The spread of freedom and the West standing up to it.
The Russian state’s open hostility, not only toward Georgia but also toward Ukraine and the Baltic states, is, in this sense, partly ideological. Genuine elections have taken place in all these countries; people who have not been preselected by the ruling oligarchy sometimes gain wealth [...]

go to permalink....

In recent years, Moscow started to think that it could most easily express its dissatisfaction with Western politics by resorting to old Cold war cliches. The Kremlin does not like that Ukraine and Georgia want to join NATO, therefore it claimed that Western military bases will inevitably be built in those countries and that they [...]

go to permalink....

Recently we have witnessed a flurry of high-profile and contradictory statements on the Russian state. In a role reversal, Russia’s leaders have been abnormally candid while several prominent western politicians and pundits have lavished undeserved praise.
Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was bold enough last week to state that democracy is irrelevant to the Group of Eight [...]

go to permalink....

NARGIS POSES HUMANITARIAN DILEMMA
The stubbornness of Burma’s military junta puts the West into a hopeless situation. If the international community wants to provide relief to victims of Cyclone Nargis, then it has to play by the regime’s rules. But the West’s submissiveness sends a dangerous signal to despots everywhere. By our reporter in Rangoon more…

Junta [...]

go to permalink....

Well, it’s time to embrace our “inner Great Satan” live up to the moniker, and kick these thugs where it hurts. If not, they will soon destroy one of our cities with a nuclear weapon. They have already announced their intentions to wipe the “little Satan”, Israel, off the map. They have [...]

go to permalink....

I have serious doubts that the West will look anything like it does today in 60 years. I mean demographically it will be significantly reduced in size due to war. First think about the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia. Next think about the rise of Islam. These are the storm clouds forming [...]

go to permalink....

The “moment of truth” has come for Europe to resist hardliners in Russia who are bent on stopping the spread of democracy in the former Soviet Union, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said on Thursday.
Moscow has sparked an international crisis by ordering extra troops and equipment to Abkhazia, a Black Sea province which threw off [...]

go to permalink....

The anti-jihad resistance is not an organization, it is any and every organization who is against the Jihadist threat which faces the West. A member of the anti-jihad resistance is anyone and everyone who is against Islamic militancy. It is the growing movement of thousands of organizations and individuals against the threats we face from [...]

go to permalink....

As the demographic, geopolitical and ideological challenge of global Jihad to the shrinking remnant of Christendom looms ever larger, the West appears hell-bent on cordoning off, fragmenting, and eventually destroying the only Eastern Christian power that could and therefore should be its partner in the joint struggle. In the name of lofty ideals, but in [...]

go to permalink....

Many of the causes for China’s being a failed state in the early twentieth century had their roots in China’s disadvantageous relations with the West.
I am going to look at the history of China’s encounters with the West in reverse order, beginning with the more familiar storyline of China as a weak and battered power [...]

go to permalink....

The West stands by idly as its foundations are rent asunder.Last Friday the UN’s Human Rights Council took a direct swipe at freedom of expression. In a 32-0 vote, the council instructed its “expert on freedom of expression” to report to the council on all instances in which individuals “abuse” their freedom of speech by [...]

go to permalink....

Dutch politician Geert Wilders may be many things, but he is not the right-wing populist he is accused of being. What the debate over his film “Fitna” reveals most clearly is the West’s cowardice toward Islam. By Henryk M. Broder more…

A Muslim Responds to ‘Fitna’: ‘I’m Not the Least Bit Offended’
SPIEGEL Interview with Dutch Populist [...]

go to permalink....

It is hardly a coincidence, he suggests, that ancient Athens found itself doing battle with the Persian tyranny of Xerxes, while the modern Western world faces a stand-off with the mullahs’ Iran. In his view of history, these are simply related chapters in a single narrative: the contest between liberal and enlightened societies whose locus [...]

go to permalink....

FP: I want to talk to you today about how the Oslo Syndrome infects the West overall. But let’s first begin by you telling us what the Oslo Syndrome is itself.
Levin: The Oslo Syndrome, taking Israel’s Oslo agreements with Yasir Arafat and his PLO as a model, refers to the inclination of some within populations [...]

go to permalink....

Yet we in the west cannot take a high moral line on any of this - the growing pollution, the disdain for human rights, the crushing of dissent. We are complicit in so much of it, not least because we continue to rely so heavily on the endless factories of this vast and enigmatic country. [...]

go to permalink....

Two decades have almost passed since the end of the Cold war but it seems like an unexpected chill has hit world relations.
In this four part series, Tim Whewell looks at the recent conflict of issues that could re-draw the old fault lines that once divided East and West.
Read More…
The Kremlin and the World - [...]

go to permalink....

IT COULD all be a cold-war rerun. Japan complains of Russian military jets intruding on its airspace. Russian pilots reportedly buzz an American naval ship. Against this backdrop, and recently resumed Russian air and naval exercises in the Atlantic and Pacific, Vladimir Putin volunteered Russia proudly this week for a new arms race with America. [...]

go to permalink....

Vladimir Putin has delivered perhaps his most menacing tirade against the West yet, repeating threats to train nuclear missiles on Europe and warning of unspecified retaliation if Kosovo declared independence.
Addressing his last press conference as Russian president, Mr Putin mounted a defiant display that demonstrated more emphatically than ever the widening gulf between Moscow and [...]

go to permalink....

At least he made the trains run on time. That was said of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator from 1922 to 1943. Much the same is now said of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s authoritarian president. He may have crushed the fragile shoots of democracy, but he has at least restored the economy, the state and his [...]

go to permalink....

No enemy is too small. In an eye-opening passage, Lucas chronicles how the Russian state has crushed aspirations towards a cultural renaissance among the tiny 600,000 Mari people in central Russia, apparently for getting too close to Estonia. He warns us in particular on the issue of gas, Russia’s main export to the rest of [...]

go to permalink....

Vladimir Putin accused the West of triggering a fresh arms race today and gave warning that Russia was now rich enough to respond with a new generation of high-tech weaponry.
President Putin attacked the United States and Europe for expanding Nato close to Russia’s border at a time when Moscow had closed military bases abroad. He [...]

go to permalink....