 characterized the killing as “state sponsored.” And despite Russia dismissing the accusations against Kovtun and Lugovoi as irrelevant, it began its own investigation, which ultimately had the effect of hampering the British one, despite British police and prosecutors contending there was enough evidence to charge to both men.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">On Tuesday, everything changed. Previous contentions by the British government that it was necessary to withhold evidence it characterized as classified and potentially detrimental to the national interest have apparently been resolved. The inquiry will <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-k-to-probe-who-was-behind-alexander-litvinenkos-death-1406028786"><span style="color: #1255cc;">proceed</span></a> beginning July 31 and should conclude by the end of 2015, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Some of the proceedings may be held in private when classified material is being considered. And while Cameron claims that the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 played no part in the decision, there is little doubt that Russia will see it that way.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">May noted the inquiry will not include questions regarding whether Britain could have, or should have, taken measures to prevent Litvinenko’s death. &#8220;It is more than seven years since Mr. Litvinenko’s death, and I very much hope that this inquiry will be of some comfort to his widow,” she said in a written statement to Parliament.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It should be noted that Boris Berezovsky, who engendered the initial acrimony between Putin and Litvinenko, and was himself a critic of Putin and Russia following his own exile to London, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/boris-a-berezovsky-a-putin-critic-dies-at-67.html?pagewanted=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovered</span></a> dead in a luxury home outside the city last year. The coroner could not determine wether his death was a suicide or a murder. &#8220;I can either return a verdict that Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide, or that he was killed, <a href="http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_27/British-coroner-left-the-question-open-regarding-cause-of-Berezovskys-death-1777/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">said</span></a> coroner Peter Bedford. “Any of these versions should definitely be supported with evidence. I do not have sufficient evidence to confirm any of these versions. So I&#8217;ll leave the verdict open.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/europe/britain-to-announce-inquiry-into-killing-of-ex-kgb-officer-reports-say.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&amp;module=second-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">elated</span></a> by the decision to investigate her husband’s murder. “I am relieved and delighted with this decision,” she said in a statement. Referring to her husband by his nickname, she continued. “It sends a message to Sasha’s murderers: No matter how strong and powerful you are, truth will win out in the end, and you will be held accountable for your crimes.”</p>
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		<title>World Leaders Lambast Obama’s &#8216;Failures&#8217; in the Middle East</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/world-leaders-lambast-obamas-failures-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=world-leaders-lambast-obamas-failures-in-the-middle-east</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:30:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The international community's scorn for a Radical-in-Chief. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sisi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237091" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sisi-450x300.jpg" alt="Egypt's President  al-Sisi and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry talk before a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Cairo" width="260" height="173" /></a>World leaders are increasingly pointing to U.S. President Obama’s failures in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Some are direct and blunt.  For example, during his recent visit to Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked by journalists about U.S. sanctions against Russia due to the Ukrainian crisis.  While naturally condemning such moves, part of his <a href="http://www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=1779613"><span style="color: #0433ff;">response</span></a> was to accuse the Obama administration of “encouraging war between neighboring states.”  In the same context, Putin added:</p>
<blockquote><p>American objectives have not been realized, nor have they accomplished anything, because everything has collapsed.   Afghanistan faces problems, and Iraq and Libya are falling apart.  Egypt also was going to collapse had President Sisi not taken matters in hand.  And all this demonstrates the failures of the Obama administration.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, and as I have <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/confirmed-u-s-chief-facilitator-of-christian-persecution/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">pointed out</span></a> in <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/obamas-proxy-war-on-mideast-christians/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">several articles</span></a>, every Muslim nation the U.S. has interfered in—whether to promote “democracy,” as in the much ballyhooed “Arab Spring,” or to defeat “terrorism” and/or eliminate “WMDs”—has seen two results: the empowerment of Islamists, followed by chaos, conflict, and constant atrocities.</p>
<p>Other leaders, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indirectly point to the Obama administration’s failures in the Middle East.  This occurred during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, in the context of the Presbyterian Church of the USA’s recent decision to divest from Israel in the name of the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>After pointing out that “Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East”—and <a href="http://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2014/07/21/presbyterian-church-criticizes-israel-ignores-christian-persecution.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;">nary a word of condemnation or concern from the Presbyterian Church</span></a>—Netanyahu said:</p>
<blockquote><p>You know, I would suggest to these Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference.  And I would give them two pieces of advice, one is, make sure it’s an armor-plated bus, and second, don’t say that you’re Christians.</p></blockquote>
<p>While not directly mentioning the U.S.’s role in these three nations—Netanyahu, after all, is on better terms with America than Putin—the obvious is clear: 1) the U.S. played a major role “liberating” two of these countries—Iraq and Libya—and is currently supporting the freedom fighters/terrorists trying to “liberate” Syria; and 2) in all three nations, the human rights of non-Muslims, specifically Christians, have taken a dramatic nosedive, evincing the nature of those the U.S. helped empower.</p>
<p>Consider Iraq today, one decade after the U.S. took down Saddam Hussein, bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to the Iraqi people: now an Islamic caliphate exists, enforcing the savageries of Sharia—from stoning women accused of adultery to crucifying others, burning churches and forcing Christians either to convert to Islam, pay “taxes” (jizya) and embrace third class status, or face the sword.</p>
<p>Libya, Afghanistan, and rebel-controlled areas of Syria are little better.</p>
<p>As Putin pointed out, the only nation still trying to hang in there is Egypt, thanks to the anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution—which, of course, was criticized by the U.S. government, including by people <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/john-mccain-proves-u-s-leadership-allied-to-muslim-brotherhood/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">like John McCain</span></a>.</p>
<p>To recap Egypt: the Obama administration turned its back on 30-year-long U.S. ally, the secularist Mubarak, embraced the Islamist Morsi, and some of the worst Muslim persecution of Christians—the litmus test of “radicalization”—took place against the Copts during Morsi’s one year of rule, from an <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/an-islamic-declaration-of-war-on-christianity/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unprecedented attack</span></a> on the most important Coptic building and seat of the pope, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/scandal-morsi-government-permits-savage-attack-on-st-mark-cathedral/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">the St. Mark Cathedral</span></a>, to a dramatic rise in the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/islams-collective-punishment-of-christians"><span style="color: #0433ff;">imprisonment of Christians accused of “insulting” Islam</span></a>.</p>
<p>As for Egypt’s current president, Sisi, he too made some observations that comport with those of Putin’s (that “someone” is fueling conflict between neighboring states) and Netanyahu’s (that the region is a mess, thanks to the empowerment of Islamists).</p>
<p>During his televised speech in early July, Sisi warned that “religion [code for “Islam”] is being used to destroy neighboring countries”—a clear reference to the empowerment of Islamists in the same failed nations highlighted by Putin and Netanyahu, namely, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan—all the handiwork of U.S. leadership in general, Obama’s administration in particular.</p>
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		<title>Putin Robbed Blind by the Castros</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-robbed-blind-by-the-castros</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Jul 2014 04:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Why many Cuba-watchers snickered.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pp.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237078" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/pp-450x253.jpg" alt="pp" width="301" height="169" /></a>Russian president Vladimir “Teflon” Putin is on a roll—or so we’re led to believe by the media. The Russian president combines the slick machismo of James Bond, the <em>cojones</em> of George Patton and the craftiness of Cardinal Richelieu.</p>
<p>Actually, in his dealings with Cuba, Putin looks more like Barney Fife. We’re not accustomed to seeing Mr Macho-Cool Vladimir Putin made an international jackass. But many Cuba-watchers snickered as the hapless Russian President met with the Castro brothers on July 11th and “wrote off” their $32 billion debt to the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>“That old thing? I never liked it anyway,” Cuba-watchers easily imagine Putin hissing through gritted teeth. &#8220;We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba,&#8221; is what Putin actually hissed for the record.</p>
<p>Vladimir Putin rose to the rank of Lieut. Colonel in an organization that tortured and murdered at roughly TWICE the rate of the Nazi SS. So his offense at the “illegal” U.S. embargo of a KGB-founded, terror-sponsoring regime should provoke only chortling and snorting. Instead it’s probably causing a fit of the vapors at the State Dept. and in faculty lounges nationwide.</p>
<p>Not that Putin left Cuba completely empty-handed. Instead the Russians reclaimed the Evil Empire’s largest foreign spying base, located in Lourdes just south of Havana. The Soviets built this complex&#8211; capable of electronic spying on everything from the U.S. Military’s Central and Southern command to NASA facilities&#8211; in 1967 and manned it until 2001. That year financial problems and pressure from the U.S. forced the Russians to close and abandon it. Interestingly it was (then) Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="http://www.capitolhillcubans.com/2014/07/russia-set-to-reopen-military.html">who felt compelled to lock it up and scurry out.</a></p>
<p>This re-colonization by the Russians of a spy base on our very borders is obviously important, but surely a true Russian Richelieu could have reclaimed the base for less than $32 billion, especially with an Obama in the White House.</p>
<p>Putin’s visit to the colonial outpost his “old” outfit (the KGB) helped convert from a vibrant capitalist nation swamped with European immigrants into a vast sewer, slum and prison that repels even impoverished Haitians disgusted most Cuban dissidents. The loathing of most Cubans (including many communists) for <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/che.html">Che Guevara</a> owed much to Guevara&#8217;s groupie-like devotion to the Soviets who infested Cuba and roundly repelled almost all Cubans.</p>
<p>Putin’s fleecing by the Castro brothers provides more proof (if we actually needed any) that rarely in modern history has any item of U.S. foreign policy triumphed as patently (or hilariously) as the so-called U.S. embargo of Castro’s Stalinist kleptocracy. Here’s a glittering gem amidst the rubble of so much recent U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Actually the Castros stuck it to Russia years ago, claiming they owed only an outfit named The Soviet Union, which no longer existed&#8211;so neither did this outfit’s invoices. Putin, faced with an offer he couldn’t refuse, simply ratified the rooking. The Castros stuck it to Mexico just last year, when its state development Bank Bancomex wrote off almost $500 million Cuba owed them from 15 years back. The Castros stuck it to Europe back in 1986, defaulting on most of their debt to the Paris Club. Fifteen years later the Castros stuck it to French taxpayers again for $175 million.</p>
<p>In 2011 the Castros stuck it even to their old “friends” Nelson Mandela’s South Africa. “The Cuban regime has a long track record of failing to pay back our loans,” lamented South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Trade &amp; Industry as he <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">wrote off almost 2 billion Rand in Cuban debt.</a></p>
<p>In sharp contrast, thanks to the so-called U.S. embargo of Cuba, the U.S. taxpayer remains unfleeced (at least at the hands of the Castros,) even after almost $4 billion in trade over the past dozen years with Cuba, the world’s most notorious deadbeat. “Wanna trade?” says the current version of the U.S. embargo. “No <em>problemo, </em>Mr Castro<em>.</em> Cash up front, buddy. The American taxpayer will NOT extend you credit. <em>Comprende</em>?</p>
<p>Enacted by the Bush team in 2001 this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer snickering on the sidelines, much as we snickered at Oliver Douglas dealings with Mr Haney or Steven Spielberg and Larry King’s with Bernie Madoff.</p>
<p>“The problem with Socialism,” famously quipped Margaret Thatcher, “is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.” True enough. But when the communist Castros run out of one sugar-daddy’s money, there’s always another suitor waiting in line. From the Soviets to the Europeans to the Mexicans to the Venezuelans, etc. the Castro brothers—unlike, say, Bernie Madoff—possess a singular talent for keeping their scam running longer than the Energizer Bunny. One born every minute, Mr P.T. Barnum? Ask the Castro brothers. They’ll tell you that ten are born every second.</p>
<p>Alas, an extremely well-funded campaign to include us among P.T Barnum’s cherished customers (i.e. lift the Cuba embargo) is building steam in Washington. Fascinatingly, “libertarians”&#8211; those self-described defenders of the U.S. taxpayer, those self-described champions of American sovereignty and pocket books against snooty, sneaky and predatory supranational cabals and elites—these very libertarians now serve as an echo-chamber for David Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, along with The Trilateral Commission , the Davos Groups, the United Nations, The Arca Foundation, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, The Ford Foundation, a KGB Lieut Colonel, The Brookings Institute, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Piece (founded by Soviet spy Alger Hiss.)</p>
<p>Today’s “libertarians” march arm in arm chanting the anti-Cuba embargo mantra in perfect rhyme and cadence with every socialist elitist and every secretive supranational outfit mentioned above. Bedfellows don’t get much stranger. Let’s stand back and have a look:</p>
<p>All of the above clamor for an Imperial Democratic President to further circumvent the U.S. Congress and nullify the work of legendary conservative Republican legislators Dan Burton of Indiana and Jesse Helms of North Carolina.</p>
<p>Another name for the Cuba embargo in its current form, after all, is the Helms-Burton act of 1996, sponsored by these Red-State Republicans and constitutionally voted upon and passed by U.S. legislative branch.</p>
<p>But today’s “libertarian constitutionalists” have signed on to one of David Rockefeller’s <a href="http://babalublog.com/2013/03/06/mr-chavez-you-were-no-fidel-castro/david-rockefeller-and-fidel-castro-shaking-hands/">longest-running and most cherished labors of love. </a> All the above clamor for a brazenly imperial President and disciple of Saul Alinsky to further trash the congressional work of Jesse Helms and Dan Burton (also a Tea Party stalwart until his recent retirement.) This trashing would enable U.S. taxpayers to subsidize the Communist terror-sponsoring regime that stole $7 billion from U.S. stockholders at Soviet gunpoint and came within a hair of nuking us. This nuking was barely foiled at the last second by the aghast Butcher of Budapest:</p>
<p>“What?!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we launch missiles from Cuba?&#8230;.But that is insane!&#8230;<em>Remove them</em> (our missiles) <em>as soon as possible!</em> Before it’s too late. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">Before something terrible happens!”</a></p>
<p>Oh, I know…I know, Camelot’s court scribes concocted a different version of why the Russian missiles left Cuba. And naturally this version went instantly viral in the MSM, Academia and Hollywood.</p>
<p>At any rate, too bad Rod Serling isn’t around. This freak- show of anti-“embargo” lobbying would make a great episode for The Twilight Zone.</p>
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		<title>Why Vladimir Putin Is Kicking Barack Obama&#8217;s Behind</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ben-shapiro/why-vladimir-putin-is-kicking-barack-obamas-behind/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-vladimir-putin-is-kicking-barack-obamas-behind</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 04:51:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Airplane]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rebels]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[separatists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236883</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The "multipolar" world spirals out of control. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/topic-peplt007593.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236884" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/topic-peplt007593-387x350.jpg" alt="Putin Views Russian Arms On Display At Expo" width="243" height="220" /></a>On Monday, four days after Vladimir Putin&#8217;s minions in Ukraine shot down a passenger airliner carrying 298 people, including an American citizen, President Barack Obama emerged from the White House to issue a statement. Scowling at the camera, Obama stated: &#8220;Russia has extraordinary influence over these separatists. No one denies that. Russia has urged them on. Russia has trained them.&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally, after fulminating for several minutes about the nastiness of the Russian government, Obama approached the predictable climax: threats of action.</p>
<p>Except that there were none.</p>
<p>Instead, Obama explained that if Russia were to ignore his warnings, it would &#8220;only further isolate itself from the international community, and the costs for Russia&#8217;s behavior will only continue to increase.&#8221;</p>
<p>To which Putin&#8217;s only rational response would be laughter.</p>
<p>This is a Western humiliation on an epic scale. Obama and Europe could wrongly and weakly pass off the invasion and annexation of Crimea as a historical anomaly brutally corrected. They could ignore the further invasion of eastern Ukraine, focusing instead on those naughty Israelis busily defending themselves against rocket attacks from Hamas terrorists.</p>
<p>But now, the West has told Putin, in no uncertain terms, that his people can hit a civilian aircraft with a missile, and that there will be no costs.</p>
<p>How can a second-rate power hold the United States and NATO over a barrel?</p>
<p>Vice President Joe Biden gave the answer in an interview with The New Yorker, albeit unwittingly (though that should go without saying, given Biden&#8217;s witlessness). While bragging about his gung-ho, macho political attitude, Biden related a story about meeting Putin — a story he pledged was &#8220;absolutely, positively&#8221; true, meaning there is a three in four chance it is complete fiction.</p>
<p>But, taking the vice president at his word, the story went like this. Biden met Putin at the Kremlin in 2011. They found themselves standing face to face. &#8220;I said, &#8216;Mr. Prime Minister, I&#8217;m looking into your eyes, and I don&#8217;t think you have a soul,&#8221; Biden related to interviewer.</p>
<p>&#8220;And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, &#8216;We understand one another.&#8217; This is who this guy is.&#8221;</p>
<p>The last line from Biden is the key to the story: He sees Putin&#8217;s response as a defeat for Putin somehow, a denial of his humanity. Putin, Biden seems to be saying, is an inhuman James Bond villain — and for some reason, Biden thinks this widespread perception of Putin makes him weak.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s Putin&#8217;s entire goal : He wants the West to believe he has no soul. While the West, like Biden, seeks to demonstrate its bigheartedness to Putin, with &#8220;reset&#8221; buttons and U.N. resolutions and G8 summits and Olympic Games, Putin seeks to demonstrate that he has no heart. He wants to be seen as cruel and inhuman. He wants everyone to know that he will never bluff and that he will always shoot first.</p>
<p>Obama, Biden and the European Union somehow believe that handwringing and moral proclamations will bring Putin into line. Putin knows strength — or, at least, the impression of intransigent steeliness — will bring the West into line. In a game of chicken, the man who openly puts a brick on the accelerator will always win.</p>
<p>Putin&#8217;s got the brick on the accelerator. He&#8217;s had quite a hot streak: Georgia, Syria, Iran and now Ukraine. The result will be a far more dangerous world, as potential Russian targets seek nuclear weapons to deter the bear, and as Putin speeds to consolidate his gains. Obama&#8217;s nuclear-free world, his multipolar United Nations geopolitics, spirals the toilet, thanks to his own utopian wishful thinking.</p>
<p>This is what happens when children play against adults on the world stage. This is what happens when starry-eyed post-Americans are given charge of Western leadership. Putin rolls on, evilly manipulating, grossly murdering. And Obama makes peeved faces as bodies smolder in Ukrainian fields.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama and Putin’s Savage World Order</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-and-putins-savage-world-order/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-and-putins-savage-world-order</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 04:42:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boko Haram]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236743</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Savages can only be beaten by throwing away the rules.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mn.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236744" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mn-450x253.jpg" alt="mn" width="352" height="198" /></a>Whether it’s Obama sneering “Sue me” to critics of his abuses of power or Putin shrugging at yet another atrocity, we are no longer in the civilized urbane precincts of law and government.</p>
<p>What both men have in common is a hard left background which has taught them that the only defining principle in politics is Lenin’s “Kto-Kovo”. Kto-Kovo or Who-Whom reduced all interactions to warfare. The Bolsheviks ushered in the end of rules, decency or honor. All that mattered was who would be able to destroy whom. It didn’t matter whether you had justice on your side, but what you would do about it.</p>
<p>Obama and Putin have the same message for America. “Kto-Kovo.” “Sue me.” “So what?” “I won.”</p>
<p>Both men are mocking the impotence of their opponents who by failing to stop them have shown that they are weak and worthless. Instead they use them to divert attention from their own crimes.</p>
<p>In a Kto-Kovo world, there are no compromises and no morals. There are no laws and no limits.</p>
<p>If you can do something, you do it. If your opponents can’t stop you, then you have the right to do it. The true radical, the man of destiny, will do anything he wants because that is what makes him great. Lies are constant and utterly shameless. No lie can ever be exposed because the liar moves on to the next lie and then the one after that. Truth is as meaningless in a Kto-Kovo world as law.</p>
<p>Words and laws are just means to power. And in a Kto-Kovo world, power is all that matters.</p>
<p>A Kto-Kovo leader, whether in the 7<sup>th</sup> century or the 21<sup>st</sup> century, operates by rallying his followers through bold acts that expand their power and humiliate and destroy the morale of their enemies.</p>
<p>Whether it’s Putin invading Ukraine or Obama unilaterally running his amnesty, a Kto-Kovo leader attacks and challenges his enemies to stop him. He ignores any authority not under his control and does what he wants and by doing so he demonstrates that his power is the only authority that counts.</p>
<p>Kto-Kovo leaders are barbarians. Their actions challenge the framework of civilization. Their coming is a warning that civilization is on its last legs.</p>
<p>Civilization limits power by creating rules, whether in the realm of political power or the realm of ideas. There are means of limiting individual power and collective power and testing ideas and agendas. Kto-Kovo breaks all these limits. It says that if I want to punch you in the face, I will. If I want to force you to buy health insurance, I will. If I want to invade your country, I will. If I want to open your borders to invaders, I will. If I want to lie about everything, I will.</p>
<p>Don’t like it? So sue me.</p>
<p>In a Kto-Kovo world, the most lawless wins. Obama can beat up Republicans who still follow the rules. Putin however can smack around Obama because he follows even fewer rules.</p>
<p>Obama abuses executive power. Putin is executive power. When there are no laws, the dictator beats the abusive elected official.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is still winning the Kto-Kovo game because it follows no rules at all. There is nothing that its terrorists won’t do. And that puts them ahead of both Putin and Obama.</p>
<p>When Michelle Obama offered one of the hashtags that work so well against Republicans, Boko Haram laughed in her face. Social media bullying can take down the unarmed. It isn’t a threat to men who have no jobs, lots of guns and who aren’t part of your society’s extended cultural peer group.</p>
<p>Their Kto-Kovo comes down to naked force. Either you kill them or they kill you.</p>
<p>Kto-Kovo is a journey to the jungle floor of barbarism and there is always someone willing to be more of a barbarian. Obama daringly uses executive orders, starts wars and smuggles guns to terrorists. Putin skips right to shooting down planes. Boko Haram and ISIS cut to the suicide bombers and the genocide.</p>
<p>Don’t like it? So sue them.</p>
<p>Terrorism is the final Kto-Kovo. That is the bloody lesson that confronts Israel in Gaza. Fighting an opponent that will commit any crime and tell any lie is impossible except by Kto-Kovo rules. Terrorists use rules to immobilize their opponents while they themselves obey no rules.</p>
<p>Alinsky’s Rule Four, “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”, is also the credo of Hamas, Putin and Obama. Kto-Kovo attackers have the most contempt for those who follow rules that weaken them. Their favorite tactic is accusing you of something they know to be false, “You are just like Hitler”, “You are a racist”, “You don’t care about human rights”… and then forcing you to disprove their accusations which limits your mobility and makes you predictable, neurotic and vulnerable.</p>
<p>Eventually you begin to turn on your own people at the first sign that they might embarrass you by proving the enemy’s accusation right. Meanwhile the Kto-Kovo enemy is a racist, doesn’t care about human rights and thinks that being compared to Hitler is a compliment.</p>
<p>What the Kto-Kovo enemy fears most is that his opponents will stop playing by the rules. Rules are a consensus, but the habits of civilization teach us that they are inviolable laws. That is why we insist on treating terrorists like prisoners of war even though the codes for the treatment of prisoners were part of a mutual reciprocal arrangement. We bend over backward to protect enemy civilians even when those civilians openly support terrorists whose goal is to kill as many of our civilians as possible.</p>
<p>We act as if Russia is a legitimate state that can be reasoned with when there is extensive evidence that its current leaders, just like in Soviet times, operate only under Kto-Kovo rules and don’t respond to anything else. And we still like to think that Obama’s Kto-Kovo politics can be neutered by the right Supreme Court decision or lawsuit when the only thing he responds to are direct threats to his power.</p>
<p>Obama isn’t worried about being sued. He isn’t afraid of any court. He isn’t even all that worried about losing the Senate. What he fears is another populist wave, like the one that created the Tea Party, swamping his agenda with mass protests and government disruption that even his media can’t ignore.</p>
<p>Putin isn’t afraid of another international investigation or limited sanctions. He’s terrified of losing power in a domestic uprising or of being forced to back up his threats with a shaky military.</p>
<p>Kto-Kovo fights can’t be won by playing by the rules. They can only be won by directly challenging the enemy’s power base and by going outside the rules to create your own power base.</p>
<p>It’s a power struggle that has no rules except that the side that blinks first loses.</p>
<p>In the memory of every civilization is the knowledge that barbarians can only be beaten by being as willing to throw away the rules as they are. Otherwise you end up on the wrong side of Kto-Kovo.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>RT&#8217;s Abby Martin Hysterically Defending Putin on Twitter</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rts-abby-martin-hysterically-defending-putin-on-twitter/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rts-abby-martin-hysterically-defending-putin-on-twitter</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 15:57:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abby Martin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liz Wahl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Putin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[RT]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236615</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Leave Putin alone. Just hate the Jews."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This puts to bed any claims that Abby Martin&#8217;s resignation over Ukraine was genuine. She&#8217;s a spokeswoman for a totalitarian regime that murders dissidents. And on Twitter, the 9/11 Truther and RT host desperately tried to spin the conversation back to denouncing Israel.</p>
<p>&#8220;Leave Putin alone&#8221;, Abby Martin implicitly shrieked. &#8220;Just hate the Jews.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-236616" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin-450x238.jpg" alt="abby martin" width="450" height="238" /></a></p>
<p>Unlike say, claiming that America was responsible for the murders of 3,000 of its own on September 11.</p>
<p>And real journalism. That&#8217;s lying for Putin while getting paid by his cronies.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin2.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-236617" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin2-450x77.jpg" alt="abby martin2" width="450" height="77" /></a></p>
<p>Then Abby Martin claimed that &#8220;Congress&#8221; edited her Wikipedia page to call her a &#8220;Russian propagandist.&#8221;  Apparently it takes a Congress to point out the ridiculously obvious.</p>
<p>Is it just me or did Russian propaganda under Communism put a little more effort into this than Abby Martin does? Maybe the Commies paid their hacks better?</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-236618" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin3-450x94.jpg" alt="abby martin3" width="450" height="94" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin4.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-236619" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin4-450x90.jpg" alt="abby martin4" width="450" height="90" /></a></p>
<p>Massacres&#8230; why won&#8217;t more Americans sympathize with them?</p>
<p>And if you think that&#8217;s bad, wait until you learn about Israel&#8217;s animal rights lab civilian complex of immigration in Gaza. Or something.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin5.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-236620" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/abby-martin5-450x65.jpg" alt="abby martin5" width="450" height="65" /></a></p>
<p>But unlike Abby Martin, some RT anchors have shown that they have integrity. Some integrity anyway.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/lizwahl">Liz Wahl,</a> who unlike Abby Martin authentically resigned, and was attacked for it by Martin&#8217;s cronies Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek, has continued denouncing Putin.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Times like this the Kremlin is glad to have a propaganda machine: &quot;Russia on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MH17?src=hash">#MH17</a>: Ukraine Was Aiming for Putin&quot; <a href="http://t.co/nMczMywhe9">http://t.co/nMczMywhe9</a></p>
<p>&mdash; Liz Wahl (@lizwahl) <a href="https://twitter.com/lizwahl/statuses/489957060830720000">July 18, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Russian Amb. to UN blames the plane for flying in Ukraine airways rather than addressing likelihood that Russian-backed rebels shot it down</p>
<p>&mdash; Liz Wahl (@lizwahl) <a href="https://twitter.com/lizwahl/statuses/490154748578762752">July 18, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/lizwahl">@lizwahl</a>, the last <a href="https://twitter.com/RT_America">@RT_America</a> reporter to quit in protest: “In order to succeed there, you don’t question.” <a href="http://t.co/U1k7CDmRGc">http://t.co/U1k7CDmRGc</a></p>
<p>&mdash; The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) <a href="https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/statuses/490108282825375744">July 18, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>Meanwhile <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/18/rt-anchor-resigns-in-protest-over-coverage-of-plane-attack-in-ukraine/">another RT correspondent actually resigned</a>, unlike Abby Martin.</p>
<blockquote><p>Russia Today’s (RT) London correspondent, Sara Firth, resigned in protest on Friday over her network’s coverage of the attack on a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. The network veteran of five years cited her respect for the truth when announcing her decision to leave the Kremlin-funded news network.</p>
<p>“Firth described the Malaysia Airlines flight crash coverage as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back for me’ and handed in her resignation this morning,” read a report in the U.K. based Press Gazette.</p></blockquote>
<p>Meanwhile nothing will ever induce Abby Martin to stop shilling for Putin and actually quit like Sara Firth did.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/Polly_Boiko">@Polly_Boiko</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ukTanos">@ukTanos</a> Lies hun. We do work for Putin. We are asked on a daily basis if not to totally ignore then to obscure the truth</p>
<p>&mdash; Sara Firth (@Sara__Firth) <a href="https://twitter.com/Sara__Firth/statuses/490070995831910401">July 18, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p><script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
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		<title>Czar Putka&#8217;s Imperial Delusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/vladimir-tismaneanu/czar-putkas-imperial-delusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=czar-putkas-imperial-delusions</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2014 04:49:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Vladimir Tismaneanu]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236533</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new book unveils the dark world of a brutal tyrant driven by messianic delusions.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/putin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236568" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/putin-383x350.jpg" alt="putin" width="311" height="284" /></a>Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has a past and an ideology. He is the head of a mafia-like association of thugs, mountebanks, and experts in manipulation, often described as &#8220;political technologists.&#8221; In other words, in spite of the masterfully crafted image of &#8220;The Man Without a Face,&#8221; to use the title of Masha Gessen&#8217;s gripping biography, Putin is not the elusively enigmatic individual propelled by anonymous forces to the rudder of the Russian boat in one of the most turbulent periods of the country&#8217;s history. Putin is the offspring of the political culture of the Soviet secret police and inherits from that constellation of passions, emotions, and phobias his political techniques and the deep contempt for individual rights.</p>
<p>In his book &#8220;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fragile-Empire-Russia-Vladimir-Putin/dp/0300181213"><em>Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin</em></a>&#8221; (Yale University Press, 2013), journalist Ben Judah succeeds admirably in deconstructing the origins, dynamics, and ramifications of the Putin regime, from the early days in Sankt Petersburg, when the teenager &#8220;Putka&#8221; was a street bully, through the KGB career, to the transmogrification into a supporter of Anatoly Sobchak, the flamboyant advocate of glasnost in the morose city on the river Neva. Not that Sobchak was a choir boy: he rose to prominence in association with the visible and invisible authoritarians in that city and engaged in reckless populism and shady economic deals. He relied on the former KGB lieutenant-colonel Putin and Putin found in Sobchak a man intimately associated with Boris Yeltsin&#8217;s bid for power, a consistently supportive patron. Judah mentions several times that Putin is fiercely loyal to those who are faithful to him. In fact, he showed this psychological feature in his relation with Sobchak.</p>
<p>In addition to the Sobchak group. Putin benefited from the enthusiastic trust bestowed upon him by the Machiavellian, power-thirsty tycoon Boris Berezovsky, the driving force in the Kremlin during Yeltsin&#8217;s second, agonizingly inept presidency. What Berezovsky needed, and Putin seemed to offer, was a disciplined, self-effacing, ascetic leader, able to restore a certain sense of hope among the increasingly disillusioned Russians, sick and tired with corruption, cynicism, and rampant plundering of the state. Nothing in Putin&#8217;s past suggested his cupitdy, greed, even rapaciousness. His KGB past indicated admiration for such paragons of austerity as the Cheka founder, Feliks Dzerhinsky, and the orgaization&#8217;s head during the persecution of the dissidents in the 1970s, Yuri Andropov. He seemed malleable and, most important, controllable. Berezovsky was terribly wrong, he misread Putin&#8217;s mind and paid for this huge mistake. Putka was interested in both power and money. He saw the oligarchs as a means to achieve these two objectives. Those who accepted his iron fist continued to thrive. Those who, like Brezovsky, did not understand that Yeltsin&#8217;s times of senile debauchery were over, were forced into exile. Putin&#8217;s nemesis, billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, paid with years of labor camp for the reckless ambtion to challenge the new czar. Power for Putin is indivisble and unsharable.</p>
<p>The best chapters in the book deal with Putin&#8217;s circle and his views on state, history, and Russia&#8217;s role in the world. Obviously, he is not a sophisticated doctrinaire. His main ideas come from dubious sources such as the maniac of Eurasian imperialism, Aleksandr Dugin. Judah mentions Dugin, but only passingly. In fact, it has been Dugin who articulated, in most virulent terms, the doctrine of imperial conservatism that Putin adopted wholeheartedly. Add to this the bizarre fascination with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn&#8217;s vision of a resurrected Russian empire that would necessarily incorporate the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan. Ironically, the same Solzhenitsyn, a main voice of Soviet dissent in the 1970s, the author of &#8220;The Gulag Archipelago,&#8221; chose to endorse Vladimir Putin as a genuine Russian patriot. He accepted honors from Putin that he had rejected when offered by Boris Yeltsin. The former dissident was thrilled to see the former KGB officer espouse his nationalist ideas and anti-liberal ideals.</p>
<p>Understanding Putin&#8217;s behavior in recent years, including his repudiation of the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014 and the invasion of Crimea, means to grasp his authoritarian mindset, including his conviction that might creates right. His values are macho-like, vertically-authoritarian, militaristic, opposed to tolerance and diversity. He despises the democratic opposition (people like Boris Nemtsov, Gary Kasparov, and Aleksey Navalny) and deeply distrusts intitiatives from below, civil society, and Western liberalism. Helped by immensely cynical operators like Sergey Markov and Vladislav Surkov, a cult of Putin&#8217;s personality has emerged as a pillar of this authoritarian-kleptocratic system. Judah documents impressively how the promise of a &#8220;dictatorship of law&#8221; evaporated into a cronyist system with an ideological camouflage reminiscent of Fascism.</p>
<p>Is there any light of this somber tunnel? Can one hope that democratic parties and movements will one day, sooner or later, prevail and create a state based on rule of law? Putin&#8217;s panic-ridden and fiercely aggressive reaction to the Ukrainian Revolution shows that he is aware of the deep trends within the Russian society. He knows that his quasi-dictatorial regime, based on lies, intimidation, and scorn for civic values, can be overthrown by a popular revolution. Judah concludes his brilliant book with these foreboding words: &#8220;There is paranoia everywhere and a presence in Putin&#8217;s office, one whose shadow is so huge that encompasses everything to the point it cannot be seen. The ghost of Boris Yeltsin. All Putin&#8217;s career has been about not being Yeltsin.&#8221; (p. 329).</p>
<p>Revolutions happen suddenly, swiftly, and unpredictably. One day, Putin may wake up and realize that all his impersonation of imperial grandeur has turned out to be another Russian mirage, a fatally bankrupt effort to derail his country&#8217;s advance toward democratic normality. As I write this review, analogies with Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini abound. From Zbigniew Brzezinski to Hillary Clinton, a consensus seems to coalesce regarding Putin as a new totalitarian dictator. Ben Judah&#8217;s book is a perfect companion in any endeavor meant to explain Putin&#8217;s seemingly absurd actions. He does not live in a non-real world, as Angela Merkel put it, but rather in his own reality, haunted by conspiratorial obsessions and driven by messianic delusions. He sees himself as Russia&#8217;s redeemer and indulges therefore in fervid fantasies of salvation.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Bill Whittle: What Do Putin and Hitler Have in Common?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/truthrevolt-org/bill-whittle-what-do-putin-and-hitler-have-in-common/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bill-whittle-what-do-putin-and-hitler-have-in-common</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 May 2014 04:54:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[TruthRevolt.org]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=226447</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Truth Revolt video.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/tt.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-226450" alt="tt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/tt-450x257.gif" width="315" height="180" /></a><strong>In the latest FIREWALL, Bill shows why you don&#8217;t have to look very far very back at all to see ugly echoes of an ugly time. See video and transcript below:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/sOO_iNHypyA" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>TRANSCRIPT:</p>
<blockquote><p>THE WOLF, THE BEAR and THE LAMBS</p>
<p>Hi everybody – I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall!</p>
<p>One of the complaints leveled against Conservatives by Progressives is that we’re always looking backwards. Why always so locked in the past? Why so obsessed with history? Why always looking behind us? Why not look forward?</p>
<p>There’s actually a very simple explanation for that. You see, the past exists. And the future doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. That’s why progress isn’t always good. We could be progressing forward off a cliff. Or into the room where the murderer is hiding. Or out into the water where the shark is. And since we can’t know where we are going, the best we can do is to see if we can learn anything from where we have been.</p>
<p>And you don’t have to look far – not these days. No sir.</p>
<p>Vladimir Putin recently announced that Russia would seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Crimea. And the Western intellectuals – “intellectuals” is Latin for “cowards” &#8212;  just swooned. A diplomatic solution!</p>
<p>All throughout the mid to late thirties, the Wolf – Adolph Hitler, it was a codename that he kept for his entire career as Fuehrer / Dictator – bullied people and broke things. And the decent, civilized leader of England and France and simply wrung their hands, and wrote harshly worded diplomatic cables, and made vague threats of sanctions, and all the rest.</p>
<p>Hitler didn’t play the West like a violin: he played them like a light switch. Threaten violence, offer peace. Threaten violence, offer peace. Make outrageous demands; invade other countries; backdate the moral argument by claiming your are simply protecting your own ethnic populations against imagined and then invented foreign oppression, et cetera and so on and you know the drill. Well, some of us do, anyway.</p>
<p>Two days ago, skipping through my satellite comedy channels – where I keep the BBC – I came in on the end of an interview with an Estonian defense minister, who proceeded to remind Vladimir Putin – the Bear &#8212; that Estonia was part of NATO, while the Ukraine is not. And the BBC interviewer leapt in, in tones of contempt and panic, protesting in a panic that that sort of language was counterproductive because it only antagonizes and offends Moscow. You don’t want to make them angry. It’s better to be nice to them before they overrun your country – you get a higher position in the slave government that way, and maybe they will shoot you last.</p>
<p>Now: both the Wolf and the Bear have a lot in common. Both were from humble beginnings, and both survived and clawed their way to becoming leaders of great nations by cunning and ruthlessness and the predator’s skill at finding weakness in their prey. Both without question have personally ordered the murder of political opponents. Both – and this is important – led nations that were filled with bitterness over lost glory, both fostered intense hatred of outsiders, and both promised to restore their national honor through military conquest. And most importantly, both the Wolf and the Bear represent nations with the exceedingly dangerous combination of resentment, envy, shame and unspoken but pervasive inferiority. That is a dangerous combination.</p>
<p>Opposing the Wolf and the Bear? Two Lambs.</p>
<p>Facing the Wolf: Neville Chamberlain, a proud, self-centered man, consumed with his own sense of self-importance: not terribly perceptive, or terribly interested in much of anything other than his own place in history as a result of his domestic social reforms.</p>
<p>Facing the Bear: ditto.</p>
<p>Hitler saw a vain and timid man who clutched at a piece of paper so that he didn’t have to look at what was behind it.  Putin sees a man-child, who is put in his place by one of the women that have always told him what to do.</p>
<p>Now, unknown to the cowards of Munich – in fact, not discovered until the flames of civilization had been put out and the wreckage of the world cleared – we have information from our look backwards. Because after the Lion replaced the Lamb and the Wolf was finally beaten, records came to light from OKW &#8212; Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German High Command.</p>
<p>Before Poland, before Czechoslovakia, before the Sudatenland… before the annexation of Austria – before all of the threats of violence followed by offers of peace: Adolf Hitler dipped his toe in the water of western resolve by sending a few lightly armed troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. We learned after the war from the records of the mortified, horrified German generals that had the French or the British put so much as a platoon, or a marching band, or perhaps even a single policeman who refused to get out of the way – had there been any resistance at all the Generals would have ordered their troops back to Germany and Hitler would have been overthrown. Could a platoon, or a single policeman have stopped World War II? Yes. Without question. Hitler himself admitted it.</p>
<p>When the Wolf went into the Rhineland, France and Britain were immeasurably superior to Germany, militarily. Even if the Germans had not backed down, the Allies would have brushed them aside in a few days. But in the three years between the Rhineland and the start of World War II in Europe, the Wolf got stronger and stronger, as the Lambs got weaker and weaker. Those of us backward-lookers see the Bear arming daily, as we make drastic cuts in our defense forces, and it looks sickeningly familiar to us as we bleat in impotent protest.</p>
<p>But Wolves – and Bears – know what lambs sound like. And those of us who do, in fact, learn the lessons of history will have to stand by once again and watch as those who don’t are doomed to repeat it.</p></blockquote>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>An Eyewitness to Ukraine’s Tragedy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/an-eyewitness-to-ukraines-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-eyewitness-to-ukraines-tragedy</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 12 May 2014 04:25:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225289</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Inside the conflict that threatens to tear a nation apart. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ukraine-crisis-eu.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225290" alt="ukraine-crisis-eu" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ukraine-crisis-eu-450x345.jpg" width="315" height="241" /></a>As mayhem in the Ukraine continues, and the death toll mounts, threatening a possible civil war, a heartwarming story emerges from this Ukrainian tragedy. The story involves Israeli humanitarian aid to injured protestors in Kiev. Ten Ukrainians wounded in clashes were airlifted, and brought to Israel’s Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. Valeriya Babchuk, a Kaplan Medical Center doctor, on vacation in her native Kiev, volunteered to provide emergency treatment to Ukrainian activists being shot at the “Maidan,” or Independence Square, in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.  </span></p>
<p>Jeremy Borovitz, 26, a Jewish Service Corps Fellow with the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Kiev was on hand in Philadelphia to relate the story surrounding the “Maidan.” He was hosted by Louis Balcher, the regional representative of Kaplan Medical Center.  Borovitz, a prospective rabbinic student at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, stopped in the Delaware Valley on his way to Israel from Kiev, where he spent a full year. In Kiev, he was involved in many projects including the “Our Shtetl” project, taking him to small villages and, with local Ukrainian non-Jewish students, made short documentary films about the Jewish history of the area.</p>
<p>The situation in the Ukraine has left an indelible impression on the young Borovitz, who worked closely with Ukrainian students seeking a freer, more Western-oriented state for their people. In the meantime, Russian President Putin reduced tension by suggesting that the referendum being staged by pro-Russia separatists in parts of Eastern Ukraine should be postponed. The separatists are seeking to rush the referendum, which they hope will result in an approval for the region to join Russia, much like what happened in Crimea earlier in March of this year.</p>
<p>It was apparent to Putin that open and unmitigated Russian support for the referendum could trigger additional and harsher EU and US sanctions.  Moscow is, however, still opposed to holding presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25, 2014. USA Today reported (May 7, 2014) that “A Ukrainian candidate for president from the country&#8217;s restive Donetsk region said that Russian President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/07/ukraine-candidate-hopes-for-peace/8817799/">pledge</a> to pull his forces back from the Ukrainian border is ‘very good news,’ and a sign that diplomacy may have a chance.”</p>
<p>Putin would like to see a change in the Ukrainian constitution that will allow for federalism in Ukraine. This would give the regions greater powers, and provide Russia with increased influence over eastern Ukraine, and ultimately over the whole of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Ukrainians in the rest of the country and in particular in the western part of Ukraine have rejected the Russian over-lordship and seek closer ties with the West. To confirm this assertion, this reporter asked Jeremy Borovitz whether the demonstrators at the “Maidan” were genuine democrats who want to see a democratic, Western-oriented Ukraine, or were they simply demonstrating for jobs and better living conditions?</p>
<p>Borovitz observed that “The demonstrations at the ‘Maidan’ began with university students expressing their desire to be part of the West, and pushed for European integration. However, after the students were attacked by the police, it became something much more involved. It morphed into a movement that was simply yearning for some sort of change, for a better government that cares about its people. It swelled as the violence increased, with people simply taking a stand against the injustice they felt was taking place. It was a plea for honesty in government, for a people tired of living in a place that was simply Soviet Union redux, rife with corruption and fear. I went to Maidan a few times, and I was amazed at the sense of community that truly existed there among Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Belarussians, Roma&#8230;it was a civil society created by individuals in a country where civil society has fallen short of the mark.”</p>
<p><strong>Joseph Puder (JP):</strong> Is the Svoboda Party in the Ukraine anti-Semitic in nature or merely ultra-nationalist, and did President Vladimir Putin have a point in characterizing the demonstrators in the Maidan as anti-Semitic hooligans?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Jeremy Borovitz (JB):</strong> <em>The Svoboda party certainly has anti-Semitic tendencies, as does Right Sector. However, they have been extremely open since the protest began, and have tried to make entreaties to the Jewish community. No anti-Semitic acts or comments have been tolerated since the protests began. In the end, they are much more anti-Russian than anti-Semitic. That being said, they are not as popular as they seem (under 10%, if you go by presidential polls), and nationalist parties seem much stronger in other parts of Europe. They also do not play a large role in the current government, which has Jews holding high positions, including the Deputy Prime Minister Volodia Groisman, whose father lives in Israel.   </em></span></p>
<p><em>Putin was trying to paint all the protestors as anti-Semitic for his own political purposes. Many Jews have been involved in the protests, many were in leadership roles. There was even a Jewish self-defense brigade, whose leader served in the IDF and wears a Kippah. I believe that Putin has been the one to spark most of the anti-Semitic incidents, desiring to paint the protests as the work of right-wing nationalists being responsible, in order to sway world Jewry to his side.</em></p>
<p><strong>JP:</strong> What has been the Israeli angle in the story you described?</p>
<p><strong>JB:</strong> <em>Israel has been extraordinary in the willingness to take on 10 injured protestors and treat them in Israel. Of the 10, five have already been sent home with a clean bill of health. Kaplan Medical Center treated the injured Ukrainian protestors without any promise of future payment, albeit, the bill has since been paid by Israelis, Americans and Canadians. Four of the protestors arrived unable to walk. Only one is still in a wheelchair, and even though Ukrainian doctors put his chances at 10%, Israeli doctors now say it is 50/50 that he will be able to eventually walk on his own. A group of over 100 Israeli volunteers have cared for the injured men and their families who came with them.</em></p>
<p><strong>JP:</strong> Where do you see the Ukraine in the next few years, and is the Jewish community fully integrated in Ukrainian life?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>JB:</strong> <em>I hope that Ukraine, in five years, will be free, independent, secure, and a part of the global community. However, I fear that the current Russian aggression, which is being met by very little or only symbolic resistance from the West, will severely harm Ukraine in both the short term and long term. I believe that Putin will go as far as he thinks he can get away with, and as long as he is unchecked by the U.S. and Europe, he will continue his westward march.</em></span></p>
<p><em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Jewish community is very much integrated into Ukrainian life. Many Jews were active in the protest movement, and are involved in politics, the arts, business, etc. This, however, is not to say that there is no anti-Semitism in Ukraine. There is. But I do not feel that the level is higher than in most European countries, and certainly it is less than in places like France. I wore my Kippah on the streets of Kiev, which I could not do in other places in Europe. </span></em></p>
<p>Borovitz, like many others, fears that if Russian aggression goes unchecked, the Ukrainian tragedy will spread elsewhere. Yet, the indomitable spirit of the young Ukrainian protestors seeking a free, open and tolerant society may overcome the odds facing them.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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