#it's a very generational issue what i fully blame the former USSR for

[420pogpills]

next week is pancake day/shrove tuesday and today i want to take a moment to educate everyone on the absolute insanity that takes place in lithuania on this day

in lithuania shrove tuesday is called 'užgavėnės' and it's a folk festival where everyone dresses up as devils, witches, goats, wolves and other animals, or even the grim reaper

we burn a giant effigy named 'morė' and some of them are the size of a normal bonfire and some of them are the size of a watchtower (and sometimes they are hilarious-looking)

there's folk music and dancing and lots of stalls selling snacks and souvenirs and this festival is very symbolic because it's to celebrate the defeat of winter and welcome in the spring

and any kid who grew up in lithuania will tell you it's an absolute ball

[alexsmitposts]

Media Spin Makes David Gareja Monastery a “Flashpoint for False Flag” Both history and borders are not constant. They are often in flux, especially if conflicts can serve some not so hidden agendas. On 30th July, the self-described “independent” outlet OC media, which also happens to be funded by the Open Society Foundation, released an article stating that only Moscow benefits from rising Tbilisi-Baku tensions, referring to the recent flare up in David Gareja between Azerbaijan and Georgia. The article begins with an alarmist tone, claiming that there is hateful rhetoric on both sides, and that only the Russian government can benefit from this. But first some background is required on the current disputed area around a 6th Century Monastery, which is on the border between the two countries and is known as the David Gareja Monastery in Georgia and Keşiş Dağ (Priest Mountain) or Keşikçidağ Dağ (Guardian Mountain) in Azerbaijan. The rightful ownership of this monastery was rarely discussed either during or after the Soviet Union. Not until recently did it become a heated issue, taken advantage of by all sides. Even now it is only fringe nationalist groups and people looking to score political points who are discussing it, but the OC media article makes clear that this will not continue to be the case – foreign contenders have also entered the ring, with far more sinister proposals. But what do these contenders have which will prove their unsubstantiated claims? No historic reference is given to the root of the problem, which lies in the former USSR , when this disputed territory was split between the Georgian and Azerbaijani SSRs, then ceded to Azerbaijan by Sergo Orjonikidze, who was later killed in Stalin’s purges, as a way of laying ticking time bombs. Both Georgia and Azerbaijan have things to gain from this dispute. When the article states that ONLY Russia can benefit from it, this gives the impression that this article is shifting blame to another side to hide its own agenda. But it won’t remain hidden fort long, based on what we know. Now is the future The only thing the authors can cite in support of their rabid claims of rising tensions in the area is a mere two articles on the above-mentioned OC media site. They also find a way to mention Putin and his supposed benefit from the incident, as if he himself is Russia,, and this in itself raises flags. The whole aim of the article and mentioning Russia becomes much clearer towards the end, when the EU and U.S are urged to support Georgia and Azerbaijan in resolving the conflict and curbing Russian influence in the region. Having spoken with several citizens of Azerbaijan and Georgia, I can confidently state that the issue in the David Gareja complex is one between Azerbaijan and Georgia only, and both are sovereign and independent nations with relatively good relations, capable of negotiating the demarcation of the border, as is planned to take place in August. But OC media has made my job easier by demonstrating the motives of the two authors. David J.Kramer is a former Assistant Secretary at the Bureau State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known for influencing countries under the guise of protecting human rights. He has also written a book about containing Putin’s “regime”, a topic he seems to care deeply about, judging by the article. Kramer is a war hawk with a great appetite. He favours keeping sanctions on Russia and meeting any challenge to US dominance with swift action. Richard Kauzlarich, the second author, is a former Ambassador to Azerbaijan and head of the National Intelligence Office for Europe – a man who has spent years influencing Caucasus politics both from the inside and outside. Both these men have experience of working for the US government, and its intelligence agencies specifically, so they know exactly what their employer’s goals are; pushing US interests in the Caucasus, under the guise of stopping Putin and protecting human rights. Their articles are stated to be opinion pieces, to give them an excuse for being so brazen with their propaganda efforts. They usually write for smaller, local new sites, to make it seem as if they have a special connection to the reader, rather than being yet more foreign analysts talking down to them about their own countries’ problems. Bit of History The David Gareja Monastery Complex is located about 60-70 km southeast of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. Georgian official information describes it as a Georgian religious and cultural monument. It consists of a number of churches, and has historical significance for Georgians as the foundation of one of the most important Georgian saints and the site of the martyrdom of the last remaining monks in Georgia during the period of Muslim occupation. David Gareja has been included on the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list. The site is characterized by a unique combination of historic architecture and important bio-geographical features. There are dozens of cave monasteries, decorated with unique frescoes, considered excellent examples of the harmonious interaction of manmade structures with a dramatic landscape. They were created on traditional principles of sustainable living and are considered masterpieces of Georgian Medieval art. The former Soviet government designated the complex part of Azerbaijan. However, upon the collapse Soviet Union the final delimitation of borders was never fully completed. The alleged facts are: “The delimitation process between Georgia and Azerbaijan on the state border is still ongoing. Commissions of delimitation between the states have agreed on 66 percent of the border, but two percent of the David Gareja monastery complex territory is included in an area whose delimitation has not been agreed, including the cells of the Udabno Monastery and the paths leading to it, for the very simple reason that the above mentioned percentage of the monastery complex’s territory came under the control of Azerbaijan during the period of the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the rest of the David Gareja Monastery complex is claimed to be situated on Georgian territory.” Azerbaijan didn’t restrict free movement on this territory for many years. However, things have changed in recent months, as Azerbaijan border guards have told Georgia that they will only let clerics and border guards into the Udabno Monastery. It appears that the Government of Georgia raised the monastery issue after information was reported about Georgian citizens and tourists not being allowed onto the part of the monastery complex now occupied by Azerbaijan. I researched this topic back in 2012, when researching information shared by Georgian priests. Since May 6 of that year Azeri guards have been posted on the part of the monastery complex their country controls, specifically the Udabno Monastery. They have not allowed some Georgians to enter various sections of the monastery complex, and visitors are told that the Udabno Monastery is part of an Albanian cultural monument, a contentious claim in the eyes of most Georgians. Naturally this issue must be resolved based on the two countries’ traditional good-neighbourly and friendly spirits. However, The former Saakashvili government and its supporters are keen to use media sites as pots to stir in order to further divide an already divided country. The dispute had almost entirely died down in Azerbaijan, but an opposition politician made a video a few weeks ago. General Elçin Quliyev maintained in this that in light of Georgian violations of the border and acts of violence towards border guards, which include grabbing their weapons, more punitive actions should be taken. Ali Alıyev, one leader of the Citizens and Progress Party, said in a recent interview with Hamam Times, that a source who claims to have worked in the border patrol for over a year and a half had strict orders to warn off those approaching anywhere within 50 metres of the border, first verbally, and then by firing warning shots into the air, and then finally shoot the intruders if they took no notice and violated the border. Ali Aliyev is not related to the first family, and Aliyev is the second most popular name in Azerbaijan. The party he represents is a minor opposition party, demonstrating that the border question is being used by political parties on both sides for sordid purposes, which is scary in itself. The purpose of this dispute, and who lies behind it, are clear – to provide an opportunity for friends of the US to capitalise on the possibility, however slight, that this cherished historic site will be forever lost to future generations of Georgians thanks to their allegedly “pro-Russian” government. Having failed in Tbilisi with efforts at destabilization, they are now trying to foment an upheaval in the border regions, amongst people more than happy to resolve this issue amongst themselves, without outside interference.

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/americans-be-pushed/

How far can the Americans be pushed?

by Ghassan Kadi

Inspired by the Saker’s article regarding how far can the Russians be pushed, (http://thesaker.is/escalation-in-syria-how-far-can-the-russians-be-pushed/), I ask, how far can the Americans be pushed, not specifically only in Syria, but in general?

In his article, the Saker articulated in his regular rational and captivating style, the issue of Russian patience, or should we say frustration, with America’s actions and inactions in Syria. And, as I was reading the article, I began to think about looking at the situation from the other side of the mirror in a tongue-in-cheek manner; looking at it from the American perspective.

I thought back to an article I had written on the very same theme some years ago, focusing and predicting on what a desperate America would do.

The sad and ironic reality is that America does not walk the talk of competitiveness and level playing fields. America’s definition of a national threat is different from that of any other country in human history; except perhaps for ancient Rome.

For this reason, America does not believe that Russia has been pushed at all, but quite the contrary. America believes that is America that has been pushed; by not only Russia, but by many other nations. As a matter of fact, I started writing this article and I wasn’t going to finish it and submit it until President Putin pushed America even further towards the state of panic in his 1st of March speech.

American politicians operate on the pretext that America has a given right to be the greatest, wealthiest, most-developed, strongest unrivaled nation on earth.

Given its history and post WWII successes of being able to lure in the best brains of the world; not only from Germany, but the rest of the world, America believed that the homeland of any eminent scientist should be America.

Furthermore, with the multitude of defections from the USSR, not only Russian scientists were welcomed into America, but also musicians, scholars, athletes and other people of exceptional talents and capabilities.

And this list goes on, because Germany and Russia were not the only nations that exported excellence to America, but the whole world did, and perhaps for good reasons, because from the 1950’s onwards, everybody wanted to live in America; and many pop culture songs have recorded this phenomenon.

In little time, the best of the best in Europe and the rest of the world ended up in America. Not too many want to be reminded that that Wernher von Braun, the “American” rocket scientist who designed the Apollo program rockets, was a former Nazi, the same von Braun who designed the rockets that hit London in 1945.The prime reasons for his exodus and that of others, were poor living conditions, political persecution among other reasons. So if America managed to lure them in and find a way to capitalize on their great talents, then America has well and truly deserved the spoils of their genius.

But Trump’s America, even Obama’s, Bush’s and Clinton’s is not exactly that global brain and talent pivot any longer. As a result, America has changed the rules of the game in order to stay on top.

But this went further, according to the American way of looking at the rest of the world. During the Cold War, members of the former Warsaw Pact were considered as enemy states together with all other states affiliated with the USSR such as Cuba, Syria, Egypt and Angola, just to name a few. After the downfall of the USSR and the virtual elimination of serious adversaries, America “had to invent” new enemies. The post “Cold War” definition of an enemy morphed into classifying nations as members of the “Axis of Evil” if they did not kowtow to Washington’s definition of the so-called “New World Order”.

But as America grows weaker, financially, technologically, and even militarily, and as the world is beginning to look to China and Russia for the latest technology instead of America, for as long as America is able to stretch the definition of what constitutes a national threat, and for as long as the rest of the West will buy this definition, it will continue to do this.

Having lost its competitive edge and not yet being able to admit it, America is still desperately trying to cling to this edge by means that contradict with its stature as the leader of the free world and the nation that it alleges to be.

To this effect, and for America to be able to hold on to its leading position, it can no longer do this from any semblance of a position of fairness and real and honest competition. This is why America is now upscaling its enemy definition and resorting to what can be best seen as bullying tactics; thereby taking unfair advantage of other nations.

According to those new rules, now that they no longer can conceal or sugarcoat its true intentions, any nation that tries to develop itself is seen by America as a potential threat. And this applies to all aspects of development, because according to America, no other nation is allowed to be better or even close to where America is.

If America cannot compete against athletes of other nations, it will ban them.

If America cannot be trade competitive, it will impose sanctions on its competitors.

If America sees that a nation does not fully kowtow to its agenda, it will classify it as a terrorist state and tries to push it to its knees by putting a ban on international trade with it.

When the economy fails and America cannot generate wealth, REAL WEALTH, to stay on the top, it will print money.

And when American citizens turn into whistle-blowers, they are branded as traitors. So much for free speech. And where did Edward Snowden seek political asylum? In Russia out of all places. Will we in the future see a reversal of the former exodus of citizens of the USSR to the USA? We cannot say this can be ruled out.

One therefore does not have to be Kim Jong Un, sitting on a nuclear arsenal with a button in his hand threatening to hit American cities with, to be seen as a threat to America. Any person or any state touted to out-perform Americans or America now or in the future, in any field of endeavour, is considered by the American policy makers as a threat. But even speaking of Kim Jong Un, the question of whether or not his stand is offensive or defensive is quite diabolical. North Korea saw what happened to Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Most importantly, North Korea has not forgotten what happened to Korea itself. How can any rationally-minded person blame North Korea for developing nukes; if the sole intention is to stave off another American onslaught?

Back to the main subject. To put this into perspective, when America sees that anti-Russian sanctions are not working and that in fact the global Russian influence is getting stronger, when it sees Russia is in Syria making things happen, it feels threatened.

When it sees Russian state-of-the-art weaponry and electronic jamming devices in action, when it sees China building a huge fleet with two aircraft carriers and counting, when it sees Russia and China way ahead, each developing their own hypersonic, even orbital, fighter jets, (https://sputniknews.com/military/201708271056829517-mig-31-41-russia-interceptor-aircraft-features/) which America itself does not yet have, when it realizes that it has to use Russian-made rockets to propel its satellites into space, when America knows that for all practical purposes, America is no longer the world’s strongest economy, then America feels that it has been pushed to the absolute limit that only further sanctions and war can remedy.

The 1st of March 2018 Putin speech will in the future be seen as a turning point. Even though President Putin did not mention electronic jamming devices and other Russian military technology that America is well and truly behind in, he will be seen in history as the first ever non-American leader to put American military on notice by saying to American policy makers that Russia is militarily more advanced than America in both defense and attack.

And if America brags its unrivaled huge fleet, the new technology Russia has developed has the potential to turn American naval vessels into ancient and expensive sitting, or should I say floating, ducks waiting to be sunk.

In retrospect, ancient Rome saw in rivaling Carthage an existential threat until the Romans pillaged Carthage killing every single man woman and child. We cannot expect annihilation of this magnitude in the time and age, or can we? Having said that, America’s nuclear power is a huge force to be reckoned with, and to expect America to accept second or third grade world status, without a bang, is no more than wishful thinking. But how useful and effective is this power?

In his recent interview with Sputnik, Ron Paul doubts that America will ever have a reasonable foreign policy, and argues that the fall of America will be financial, like other empires in the past, and that someday America will go broke and no longer be able to continue to run the world: (https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201802231061934663-ron-paul-sputnik-interview/).

To put it bluntly, after the petro-dollar loses its world dominance, and this doesn’t seem very far away, a time will come when it will become virtually impossible to keep propping up the American economy with quantitative easing (aka printing money). And as America loses its economic stature, its only remaining prowess and might will be in its nuclear arsenal. The question is this. If America is imposing sanctions and bans right left and centre right now, and for no good reason at all, will a much more desperate America use its nuclear power to restore its dominion? Lately, America has been considering diluting its restrictions on the use of nuclear power by developing “more usable” nukes:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/09/us-to-loosen-nuclear-weapons-policy-and-develop-more-usable-warheads.

After all, using conventional weapons in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan etc didn’t win wars for America, despite the technical superiority they had over the conventional weapons of the adversaries. Is America simply looking for a new edge to use in its conventional wars against non-nuclear enemies? Is this new move of developing small and “more usable” nukes a prelude for a new age of nuclear confrontations? Or is it just the beginning of a new type of cold wars with “Cold War II” already underway? Either way, it is a race that non-nuclear nations cannot compete with, and this alone makes them much softer targets for America than before.

Will America go further and use its nuclear power in order to secure trade deals? Recources? Trade routes?

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but as America becomes more desperate finding that elusive “edge”, it will run out of options, and it has indeed run out of a few already. What if the implementation of the “America First” doctrine runs out of all options except the nuclear option?

Has President Putin’s latest speech stopped any such potential American nuclear plans and nipped them in the bud?

Inadvertently, President Putin’s 1st of March 2018 speech answers the question of The Saker in as far as how far can Russia be pushed.

The answer to the question of how far can the Americans be pushed is increasingly becoming more of what can they do, rather than what they would like to do.