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Kunstler: "Welcome To The Era Of Failed States"
Submitted by James H. Kunstler of Kunstler.com,
So, now we are threatening to start World War Three because Russia is trying to control the chaos in a failed state on its border — a state that our own government spooks provoked into failure? The last time I checked, there was a list of countries that the USA had sent troops, armed ships, and aircraft into recently, and for reasons similar to Russia’s in Crimea: the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, none of them even anywhere close to American soil. I don’t remember Russia threatening confrontations with the USA over these adventures.
The phones at the White House and the congressional offices ought to be ringing off the hook with angry US citizens objecting to the posturing of our elected officials. There ought to be crowds with bobbing placards in Farragut Square reminding the occupant of 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue how ridiculous this makes us look.
The saber-rattlers at The New York Times were sounding like the promoters of a World Wrestling Federation stunt Monday morning when they said in a Page One story:
“The Russian occupation of Crimea has challenged Mr. Obama as has no other international crisis, and at its heart, the advice seemed to pose the same question: Is Mr. Obama tough enough to take on the former K.G.B. colonel in the Kremlin?”
Are they out of their chicken-hawk minds over there? It sounds like a ploy out of the old Eric Berne playbook: Let’s You and Him Fight. What the USA and its European factotums ought to do is mind their own business and stop issuing idle threats. They set the scene for the Ukrainian melt-down by trying to tilt the government their way, financing a pro-Euroland revolt, only to see their sponsored proxy dissidents give way to a claque of armed neo-Nazis, whose first official act was to outlaw the use of the Russian language in a country with millions of long-established Russian-speakers. This is apart, of course, from the fact Ukraine had been until very recently a province of Russia’s former Soviet empire.
Secretary of State John Kerry — a haircut in search of a brain — is winging to Kiev tomorrow to pretend that the USA has a direct interest in what happens there. Since US behavior is so patently hypocritical, it raises the pretty basic question: what are our motives? I don’t think they amount to anything more than international grandstanding — based on the delusion that we have the power and the right to control everything on the planet, which is based, in turn, on our current mood of extreme insecurity as our own ongoing spate of bad choices sets the table for a banquet of consequences.
America can’t even manage its own affairs. We ignore our own gathering energy crisis, telling ourselves the fairy tale that shale oil will allow us to keep driving to WalMart forever. We paper over all of our financial degeneracy and wink at financial criminals. Our infrastructure is falling apart. We’re constructing an edifice of surveillance and social control that would make the late Dr. Joseph Goebbels turn green in his grave with envy while we squander our dwindling political capital on stupid gender confusion battles.
The Russians, on the other hand, have every right to protect their interests along their own border, to protect the persons and property of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, not long ago, were citizens of a greater Russia, to discourage neo-Nazi activity in their back-yard, and most of all to try to stabilize a region that has little history and experience with independence. They also have to contend with the bankruptcy of Ukraine, which may be the principal cause of its current crack-up. Ukraine is deep in hock to Russia, but also to a network of Western banks, and it remains to be seen whether the failure of these linked obligations will lead to contagion throughout the global financial system. It only takes one additional falling snowflake to push a snow-field into criticality.
Welcome to the era of failed states. We’ve already seen plenty of action around the world and we’re going to see more as resource and capital scarcities drive down standards of living and lower the trust horizon. The world is not going in the direction that Tom Friedman and the globalists thought. Anything organized at the giant scale is now in trouble, nation-states in particular. The USA is not immune to this trend, whatever we imagine about ourselves for now.
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If you think Russia is a rogue state what the hell do you call the USSA?
do you think russia has the right to land on Brighton Beach in Brooklyn to "protect the persons and property of Russian-speaking [people]" too?
I think Russia has the right (and obligation) to land in Brooklyn and take back their Kazarian terrorists (and Kunstler too).
Welcome to the era of Made to Fail States. Richey Rich thinks if he lets the developement of a middle class takes something away from him. In fact every penny you have he considers his. You're breathing his air, clogging his highway, blocking his view. The only time he is at peace is when he flys overhead looking down thinking, "How like ants they are. I want to crush them, burn them, pour molten lead into their nests."
We invaded Iraq to protect our oil interests in the first gulf war. Why would we not think Putin's desire to protect his natural gas pipe line routes to W Europe and warm water seaports are not of equal concern to him?
Funny how the liberals on the Huff'ing Post are now working overtime to hang this on either GW Bush or the GOP house majority. They continue to bend themselves into pretzels trying to convince themselves Obama is perfectly capable of dealing with Putin and is just the victim here of Racist Tea Partiers. In the meantime, on to the Minimum wage debate for ther libs and back to The Real Housewives of Bsverly Hills for the sheep.
There is no deception quite like self deception.
"We ignore our own gathering energy crisis, telling ourselves the fairy tale that shale oil will allow us to keep driving to WalMart forever." I'm so pleased to see Kuntsler riding his mummified hobbyhorse. Still crazy and wrong after all these years.
The white-hating liberal lefty Kunstler has been wrong for so long that he is irrelevant. He needs to go home to Israel and STFU.
The list of Eastern European banana republics keeps growing: Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Estonia, former Yugoslavian states now totally bankrupt Ukraine.
The irony is that it only took 20-years to undo 50-years of progress in former Soviet client states. They all borrowed and consumed like drunken sailors and they called it capitalism. The Western moneychangers indebted all of eastern Europe. Europe as a continent is totally fucked--austerity as long as can one see is the only answer as neo-Feudalism creeps back to Europe and boatloads of Muslims. I see rising Antisemitism in EU; but whom are they going to blame this time: the only Semites are Arabs and mixed North Africans. The Europeans said its all good because they needed immigrants to work in order to pay all the pensions. But...all the immigrants are on the dole, and old Europeans must work to support the young Muslims.
Is it poetic justice?
and 1400 Pennsylvania Ave. [SE] is where Obomba belongs
I live in California, USA. One is run by a wack job indebted to a few banksters and union hustlers, and the other is California. If it wasn't for failed states, I wouldn't have no states at all.
Musical accompaniment.
Who ever run's ABC media, and KUNSTLER is certainly the same TEAM CENSORSHIP.
The exact same things that get you banned and/or delted on ZH will get you banned on KUNSTLER.COM, the j- word, z- word are verboten, but you can insult anybody else to your pleasure.
Kunstler and ZH are conjoined siamese zionist assholes sharing the same rectum.
This comment section is pretty much where I learned the truth about the puppet masters in land of the Bible.
that would be 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and Lafayette Square knucklehead. Your remarks on Kerry are spot on. WTF has he done to his face?