Friday, October 23, 2015

Valdai Club

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...


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"It's always difficult to play a double game: declaring a fight against terrorists while simultaneously trying to use some of them to arrange the pieces on the Middle East chess board in one's own interests," Putin said at a meeting of political scientists in Sochi known as the Valdai Club.

"It is impossible to prevail over terrorism if some of the terrorists are being used as a battering ram to overthrow undesirable regimes," Putin said.

... ... ...

"There is no need to play on words, to classify terrorists are moderate and non-moderate," Putin said.
"What is the difference?" he said, suggesting that "in the opinion of some experts... so-called moderate bandits behead people moderately or gently."


Putin accuses West of playing 'double game' in Syria

http://news.yahoo.com/putin-accuses-west-double-game-syria-terrorist-groups-155553638.html

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Putin has a flair, I'd say, and I hadn't heard him speak until awhile back I saw a youtube of him on a stage like before a Town Meeting going on about Senator McCain...he's speaking in Russian of course, but one can see he is agile with words, and has a quick and sardonic humor...

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Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin called the former presidential candidate “nuts” in response to Twitter comment about Russia’s parliamentary elections that drew allegations of fraud and triggered large protests.
Mr McCain’s tweet read: "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighbourhood near you."
Mr Putin turned stony faced when asked about the tweet on his annual televised phone-in.
"Mr McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore.
"Mr McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years," he said. "Anyone [in his place] would go nuts."

Vladimir Putin calls John McCain 'nuts' in outspoken attack
By
12:59PM GMT 15 Dec 2011
 
 
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McCain IS kind of a screwball...thinking here, I see in my mind's eye the Navajo Indians chasing after him as he retreats in a SUV...
 
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Reports, and a video, have surfaced claiming that protesters decrying the Oak Flat land grab and other disrespect to Indians allegedly perpetrated by John McCain ran his cavalcade off the Navajo Nation when he was there to celebrate Code Talkers Day on August 14.
 

Video: Was Sen. John McCain Run Off the Navajo Nation?

8/20/15

 
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/08/20/video-was-sen-john-mccain-run-navajo-nation-161459

 

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When he was a pilot, he got to hotdogging, and flew under the electric transmission wires suspended from those tall grid towers in Spain...
 
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In his most serious lapse, McCain was "clowning" around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain's own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid...
 
McCain's mishaps in the cockpit
 
 
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McCain, clearly, is, or was, star crossed...
 
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McCain, pilot of A-4 Skyhawk side No. 416, next to White's, was among the first to notice the flames, and escaped by scrambling down the nose of his A-4 and jumping off the refueling probe shortly before the explosions began.
 
1967 USS Forrestal fire
 
 
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Some have it that McCain was horsing around and teasing another pilot on the Carrier, who reacted by hitting a wrong button...but that's just a rumor!
 
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“Sen. Biden referred to how Jack Kennedy was tested in the Cuban Missile Crisis. My friends, I had a little personal experience in that,” McCain said. “I was on board the USS Enterprise. I sat in the cockpit of a flight deck on the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, do you know how close we came to nuclear war? America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I’ve been tested my friends.”
 
McCain Tells of His ‘Little Personal Experience’ in Cuban Missile Crisis
Mary Lu Carnevale

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/21/mccain-tells-of-his-little-personal-experience-in-cuban-missile-crisis/

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sheesh...don't know but McCain must drink Dos Equis..."Stay thirsty, my friends!"

Well, well, this morning's post is going nowhere in particular...lemesee where McCain is in the Putin/McCain Back and Forth today...

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WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain on Wednesday branded the U.S.-Russian deal to avoid conflict in the sky over Syria "immoral," saying it gives Vladimir Putin a green light to bomb American allies.

U.S.-Russian Syria deal 'immoral,' McCain says

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/10/21/russia-isil-vladimir-putin-john-mccain/74349556/

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Atrocities were committed by both sides. That fall our fighter group received orders from the Eighth Air Force to stage a maximum effort. Our seventy-five Mustangs were assigned an area of fifty miles by fifty miles inside Germany and ordered to strafe anything that moved. The objective was to demoralize the German population.

Noboby asked our opinion about whether we were actually demoralizing the survivors or maybe enraging them to stage their own maximum effort in behalf of the Nazi war effort. We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time and did it. If it occurred to anyone to refuse to participate (nobody refused, I recall) that person would have probably been court-martialed.

I remember sitting next to B[..] at a briefing and whispered to him: 'If we're gonna do things like this, we sure as hell better make sure we're on the winning side." That's still my view'"

Chuck Yeager in his biography

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Yeager had exceptional eyesight, could spot an enemy plane way way away...don't know but his mind's eye was spot on too...

"or maybe enraging them to stage their own maximum effort"

At some point, I'd say, the opposing sides in war become like acts of Nature, and are beyond moral judgement like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and such...acts of God...

oh...I completely lost track of where I was headed with the beginning of this post...Putin called the war over Syria/Damascus a 'game'...and I found that charming insomuch as I've been going on about Cities being game boards...I'll get back on that track tomorrowmorrow!

but a bit more, as this is troubling...

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Controversial weapon - Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent

YouTube video from the fighting in Syria has thrown up images of a rarely seen Russian weapons system - the TOS-1 "Buratino" multiple rocket launcher.
Described by the Russians as a "heavy flame-thrower", it is a highly controversial weapon and its appearance in Syria raises the question as to who is actually operating it.
The TOS-1 fires a 220mm rocket that is designed to carry a thermobaric warhead. Sometimes known as a "fuel-air explosive" the rockets detonates at a set altitude above the ground, releasing a cloud of fuel which is then ignited by a second explosion.
This creates a huge temperature and pressure wave whose impact has been likened to a low-yield nuclear explosive.
It is very much an indiscriminate weapon, typically used to support offensive operations by blanketing given areas with fire. Thermobaric weapons were used to devastating effect by the Russians in Afghanistan.

Syria war: Lavrov seeks talks with 'full spectrum' of opposition

 
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Very early on, on a TV news clip when US troops first rolled into Baghdad, from a group of soldiers in the background, a photo bomb these are called, one soldier shouted out, 'just nuke 'm'...

Oh...I wanted to see what the Valdai Club is...brb...

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The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It was named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the club’s first meeting took place. The club’s goal is to promote dialogue between Russian and international intellectual elite, and to make an independent, unbiased scientific analysis of political, economic and social events in Russia and the rest of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdai_International_Discussion_Club

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At a meeting in Kazakhstan of leaders of former Soviet nations, Putin said his air force has achieved “impressive” results in Syria.

Russia denies unidentified drone shot down by Turkey belongs to them

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/10/16/putin-touts-impressive-results-from-russias-bombing-in-syria.html

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hmmph

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The nickname Buratino matches the name of the hero of a Russian version of a Pinocchio-style tale (by Alexey Tolstoy), because of the big "nose" of the launcher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1

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DavidDavid






 

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