France's Sarkozy Meets Putin, Says West Too Tough On Russia
Source: Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) -- Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged the West to stop isolating Russia, and met with Vladimir Putin on an unusual diplomatic foray.
Putin hosted Sarkozy in his Moscow region residence Thursday, insisting that "the world needs Russia." Sarkozy agreed, saying "Russia and Europe have to work together" to end current tensions, particularly in Syria.
Sarkozy's trip and warm relations with Putin have angered some in France who see that as potentially damaging for diplomatic efforts of the current French administration. Sarkozy is hoping to return to the French presidency in 2017.
In a speech to a Moscow university, Sarkozy said, "We should in no way accept a new cold war, as this will be a defeat both for you and us," according to Russian news agencies.
Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_SARKOZY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-10-29-13-37-34
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swilton
(5,069 posts)are not to 'bring democracy to Ukraine's masses' but to
1. topple Putin through a destabilized Russia and
2. control Russia's vast resources of oil/gas/etc. for Western multi-national corporations
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)They want Russia to be stable, and for it to stop destabilizing its neighbors.
The stuff about the US wanting to overthrow Putin is Russian state propaganda. Some are dumb enough to buy it.
uawchild
(2,208 posts)Robert Parry, investigative journalist, seems to not be a Russian state propagandist:
Robert Parry (born June 24, 1949) is an American investigative journalist best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek, including breaking the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) and the CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US scandal in 1985. He was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984. He has been the editor of Consortium News since 1995.
Here's what he says on whether the neocons in the US want to destabilize Russia:
"Why Neocons Seek to Destabilize Russia
April 27, 2014
Exclusive: Any propaganda war starts by planting stories that your target is getting rich, whether he is or isn’t, the latest move in demonizing Vladimir Putin. But the larger question is what might happen if the neocons succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia, asks Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Now that the demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in full swing, one has to wonder when the neocons will unveil their plan for “regime change” in Moscow, despite the risks that overthrowing Putin and turning Russia into a super-sized version of Ukraine might entail for the survival of the planet.
There is a “little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly” quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme.
If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with “regime change” – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your “regime change” in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]
Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program.
So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]
You support an uprising against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, even though neo-Nazi militias are needed to accomplish the actual coup. You get the U.S. State Department to immediately recognize the coup regime although it disenfranchises many people of eastern and southern Ukraine, where Yanukovych had his political base.
When Putin steps in to protect the interests of those ethnic Russian populations and supports the secession of Crimea (endorsed by 96 percent of voters in a hastily called referendum), your target shifts again. Though you’ve succeeded in your plan to drive a wedge between Obama and Putin, Putin’s resistance to your Ukraine plans makes him the next focus of “regime change.” "
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/27/why-neocons-seek-to-destabilize-russia/
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)He carries more water for Russia than the Volga.
He's a joke here.
uawchild
(2,208 posts)Or is he just a dupe or something? When did he go bad? His early credentials seem impressive -- do you think it's possible he's a victim of brainwashing?
But here's a question... why wouldn't the neocons be trying to destabilize Russia? Isn't that exactly the sort of thing neocons do?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)His columns on Russia are pretty much written in Moscow though. Never a criticism for Assad, or Putin, or the people who shot down MH17. Never.
He peddled the theory that Ukrainians shot down MH17 because they were trying to kill Putin.
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/08/was-putin-targeted-for-mid-air-assassination/
Always the same line of bullshit from him--he claims that his sources are "US intelligence analysts" when it's pretty obvious where this stuff comes from.
Neocons want cheap oil. Russia provides cheap oil.
Invading Iraq or Libya is one thing. No one has any appetite for invading Russia. Destabilizing Russia would lead to loose nukes, and tank the world economy.
uawchild
(2,208 posts)I think some of them think if they destabilize Russia and break it up into 3-4 countries more, then they can get their hands on those resources even cheaper.
We will see. The neocon propaganda machine seems stuck in high gear, wasn't it just yesterday CNN was running scare stories about Russian subs lurking near undersea cables with bad intentions?
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Award-winning journalist who turns into a Russian propagandist over Ukraine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)Frankly, I'm sick of the jingoism about "bad guys" and "good guys." It just means more 'filthy lucre' for the "military-industrial complex." When are we, the people--who pay in bodies, and money, and international disrepute--going to get smart about the war propaganda of our own "military-industrial complex" and its war-loving corporate media?
Our MIC overlords destabilize other countries in their interests--they've done it in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and other places, recently (--and Vietnam, back in the day; central Africa then, too; and, of course, Latin America, then, too; and Indonesia; and back further, the overthrow of Iran's first elected president in 1954, and on and on--it's what our MIC does), and now--after horribly destabilizing Iraq, Syria and Libya, in particular--they are trying to demonize Russia for trying to prevent the destabilization of Russia's borders (my read on Russia's actions in Ukraine, and I'm not alone), for fearing NATO and for having an interest in stabilizing Syria. I don't have any love for Putin--he's just yet another overlord similar to our own (not Obama, but the real powers in Washington--those calling the shots at the Pentagon and the CIA). We have an equivalency of overlords, and all of the propaganda, on both sides, needs to be seen for what it is: power and money games backed by violence.
The U.S.--that is, the overlord U.S.--absolutely would want to destabilize Russia and overthrow Putin, because Russia is a rising power, and they do not want any rivals. This has been going on for a very long time--for about seven decades. I remember when the U.S. Joint Chiefs opposed JFK's compromise with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Krushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. withdrawing its missiles from Turkey (on Russia's border). The Joint Chiefs were bent on NUKING Russia during that crisis. They also opposed JFK's "Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" with Russia (the first treaty to limit nuclear weapons) and the Russian Wheat Deal (U.S. wheat to Russia to prevent the starvation of millions of Russians after a failed harvest).* This new developing "cold war" is very similar, and it's important to understand its history.
Now Sarkozy is trying to bring sanity back into this new and growing crisis with Russia, and your response seems to be "Rah, rah USA! Bad, bad Russia!" Please correct me if I'm wrong. That's how I read it. You don't want Sarkozy's intervention to be taken seriously here. You want us to think "Bad Russia." My point is both sides are bad, both sides have lots of nukes and vast amounts of other weaponry, and both are playing power and resource games, with millions of lives and the earth itself at very great risk.
Taking sides--demonizing "Putin" (yet another demon figure for all of us to sneer at and fear)--is not going to solve any problems. Sarkozy is right, that diplomacy--and in particular inviting adversaries to a common table to work things through peacefully--is the way to head off a new and extremely dangerous "cold war." We don't want to go there again. We don't want to be shuddering once again under threat of annihilation of the human race and all life on earth. I'm not a Sarkozy fan either. But in this case he is right.
-------------------------
*(See "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," by James Douglass.)
Cal33
(7,018 posts)purposes that cannot use any other type of energy). If it doesn't, the human
race could become extinct in a century or so.
Chakab
(1,727 posts)honorable does not make Putin and his crony state any less worthy of the derision and marginalization.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)swilton
(5,069 posts)We're better off managing our own leadership.
Russia has and could do a lot worse than Putin.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)That PROVES...something.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Works out well for some that she's not widely known.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Which is why it shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone that the head of a cabinet department met with someone who works at that cabinet department.
It's almost like she's her boss or something.
Cookies!
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Never mind the straw man, "they met".
cprise
(8,445 posts)and that half the Middle East must be invaded.
pampango
(24,692 posts)The European wants a weaker, or nonexistent, EU which is also something they agree with Putin about.
Undermining the 'diplomatic efforts' of the left is not something that will cause Sarkozy to lose any sleep. He is playing to the far-right which he hopes to coopt enough to win the election in 2017. The far-right is even more pro-Russia than is Sarkozy party, now called the "Republicans".
cprise
(8,445 posts)against non-aligned producers of resources like Russia (and half the Middle East).
Where NATO/US is concerned, they never met a cooperative far-right despot they didn't like. They're also overwrought to the point where they must keep looking for trouble or manufacturing enemies. That would be true even if MIC were 1/5 the size it is today.
