On February 13 President Obama will address the nation on the State of the Union. It will be a television show, constricted in time due to short attention spans, and include some vox populi features such as real praise for fake heroes and fake praise for one or two real ones. It all adds to the illusion that we are self-governed. He’ll throw crap on the wall.
Vladimir Putin recently gave his own Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It took a long time to read, so I imagine it must have taken well over an hour to deliver, maybe two. I cannot begin to describe its content and do it justice. But most of it could never be spoken here. I did not find any applause lines. He did say “There can be no place in politics for criminals.” If Obama were to utter that line, there would be cold, malevolent stares. He might fear for his life.
Piece of Mindful 
Wether here or in Russia.
All hail the power of the dot.
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Anything else going on in your utterly banal existence? If so, please link us.
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By the way, Swede – do you want to know what happens when John Galt goes Galt? Or anyone for that matter? Someone else steps in and fills their slot and it’s as if they were never there.
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I dont get your admiration for this guy. If you were the Russian version of Mark Tokarski blogging the version of things you do here but against the excesses of the Russian regime as opposed to the US you actually would not be mistaken to fear for your life or at least your freedom. This guy wrote the playbook for what you consider to be the 9/11 conspiracy, except they literally got caught in the act planting explosives in those apartment buildings back in 1999.
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I like this guy because he plays chess. He is the holdup in the downfall of Syria, the attack on Iran, not that he can stop it. (The US objective in Syria, as I just recently read, is to take Syria and Hezbollah out of the picture so that there is no need for regional bombing and troops when Iran is attacked.) We need a bipolar/tripolar world to put the US back in its cage, make it safer for humans and animals.
Your assumption that because the US is a force for evil, that I must assume that Russia is a force for good, is wrong. However, they have never been the evil empire that they were painted to be in our propaganda system.
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He is very intelligent, he obviously has the backing of the intelligence services and bureacracy in Russia and knows how to make it work for him. Wont be long before he is on our side though for a Chinese dogpile.
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I don’t know the future, but if he does indeed block the move on Iran, he’ll likely be the head of the Evil Empire again.
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They will need us and japan eventually or siberia will be northern china.
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Traditionally it has been Japan that has had its eyes on Siberia. I doubt the Russians would look to them for help!
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true, but that’s because traditionally it has been Japan that was the most powerful in the neighborhood and looking to expand at the expense of it’s neighbors. Not the case now. They will need each other to try and hold onto what they have.
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The US has occupied Japan since the end of World War II and continues to do so. In the meantime, Japan has rearmed, but is still under the US thumb. Your words seem to indicate a belief that Japan is a stand-alone entity. I disagree. Were that so. It would be able to force the US to relinquish ts bases, which are hugely unpopular among the population there.
So as with NATO, I view Japan as merely another manifestation of US hegemony, even if there are massive cracks in the dam.
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Stand alone entity or not is not the issue. They would not last long as a stand alone entity these days anyway. China is the great power in the region and is trending upward. The lesser powers like Russia Japan and the us will either shine the shoes of china or naturally band together in areas where their interests converge to oppose it.
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I beg to differ. Russia is an immense power, like us loaded with resources and self-sufficient, and long on the way to recovery from the big collapse. They are not as powerful as the US, but too big to attack. China is in the process of bundling up, and Japan is a very powerful nation, again, not as powerful as the US. But if they form alliances, we have a problem. And that is what the US works to prevent every morning – alliances. The big one right now is India/China/Russia, and it would be logical for Japan and Korea to come aboard, and that scares the living shit out of our leaders.
(By the way, the Koreas would reunify this afternoon if the US would allow it.)
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The calculation is not the same as it is in the middle east. China is not going to form a lasting alliance with Russia because Russia has exactly what China wants. Large expanses of open space and resources right on their border. They would not even have to ethnically cleanse the place because so few Russians actually live there. China and Russia have fought each other far more often than they have us. You have a US centric view of the world. Its not about us. Russia will come looking to us and Japan for backing. China is not going to need an alliance with Russia and wont enter into one if it prevents them from getting what they want…chopping off a few chunks of russia here and there if it suits them.
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China and Russia are already aliied though it is not talked aout here in the land of free press. Luke, use the Google. It is a major plank in the Putin regime, to bring Russia and BRIC together for survival against a US dominated NATO.
There was a border skirmish with Russia in the late sixties, but China is generally not expansionist. Japan has typically been the aggressive force in the region, a very strong militaristic culture, as Chinese will attest.
US-centric? The US, as we speak, is aggressively encircling China, which responding in kind, is beefing up its defense posture. In American parlance, that is called China being a “threat to world peace.” You gotta learn the lingo.
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“China is generally not expansionist”is very superficial and would come as news to the native populations who reside in what is now called western China, as well as the Vietnamese, Phillipinos and various residents of the south china sea islands. You want see the entire world as merely reacting to the evil aggresive acts of the United States. That happens such as it is only as a function of the fact that the US has been the dominant power. Once China has the power to assert its own will vis a vis Russia….it can and will. Just as China and Russia group to oppose the US when it suits their own interests so will Russia and US group to oppose China. Its the natural order of things.
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I meant just that – China is generally not expansionist. It has plenty of resources – of course, if you want to go way, way back you can trace the origins of modern China to invasions. And Tibet has always been a sticking point.
Vietnam and China have skirmished over South China Sea islands, but those are not invasions. In 1979 Vietnam invaded Cambodia to get rid of the Pol Pot regime, and then withdrew. China invaded Vietnam at that time, and then withdrew. That is interesting as the US had apparently been funneling aid to PP through China.
And, of course, North Korea in 1951, but I see that as purely defensive. US troops had not too long before left China in the wake of the defeat of Chaing Kai Chek, and likely saw US presence so close to its border as a direct threat requiring a response.
I stand by my statement.
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