"...Tucker Carlson Criticized for Saying 'Russia Poses No Threat to the United States At All'"

"If we're really being honest here, Russia poses no threat to the United States at all."

"Too many careers depend upon keeping our assumptions exactly where they were in the fall of 1977, when fighting the Soviet Menace consumed the lion's share of our federal budget," Carlson said.

"So here in Washington that's what we're doing. Our real fear is that the rest of America will at some point discover that the Soviet Union no longer exists," he continued.

Carlson went on to list things about Russia intended to minimize their power: an economy the size of Italy's, a military budget that is one-tenth of ours and an aircraft carrier "that needs to be towed around the ocean because it's broken."  Newsweek

------------

Yup.  It is true, pilgrims.  The USSR no longer exists.

For years after the fall of that communist monstrosity, Soviet specialist analysts in the IC used to sing at office Christmas parties in Washington that they were dreaming of "A Red Christmas Just Like The Ones They used to Know."  These characters had lived "high on the hog" since WW2.  They got the lion's share of everything, funds, attention, you name it.  Poor sods like me who specialized in regions where people actually fought each other with rusty rifles and machine guns were definitely the poor relatives come to town hat in hand.

And then, all of a sudden, the Soviet specialist people were essentially out of a job.  Or, at least, they were a hell of a lot less important.  The same thing happened to all the Iranian specialists when the Pahlavis went down.  Fortunately for me, my good old Arabs and other assorted ME scoundrels kept right on bashing and backstabbing each other while most of them sat on a great big puddle of oil.  That and the Zionist thing kept me well employed.

The Soviet guys needed a few years to rebound, but as Tucker says, they have done so by merchandising the notion that Russia = the USSR.  The two pomposities (Taylor and Kent) from the Foreign Service who testified yesterday made it very clear that their real bitch against Trump is that 1.  He thinks he can do business overseas without their bureaucratic intervention and 2.  He doesn't really accept the assumption that Russia is an indispensable and inevitable enemy.  Kent rather sadly said that it has been a basic assumption of his entire career that Russia is THE ENEMY.  The whole swamp is infected with group think to that effect.  In the case of the Foreign Service it is remarkable that such a group of soi-disant intellectuals and sophisticated veterans of the FOREIGN SERVICE EXAM should in truth be just another bunch of conformists seeking the approval of their colleagues.  But, then, that is how one gets promoted.

No, pilgrims, China is THE REAL ENEMY.  pl

https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-tucker-carlson-criticized-saying-russia-poses-no-threat-united-states-all-1471681

Comments

[Babak Makkinejad]

Here is Ambassador (Ret.) Chas Freeman on US-China split:
https://chasfreeman.net/the-sino-american-split-and-its-consequences/
I do not see any utility for anyone to turn China into an enemy.
In regards to Baluchistan, not much can be done beyond what is currently being done. But Armenians in Iran are not murdering other citizens.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Drugs are now a global mental health and social health problem. Rich or poor country, it matters not. The usage of drugs is a threat to the functioning of society, in France or in India, it is not a harmless indulgence.

[turcopolier]

Babak

Who said there is any "Utility" in US/China enmity?

[Babak Makkinejad]

I agree with you and I have seen many Americans, over the years, who railed, cautioned, or spoke against the policies of last 40 years. They were soundly ignored. Look at the speeches of Pat Buchanan.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All right. So we agree.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I speak of personal experience.

[Babak Makkinejad]

They are Europeans but not Western Europeans, although their leaders have been copying them for centuries. The adoption of Communism of a Mr. Karl Marx of London was supposed to leap frog them ahead of the Western Diocletian civilization.

[Norbert M Salamon]

Colonel the answer to your Q based 2nd half of 2019 stats.:
Males lower limit 19.6% upper Limit 22.9%
Females lower limit 15.8% upper limit 17.9%
Chheerss

[Babak Makkinejad]

Right. Old US products were sturdy and lasted a long time. US empowered finance capital to devour her industries and the population went along with it.

[English Outsider]

Prices must rise under a protectionist framework. Not by that much - the direct labour input into most manufactured goods is only a small part of the final price the consumer pays and the distribution and marketing costs are home costs. But in services by a lot.

Wages for the lower paid must therefore rise to compensate- else there's no point in bringing the jobs back home. Since the cake is not infinite that means a sharp drop in the income gap.

That does not mean only the top .01 super rich taking a hit. It means the top ten percent will. Since that top ten per cent is the most influential that is the drawback to protectionism - how to sell it to the better off.

The notion that untrammeled trade across the entire world is needed to get us the cheapest and best is false. Partly because there is no such thing as untrammeled trade today anyway. Mostly because economies of scale and the spur of competition shades off. You have an entire continent to play with! Surely that's scope enough!

In any case the US (and the UK) cannot carry on safely as they are. As increasing amounts of goods and services are supplied from abroad, those supplying them are going to want goods and services back at some time. If they don't get them and are unlikely to get them there is no point in them continuing to supply. It's in the interests of the suppliers to sell into a healthy economy since a derelict economy has nothing to send back.

That is why the talk of trade wars is unnecessary. It is in the interests of the Chinese to arrive at more or less balanced trade since unbalanced trade doesn't pay.

[Babak Makkinejad]

No, US let finance capital run amok, in my opinion.

[Fred]

Babak,

Ann Arbor's dynamic duo of legislative brilliance, Jeff Irwin and Yousef Rabhi, are going to cleanse the records of every career criminal who pled down more serious charges to marijuana possession because that wouldn't be a punishable offense now. Lots of other liberal ideas are on the way from the Hash Bash Republic. I'm reliably informed by the senator that no such plea deals happened and that these newly criminal record free citizens won't be committing crimes in the future.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I agree, the worked for the financial results of that quarter and its fruits: 10-million dollar place in Manhattan and a similar spread in the Hamptons. In UK it was Mayfair and Surrey and spread in Portugal.

[English Outsider]

When they get to it that tune's a haunting tune, Mr Habakkuk. Their equivalent, as far as its effect goes, of our "Last Post"?

Unfortunately we have no current equivalents for their Prokhorenkos and Filipovs. We almost certainly do, in reality, but the figures that are our known current equivalents are the Le Mesuriers and de Bretton-Gordons of that theatre. Those are not adequate equivalents.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Inspired by the paper cranes of Sadako Sasaki.

[Fred]

Amir,

Immigrant good, American lazy. Nice script, you might mix it up a bit with some other imigrant success stories, like Obama's dad or the police officer in Minneapolis born in Somalia.

[catherine]

'' It is not all Potomac’s making. The entire population went with it.''

No they didn't. First the American small to medium business community strongly protested it and then out of worked manufacturing employees protested it. Unfortunately it made no difference.

""ALL my Chinese colleagues are EXTREMELY hard working, one logarithmic scale difference''

I somehow doubt you are a unbiased judge of who works harder, Americans or Chinese. All minority immigrants work hard to make it in America, that why they come to the nation built by non Chinese.
Typically once they make it and become comfortable they slack off. The Jews had their spurt and then started declining in academics, now the Asians are having their spurt...eventually they too will rest back on their haunches also.....its a cycle seen in minority immigrants.
What counts is the long haul.

[Babak Makkinejad]

England has become a violent country, awash with drugs. That is the reality. Having said this, most of the dead are black kids killing each other in London (80%), if that's any comfort, and of course it is not -- something the media avoids to mention, of course, hence it continues. Drugs, money, power, violence

[Jim Ticehurst]

the major Improvement in Universal Education and Research on Chinese Global and Strategic Intent...widely available a Hugh Open Source Article..Analysis Materials..Article..Charts..Graphs in a Sincere Open Minded Way is What is Required...Meanwhile...Many Nations including China..sent their people to the United States..For Degrees in Higher Education and the Best R&D technology in the World..All Paid for..and Xenophobia..?? I have never found that world in My Chinese fortune Cookies..Or heard it spoken by My Mexican Family Members..My Viet Nam Nieghbors I Share things from My garden with...My Friend from Thailand..who brings Us home grown Tomatoes all summer..or My Muslim friend who brought me a Koran..that I have in My Library of Books on History..Cultures..Religion..and Copys of the United States Constitution..The United States does not have a Million Muslims in Concentration Camps..Study Nazi Germany for Strategic and Logistic Purpose..

[vig]

More then the suggested 1000 but 1600 in the end. Thanks I didn't know.

[CK]

How strange is it that from 1795 to 1881 Czarist/Imperial Russia was the only consistent "friend" that the USA had in Europe. How strange is it that the USA helped Russia defeat the Mackinder model that the perfidious Albionese had imposed, by helping Russia complete the Trans-Siberian allowing internal lines of control and communication to develop and removing the ocean based means of supply from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/stsib.Html
( And how ironic that the polar passage from Vladivostok to Rotterdam will allow Chinese goods to reach Europe even faster and with even less chance of interdiction by unfriendly competitors.

[CK]

Or that other meme "Islam is correct about women."?

[English Outsider]

Drug dealers wait around schools for the children to come out even in the most rural parts of England. Once they get the children accustomed to "soft" drugs the supply chain is established for harder drugs.

Here's how the Dutch deal with the problem of children having access to drugs when drugs are legal for adults -

https://www.mic.com/articles/185944/inside-drugslab-why-the-netherlands-pays-these-hot-20-somethings-to-get-high-on-youtube

I think they're worsening the problem rather than addressing it. The more vulnerable children won't take much notice of the warnings but they will take notice of the general attitude of fashionable approval.

Here in England the supply chains are set up and I don't think the Dutch approach would tackle the problem of children getting access to drugs, whether those drugs are legal for adults or not.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-trafficking-drugs-children/uk-gangs-target-younger-children-to-use-as-drug-mules-idUSKCN1PN2AQ

[Babak Makkinejad]

I suppose the Dutch would install, in the ripeness of time, a series of vending machines in their secondary schools, dispensing beer, cigarettes, condoms, drugs, and abortion pills. And each school would be equipped with a boom-boom room as well.

[Mark Logan]

Babak, different clue,

I don't include business people within my definition of "globalist". Business people don't care about anything but enriching themselves. These days they even tout their primary if not ONLY responsibility to be the interests of their share holders. There is more noblesse-oblige in my Labrador retriever than there is in Walls Street.

I'm referring to the long chain of public leader's rationalizations. Bill Clinton has articulated this as well as anybody has in his numerous economic forum talks. However I don't blame it on the Clintons, this has been the de-facto policy of the US political class ever sense Japan started dumping cheap consumer goods on the US market in the 60's.