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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (22441)	2/25/2005 6:25:45 AM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81091

Gus > I see you too fell for the official spoof about a "growing rift" between the US and Russia. To me, the friendship between Putin and W is similar to the "non-aggression pact" Hitler and Stalin made at the commencement of WW2. >On second thoughts, however, I've come to the contrarian opinion that Bush and Putin see eye-to-eye on the issue of Iran's nuclear scheme As far as I'm concerned, Putin senses W's reluctance to be further involved in military escapades and is simply saying what he knows W wants to hear. And, of course, it doesn't suit him either that Iran has nukes. But he also knows that Russia is on the neocons' Axis of Evil list, especially after what he has done to Khodorkovsky and stuffed Western plans to grab Russian oil, and he must also be as pissed-off as hell at the interference the US has been making in the former USSR republics eg Ukraine, Belorus, Central Asian Muslim Republics.

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (22441)	2/25/2005 6:38:43 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81091

Gus, New Report Says Nuclear-Armed Iran Would Present Clear, Present Danger to US voanews.com >>A new report by an influential group of diplomats and Middle East scholars says a nuclear-armed Iran would present a clear and present danger to U.S. interests, and urges President Bush to retain the option of using military force, if necessary, to disrupt Iran's nuclear ambitions. The recommendations on Iran are part of a study released by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that examines U.S. priorities on a variety of issues in the Middle East. The report by the Washington Institute's Presidential Study Group says the three pillars of U.S. strategy in the Middle East should be security, reform and peace. The report brought together a bi-partisan group of former high-ranking government officials and Middle East analysts to highlight challenges and recommend solutions to President Bush as he begins his second term in office. Robert Satloff, the executive director of the institute, says the group identified the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, as the most serious threat to U.S. national security. Mr. Satloff says the group urges the Bush administration to continue working with allies in Europe and on the U.N. Security Council to find a solution to the Iranian nuclear threat. If diplomacy does not work he says the president should publicly retain the option of using military force and be prepared to use it.<< Seems like these are the same guys who "identified the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons" in Iraq. And what is even more amazing is there are actually many people in the US who believe this crap.

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (22441)	3/1/2005 5:15:16 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81091

Gus > I see you too fell for the official spoof about a "growing rift" between the US and Russia. I'm not the only one. This article is interesting for two reasons: 1. Someone with apparent evidence that the Moscow "911" was an inside job is given political sanctuary in the US 2. The extent of the US-Russian rift is defined cyprus-mail.com >>Three apartment blocks in Russian cities were destroyed by huge bombs that month, including one that left Alyona Morozova’s mother and boyfriend dead under the rubble. There had been peace between Russia and the breakaway republic of Chechnya since 1996, and no Chechen claimed responsibility for the bombings, but then-prime minister Vladimir Putin immediately blamed the atrocities on the Chechens and launched a second war against them that continues to this day. Alyona Morozova (and many others) claim that Putin’s old friends at the FSB carried out the apartment bombings themselves, in order to give their man a pretext to declare war on Chechnya and make himself a national hero in time for the presidential elections. It would be just one more unfounded conspiracy theory – except that only days after the big Moscow bomb, a resident at a similar apartment building in the city of Ryazan spotted three people acting suspiciously and called the local police. ------------------------ Just straws in the wind, but count them. Russia has refused to cut its support for Iran’s nuclear power projects despite all of Washington’s blandishments. Moscow is on the brink of a surface-to-air missile deal with Syria that would give that country the ability to challenge Israeli and even American overflights. The European Union is about to end its embargo on arms sales to China. The EU will go ahead with its Galileo satellite geo-positioning system, which can greatly improve missile accuracy, despite US protests that the existing American system (with fuzzed data for non-US military customers) is good enough for everybody. And it will sell the Galileo data to the Chinese. There is a realignment going on, and it isn’t about ideology. If Russia were a fully democratic country, its foreign ministry would still be worried by US adventurism in the Middle East. If China were a democracy, it would probably be more active in opposing the American military presence in East Asia. And France and Germany, which are genuine democracies, increasingly see the US as a threat – not to them directly, but to global stability. This change of attitude is not yet an accomplished fact, and a change of course in Washington could still abort the trend. But most of the world’s other major powers are starting to see the United States as a rogue state, and gradually they are responding to that perception. Nothing George W. Bush will say or do on this European trip is likely to change their minds.<<