Now, I think that crew of creepy right-wingers in the US and Australia who think Putin is a great friend of Western civilisation are just about crazy.
My goodness, who are such people? What do they say? Quotes and references, please. The Russians have their interests and we have ours and sometimes they overlap. But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union and there are many things the US and Russia can achieve together since their and our interests often overlap. And guess what we find right after the above?
But in strategic policy, in the real world, the choice is often between the evil and the even more evil. Russia’s presence in Syria may have produced something somewhat less horrible than its absence would have produced. Look at the other main actors in Syria — Islamic State, Iran, Hezbollah. They are all worse for humanity in Syria, and worse for Western interests, than Russia has been.
For whatever its many sins, Moscow has played the role in Syria that the West once played in troubled countries — it has restored order.
And on the American president:
The Trump administration is right to repudiate the pathetically weak deal Barack Obama did with Iran. Trump wants to enforce the red lines Obama once had for Iran — no uranium enrichment, no ballistic missiles and so on. Canberra should support this.
With this conclusion:
Trump does good as well as bad. We should explicitly and publicly support US policy on Iran.
ADDED ON: Old Ozzie mentioned in the comments that the Russian President had spoken about a Western assault on Christianity and traditional values in 2013 – just before anti-Russian troubles began, so I went looking to see what he meant, and there below in the vid is what I found. Not at all what you might have expected.
ORIGINAL POST
Thank you for noting the typical far left media bias at the ABC, Rafe, but what can you expect? The ABC is just reflex ignorant as this article today on Venezuela provides one more example: IMF: Venezuela’s inflation on track to top 1 million percent which comes via the ever-unreliable Associated Press. Heaven forbid they should mention that socialism has had anything to do with it. Instead, their authority on the nature of the problem is no less than the President of Venezuela himself:
Socialist President Nicolas Maduro often blames Venezuela’s poor economy on an economic war that he says is being waged by the United States and Europe.
Maduro won a second six-year term as president despite the deep economic and political problems in a May election that his leading challenger and many nations in the international community don’t recognize as legitimate.
Two of the most uninformed sentences you are ever likely to find, specially designed for those who want to hide themselves from reality. It is even possible that the ABC knows better, but the last people to actually try to explain it are the ones who want the same kinds of economic management in Australia.
But this media ignorance continues everywhere. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sickness that will do us all in and if we are not very careful put an end to Western Civilisation within a generation. The latest bit of TDS is from Troy Bramston in a column as empty and unhistorical as it is possible to be: Putin could never have suckered Reagan like Trump the chump. I will merely make the obvious point that when Reagan was president, Russia was the Soviet Union and when Reagan met with the Soviet President he was dealing with the core ideological issue of the time. As it happens, I supported Reagan then just as strongly as I support Trump now, and for much the same reasons. Russia is no longer communist, so perhaps it is time to bury the hatchet. Bramston doesn’t like Trump, but so what? He is like virtually every other media type, with nothing to add to the conversation other than empty rhetoric. Here are a few of the comments on the column at The Australian, starting from the top and working my way down. There are plenty more like these, and in fact I never came to a single comment that supported him.
So the writer was in the meeting between Trump and Putin!! I’m sick to death with this type of article. No wonder many of us no longer trust the media.
Oh my Lord … talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome writ large. This column should be compulsory study for journalism students in what NOT to write. There are so many falsehoods and opinions masquerading as fact that no-one could even begin to deconstruct it! Truly shameful, Oz.
What was Trump to do about funding 70% NATO, May’s feckless indecisive dithering over Brexit, the Steele dossier fraud, the FBI, CIA stacked with anti Trump activists, the Muller witch hunt, an irrational left wing media and the list goes on and on. But the best thing he’s done for the US is to get out of that crippling Paris Agreement. If only we had a Trump here.
Sorry Troy…..that days of journalists cherry picking factoids and creating an ideologically charged narratives are over. In this digital world, we are on to you, and what you have tried to run here I know not to be true.
Typical Trump basher. Ignorant of American history and even more ignorant of the American voter. Donald Trump’s supporters don’t care who he’s nice to or how many mistakes he makes as long as he drains the swamp. That’s what they hired him for. He has done exactly what he said he would do when on the campaign trail. That is why people like the writer of this article don’t like him. Donald Trump is not one of them. He is his own man. God Bless Donald Trump.
Mr Bramston, you and many others in the media and political elites will no doubt continue to pile on President Trump but be aware his supporters are as strongly behind him as ever and while his press conference in Helsinki was clumsy, it had no negative effect on his support in America. In fact the more they pile it on, the stronger Trump’s support may get. No doubt you also predicted with absolute certainty that Trump would never beat Hillary, and that Hillary calling Trump’s supporters “deplorables” would have no meaningful impact as well? Hmmm
Engaging in a bit of hyperbole, Troy. The EU is still in place, so too NATO, ANZUS and the rest. Unfortunately for the UK, Australia and the US, so is Theresa May. The fact that some passengers are told to pay up is not a bad thing. The fact some countries taking advantage of trade rules to the detriment of the US are told that must change is not a bad thing. That Trump talks to Putin is not a bad thing. Now, if Kim Jong Un does not deliver on his side of the bargain in Singapore, let’s see how Mr Trump responds. At that point you will be in a better position to see whether Mr Trump was wrong to give talks a chance. But if Rocket Man is sliding from his agreement, I’d be looking to see what role China has been playing in sabotaging any agreement.
“We are witnessing a fracturing of the Western liberal order and a decline in US global leadership”. Wrong Mr Bramston, what we are witnessing, thanks to Donald Trump, is a worldwide draining of the swamp and the hopefully the decline of the United Nations and the European Union from taking over our countries.
I’ve not read this article, looks like more Trump bashing. I’m sick of these stories/analysis by people that can’t wait to criticise, when the end of the event in nowhere in sight. Hoping and praying for failure. Can’t you wait to see how it unfolds?
Awesome news filtering in today that the great US President is considering revoking the security clearances of former top Obama era officials. They all conspired against him and need to go now and quickly. Whilst Bramston pummels the keyboard listing all the petty things Trump has done, little does he know that after Iran is fixed, the Federal Reserve will be next on the agenda. There’ll be plenty of time for Troy and his globalists friends to write angry articles about Trump – waaaay into the future as they observe, from the sidelines, the glorious wonders of the swamp getting drained!
Some further reflection on PDT’s dealing with Putin in Helsinki. The truly repulsive bit of the media flak were that nothing positive about the president would ever have been said by the clowns in the media no matter what had happened, not to mention that the last people in the world you would take instruction from on foreign relations, or on anything else for that matter, are journalists. All from Lucianne today.
Five days after the Helsinki summit I am inclined to believe that President Donald Trump either knows exactly what he is doing—that there is uncanny finesse and foresight behind his bluster—or else that he is guided by an almost unfailing intuition, with similar results. Trump’s refusal to parrot the Intel-deepstaters’ “Russiagate” narrative at last Monday’s press conference is a case in point. [snip] No evidence of any kind exists to prove Russian meddling in 2016, or thereafter. It never will be found, because Podesta’s and DNC mails were leaked, not hacked.
President Trump’s had a very bad week. By appearing to side with Russia over his own intelligence agencies on the question of election interference, he made himself look unpatriotic, anti-American and as weak as a ‘wet noodle’ to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump’s subsequent attempt to wriggle off his self-imposed hook by claiming he meant to say ‘wouldn’t’ not ‘would’ was laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But at least he seemed to realise the offence his original comments had caused. Yesterday, Trump reverted to type and doubled down on the furore by inviting Russian president Vladimir Putin to the White House in a few
As President Trump continues to stumble past his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, Republican voters are handing him a lifeline. Though many GOP lawmakers have been critical of the president´s statements in Helsinki, party voters are registering their support for Trump´s handling of Putin. According to a CBS News poll released Thursday, 68 percent of Republicans approved of the president´s performance, even as 55 percent of voters overall, including 53 percent of independents, disapproved. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that 71 percent of Republicans approved of Trump´s handling of Russia even as more
Did US President Donald Trump commit treason in Helsinki when he met Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin? Should he be impeached? That is what his opponents claim. Former president Barack Obama’s CIA director John Brennan accused Trump of treason outright. Brennan tweeted, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki [with Putin] rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.” Fellow senior Obama administration officials, including former FBI director James Comey, former defense secretary Ashton Carter, and former deputy attorney general Sally Yates parroted Brennan’s accusation. Almost the entire US media joined them in condemning
Pearl Harbor. Kristallnacht. Treason. High crimes and misdemeanors. These are some of the hyperventilating left’s overheated and ludicrous characterizations of President Trump’s remarks at his Helsinki press conference with Vladimir Putin. Listening to the Democrats and their wholly owned media subsidiary, you would have thought that Trump had (a) smilingly handed Putin a large red “reset” button or (b) had been caught on a hot mic during a global nuclear security summit murmuring to Putin’s representative that, after the midterm elections, he would have more flexibility in his dealings with Russia or (c) had signed off on a deal to give
President Trump appears to be playing out a geopolitical agenda with Russia´s Vladimir Putin and keeping his cards so close to his chest that even his director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, is in the dark. When the White House revealed yesterday that Putin has been invited by national security adviser John Bolton to the White House for talks, Coats was publicly humiliated at the Aspen Security Conference, where he learned about the invitation onstage, “where he had been telling the audience that the U.S. is ´under attack´ by Russian cyberforces,” according to Dave Boyer and Seth McLaughlin of the
As it happens, I spent the journey home reading my signed copy of The Deep State: 15 Surprising Dangers You Should Know which essentially highlights everything you knew but through the sheer massing of the facts and the detail really does bring the dangers presented by our “elites” to a level of clarity that is quite quite astonishing. If you are anti-Trump then you are trying to contrive a Venezuelan future for us as well. You are either ignorant, stupid or malevolent, but there is no justification for running an anti-Trump screed when the American President is all that stands between us and a socialist future of wealthy elites who use politically correct thoughts to identify their ideological enemies, who are, in general, you and me. Then there is Tucker Carlson who discusses these things as well.
Barack Obama’s CIA chief, John Brennan, told the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, on 15 September 2016, in Washington DC, that when he had applied in 1980 to join the CIA, he admitted to them that in the 1976 Presidential election, when Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford, Brennan had voted instead for the candidate of the US Communist Party, Gus Hall, and that he was then greatly relieved to find that this information didn’t cause rejection of his CIA-application.
These people are our enemies, and to see them quoted in the mainstream is not just a disgrace but something you really need to fear.
AND IN ADDITION: From P in the comments with gratitude: Everyone Is Smart Except Trump. Here are the first and last paras but you really should read it all.
It really is quite simple. Everyone is smart except Donald J. Trump. That’s why they all are billionaires and all got elected President. Only Trump does not know what he is doing. Only Trump does not know how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Anderson Cooper knows how to stand up to Putin. The whole crowd at MSNBC does. All the journalists do. . . .
What has Anderson Cooper achieved during that period? Jim Acosta or the editorial staffs of the New York Times and Washington Post? They have not even found the courage and strength to stand up to the coworkers and celebrities within their orbits who abuse sexually or psychologically or emotionally. They have no accomplishments to compare to his. Just their effete opinions, all echoing each other, all echoing, echoing, echoing. They gave us eight years of Nobel Peace Laureate Obama negotiating with the ISIS JV team, calming the rise of the oceans, and healing the planet.
We will take Trump negotiating with Putin any day.
PDT is afraid of nothing. Here they are, out to railroad his presidency because of some alleged form of pre-election collaboration with Putin and Russia, and here he is, just yesterday, collaborating with Putin and the Russians: Putin and Trump talk Syria, election meddling at brief meeting. The US and Russia working together against a common enemy works for me, and apparently for them as well.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a statement on Syria during a brief meeting at a summit in Vietnam on Saturday and Putin again dismissed allegations of meddling in last year’s U.S. election.
And walking into the media-Democrat Lion’s den, this is how the article ends.
“It would be a great thing to have a good relationship with Russia,” Trump said.
It would indeed. It would be great if the relationship between Russia and the United States could somehow be reset. It would be a true benefit if the President could have more flexibility now that the election is over, if you know what I mean, which no Democrat following the party line would ever do.
The Russian-led military coalition is badly beating Washington’s proxies in Syria which is why John Kerry is calling for a “Time Out”.
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for an emergency summit later in the week so that leaders from Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could discuss ways to avoid the “total destruction” of Syria. According to Kerry, “Everybody, including the Russians and the Iranians, have said there is no military solution, so we need to make an effort to find a political solution. This is a human catastrophe that now threatens the integrity of a whole group of countries around the region,” Kerry added.
Of course, it was never a “catastrophe” when the terrorists were destroying cities and villages across the country, uprooting half the population and transforming the once-unified and secure nation into an anarchic failed state. It only became a catastrophe when Vladimir Putin synchronized the Russian bombing campaign with allied forces on the ground who started wiping out hundreds of US-backed militants and recapturing critical cities across Western corridor. Now that the Russian airforce is pounding the living daylights out of jihadi ammo dumps, weapons depots and rebel strongholds, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is tightening their grip on Aleppo, and Hezbollah is inflicting heavy casualties on Jabhat al Nusra militants and other Al Qaida-linked vermin; Kerry’s decided it’s a catastrophe. Now that the momentum of the war has shifted in favor of Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Kerry wants a “Time out”.
Keep in mind, that Putin worked tirelessly throughout the summer months to try to bring the warring parties together (including Assad’s political opposition) to see if deal could be worked out to stabilize Syria and fight ISIS. But Washington wanted no part of any Russian-led coalition. Having exhausted all the possibilities for resolving the conflict through a broader consensus, Putin decided to get directly involved by committing the Russian airforce to lead the fight against the Sunni extremists and other anti-government forces that have been tearing the country apart and paving the way for Al Qaida-linked forces to take control of the Capital. Putin’s intervention stopped the emergence of a terrorist Caliphate in Damascus. He turned the tide in the four year-long war, and delivered a body-blow to Washington’s malign strategy. Now he’s going to finish the job.
Putin is not gullible enough to fall for Kerry’s stalling tactic. He’s going to kill or capture as many of the terrorists as possible and he’s not going to let Uncle Sam get in the way.
These terrorists–over 2,000 of who are from Chechnya–pose an existential threat to Russia, as does the US plan to use Islamic extremists to advance their foreign policy objectives. Putin takes the threat seriously. He knows that if Washington’s strategy succeeds in Syria, it will be used in Iran and then again in Russia. That’s why he’s decided to dump tons of money and resources into the project. That’s why his Generals have worked out all the details and come up with a rock-solid strategy for annihilating this clatter of juvenile delinquents and for restoring Syria’s sovereign borders. And that’s why he’s not going to be waved-away by the likes of mealy-mouth John Kerry. Putin is going to see this thing through to the bitter end. He’s not going to stop for anyone or anything. Winning in Syria is a matter of national security, Russia’s national security…..
The entire US political establishment supports the removal of Assad and the breaking up of Syria. Kerry’s sudden appeal for dialogue does not represent a fundamental change in the strategy. It’s merely an attempt to buy some time for US-backed mercenaries who are feeling the full-brunt of the Russia’s bombing campaign. Putin would be well-advised to ignore Kerry’s braying and continue to prosecute his war on terror until the job is done.
That bit in bold. I didn’t know that. Is it true? Is that really what they want? Seems perfect for ISIS to me, but what do I know? But given Obama’s approach to Libya, Egypt and Israel, whatever the “US political establishment” wants, I am inclined to take the other side.
Maybe it is the photos of him posing shirtless on horseback, or his military push into Ukraine, but Americans in a new poll believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is a much stronger leader than President Obama.
A YouGov/Economist survey of 1,000 adults interviewed March 8-10 found that 78 percent view Putin as somewhat to very strong leader. Just 45 percent see Obama the same way. Worse, more Americans, 55 percent, view Obama as a weak leader.
The poll comes as the president is struggling with a response to Putin’s push into Ukraine and expectations that Crimea will break off and join Russia.
Or maybe it’s because Obama really is weak and not just weak but has no idea what to do or even who to ask or listen to.
Law of Markets 