Prometheus 6

You know what this is?

It's a representation of 900 million dollars in one dollar bills, compared to an average human being. 

It also represents nine tenths of the one billion dollars Bush is about to promise to Georgia.

The aid — along with Mr. Cheney’s visit — is sure to increase tensions with Russia, whose leaders have accused the United States of stoking the conflict with Georgia over its two separatist regions, by providing weapons and training to the Georgians. President Dmitri A. Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin have also complained that humanitarian supplies delivered by the American Navy and Air Force since Russian forces routed Georgian forces and occupied parts of the country were a disguise for delivering new weapons.

Administration officials have dismissed those accusations as baseless....

He said Russia's reaction to NATO ships ''will be calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer,'' Interfax quoted Putin as saying during a visit to Uzbekistan.

Asked by exactly what measures Russia would take, Putin was quoted as answering ''You'll see.'' 

Putin vows 'an answer' to NATO ships near Georgia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 10:30 a.m. ET

MOSCOW (AP) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia will respond calmly to an increase in NATO ships in the Black Sea in the aftermath of the short war with Georgia, but promised that ''there will be an answer.''

Dutch withdraw spy from Iran because of 'impending US attack'
The Dutch intelligence service has pulled an agent out of an "ultra-secret operation" spying on Iran's military industry because spymasters in Netherlands believe a United States air attack was imminent.
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 9:24AM BST 01 Sep 2008

According to reports in the newspaper De Telegraaf, the country's intelligence service, the AIVD, has stopped an espionage operation aimed at infiltration and sabotage of the weapons industry in Iran.

"The operation, described as extremely successful, was halted recently in connection with plans for an impending US air attack on Iran," said the report.

"Targets would also be bombed which were connected with the Dutch espionage action."

"Well placed" sources told the paper that a top agent had been recalled recently "because the US was thought to be making a decision within weeks to attack Iran with unmanned aircraft".

In his unabashed claim to a renewed Russian sphere of influence, Mr. Medvedev said: “Russia, like other countries in the world, has regions where it has privileged interests. These are regions where countries with which we have friendly relations are located.”

Asked whether this sphere of influence would be the border states around Russia, he answered, “It is the border region, but not only.”

Russia Claims Its Sphere of Influence in the World
By ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia on Sunday laid out what he said would become his government’s guiding principles of foreign policy after its landmark conflict with Georgia — notably including a claim to a “privileged” sphere of influence in the world.

Speaking to Russian television in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, a day before a summit meeting in Brussels where European leaders were to reassess their relations with Russia, Mr. Medvedev said his government would adhere to five principles.

“The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States,” Mr. Putin said in an interview with CNN.

He added, “They needed a small victorious war.”

Putin Suggests U.S. Provocation in Georgia Clash
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — As Russia struggled to rally international support for its military action in Georgia, Vladimir V. Putin, the country’s paramount leader, lashed out at the United States on Thursday, contending that the White House may have orchestrated the conflict to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election.

Russia Recognizes Breakaway Georgian Regions
By Philip P. Pan and Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 26, 2008; 9:16 AM

MOSCOW, Aug. 26 -- President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the independence of two breakaway regions of Georgia on Tuesday and called on other nations to do the same, escalating what has become one of the most serious conflicts between Russia and the United States since the end of the Cold War.

In a statement broadcast live on national television, Medvedev said he signed decrees recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia because it was the "only way to protect people's lives." He said Russia had tried for years to resolve the ethnic conflict between Georgia and the two provincesthrough peaceful negotiations but that Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili, made a negotiated settlement impossible by trying to seize South Ossetia by military force and slaughter its residents.

I am now officially concerned about Pakistan.

If diplomatic responses mean anything at all, imagine Russia's reaction if the United States starts chasing militants in Pakistan independent of the Pakistani government.

It turns out the Bush administration's mishandling of Afghanistan and Pakistan could have greater repercussions than their mishandling of Iraq. In fact, abandoning those nations mid-war in favor of adventures in Iraq set the conditions for their current crisis.

There might be proof of intelligent design in this. It really seems to me that those who want to dominate the world inevitably turn out to be too stupid or impatient...same thing, really...to pull it off. Even a collective effort as coordinated as PNAC is composed of humans that can't wait to be the one that sets it in motion, or makes the decisive step. Above all, we want it to happen while we're able to enjoy our just reward. We may be designed that way, and it may be our final defense

Friction With Russia May Spell Trouble for U.S.
By PETER BAKER

The president of Syria spent two days this week in Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy. The visit may prove a harbinger of things to come.

If Russia’s invasion of Georgia ushers in a sustained period of renewed animosity with the West, Washington fears that a newly emboldened but estranged Moscow could use its influence, money, energy resources, United Nations Security Council veto and, yes, its arms industry to undermine American interests around the world.

Although Russia has long supplied arms to Syria, it has held back until now on providing the next generation of ballistic missiles. But the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, made clear that he was hoping to capitalize on rising tensions between Moscow and the West when he rushed to the resort city of Sochi to meet with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev.

In choosing the target, the Taliban singled out a symbolically important industry, and one that Pakistanis thought was virtually impregnable, General Masood said.

Suicide Attack at Pakistan Arms Plant Kills 60 People
By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — More than 60 people were killed Thursday when two suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s largest weapons manufacturing complex just north of the capital, the deadliest attack by the Taliban in their escalating campaign against the government.

The attack came just days after the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf, leaving two rival political parties in the governing coalition haggling over the question of succession and adding a new layer of turbulence to an unstable, nuclear-armed nation. Neither party has been anxious to take on the campaign against the militants, which is seen here as an American conflict foisted on the country.

If you don't, look it up. Because you can bet your ass the Russians do. And it doesn't matter much that Bush and Condi say the missile shield is aimed at Iran when Poland says fear of Russia is what moved them to sign onto the pact.

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and the government’s point man on missile defense, said in an interview this week, “Parchments and treaties are all very well, but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies.”

It is not a cold war mindset that drives Poland, Mr. Sikorski said, but one that harks all the way back to World War II, when, despite alliances with Britain and France, Poland fought Nazi Germany alone, and lost.

She said that the Bush administration wants “to make sure that any timelines reflect what we believe can be done,” adding that ultimately, “the prime minister has to make the call on moving forward.”

Rice Travels to Iraq to Push for Deal on U.S. Forces
By HELENE COOPER, STEPHEN FARRELL and THOM SHANKER

BAGHDAD —Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here Thursday to try to iron out the last remaining differences on a long-awaited security agreement to govern the presence of American troops in Iraq, after negotiators in Baghdad said they had agreed on a draft.

Ms. Rice said that her visit, which was previously undisclosed, should not be viewed as a sign that a final agreement, which has been under negotiations for five months, was imminent. But she said the talks had reached the point where political leaders from both the United States and Iraq could push on the remaining decisions. Those would address the timing of American forces’ withdrawal and the issue of immunity for American troops from Iraqi prosecution.

"This is hard to watch," said Zekri Youssef, 33, a pizza maker from Egypt. "People don't know this happens."

"I recognize this, because I was tortured, too," said Paul Rivera, 41, who says he was tied down with restraints while he was serving prison time for selling drugs and guns. "This is sad to see."

"That's messed up," said Joshua Sanchez, 16, a Bronx student. "That's real wrong to torture someone, and I wouldn't have put a dollar in if I knew."

"I don't think there's a need for that. I don't like it," said Denise Kennedy, 49, a Brooklyn homemaker who held up her 9-year-old niece to view the exhibit before realizing what it was. "It's not for kids at all."

In N.Y., Waterboarding as Dark Art
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2008; A02

NEW YORK -- Slip a dollar into a slot in the "Waterboard Thrill Ride," and watch through bars as a man in a hooded sweatshirt pours water into the nose and mouth of another man in an orange jumpsuit convulsing against his restraints.

It looks like a scene from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But this is Coney Island, and the two men are motorized mannequins whose interaction takes place alongside freak shows and funnel cakes.

The scene is the creation of Steve Powers, who has participated in the Venice Biennale, won a Fulbright grant and published art books, but whose roots are in the graffiti art of the streets.

She's still representing what I think of as the full-of-shit demographic.

Rethinking the National Interest
American Realism for a New World
By Condoleezza Rice

From Foreign Affairs , July/August 2008

Condoleezza Rice is U.S. Secretary of State.

What is the national interest? This is a question that I took up in 2000 in these pages. That was a time that we as a nation revealingly called "the post-Cold War era." We knew better where we had been than where we were going. Yet monumental changes were unfolding -- changes that were recognized at the time but whose implications were largely unclear.

And then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. As in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was swept into a fundamentally different world. We were called to lead with a new urgency and with a new perspective on what constituted threats and what might emerge as opportunities. And as with previous strategic shocks, one can cite elements of both continuity and change in our foreign policy since the attacks of September 11.

The United States is sharing intelligence with Turkey on the rebels, who maintain bases in Iraq that serve as a launch pad for attacks on targets inside Turkey.

Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish rebel target in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:48 a.m. ET

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Turkish warplanes hit a suspected Kurdish rebel target in northern Iraq, Turkey's military said Sunday.

The cross-border air assault targeted a rebel shelter late Saturday where a group of PKK Kurdish rebels was believed to have gathered before a planned attack in Turkey, the military said on its Web site.

The military provided no casualty figures. The reported air raid on the Avasin-Basyan region of Iraq could not independently be confirmed.

Turkey's military has launched several air strikes and one ground incursion targeting the PKK rebel safe havens in northern Iraq since the parliament authorized cross-border military moves following a surge in PKK ambushes inside Turkey late last year.

In saner times it would be paranoia but both their local interests (as defined by their previous actions) benefit. Bush gets to posture, Republicans get to run on National Defense and the Cold War (which will subsume the War on Terra) unto perpetuity, and Russia gets Georgia and the tremulous respect of everyone in the neighborhood.

Russia Enraged by Poland Missile Deal
By THOM SHANKER and NICHOLAS KULISH

WASHINGTON — The United States and Poland reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia.

He said the deal also includes a ''mutual commitment'' between the two nations to come to each other's assistance ''in case of trouble.''

That clause appeared to be a direct reference to Russia, which has threatened to aim its nuclear-armed missiles at Poland -- a former Soviet satellite -- if it hosts the U.S. site.

U.S. and Poland Agree to Missile Defense Deal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:14 p.m. ET

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Poland and the United States struck a deal Thursday that will strengthen military ties and put an American missile interceptor base in Poland, a plan that has infuriated Moscow and sparked fears in Europe of a new arms race.

''We have crossed the Rubicon,'' Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, referring to U.S. consent to Poland's demands after more than 18 months of negotiations.

And there's no more racism either.

Man, Medvedev and Putin are playing us like Black Bush played the UN..."Okay, you're right. You should sanction me. Sanction me with your army. Oh, that's right, you don't HAVE an army!"

Russia Takes Gori

President Dmitri Medvedev promised European negotiators early Wednesday morning that Russia would halt its attacks on Georgia and begin withdrawing its troops. A few hours later, Russian tanks rolled into the strategic crossroads town of Gori — just 40 miles from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.

We’re not sure if that means Mr. Medvedev isn’t in charge or that he was lying to buy more time to push for the overthrow of Georgia’s democratically elected government. Either explanation is chilling.

We KNOW how to run a cold war.

Bush Sends Aid to Georgia as Russians Occupy a City
By ELLEN BARRY

MOSCOW — With the fragile truce in Georgia on the brink of collapse Wednesday, President Bush announced that the United States had begun a humanitarian aid mission there and said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would go to the region to work for a settlement of the conflict with Russia.

Nerves frayed all day after a Russian tank battalion occupied the Georgian city of Gori, a move Georgia condemned as flagrant defiance of a Western-brokered agreement struck only hours earlier. Gori is only 40 miles from Tbilisi, the capital, and rumors circulated all day of an attack on Tbilisi. Meanwhile, hundreds of Russian soldiers poured over the border from Russia into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, where attack helicopters and fuel trucks accompanied a long convoy of trucks.

The Wages of Destruction, Part 2: Controversies

(Part 1)

Adam Tooze weighs in on several controversies, among them:

1. Degree of sacrifice made by the German economy during the War;

2. Role of direct economic controls on the German economy;

3. Voluntarism (i.e., the degree to which Hitler's regime reflected the will of the German people);

4. Arbitrariness of decision (i.e., the range of options that the Nazi regime actually had);

5. Inevitability of outcome.

In order to make it clear we're not talking about straw men here: Tooze's endnotes cite opposing views on each subject. 

People of all political persuasion now seem to get it about Russia. In “The Return of History and The End of Dreams,” Robert Kagan, the neoconservative foreign policy expert who is advising John McCain, writes of Mr. Putin and his coterie: “Their grand ambition is to undo the post-cold war settlement and to re-establish Russia as a dominant power in Eurasia.”

Of course, Russia having stopped their advance makes one question all the hyperventilating.

Taunting the Bear
By JAMES TRAUB

The hostilities between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday over the breakaway province of South Ossetia look, in retrospect, almost absurdly over-determined. For years, the Russians have claimed that Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been preparing to retake the disputed regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and have warned that they would use force to block such a bid. Mr. Saakashvili, for his part, describes today’s Russia as a belligerent power ruthlessly pressing at its borders, implacably hostile to democratic neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine. He has thrown in his lot with the West, and has campaigned ardently for membership in NATO. Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s former president and current prime minister, has said Russia could never accept a NATO presence in the Caucasus.

The border between Georgia and Russia, in short, has been the driest of tinder; the only question was where the fire would start.

Ex-President Gorbachev puts together a far better case for invading Georgia than Bush did for invading Iraq.

Richard Cohen says Russia's version of Shock and Awe is over the top.

A couple of folks at the NY Times discuss what comes after the post-Soviet era.

McCain loves it, of course. But more importantly, it's making investors nervous.

(P6: Thanks to James for the guest post. Have at it!)

Special thanks to Submariner for recommending the book

Coming up with something original to say on Hitler's Third Reich would seem like an exceptionally difficult thing to do, but Adam Tooze has. And while Tooze's book pays much attention to the economic conditions that allowed Germany to wage its stupendous war, the controversial aspects lie in very universal questions of collective responsibility and personal dignity.  In a way, as the War recedes further into the history, new histories become analyses of prior efforts to understand it—"meta-history," so to speak.  There are already a large number of professional reviews of the book, all favorable, so this review is now tasked with coming up with something original to say about the original things Tooze said (see below for some examples).

Maybe they are as immune to historical truth as Georgia, USA.

Will Russia Get Away With It?
By WILLIAM KRISTOL

In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While “sympathetic reference to his country’s efforts was made” in the Assembly, the Times said, “it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.”

“Unlikely” was an understatement. Georgians did not enjoy freedom again until 1991.

Take sorghum, a staple of the Sudanese diet, typically eaten in flat, spongy bread. Last year, the United States government, as part of its response to the emergency in Darfur, shipped in 283,000 tons of sorghum, at high cost, from as far away as Houston. Oddly enough, that is about the same amount that Sudan exported, according to United Nations officials. 

Darfur Withers as Sudan Sells a Food Bonanza
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ED DAMER, Sudan — Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.