Memo To Obama: This Was Their Red Line! David Stockman davidstockmanscontracorner.com March 3, 2014
In 1783 the Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great, thereby satisfying the longstanding quest of the Russian Czars for a warm-water port. In fact, over the ages Sevastopol emerged as a great naval base at the strategic tip of the Crimean peninsula, where it became home to the mighty Black Sea Fleet of the Czars and then the commissars. For the next 171 years Crimea was an integral part of Russia—a span that exceeds the 166 years that have elapsed since California was annexed by a similar thrust of “Manifest Destiny” on this continent, thereby providing, incidentally, the United States Navy with its own warm-water port in San Diego. While no foreign forces subsequently invaded the California coasts, it was most definitely not Ukrainian and Polish riffles, artillery and blood which famously annihilated The Charge Of The Light Brigade at the Crimean city of Balaclava in 1854; they were Russians defending the homeland. And the portrait of the Russian ”hero” hanging in Putin’s office is that of Czar Nicholas I—who’s brutal 30-year reign brought the Russian Empire to its historical zenith, and who was revered in Russian hagiography as the defender of Crimea, even as he lost the 1850s war to the Ottomans and Europeans. Besides that, there is no evidence that Putin does historical apologies, anyway. In fact, its their Red Line. When the enfeebled Franklin Roosevelt made port in the Crimean city of Yalta in February 1945 he did know he was in Soviet Russia. Maneuvering to cement his control of the Kremlin in the intrigue-ridden struggle for succession after Stalin’s death a few years later, Nikita Khrushchev allegedly spent 15 minutes reviewing his “gift” of Crimea to his subalterns in Kiev in honor of the decision by their ancestors 300 years earlier to accept the inevitable and become a vassal of Russia. Self-evidently, during the long decades of the Cold War, the West did nothing to liberate the “captive nation” of the Ukraine—with or without the Crimean appendage bestowed upon it in 1954. Nor did it draw any red lines in the mid-1990′s when a financially desperate Ukraine rented back Sevastopol and
the strategic redoubts of the Crimea to an equally pauperized Russia. In short, in the era before we got our Pacific port in 1848 and in the 166-year interval since then, the security and safety of the American people have depended not one wit on the status of the Russianspeaking Crimea. Should the local population now choose fealty to the Grand Thief in Moscow over the ruffians and rabble who have seized Kiev, what’s to matter! Worse still, how long can America survive the screeching sanctimony and mindless meddling of Susan Rice and Samantha Power? Mr. President, send them back to geography class; don’t draw any new Red Lines. This one has been morphing for centuries among the quarreling tribes, peoples, potentates, Patriarchs and pretenders of a small region that is none of our damn business.
Obama ‘brandishes Phone At Putin!’ What People Are Saying About This Staged White House Photo Release Joe Saunders Bizpacreview March 3, 2014
President Obama spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes on Saturday following the “uncontested arrival” of Russian tanks in Ukraine. The White House released a photo of that phone call, with Obama decked out in rugged denim. The Reagan-esque image is an almost comically effort by the White House to portray a tough looking Obama to the American people, a likely reaction to the pointed criticism over his timid response to Putin’s aggression. Twitter users tweeted the photo and their thoughts of Obama’s theatrics. The commentary is hilarious, despite the seriousness of the matter. As captured by Twitchy:
A Bit of Ancient History Regarding Ukraine Charles Burris lewrockwell.com March 3, 2014
Watch the award-winning documentary, The Soviet Story, to learn a bit of ancient history regarding Ukrainians, Russians, and their European brethren. The Soviet Story (2008) - cu subtitrare in Română VIDEO BELOW http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVZjyyAE-78
Kerry To Russia: You Can’t Just Invade A Country On False Pretext Daniel McAdams Lew Rockwell Blog March 3, 2014 Poor John Kerry. He is prone to foot-in-mouth syndrome, but clearly the stress is getting to him. It’s understandable. The Secretary of State and his minions went and provoked a regime change in Ukraine to which they sang the chorus “democracy” and “people power” only to discover that: 1) the new leadership has a bad case of Basil Fawlty syndrome, stiff-arming at every opportunity; and 2) a good chunk of the country (as the rest of us could tell looking at voting maps) had no intention of going along with the US-engineered regime change in Kiev. First Crimea, with a majority Russian and Russian-speaking population, rejected the self-proclaimed government in Kiev, then one by one eastern Ukrainians began mass demonstrations where the Russian flag was hoisted on public buildings. In Kiev, the demonstrations are “people power.” In Donetsk and Sebastopol it is “armed gunmen.” That is the view of western governments and their media class. But the authorities in the autonomous province of Crimea — backed by tens of thousands in the streets — did the unthinkable: they asked the Russians to protect them against the new Kiev regime which was en route to crush dissent. Interventionism is a dirty game and there is considerable danger in believing too closely in one’s own self-deceptions and on closed-loop analysis. But what Kerry and his boss called a “invasion” looked a lot more like the neocon fantasy of how US troops would be greeted in Baghdad. In other words, for an invading force, the Russians seemed to be welcomed by the local population. The stress was clearly too much. Today on Face the Nation Kerry delivered the kind of hilarious groaner that undermines the entire US manufactured outrage at Russia’s action next door in Ukraine. Said Kerry on camera: It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country…You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext. One risks ruining the punchline by mentioning such words as Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Yugoslavia, and so on…
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