1. BobW said:

Headnote: A great article by a Virginian.

This was a high quality article explaining the mechanical aspects of international relations along with the other real-world matters.

One point does require comment re PM Sharon and PM Putin "share a similiar mindset about their Muslim opponents: they are terrorists with whom there can be no negotiation.". If PM Sharom is NOT negotiating with terrorists, I'm scared to see what negotiating would give them. Maybe Rafael developed a method to give away =mazal=, "soul root". What else is left?

It was a great article.

Footnote: The mentioned Yevgeny Primakov (FM 1996-8; PM 1998-9) is, per Halacha, Jewish. Former Prime Minister Primakov's original name was Finkelstein. His father was from Kiev, Ukraine. His mother's maiden name was Kirshenblatt; from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Kol tuv,
BobW

2. felix quigley said:

It may be a very detailed article but that is as far as I would go

The issue of Sharon and his political tendency inside Israel which is really working some kind of dictatorship, Joseph calls it Bonapartist, is really the central issue.

My reading suggests that this so-called Left tendency which Sharon represents comes out of the accomodation made with the social democrats and the Stalinists in the Israeli Communist Party right back there in 1948. Then they were fresh from that historical betrayal to Hitler which allowed the Nazis to WALK into power without a shot being fired.

This is the tendency which is betraying Israel. A second Palestinian state is the deadly threat to Israel.

Putin has travelled across to meet with the three European central governments, the French, German and the Spanish just days ago. That is his real orientation. It is to reduce the proud ideal of the Jewish Homeland to virtually a powerless rump.

I feel that if Putin is linking with Sharon then it is on that basis.

3. Getzel said:

I believe the market conditions have remained constant since prior to 1948 with respect to the government(s) operating out of Moscow's foreign policy. By 1918 a weapons manufacturing company had consolidated power in Moscow and referred to themselves as the USSR; Promise communism, deliver slavery to a military industrial complex. The KGB and its succssesor are the marketing department for THE (commuless) Moscow Weapons Company. While The Moscow Weapons Company dropped the sharade of portraying itself as " a communist: equal sharing of resources country"; it nevertheless remains the MOSCOW Weapons Company. The KGB and its succseesor: manipulate ethnic masses, stir up hostilities, insure there are two viable sides and (along with the Americans)create the conditions for nice long lasting wars and SELL LOTS OF WEAPONS...in 1982 I developed that strategy for explaing the wars of the last 150 years and for dooming the Commuless Moscow Weapons Company; they had to change their name (they realised they could not survive being called Commuless Moscow Weapons Company) but the game remains the same. Believing or not believing this stategy is not important; following this stategy of referring to these wars as only weapons deals makes the wars avoidable and the settlements real easy, (but makes the Moscow Weapons Company and American weapons companies real mad). E.G. The current big war. Boosted by petro dollars the fundamentalist Moslems, like Iran's ruling Mullahs and the house of Saudis(et al) use Bin Laden, Hizbullah et. al. as private surragate armies to lash out at American free democratic societies who's success spells fundamentalist Islams doom. So America finances the war against itself every day at the gas pumps...backround: the 1973 so called oil embargo and Yom Kippur war were only a weapons deal: The new generation of( in 1973) 10 million dollar jets were great but who could the americans sell them to? Oil went from 2.50 /bbl to $8/bbl. Vwielie the Arabs &/or Moslems now have money to pay for weapons/war...ditto 1979, ditto 2005...Ethanol is cost effectivly produced and used to fuel GM, Ford, Toyota manufactured to run on ethanol cars in Brazil (for the last 30 years), but the American oil and military industrial complex people swear in congress that the physics for ethanol production are totally different south of the equator. 9999 out of 10000 Americans have no idea GM, FORD, AND TOYOTA et al,have manufactured made to run on ethanol cars in Brazil for 30 years. The American press is by definition only a pawn (intentional or unintentional) of these evil war manufacturers. The congessmen value their seats (and hides) to much to even think about it.