Wednesday, March 11th, 2015
Stephan: I cannot tell you how sad this story made me. From 1970 to 1994 The Soviet Union, and particularly Russia, played a huge role in my life. First as editor of Sea Power Magazine focused on naval and maritime issues, then as Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations, Consultant to the Oceanographer of the Navy, and member of the MIT-secretary of Defense Discussion Group on Innovation Technology and the Future. And then on a completely different tack I became deeply involved with Dulce's Murphy's Citizen Diplomacy Program, Track II, on whose board I still sit. And finally with various partners owned several successful businesses in Russia. All that time I travelled extensively through Russia and the Republics and still count men and women in all of them friends.
There was a period of about four years in the 90s when had America been geopolitically elegant a new life-affirming world order might have been created. The only person of real wealth who truly saw this was George Soros, who poured millions of dollars into creating a capitalist economy with wellness as a priority and a democratic Russia. But the U.S. government was either indifferent, or actively worked against that outcome out of paranoia and greed for security/military industrial profits. And so we have Putin, an old KGB enforcer, and war throughout the Middle East. It is such a tragedy. And entirely the result of governing from bias not facts. This is what the Theocratic Right and its Neocon thinkers, fact free gremlins that they are, caused to happen.
The change in Russian attitude of the U.S> from 1990 to 2015
Credit: The Washington Post
MOSCOW — Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today’s Russia.
After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.
The indignation peaked after the assassination of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, as conspiracy theories started to swirl — just a few hours after he was killed — that his death was a CIA plot to discredit Russia. (On Sunday, Russia charged two men from Chechnya, and detained three others, in connection with Nemtsov’s killing.)
There are drives to exchange Western-branded clothing for Russia’s red, blue and white. Efforts to replace Coke with Russian-made soft drinks. Fury […]
