Diaries of the Beast

CHASING VLAD.....

My friend Vlad, President of "all" the Russians, is on the move.this weekend, he had a little meeting with officials in India. Today, as I stood in the background, competing  for a decent view of his remarkable rant against the West, with grim faced Russian security agents, nervous Indian officials, and a whole brace of the international press, I began to wonder about his angry mood.

Curiously, none of the American press chose to attend.

Why?

Because whatever my friend has to say matters little to the American public. After all, it is "football Sunday" in America, and no one listens anyway.

Neither did I.

Not too much.

It is hot here.... and all I want is out of this filthy hole of a country.

But I was standing there, watching this smallish man with a stiff military bearing rant and rage. I had heard it all before. But only in private. Today, it belched from him like poison.

Why was his dander up?

Because his "Imperial" ambitions met a bump in the road......

His dream of a "reunified" Russia is not going to happen .......

At least now.......

Vlad knows the "boys" in America own the Middle East, and are more than willing to prove it. The West will do anything at all to display the fact that screwing around with Western designs is tantamount to international suicide.

"If you screw with the West, you will be reduced to nothing"........

That is the prevailing view in Washington.

That is what "Western boys" think......

That is the policy of the United States.

It does not matter what History teaches.

Because, "History" is a fable.

Right?

Of course it is.

"History" teaches that it is possible to lose every single battle, and still win the war.

Vlad knows that.

So do Iraqi militants.......

But since the Americans believe they can change the immutable cycles of the "fable", even their own "fable", they ignore it's lessons.

They ignore the Viet Nam experience....

They ignore the Korean experience....

Vlad knows this.

He lived this arrogance himself......

He knew it in Afghanistan, where he slaughtered every single person he could find except the opium farmers.

The West, impressed by this policy, continues it.

When my friend was in that accursed land, very little information (if you can call "Soviet information", information....) came from there....(precisely the policy of the current American Administration......)

But body bags full of Russian soldiers did....

Those ragheads knocked Soviet helicopters out of the sky with rocks, and the occasional "Stinger" provided by the United States, in support of the "former" Taliband.

Over a lunch of caviar and orange juice, Vlad told me his memories of what he calls, "this unfortunate period".

His gaze grows far, to a place long ago.....

To Afghanistan.....

To a land no one wants, or understands.....

To a land where Americans, Russians, and even Greeks (remember Alexander? ,oh, sorry, another fable.....) go to attempt change and end up dying in droves.

In numbers too awful to report, at least honestly.....

However, Vlad does not say this.....

He is thinking of the friends he lost....

In Afghanistan....

He is thinking of painful Soviet defeat.....

He mourns his countrymen....

As the West mourns their blood, at this very moment.....

Every single day.....

It is difficult to interrupt his trance...

So I eat the caviar and wait for his gaze to refocus....

I know, in the back of his mind, he is thinking of failed Russian ambitions...

I know he wants a redress to this failure......

I know he wants closure to memories he cannot shake off....

I know he thinks Russia in the middle.....

Between the West and a growing, unstoppable Chinese hegemony.....

This is the way he looks at it........

He may be a gangster (is that a crime anymore?), but he fears the way the wind is blowing.....

He fears the isolation of his country....

He fears the reaction of his country.....

Russians, unlike Americans, do not mind changing themselves, or the world, at a moments notice....

They do not mind disrupting the plans of the "Western boys",

Or creating the conditions of "make or break", for the EU, and their plans....

They do not care, because their societal identity is as much a mystery to Americans as the Islamic world.

Why should they care about placating Western concerns, as even as it's design moves, inexorably, to their heartland?

That is the way Vlad sees it......

If you were a Russian, you would see it that way too......

He still had not touched his food...

Other thoughts prayed upon his mind....

Who to pay off....

What to say to whom and when.....

The weight of both worlds, East and West rested upon his blood stained shoulders.....

But i did not word these thoughts.....

It was enough to know that my friend Vlad had serious, "big boy" thoughts on his mind....

As he got on his plane ( personally, i will not fly a Russian plane, they rarely check the baggage, ya know?), he looked at me, and winked.

He knows the game.

And he is going to play the game.

The next time i catch up with him, Ill be sure to let you know what is on his mind....

Wanting What You Want When You Want It.......

Well, boys and girls, it seems the Russian President, Vlad Putin got his nose bloodied by the by western Ukraine. His man did not get elected. God knows he tried. Every two bit trick and truckloads of cash (not to mention untold numbers of "voters", all of them Russian, bussed to Ukraine to help out, voting, at least once, for Moscow's butt boy), did not seem to help.

Dont be alarmed.

It is business as usual.

But who did our "media" say stopped this "crime"?

Who did it?

The farmers. The people, so they tells us.

The Ukranians most distant from the neo-Soviets.

The ones who know a pile of dung when they smell it. Because they smell it their whole lives.

And they are still in the streets.

It has been over a week.

They won a "victory" of sorts; a new election.

The whole world will watch this one.

It will be as phoney as the last one.

As phoney and corrupt as both "candidates".......

Except to the young, the students, and the uninitiated, who take the whole thing seriously.

The ones without memory, or a personal history of victimization.

The ones who have not been around the international political block enough times to realize that the whole structure is a joke we all buy into.

There is no such thing as the "will of the people"........

Never fear.....they will learn.

And when they do.

They will become as cynical and oblivious to what is actually happening in the world as you and I are. As willing to let men (mostly men), run their lives through corporate sturctures so powerful they laugh out loud at "goverments".

Russia is a gangster state; plain and simple. An ocean of disinfectant would not be enough to clean the blood off of their President's hands

So?

Name a single world leader incomplicit in international "crime".

Not that Vlad is a bad guy. Ater all, our blood soaked, war monger of a President likes him a lot. He invited him to the ranch in Crawford, Texas. The had a swell time and everybody smiled for the cameras. (Vlad even rode a horse.) George II knew of Russia's attempts at controlling the Ukranian vote. But, in the words of the State Department, The Ukraine is a "Russian sphere of influence".

None of these affairs are accidental.

The "boys" in the back room are running things. "Boys" who abhor publicity and collect politicians like toy soldiers.

Here is another example.......

The United States is destroying Iraq.

So?

And there is more to come from United States "wantings".

Shortly (as the media builds the case for a "limited" (whatever that means) mlitary "look see" into Iraq's eastern neighbor....) the United States, even as you read, exerts enormous diplomatic pressure upon Iran to stop it's nuclear weapons program. (they are not mature enough or responsible enough to be like the United States...how kind our attempts at persuasion are....right?...nor does it matter to the United States that Iran is surrounded by countries POSSESSING  military nuclear capabilities........did you think of that, or did you immediately leap to the conclusion that Iran is simply a rouge state, as you are currently being told to think? [what would YOU do if surrounded by what YOU considered imminent danger....what would YOU  demand of YOUR nation's leadership?]..)

And what if they do not cease and desist?

We will kick their ass.

Thats the fact.

No bunch of fundamentalist towel heads is gonna get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction (WMD...remember that acronym, or do you?)....remember how it turned out to be a phoney excuse to invade a legitimate country, a member of the United Nations? A legitimate, international entity?

Remember?

The Europeans worry about Ukraine, bitch at the United States and generally wring their hands, proving their ineffectuality. But they know the truth. A while back, when they possessed the same illusions the United States has now, they threw their weight around.  (Ah, the good old days....."Mad dogs and Englishmen"....)

Why?

Because they could. The didnt need another reason.

However, time passed, new "boys" took over the block (or maybe the same "boys" in better suits), and these days, the EU cannot change anything.

Why?

Because the United States holds nearly all the cards in this game........ for now.

What is the game?

Power.

Regardless of what you read, or think, or wish to do about injustice, or improving humanity,  the unspeakable sufferings of this planet exist because of one desire.

Any one who can, regardless of ethnicity, culture, or country, wants what they want when they want it.

They will serve their own interest, evey single time.

That is historical fact.

The United States will do what it feels it must do to maintain what it feels it must maintain.

So will the Europeans (in their convuluted way).

Did you know this (bet you did not)?

A huge pipeline runs through Ukraine, filled with oil for Germany, France, Holland, and damn near everyone else in Europe who wants what they want when they want it.

That is the real resaon Ukraine is important to Europe.

Not "Democracy" for the oppressed Slavics.

Russian oil flowing through a an indespensible European artery........ 

What do the Russian's get out of it?

Money and regional influence to scare hell out of the EU, halting the steady eastern advance of NATO.

Where does the oil money go?

To the same places it goes everywhere else.

To the "boys", the  people who want what they want when they want it.

There is nothing new about the power game. It is as old as History and vibrant as human desire.

However, only half the world gets to play. The other half reeks of maggot filled children and hopeless poverty.

The ones who cannot get what they want when they want it.

But nobody really gives too much thought to these people, these lives, these members of history.

Why?

Because they do not matter, and possibly never will.

This begs a rather disturbing question......

Is there any longer a need to teach History as an academic subject? Not many of you bastards know too much about it anyway.

Why should you?

Why waste your time?

Why spend years reading the same old story?

The only thing you really need to know about nations and human behavior, is that it is fundamentally a matter of self interest. And, like the leaders (thugs) of the United States, most nations will do anything to get what they want when they want it. (At least anything they can get away with.)

This is what is going on now, internationally, domestically, in your own home, and definitely in your minds.

Man is both good and bad.

And the game is immutable.

Not exactly sage prophesy.

But think about it.

At least for a minute......... maybe thirty seconds.

Is that too much to ask?

By the way, Vlad, wiping the blood from his nose, didnt let the little Ukranian setback stop him. He is currently in India, doing an arms deal with that "government".

Why?

So that India, vis a vis Pakistan (the hand picked stooge of the United States), will have what it wants when it wants it, too.......(preferably, hegemenomy over Pakistan).

Golly, we left out China, and the entire continent of South America, didnt we?

But rest assured, the "boys" are there too.

But do not think their slide rules and Cray computers are not working overtime in that neck of the woods.

The game never ends.

It never will.......

It is maddness.

It is a human curse.

And it is very good business, for those who play the game.