Mother Russia

After reading this, it is becoming quite apparent that Russia is returning to her old ways. For those that have followed Russia's consolidation of once private energy companies into state-owned ones such as Yukos, this is nothing new. As mentioned in the article, Russia cut off supplies to the Ukraine in the past and has tried bullying western-leaning Georgia for a number of years now. I fear this is only going to continue to grow as a problem for the world as Russia and/or Iran will try to blackmail the world to meet its political objectives. Russia has long supplied countries such as Iran with nuclear expertise and conventional weapons and sells arms to the number 1 buyer of weapons today (Venezueala). Neither of these US friends. It should also be noted that Russia provided intelligence information to Iraq before the US invasion. This is disturbing to me especially as we try to stabilize the fragile Middle East (as best as we can).

An interesting read for people that are interested in the growing ties between Russia and the Middle East should read Joel Rosenberg's book Epicenter. I have read the book myself and it is a fascinating read (he looks at today's current events and analyzes them with Ezekiel 38-39) regardless of your spiritual preferences. He is a smart man: worked for the Heritage Foundation, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Steve Forbes' presidential campaign. Joel Rosenberg also was the one who originally wrote about terrorists using planes as weapons and the invasion of Iraq before they happened.