19 Comments

1. Annoy Mouse:

“education is the motor-force of revolution.”

It seems like education is front and center of the cultural war. The guys at the Winds of Change have been referring to it as the Cold Civil War. Fitting.

The Left who effectively took over education and so called social sciences have been emboldened by their success and may be preparing for a final push to sieze the brass ring of power.

Nov 14, 2008 - 3:16 pm 2. Annoy Mouse:

Maybe they already have.

Nov 14, 2008 - 3:17 pm 3. Brock:

I really don’t understand Russia’s game here. What’s the point of all this? Is there any advantage to them at all to piss off the USA and the West generally? I mean, in the long run, what does Cuba and Venezuela offer them that a genuine relationship with the USA and EU doesn’t offer them ten-fold?

My only thought is that they still have some silly dreams of Empire, which I really don’t get. The EU population outnumbers them 5:1, and industrially Spain beats them all by itself. They can’t expand West. East is China – that’s out. And I really don’t see them taking over anything worth having to their South. It’s all foolishness.

Nov 14, 2008 - 3:37 pm 4. Annoy Mouse:

” What’s the point of all this?”

Good question. I heard today that the premier of China will be visiting Cuba this month as well. Perhaps they think that the fall of capitalism is at hand and the communist ideologies can now reemerge now that they are no longer under the boot of freedom. How long will it be before the west declares its own defeat? It seems to me that these mega bailouts are themselves an admission that free markets have failed.

What a poison pill though;
Oil prices have fallen.
The treaury is going bankrupt so vast new welfare programs are impractical.
The Luddites desire to curtail green house gasses at any price is sure to ensue.

Alas, a new world order.

Nov 14, 2008 - 4:01 pm 5. sirius_sir:

I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.

Aren’t the most dangerous people always exactly those who “seek to create something truly new and deeply humane”?

These idiots never learn and so eternally think the future is theirs to mold as they will. As if that’s not bad enough, they always attract idiots enough to fall for this rot.

This is a failure of education, all right. But pinning it on capitalism is just another way of skirting the blame for their own obdurancy.

Nov 14, 2008 - 4:14 pm 6. whiskey:

Russia seeks to rebuild an empire. Thus Cuba and Venezuela. That has always been Putin’s game.

Putin thinks will, and a will to strength, will seem him conquer a weak, feminized West. His foreign minister repeatedly called Rice racist names and made mocking monkey noises in their meetings. She lacked the stones to walk out and expel the Russian Ambassador to the US in protest (to a monumental insult to the US).

Putin looks upon Obama as weak and racially inferior. The racism of Russians and particularly men like Putin cannot be understood by people in the West. But it is large and real.

Nov 14, 2008 - 4:21 pm 7. whiskey:

I meant “see him.” Sorry.

Putin is dangerous.

Nov 14, 2008 - 4:22 pm 8. wretchard:

Guys, let’s try to avoid any racial or gender references if we can. We can make our points in other ways.

Nov 14, 2008 - 4:32 pm 9. Nomenklatura:

Russia and China’s goals here are to:

(a) Knock Obama off balance right at the outset, by driving home to him that he has no good response available to what they are doing. If he ignores this he looks weak; if he responds then he disrupts his own carefully crafted political image as someone who can by his very accession induce everyone to ‘play nicer’.

(b) Disrupt any sense on Obama’s part that he can rely on his military advisors in future to come up with options capable of digging him out of a hole, if he missteps. Hitting the jackpot here would mean generating a lingering sense of mistrust in Obama’s part against senior officers in the military. It’s likely that he is simultaneously being fed misinformation via one or more backchannels, in a bid to encourage this (the choice of ‘useful idiots’ available to be used as middlemen for this purpose must as usual be embarrassingly large).

(c) Ideally, actually get Obama embroiled in controversy with two countries in a region which is peripheral to their own strategic interests, and thus keep him distracted from what they are doing elsewhere.

(d) Probe whether he is as unflappable in the foreign sphere as he managed to appear during the campaign (something we would all like to know).

In short, they are out to ‘rattle his cage’.

It’s a clever move, their cost is zero, the timing is perfect, and given his whole ‘Kennedy’ preoccupation and the Cuba connection it’s pretty psychologically perceptive as well. They are out to ‘mess with his head’.

Nov 14, 2008 - 5:05 pm 10. NahnCee:

So Putin is going to have to start sending money to Cuba again, and perhaps to Venezuela when Hugo finally kills off its economy. Why is this a bad thing for America?

I agree that Putin is dangerous, but increasingly he’s floundering in the shifting quicksands of the world’s economy and Russia’s inability to cope with ANYthing. I sort of think he’s going to have a mysterious heart attack real soon now, when the oligarchs get tired of him losing their money while they’re frolicking in the West and not paying attention.

Nov 14, 2008 - 5:40 pm 11. NahnCee:

Wretchard – I understand that you don’t want people to make racist comments about Obama, but it seems to me that to ignore how he will be accepted by countries like Saudi Arabia or pretty much anywhere else in the world (including Russia) because of his skin color is not helpful.

Personally, I’m not going to waste an ounce of sympathy for the man (or his angry black wife) because I think he’s not only a snake oil salesman, but the snake itself, but if overseas savages start taking potshots at America through him and he allows it, that will be a very bad (and enraging) thing which I *sincerely* hope will not happen.

Nov 14, 2008 - 5:44 pm 12. veracious:

Me thinks the arrogance of the West/USA improves the odds that the predator nations are enabled to come take a spoil, by force. Certainly the people, if not the government believe themselves safer than a baby sleeping in nanny’s arms.

Arrogance, as defined by assumptions of invulnerability in: military, finances (hah), global commons, information. Arrogance also defined as a culture doing anything desired with no regard to consequences.

Let me see if there may be cracks appearing in that exo-skeleten of strength:

1) A massively over hypothicated debit based monetary system which is now adding say $2 Trillon more debt to attempt refloat.

2) Much production needed for it’s own security manufactured by _friends_ overseas.

3) Primary provider (foreign) of most manufactured goods and debt soothing investments, which has a capital reserves of over $1 QUADRILLION (just read this), makes plans for war against us.

4) Free access for enemy agents via largely open borders, especially to the south. Plenty of these agents assumed to be already in place in key locations.

5) War machine resting upon high cost, complexity combined with very long replacement time items. All completely or essentially dependent on _oil_ or and electrical grid to operate. Any honest apprasial would understand the possibility of losing assets like aircraft carriers and planes quickly in a surprise attack. Then a drawn out strategic exchange would drain the reserve equipment and oil out.

6) A populace that is losing the will to defend itself or even the understanding of why it should. Duh, there are no predators in the world today, just bogey men and shadows… Our numerous buddies around the world will be eager and able to come to our rescue!

7) Whole economy dependent upon oil which bleeds national treasure/control to those seeking to subjegate us.

Most political leadership with very limited leadership, courage or insight.

9) Intelligence agencies are assumed to know all things dangerous already.

All the above may be used at once against US too.

Nov 14, 2008 - 5:46 pm 13. Charles:

3. Brock:

I really don’t understand Russia’s game here. What’s the point of all this? Is there any advantage to them at all to piss off the USA and the West generally? I mean, in the long run, what does Cuba and Venezuela offer them that a genuine relationship with the USA and EU doesn’t offer them ten-fold?
……………
Now run that question in reverse and instead insert Georgia or the Ukraine or the baltic states, or any of the Stans

Nov 14, 2008 - 6:43 pm 14. vb:

Wretchard,

Andre Glucksman has an article on Russia that is open now at City Journal.

Nov 14, 2008 - 8:52 pm 15. Belmont Club » Black Sea blues:

[...] an earlier post, Russia is planning to tighten cooperation with Cuba and Venezuela, a place where Bill Ayers is received like a star and makes speeches in praise of Hugo [...]

Nov 14, 2008 - 10:06 pm 16. anton:

Obama is getting the “new kid on the block” treatment. Everybody is trying to size him; where will he draw lines (if anywhere), can he be conned? intimidated? rattled? Chavez feels he has a real friend, Putin that he has a real opportunity. They are both on the make.

Fortunately the only positive side-effect of the financial meltdown is that oil is falling faster than my 401k, this cuts the legs out from under most of their schemes. Sadly it also makes them that much more dangerous as they will soon be in desperate straits due to collapsing economies. The time-honored way for a dictator to distract his people is to start trouble overseas, to pick a fight with the “other”.

Putin thinks he can make ground in the Old Empire because the rest of Europe is weak, both in will and might. Spain may outproduce Russia but barely has the will to defend itself at home, and has no defense industry worth the name. That goes for just about all of the rest of the EU.

The Russia-Venezula-Cuba Axis is like a matador’s cape, a distraction while Putin grabs at things much nearer and dearer to his dreams (Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the ‘Stans etc). Putin cares little if Chavez succeeds or ends up like Mussolini, he is a currently useful ploy and will be used as such.

The Russians may lack many things but will has never been one of them.

Nov 14, 2008 - 11:53 pm 17. Agoraphobic Plumber:

“The Left who effectively took over education and so called social sciences have been emboldened by their success and may be preparing for a final push to sieze the brass ring of power.”

An interesting side note on the Left and education…

I met my wife in college. I was hot for her then, but not so much the other direction. What will be will be, I guess. Anyway, I married another woman and stayed married for about a decade, then divorced her and married my current wife, who had discovered that maybe I wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Anyway, my point: my current wife is a devout Christian. To the point where I feel it my obligation to try to talk her down off the creationism ledge from time to time. I’m a devout Christian too, for that matter, but I take a more realistic/metaphorical view of certain parts of the Bible, you know?

And also she’s a dyed-in-the-wool social worker. That’s what she was studying while we were in college, and she’s used it in her career ever since. She was surrounded by this Leftist, abortions-are-to-be-encouraged, moral relativistic crap for over a decade, and through it all she has kept her moral compass. I can’t tell you how proud I am of her for that.

We run a foster home (2 kids with us tonight, who knows how many tomorrow or a week from now) and we’re SURROUNDED by social workers, and most of them strike me as much more typical of the Left.

But my wife gives me hope that even the educational system can’t stamp out ALL the good things in people. She cares for these kids like her own, we both try to sneak in at least a LITTLE exposure to Christianity (without actual proselytizing, which is damned near punishable by death) and she’s of course the best mom EVER to our newly adopted infant…and talks of perhaps homeschooling her when the time comes.

As the son of two K-12 teachers, I got a fairly liberal upbringing, but it was small-L liberal, in mostly a good way (though Mom still thinks Carter was the Best President Ever because he’s a Good Man). But liberalism has drifted far from its roots.

Sorry. Done rambling now. It’s late and I plead colicky infant crying all night.

Nov 14, 2008 - 11:59 pm 18. Bob Murphy:

Has it occurred to anyone that the Kennedy Khrushev deal over Cuba, the one where we gave our word we would never invade if they pulled their missiles out probably went null and void when the USSR imploded.
Wouldn’t take much for regime change to get rid of one pest.
On the other hand could both China and Russia see the possibility for drilling for oil in Cuba’s territorial waters? They may already be doing it but that is or would be reason enough for China especially to make nice with Cuba.

Nov 15, 2008 - 2:59 am 19. Konyok:

Putin/Medvedev is seeking to a) distract Russian public opinion from the economic crisis, b) harmonize, extra OPEC, oil export policies to stabilize prices, and c) to test Obama.

Hu Jintao is seeking Chinese participation in the Cuban offshore oil discoveries.

Empire building? Lazy one size fits all answer.

Nov 15, 2008 - 11:06 am

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