The Brits are going totally overboard with Russophobia. Check out the intro to this Guardian article:
A brutal crackdown may be coming for Russia’s renewed opposition. The growing sense of unrest in Russia may lead Vladimir Putin to take drastic and possibly violent action.
While they are at it, why don’t they add that Putin may eat babies of breakfast, the Russian military may be about to nuke Monaco and that Russian Nazis may be busy planning the next Holocaust?
Amazing, even the US press does not hallucinate that way. I mean, sure, the crazies at the Jamestown Foundation will continue to predict that a “resurgent Russia” will “threaten the world” with its huge army, bloody secret services, evil Mafia thugs, etc. But that kind of crap has very little traction in the USA were most Americans – with the exception of the Zionists, of course – view Russia with a mix of curiosity and amused sympathy (at least that is my highly subjective observation). But not so in the UK.
I don’t know if Berezovsky and his minions are paying for these articles, but I frankly doubt it. There seems to be a “Russophobic consensus” in the British elites, from the yellow press, to the government, to the think tanks, everybody just seems to fear and hate Russia on principle. And a strong Russia is really the most loathed and feared one, of course.
I wonder if the Brits resent the fact that they lost the bulk of their empire while Russia did not? Or is it because the UK is the USA’s “poodle” whereas Russia is independent? Or do the British elites feel that by going totally overboard with Russia bashing they will get brownie-points from their bosses in the USA and Israel?
I looked up this Julia Pettengill whose nightmares the Guardian saw fit to print and it turns out that she is the co-chair of the Russia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, which is the British equivalent of the US NED. Ok. so we are dealing with professional Russia-bashers here, probably a front for the usual suspects (CIA/MI6). Look at their homepage:
Clearly, these folks are serious about Russia and the so-called “opposition” (nevermind that it could not even get 10’000 people out in the streets of Moscow for something which they had planned as a “March of the Millions” [plural]). As for Ms Pettengill, she also pens Russia-bashing articles for a wide spectrum of outlets including the Huffington Post and the Weekly Standard (some combination, no?).
Sadly, it appears that the West or, at least, the Anglo-West will get its way and that another Cold War with Russia is in the making. With Putin in power for the next 6 years we can be quite confident that the Anglo-Zionist empire will not get its way at all. Combine that with a full-spectrum weakening of the USA and its “allies” (poodles) and you get the all the ingredients for a new, resentful and vitriolic anti-Russia propaganda campaign by the Western corporate press.
The good news this time around is that the West’s bark is now far more powerful than its rather lame bite. Unlike Ms Pettengill, Vladimir Putin will not have any nightmares to scare him anytime soon.
The Saker
Maybe the Litvinenko affair hasn’t worn off.
My favourite was during the Russian Georgian war when David Miliband the Foreign Secretary said that there was no such thing as post Soviet space. I can just imagine Putin shaking in his boots. Well David, my post Soviet tanks are all over this space and what are YOU going to do about it?
Assad’s thugs are raping and impregnating women in Syria
Where have we heard that before.
@Jack: yeah, we did, didn’t we…
Here is the link to one such story, courtesy of Mr Weiss:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100153001/assads-thugs-are-raping-and-impregnating-women-in-syria/
Next, we will hear that Serbian Chetniks trained Libyan Gaddafi soldiers on how to commit genocide and use Viagra to rape women, and that the over-stock of Libyan Viagra was shipped to Syria for the “Assad thugs” who, as soon as they are done ethnically cleansing (aka impregnating) freedom loving women, will no doubt ship the leftover Viagra to Iran where Ahmadinejad’s Qud’s force, assisted by Russian anti-semitic Spetsnaz Cossacks, will send volunteers to Israel to rape Jewish women thereby achieving another Holocaust with six million victims. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
LOL!
@VINEYARDSAKER:
Have you checked out the news from the Breivik trail?
10.40am: Breivik says he and the Knights Templar were influenced by Serb nationalists rather than Nazis
He also claims to have been mentored by a Serb war crimes suspect in Liberia
Breivik seems in a more belligerent mood today, refusing to answer the prosecutions questions or taking an age to do so. The way the court deals with his behaviour is especially interesting for a British journalist used to covering trials at the Old Bailey or other crown courts. Back home, barristers tend to showboat, using elaborate language in an attempt to outwit a defendant. Should the accused dare to throw a question back during cross examination, he or she is quickly told to step into line.
But not in Norway. This morning, the prosecutors are trying to tease out from Breivik why he made a trip to Liberia in the spring of 2002. They know he went there because they have seen the genuine stamps in his passport. But they want him to explain why he has repeatedly says he has no wish to play ball. The reason, he says, is that he does not want to say anything that could lead to anyone elses arrest.
Yet in 1,100 pages of police interviews, Breivik has already opened up about his Liberian adventure, and the prosecutors want him to elaborate for the benefit of the five judges, who have not read the police transcripts. I do not wish to comment on Liberia. Youll have to skip it, said Breivik at one point. Inga Bejer Engh, the prosecutor leading today, held her cool, saying she couldnt skip it and would have to read from the police transcript. Fine, said
Breivik. Read it, then.
Breivik also told berated Engh and the police for not following up leads relating to 8,000 Facebook contacts to whom he sent his manifesto and the Serb war criminal he claims to have met in Liberia.
http://www.allnewsupdates.com/anders-behring-breivik-trial-day-three-live-updates/
Nothing new about Brit Russophobia. They got a permanent case of it after the Napoleonic Wars.
Hitler was their “bulwark against Bolshevism”, until he sent Ribbentrop to Moscow.
Then it was “For twenty years Hitler has been the foremost opponent of Bolshevism. He is now its ally.”
@Robert: Maybe the Litvinenko affair hasn’t worn off.
Well, it should have. Lugovoy passed a polygraph text in Russia, but administered by a reputable British company, while Litvinenko’s father has recanted all his accusations and pointed the finger at MI5/MI6.
http://rt.com/news/lugovoy-innocent-detector-test-953/
@RKKA: yes, you are right. I always have the feeling that for all their official condemnations of Nazis, most Western politicians see the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany not so much as a liberation, but as a victory of “Russia against the West” and that scares them and fills them with resentment.
For them, it was something like “Hitler was a SOB, but he was *our* SOB”…
Yes. A mere 12 years ago deaths were exceeding births by almost a million per year. Some Anglosphere scholars in the 1990s openly considered a Russia under Yavlinsky reduced to no military capabilities, the natural resources sector in Western hands… and a population of 130 million as “The most favorable scenario.” I expect that many more held the same view but were quiet about it.
These people are Very Upset that Russia is on track for a 2025 population of 147 million and shows no sign of getting rid of their military capabilities.
Here’s an example of what one Anglosphere scholar thought would be favorable developments for Russia back in 1995:
Richard F. Starr “Russia and the West”, Mediterranean Quarterly, Fall 1995 pgs 76-77″
Quote
The Most Hopeful Scenario
This would include a genuine transition to democracy and economic relations, based on private enterprise. A ten-year projected decline of the Russian population by 16.5 million to 131.5 million by the year 2005, coupled with about four hundred thousand tons of grain exported for 1996, suggests that the country finally would become able to feed itself. The military-industrial complex is closed down and the armed forces reorganized into a constabulary force, without offensive combat capabilities.
After the young economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky has been elected president and proclaims a Compact with Russia, an enormous rescue operation is mobilized by the industrialized world. It dwarfs the Mexican bailout. Moscow offers as collateral its natural resources, valued at $29 trillion. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the G-7 organization of seven leading economic powers, and private banks in the West and Japan all join in support of this largest assistance program in history.
The new leadership in Moscow proposes to transform the Federation of Russia, with its twenty-one republics, into a United States of Russia that would encompass forty-six territorial units. Five of the latter are Cossack republics, named after historic military settlements along the border of the former tsarist empire. A continental congress, convened at St. Petersburg, drafts a new constitution and a bill of rights.
/quote
The important points of this plan were:
1) Decline of Russia’s population to ~130 million by 2005.
2) Elimination of Russia’s military-industrial sector.
3) Elimination of Russian military capabilities.
4) Western control of Russia’s then-$29 trillion natural resources sector, at a price of ~$100 billion (The Mexican bailout Starr referred to came to about $50 billion).
5) The multiplication of territorial units in Russia, to ensure that if Russia fell apart there would be as many small pieces as possible.
Starr wrote this openly. I suspect many in the Anglosphere felt exactly the same, but were quiet about it.
These people have reason to be Deeply Upset:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/04/27/978171/from-more-russians-with-longer-life-expectancy
“While its fellow BRICs have rapidly growing populations, Russia’s has only recently been bucking its trend of decline. In 2004, downside forecasts had the country’s population falling to 125 million by 2025 — something that doesn’t exactly shout “invest here!”. This negative demographic is sometimes referred to as one of Russia’s “most persistent discount factors”, according to economist Marcus Svedberg of East Capital.
However, it would seem that all those early morning river-swims and shirtless horseback rides have been helping. And things are going in the right direction for the other 142,864,999 people who live in Russia too — they are living longer
They are also having more babies
Getting to the economic impact, there has been a corresponding increase in the numbers of the economically active and employed.
Of course living longer also means increased pension obligations and healthcare costs, but hopefully increases in the overall level of economic prosperity will be able to help with that.
Perhaps the most interesting graph shows how Russia’s recent population growth spurt has exceeded even the optimistic scenario outlined in 2010.”
I suspect that much Putin-hatred is grounded in Russia’s recovery from her 1990s death spiral. The Anglosphere are far more upset by how Russia recovered from her 1990s death spiral than they ever were about Russia’s 1990s death spiral itself.
There is evidence that Hitler was inspired by brits while developing his views. Russians (as other non-european nations) were and still are second grade people for the british aristocracy.
http://orientalreview.org/2011/07/06/anglo-saxon-roots-of-german-nazism/
“English roots of German fascism” (Russian):
http://lib.rus.ec/b/351484/read
@everybody: that is all so, we might even remember how the Germans send Lenin into Russia and how the US Bankers financed Trotsky. Or, for that matter, how Jewish bankers financed the Japanese Fleet in retaliation for Witte’s refusal to cave in to their demands. Or how many European nations joined Napoleon in his war against Russia, or even how the Pope ordered the Teutonic Order to attack Russia and either convert Russians to the Papacy or exterminate them all, etc. etc. etc. etc.
This list is very long, and they haven’t learn diddly squat from all their defeats as they are still at it….
Soros himself states in the chapter on Russia in his book The Crisis of Global Capital that there should have been a huge aid package to shield Russians during the transition period and if the IMF had paid Russians’ pensions when they were starving in the Nineties Russia might have become a “stable democracy and friend of the United States as Germany did after the war” He said he proposed this at a meeting of the great and good in the early Nineties and the British Tory minister William Waldegrave literally laughed in his face.
I’m not a fan of Soros but he does strike me as relatively enlightened as far as billionaire financiers go, enlightened enough to see that greed and callousness can be self defeating for Western interests in the long run.
As a Jew I suspect Soros was deeply concerned that the catastrophe of the Nineties might lead to a fascist dictator coming to power in Moscow blaming it all on the Jews. As we all know many of those oligarchs who raped the country were Jewish.
The fact is the West is damn lucky that a relatively responsible and sophisticated man like Putin came to power. There could easily have been a much worse strongman.
“The fact is the West is damn lucky that a relatively responsible and sophisticated man like Putin came to power.”
Agreed. Even now, Putin is prepared to cooperate with the West for mutually beneficial objectives. And the Germans, French, and Italians have taken him up on it.
It’s the Anglosphere that require permanent, abject Russian submission as a precondition for everything. Yeltsin submitted, so the Anglosphere loved him. Putin requires reciprocity, hence the Anglosphere Foreign Policy Elite & Punditocracy’s incessant vituperation of him.