H/t Freedom is Just Another Word
Archive for October 12, 2016
Catoons of the Day
October 12, 2016As rioting in Jerusalem area continues, Palestinians open fire on IDF troops
October 12, 2016As rioting in Jerusalem area continues, Palestinians open fire on IDF troops, DEBKAfile, October 12, 2016
Rioting broke out in the Ras al-Amud and Sheikh Jarrah areas of Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, with Palestinians blocking streets and throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli security forces. Large numbers of elite Israeli police and border policemen were on the scene. Meanwhile, in the village of Naalin south of Jerusalem, a number of Palestinians approached IDF troops and opened fire on them, but none of the troops were wounded. Several Palestinians were arrested and taken in for questioning during a manhunt for the shooters.
Catholic group calls for Clinton spokeswoman’s resignation after anti-Catholic comments in emails
October 12, 2016Catholic group calls for Clinton spokeswoman’s resignation after anti-Catholic comments in emails, Washington Times, Ben Wolfgang, October 12, 2016
(Roman Catholics are misogynists, but Islamists are not? — DM)
A leading Catholic advocacy group on Wednesday called for the resignation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, after hacked emails show Ms. Palmieri and other Clinton allies openly talking about Catholics being “severely backwards” and charging that they don’t know “what the hell they’re talking about.”
In its statement, CatholicVote.org said there is now a pattern on the part of the Clinton campaign of dismissing or even making fun of large blocs of Americans.
“Hillary Clinton has already called half of her opponents’ supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ and ‘irredeemable’ and now it comes out that her campaign spokeswoman dismissively question[ed] the sincerity of Catholic Americans’ faith,” said Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote. “Everyone has a unique faith journey, and it’s just insulting to make blanket statements maligning people’s motives for converting to another faith tradition. Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups she [would be] dismissed. Palmieri must resign immediately or be fired.”
The messages in question come from the WikiLeaks hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s private email. Mr. Podesta doesn’t appear to have been involved in the April 2011 email discussion between Ms. Palmieri and John Halpin, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, which Mr. Podesta used to head.
Mr. Podesta received each message but apparently did not respond.
In the exchange, Mr. Halpin mocks media mogul Rupert Murdoch for raising his children in the Catholic church and said that most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are all Catholic.
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” Mr. Halpin said.
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals,” Ms. Palmieri responded.
“Excellent point,” Mr. Halpin wrote back. “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”
Republican nominee Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the 2016 presidential race, ripped the anti-Catholic remarks during a campaign rally Tuesday night.
“The new emails show members of the Clinton team attacking Catholics. This is deeply offensive. It’s just the latest evidence of the hatred that the Clinton campaign has for everyday Americans,” the billionaire said.
Merkel’s Economic Disaster: Only 1 in 10K New Migrants Employed
October 12, 2016Merkel’s Economic Disaster: Only 1 in 10K New Migrants Employed, Truth Revolt, Mark Tapson, October 12, 2016
German leader Angela Merkel is facing a new disaster stemming from her embrace last year of over a million migrants from the Middle East: only 1 in every 10,000 refugees who arrived in the country are now employed, according to the UK Express.
Merkel blamed German firms for not hiring enough refugees — a survey by Reuters of the 30 companies in Germany’s stock market index found just 63 hired out of more than a million refugees, and of those 63 hires, 50 are employed by Deutsche Post DHL to sort and deliver letters and packages.
Merkel summoned the bosses of Germany’s biggest companies to Berlin to explain. The companies defended themselves by explaining that refugees “are just not ready” for the job market, lacking German-language skills and proof of qualifications.
“Given that around 80 percent of asylum seekers are not highly qualified and may not yet have a high level of German proficiency, we have primarily offered jobs that do not require technical skills or a considerable amount of interaction in German.”
Airline and financial industries added that many asylum seekers are unable to prove their identities.
“Our experience is that it takes a minimum of 18 months for a well trained refugee to go through the asylum procedure and learn German at an adequate level in order to apply for a job.”
“Many refugees need money quickly to send it back to their relatives in their home country or pay their bills and they do not see the advantages of an apprenticeship that starts with less pay.
“We try to convince them that this would be better in the long run and we try to figure out what skills they actually have.
“The problem is that a mechanic from Afghanistan may repair cars, but he never went to a professional school and got a certificate.”
These dire employment figures have come to light as the anti-refugee Alternative für Deutschland party has made significant gains in elections following concerns that Merkel’s suicidal refugee policy was threatening German stability.
Connecticut: Jordanian Muslim student ‘intentionally’ crashes plane near major defense contractor
October 12, 2016Jordanian Muslim Feras M. Freitekh came to the United States on a temporary visa in 2012 to attend flight school. On Tuesday, October 12, he crashed a small aircraft into a utility pole in East Hartford, Connecticut, near Pratt & Whitney, a major defense contractor. While this story is still developing, new facts are coming out: the badly injured surviving passenger, who is a flight instructor, told the press that this crash was not an accident. Feras M. Freitekh himself died in the crash.
Though this might or might not be another case of mental illness or “Islamophobia,” it is important to note that the FBI is now involved in the case. They have since raided an apartment in Hartford where Freitekh lived, along with three other foreign nationals who are also studying to become pilots. It also remains unclear as to why Freitekh chose to come to the United States in the first place, as Jordan has one of the best air forces in the Middle East.
“Mayor: Pilot Tells Police That Plane Crash Was Intentional,” by Dave Collins, Associated Press, October 12, 2016:
The pilot of a small plane that crashed on a busy road near the headquarters of military jet-engine maker Pratt & Whitney, killing a passenger, told police detectives that the wreck was intentional, the mayor said Wednesday.
East Hartford Mayor Marcia Leclerc told The Associated Press that the badly burned pilot told authorities the crash Tuesday was not an accident, but she cautioned that investigators have not confirmed that information.
“It’s troubling,” Leclerc said. “But I also know that stories change and information can be skewed. We’re waiting for the facts to come out.”
The FBI, Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
Authorities said a student pilot and an instructor were trying to land the Piper PA-34 Seneca at Brainard Airport in Hartford when it struck a utility pole in East Hartford and crashed onto the road at around 4 p.m., bursting into flames. The crash site is a short distance from the airport, across the Connecticut River and in line with the runway.
The police chief in East Hartford asked the FBI to assist in the investigation because it happened so close to Pratt & Whitney.
“The path that the plane took could have been much worse. So we’re very fortunate in that sense,” Chief Scott Sansom said.
Police say the pilot was hospitalized with serious burns but was talking with investigators. The passenger was in the wreckage and presumed dead. Police haven’t released names.
Two people in a minivan that came close to colliding with the plane were taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
Authorities urged people to avoid the area as investigators continued their work.
“This is a very complex investigation with a lot of different agencies and a lot of different moving parts,” fire Chief John Oates said.
First Iranian-Yemeni missile attack on US flotilla
October 12, 2016First Iranian-Yemeni missile attack on US flotilla, DEBKAfile, October 12, 2016
Contrary to Tehran’s assurance to Washington in August that Iranian arms supplies to Yemeni Houthi rebels had been suspended, the rebels took delivery last week of the largest consignment of Iranian weapons to date.
According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the shipment included highly sophisticated Scud D surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 800km; and C-802 anti-ship missiles (an upgraded version of the Chinese YJ-8 NATO-named CSS-N-8 and renamed by Iran Saccade).
They came with Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers and radar systems to fine-tune the targeting of these missiles by Iran’s Yemeni proxies.
The Scuds were given to the Houthi forces fighting in northern Yemen on the Saudi border, while the C-802s were delivered to the Houthis’ Ansar Allah faction, which is under direct Iranian Rev Guards command.
The missiles were posted at special launch bases constructed by Iran outside Yemen’s two principal Red Sea ports of Mokha and Hudaydah.
Since no more than 62km of Red Sea water divides the Saudi and African coasts, the Iranian missiles are well able to block shipping and tanker traffic plying to and from the Gulf of Suez and the Persian Gulf. Therefore, the threat of blockade hangs imminently over one-third of Saudi and Gulf Emirate oil exports.
The same threat hangs over Israeli civilian and naval shipping from its southern port of Eilat through the Gulf of Aden and out to the Indian Ocean.
One of the most troubling aspects of this pivotal new menace to an international waterway was that US, Saudi, Egyptian and Israeli intelligence agencies missed the huge consignment of Iranian missiles as it headed towards Yemen. Neither did they pick up on the construction by Iranian military engineers of three ballistic missile bases – one facing Saudi Arabia and two Red Sea traffic.
Tehran’s Yemeni proxies moreover landed large-scale military strength on Perim island in the mouth of the Bab al-Mandeb strait, the chokepoint for ingress and egress from the Red Sea.
Since the strait is just 20km wide, control of this island empowers this force to regulate shipping movements through this strategic strait.
Tehran wasted no time after all its assets were in place to begin using them:
1. On Oct. 1, Iran’s Houthi surrogates launched C-8-1 missiles against a United Arab Emirates transport HSV-2 Swift logistics catamaran as it was about to pass through the strait. The ship, on lease from the US Navy, was badly damaged. No information was released about casualties.
DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources discerned that the aim of this attack was to choke off the movements of UAE warships from the southern Yemeni port of Aden, where large Emirate and Saudi forces are concentrated, to the Eritrean port of Assab, where the UAE has established a large naval base.
This attack did finally evoke a US response. The guided missile destroyers, USS Mason and USS Nitze, were dispatched to the Red Sea, along with the USS Ponce afloat forward staging base, to patrol the strait opposite the Yemeni coast
2. This did not deter Tehran or its Yemeni pawns: On Oct. 9, they fired an additional barrage of C-802 at the American flotilla, which according to a US spokesman, missed aim.
The Mason hit back with two Standard Missile-2s and a single Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile.
There has been no official word about whether these weapons destroyed a Yemeni launching site. But the event itself was a landmark as the first direct Iranian-Houthi attack of its kind on an American naval vessel.
3. That same day, the Houthis fired Scud-D missiles at the Saudi town of Ta’if, 700 km from the Yemeni border and only 70km from the Muslim shrine city Mecca. This was meant as a direct assault on the Saudi royal house and its claim to legitimacy, by virtue of its role as Guardian of the Holy Places of Islam.
In America’s heated presidential campaign, the Democratic contender Hillary Clinton boasts repeatedly that as Secretary of State she helped “put the lid on Iran’s nuclear program without firing a single shot.”
That is factually true. America did not fire a single shot. Iran did the shooting and still does, constantly upgrading its arsenal with sophisticated ballistic missiles.
Kerry: To Avoid ‘Islamic’ or ‘State,’ Call ISIS ‘World’s Most Evil Terrorist Group’
October 12, 2016Kerry: To Avoid ‘Islamic’ or ‘State,’ Call ISIS ‘World’s Most Evil Terrorist Group, PJ Media, Bridget Johnson, October 11, 2016
“But it’s just — you kind of resort to the use of those letters because it refers to a state — it’s the Islamic State — and it’s not a state. There’s nothing legitimate about it. There’s nothing Islamic about it. It’s a complete misnomer. It’s their title and we shouldn’t use it and I feel that very strongly,”
*****************
Secretary of State John Kerry suggested referring to ISIS as “the world’s most evil terrorist group” so as to not use the acronym references to “Islamic” or “State.”
Kerry noted at the Virtuous Circle Conference on Monday in Silicon Valley that he “rarely” uses the terms “ISIS” or “ISIL” at all.
“I’ve been on a lot of campaigns to get everybody to say “Daesh” because it’s a pejorative in Arabic — the initials — and I haven’t won that campaign at all,” he added.
“But it’s just — you kind of resort to the use of those letters because it refers to a state — it’s the Islamic State — and it’s not a state. There’s nothing legitimate about it. There’s nothing Islamic about it. It’s a complete misnomer. It’s their title and we shouldn’t use it and I feel that very strongly,” Kerry continued. “But it has gained — it’s the recognized term and if you want people to know what you’re talking about, unfortunately, sometimes you are forced to.”
He stressed that “it would be great if we could get away from that, and the key is the media to begin really to call it something else.”
“The terrorist group Daesh — that would be the best moniker, I think,” he said. “Or the most evil — the world’s most evil terrorist group.”
Daesh also incorporates Islamic State, just in Arabic. It stands for al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham. It’s one letter away from the word “daes,” which means to crush or trample. ISIS hates the Daesh term and has threatened violence against people who use it.
“Anyway, it’s hard,” Kerry added. “Today’s media is so — it’s so labelized and it reduces everything into these simplistic things. It’s very, very hard to break out once something has stuck.”
Kerry also talked at the technology confab about the State Department’s Global Engagement Center “mostly focused on countering violent extremism.”
“And we have 131 employees authorized, I think we’re currently at about 68. Why are we not at full force? Because it’s pretty competitive out here and tough to get people… it’s hard to find the talent and fill the slots, number one. It’s just been a slower growth process than we would have liked,” he said of the department meant to counter terrorist propaganda online.
“We’re messaging and changing the narrative of ISIL, of Daesh. And countering that narrative very forcefully. We use a lot of defectors, a lot of survivors of Daesh’s brutality. And they are the people who are messaging. They are the communicators. They’re the people who are debunking the extraordinary lies of a fairly sophisticated Daesh operation, I might add. It’s quite amazing how effective they’ve been for a while in proselytizing propaganda and so forth,” Kerry said.
“Their narrative is caliphate, we’ve taken territory, we’re the future of true Islam, and on you go. And you have to find a way to counter that that’s effective and I think we’ve gotten pretty good at it. We know we have reduced recruits. We know we have cut financing. And I am absolutely convinced, not any exaggeration, that we are going to destroy ISIL as we know it now, in the sense that there’s still a few al-Qaeda folks around, but there’s not the day-to-day threat that existed. We’re moving on Mosul, we’re moving on Raqqa, we’re shrinking their space significantly. They haven’t taken one piece of territory and held it since May of last year and their leadership is being decimated person by person.”
Al-Qaeda has been growing in the past few years, from the opening of its al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent chapter to numerous attacks by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The Treasury Department recently sanctioned “part of a new generation of al-Qaeda operatives” being sheltered by Iran.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told CBS on Sept. 11 that al-Qaeda “continues to metastasize” and “is very, very good at seeding people in and waiting. They’re very patient… they’re spreading globally very, very slowly.”
Kerry added that “the problem is there have been thousands of fighters over the course of five years, some of whom have gone back to other countries, where through the Internet they’ve been able to build subgroups of the group, or create affiliations with Boko Haram, with al-Shabaab in Somalia.”
“And so we’re going after them too, and that’s why Somali is one of the languages we’re working in now, and French for Boko Haram,” he said. “And we’re getting pretty good at this.”
Peters: ‘Obama Doesn’t Have Guts’ for Confrontation With Russia
October 12, 2016Peters: ‘Obama Doesn’t Have the Guts’ for Confrontation With Russia
BY:
October 11, 2016 3:58 pm
Source: Peters: ‘Obama Doesn’t Have Guts’ for Confrontation With Russia
Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters told Fox Business Network’s Trish Regan on Tuesday that President Obama “doesn’t have the guts” to enter into a military confrontation with Russia.
While describing the flaws in both of the presidential candidate’s proposed Syria policies, Peters slammed Obama for his inaction in the Syrian civil war during his presidency.
“President Obama has let this go on so long. He’s been so apathetic, so lethargic that it’s gotten to the point where Russia dominates the skies, and [Vladimir] Putin has warned us explicitly that any attempt on our part to ground, to militarily ground Syria’s air force will lead to a military confrontation with Russia,” he said. “And you know President Obama doesn’t have the guts for that.”
This did not stop Peters from laying into Donald Trump as well.
“Mr. Trump is utterly wrong that [Bashar al] Assad and ISIS and–rather, that Assad and Putin are fighting ISIS,” he said. “They’re fighting the moderate rebels that we equipped and letting us pay the bill to fight ISIS.”
Peters said that Clinton’s no-fly zone proposal could have been effective years ago.
While elaborating on Clinton’s policy proposal, Peters ripped into Obama again.
“Now, Hillary Clinton talks about a no-fly zone, and it’d be great if we could do it at no cost, but are we really going to confront Russia militarily in the skies?” Peters asked. “Are our aircraft going to be dogfighting Russia? I’m not saying we shouldn’t or we should, I’m trying to lay out the problems here because Obama has let it go on so very, very wrong.”
He took a final hit at Trump and Clinton after laying into Obama.
“So, Trump is wrong utterly about the situation,” he concluded. “I think Hillary Clinton is four years too late in the solution.”
Trump Tapes and Clinton Morals
October 12, 2016Trump Tapes and Clinton Morals, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, October 12, 2016
“Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life,” President Clinton whined.
It was the late hot summer of ’98 and the man dubbed “Slick Willie,” the nickname he claimed to dislike the most, was facing the prospect of becoming the first president to be successfully impeached.
These days the Clintons seem to have changed their minds about whether presidents should have private lives that ought to be pried into. So did the media, which back then insisted that it was “just sex,” but has belatedly decided that a president’s sexual conduct ought to be subject to scrutiny after all. But then again double standards are its stock in trade. They always have been.
Bill’s bedroom is off limits, but Trump’s isn’t.
Unable to run on national security, the Clintons want to run on the same subject that they once eschewed. And they want Trump’s sex life to be up for public debate, but not Bill’s.
The media has joined in this chorus which insists that when Trump mentions Bill’s rapes, he’s climbing into the “gutter,” but that when Hillary references Trump’s tape, she’s taking the “high ground.”
How can the same subject be both the gutter and the high ground? It’s either one or the other.
Meanwhile the clock to the next Islamic terror attack goes on ticking.
Back in ‘98 Bill Clinton complained, “Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long, and I take my responsibility for my part in all of this. That is all I can do. Now it is time, in fact, it is past time to move on,” he added. “We have important work to do — real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face.”
These days the Clintons don’t want to move on. They want to discuss the Trump tape as often as possible. Why? Because they don’t want to deal with what the Clintons did move on to.
Hours before 9/11, Bill Clinton was giving a speech in Australia and boasted that he could have gotten Osama bin Laden, but chose not to because of the collateral damage in Kandahar.
“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him,” he admitted.
The planned airstrike had been vetoed in late December ’98. Congress had postponed debate on impeachment a few days earlier to allow Bill Clinton to bomb Iraq in peace. The raids accomplished little except to distract from the impeachment debate and from his refusal to take out Osama bin Laden.
Americans watching every salacious detail of the Lewinsky affair laid out for them were focusing on the wrong thing. In early August, Al Qaeda had carried out the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. This attack was a major signpost on the road to 9/11. But like the World Trade Center bombing and the Benghazi attack, the Clintons had miserably failed in the face of Islamic terror.
Back in ’98, Bill Clinton insisted that his sex life didn’t matter compared to “security matters.” Now the Clintons would like us to believe that Trump’s sex life matters more than ISIS.
The Clintons have cost the lives of thousands of Americans and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world with their approach to “security matters.” The real question may be how many more lives, especially American lives, their way of doing things will cost.
Hillary Clinton is determined to dump massive numbers of Syrian Muslim migrants in this country despite the terror risk. She has doubled down on the destructive policies that led to the rise of ISIS.
It’s not hard to imagine a speech by yet another President Clinton discussing how she could have gotten the man behind the next Islamic terror threat, but chose not to do anything.
The question is whether voters can take the time to look past the flood of salacious material in the media. Europe has seen a wave of major attacks. It’s only a matter of time until an attack on a larger scale than the Pulse massacre in Florida, in which an ISIS Muslim killed 49 people, takes place.
Despite their ugly past, the Clintons have decided to run for a third term on their record as moral paragons. Hillary’s Role Models ad urged voters to protect their children from the bad influence of a President Trump. “Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?” it asked.
At the second debate, she also warned that our children were watching.
Hillary’s concern for what children watch politicians do on television is a little belated. It wasn’t that long ago that parents were sending their children out of the room when Bill’s affairs were being discussed.
And these days they are again.
Hillary would have as much luck running on her honesty or foreign policy track record as on being a role model for the children. Having the Clintons as role models for children should be considered child abuse.
But Bill Clinton was just doing his best JFK impression. And compared to the antics of the Kennedys, he looked like a saint. At least we don’t know of a single woman whom he actually murdered.
And here was Ted Kennedy at his best. “The six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair… Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers.”
This wasn’t talk on a tape. It happened. And Ted went on to be praised as a champion of women’s rights.
It’s a little bizarre that at this late date, the Democrats have decided to become the guardians of our moral values. Or that the Clintons of all people would try to fill those shoes.
But discussing Trump’s tape is a nice distraction from addressing the role that Hillary’s support for the Arab Spring played in the rise of ISIS, the mass kidnapping and rape of Yazidi women by Islamic Jihadists, the mass sexual assaults against women in Germany perpetrated by Muslim refugees, including those from Hillary’s Arab Spring, and the men and women who died here on September 11.
Back in ’98, Bill Clinton claimed that his personal life had to be off limits so that he could protect our national life. He got what he wanted and he failed to protect our national life. Having abandoned any sense of responsibility to our national life, the Clintons want to talk about the values of personal life.
But if voters want paragons of morality in personal life, why would they turn to the Clintons? And if they want someone to protect the national life, why would they turn to the Clintons?
If they want a superpredator who waged a private war on women, they have the Clintons. And if they want someone who will let the next 9/11 happen, they also have the Clintons.
Russian Government Officials Told To Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad | Zero Hedge
October 12, 2016Russian Government Officials Told To Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad Tyler
by Tyler Durden
Oct 12, 2016 2:42 AM
Source: Russian Government Officials Told To Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad | Zero Hedge
In Europe, when it gets serious, you have to lie… at least if you are an unelected bureaucrat like Jean-Claude Juncker. In Russia, however, when it gets serious, attention immediately turns to the children.
Which is why we read a report in Russian website Znak published Tuesday, according to which Russian state officials and government workers were told to bring back their children studying abroad immediately, even if means cutting their education short and not waiting until the end of the school year, and re-enroll them in Russian schools, with some concern. The article adds that if the parents of these same officials also live abroad “for some reason”, and have not lost their Russian citizenship, should also be returned to the motherland. Znak cited five administration officials as the source of the report.
The “recommendation” applies to all: from the administration staff, to regional administratiors, to lawmakers of all levels. Employees of public corporations are also subject to the ordinance. One of the sources said that anyone who fails to act, will find such non-compliance to be a “complicating factor in the furtherance of their public sector career.” He added that he was aware of several such cases in recent months.
It appears that the underlying reason behind the command is that the Russian government is concerned about the optics of having children of the Russian political elite being educated abroad, while their parents appear on television talking about patriotism and being “surrounded by enemies.”
While we doubt the impacted children will be happy by this development, some of the more patriotic locals, if unimpacted, are delighted. Such as Vitaly Ivanov, a political scientist who believes that the measure to return children of officials from studying abroad, is “long overdue.” According Ivanoc, the education of children of the Russian elite abroad is subject to constant ridicule and derision against the ruling regime. “People note the hypocrisy of having a centralized state and cultivating patriotism and anti-Western sentiment, while children of government workers study abroad. You can not serve two gods, one must choose.”
On the other hand, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky quoted by Znak, believes that such decisions should be approached with more pragmatism. Such a recommendation is more likely to lead to an outflow of officials from the state, rather than allow the return of the children studying at elite foreign universities. He also warned of attempts to recreate an echo chamber such as that experienced after the failed July coup attempt on Turkey’s President Erdogan.
But what he said next was more disturbing: “On the one hand, this is all part of a package of measures to prepare the elites for some ‘big war’ even if it is rather conditional, on the other hand – this is another blow to the unity of President Putin with his own elite” Belkovsky said. He adds that the Western sanctions launcedh in March 2014, had sought to drive a wedge between Putin and elites. In response, the Kremlin began to act precisely according to the logic of these sanctions. “But while a ban for having assets in the West is one thing, and understanable, when it comes to a ban for offshore health and education services, the blowback will be far greater, as it represents a far more important element of the establishment’s life strategy.”
Ultimately the motivation behind Putin’s decision is unclear: whether it is to show Russia’s high-ranking oligarchs who is boss, to boost a sense of patriotism among the nation by sending a symbolic message that the west is no longer a welcome destination for Russia’s rich kids, or just a preemptive move of repatriating of any individuals affiliated with Russian politics for other unknown reasons; however it underscores the severity of the ongoing diplomatic crisis and just how significant the upcoming isolation between Russia and the West is likely to become in the coming months – unless of course tensions deescalate dramatically in the very near future – resulting in even greater collapse in global commerce and a further slowdown to world economic growth, which may ultimately lead to an armed conflict, whether regional or global, as the only possible outcome.
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