Re: Off Topic: Heads Up

["Kyle C. Quest" <kyle.c.quest () gmail com>]

No... no... no... and no again. He is completely off base. And not
only that... he's also very subjective on the topic because he's got
more than enough hate and fear for the old Soviet Union. You know that
Brzezinski is from Poland... The Polish government never liked Russia.
As a matter of fact Poland invaded Russia many times (during the good
old days of the Polish Empire). The biggest modern reason the Polish
government hates Russia is because during the WW2 Soviets and Germany
decided to split Poland into two, then at the end of the WW2 in 1944
during the Warsaw uprising Soviets just waited outside of the city and
let Germans exterminate them (then, of course, they sure didn't like
to be a communist country). Brzezinski was a witness to it... In his
eyes Russia will forever be a monster no matter what...

None of what Brzezinski says is any good. His reasoning is affected by
the old fears and hatred. Don't ever get duped into believing any of
that. This is exactly the old Cold War mentality I was talking about.

Have you noticed how he started the article with a reference about
Stalin and the old days... It's not a surprise, because he lived
through it... One thing that should be noted is that Stalin himself
was from a city called Gori... and you might recognize the name
because it's one of the Georgian cities we hear about... What's funny
is how Stalin is still a national hero there. I don't know if anybody
knows, but there's a big ass stature of Stalin there. In some cases if
you say something bad about Stalin there you'll get more than a number
of unpleasant looks.

This whole setup about Georgia being an innocent democracy attacked by
a big barbarian neighbor because they can't stand democracy and have
to destroy it is just a big joke. Do you really think that russians
are blood thirsty monsters... This is the exact same thing that was
going on during the Cold War. We scared our people... so we could
justify our military spending and everything we did. We overstated how
many nukes Soviets had and what they were capable of. We, as people,
must not fall for the same propaganda and war mongering. We can't
afford it...

 Back to Georgia... Just look at what was going on in Georgia in 2007.
It sure didn't look like democracy when the police was doing something
taken from a Soviets' playbook (read this as a reference:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/69464  ).

When the current Georgian president was elected one of his main
campaign promises was to retake Abkhazia and S.Osettia. The whole
thing about Russia trying to instigate the breakup is a bit of a joke
because this problem was there from the early 90s. When USSR dissolved
both of those regions wanted to be independent to, but Georgia didn't
want that and tried to keep them by force, but that failed and
according to the peace agreement Russians ended up sending
peacekeepers there. Of course, Russia played politics with those
provinces. Obviously, giving Russian passports to people there was not
the most diplomatic thing to do. However, to say that Russians
instigated the breakup and it was their master plan from day one is
untrue. Russia itself is much more interested in territorial
integrity. Breaking Georgia apart would cause problems in their own
hot spots. Russia, as any other country, wants have friendly nations
around their borders and they are more inclined to work with somebody
who's willing to co-exist instead of somebody who's trying to pick a
fight and disrespect them. Take the Ukrainian government for example.
They are trying to pick a fight with Russia. They've being doing it
ever since the so-called orange revolution. It got so ridiculous that
it's not even funny. They are trying to exterminate everything Russian
including the language. Imagine Canada trying to get rid of the French
language and how ridiculous it would be. Well, the Ukrainian
government is actually doing it. And now they are trying to rewrite
international agreements to control russian military movements to and
from Crimea and to control how that military could be used. And they
are trying to do it with a straight face :-) Just imagine if Cuba
tried to pull something like this with our naval base in Cuba... Would
we be happy?

As far as danger to the neighboring countries take Azerbaijan, for
example. Russian-Azerbaijan relationships are normal and Azerbaijan is
a pro-western democracy. And, on top of all that, they are the ones
with most oil. Using the oil logic that many seem to invoke, they'd
try to invade them before anybody else. The bottom line is that as
long as we don't try to get in where we don't belong and the countries
neighboring Russia are not escalating the relationships on purpose
(due to their historical or political reasons) nobody is in danger.

The last thing that I want to point out as an evidence that
Brzezinski's article is totally off base is how he presents
speculations about the cyber attacks in Estonia as facts...


On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Paul Ferguson <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote:
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> Hash: SHA1
>
> - -- "Kyle C. Quest" <kyle.c.quest () gmail com> wrote:
>
> > This is getting a bit political... nonetheless it is related to
> > security... even though it's a different kind :-)
> >
> > Several points:
>
> [elided]
>
> I would suggest that the finer points of this situation are best
> outlined in this Time.com article authored by Zbigniew Brzezinski,
> who is a former U.S. National Security Adviser:
>
> http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1832699,00.html
>
> Also, this audio report (6:12) that aired today on the PBS news show
> "The World" this afternoon sums up the situation very nicely,
> I think (especially towards the very end of the clip):
>
> http://theworld.org/audio/0818086.mp3
>
> FYI,
>
> - - ferg
>
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> --
> "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
>  Engineering Architecture for the Internet
>  fergdawg(at)netzero.net
>  ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
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