Roger Cohen in the New York Times: "It´s time to get real over Putin"

Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times, is spot on:

It’s time to get real over Putin. He has not poured tanks and multiple-launch rocket systems over the Ukrainian border because he is about to settle for anything less than a weak Ukraine, sapped by low-level conflict in the Donetsk region, a country with its very own pro-Russian enclave à la Abkhazia or Transnistria, firmly within the Russian sphere of influence: the symbol of his definitive strategic turn away from closer cooperation with the West toward the confrontation that shores him up as oil prices and the currency plunge. He will not let Ukraine go.

There is a language Moscow understands: antitank missiles, battlefield radars, reconnaissance drones. Bolster the Ukrainian Army with them and other arms. Change Putin’s cost-benefit analysis. There are risks but no policy is risk-free. Recall that Ukraine gave up more than 1,800 nuclear warheads in exchange for that bogus commitment from Russia back in 1994 to respect its sovereignty and borders. Surely it has thereby earned the right to something more than night-vision goggles. The West’s current Ukraine diplomacy is long on illusion and short on realism. Two plus two equals four, in war and peace.

Merkel and Hollande as Putin´s useful idiots

Putin´s useful idiot

Angela Merkel and François Hollande seem to be happy acting as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin´s useful idiots. Fortunately, leading US representatives point out what their "peace initiative" in reality is: “Moscow bull****”.

A rift between Europe and the US over the Ukraine crisis appears to be growing after senior American figures reportedly compared the peace initiative by Angela Merkel and François Hollande to appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War.

In a meeting attended by General Philip Breedlove, Nato’s military commander, and Victoria Nuland, the US’s most senior European diplomat, Angela Merkel was described as “defeatist” for her opposition to arming Ukrainian forces, according to details leaked to Bild newspaper.

Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande’s peace initiative was dismissed as “Moscow bull****” at the meeting of American delegates to the Munich Security Conference, held behind closed doors at the conference hotel.

Senator John McCain reportedly compared the initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister at the time, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annexe the Sudetenland.

“History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them,” Senator McCain allegedly said. “They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behaviour when you fly to meet them to Moscow – just as leaders once flew to this city.” The reported remarks came as a new peace summit to be held in Minsk on Wednesday was announced, following a phone call between Mrs Merkel, Mr Hollande, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president.

Putin more interested in Sochi ice show than in meeting "peace makers" Merkel and Hollande

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on Friday gave two hours of his time to "peace makers" Angela Merkel and François Hollande, who travelled to Moscow without any real peace plan. Then Putin´s press service announced that the dictator has more important things to do - to attend an "anniversary ice show" celebrating the one year anniversary of the most corrupted Winter Olympics ever:

According to European diplomats, Putin had suggested reviving the Minsk agreement but with different ceasefire lines that recognised the territorial gains made by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. But that suggestion was rejected by Kiev.
The Russian president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the talks involved just the three leaders without delegations, aides or experts. Despite the late start, there seemed little chance of the talks going to a second day, as Putin’s press service announced he would spend Saturday in Sochi at an “anniversary ice show” celebrating one year since the start of the Winter Olympics. He said the three leaders would hold a four-way phone-call with Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko on Sunday to discuss the proposals.
As the day went on it became increasingly clear that Merkel and Hollande had come to Moscow without a comprehensive plan. Instead, they had a response to proposals Putin sent them in letters earlier in the week, in which he envisaged an expansion of territory under rebel control.

There seems to be no limits to the naivity of the German and French leaders.

Vladimir Putin - "A common criminal dressed up as a Head of State"

 "A common criminal dressed up as a Head of State"

Yes, Vladimir Putin is nothing but a "common criminal dressed up as a Head of State":

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “common criminal dressed up as a Head of State” who ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko to stop him exposing him, the inquiry heard.

The former spy was murdered for trying to reveal Putin’s close links to organised crime and a cabal of crime lords who prop up his corrupt regime, it was claimed.

Ben Emmerson QC, representing the Litvinenko family, said the trail behind the “act of unspeakable barbarism” led directly to Putin’s door.

He said Russia was a “Mafia state” where the Kremlin and Russian organised crime syndicates were “indistinguishable”.

Mr Litvinenko could even show crimes committed or authorises by Mr Putin personally, it was claimed.

And the seeds of hatred Putin had towards his former agent which would eventually lead to the murder were first sown in clashes more than eight years before, the inquiry heard.
Putin was a “ruthless and deadly enemy” and “we find Mr Putin's fingerprints as clearly as we find the traces of nuclear material in the forensic evidence”, he said.
In his opening statement to the inquiry, Mr Emmerson said: "Vladimir Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more or less than a common criminal dressed up as a Head of State.

Read the entire article here
 

Al Gore and Mother Nature

Al Gore has appeared in Davos, Switzerland:

USA TODAY asked Nobel Peace Prize winner Gore what is needed to sustain public interest in a topic that routinely flits in and out of the news and still regularly divides many worldwide.
"Mother Nature has the most persuasive voice," he said. "Climate-related extreme weather events have really changed thinking dramatically."

Maybe Gore for once is right?

Mother Nature seems to be speaking with a "most persuasive voice" right now:

Much of the Northeast was going into shutdown mode Monday ahead of a blizzard of "historic proportions," with thousands of flight cancellations, a statewide travel ban in Connecticut and road crews and utilities braced for a long night of work heading into ...

(Fox News)

PS

No doubt Gore and other members of the Global Warming Church will say that the historic blizzard is caused by global warming ...

Russia continues its aggression against Ukraine - EU is waging war against global warming

A European country, Ukraine, is being invaded by the the forces of an evil dictator, Vladimir Putin.

What is the the European Union - the self-proclaimed "soft superpower" - doing?

Answer:

The EU foreign ministers are wasting their time - and taxpayers´ money - on a huge "preventive diplomacy" campaign, "aimed at preventing future violent conflicts through cooperation and dialogue":

Europe is launching a major diplomatic push for an ambitious deal on global warming, mobilising A-list celebrities and tens of thousands of diplomats to exert “maximum pressure” on key countries in international climate negotiations.
The EU plan, endorsed by ministers on Monday in Brussels, will see 90,000 diplomats in over 3,000 missions lobbying to win new pledges on carbon cuts from countries ahead of a crunch UN climate summit in Paris this December.
European stars, of a calibre of US public figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore, will front a push to make climate action a “strategic priority” at G7, G20 and Major Economies Forum summits.
The action plan, seen by the Guardian, calls for a ‘Climate Action Day’ in June and a ‘100 days to Paris countdown’ event later in the year.
The aim is to raise the EU’s profile and cement alliances by winning new pledges for greenhouse gas cuts – intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) in UN jargon, the backbone of any deal in Paris – before June at the latest.
“The EU has enormous soft power and we must use that to push for an ambitious agenda in Paris,” the Danish foreign minister Martin Lidegaard told the Guardian. “I have urged my colleagues to commit to including climate diplomacy in their activities in the run up to COP21 [the Paris summit] – and the EU’s foreign service to work more on this. We should focus our efforts on the major growth economies and climate financing.”
A UK government spokesman described the diplomatic blitz as “a welcome step to ramp up European climate diplomacy globally”.
The action plan cites climate change as “a key element of preventive diplomacy,” aimed at preventing future violent conflicts through cooperation and dialogue. It also goes further than past EU communications, describing climate change as “a strategic threat affecting natural resource availability, economic stability and hence overall national and regional security”.

Of course the EU foreign ministers and their bosses are also going to adopt some new meaningless statements, and possibly even soft sanctions due to the continuing Russian aggression, but the clear priority of this "enormous soft power" will be to conduct a (senseless) propaganda war against irrelevant "climate change".

An excellent documentary: "Putin´s Way"

 This excellent documentary on Vladimir Putin and the mafia state he has created is highly recommended:

The documentary does not address the question about how the free world should react to what has happened in Putin´s Russia, but in a separate interview Walter Clemens, professor emeritus of political science at Boston University and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, gives his well founded opinion:


What should the international community do about Mr. Putin?

CLEMENS: He should be indicted and brought before the International Criminal Court. Putin is probably guilty of all types of transgressions the court is authorized to prosecute—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. As Russia’s president or prime minister, Putin dispatched Russian armed forces against the peoples of Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine while keeping them in a province of Moldova. His troops killed between 100,000 and 200,000 Chechens, split off South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, and watched as South Ossetians carried out ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages. Putin’s forces have seized Crimea, putting Tatars as well as Ukrainians at risk. Putin has fomented separatism in eastern Ukraine and sent several thousand Russians to fight alongside the separatists. He may not have intended for his proxies to shoot down a Malaysian airliner, but he provided the equipment and training that permitted them to do so and kill nearly 300 civilians. When weapons based in Russia strike targets inside Ukraine, however, there is no doubt about Putin’s intentions.