Category Archives: vladamir putin

The drums are getting louder!

The drums are getting louder!


Over the last few years we have seen an increasingly audible and increasingly un-ignorable, drum roll of problems arising out of militant Islam and Islamist activists.

This drum roll whilst getting louder and faster is of course nowhere near its crescendo as yet.

But recently here in Europe we have not only had the attacks in France, Belgium and Germany but also a number of foiled attacks and also attacks that are no longer sufficiently dramatic to attract much media coverage but which would once have been reported.

Then on the same day we have now had the deliberate murder, using a truck as a weapon, not only of the Polish truck driver, but also of a dozen who were at a Christmas market in Berlin, but dozens of other, no doubt, many very seriously injured.

There was also on the same day the outrageous murder of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey by a Turkish policeman. Had the Russians wanted to they would be well within their rights to treat such a murder as a cause for a very serious escalation of hostile relations between Russian and Turkey. President Putin has however shown himself to be very statesman like in his response to this provocation, which after all is of no lesser level of provocation than the provocation to Austro-Hungary of the assassination of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand.

It would seem that President Putin has seen that President Erdogan’s over-zealous reaction to clamping down on his political opponents, following the attempted coup in Turkey, and the ending of the siege of Allepo, as being a moment in which Turkey has far fewer allies than it had, but also the moment in which Russia could emerge in the Middle East as a far bigger and more effective power broker than has been the case in recent history.

Given that President Erdogan has a track record himself of being an Islamist and indeed has spent time in Turkish prison for his Islamist activities, it remains unclear whether a rapproachment between Turkey and Russia will lead to any slackening of the tempo of the Islamist drum beat.

Another factor that needs to be considered is the effect of the current low oil price, not only on the Russian economy, but also on the long term prospects of Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are using up the capital that they have built up over decades. Not long ago the Financial Times was predicting Saudi Arabia would run out of money before 2020. If that happens Turkey will probably again become the leading Sunni power and also there will be a collapse in funding for Sunni Islamism across the world.

The oil price is however a consequence of an undeclared economic war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Iranians calculate that they have much greater ability to endure low oil prices for much longer than Saudi Arabia and therefore they can economically bleed out Saudi Arabia and emerge as the regional Shia Power. If that happens there will be, of course, a whole new real politique dynamic in the Middle East.

In the meanwhile the drum beat will I suspect continue to grow louder and faster as Saudi Arabia starts to see the collapse looming. That may be the moment when the panicky crescendo hits us.

As citizens of Western European countries we can only hope and campaign for our leaders to show more sense than they have done so far over the Islamist question! Or to replace them!

Happy New Year!

ENGLISH SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN ACTION IN SYRIA GROWS

ENGLISH SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN ACTION IN SYRIA GROWS


On Friday, the Daily Express carried an article showing that despite the concerted efforts of the British and American political Establishments and mass media, the majority of the English people support the decisive action being taken by Russia’s President Putin and the Russian military in supporting the only viable answer to the Islamist terrorist army of Islamic State or ISIS. Here is a link to the Express article >>>
More than 70% SUPPORT Vladimir Putin’s ISIS airstrikes despite rising Middle East tensions | UK | News | Daily Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/611495/Vladimir-Putin-bombing-campaign-poll-support-syria-middle-east

On Friday I was asked by Russia Today whether I would comment on it and here is a link to their article about it and at the bottom of the article you can play the sound track of their interviews with others >>>
Why does Western public opinion support Russian ops in Syria? — RT Op-Edge
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/318878-us-poll-isis-russia/

Also here is a link to my interview >>> Robin Tilbrook about public opinion on Russia’s campaign in Syria – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1BoHtN5mE&feature=youtu.be

In my view it is not at all surprising that the common sense minded public in England has not been bamboozled by the efforts of the mass media into thinking that we have got to support some groups of “moderate” Islamists, whatever that might amount to, in fighting President Assad, when it is all too clear that frequently that the so-called moderate Islamists accept the weapons and training that they are given before defecting to ISIS.

The United States has a track record of misjudging this kind of situation. After all in Afghanistan the rise of the Taliban was largely the result of US policy, supported by Islamists within Pakistan, originally with a view to undermining the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. They succeeded in arming and training a huge number of Islamists who then, not surprisingly, proceeded to take-over the country and run it according to fundamentalist Islamic Sharia Law principles. The same cack-handed approach seems to have been attempted in Syria leading to a protracted civil war.

In considering what has happened in the Middle East it would be remiss not to mention the mainly British and American intervention in Iraq, which not only led to the deaths of uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqis, but also the virtual collapse of the Iraqi State.

Having learnt nothing from Iraq, David Cameron and William Hague plunged into an attack on the Libyan Government, led by Colonel Gadaffi, and have left that country in a Hobbsian state of nature of a “war of all against all in which man’s life is nasty, brutish and short”! Both Iraq and Libya are products of a neo-colonialist “liberal interventionist” doctrine developed partly by Tony Blair, over amongst other places Kosovo.

This doctrine is in stark contrast to one of the most fundamental rules of “international law” from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War, until modern times. It was generally considered to be a clear breach of “international law” for other countries to intervene in the internal affairs of other states. 

Not only is this new doctrine very doubtful as a concept of “international law”, but also it is demonstrably both contrary to Realpolitik and dangerous. The Syrian conflict is merely the latest manifestation of this Blairite dodgy doctrine. A doctrine which is even more dodgy than Blair’s infamous dodgy dossier which he used as a pretext for war in Iraq!

It has to be remembered that the States in the Middle East are the product of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and of the disastrous peace conference of Versailles. The boundaries were drawn principally to enable the colonialist victorious powers to divide up the territory between them. With this agenda in mind, it would not have suited the imperialists to have States which had homogeneous Nation States created with a strong sense of their identity and cultural roots. Instead what imperialists wanted were States where the opportunities for the ancient Roman imperialist doctrine of “divide and rule” could easily be applied.

It was for this reason that Iraq, for example, was created with borders that were drawn by British decision makers at Versailles to break up the Kurds, who are by any usual measure a Nation partly into Iran, partly into Iraq, partly into Syria and partly into Turkey to prevent them from uniting. A mixture then of Sunni Arabs, the Marsh Arabs and part of ancient Persia were then added to the mix to create the new territory of Iraq, which British imperialists hoped could never be expected to unite against them.

Even so it should be remembered that the British imperialists did find it impossible to maintain control of Iraq and, despite the best efforts of the young “Bomber Harris” to bomb opposing populations into submission, the British Empire withdrew from Iraq setting up what they hoped would be a puppet State. In fact of course Iraq, like most of the States set up in this way, has inevitably wound up with a series of dictators as willingness to use violent oppression is probably the only effective way of maintaining control of a disunited, antagonistic and feuding population.

Syria is of course another one of those States where the borders were drawn up arbitrarily to include different populations. In the case of Syria it was in the interests of French imperialism and again a series of dictators following withdrawal of France has been the only effective way of keeping that State together. It is in this context that the American and to some extent the British policy of supporting groups of Islamist rebels against the current Government of Syria has to be considered. I do not think it is at all surprising that this ill-thought out policy has resulted in catastrophe.

If the real objective is to get rid of ISIS the only sensible answer is the policy that President Putin and the Russian Government are now pursuing which is the open and full throttle support of the Government of Syria. The fact that so much time and effort and money has been spent by the Obama administration and his other Western allies on other tactics (including the drone terrorist tactic of assassinating individual opponents), suggests that either they must be utterly incompetent or they have another hidden and perhaps more sinister agenda; or that they have been misled by their alliance with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which countries have been sponsors of Sunni Islamist terrorism in Syria.

What do you think?

Vladimir Putin: ‘Stalin no worse than Oliver Cromwell’!!

It was interesting to hear  that the Russian President, Vladamir Putin, has recently sought to compare Joseph Stalin with Oliver Cromwell.

(Here is a link to an article about this >>> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-soviet-leader-joseph-stalin-was-no-worse-than-oliver-cromwell-9016836.html).

At one level it goes to show how little Mr Putin knows about history, but on another, there is a serious point that after the chaos of every revolution in history and the usual accompanying wild hopes for a better world, there has typically emerged a nasty dictator.

The striking differences between Oliver Cromwell and Joe Stalin (let alone the other Socialists like Lenin and Mao Tse Tung), is the fact that our devout evangelical Christian, Oliver Cromwell, not only refused the Crown of England which he was repeatedly offered, but also did not carry out mass murders and terror tactics unlike the 20th Century’s genocidal, Communist mass murderers.

Cromwell on the other hand sought to modernise the English government and had an important role in building the foundations of the very first modern nation state that is:- England.

Cromwell’s reforms set England and the English nation on the path, not only to the first industrial revolution, but world mercantile trade and indeed the largest empire the word has ever known.

Stalin on the other hand is directly implicated in the murder of up to 55 million people who were alleged to be class enemies (e.g. petit bourgeois) or who held heretical communist beliefs or who were ethnically inexpedient.  In contrast however to the total physical cowardice displayed by Mao Tse Tung, Stalin did show personal courage and resolve as the German Army reached Moscow.

Also Stalin had two strokes of luck back in the Second World War.  Churchill’s willingness to help him and Hitler’s greedy blunder in encouraging the Japanese to attack South rather than up into Siberia.  Personally nevertheless I would suggest that Stalin is better compared with Genghis Khan!

So much for the comparison between Cromwell and Stalin! Happy New Year!