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POPS October Surprises In History During October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of war over nuclear-armed missiles that Nikita Khrushchev had shipped to Cuba. Those who believe that this month's collapse of global financial markets is an unprecedented disaster need to study history. In 1987, Oct. 19 became known as "Black Monday," as Wall Street investors watched the market nose-dive 22 percent and lose $500 billion in value in a single trading session -- still the biggest one-day loss of value in history. The 23rd of this month is the 25th anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon -- a radical Islamic suicide attack that killed 241 Americans. Fifteen years ago this month, there was a 19-hour gunfight in Mogadishu, Somalia, which claimed the lives of 18 U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force personnel.
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POPSSwift Satire gores both sides I think Jon Swift is one of the funnies guys in the blogosphere. He goes on to say: "But some conservative “intellectuals” like David Brooks subscribe to the canard that the conservative movement was defined by pointy-headed eastern elites like William Buckley, whose “entire life,” Brooks recently wrote, “was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.....Brooks even goes so far as to claim that conservatives once valued “constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking.” We did? Since when? Does he honestly believe that the conservative movement was based on people who read books? Reagan wasn’t elected by the Harvard faculty. It was an angry mob tired of welfare queens and pinko fellow travelers selling us out to the Soviet Union that put him in office."
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POPSThree major points from Russian-Georgian war
The West appears to have underestimated the strength of the Kremlin’s negative reaction toward NATO’s eastward expansion. Russia’s reluctant acquiescence to the Baltic states’ joining the Atlantic alliance was clearly misleading: Moscow did make some noise, but it was in no position to take any active measures of resistance, as Russia back then was still relatively weak. For the Kremlin, the establishment of a NATO foothold in Georgia would be an intolerable development that could spark a domino effect across the Caucasus. It would start with the internationalization of peace process in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, causing Russia to lose its monopoly on "peacekeeping" operations, and culminate with Moscow losing control over the South Caucasus - with the grave consequences for stability in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus autonomous republics. To prevent this from happening, the Kremlin "preempted" the Western move and, in a risky gambit, radically changed the situation on the ground.
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POPSTurkey torn between NATO and Russia Ian Lesser, an expert on Turkey at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote in a recent policy paper. "In theory, Turkey’s proximity to the crisis and desire to play a larger diplomatic role in the Black Sea could make Turkey a lynchpin of NATO strategy in Georgia, especially if rapprochement with Armenia is part of the equation. But Turkish willingness to place its territory at the service of Western policy in Georgia is highly uncertain."
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POPSMedvedev calls Georgia's attack "Russia's 9/11" “We must build a new security system based on international law, not on the might-is-right rule,” he said. Russia is no longer frail and weak, as it was in the 1990s, and will forge ties, including in the defence field, with any state that wants to be friends with it, whether somebody likes it or not, Mr. Medvedev asserted. As he spoke reports came that the Russian and Syrian naval commanders were discussing in Moscow plans for a Russian naval base in Syria, while Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki began talks with his Russian counterpart. A day earlier Russia’s long-range nuclear bombers flew on a training mission to America’s sworn enemy Venezuela. Russia and its Central Asian allies — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — will set up a large military force to fend off possible attacks in the region, the head of the Russia-led defence pact announced on Friday. General Nikolai Bordyuzha, Secretary-General of the Collective Security Treaty Organisatio
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POPSMoney Inc. ....... The 10 most decadent dictators ....... One common characteristic of these frauds is their penchant for bombastic titles, grandiose settings and fantastic heraldry. Nicolae Ceausescu, President of Romania, 1967 - 1989 Saparmurat Niyazov, President of Turkmenistan, 1990 - 2006 Idi Amin, President of Uganda, 1971 - 1979 Joseph Stalin, Leader of the Soviet Union, 1922 - 1953 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Persia, 1941 - 1979 Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, 1989 - 2003 Mobutu Sese Soku, President of Zaire, 1965 - 1997 Suharto, President of Indonesia, 1967 - 1998 Today we live in a world where the Filipinos who died in the Bataan Death March can be be dismissed as colonial “dupes” while the memory of Indonesian “nationalists”, Korean “Dear Leaders” and Soviet “Uncle Joes” can be artfully preserved and their crimes very carefully excused. And why? Because as the first paragraph showed, there’s money in bilking useful fools.
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POPSIs she nuts? We can't even take over Iraq how are we going to take on Russia? The prelude to "nuklar" war....more neocon BS...
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POPSABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures Arrested for taking pictures in a public space of public officials. It's just like the spy novels I read as a teen, except now this sort of thing occurs in the US instead of the Soviet Union. Basically the law these days is "Whatever the hell I say it is" if you are a police officer. If this had only been a single isolated incident, I wouldn't be so hot about this issue, but it's happening more and more every day. I read at least 1 article a week about the police abusing their power when it comes to photographers. So now I have to ask myself what I as a citizen should do. I know that patriotically I should never stand for abuse of power, but realistically I can't imagine how to even stand against this level of national fascism.
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POPSBack to The Future * In 1979, he shared Carter's starry-eyed belief that the fall of the shah in Iran and the advent of the ayatollahs represented progress for human rights. Throughout the hostage crisis, as US diplomats were daily paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras and threatened with execution, he opposed strong action against the terrorist mullahs and preached dialogue. * Biden opposed President Ronald Reagan's proactive policy against the Soviet Union. Biden was all for détente - which, in practice, meant Western subsidies that would have enabled the moribund USSR to cling to life and continue doing mischief. Had Biden had his way, "the Evil Empire" would still be around and Saddam Hussein still in power. The US would still be begging the mullahs of Tehran for forgiveness of unspecified "past sins" - and more American hostages would be seized in the Middle East while the mullahs celebrate their first atomic bombs.
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POPSRed Primer for Children and Diplomats Part III by Victor Vashi
Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, sought to reclaim all of the areas formerly controlled by the Czars, especially the fertile Ukraine. As a result, four years of chaos and conflict followed in which Ukrainian national troops fought against Lenin's Red Army, and also against Russia's White Army (troops still loyal to the Czar) as well as other invading forces including the Germans and Poles. By 1921, the battles ended with a Soviet victory while the western part of the Ukraine was divided-up among Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. But when Lenin died in 1924, he was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, one of the most ruthless humans ever to hold power. To Stalin, the burgeoning national revival movement and continuing loss of Soviet influence in the Ukraine was completely unacceptable. Beginning in 1929, over 5,000 Ukrainian scholars, scientists, cultural and religious leaders were arrested.... http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm
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POPSRed Primer for Children and Diplomats Part II by Victor Vashi Red Army invasion of Georgia The Red Army invasion of Georgia also known as the Soviet-Georgian War (February 15 – March 17, 1921) was a military campaign by the Soviet Russian (RSFSR) Red Army against the Democratic Republic of Georgia (DRG) aimed at overthrowing the local Social-Democratic (Menshevik) government and installing the Bolshevik regime in the country. The conflict was a result of expansionist policy by the Soviets, who aimed at control of the same territories which had been part of Imperial Russia until the turbulent events of World War I, as well as the revolutionary efforts of mostly Russia-based Georgian Bolshevik elite, who did not enjoy sufficient support in their native country to seize power without foreign intervention. Copy of the New York Times article at link: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/russians-overrun-georgia-republic-1921
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POPSRed Primer for Children and Diplomats The Order of the October Revolution (Russian: Орден Октябрьской Революции, or Orden Oktyabr'skoy Revolyutsii) was instituted on October 31, 1967, in time for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. It was awarded to individuals or groups for services furthering communism or the state, or in enhancing the defences of the Soviet Union. It ranked second amongst the Soviet orders, after the Order of Lenin. Nicholas II of Russia born Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov (18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Tsar of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland. Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until his abdication in 1917. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917 in which he and his family were imprisoned first in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, then later the Governor's Mansion in Tobolsk. Finally, at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Nicholas and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 17, 1918.
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