LORDY, LORDY, MY SWEET B'JEBUS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html

If this isn't about the best 14 minutes I've spent in a long time, then I don't know what. This is Governor Sarah Palin holding forth in her baby's mama's church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, standing aside her very own pastor - both of 'em. The only thing that would have been sweeter is if she had broke out speaking in tongues, but never mind that, I'm telling you, the spirit was moving upon her.

I heard say that Fred Thompson vetted her up real good last night and plain told folks how's she's the only candidate in either party that knows proper how to field dress a moose and how's good ol' folks need figger 'bout we proper types to take off our colored glasses and look real close at our next preznit and make sure about his colored glasses being all colored and all.

I see right here where the right reverend Joe Lieberman carried her over to the AIPAC yesterday where she got her special pin right after she put her hand on the bible and expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of AIPAC, or so says the JTA Breaking News , and they should know.

I believe we got ourselves our own little Maggie Thatcher and Evita Peron wrapped up in one mean little fire cracker of field dressing mama.

Daaaaamn, we're good to go.
Rock and Roll. I mean, Lock and Load.

CINDY HAS COMPLETELY REDONE HER LOOK SINCE JOHN GOT HIS THIRD WIFE...

...I THINK IT HAS BEEN GOOD FOR THEIR MARRIAGE

MCCAIN DOG IS ON BOARD

Spotted in St. Paul and ready to do business

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ALASKAN NATIONAL GUARD

Finally, after eight long years of kicking the asses of Bush, Cheney and the neoconservatives, Putin meets his match.

WHERE'S MY REPUBLICAN HAT

"This is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats." Cindy McCain was referring to GOP efforts in the face of Hurricane Gustav.

When one is threatened we are all threatened - Mike Duncan Chairman of the Republican Convention

Why did we ever take off our American hats.

Why do we only take off our republican hats when natural disaster strike

Why don't we take off our Republican hats when a child has a life threatening illness and no health care

Why don't we take off our Republican hats when a child is threatened by gun violence in the inner city

Why dont we take off our Republican hats when millions are losing their homes in foreclosure

Why are these not threats that also affect us all - Huffpost

JOHN MCCAIN'S MILF

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

SNIPER STILL ON THE LOOSE WAITING ON NEW PATSIES

Tharin Gartrell, left, Shawn Robert Adolph,33, center, Nathan Johnson, right

OK, Here's the big question: Whose patsies are these and Who blew their cover?

Will Obama will be the next 911, and the final step of the fascist take over of the United States of America will have been completed.

This story is getting very little coverage in the corporate media and it appears that a blackout is now in force on the story.

Mr Gartrell was arrested by the Aurora police on Sunday after he was stopped for driving erratically. In the back of the vehicle, officers found two high-powered rifles, one with telescopic sights, a spotting scope, a flak jacket, camouflage clothing, a bulletproof vest, boxes of ammunition, three fake identity cards, two wigs, two walkie-talkies and a quantity of the drug methamphetamine, a form of speed known as crystal meth.

...with the Secret Service conspicuous by its absence

Fox News reported that the three men might have links to Sons of Silence, an outlaw motorcycle group, as well as white supremacists with ties to the Aryan Nation.

How is it that a biker from a club that deals in methamphetamine, a business that as a matter of form has contingency plans for dealing with cops, who is simply pulled over for erratic driving, quickly confesses, for no reason, to an assassination plot to kill Obama and quickly rats out all of his biker co-conspirators?

If you blew your role as patsy by being picked up too soon, it might be wise to mitigate your grief in prison by following through on the story.

The arrest led police to the Cherry Creek Hotel in Denver, about four miles from Invesco Field - where Mr Obama will accept the nomination - to pursue Mr Adolph, 33, who was already wanted on numerous warrants. He jumped out of a sixth floor hotel window, breaking an ankle, and was arrested. Police sources said he was wearing a ring with the Nazi swastika.

All three belong to Aryan Nations, according to Victor Ross, the police chief in Glendale, a suburb of Denver where one of the suspects was arrested. The other two were held in Aurora, another suburb.

"We don't usually have that number of Aryan Nations people here,'' Mr Ross said

OK, so they belong to a meth dealing biker club, they are Aryan Nation, their name is Adolph, they wear a swastika ring, and they are carrying around a meth lab and they jump out of sixth floor windows and they are going to assassinate Obama from a high vantage point in the Invesco Field. That is a rare combination.

A motorcycle gang reportedly connected to the three men suspected of trying to kill Barack Obama are up in arms claiming any link is pure hogwash.

A rep from the Denver chapter of the Sons of Silence motorcycle club said, "Those guys have nothing to do with our organization whatsoever. Nothing. None of our guys know who they are. We heard one of them was wearing a Sons of Silence support t-shirt, but you can buy that online or at any of our swap meets."

So now, our assassins have gone to the trouble of an elaborate costuming. Why? and who are they really?

So far, this plan is off to a bad start. It's not as bad as JFK's head recoiling into the bullet, but it's getting close.

Ironically and coincidentally, Obama's opponent, John McCain, made a blatant appeal to the racist right by appearing at the massive outlaw biker rally at Sturgis, South Dakota, an annual convention of Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-semites. It was at this convention that John volunteered his wife, Cindy, to compete in Miss Buffalo Chip, a topless beauty contest.

OK, here's the drill

1. They will fly in a sniper in a private jet.
2. They will have obtained two identical rifles (to avoid Technical Services Division-style controversy about the type of rifle found), keeping the receipt from the second rifle (bought at a gun shop in the area).
3. They will send a special invitation to the patsy, a white male from the South with three names, to attend a reception after the public rally.At the rally, the sniper will blow Obama's head clean off. He will then head back to his jet to be flown.
4. The patsy will find himself alone at the site of the 'reception', will be drugged, and eventually will be shot by authorities, 'resisting arrest' . The second rifle will be the 'throw down', placed by the authorities beside the patsy so the photos can show the assassin beside his gun. Later, the assassination rifle will be swapped for the throw down (so the ballistics will match), with the patsy's fingerprints applied to the sniper's rifle post mortem.
5. The patsy will be described as a white supremacist, neo-Nazi, gun nut. None of his friends will be able to recall hearing him say one racist thing, and nobody will ever recall seeing him with a gun or even talking about guns. Nevertheless, the authorities will raid his house (described as a 'compound'), and will discover a huge cache of guns (including the receipt for the assassination rifle, although a later check of the surveillance tape at the gun shop will show that the video system was malfunctioning at the time the rifle was purchased), neo-Nazi regalia on the walls, and a collection of white supremacist literature.

Except one major difference this time. Obviously, there are two warring agencies. One agency knows exactly what the other agency is doing and is checkmating them. Who is who? Which is which?

BRIAN SCHWEITZER

A generation later, we face a great new challenge, a world energy crisis that threatens our economy, our security, our climate and our way of life. And until we address that energy crisis, our problems will only get worse. For eight long years, the White House has led us in the wrong direction. And now Senator McCain wants four more years of the same.

Can we afford four more years? Is it time for a change? When do we need it? And who do we need as the next President of the United States of America? That's right. Barack Obama is the change we need!

Right now, the United States imports about 70 percent of its oil from overseas. At the same time, billions of dollars that we spend on all that foreign oil seems to end up in the bank accounts of those around the world who are openly hostile to American values and our way of life. This costly reliance on fossil fuels threatens America and the world in other ways, too. CO2 emissions are increasing global temperatures, sea levels are rising and storms are getting worse.

We need to break America's addiction to foreign oil. We need a new energy system that is clean, green and American-made. And we need a president who can marshal our nation's resources, get the job done and deliver the change we need.

That leader is Barack Obama. Barack Obama knows there's no single platform for energy independence. It's not a question of either wind or clean coal, solar or hydrogen, oil or geothermal. We need them all to create a strong American energy system, a system built on American innovation.

After eight years of a White House waiting hand and foot on big oil, John McCain offers more of the same. At a time of skyrocketing fuel prices, when American families are struggling to keep their gas tanks full, John McCain voted 25 times against renewable and alternative energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind energy.

This not only hurts America's energy independence, it could cost American families more than a hundred thousand jobs. At a time when America should be working harder than ever to develop new, clean sources, John McCain wants more of the same and has taken more than a million dollars in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. Now he wants to give the oil companies another 4 billion dollars in tax breaks. Four billion in tax breaks for big oil?

That's a lot of change, but it's not the change we need.

In Montana, we're investing in wind farms and we're drilling in the Bakken formation, one of the most promising oil fields in America. We're pursuing coal gasification with carbon sequestration and we're promoting greater energy efficiency in homes and offices.

Even leaders in the oil industry know that Senator McCain has it wrong. We simply can't drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain's backyards, including the ones he can't even remember.

That single-answer proposition is a dry well, and here's why. America consumes 25 percent of the world's oil, but has less than 3 percent of the reserves. You don't need a $2 calculator to figure that one out. There just isn't enough oil in America, on land or offshore, to meet America's full energy needs.

Barack Obama understands the most important barrel of oil is the one you don't use. Barack Obama's energy strategy taps all sources and all possibilities. It will give you a tax credit if you buy a fuel-efficient car or truck, increase fuel-efficiency standards and put a million plug-in hybrids on the road.

Invest $150 billion over the next 10 years in clean, renewable energy technology. This will create up to 5 million new, green jobs and fuel long- term growth and prosperity. Senator Obama's plan will also invest in a modern transmission grid to deliver this new, clean electricity from wind turbines and solar panels to homes, offices and the batteries in America's new plug-in hybrid cars.

SOURCE 2008 Democratic National Convention

RELIGULOUS

I was flipping through the channels last night. I seldom watch Larry King and there are parts of Bill Mahers politics that I don't like, but there they were, shilling for Mahers new movie which is coming out in October and they quickly caught my ear with this...

The movie is called Religulous as in ridiculous. It has the same producer at Borat and distributed by Lionsgate. The release date is October third

"It is not a documentary, but an unscripted, uproarious comedy. Maher says to Larry...

In making this comedy. I am trying to arouse the 16% who I would call Rationalist, America would call them atheist or agnostics. It sounds like it is a small minority, but 16% is bigger than blacks or Jews or homosexuals or NRA members, Teachers Unions, hispanics, If those people stood up and made themselves heard - but they never do..."

Well, that was pretty exciting. I never thought of the number rationalists in this country as high as 16% and I never thought of them as a movement but we know that it is a viable cohort simply because of the recent book sales of a group referred to as the New Atheists: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and A C Grayling, Skepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge, journalists Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Polly Toynbee, and novelists Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. 16% is something over 51 million people.

The film was shot in many places, the Mormon Church, the Vatican, the Wailing Wall, inside the Mosque at the Dome of the Rock, The Holy Land theme park in Orlando, FL

Larry asks, "What should religion play in our politial life?" "None".

"Religion in America is not about doing the right thing or the ethical thing, it is mainly about salvation. It's mainly about getting your butt saved when you die..."



They discussed Rick Warren and Saddleback Church event where the big question was

"Is there evil and what should we do about it

Obama gives a nuanced answer. We should be aware of evil, but we should be humble about evil. It's easy to sit back in America and say we are the good people, that's common knowledge, evil is always over there, never here. Obama was saying we have a lot of evil right here. Look at the prison system, look at the justice system, look at how we treat immigrants, we torture people now in Anerica, rampant sexual harrassement of women in the military, there is a lot of evil that we are doing.

This type of thinking was labeled by the neoconservatives as moral equivalence the very day after 9/11. How well I remember that day because this was a new term for me. The neoconservatives were out in force that day with their well rehearsed scripts haranguing against this type of thinking, because the moment Americans step outside themselves, put themselves in the shoes of the "other" and view America from the eyes of the rest of the world, the neocon project starts to unravel.

McCain is asked, What do we do about evil.. Two words, Defeat it, and we can defeat evil by the end of my first term. It goes over great in this audience. When they think of evil they think of something very tangible, the devil. they believe in this comic book figure called the devil, who is going to poke your ass in hell if you are bad, and there is heaven where there is air conditioning.

I used to reed Rick Warren in my stage act, it's hilarious. The idea that another person on earth can tell you with such specificity what happens when you die, just blows my mind. That somebody on earth, another person can say, "Oh yea, What happens when you die You will meet Jesus, he's wearing a white robe, then you go in this room and you eat eggs". Are you kidding, What are you talking about, you are person just like me, you are clueless, you have no idea what happens. Of course, Rick believes it. He knows exactly what happens when you die. That is my ultimate message, Unless a god told you personally what happens when you die, it all came from another person who has no more mental powers than you have, and you don't know, so why don't you just man up and say I don't know.

At sometime, Man is going to have to shed this skin if he is going to move forward. I have an intellectual problem with all this, but on another level it is just the ultimate hustle. I ask the Jesus in Orlando's Holy Land, Why cant God just defeat the devil and get rid of evil? It's the same reason the comic book character cant get rid of his nemesis, because then there is no story. If god gets rid of the devil and he could, he's all powerful, well then there is no fear, there's no reason to come to church, to pass the plate, we are all out of a job,

Film Clip Senator Mark Pryor (AR)

Do you believe in evolution? Adam and Eve, five thousand years ago, with a talking snake in the garden.

Senator Pryor talks from both sides of his mouth, but mostly from the right side.

You are a senator it worries me that people are running my country who believe in a talking snake.

About the Presidential campaign

In America it's about racism, only 30% of white Americans have a positive view of Obama



McCain is another Bush in the sense that we are getting a very detached, anti intellectual president. There is a big vacuum when you have a president like that, and so the vice president steps into that vacuum as we saw with Dick Cheney. That could happen with McCain. When you have McCain you get the worse of Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. Old, forgetful, dotering, anti intellectual and into that breach who knows who might step.

It sounds like it is going to be a great movie. You can listen to the King/Maher conversation here A controversial movie such as this, released one month before the election, at pretty much the precise moment when Freedom Watch will have raised the "Obama the Antichrist" meme to a fevered pitch is liable to catch the attention of a lot of people.

You can listen to the King/Maher conversation here
Check out the trailer here .
Wikipedia here .
Disbelief.net here .
Huffpost review here .

Phillip K Dick

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."

--Philip K. Dick

Timelines

War in Georgia Time Line

July 1-2, 2008 GUAM Summit in Batumi, Georgia.

July 1, "US-GUAM Summit" on the sideline of the official GUAM venue.

July 5 -12, Russian Defense Ministry hold War Games in the North Caucasus region under the codename "Caucasus Frontier 2008".

July 9, 2008 China and Kazakhstan announce the commencement of construction of the Kazakhstan-China natural gas pipeline (KCP)

July 15-31, The US and Georgia hold War Games under the codename Operation "Immediate Response". One thousand US servicemen participate in the military exercise.

August 7, Georgian Ground Forces and Air Force Attack South Ossetia

August 8, Russian Forces Intervene in South Ossetia.

POLAND

August 14, 2008 Signing of US-Polish Agreement on the stationing of "US Interceptor Missiles" on Polish Territory

Pakistan

Since August 10, the military has stayed in those defensive positions but aerial bombing and artillery barrages have been used to literally depopulate Bajaur and areas of the adjoining agency of Mohmand. After more than two weeks of indiscriminate attacks against alleged militant positions, it is estimated that 300,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes—a significant proportion of the population in the areas not under government control.

August 18, Musharuff resigns

on August 21, a refugee from Zigai said he had fled his home in the Zigai area because “the military helicopter gunships had started pounding civilian targets”. Another man said: “They [the military] are not hitting the known targets of the militants but blitzing the civilian abodes.”

Diyala

August 19, Mysterious Raid

IF YOU DISAGREE WITH BUSH: HE'S AN IDIOT, IF YOU AGREE WITH BUSH: HE'S AN IDIOT

Is it any wonder, given the strategic wasteland that is America's security policy, that almost seven years into our woebegone war on terror, a study by the Rand Corporation has concluded that al Qaeda remains a "strong and competent" organization?

America spends as much on defense as rest of the world combined, yet our military failed to defend the homeland from an air raid conducted by four commercial jets armed with box cutters, we cannot control the military behavior of Russia, whose defense budget is roughly 10 percent the size of ours, the administration says that the nation that presents our greatest challenge is Iran, whose defense budget is less that one percent of ours, and we've failed to diminish al Qaeda, the terrorist organization that attacked us on September 11, 2001, and whose defense budget is zero percent of ours.



Fellow citizens, I say let's vote McCain in and give the neocons another chance to get it right. In for a penny, in for an Armageddon, that's my motto.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff's novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Russ Wellen's interview with Jeff at The Huffington Post and Scholars and Rogues.

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http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/852010.html

It was hard not to notice the bus at midday Thursday in downtown Fort Worth.

But before a single woman could do anything on camera she would later regret, the event was abruptly canceled.

Someone on the bus said "the city" was kicking them out, but it turned out that the intervention came from Sundance Square Management, which oversees leasing in downtown real estate development.

"We asked City Streets to not do this," said Tracy Gilmour, director of marketing for Sundance Square Management.

"We knew nothing about it until the bus showed up, and that’s just not the way we like to do business in Sundance," Gilmour said.

MISSILES IN POLAND

clipped from: www.wsws.org

a major turning point in international political relations.

US to set up a new missile system in the heart of Europe. In addition,

• Poland will receive 96 Patriot missiles,

• a permanent garrison of American troops

• Washington’s commitment to come to the country’s defence,

• independently of the NATO alliance.

was strictly of a defensive character?

circumstances confirm the opposite: the missile system is of an offensive character and is designed for use against Russia.

increases the possibility of a confrontation between the two nations with the world’s biggest arsenals of nuclear weapons—Russia and the US—with central Europe as a primary battlefield.

Just before signing the missile deal, Rice reiterated that the system was designed to counter threats from Iran and North Korea and told reporters: “It is not aimed in any way at Russia.”

None of these claims are credible.

• Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Just two days before the finalisation of the missile pact, Kaczynski appeared alongside Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili at an anti-Russian rally in Tbilisi to proclaim, “We are here to take up the fight (against Russia).”

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that he only agreed to host the US defence shield on the condition that the US augment Poland’s defences with Patriot missiles, which are intended to combat any threat from Russia.

The American State Department has always insisted that the 10 interceptor missiles that are to be installed at a base in Poland, just 115 miles from Russia’s westernmost frontier, are aimed at countering potential missile attacks from so called “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea.

Washington has already reached an agreement with Prague to place the second component of the missile defence shield, a radar tracking system, in the Czech Republic to Poland’s south-west.

in an article published in the Blätter für deutsche and internationale Politik, Germany’s most widely read political and foreign policy journal.

author Hauke Ritz stresses

• Iranian military lacks any missiles with a range capable of reaching Europe and that it would require a long period of time to develop and build them

• US State Department ruled out a Russian proposal for setting up a joint US-Russian anti-missile system in Azerbaijan, which could intercept and destroy any Iranian missile at the start of its flight path.

• the missile shield is directed first and foremost not against Iran, but against Russia.

• This is underlined by the fact that the other bases for the missile system are also located in border regions to Russia, for example Alaska.”

it is intended not as a deterrent against nuclear attack
but rather as an essential component of a US first-strike strategy.

“The strategic significance of the system consists of intercepting those few dozen missiles Moscow is capable of launching following an American first strike,”

in the US magazine Foreign Affairs in 2006 entitled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” which argues that the US currently has unique advantages in conducting nuclear war. Ritz concludes: “This article makes very clear the actual function of the missile system: it is to guarantee the US the capacity to carry out nuclear war without the risk of a counter-strike. If this capacity can be achieved then it can be employed as a geopolitical argument, in order to implement national interests.”

Ritz’s analysis of the missile shield system as an essential component of a first-strike strategy underscores the enormous and growing danger that the escalating conflict between the US and Russia could unleash a nuclear conflagration.



Last Friday, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian armed forces’ deputy chief of staff, described the pact as an act of aggression against Russia and warned Poland that it was leaving itself open to retaliation—and possibly even a nuclear attack.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Washington has followed a policy of systematically encroaching on former Soviet territory to establish a string of military bases and governments friendly to the US. The purpose of this policy was to undermine the influence of Russia in the energy-rich regions of central Asia, while seeking to divide and weaken Europe.

The consequences

the installation of a number of authoritarian regimes which lack any genuine broad popular base such as those of

• Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia and

• Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukraine,

• as well as the regime in Poland.

The most common characteristics of these administrations are

• rabid anti-communism,

• national chauvinism,

• contempt for genuine democratic processes and

• an unwavering adherence to the precepts of the free market.

Such regimes are inherently unstable

the US administration has agreed to install a new weapons system in Poland directed against its biggest neighbour, while at the same time guaranteeing to come to the military assistance of the Polish government when necessary.

Throughout the 1930s, the German dictator Adolf Hitler professed his peaceful intentions while at the same time undertaking a series of provocations as part of his plan to fundamentally redraw the map of Europe in Germany’s interests.

there cannot be the least doubt that the main power intent on establishing new power blocs and spheres of influence in the region is the US. This is the significance of the network of military bases and installations established in Eastern and Central Europe by successive US administrations since 1991 with the aim of encircling Russia.

Now in its missile deal with Poland, it is the US which has agreed to a clause that subverts the traditional structures of the NATO alliance in order to further Washington’s unilateral militarist policy in the region.

The increasingly aggressive penetration of the US into central and eastern Europe is causing alarm in Paris, Berlin and Rome. At the same time, Washington is only able to press ahead with its reckless offensive because of the cowardly stance adopted by the European bourgeoisie, which watches as tensions on the continent escalate to boiling point, but is not prepared to challenge the US administration.

The Missile-Defense Flap

Behind America's shield

US contractors eye gains from Polish shield deal
Missile Defense: Understanding the Issues

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PETROLEUM MAN

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POPULATION

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PETROLEUM

ENCIRCLEMENT OF RUSSIA IS A BIPARTISAN POLICY

The Georgian upstart overplayed his hand, reflecting divisions among Western states on strategy in the Caucasus.

The US has always pursued a 'Grand Area' strategy. In this design, whole areas of the planet are presumed to be under its command. American planners had an unprecedented opportunity when the USSR broke down

Contrary to some opinion, the placing of 'lily-pads' in the Caucasus and Central Asia did not begin under Bush or after 9/11, but under Clinton in 1997. Encirclement of Russia is a bipartisan policy.

The US political class is less divided. McCain is staking out the most belligerent territory, but Obama is catching up rapidly. His foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has compared Putin to Hitler and complained that Western access to crucial oil pipelines will be cut off by Russia's action - which suggests that any administration that takes his advice would be far more aggressive toward Russia than the Bush administration has been.

Obama wants to pour troops into Afghanistan and shore up the Central Asian frontier. Brzezinski has already supplied the rationale for this in The Grand Chessboard: "Eurasia is the world's axial super continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia

Eurasia accounts for 75% of the world's population, 60% of its GNP, and 75% of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia's potential power overshadows even America's."

In this account, control of the Middle East is a secondary aim.

You may recall Obama's sabre-rattling toward Pakistan

It would seem that US control of its Pakistani ally is tenuous, and that the US has to threaten it with a bit of ultra-violence to keep it in line.
So Obama was being perfectly realistic about what he might be expected to do.

In his most recent book, Second Chance, Brzezinski offers a future president the purported means to reverse America's declining power. One of his recommendations is to pay more attention to Russia, disrupt its increasingly close relationship with China and make a concerted effort to contain Putin's efforts to restore Russian power. Brzezinski, I suspect, is speaking for a lot of people in the American establishment. So, don't buy the line that Obama is just tail-coating McCain when he talks tough about Russian aggression. It is an integral component of the global 'Grand Area' strategy of a significant component of US power.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

One of the most strident anti-Russian voices was that of former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. In comments to the British Guardian and the German Die Welt, he compared Putin to Hitler and Stalin, and the Russian intervention in Georgia to the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939. “Georgia is to an extent the Finland of today, both morally and strategically,”

Brzezinski pointed to the central role of oil, particularly the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline built over the last decade with US support to bring oil from the region to the world market, bypassing Russian territory. “If Georgia no longer has its sovereignty, it means... that the West is cut off from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia,”

The strategists of US imperialism have broader interests than oil, however. Brzezinski himself has long sought the breakup, not only of the old Soviet Union, but of the Russian republic which comprises the bulk of the land mass of the former USSR. As the Guardian observed Monday, “The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is only a minor element in a much larger strategic equation: an attempt, sponsored largely by the United States but eagerly subscribed to by several of its new ex-Soviet allies, to reduce every aspect of Russian influence throughout the region, whether it be economic, political, diplomatic or military.”

THE NEW CAPITALIST PYRAMID