That test is just stupid, although not yet as bad as Lysenko. Znamya was a real attempt at engineering by the Russians.

@sherry william

The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was met with overt hostility from President Wilson's administration.

Actually it was Woodrow Wilsons administration through the lobbying efforts of Jacob Schiff gave Trotsky and other Jewish Communists revolutionaries in New York passports to enter Russia who would become the bulk of the new government.

WOODROW WILSON AND A PASSPORT FOR TROTSKY

President Woodrow Wilson was the fairy godmother who provided Trotsky with a passport to return to Russia to "carry forward" the revolution. This American passport was accompanied by a Russian entry permit and a British transit visa. Jennings C. Wise, in Woodrow Wilson: Disciple of Revolution, makes the pertinent comment, "Historians must never forget that Woodrow Wilson, despite the efforts of the British police, made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia with an American passport."

President Wilson facilitated Trotsky's passage to Russia at the same time careful State Department bureaucrats, concerned about such revolutionaries entering Russia, were unilaterally attempting to tighten up passport procedures. The Stockholm legation cabled the State Department on June 13, 1917, just after Trotsky crossed the Finnish-Russian border, "Legation confidentially informed Russian, English and French passport offices at Russian frontier, Tornea, considerably worried by passage of suspicious persons bearing American passports."9

To this cable the State Department replied, on the same day, "Department is exercising special care in issuance of passports for Russia"; the department also authorized expenditures by the legation to establish a passport-control office in Stockholm and to hire an "absolutely dependable American citizen" for employment on control work.10 But the bird had flown the coop. Menshevik Trotsky with Lenin's Bolsheviks were already in Russia preparing to "carry forward" the revolution. The passport net erected caught only more legitimate birds. For example, on June 26, 1917, Herman Bernstein, a reputable New York newspaperman on his way to Petrograd to represent the New York Herald, was held at the border and refused entry to Russia. Somewhat tardily, in mid-August 1917 the Russian embassy in Washington requested the State Department (and State agreed) to "prevent the entry into Russia of criminals and anarchists... numbers of whom have already gone to Russia."11

Consequently, by virtue of preferential treatment for Trotsky, when the S.S. Kristianiafjord left New York on March 26, 1917, Trotsky was aboard and holding a U.S. passport — and in company with other Trotskyire revolutionaries, Wall Street financiers, American Communists, and other interesting persons, few of whom had embarked for legitimate business. This mixed bag of passengers has been described by Lincoln Steffens, the American Communist:

The passenger list was long and mysterious. Trotsky was in the steerage with a group of revolutionaries; there was a Japanese revolutionist in my cabin. There were a lot of Dutch hurrying home from Java, the only innocent people aboard. The rest were war messengers, two from Wall Street to Germany....12

Notably, Lincoln Steffens was on board en route to Russia at the specific invitation of Charles Richard Crane, a backer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee. Charles Crane, vice president of the Crane Company, had organized the Westinghouse Company in Russia, was a member of the Root mission to Russia, and had made no fewer than twenty-three visits to Russia between 1890 and 1930. Richard Crane, his son, was confidential assistant to then Secretary of State Robert Lansing. According to the former ambassador to Germany William Dodd, Crane "did much to bring on the Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism."13 And so Steffens' comments in his diary about conversations aboard the S.S. Kristianiafjord are highly pertinent:" . . . all agree that the revolution is in its first phase only, that it must grow. Crane and Russian radicals on the ship think we shall be in Petrograd for the re-revolution.14

Crane returned to the United States when the Bolshevik Revolution (that is, "the re-revolution") had been completed and, although a private citizen, was given firsthand reports of the progress of the Bolshevik Revolution as cables were received at the State Department. For example, one memorandum, dated December 11, 1917, is entitled "Copy of report on Maximalist uprising for Mr Crane." It originated with Maddin Summers, U.S. consul general in Moscow, and the covering letter from Summers reads in part:

I have the honor to enclose herewith a copy of same [above report] with the request that it be sent for the confidential information of Mr. Charles R. Crane. It is assumed that the Department will have no objection to Mr. Crane seeing the report ....15

In brief, the unlikely and puzzling picture that emerges is that Charles Crane, a friend and backer of Woodrow Wilson and a prominent financier and politician, had a known role in the "first" revolution and traveled to Russia in mid-1917 in company with the American Communist Lincoln Steffens, who was in touch with both Woodrow Wilson and Trotsky. The latter in turn was carrying a passport issued at the orders of Wilson and $10,000 from supposed German sources. On his return to the U.S. after the "re-revolution," Crane was granted access to official documents concerning consolidation of the Bolshevik regime: This is a pattern of interlocking — if puzzling — events that warrants further investigation and suggests, though without at this point providing evidence, some link between the financier Crane and the revolutionary Trotsky.

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/chapter_02.htm#WOODROW WILSON AND A PASSPORT FOR TROTSKY

ALLIED INTELLEGENCE REPORTS

Report of the American Expeditionary forces to Siberia, March 1, 1919. Captain Montgomery Schyler, speaking of events following the decline of the First Provisional Government, says:

These hopes were frustrated by the gradual gains in power of the more irresponsible and socialistic elements of the population, guided by the Jews and other anti-Russian races. A table made in April 1918 by Robert Wilton, the correspondent of the London Times in Russia, shows that at that time there were 384 “commissars” including 2 Negroes, 13 Russians, 15 Chinamen, 22 Armenians and more than 300 Jews. Of the latter number, 264 had come to Russia from the United States since the downfall of the Imperial government.

Captain Schyler then provides a personal reflection:

It is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States, but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning guided and controlled by Russian Jews of the greasiest type, who have been in the United States and there absorbed every one of the worst phases of our civilization without having the least understanding of what we really mean by liberty.

Western intervention during the Civil war period was to prolong Bolsheviks from siezing power to not let them take countrol and remove Russia from WW1 and support anti-Communist factions in strategic oil and gas sectors of Siberia and the Caucasus.

The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was met with overt hostility from President Wilson's administration. After withdrawing funding for Russia and opposing a British and French plan to include the Bolsheviks as allies against Germany in 1918, the United States extended its maritime blockade of Germany to include Soviet Russia and began covertly supporting Russian opposition factions. In 1918, the United States together with other Western powers and Japan launched an armed intervention during the Russian Civil War that included an armed invasion staged in the Russian port cities of Vladivostok and Archangel. President Wilson appointed General William S. Graves to lead the thousands of American troops at Vladivostok.
I am a student of network+ exam and I am having the specialties in the network solutions.

@T. Greer

This is what I consider war I think you would agree.

Declassified 1998 US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Intelligence Information Report (IIR) of foreign terrorists networks in Russia and the Crimea and central Asia from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey and Azerbaijan from a 2000 Freedom of Information act request from Judicial Watch.

“A good deal of information concerning OBLs and al Qaedas efforts in Chechnya, the Caucuses, Crimea, and the Central Asian Republics is covered in the IIR. The confirmed existence of a [secure, reliable, terrorist-sponsored] direct route to Chechnya from Pakistan and Afghanistan through Turkey and Azerbaijan is a stunning information point within this IIR especially in light of the date of the information, 1998.”

http://www.judicialwatch.org/story/2004/nov/defense-intelligence-report-details-al-qaedas-plans-russia-chechnya-and-wmd

http://www.judicialwatch.org/cases/102/dia.pdf

And who is the Sakka they refer to in the report? This who Sakka is.

(Sakka's) story is also one of a globetrotting terrorist in an organisation that is truly multinational.
[...]
The Chechens needed trained fighters. Sakka was telephoned by Ibn al-Khattab, the late militia leader controlling the foreign fighters against the Russians. Khattab requested that Sakka’s trainees should be sent on to Afghanistan for military training because "conditions are tough".
[...]
One of Sakka’s chief roles was to organise passports and visas for the volunteers to make their way to Afghanistan through Pakistan. His ability to keep providing high-quality forged papers made Turkey a main hub for Al-Qaeda movements, his lawyer says. The young men came to Turkey pretending to be on holiday and Sakka’s false papers allowed them to "disappear" overseas.

Turkish intelligence were aware of unusual militant Islamic activity in the Yalova mountains, where Sakka had set up his camps.
[...]
Some of Sakka’s account is corroborated by the US government’s 9/11 Commission. It found evidence that four of the hijackers – whom Sakka says he trained – had initially intended to go to Chechnya from Turkey but the border into Georgia was closed.
[...]
Sakka’s lawyer said: "Just like there is money laundering, there is also terrorist laundering and Turkey was the centre of this."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/15/551916/-Sibel-Edmonds-Case:-The-Central-Asia-Islamization-Cocktail:-Mosques,-Madrassas,-HeroinTerrorism

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2008/01/07/nukes-spooks-and-the-specter-of-911/

1) The world economy will go up then down once the bailout money has ran out and the bubble pops.

2) Main target of US policy will be Russia not directly but indirectly so I expect there will be increased tensions in the Caucasus with increased terror attacks and US/British backing of Crimean Tatars with conflict between the Tatars and Russians.

This is the year you will start to see a lot of documentaries, TV programs, articles in the press, maybe a movie at the end of the year, etc about Communist crimes in the USSR especially Stalin and the WW2 era.
Maybe I should start a thread with a counter listing the various articles, TV about Communist crimes in the media in 2010.

3) US will start a major push into Central Asia so I expect the flow of drugs to increase in the region from Afghanistan with increase in violence in Xinjing and maybe Tibet. The major flash point will be the Fergana Valley and destabilisation of Uzbekistan.

4) Sarah Palin will be promoted as the Republican opposition and in 2012 where the main foreign policy issue will be conflict with Russia and Palin will be promoted as Reagan with tits and win the election.

Viktor Yanukovych will win the election in Ukraine and Britain, US and EU/Soros organisations will do everything possible to disrupt his presidency (smear campaigns in the press, organised nationalist and marches and protests although the western media will refer to them as simply the opposition.

UK politics will be as boring as ever

5) US/Israel will support opposition to the current government in Turkey with Turkey supporting oil and gas transit routes from Russia and cooperation with Iran for oil and gas which is vital to Nabucco after the failed Mossad coup attempt (which surprisingly got little attention even on the internet).

6) I had other predictions but I forgot what they are.

Happy New Year! My vision is posted at New Year Special: Year in Review and 2010 Predictions.

Please use this thread to do your own forecasting / crystal-ball gazing.

1) World economy continues an anemic recovery, though there are significant risks to the downside.

2) Obama’s honeymoon period is over, his approval ratings are on the downslide, and his major domestic and foreign policy initiatives have almost all failed. Republicans will carry the mid-term elections in 2010, but there is a strong mood of apathy and a sense that what is really needed is a new party, a new politics – though this will only start playing a great role in the post-Obama, or post-2012, era. Rising violence in Iraq (perhaps abetted by Iran, to demonstrate to the US the dangers of attacking it); a false quiet in Afghanistan, as the Taleban limit activity to conserve their strength while the US presence in Afghanistan is strong (they know the Americans will retreat the bulk of their forces soon enough anyway).

In the UK, Gordon Brown (New Labour) will almost certainly lose to James Cameron (Conservatives) in the mid-2010 elections.

3) Possible wars. Foremost looms the shadow of Iran and the bomb, of course. I doubt the US will attack in 2010, unless Israel forces its hand. It will first exhaust its options with sanctions, etc, which will almost certainly be ineffective. The Iranian IRGC-linked hardliners in power (figurehead – Ahmadinejad), under pressure from the Rafsanjani / Mousavi clerical clan, will not yield, and will remain defiant internationally to justify increasing their hold on internal power. There will be tension, but no war – especially since the US still needs to develop its Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the next-generation bunker-buster, to have a high level of confidence that a bombing raid on Iranian nuclear installations have truly done their job. (True, postponing the strike to 2011 or 2012 makes the world economy more vulnerable to disruption because oil prices will be higher then and oil supplies tighter, but then again I highly doubt the administration takes “peak oil” into consideration in its strategic planning). Likelihood: 25%; Severity: 6.

What is much more likely to happen is a new war between Israel and Hezbollah. Since 2006, Israel may have infiltrated Hezbollah, aided by internal splits within the organization, and has taken stock of lessons learned during the unsuccessful last war; it may now want to send a signal to Iran and preemptively incapacitate one of its most effective means for retaliating against Israel into the bargain. Israeli special forces are more than capable of producing a false flag, even if Hezbollah refrains from doing it for them. Furthermore, Hezbollah is causing Saudi Arabia trouble by sending fighters and weapons to the Shia insurgency in Yemen fighting the Saudis; SA would appreciate an Israeli crippling attack on Hezbollah, and may give concessions to Israel, such as allowing it to use its airspace in a strike against Iran (the US has said it will shoot down Israeli planes flying to Iran over Iraq). This further increases the incentives for Israel to pummel Hezbollah, this time round with a real, large-scale ground invasion. Likelihood: 50%; Severity: 3.

A new Russia-Georgia war remains a serious possibility, if Saakashvili uses his rapidly rebuilding military forces to make another megalomaniac lunge at reclaiming South Ossetia, or if Russia orchestrates a false flag to give itself the justification to roll in the tanks to Tbilisi and set up a puppet regime. In the latter case, the “new cold war” atmosphere of August 2008 will begin to appear to be distinctly jovial. Likelihood: 10%; Severity: 4.

Finally, we should note that a) Azerbaijan and Armenia have a bitter rivalry, cultural and geographic over the Armenian-populated and -occupied Azeri enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, b) though it lost a war to Armenia in the early 1990’s, Azerbaijan has been implementing a rapid military modernization since 2006 with the help of oil pipeline transit revenue from the BTC, and its military budget alone is now equivalent to Armenia’s entire state budget, c) Armenia and Turkey are slowly moving towards a reconciliation under Russian brokerage, which threatens Azerbaijan’s strategic position, and d) Armenian-Azeri talks over Nagorno-Karabakh have recently collapsed. The obstacle to war is that Turkey and the US, though friendly with Azerbaijan, are very unlikely to give it direct support; but Armenia is in the CSTO military alliance with Russia. An Azeri attack will almost certainly lead to a decisive Russian response, furthermore there is a large Russian military base in Gyumri, Armenia. Unlike Saakashvili, Aliyev is a rational leader, and for now Russian and Turkey have a mutual interest in keeping things contained. That said, the possibility of a new war cannot be fully discounted – especially if it is simultaneous with the chaos unleashed by a US-Israeli war with Iran and its proxies.

Expect instability, but not collapse, in Pakistan, Egypt, Mexico, some or all of the Baltic states. Despite the occasional rhetoric, there is very little chance of a new Korean war, a Venezuela-Colombia war, or an Israel-Syria war.

4) Given that Russia’s demography has continued improving even in 2009, a year of deep economic contraction and scare stories (false) of an abortion apocalypse, it is almost certain that it will continue improving further in 2010 and that the year will see the first year of positive population growth since 1994 (or 2009). Birth rate = 12.5-13.0 (reasons), Death rate = 13.5-14.0 (a reason), Net Migration = 1.5-2.0, all / 1000. Economic growth of around 3-5% of GDP sounds reasonable. Lots of privatizations and corruption investigations as part of the Surkov clan’s struggle against the siliviki and “their” state companies. Ukraine under Yanukovych will join Eurasec or the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union, but is yet unlikely to join the CSTO or give Russian 2nd language status.

5) Oil production in 2010 will be around the same as 2009 – increased demand will collide with geological depletion to keep output stable. Oil prices in H1 will remain at 70-90$, and will rise to 90-110$ in H2 on the basis that background geological depletion will be cancelled out by OPEC going back on its 2009 production cuts to fuel the ongoing global recovery. Of course, if there are serious confrontations with Iran, the oil price will veer right off the historical charts.

6) No major AGW-related physical events (except for a heatwave or two), given that solar irradiation remains at an unusually long trough – expect the fireworks by 2012-15. AGW skepticism will become more popular in the wake of Climategate. China and its proxies will prevent any more significant action being taken at the next UN climate change summit in Mexico, than was “achieved” in Copenhagen. By year-end the performance of the world’s top supercomputer will exceed 3 petaflops (repeat of 2009 prediction).

7) China’s growth will slow from around 8% in 2009, to perhaps 5% in 2010 as it cuts back on the loose credit in recognition of the problems this is going to create further down the line (this is already happening). Otherwise, expect China to continue keeping a low profile as the US insists on shooting itself in the foot.

*sigh*

SolarSun, please provide me with a definition for war. I feel like the concept has been rather muddled in this conversation - do you mind providing a measure of clarity? Before I can accept your claims that the United States is waging a covert war on the Russian state, please, I ask, give me a concise and simple definition for what is and what is not warfare.

I do not have enough time to comment on this one, but I think the story will be appreciated by members of this forum:

RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS FIELD TEST GEOENGINEERING
Chris Mooney. The Intersection. 14 December 2009.

@Anatoly Karlin

Yes but this is a revised Nuclear war doctrine.

And it is not just that as Justine Ramandio of antiwar.com mentioned in an article a couple of month’s back Washington is running war games simulations against Russia and China.

There was a leading establishment like military think tank analysing establishment like military think tank analysing

And as I have predicted and been saying for years with Brezinski there objective is to destabilise Eurasia via Islamic just like they did Yugoslavia and it is totally predictable that since Obama/Brezinski administration came to power

I believe and I think it is obvious that the US/NATO goal is to push these Islamic militants into Central Asia to destabilise the region as I stated in a previous thread.

Currently as I mentioned before and predicted they would are promoting Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang against China like this establishment worm Peter Hitchen’s in the Daily Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1233439/Special-Investigation-PETER-HITCHENS--Blood-fear-Happiness-Street-China-threatens-obliterate-ancient-culture.html

I would login in to post comment s with links detailing there links to the CIA and RAND Corporations “Xinjiang Project” but I can’t remember if I ever registered with the Daily Mail I’ll have check my email.

That map refers to a proposal by the FAS to <b>reduce</b> the damage to Russia in a US nuclear response by targeting counter-value targets in a strategy of minimal deterrence (much like what China has today).

In fact Washington has drawn nuclear strategy plans as a war doctrine to target Russian infrastructure.

This is rather nonsensical. Moscow and Washington have both had nuclear war plans since the 1950's to destroy the other side's military potential. They still do, though planners spend a lot less time thinking about them nowadays.

Best review of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVHKvcCh_zU

@T. Greer

And no war has expanded to include every precondition for armed conflict. The problem with this is easy to see. There are dozens of prerequisites that must be met before a war between two states is possible. A country must have people, for one. Is the production of food, the watering of fields, or the mothering of sons also a function of war? Every conflict throughout history has total war, if we are to take you by your word.

Obviously it must have people then they would not need to fight as there is no one to fight against.

And there is a thing called international law states can't just go and invade other states without a viable reason/pretext.

Best example was Iraq were evidence was cooked up to pose Saddam as a threat WMD, links to Al Qaeda, etc.
Or the new excuse for waging war to prevent "genocide" with "humanitarian intervention" which is actual part of Soros Open Society philosophy who ran alternative anti-Milosevic/pro Albanian media in the former Yugoslavia and financed training of Otpor activists to overthrow the Milosevic government.

Now we have another definition of war! So now a country cannot be part of a conflict unless it faces "social degradation" and the "destruction of physical industrial output". This seems quite curious to me. I may be wrong, but I have been told that the United States was a participator in the Second World War. Did they not have industrial growth during that time?

I didn’t say that all these were prerequisite for war to be meet that leads to war but they are an instrument of war obviously if you are going to attack a country you do not do it when it is military or socially strong.

Yes I think economic warfare is an instrument of war like sanctions imposed on Iraq and Serbia before there was actual physical warfare.
Can’t wage a war or become strong independent state without a manufacturing production base.

In fact Washington has drawn nuclear strategy plans as a war doctrine to target Russian infrastructure.

Kotare's piece was prompted by a blogger who called the subversive tactics between the Dems and the GOP war, yes. But I think you missed the reason I posted it. In the post, Kotare gave a fair (if rudimentary) definition for war. I will repeat it again for the benefit of everybody reading this thread:

Only when political discourse breaks down entirely, and two sides take up arms against each other, does politics become war.

If there is not armed conflict between two groups, it is not war. It is politics, diplomacy, economics, cultural diffusion - but it is not war.

So it is only warfare when two groups of armed combatants are physically fighting each other?

Then why is psychological operations considered a form of warfare by the US government under the CIA.

And they had Economic and Political Warfare agencies during WW2.

World War II
There was extensive use of psychological operations in World War II, from the strategic to the tactical. National-level white propaganda was the responsibility of the Office of War Information, while black propaganda was most often the responsibility of the Morale Operations branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).[14]

Psychological operations planning started before the US entry into the war, with the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), under Nelson Rockefeller, with the responsibility for psychological operations targeted at Latin America.[15] Special operations and intelligence concerning Latin America was a bureaucratic problem throughout the war. Where the OSS eventually had most such responsibilities, the FBI had its own intelligence system in Latin America.
On 11 July 1941, William Donovan was named the Coordinator of Information, which subsequently became the OSS. At first, there was a unit called the Foreign Information Service inside COI, headed by Robert Sherwood, which produced white propaganda outside Latin America.[15]
To deal with some of the bureaucratic problems, the Office of War Information (OWl) was created with Elmer Davis as director. FIS, still under Sherwood, became the Overseas Branch of OWl, dealing in white propaganda. OSS was created at the same time. Donovan obtained considerable help from the British, especially with black propaganda, from the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE), part of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. PWE was a sister organization to the Special Operations Executive, which conducted guerilla warfare. The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), was an essentially independent organization. For the US, the OSS included the functions of SIS and SOE, and the black propaganda work of PWE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Operations_(United_States)#History_of_US_Psychological_Warfare

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
--William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy

Perhaps I should have clarified modern warfare or warfare in the 20th/21st Century.

They did not have mass media propaganda to influence the mass public in 416BC.

Perhaps you should have. I am still waiting on a solid definition for the word "war".

Funnily enough though, they did have mass propaganda in 416 BC. Here is an excerpt from the afore mentioned Melian Dialogue:

Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, the generals, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. These the Melians did not bring before the people, but bade them state the object of their mission to the magistrates and the few; upon which the Athenian envoys spoke as follows:

Athenians. Since the negotiations are not to go on before the people, in order that we may not be able to speak straight on without interruption, and deceive the ears of the multitude by seductive arguments which would pass without refutation (for we know that this is the meaning of our being brought before the few), what if you who sit there were to pursue a method more cautious still?

Crawley, Richard, trans. The History of the Peloponnesian War. (New York: Barnes and Nobles Classics.) 2006. Book 7, chapter 5.

But as said before, this is besides the point. To bring us back to the point - You argue that propaganda is a form of warfare - with a bit more nuance, of course:

Without the deliberate mass media and government pretext for war there would not be a war so it is actual function of war itself.

And no war has expanded to include every precondition for armed conflict. The problem with this is easy to see. There are dozens of prerequisites that must be met before a war between two states is possible. A country must have people, for one. Is the production of food, the watering of fields, or the mothering of sons also a function of war? Every conflict throughout history has total war, if we are to take you by your word.

But there was still a population increase as physical economic structure and institutions sustainable like functioning health care system, housing, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989)

It was not until Soros/Harvard cronies economic "shock therapy" on Russia was there severe demographic, economic and social degradation and with the destruction of the physical industrial output of the country which many regions depended on. And that in effect brings an increase in alcohol consumption, organised crime, drug use, skilled labour shortage, etc.

Now we have another definition of war! So now a country cannot be part of a conflict unless it faces "social degradation" and the "destruction of physical industrial output". This seems quite curious to me. I may be wrong, but I have been told that the United States was a participator in the Second World War. Did they not have industrial growth during that time?

I think he is talking about subversive tactics between the 2 political parties in the US obviously the Democrats and Republicans are not at war with each other and are not seeking to undermine the US or have hostile intent towards its people or overthrow of the government or have links to foreign governments and intelligence services despite the fact there is barely a dimes bit of difference between the two parties.

Kotare's piece was prompted by a blogger who called the subversive tactics between the Dems and the GOP war, yes. But I think you missed the reason I posted it. In the post, Kotare gave a fair (if rudimentary) definition for war. I will repeat it again for the benefit of everybody reading this thread:

Only when political discourse breaks down entirely, and two sides take up arms against each other, does politics become war.

If there is not armed conflict between two groups, it is not war. It is politics, diplomacy, economics, cultural diffusion - but it is not war.

@T. Greer

Perhaps I should have clarified modern warfare or warfare in the 20th/21st Century.

They did not have mass media propaganda to influence the mass public in 416BC.

Every major war that involves directly or indirectly the US from WW1 to the current Iraq war has involved false pretext for war

But with that aside taken care of, you are still dodging the issue. Propaganda may be a pretext to war, but you actually called it war. Which version is correct? Is propaganda war or simply a justification for it?

Without the deliberate mass media and government pretext for war there would not be a war so it is actual function of war itself.

Both. They have military psych-ops military personal that disseminate propaganda in the mass media it is in itself is an instrument of war.

The British hanged Lord Haw Haw after WW2 for broadcasting Nazi propaganda.

The effect of vodka and beer is more than equitable with bombing the industrial base of the country in open warfare.

But has alcoholism declared war on Russia? How about tuberculosis?

But there was still a population increase as physical economic structure and institutions sustainable like functioning health care system, housing, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1989)

It was not until Soros/Harvard cronies economic "shock therapy" on Russia was there severe demographic, economic and social degradation and with the destruction of the physical industrial output of the country which many regions depended on. And that in effect brings an increase in alcohol consumption, organised crime, drug use, skilled labour shortage, etc.

Sorry, but this is not war. It's politics. Perhaps a virulent strain of politics, but politics nonetheless.

War involves the use of physical force, or the threat of it, to compel an opponent to submit to one's will. Politics involves non-violent competition and struggle. When politics turns violent, this becomes a criminal act. When political activity aims at overthrow, this becomes subversion. Only when political discourse breaks down entirely, and two sides take up arms against each other, does politics become war.

I think he is talking about subversive tactics between the 2 political parties in the US obviously the Democrats and Republicans are not at war with each other and are not seeking to undermine the US or have hostile intent towards its people or overthrow of the government or have links to foreign governments and intelligence services despite the fact there is barely a dimes bit of difference between the two parties.

If the US did not perceive this as a threat then why did they enact FARA (The Foreign Agents Registration Act).

SolarSun, I hate to pop your bubble, but the United States has not actually invaded Iran. If these Jewish Neoconservatives operate a media cabal whose driving purpose is the radiation of Tehran, it is an incredibly ineffective one.

Because of the disastrous war in Iraq it will be hard to get approval and support world wide for a military strike on Iran and US intelligence community.

But in 2006 the US approved about 400 million dollars to provide assistance to groups dissident, political and terrorist inside Iran to overthrow the regime and shut down Iranian banking connections in the US.

Without disinformation there would not be any war. I can't think of any major western conflict either by proxy like in the case of Afghanistan 79, the Balkans, Chechnya or Xinjing or warfare where they are directly involved like Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq 91 and 2003 where the pretext and justification for war has been a lie.

Without disinformation there would be no war? No war at all? Anywhere? Not sure how this stands up to the real world -- am I the only one who recalls a rather frank dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians back in 416 BC? There seems to be a rather long history of wars without false pretexts -- you just need to dig a little deeper.

But with that aside taken care of, you are still dodging the issue. Propaganda may be a pretext to war, but you actually called it war. Which version is correct? Is propaganda war, or simply a justification for it?

The effect is the same if you bombed the industrial base of a country in open warfare

But that doesn't mean it is the same thing as war.

Let me provide you with a counterexample - in the Russian Federation, half of all premature male deaths can be attributed to alcohol consumption. Alcohol has reaped more destruction on the Russian people over the last 60 years than any conflict Russia has engaged in during the same time. The effect of vodka and beer is more than equitable with bombing the industrial base of the country in open warfare.

But has alcoholism declared war on Russia? How about tuberculosis?

These examples point to the necessary limits of defining war. If you define war as anything that damages the infrastructure, economy, or population of a country, then every interaction between states is a type of warfare.

I read a wonderful post on The Strategist that sums up the problem with this type of approach nicely:

Sorry, but this is not war. It's politics. Perhaps a virulent strain of politics, but politics nonetheless.

War involves the use of physical force, or the threat of it, to compel an opponent to submit to one's will. Politics involves non-violent competition and struggle. When politics turns violent, this becomes a criminal act. When political activity aims at overthrow, this becomes subversion. Only when political discourse breaks down entirely, and two sides take up arms against each other, does politics become war.

I will defend his words as my own. They make perfect sense to me -- but perhaps I am too great a believer in the rectification of names?

Now to your last point:

That’s an obvious false hood especially in relations to the US when Jewish Neoconservative and Non-Neocon Jewish writers and journalists and news outlet which is literally a monopoly in the US like Michael Coren We Should Nuke Iran Toronto Sun | Saturday, September 2, 2006 and Norman Podhoretz The Case for Bombing Iran I hope and pray that President Bush will do it Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2007 advocating war against Iran for the sake of Israel just like they did with Iraq or 60 minutes Mike Wallace anchor who interviewed the Iranian president edited the interview to give the impression he was aggressive and wanted to attack Israel.

SolarSun, I hate to pop your bubble, but the United States has not actually invaded Iran. If these Jewish Neoconservatives operate a media cabal whose driving purpose is the radiation of Tehran, it is an incredibly ineffective one.

Solar, Rick Rozoff who appears on GlobalResearch has a Yahoo list where he posts a continuous stream of NATO related news.
I don't have time to parse them all and sometime the headlines don't quite match the story, but I think the trend is clear, and NATO is acting like it's on crack. They are slowing down nothing, they are accelerating their expansion, if they make noises about pulling back on missiles it's only because they have a better idea.

Rozoff's list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato

@JS6

I could also state other things like the increased military bases in Europe, the half a dozen NATO military exercises on all of Russia's borders, the fact that an senior establishment think tank here in Britain analysis Russian military capability, and this constant Communist revisionism painting Russian's as pure villians.

Michel Chossudovsky Global Research seems to be the only website tracking what NATO is doing.

@Anatoly Karlin

Excellent find on the article how did you find it?

There is reliable information (beyond Russian allegations) that after Saakashvili came to power in 2004, Shamil Basaev—the Chechen militant responsible for the Beslan massacre—had a private meeting with Georgia’s interior minister and presumably was convinced that the new president would turn a blind eye to the activities in Pankisi Gorge. After being wounded in Afghanistan, Dokka Umarov, the head of al-Qaeda’s South Caucasian efforts, was treated in a Tbilisi hospital. His former boss, Ruslan Gelayev, who was killed by Russian border guards in 2004 while fleeing into Georgia, was said to be a close friend of Saakashvili. Gelayev and his henchmen were welcomed by the Georgian authorities because of their promise of violence in the Russian-controlled breakaway region of Abkhazia, a territory Saakashvili has all but forfeited after last August’s five-day war with Moscow.

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=22498

I will post it on other blogs and comment sections but why didn't you post it in this thread?

FWIW, the video game has been banned in Russia, also FWIW, I agree with Solar sun, to me the war is on, to me the war in Iran is on too, it's just not a shooting war yet. Come to think of it, in modern wars the shooting is actually the beginning of the end of the war.

OT, is there a way to have email notification to subscribed topics?

To Anatoly and others who don’t that there is an extensive covert war against Russia (disregarding what I said about entertainment with the above video games that’s just an opinion) how do you explain the fact that the exact same network and people involved in supporting terrorism against Serbs in the Balkans during the 90’s which is well documented are also involved in terrorism in Russia with links also to groups across the whole Eurasian sphere as they are all inter-connected.

Check out the news archives and read the Hague Tribune transcripts yourself at

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/hague.htm

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/index_old.htm

@T. Greer

But we are back to our original problem -- how can you attach "information" to the word "war" and still be describing anything related to war itself? In order to make propaganda a type of war you have to change the definition of war itself (in this case, the shaping of popular perception to favour armed intervention).

Without disinformation there would not be any war. I can't think of any major western conflict either by proxy like in the case of Afghanistan 79, the Balkans, Chechnya or Xinjing or warfare where they are directly involved like Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq 91 and 2003 where the pretext and justification for war has been a lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKYhaQ3gbsA

We can talk about "info war" or "economic war", but separate from martial conflict they are useless terms. As with the phrases "war on drugs" or "war on cancer", the concept of conflict is being diluted to an extant that it is meaningless.

But these are geo-political warfare tactics if you do not have economic independence and you government is run like a colony where the major owners of major industry, media and government are foreigners like Ukraine and Russia during the 90's and they diliberatly de-industrialised the economy and production value of the Russian and Ukranian government so to reduce the standards for living and development encreased or sustained living capacity of the Russian and Ukranian populations.

The effect is the same if you bombed the industrial base of a country in open warfare

You obviously don’t attack a country when it’s strong you weaken then attack it.

A parting note -- I do not mean to suggest that mass media does not play a part in shaping culture. That would be silly; it is through the mass media the larger portion of ideas are transmitted throughout society. However, the relationship is one of interdependence. There is no cabal of news anchors whose expressed goal is to elect this President or declare war on this country. They, like everybody, are products of their culture. They are different only is their unparalleled ability to transmit their cultural ideals to larger audiences.

That’s an obvious false hood especially in relations to the US when Jewish Neoconservative and Non-Neocon Jewish writers and journalists and news outlet which is literally a monopoly in the US like Michael Coren We Should Nuke Iran Toronto Sun | Saturday, September 2, 2006 and Norman Podhoretz The Case for Bombing Iran I hope and pray that President Bush will do it Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2007 advocating war against Iran for the sake of Israel just like they did with Iraq or 60 minutes Mike Wallace anchor who interviewed the Iranian president edited the interview to give the impression he was aggressive and wanted to attack Israel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onNzrNEFs1E

And this is a subject that has been discussed on some websites and books like Paul Gottfried at TakiMag (does anyone know how to play aif files?) and Professor Kevin MacDonald and others historically especially during the first decades and in the 50’s with Communism dealing with the historical and predominant role of Jews in shaping society and leading intellectual political movements that advance Jewish interests through there enormous wealth especially there monopoly in banking and control of western mass media and prominence in academia.

And they use holocaust iconography most noticeable in the case of Bosnians and Kosovars against the Serbs but also in other fields of geo-political interest like Chechnya and Sudan.
This ties in with the Soros "humanitarian intervention" concept promotion which is ironic as he was a Nazi collaborator in his native Hungry.

http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/990402/kosovo.shtml

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007266

But we are back to our original problem -- how can you attach "information" to the word "war" and still be describing anything related to war itself? In order to make propaganda a type of war you have to change the definition of war itself (in this case, the shaping of popular perception to favor armed intervention).

We can talk about "info war" or "economic war", but separate from martial conflict they are useless terms. As with the phrases "war on drugs" or "war on cancer", the concept of conflict is being diluted to an extant that it is meaningless.

(NOTE TO NITPICKERS: The above statement is in not meant as an attack on 4GW, nor serves as an adequate refutation of such. Notice that 4GW, while waged in a broader context than traditional wars, still maintains the martial conflict amidst all the new stuff.)

A parting note -- I do not mean to suggest that mass media does not play a part in shaping culture. That would be silly; it is through the mass media the larger portion of ideas are transmitted throughout society. However, the relationship is one of interdependence. There is no cabal of news anchors whose expressed goal is to elect this President or declare war on this country. They, like everybody, are products of their culture. They are different only is their unparalleled ability to transmit their cultural ideals to larger audiences.

The last Tom Clancy game End War had Europe and the US fighting Russia and China over Europe for energy supplies.

The "propaganda war" is a case in point. Propaganda is not war. It is propaganda. The two are not one and the same.

Wrong propaganda is a form of information warfare that shapse people perceptions like our need to go into Iraq or this fake "war on terror" hoax. I would refer you to the documentary I post in the Balkans War thread of how PR and media was used to justifying war against Serbia. (I'll post documentary that exposes the fake Serb death camp as the best example later).

It's all part of George Soros Open Society philosophy of "humanatarian intervention".

Entertainment reflects the culture far more than it determines it.

Wrong the mass media determines and shapes peoples perceptions/opinions.

Write and finish this comment later when I have more time.