Dont ignore the Russian bombings.

[neilgin1]

the two bombings that just happened in Russia, are just about the scariest news to happen on the eve of 2014 because what it MIGHT mean is that a wicked AND stupid sa-udi "prince" (Bandar) just made good with a threat he hurled at Vladi Putin, a few months back:

"Bandar told Putin, "...The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya.... As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us... "

(article conts...its a ZH article dated 27 Aug 2013)

"Was today's terrorist explosion just a warning shot ultimately funded and organized by none other than the biggest loser from the Syrian detente: Saudi Arabia, because recall that it was Saudi Arabia which orchestrated the near-US invasion after playing Obama and Kerry like a fiddle, in hopes of getting the natgas pipeline under Syria. Following the Putin-brokered peace plan, Saudi will now have to wait at least one more year before re-escalating tensions in the Syria region with hopes of installing its own puppet regime. In the meantime, is Saudi now openly lashing out at the one country that made this delay a reality. And if so, when, where and how will Putin retaliate against the country that serves as the anchor of the petrodollar system? We look forward to finding out. "

"Meet Saudi Arabia's Bandar bin Sultan: The Puppetmaster Behind The Syrian War "
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-27/meet-saudi-arabias-bandar-bin-sultan-puppetmaster-behind-syrian-war

then this article "Caught On Tape: Suicide Bombing In Russia's Fifth Largest Train Station Kills 15, One Month Ahead Of Sochi Games"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-29/caught-tape-suicide-bombing-russias-fifth-largest-train-station-kills-15-one-month-a

ends with the question: "So, like before, if Saudi Arabia is doing its best to poke Vladimir Putin with ever escalating provocations, how long until the former KGB spy retaliates?"

Now, is it just me, or does it strike anybody odd, that some very real rising tensions, almost preludes to war, are happening at both ends of the Russia-China-Iran area......China, in the east, with the exclusionary zones, and now this in the Middle East/Turkey/Caucasus regions?

i'd really like to see what Putin has to say publically.....we could really be on the eve of World War Three.....no bs.

[neilgin1]

(OP-ED from RT-Russia Today....Putin's English language mouthpiece...this is going to ugly)

West should drop 'inconsistent approach' to terrorism after Volgograd bombings

"Attacks in Russia must be considered as serious as those in London and New York, and they require an international response since many countries in the world could be threatened, Neil Clark, journalist and broadcaster, told RT.

RT: We've heard a lot of reaction from the international community. Will there be any action in your opinion?

Neil Clark: It’s nice that the NATO Chief condemned this terrible attack and yesterday’s attack as well. But what we are going to do in concrete terms? Because the Western approach to terrorism is very inconsistent. We are told, on the one hand, that the West totally opposes terrorism and radicalism. On the other hand we have the West lining up with radical Islamic terrorists in Syria, backing Al-Qaeda which is trying to topple a secular government now. The Syrian authorities actually repelled an Al-Qaeda attempt to bomb the US embassy in Damascus in 2006. And what the US is doing in response? They are trying to topple the Syrian government.

So there is an inconsistency here and I think that unless the West actually stops this inconsistent approach and actually does fight terrorism across the world and work with Russia closely, these problems will only continue to present a danger. But when terrorism occurs in Russia, it’s a kind of dismissed or disregarded; this is not really the same thing. There have been some shocking articles in the Western media when similar terrorist attacks have occurred in Russia; they were blaming the Russian authorities for this. For example, when there was a Moscow bombing in 2011, an article was saying that the Russians actually brought it on themselves by their policy towards Chechnya. And you wouldn’t write articles like that on the bombings in London, in New York. So I think there are double standards here.

We need to take these terrible attacks in Russia very seriously, as seriously as we take these attacks in New York or in London. Until this happens, until the West does take serious action… But I’m afraid we are not going to take action needed to stop these attacks taking place in the future.

RT:What kind of international action you are talking about?

NC: The West needs to change its policy towards Russia because there is a war being carried against Russia. That’s a kind of soft war, a propaganda war which has been orchestrated by the Western neo-conservatives, which I call the “fake left” in Western countries, which is actually trying to demonize Russia for any reason, whether it’s Pussy Riot… whether it’s the gay rights law…

In terms of terror threats, I think, the West should change its [alliance] with Saudi Arabia which is a major sponsor of radical Islamic groups throughout the world. The trouble is, if you look at Syria for example, the West is actually on the same side as the terrorists because of its relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel, who both want the regime in Syria to be removed.

So I think we need a shift in the Western capitals. I think we need to work closer with Russia. We saw close cooperation at the Boston bombings, when we had the Russian warnings about the Tsarnaev brothers, but they were ignored by the Americans because again it’s Russian warnings. The West [must] cooperate more seriously with Russia, as equal partners, in this battle against the radical terror groups; that’s a major shift that’s got to happen. On the one hand, they say they are going to work with Russia; on the other hand, there is this kind of Cold War propaganda against Russia.

RT:Back to Volgograd - Two attacks in less than 24 hours, both are now thought to have been carried out by male suicide bombers. What kind of message do you think the attackers are trying to send in that city now?

NC: They are clearly trying to intimidate, to scare people. It’s their daily business, you know. Bombing crowded buses on Monday morning, bombing railway stations…It’s about terrorism. And of course this is linked again to the Olympics coming up; it’s an attempt to scare people from going to the Olympics.

On the one hand, we have those in the West telling people: “Don’t go to the Olympics because Russia oppresses laws on this, on that… ”, on the other hand, we got terrorists. This is sociological warfare going here and it’s about saying to Russian people, in particular Southern Russians: “Look, we can get you wherever you go, whether it’s a bus or a train station,” and trying to intimidate people.

The only response to this is of course international action. Who knows who funds these people, who carried out those attacks; it could be international, we don’t know. It requires an international response because many countries in the world are threatened by this. And what can you do? You can’t put metal detectors on buses, it’s absolutely impractical. So I think it needs a massive international response."

http://rt.com/op-edge/volgograd-bombing ... roach-971/

[johnbrickner]

Well, say a former KGB takes the strutting Bandar out. The US won't like it but won't do anything overt about it. If he's as big a scum bag as I'm reading the US may not care to do much of anything about it. I mean outside of condemning terrorism, bla, bla, ect.. The rest of the world outside of Saudi/Bandar's influence . . . He got his just deserves.

Now Putin is a sly dog. He's not going to say or do anything publicly that will tip his hand in the slightest. Currently after having let all those (political?) prisoners go, and getting Ukraine (natural gas) to turn back East instead of West, he's looking good right now.

I'm not discounting a WWIII scenario Neil, I just don't see it yet. Nyet even with a Saudi Prince getting assassinated. The pressure cooker isn't hot enough yet.

[neilgin1]

Well, say a former KGB takes the strutting Bandar out. The US won't like it but won't do anything overt about it. If he's as big a scum bag as I'm reading the US may not care to do much of anything about it. I mean outside of condemning terrorism, bla, bla, ect.. The rest of the world outside of Saudi/Bandar's influence . . . He got his just deserves.

Now Putin is a sly dog. He's not going to say or do anything publicly that will tip his hand in the slightest. Currently after having let all those (political?) prisoners go, and getting Ukraine (natural gas) to turn back East instead of West, he's looking good right now.

I'm not discounting a WWIII scenario Neil, I just don't see it yet. Nyet even with a Saudi Prince getting assassinated. The pressure cooker isn't hot enough yet.

Govts "communicate" thru main stream press op-ed's.....or "analysis articles"....check out this response from the Washington Times....not so much on the bombings, but what China and Russia "grand plan"....no condolences yet, btw...the only nation to send Putin condolences has been Israel, probably because they had quite a few of their buses bombed like this, which of course stopped after the wall was erected by Arik Sharon....guess it worked..

so read this article from the US: (i'm NOT saying Putin is some sort of 'nice guy', but SOMEBODY sure wants war....maybe that's why Obama has purged 200 + senior flag officers from the military this past year)

U.S. Cold War rivals China, Russia step up challenges to Obama’s Asia pivot


Russia bullies Ukraine and pushes its claims to the North Pole, while Beijing beefs up naval patrols in the South China Sea and challenges U.S. allies on its borders. As the Obama administration attempts an ambitious reorientation of the nation's strategic and diplomatic focus, two regional powerhouses and former Cold War adversaries are showing themselves increasingly keen to challenge Washington's dominance on the world stage.

Foreign policy analysts say recent moves by Moscow and Beijing have been far-reaching, heavy with symbolism and clear tests of President Obama's intentions and resolve.

Since a team of Moscow-backed explorers planted a symbolic Russian flag into the potentially oil- and gas-rich floor of the Arctic Ocean in 2007, actions to make good on that claim include the construction of nuclear icebreakers, and refurbishing its port and military facilities in the region.

Teams of Chinese government operatives have been scouring Africa and Latin America to cut a growing number of forward-leaning energy deals with governments and cement long-term alliances.

The overall message: U.S. power will not go unchecked in the 21st century — particularly in Eastern Europe and greater Asia, where Russian
and Chinese influence and interests have long presented strategic challenges for American presidents.

Big questions are surging through Washington's foreign policy establishment over the extent to which the U.S. is on course to effectively respond or is at risk of having its influence rolled back in those regions — and perhaps globally.

With the Obama administration spending the past half-decade reducing America's military footprint in the Middle East and preparing to pull U.S. forces from Afghanistan, "Russia and China are making global moves," said Patrick M. Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

"The U.S. has been engaged in drawdown from two active wars and a gradual restructuring of our strategic priorities to Asia over the long term, and this transition is being seized by Russia and China," Mr. Cronin said.

"China is most focused on the South and East China Seas, while Russia is most focused on the Arctic and other global interests," he said. "The U.S. is trying to stand up to this activity, but it's hard when you're busy trying to make your own transition."

Three-cornered game

In the past month, Russia has shifted several of its long-range, nuclear-capable missiles to a territory that abuts Poland. This provocative show of force was aimed at countering a long-planned U.S. missile shield on Europe's eastern border.

China abruptly established an air defense zone in the East China Sea in a territorial clash with Japan. The development triggered a Cold War-style rhetorical standoff for weeks between Washington and Beijing and prompted the Pentagon to defiantly fly B-52 bombers in the zone.

The struggle for influence in greater Asia is complicated by the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin is "more worried about China than it is about the U.S. military's activities in the region," Mr. Cronin said.

Russia is far less capable than it was decades ago in projecting military power, he said, asserting that Moscow has come to rely on provocative announcements such as the surprise movement of missiles to "indicate that they are still in the game."

Mr. Putin played a particularly aggressive hand in the recent clash over Ukraine, using threats and Russian cash to woo the strategic former Soviet territory away from a long-term economic and strategic deal with the European Union.

In essence, Mr. Cronin said, Moscow is prone to playing geopolitical games designed to subvert U.S. influence in Eastern Europe and Asia. "If they can gain political advantage by looking like they're supporting China, and they can do it at our expense, they're happy to do it," he said.

Caught in the middle as Beijing and Moscow flex their muscles are the smaller nations in both regions. Many of them are fragile young democracies struggling to figure out how closely they want to align themselves with Washington and invoke the ire of the rising regional power.

Moscow's determination to fight for influence burst into the headlines when the government of Ukraine accepted a $15 billion loan from the Kremlin, despite warnings from Washington and a massive outcry from pro-democracy protesters in Kiev, who spent weeks pleading with their government to engage, alternatively, in a closer U.S.-backed economic partnership with the European Union.

China's massive economy is wielding similar influence over its smaller neighbors in East Asia, including the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar.

Beijing also has clashed openly with Japan, particularly in territorial disputes in the East China Sea. The dispute may grow more heated with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit Thursday to a historically fraught shrine to Japan's World War II dead.

U.S. national security officials say a bigger worry is that many Chinese leaders appear to regard the isolated dictatorship in North Korea as a kind of puppet state whose nuclear weapons program and general antipathy toward the wider international community hang on strings that lead back to Beijing.

Some conservative foreign policy analysts in Washington say the Obama administration is naively ignoring the gravity of the situation.

"We've got to realize that we're in a new Great Game and we don't ," said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar focusing on national security and foreign policy issues at the American Enterprise Institute. "We're too distracted to realize we're playing. We're distracted by a lack of coherent strategy. We're distracted by willful blindness.

"The way I see it is we have a clash of philosophies," Mr. Rubin said. "While American diplomacy is predicated on the notion of compromises and win-win situations, both the Russians and the Chinese see influence as a zero-sum game and, as a result, whenever we give either an inch, they take a mile and they have no intention of letting go.

"There's also a philosophical difference about allies," he said. "America tends to see allies as partners, while both Russia and China see allies as client states. They dictate and the ally listens. For Moscow, that's what they've sought in Ukraine and how they look at Armenia, Belarus and increasingly Uzbekistan. With China, look at North Korea."

Perilous pivot

The Obama administration has spent the past five years pushing for more inclusion of smaller Pacific Rim nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a wide-reaching free trade agreement that pointedly does not include China. The administration also has thrown increased U.S. diplomatic weight behind the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a kind of multilateral counterweight to China's growing geopolitical clout in the region.

But at the end of the day, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Cronin say, the Obama administration would be wise to adopt a more unambiguous, black-and-white approach to executing the "pivot to Asia" during Mr. Obama's final three years in the White House.

The United States, the analysts say, should be doing more to beef up unilateral, military-based relations with smaller Asian nations in order to send a message to China and Russia of the depth and durability of U.S. interests in key regions.

"It's a long game," said Mr. Cronin. Beijing's creation of the air defense zone in the East China Sea may be "small tactical gambits," but if the U.S. does not "respond and we don't remain strong, then China will unilaterally redefine the region in a way that we do not recognize," he said.

"The U.S. can still hold its own on this contest and still prevail by keeping the region behind the U.S. presence," he said. "If we don't respond vigorously, over time, we're going to be just muscled out of the region and China will be the dominant power."

Mr. Rubin said Washington should be more active in seizing opportunities for the U.S. Navy to make statements in the region. "We can consider our aircraft carriers as floating embassies in a way," he said, arguing that Washington has made a mistake in recent years by turning down invitations from Cambodia to make ports of call.

"The reason we don't take advantage of this enough is because we do not see influence as a zero-sum game the way that the Chinese do," Mr. Rubin said. "All the countries in the region realize this is the Chinese mentality. We, on the other hand, are wallowing in blissful ignorance of the way our adversaries think."

As a result, he said, Taiwan and other allies are questioning the U.S. commitment. Taipei, he said, has become significantly closer to Beijing in recent years "because they see us as unreliable."

Mr. Cronin said the Obama administration deserves some credit for its pivot to Asia and for pushing ahead with massive U.S. military and strategic realignments during the past five years — even at a time of significant strain on the U.S. economy.

"We're transitioning from a land-based military to an air- and sea-based posture, and we're transitioning from Middle East wars to more of a broad Indo-Pacific engagement," he said. "We're doing the right reorientation, but we're not doing it very effectively because we're big and slow and cumbersome and we have domestic political and budget constraints.

"The point is that it's not going as well as anyone would like, but it's also not going so badly strategically," Mr. Cronin said. "I think the Obama team is making the necessary strategic shifts from a posture in which we could not win, to a posture in which we have a chance to keep the leading role in the world."


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ges/print/

[neilgin1]

i'm not the only one to draw the Bandar/Sa-udi link; James Corbett, who I regard as one of the best alt-media journalists, spoke on RT today:



(sorry if it seems like i'm making much ado about nothing.....but something tells me this is "Sarajevo 1914"....hope i'm wrong, I REALLY Do)

[IdahoCopper]

As the dollar unwinds the only thing the us.gov can do as a distraction is to incite war.

[gubni]

As the dollar unwinds the only thing the us.gov can do as a distraction is to incite war.

I've said for years we should give those arab countries a new natural resource. I've heard if you superheat sand with a nuke it will make glass.

[neilgin1]

As the dollar unwinds the only thing the us.gov can do as a distraction is to incite war.

I've said for years we should give those arab countries a new natural resource. I've heard if you superheat sand with a nuke it will make glass.

which one?

we're dependent on the Sa-udi/Qatar/Kuwait gang, and they're dependent on us, for security.

how are we dependent on them?....its not so much the oil, its the fact that the Sa-udi's as lead nation of OPEC, will only trade in petro-dollars....and that is the ONLY reason the majority of GLOBAL oil trade is done in DOLLARS....the second, the world decides en masse to trade oil in anything BUT dollars?

the jig is up, but before the world gets to that point, they know the whole weight, and heft of the US military is upon them. That's the reason we pay ONLY $3 plus a gallon of gas, we EXPORT our inflation to the WORLD, flooding it with paper dollars....that's what Libya was about, the "Arab Spring", Mali, Chad, South Sudan.....and even this current Bandar "threat" to Putin regarding Syria.

Syria's not about a bunch of arabs suddenly deciding "we don't like Assad"....its about competing natural gas pipelines; the Saudi's want their pipeline going north to sell to Europe, and the Russians want their pipeline going west to sell to Europe too. all the rest of the noise is bs.

and nukes?....an effective weapon....too effective, cant use them, unless its a last resort, because like when you take out a sidearm, say if somebody wants to rob you?....you have to be prepared in a millisecond, to pull that trigger to END assailant A, B, C, etc....right?....now imagine that with nuclear weaponry....it takes a real cold heart to pull that trigger. Once it all starts, how do you stop it?....OR if your adversary regards ANY nuclear threat, implicit or explicit, as real, who says they wont pre-empt strike you? Oct 73, Golda Meir had 13 F-14's with nuclear strike packages in GO position, the only thing that stayed her hand was Nixon emptying NATO stockpiles to re-supply Israel....true story.

but someday, somebody WILL miscalculate....count on it.

[AGgressive Metal]

Secretive wealthy Arab princes, KGB, CIA, international financiers, the opium trade, French & British neo-colonialism, Chinese communists, Swiss bank accounts, Turkish gold merchants, Islamic terrorists networks, private "contractors", Zionist settlers, Texas oil barons, etc - The story of current middle-east events reads like a Tom Clancy novel on steroids.

[neilgin1]

Secretive wealthy Arab princes, KGB, CIA, international financiers, the opium trade, French & British neo-colonialism, Chinese communists, Swiss bank accounts, Turkish gold merchants, Islamic terrorists networks, private "contractors", Zionist settlers, Texas oil barons, etc - The story of current middle-east events reads like a Tom Clancy novel on steroids.

or Revelations...