- America's neo-conservative elite and their collaborators
in the pro-Israel lobby in Washington have fired a first shot in the opening
guns of a new Cold War being launched against Russian Premier Vladimir
Putin.
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- Although it hasn't been reported widely in the America
mass media, Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.),
two of the Israeli lobby's leading congressional stalwarts, introduced
a resolution in the Senate on February 19, condemning Putin and urging
President Bush to push for suspending Russia's membership in the G-8 group
of industrial nations.
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- Latching on to the president's emphatic declaration in
his January 20 inaugural address of a new global campaign by the United
States for the promotion of "democracy." Lieberman announced
that "President Putin,s assault on democracy in Russia violates the
spirit of the industrialized democracies and the letter of Russia's obligations
to the Group of Eight. We must openly confront anti-democratic backsliding
in Russia for the sake of all those who look to the United States as a
beacon for freedom."
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- The resolution was designed to put President Bush on
the spot, coming just as President Bush was preparing for his scheduled
meeting with Putin in Slovakia on February 24.
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- The motivation for the effort by the neo-conservatives
and their congressional spokesmen to undermine Putin is quite clear, inasmuch
as Putin recently challenged Bush and Israel by daring to say publicly
that he (Putin) does not believe that Iran is seeking to build nuclear
weapons of mass destruction.
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- Although the burgeoning hostility against Putin by the
neo-conservatives has been widely hashed over in small-circulation pro-Israel
publications and American Jewish community newspapers on a regular basis,
it has only been of recent date that mainstream publications such as The
Washington Post and and The New York Times, to name the most prominent,
have begun to echo those concerns about Putin, almost as if the big name
dailies were taking the lead from the other journals. Increasingly, however,
the word that "Putin is a possible enemy" is now being breached
to the average American, through the outlets of the mass media.
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- Reflecting on the fact that the media was increasingly
promoting hostility to Putin, American Free Press noted on October 25,
2004 that the media's primary concern about Putin stems from the fact that
he has been moving against the handful of billionaire plutocrats in Russia
(many of whom also hold Israeli citizenship) who grabbed control of the
Russian economy with the open-connivance of then-Russian leader Boris Yeltsin,
following the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
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- One American hard-line pro-Israel publication, The New
Republic, raised the question on September 24, 2004: "Is Russia going
fascist?" asserting that whether Putin personally remains in power
or not, there is a growing movement "nationalist" in nature"that
holds great sway among the Russian population. TNR expressed concern that
"a fascist revolution" could be in the offing, meaning a movement
hostile to the Israeli oligarchs (with international criminal connections)
who rule the Russian economic. Likewise, much earlier, in his 1995 book,
Russia: A Return to Imperialism, Boston-University-based Israeli academic
Uri Ra'anan sounded the concern that post-Soviet Russia may pose a threat
to the West.
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- These works echo such writers as Jonathon Brent and Vladimir
Naumov who, in their 2003 book, Stalin's Last Crime, published evidence
that longtime Soviet leader Josef Stalin was almost certainly murdered
in 1953 after he began moves toward exorcising Zionist influence in Soviet
circles of power. They concluded by saying that "Stalin is a perpetual
possibility," leaving open the theoretical proposition that Putin,
or other would-be Russian leaders, may ultimately emerge as heir to Stalin's
anti-Zionist legacy.
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- Essentially, with the American neo-conservatives (whose
ideological godfathers are widely known as admitted ex-Trotskyite communists)
now moving against Putin, it is as if we are seeing a rejuvenation of the
war against Russian nationalism by the Trotskyites, retooled for 21st century
geopolitical considerations. Now - unlike in the first half of the 20th
century prior to the founding of the state of Israel - the central role
of that Middle East state in the neo-conservative worldview cannot be understated,
for the concern about Israel is a front-line consideration in the neo-conservative
campaign against Putin.
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- Although Russia joined the G-8 nations (which includes
Britain, Canada, Japan, France, Italy and Germany) in 2002, the companion
resolutions in the Senate and the House ask the president to enlist the
other G-8 countries to join with the United States in suspending Russia's
G-8 membership until such time as President Bush decides that Russia is
supposedly committed to so-called "democratic principles."
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- This is the second time that McCain and Lieberman introduced
such a measure, although their last effort, in 2003, failed in committee.
At that time, two other members of Congress, California Reps. Tom Lantos
- a Democrat - and Christopher Cox - a Republican - introduced a companion
resolution in the House of Representatives which reached the House floor,
but it was never voted upon.
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